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01.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-17

Reimagining machine vision with optical computing

作者: 未知作者

A general-purpose artificial-intelligence vision system for use in image-sensing devices has been developed by embedding fundamentals of core computer-vision operations into a light-manipulating planar material called an optical metasurface. A prototype enables accurate, real-time perception and processing across diverse tasks, suggesting that this could be a solution for rapid, low-energy, on-device vision intelligence. A specialized ‘metasurface’ can preprocess incoming scene information on image-generating devices.

02.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Decoupling local classicality from classical explainability: A noncontextual model for bilocal classical theory and a locally-classical but contextual theory

arXiv:2511.19266v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We construct an ontological model for the theory known as bilocal classical theory doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.102.052216. To our knowledge, this is only the second time that an ontological model has been constructed for an entire theory, rather than just for some particular scenarios within a theory. This result refutes a conjecture from doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.102.052216 which suggested that there might be no local-realist ontological model for bilocal classical theory. Moreover, it is the first time that an ontological model has been constructed for a theory that fails to be locally tomographic, showing that the assumption of local tomography underpinning the structure theorem in doi.org/10.22331/q-2024-03-14-1283 is a genuine limitation of the theorem. This demonstrates that in general there is no tension between failures of local tomography and classical explainability (i.e., generalised noncontextuality). In fact, bilocal classical theory is in many ways more simply understood via the underlying ontological model than it is within its original formulation (much as how odd-dimensional stabiliser subtheories can be more simply understood via Spekkens' toy theory). Furthermore, this result naturally leads to the question, does every locally-classical theory admit of an ontological model? By constructing a concrete counterexample, we show that this is not the case. Our findings demonstrate that there is no straightforward relationship between theories being locally-classical, and them being classically-explainable. This shows that the fundamental status of compositional properties (such as local tomography) is not a technical side-issue, but a central and unavoidable question for a coherent understanding even of classicality itself.

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

Continuous Splatting meets Retinex: Continuous Gaussian Splatting and Implicit Reflectance Modeling for Low-Light Image Enhancement

Low-light image enhancement aims to recover clear images from low-illumination observations and is crucial for high-level downstream vision tasks. However, existing methods frequently encounter color distortion and structural artifacts when balancing global smooth illumination adjustment and local high-frequency detail recovery. To address these issues, we propose CGS-Retinex as the first low-light image enhancement framework based on explicit-implicit joint modeling. Our framework deeply integrates continuous Gaussian splatting with Retinex theory. Specifically, we represent the image grid as a continuous parameter field and propose a continuous Gaussian renderer to estimate the spatially continuous global illumination distribution. This approach fundamentally eliminates grid artifacts caused by discrete Gaussian sampling. Furthermore, we introduce an implicit neural representation to model reflectance independently. We leverage shallow high-frequency features to guide the network in accurately reconstructing degraded texture details. Within the Retinex framework, we incorporate physics-inspired brightness consistency constraints and illumination smoothness regularization to enable explicit illumination and implicit reflectance to maintain proper exposure and achieve high-fidelity recovery of high-frequency structures and colors. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CGS-Retinex significantly suppresses dark-region noise and overexposure while achieving exceptional high-frequency structural fidelity and color restoration by precisely decoupling illumination and texture. This work establishes a novel continuous physical representation paradigm for low-light image enhancement.

04.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-19

ContinuumCellAgent: A Framework-Guided Agent for Long-Horizon Scientific Research

AI-scientist systems are beginning to automate parts of scientific research. We present ContinuumCellAgent, an autonomous agent that executes literature review, hypothesis formation, computational experimentation, manuscript drafting, and adversarial peer review as a single unattended run. Existing AI scientist systems remain difficult to diagnose because they lack modularity, systematic prompt grounding, and observability into long-running behavior. ContinuumCellAgent addresses these gaps with a modular supernode architecture for stage-wise backend swapping, protocols grounded in curated research-method checklists that also define reviewer rubrics, and a diagnostics layer that records file-based artifacts, message traces, and state transitions. We evaluate the system on open-domain QA benchmarks and biomedical/longevity case studies, showing that it can produce checkable research artifacts while exposing pipeline dynamics for rigorous AI co-scientist research.

