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01.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

DrivingAgent: Design and Scheduling Agents for Autonomous Driving Systems

Many autonomous driving systems are increasingly incorporating foundation models to improve generalization and handle long-tail scenarios. However, this trend introduces two key challenges: (i) the manual and labor-intensive process of designing and integrating new models, and (ii) the lack of intelligent, dynamic scheduling mechanisms to meet strict real-time constraints. While Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents offer a promising avenue for automation, existing frameworks are ill-suited for autonomous driving. Specifically, they fail to distinguish between the fundamentally different requirements of system design and real-time scheduling, treat modules as opaque black boxes, and are not designed for continuous operation. To address these limitations, we propose DrivingAgent, a novel agent framework tailored to the dual challenges of autonomous driving system design and scheduling. In the design phase, DrivingAgent automates module development by interpreting system architecture, generating code, and validating modules via super-network training. In the scheduling phase, it employs a lightweight LLM trained with reinforcement learning to dynamically orchestrate system modules in real time, supported by a structured memory that integrates long-term storage with timestamped short-term context. Experimental results demonstrate that DrivingAgent achieves a superior speed–accuracy trade-off on both the nuScenes and Bench2Drive benchmarks.

02.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Learning from Biased and Costly Data Sources: Minimax-optimal Data Collection under a Budget

arXiv:2602.17894v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Data collection is a critical component of modern statistical and machine learning pipelines, particularly when data must be gathered from multiple heterogeneous sources to study a target population of interest. In many use cases, such as medical studies or political polling, different sources incur different sampling costs. Observations often have associated group identities - for example, health markers, demographics, or political affiliations - and the relative composition of these groups may differ substantially, both among the source populations and between sources and target population. In this work, we study multi-source data collection under a fixed budget, focusing on the estimation of population means and group-conditional means. We show that naive data collection strategies (e.g. attempting to "match" the target distribution) or relying on standard estimators (e.g. sample mean) can be highly suboptimal. Instead, we develop a sampling plan which maximizes the effective sample size - the total sample size divided by $D_{\chi^2}(q\mid\mid\overline{p}) + 1$, where $q$ is the target distribution, $\overline{p}$ is the aggregated source distribution, and $D_{\chi^2}$ is the $\chi^2$-divergence. We pair this sampling plan with a classical post-stratification estimator and upper bound its risk. We provide matching lower bounds, establishing that our approach achieves the budgeted minimax optimal risk. Our techniques also extend to prediction problems when minimizing the excess risk, providing a principled approach to multi-source learning with costly and heterogeneous data sources.

03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

MA-SBI: Misspecification-Aware Simulation-Based Inference via Side-Channel Guidance

arXiv:2606.16923v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Simulation-based inference (SBI) of latent parameters is often hindered by simulator misspecification, the mismatch between simulated and real-world observations caused by inherent modeling simplifications. RoPE, the recent state-of-the-art for robust SBI, addresses this through optimal transport between learned representations of real and simulated observations, but requires ground-truth parameter calibration pairs that are typically unavailable in the very settings where SBI is needed. What practitioners do have is unstructured side-information such as regime labels, instruction text, and policy bulletins. We propose Misspecification-Aware Simulation-Based Inference (MA-SBI), a calibration-free framework that turns this side-channel into a posterior correction. A learned corrector maps side-channel text to an observation-space shift applied before any pre-trained amortized posterior, requiring no retraining and no parameter ground-truth. Our main theorem bounds achievable bias reduction by the mutual information between misspecification and side-channel, with a non-vacuous constant that extends to all sub-Gaussian noise via Donsker-Varadhan. On hide-the-calibration benchmarks, MA-SBI with text alone matches the oracle posterior across 10 seeds and two backbones (TOST equivalence), while RoPE given more data does not. The two approaches are complementary: where misspecification is structural and recoverable from parameter pairs, RoPE dominates, as the theory predicts. A stochastic variant improves posterior-predictive log-likelihood on real COVID and OxCGRT epidemiological data, and correctly leaves the posterior unchanged on a well-specified cognitive-science corpus.

04.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Sorries Are Not the Hard Part: An Expert-Review Case Study of a Semi-Autonomous Formalization

arXiv:2606.13925v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models can often close proof gaps in interactive theorem provers, but a verified theorem is not the same thing as a reusable library contribution. We study this distinction through a detailed case study: a semi-autonomous formalization of Grothendieck's vanishing theorem. The initial version compiles with no sorries, but an expert review found serious problems in definitions, theorem generality, file organization, and the API. We then ran a review-driven refactor and compression process and obtained a second expert review. The before-and-after comparison shows a sharp split: agents adapted well to local, mechanically checkable feedback, but remained weak at choosing definitions and designing APIs. We argue that autoformalization should be evaluated not only by closed sorries, but by whether the resulting formalization survives expert review.

05.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Label Shift Aware Adaptation for Online Zero-shot Learning with Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training (CLIP)

Vision-language models like Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training (CLIP) have been extensively studied in data-scarce scenarios. A particularly challenging and realistic task in this area is online zero-shot learning with CLIP, where unknown test samples are predicted sequentially in random order by CLIP while keeping the feature extraction and model parameters fixed during the sequential inference phase. Most existing approaches in this setting address the problem by adapting representations online using incoming test samples, while neglecting the distribution of the data on which CLIP was initially trained. This mismatch can lead to degraded performance when the label distribution in the test data differs from that of the training domain. To address this gap, we propose Label Shift Aware (LSA), which formulates the online zero-shot classification task as a domain adaptation problem. Specifically, LSA adapts the predictions computed by CLIP, which was trained on an unknown source distribution, to a target distribution using only unlabeled test data, and applies label shift correction to mitigate the mismatch between the source and target domains. The extensive experiments across multiple datasets demonstrate that the proposed LSA consistently outperforms state-of-the-art online zero-shot learning methods based on CLIP.

06.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

ChronoID: Infusing Explicit Temporal Signals into Semantic IDs for Generative Recommendation

arXiv:2606.14260v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Semantic IDs are crucial in generative recommendation, but with a fundamental limitation: temporal information is not well incorporated into semantic IDs. Instead, time influences recommendation only implicitly (e.g., through session construction heuristics, preference alignment, or sequence order), while existing semantic ID learning remains entirely time-agnostic. This design conflates interactions occurring under distinct temporal contexts into identical semantic representations, implicitly assuming that item semantics and user intent are temporally stationary. Such an assumption is misaligned with real-world recommendation scenarios, where evolving interaction rhythms play a central role. In this work, we investigate where and how the explicit time should be incorporated into semantic ID for generative recommendation. First, we systematically characterize the design space along three orthogonal dimensions of temporal signals and present a unified framework, ChronoID, for time-aware semantic ID learning. Then, by contributing a new time-explicit generation recommendation benchmark, ChronoID answers the questions: what is the effective way of infusing time, how to design the architecture, and where does the gain come from.

07.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

Large-scale proteomics and timing of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy

Background: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) may first be diagnosed antepartum, during labor, or postpartum. We utilized untargeted large-scale proteomics to identify pathways associated with HDP based on timing of onset. Methods: We performed a nested case-control study comparing differential protein expression, from the SomaScan 7K platform, based on timing of onset of HDP versus controls (referent) using first-trimester samples from the NuMoM2b-Heart Health Study, a multi-site cohort that followed nulliparous individuals from the first trimester. Associations of proteins with timing of onset of HDP, adjusted for co-variates, were assessed using logistic regression q value-based false discovery rates and pathway enrichment and differential expression analysis were conducted. Results: Of 1628 individuals included, 678 had HDP, of which 67% manifested antepartum (AP), 29% intrapartum (IP), and 3% postpartum (PP). After adjusting for co-variates, compared to controls, 698 proteins, 39 proteins, and 144 proteins were differentially expressed in those with HDP according to AP, IP, PP onset, respectively. There was little overlap in individual protein expression based on timing of HDP. Pathway enrichment and graphical summary analyses suggested distinct processes. Specifically, there was downregulation of angiogenic proteins in AP HDP, downregulation of immune-related proteins in IP HDP, and upregulation of complement activation promoting fibrotic changes leading to cardiac dysfunction in PP HDP. Conclusion: There are differences in first-trimester protein expression based on whether HDP first manifests AP, IP or PP. This raises the possibility that there may be distinct mechanistic phenotypes that could uniquely inform diagnostic and therapeutic targets for HDP.