05.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

Phase Transition in Convex Relaxations for Graph Alignment

arXiv:2606.15581v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the graph alignment problem for correlated Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE) matrices, where the goal is to recover a hidden vertex permutation given two correlated symmetric Gaussian matrices $(A, B)$ with correlation $1/\sqrt{1+\sigma^2}$. While the maximum likelihood estimator is information-theoretically optimal, its computation, which reduces to a quadratic assignment problem, is intractable. Motivated by this, we analyze convex relaxations based on minimizing $\|AX - XB\|_F$ over the set of doubly stochastic matrices and the unit hypercube. We show that when the correlation parameter satisfies $\sigma = o(n^{-1/2}/\log^4 n)$, the solution of either relaxation $(X^\star)$ concentrates around the ground-truth permutation matrix $(\Pi^\star)$, i.e., $\|X^\star-\Pi^\star\|_F^2 = o(n)$, implying recovery of all but a vanishing fraction of vertices after simple post-processing. Combined with existing lower bounds, our results precisely characterize that $\|X^\star-\Pi^\star\|_F^2$ transitions from $o(n)$ for $\sigma = \tilde{o}(n^{-1/2})$ to $\Omega(n)$ for $\sigma = \tilde{\Omega}(n^{-1/2})$. In doing so, our analysis significantly tightens prior results and extends them beyond doubly stochastic relaxations.

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

Amortized Probabilistic Retrieval of Atmospheric CO2 from OCO-2 Spectra Using Deep Learning with Laplace Approximations and Normalizing Flows

arXiv:2606.17413v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Space-based monitoring of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential for constraining the global carbon budget. NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) estimates column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) using high-resolution spectra. However, current operational retrieval algorithms are computationally expensive and do not properly quantify uncertainties. We present a novel deep learning framework that addresses these challenges. Due to the difficulties of ground-truth data for real satellite observations, we develop and validate our approach using a high-fidelity simulation dataset. This dataset, created to support OCO-2 uncertainty quantification (UQ), incorporates realistic forward model errors. Our architecture encodes spectral bands using a multi-branch neural network and estimates posteriors of the full CO2 column or desired summaries thereof using two scalable UQ methods: Laplace approximations and normalizing flows. Our approach has five key advantages relative to operational "full-physics" solvers: (1) Amortization: Inference is orders of magnitude faster, enabling real-time processing of massive data streams; (2) Model error robustness: By training on simulations that explicitly include model discrepancies, our method accounts for systematic errors often neglected by standard inversions; (3) Point estimate accuracy: We achieve superior predictive accuracy compared to baseline methods; (4) Improved UQ: The probabilistic outputs yield better-calibrated uncertainty estimates; and (5) Non-Gaussian posteriors: When utilizing normalizing flows, our framework successfully models complex, asymmetric posterior distributions, overcoming the limitations of the Gaussian assumption. These results suggest that simulation-based deep learning is a viable path toward next-generation operational processing systems.

07.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

PlaceRep: Geospatial Place Representation Learning from Large-Scale Point-of-Interest Data

arXiv:2507.02921v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Learning effective representations of urban environments requires capturing spatial structure beyond fixed administrative boundaries. Existing geospatial representation learning approaches typically aggregate Points of Interest (POIs) into pre-defined administrative regions such as census units or ZIP code areas, assigning a single embedding to each region. However, POIs often form semantically meaningful groups that extend across, within, or beyond these boundaries, defining places that better reflect human activity and urban function. To address this limitation, we propose PlaceRep, a geospatial representation learning method that constructs place-level representations by clustering spatially and semantically related POIs. PlaceRep summarizes large-scale POI graphs from U.S. Foursquare data to produce general-purpose urban region embeddings while automatically identifying places across multiple spatial scales. By eliminating model pre-training, PlaceRep provides a scalable and efficient solution for multi-granular geospatial analysis. Experiments using the tasks of population density estimation and housing price prediction as downstream tasks show that PlaceRep outperforms most state-of-the-art graph-based geospatial representation learning methods and achieves up to a x100 speedup in generating region-level representations on large-scale POI graphs. The implementation of PlaceRep is available at https://github.com/mohammadhashemii/PlaceRep.