08.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

SPARX: Secure and Privacy-Aware Approximate CNN Acceleration with Edge RISC-V SoC

Edge-AI systems increasingly require real-time CNN inference under strict energy, performance, security, and privacy constraints. Approximate computing improves hardware efficiency by exploiting the error resilience of neural network workloads; however, most approximate CNN accelerators do not jointly consider secure, privacy-aware edge deployment. This paper presents SPARX, a Secure and Privacy-Aware Approximate CNN Acceleration framework integrated within a heterogeneous RV32IMC RISC-V System-on-Chip (SoC). SPARX combines a custom RISC-V instruction extension, an approximate logarithmic CNN acceleration unit, a lightweight differential-noise-based privacy engine, and a challenge-response authentication mechanism. To guide arithmetic selection, an approximation-aware decision framework is introduced that uses the Approximation Severity Index (ASI), Approximation Efficiency (AE), Quality of Approximation (QoA), Approximation Figure-of-Merit (AFOM), and Hardware Acceleration Efficiency (HAE). Evaluation across 11 state-of-the-art approximate MAC architectures identifies the Iterative Logarithmic Multiplier (ILM) as the most suitable design, achieving 51.7% area reduction, 81.5% power reduction, and 2.13x throughput improvement compared with an accurate radix-4 Booth MAC, while only reducing ResNet-20/CIFAR-10 accuracy by 2.82 percentage points. FPGA implementation on a Xilinx VC707 platform achieves 58.4 GOPS/W energy efficiency at 250 MHz, while 28-nm CMOS physical implementation validates ASIC feasibility

09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Masked Neural Detection for Constrained Channel Coding in Molecular Communication

arXiv:2606.12489v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Molecular communication (MC) suffers from severe diffusion memory because molecules released for one symbol may arrive during later symbols. Neural sequence detectors, especially sliding bidirectional recurrent neural networks (SBRNNs), can substantially outperform threshold detectors in such channels. This raises a central question for MC channel coding: does a code whose advantage was established under threshold detection retain it when both coded and uncoded transmission are evaluated with neural detection? This letter answers this question for run-length-limited ISI-mitigation (RLIM) codes, a class of constrained codes previously shown to provide large BER gains in MC. Across the tested operating points, the best RLIM-SBRNN receiver beats the best uncoded receiver, chosen between threshold and SBRNN detection, in $46$ of $59$ cases, with a mean gain of $10.36\times$ over those wins. We also propose an RLIM-tailored training mask for compact SBRNN detectors, improving the unmasked RLIM-SBRNN in $227$ of $236$ comparisons with $3.267\times$ mean gain when masking is beneficial. Finally, the compact masked RLIM-SBRNN is competitive with channel-state-aware MLSE despite using no channel knowledge.

10.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-18

Urinary Creatine Riboside Complements PSA to Improve Disease Detection in the Diagnostic Gray Zone of Prostate Cancer

Circulating prostate-specific antigen (PSA) discriminates poorly in the diagnostic gray zone (3.0-9.99 ng/mL), where ~75% of biopsies yield no clinically significant prostate cancer (PCa). We evaluated whether urinary creatine riboside (CR), a tumor-derived metabolite excreted through the prostatic urethra, complements PSA for gray-zone detection and independently predicts prostate-cancer-specific mortality (PCSM). In the NCI-Maryland PCa Case-Control Study (951 cases, 962 controls; 47.6% African American men; median follow-up 11.5 years), urinary CR was quantified by UPLC-MS/MS. Within the PSA gray zone (n = 668), urinary CR was complementary to PSA, with markedly higher single-marker discrimination than PSA (AUC 0.93, 95% CI 0.88-0.98 vs 0.77, 0.66-0.89) and additive when combined ({Delta}AUC +0.17, p < 0.001; 91.4% sensitivity at 80% specificity). After adjustment for 11 clinical and sociodemographic covariates, urinary CR independently predicted PCSM complementary to PSA (Fine-Gray SHR 1.72, 1.35-2.19 for CR; 1.35, 1.08-1.68 for PSA; Harrell's C 0.85 for CR + PSA vs 0.77 for PSA alone), with strongest signal in African American men (SHR 2.43, 1.57-3.75 for CR). We conclude that urinary CR is a candidate non-invasive biomarker complementary to PSA - improving gray-zone triage and predicting PCSM; prospective validation in biopsy-referred cohorts is warranted.

12.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Bridging Passive and Active: Enhancing Conversation Starter Recommendation via Active Expression Modeling

Large Language Model (LLM)-driven conversational search is shifting information retrieval from reactive keyword matching to proactive, open-ended dialogues. In this context, Conversation Starters are widely deployed to provide personalized query recommendations that help users initiate dialogues. Conventionally, recommending these starters relies on a closed "exposure-click" loop. Yet, this feedback loop mechanism traps the system in an echo chamber where, compounded by data sparsity, it fails to capture the dynamic nature of conversational search intents shaped by the open world. As a result, the system skews towards popular but generic suggestions. In this work, we uncover an untapped paradigm shift to shatter this harmful feedback loop: harnessing user "free will" through active user expressions. Unlike traditional recommendations, conversational search empowers users to bypass menus entirely through manually typed queries. The open-world intents in active queries hold the key to breaking this loop. However, incorporating them is non-trivial: (1) there exists an inherent distribution shift between active queries and formulated starters. (2) Furthermore, the "non-ID-able" nature of open text renders traditional item-based popularity statistics ineffective for large-scale industrial streaming training. To this end, we propose Passive-Active Bridge (PA-Bridge), a novel framework that employs an adversarial distribution aligner to bridge the distributional gap between passively recommended starters and active expressions. Moreover, we introduce a semantic discretizer to enable the deployment of popularity debiasing algorithms. Online A/B tests on our platform, demonstrate that PA-Bridge significantly boosts the Feature Penetration Rate by 0.54% and User Active Days by 0.04%.

13.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-19

Exposing the Unsaid: Visualizing Hidden LLM Bias through Stochastic Path Aggregation

Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit representational and syntactic biases that are difficult to evaluate due to the stochastic nature of text generation. Standard auditing methods rely on a single output inspection or static automated metrics. These approaches obscure the underlying probability distributions and fail to capture biases hidden in lower-probability generation branches. This paper introduces TreeTracer, a visual analytics tool designed to evaluate LLM bias through aggregated comparison. Using a systematic perturbation analysis pipeline, the tool replaces ontology-defined terms in each input prompt, aggregates hundreds of stochastic generations into a syntax-aligned hierarchical structure, and then performs classification-aware node merging with an auxiliary language model. The resulting structure is visualized through a custom Sankey diagram. By juxtaposing two ontology-driven trees, the workspace enables direct comparison between semantic contexts and supports systematic bias detection. Because any visualization reflects only a subset of the model's learned behavior, the system further applies contrastive inference to compute and directly display counterfactual token probabilities across contexts, reducing the risk of misinterpreting the presence of bias. We validate the workspace through case studies comparing an unaligned baseline model GPT-2 XL against the constitutionally aligned Apertus models. The visual aggregation successfully exposes hidden representational harms, such as counterfactual pronoun suppression and conversational marginalization of individuals. A preliminary user study confirms that the aggregated comparative interface reduces cognitive load and effectively supports analysts in detecting systemic biases.

14.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Initiation of Superradiance from Different Collective Spin States

arXiv:2606.14949v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Superradiance is an extensive cooperative spontaneous emission phenomenon. Some atomic collective spin states exhibit it. However, distinct initial states differ in their decay dynamics. Dicke states with different numbers of excitations have their peak emission intensity shifted in time depending on the number of excitations. Emission intensity in atomic coherent states depends on their polarization. Some specific states undergo a squeezing controlled crossover, making the emission character dependent on the amount of squeezing in the state. We present detailed results on the superradiant dynamics of a representative selection of Dicke states. For large N, we are able to predict fairly accurately the pulse profile in each case using the mean field approximation, an approach based on the Fokker Planck Equation. We also present results on the intensity correlation function of the emission.