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

Toward Simultaneously Optimal Regret in U-Calibration

arXiv:2606.18527v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: U-calibration studies online forecasting algorithms whose predictions can be consumed by any unknown downstream agent, guaranteeing sublinear regret simultaneously for all proper loss functions. Existing U-calibration algorithms achieve worst-case optimal $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret for every bounded proper loss, but they fail to adapt to easier losses: as we show, even for smooth losses such as squared loss, they incur $\Omega(\sqrt{T})$ regret instead of the optimal $O(\log T)$ regret. In this work, we show that this limitation is not inherent. Specifically, we design a single forecast algorithm that simultaneously achieves $\tilde O(\sqrt{T})$ regret for every bounded proper loss and $O(\log T)$ regret for every bounded smooth proper loss. More generally, our algorithm also attains logarithmic regret for losses that are smooth relative to the log-barrier, which include several non-Lipschitz examples. Our approach is based on a novel variant of Follow-the-Perturbed-Leader (FTPL) in which perturbations are applied directly in the prediction space using self-concordant noise. The resulting analysis also departs substantially from prior FTPL analyses due to the complex nature of this noise and may be of independent interest.

09.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Remote sensing data imputation using deep learning for multispectral imagery

Remote sensing techniques have been increasingly utilised in aquatic applications in recent years. A common challenge in using optical satellite data is the presence of missing observations due to cloud cover. These data gaps can lead to missed detection of critical events, such as algal blooms, in lakes of high interest to water authorities. As a result, enhancing the completeness of optical satellite datasets is crucial for improving the monitoring and prediction of algal blooms. In this study, we compared a traditional data imputation method (i.e., linear interpolation) with deep learning models for reconstructing missing spectral bands across four lakes with historical records of algal blooms. The deep learning models adopted include CNN-based architectures (i.e., CNN, Inception Resnet, and Autoencoder) and CNN-LSTM-based architectures (i.e., CNN-LSTM, Resnet-LSTM, and Autoencoder-LSTM). Our results demonstrated that deep learning models substantially outperformed the baseline linear interpolation method in imputing spectral band values within artificially masked regions. Among these models, CNN delivered the best performance across most lakes. Furthermore, we evaluated the performance of algal bloom indices (i.e., Green/Red and NDCI) derived from the imputed imagery by comparing them with the observed data. Our results demonstrate that deep learning models are effective for imputing missing data in PlanetScope SuperDove imagery, enabling more reliable applications in water monitoring.

10.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Epistemic Uncertainty Is Not the Reducible Kind

作者:

arXiv:2606.12646v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The standard taxonomy of predictive uncertainty defines epistemic uncertainty as the part removable by collecting more data, while the standard measure identifies it with a mutual-information term. We prove the definition and the measure are extensionally inconsistent. On an explicit construction, the measure assigns all uncertainty to the epistemic class, yet no quantity of training data reduces it. Reducibility is instead a property of the pair (uncertainty, acquisition class), and the dichotomy resolves into three parts: aleatoric, sample-reducible epistemic, and mechanism-reducible epistemic uncertainty. An exact identity for the value of an observation shows that in-distribution data never reduces mechanism-irreducible uncertainty and generically increases it. Ensemble disagreement, the deployed epistemic estimate, tracks the training procedure rather than the epistemic term. It collapses to zero beneath a positive truth under consistent training, and equals hyperparameter-scaled initialization noise under interpolation. A finite-sample falsification test and seed-swept experiments confirm the theory.

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

STEAM: Squeeze and Transform Enhanced Attention Module

Channel and spatial attention mechanisms introduced in earlier work enhance the representational capabilities of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) but often increase parameter and computational costs. While recent approaches focus solely on efficient feature context modeling for channel attention, we aim to model both channel and spatial attention comprehensively with minimal parameters and reduced computation. Leveraging the principles of relational modeling in graphs, we introduce a constant-parameter module, STEAM: Squeeze and Transform Enhanced Attention Module, which integrates channel and spatial attention to enhance the representation power of CNNs. To our knowledge, we are the first to propose a graph-based approach for modeling both channel and spatial attention, utilizing concepts from multi-head graph transformers. Additionally, we introduce Output Guided Pooling (OGP), which efficiently captures spatial context to further enhance spatial attention. We extensively evaluate STEAM for large-scale image classification, object detection and instance segmentation on standard benchmark datasets. STEAM achieves a \(2\%\) increase in accuracy over the standard ResNet-50 model with only a meager increase in GFLOPs. Furthermore, STEAM outperforms the leading modules, ECA and GCT, in terms of accuracy while achieving a threefold reduction in GFLOPs. The code will be made available upon acceptance.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Detecting High-Potential SMEs with Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks

arXiv:2602.19591v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) constitute 99.9% of U.S. businesses and generate 44% of economic activity, yet systematically identifying high-potential SMEs remains an open challenge. We introduce SME-HGT, a Heterogeneous Graph Transformer framework that predicts which SBIR Phase I awardees will advance to Phase II funding using exclusively public data. We construct a heterogeneous graph with 32,268 company nodes, 124 research topic nodes, and 13 government agency nodes connected by approximately 99,000 edges across three semantic relation types. SME-HGT achieves an AUPRC of 0.621 0.003 on a temporally-split test set, outperforming an MLP baseline (0.590 0.002) and R-GCN (0.608 0.013) across five random seeds. At a screening depth of 100 companies, SME-HGT attains 89.6% precision with a 2.14 lift over random selection. Our temporal evaluation protocol prevents information leakage, and our reliance on public data ensures reproducibility. These results demonstrate that relational structure among firms, research topics, and funding agencies provides meaningful signal for SME potential assessment, with implications for policymakers and early-stage investors.

13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

PCS-UQ: Uncertainty Quantification via the Predictability-Computability-Stability Framework

arXiv:2505.08784v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As machine learning (ML) enters high-stakes domains, trustworthy uncertainty quantification (UQ) is essential for safety. In this paper we introduce PCS-UQ, a framework based on the Predictability, Computability, and Stability (PCS) principles for veridical data science. Starting with a candidate set of models or algorithms, PCS-UQ integrates a rigorous prediction-check to screen out unsuitable models in the set and utilizes bootstrap samples, in order to capture both inter-sample variability and algorithmic instability for the prediction-checked algorithms. We then introduce a novel multiplicative calibration scheme to enhance local adaptivity, which basically corresponds to a new score in conformal prediction. Moreover, we produce a compilation of 17 real-world regression datasets with manually-constructed subgroups. On this benchmark, PCS-UQ maintains the target coverage while outperforming or matching conformal methods equipped with oracle-selected algorithms in interval width. PCS-UQ achieves consistent subgroup coverage, outperforming these oracle-selected conformal methods. Notably, PCS-UQ stands out in achieving both competitive interval widths and consistent subgroup coverage.Across 6 classification datasets, PCS-UQ reduces prediction set sizes by 20\%. To scale the framework for deep learning, we propose computationally efficient variants that bypass expensive retraining. On three computer vision benchmarks, these variants reduce prediction set sizes by 20\% over conformal baselines. Finally, we provide theoretical proof that a modified PCS-UQ algorithm preserves valid coverage under exchangeability as a form of split conformal inference.

14.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

DYNA : Dynamic Episodic Memory Networks for Augmenting Large Language Models with Temporal Knowledge Graphs in Continuous Learning

Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle to incorporate new knowledge without forgetting or costly retraining. We propose DYNA, a lightweight framework that augments a frozen LLM with a temporal knowledge graph where events are nodes and temporal relations are directed, timestamped edges. The graph serves as an external, updatable memory. At query time, DYNA retrieves relevant nodes via random walks and centrality measures, then augments the LLM's response. Evaluated on three temporal recall tasks, DYNA reduces catastrophic forgetting by ~7% compared to fine-tuning and improves temporal ordering by ~5% over standard RAG. Higher graph clustering coefficients correlate with better retrieval, showing that graph structure matters. Contributions: (1) episodic memory as temporal KG, (2) retraining-free LLM augmentation, (3) graph properties as predictors of retrieval performance.

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-18

Human Intuition vs. Computational Precision: Neurologists, Feature-based Models, and Deep Learning for Stroke Prognosis