15.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Quantum charge pumping in helical systems: A comparative study of short- and long-range hopping

arXiv:2606.12914v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Using the Keldysh non-equilibrium Green's function approach, we investigate charge pumping through a single-stranded helical structure described by a tight-binding model that includes either short-range hopping (SRH) or long-range hopping (LRH). While quantum pumping has been studied in various low-dimensional systems, the detailed behavior of the spectral current and the pumped dc current in helical geometries in the presence of higher-order electron hopping (beyond nearest neighbors) has not yet been systematically explored. Here, we focus on the interplay between helicity and extended hopping ranges, analyzing how they jointly control the energy-resolved and dc pumped currents under time-periodic end potentials. For LRH, the pumped dc current exhibits pronounced plateau-like regions as a function of chemical potential when energy levels are sparsely spaced – consistent with adiabatic transport – whereas SRH yields more parameter-sensitive currents without clear plateaus. The plateau stability is controlled by the drive frequency: at higher frequencies, Floquet side-band mixing destroys the plateaus, leading to oscillatory currents. The phase dependence remains nearly sinusoidal, and the current vanishes at zero phase lag, confirming the necessity of out-of-phase potentials. Crucially, in helical systems, the decay exponent $(\ell_c)$ acts as an effective structural parameter that can tune both the magnitude and sign of the pumped current, offering a geometric knob for controlling quantum pumping. Our findings not only fill a gap in the understanding of spectral and pumped currents in helical systems with extended hopping but also provide tools that can be applied to analyze similar phenomena in other chiral or quasi-one-dimensional systems.

16.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Output Type Before Quality: A Standards-Derived XAI Admissibility Rubric for Autonomous-Driving Safety

arXiv:2606.05461v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Safety standards for ML-based autonomous driving specify the kind of evidence an assurance case must contain (directed cause-and-effect chains, quantified interventional effects, named root-cause variables), yet the XAI literature is organised by output type and technique family (saliency maps, feature attribution, counterfactuals, causal graphs, language traces). SHAP, the most-recommended ADS XAI method, returns a ranked feature list that no implementation effort can convert into a directed chain (Fig.1). We name this mismatch the evidence-type gap. From AMLAS, ISO 26262, ISO21448, ISO/PAS 8800 we derive 19 testable evidentiary criteria across 7 lifecycle stages with representative clause-cited derivations and score six XAI method classes structurally. Causal XAI emerges as structurally required to satisfy the derived criteria at three stages: hazard identification (+62% rubric gap), incident investigation (+50%), and data management (+50%); the verdict set is stable across thresholds T in (0%, 50%]$ and survives a worst-case single-cell flip down to T = 25%. At the remaining four stages, correlational or language-based methods are comparable or sufficient. The rubric identifies structural admissibility (necessary but not sufficient for compliance): an admissible method's specific output content may still be wrong, and validating that fidelity (the edges a fitted SCM produces, the cause a trace names) is the open assurance challenge. A single-VLA proof of concept on 1,996 real-world driving clips (79,840 rows, ten splits) is consistent with each method's observed output type matching its rubric prediction. XAI method selection for ADS safety assurance should be driven by lifecycle-stage evidence demand, not by method popularity.

17.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

SciDef: Datasets and Tools for Automated Definition Extraction from Scientific Literature with LLMs