Background: Prognostication in large vessel occlusion (LVO) stroke remains challenging. Although several prognostic models exist, their comparison to clinician performance, human-model interaction, and specific sources of human bias remain poorly understood. Methods: Using pre-treatment clinical and CT data from the MR CLEAN trial (n=500), six neurologists predicted three-month modified Rankin Scale (mRS) scores for 40 patients, both unaided and assisted by a validated feature-based model (MR PREDICTS). Human performance was benchmarked against MR PREDICTS and a multimodal, interpretable deep learning (DL) approach using raw imaging data. We explicitly assessed neurologists? ability to estimate model-required imaging features and identified systematic human biases. Models were additionally validated in a larger MR CLEAN trial cohort (n=404). Results: For predicting the full mRS distribution, standalone models achieved good ordinal agreement (MR PREDICTS quadratic weighted kappa (QWK) 0.51 [0.24 to 0.70]; DL model 0.49 [0.25 to 0.67]), significantly outperforming unaided neurologists (QWK 0.27 [0.10, 0.42]). Neurologists showed systematic overoptimism, predicting lower mRS scores than observed. Furthermore, there was poor accuracy in extracting imaging features. Raters? ASPECTS predictions deviated by 3.4 points from the confirmed scores, and collateral score accuracy was 44.6%. However, for predicting binary mRS (0-2 vs. 3-6), accuracy was comparable between unaided neurologists (64.17% [55.42% to 72.92%]) and models (MR PREDICTS 67.50% [52.50% to 82.50%]; DL model 63.16% [47.37% to 78.95%]). Model-assistance modestly improved and harmonized neurologists? predictions (QWK 0.41 [0.22 to 0.55]; binary accuracy 68.75% [58.33% to 78.34%]. Model performance remained robust in the larger cohort. Conclusions: Multimodal prognostic models outperform clinicians in predicting the full range of mRS outcomes, while human error in imaging assessment and systematic optimism bias are primary drivers of prognostic inaccuracy. End-to-end DL models eliminate human-input variability and hold strong potential as an automated second opinion to support prognostication and decision-making in acute LVO stroke.

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

Silent Failures in Federated Personalization of Foundation Models

arXiv:2606.00947v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Foundation models are increasingly personalized on decentralized private data through federated learning and are now deployed at scale under growing regulatory requirements for post-market monitoring. We argue that this convergence creates a distinct and under-recognized class of trustworthiness failures, which we term "Silent Failures." These include amplified bias, fairness collapse, and alignment erosion that may remain difficult to detect because federated learning's privacy constraints limit visibility into model behavior. A landscape analysis of existing benchmarks reveals a structural divide. Federated benchmarks evaluate system performance but provide limited insight into model behavior, whereas centralized trustworthiness benchmarks assess behavior but require model access incompatible with federated privacy. We introduce a taxonomy of six silent failure modes arising from the interaction of foundation model personalization, dataset shift, and core federated constraints. Our analysis shows that privacy-preserving training alone is insufficient for trustworthy deployment. We conclude with a research agenda for privacy-preserving behavioral evaluation and propose that silent failures become a standard diagnostic category for trustworthy federated artificial intelligence.

17.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-16

Using visual biofeedback to reduce step length error at fast walking speeds is feasible after stroke

Background and Purpose: Walking after stroke is often characterized by persistent biomechanical impairments and reduced walking capacity. While visual biofeedback can improve gait mechanics and fast walking can enhance capacity, it is unclear whether individuals post-stroke can effectively use biofeedback at higher walking speeds to address both deficits simultaneously. This study examined the effects of walking speed on the ability of participants with chronic stroke to reduce step length (SL) errors using visual biofeedback. Methods: Sixteen individuals with chronic stroke walked on a treadmill at slow, self-selected, and fast speeds with and without visual SL biofeedback. Absolute SL error relative to individualized targets was calculated for paretic and non-paretic limbs. Linear mixed-effects models with piecewise linear splines assessed the effects of speed, limb, and feedback condition. Post hoc comparisons were performed for significant interactions. Results: At lower speeds, increasing speed reduced SL error in both limbs (p < 0.001). At higher speeds, the effects of speed were dependent on limb and condition (p < 0.001). Paretic SL error increased with speed without feedback but remained stable with feedback (p < 0.001). Non-paretic SL error decreased with speed regardless of condition. SL error was greater in the paretic limb overall (p < 0.001). Discussion and Conclusions: Fast walking alone did not reduce paretic SL errors. Participants with chronic stroke can effectively use visual biofeedback to reduce paretic SL errors at higher speeds, supporting its integration into high-intensity gait training to simultaneously treat biomechanical impairments and walking capacity deficits after stroke.