Scientific concepts are often defined inconsistently across papers, making it difficult to compare findings, reuse terminology, and build reliable downstream resources. We present SciDef, a resource suite for scientific definition extraction. The suite contains DefExtra, a benchmark of 268 human-validated author-stated definitions from 75 academic papers; DefSim, 60 human-labeled definition-pair similarity judgments; and an open LLM-based pipeline for PDF preprocessing, chunking, definition extraction, prompt optimization, and evaluation. We validate the resources by benchmarking 16 language models across prompting strategies and chunking schemes. The strongest set-level configuration achieves a score of 0.397, while the highest-coverage configuration matches at least one prediction to 86.4% of gold definitions but over-generates candidate definitions. We further show that an NLI-based matching metric agrees strongly with human DefSim judgments. These results position SciDef as a reusable benchmark and tooling layer for definition-centric literature analysis, while highlighting relevance-aware filtering as the key bottleneck for fully automatic definition extraction. Code & datasets are available at https://github.com/Media-Bias-Group/SciDef.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Risk Stratification for ICU Delirium using Pervasive Ambient Sensing Information

arXiv:2606.19292v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Delirium is a common and serious complication in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), associated with increased morbidity, prolonged hospital stays, and higher healthcare costs. Despite its prevalence, early prediction and prevention remain challenging. Environmental factors such as ambient sound and light may influence the onset of delirium, yet they are often overlooked in risk assessments. In this study, we examined whether light intensity and sound pressure levels can independently predict delirium across multiple prediction horizons. We evaluated four efficient sequential neural network models on data collected from 9 ICUs across 309 patients to predict delirium for 10 prediction-window sizes. We reported feature importance and direction of influence using Shapley Additive Explanations analysis. The convolutional model achieved the strongest discrimination, with AUC = 0.80 on sound data and on combined data. Sound features were the dominant predictors overall. Integrating sound with light improved short-term ($

19.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-11

HoloCell: A Generative Foundation Model for Holistic Cellular Modeling

Single-cell multi-omics technologies have recently advanced to enable the profiling of epigenomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic layers within individual cells, offering new opportunities to characterize cellular states as integrated biological systems. However, developing a unified framework that can seamlessly integrate diverse omics modalities and remain robust to heterogeneous modality missingness remains challenging. Here we present HoloCell, to our knowledge the first generative foundation model for joint representation learning and generative modeling across all three major single-cell omics modalities, i.e., epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. HoloCell contains over 860 million parameters and is pretrained on the Human-Multi-Omics-Corpus, which comprises approximately 468 million single-cell profiles across these three omics layers, corresponding to over 425 billion tokens. HoloCell introduces a simple yet biologically grounded hierarchical tokenization strategy that encodes cis-regulatory elements, genes, and proteins as structured tokens within a shared modeling framework. We evaluated HoloCell across single-omics representation learning, paired multi-omics integration, unpaired multi-omics alignment, and cross-modal generation via iterative diffusion and remasking, demonstrating its superior performance and flexibility across diverse omics tasks. From a representation perspective, HoloCell provides a unified digital mapping of cellular states across multiple omics layers, capturing cell heterogeneity as an integrated system. From a generation perspective, its iterative diffusion and remasking framework accounts for the inherently unordered nature of biological features, enabling in silico simulation of multi-omics information flow. Together, these capabilities position HoloCell as a versatile foundation model toward the emerging concept of a virtual cell, offering both systematic characterization and generative simulation of cellular systems within a unified framework.

20.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

Emerging Flexible Designs for Geospatial Multimodal Foundation Models

Foundation models are rapidly transforming Earth observation by enabling scalable pretraining across diverse unlabeled geospatial modalities. However, their architectural diversity ranging from encoder-only to encoder-decoder and masked autoencoding paradigms makes it challenging to assess performance trade offs in a consistent manner. In this work, we present an apples-to-apples comparison of leading FM architectures designed for geospatial multimodal reasoning, with a particular focus on flexibility across varied spectral band configurations. We standardize pretraining using identical self supervised learning objectives and training datasets, and evaluate all models under consistent parameterization on the GEOBench benchmark across classification and segmentation tasks. Our results offer new insights into the design trade-offs between model flexibility, modality alignment, and downstream task performance. By highlighting architectural strengths and limitations under controlled conditions, this study provides practical guidance for building next generation geospatial foundation models capable of robust multimodal reasoning.

21.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

Speaking in Self-Assessing Tongues: On the Verbalized Confidence of LLMs in Machine Translation

The rapid rise in popularity of large language models (LLMs) for translation calls for a thorough study of the reliability of their confidence in their own outputs. Unlike many generation tasks, translation errors and confidence levels can be useful at different levels of granularity (tokens, words, or spans). Unsupervised approaches based on internal signals like predicted probabilities can be misleading because they reflect certainty among alternatives rather than correctness. In addition, they require access to such internal signals. Here, we devise five verbalized methods of extracting an LLM's per-token confidence without those shortcomings and compare their reliability with that of the model's internal signals of certainty. We evaluate reliability using two forms of alignment: fine-grained error detection and calibration. For both, internal and verbalized methods perform similarly, although results vary by model. Interestingly, we find little to no correlation between internal and verbalized methods.

23.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Effects of Josephson Junction Non-idealities on Adiabatic Quantum Flux Parametron Circuits

arXiv:2606.17338v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Adiabatic quantum flux parametron (AQFP) gate is a promising approach to scale up the cryogenic microwave electronics for superconducting qubit multiplexed control. However, the performance of these circuits depends on the quality of the Josephson junctions which are ideally superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) type following the ideal sinusoidal relation between current and quantum phase. We demonstrate how the non-sinusoidal current-phase relation in Superconductor-Normal metal-Superconductor (SNS) and weak link (WL) junctions affects the speed, delay, and margin of the AQFP gates. The JJ models are defined in the Keysight ADS simulator using symbolically defined device (SDD) method.

24.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-04

Cell differentiation can underpin the reproducibility of morphogenesis

by Dominic K. Devlin, Austen R. D. Ganley, Nobuto Takeuchi Morphogenesis of complex body shapes is reproducible despite the noise inherent in the underlying morphogenetic processes. However, how these morphogenetic processes work together to achieve this reproducibility remains unclear. Here, we ask how this reproducibility is achieved by evolving complex morphologies in a multi-scale, computational model. Each morphology consists of a population of cells on a two-dimensional grid using the Cellular Potts Model framework. Each cell contains a genome that encodes a gene regulatory network, morphogens for cell-cell signalling, and proteins that determine cell behaviours. By repeatedly simulating our model with different initial conditions under selection for shape complexity, we obtained a “zoo” of evolved morphologies. We find that these evolved, complex morphologies are reproducible in a sizeable fraction of simulations, despite no direct selection for reproducibility. We show that high reproducibility is caused by spatially segregating moving cells that “shape” morphologies from stationary cells that “maintain” morphologies during morphogenesis. Strikingly, most highly reproducible morphologies also evolved cell differentiation, where proliferative, moving progenitor cells irreversibly differentiate into non-dividing, stationary differentiated cells at tissue boundaries. These results suggest that cell differentiation observed in natural development plays a fundamental role in morphogenesis in addition to the production of specialised cell types. This previously unrecognised role of cell differentiation has major implications for our understanding of how morphologies are generated and regenerated.

25.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

TUNI: Unifying Pre-training and Fine-tuning with Modality-Aware Mutual Learning and Rectification for RGB-T Semantic Segmentation

RGB-thermal (RGB-T) semantic segmentation improves the environmental perception of autonomous platforms in challenging conditions. Prevailing RGB-T segmentation frameworks suffer from suboptimal multi-modal feature extraction and fusion, unbalanced modality dependency, and inadequate utilization of thermal information. To address these challenges, we propose TUNI, a unified pre-training and fine-tuning framework for efficient and real-time RGB-T semantic segmentation. It pre-trains an RGB-T encoder that incorporates an RGB-T local module that selectively emphasizes salient consistent and distinct local features across modalities, thereby integrating cross-modal feature extraction and fusion in a unified manner. To alleviate the modality bias issue during RGB-T pre-training, modality-inverted contrastive mutual learning is introduced to enable knowledge exchange between two RGB-dominated and thermal-dominated encoders. In the fine-tuning phase, modality rectification learning fully exploits residual thermal information by focusing on correct yet divergent prediction regions between two modality-specific decoders. We further develop three TUNI variants, covering lightweight, balanced, and high-performance requirements. Extensive experiments on five RGB-T semantic segmentation datasets demonstrate that TUNI achieves superior accuracy, generalization, and compactness compared with 15 state-of-the-art models. The code is available at https://github.com/xiaodonguo/TUNI-v2.