18.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

IterCAD: An Iterative Multimodal Agent for Visually-Grounded CAD Generation and Editing

Computer-Aided Design is pivotal in modern manufacturing, yet existing automated methods predominantly rely on open-loop, one-shot generation, creating a mismatch with iterative real-world practices. In this paper, we present IterCAD, a unified multimodal agent framework for closed-loop, interactive CAD generation and editing. We formulate the task as a multi-turn interaction between a multimodal agent and an executable CAD sandbox, covering three tasks: Drawing-to-Code, Text-to-Code, and Interactive Editing. To support this, we develop a data synthesis pipeline incorporating advanced industrial manufacturing features to generate standard-compliant multi-view engineering drawings, complex code-editing tasks, and high-fidelity interaction trajectories. We optimize the agent via progressive SFT followed by geometry-aware reinforcement learning with viable-prefix masking to enhance code executability and geometric fidelity. Finally, we introduce the IterCAD-Bench evaluation suite and propose the Chamfer Distance Tolerance-Recall (CD-TR) curve alongside its AUC-TR metric, establishing a survivor-bias-free standard that unifies code validity and geometric precision. Extensive experiments demonstrate that IterCAD achieves highly competitive performance across multiple benchmarks, significantly outperforming existing approaches in both code executability and geometric precision, while exhibiting superior capabilities in closed-loop iterative refinement.

19.
Nature Medicine 2026-06-22

<b>PROTEUS trial heralds perioperative therapy for prostate cancer</b>

Perioperative androgen-deprivation therapy plus apalutamide could represent a new treatment option for patients with high-risk, localized prostate cancer. Perioperative androgen-deprivation therapy plus apalutamide could represent a new treatment option for patients with high-risk, localized prostate cancer.

20.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Agentic Retrieval and Reinforcement Learned Equation Chains: A Controlled Generation Framework for Complex and Novel Physics Word Problems

Generating high-quality Physics Word Problems (PWPs) that are novel, complex, and solvable remains a challenging and underexplored problem in educational content generation. Existing approaches, many adapted from Math Word Problem (MWP) generation, often produce ambiguous, unsolvable, or structurally simple questions with limited linguistic diversity. We introduce ARVRE (Agentic Retrieval Value Reinforced Equation-chain), a two-stage framework for generating diverse and mathematically valid PWPs. In the first stage, a form of offline temporal-difference learning is used to construct valid chains of physics equations, while an agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) framework dynamically selects topic-specific concepts and vocabulary. This design enables explicit control over problem structure and difficulty. In the second stage, a Large Language Model (LLM) converts the equation chain and retrieved concepts into a natural-language physics question. By grounding generation in valid equation chains, our method preserves mathematical correctness while promoting linguistic diversity and contextual richness. Human and automated evaluations demonstrate that ARVRE generates PWPs that are more complex, novel, and solvable than those produced by existing approaches. These results highlight the potential of combining reinforcement learning, retrieval, and LLMs for reliable generation of educational physics content.

21.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Guava: An Effective and Universal Harness for Embodied Manipulation

arXiv:2606.18363v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Language models trained on large-scale vision-language data have demonstrated strong potential for embodied agents. Harnessing models through embodied tools use offers a promising alternative to end-to-end vision-language-action systems by combining high-level reasoning with external modules for perception, planning, and control. However, it remains unclear what makes an effective harness for embodied manipulation, and to what extent such a harness can unlock embodied capabilities in a wide range of reasoning models. In this work, we present Guava, a harness framework for embodied tool use developed through systematic exploration of the design space of agent workflows, action spaces, and observation spaces. Our study identifies three key ingredients for effective embodied agents: iterative perception-reasoning-action loops, semantic action abstractions, and multimodal observations. To understand whether these design principles are universal even to small models, we develop an end-to-end training pipeline that distills embodied manipulation capabilities into a 4B open-source model using fewer than 2K trajectories collected entirely in simulation. Experimental results in both simulation and real-world environments show performance comparable to frontier proprietary models while exhibiting strong generalization to unseen objects, novel instructions, and long-horizon tasks. Results suggest that a well-designed harness can serve as a scalable, model-agnostic interface for embodied manipulation, enabling strong emergent embodied capabilities in compact open-source models with minimal training data.

22.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Discriminative Span as a Predictor of Synthetic Data Utility via Classifier Reconstruction

In many real-world computer vision applications, including medical imaging and industrial inspection, binary classification tasks are characterized by a severe scarcity of positive samples. A widely adopted solution is to generate synthetic positive data using image-to-image transformations applied to negative samples. However, a fundamental challenge remains: how can we reliably assess whether such synthetic data will improve downstream model performance? In this work, we propose a geometry-driven metric that predicts the utility of synthetic data without requiring model training. Our approach operates in the embedding space of a pre-trained foundation model and represents the dataset through difference vectors between samples. We evaluate whether the weight vector of a linear classifier can be expressed within the subspace spanned by these variations by measuring the relative projection error. Intuitively, if the variations induced by synthetic data capture task-relevant directions, their span can approximate the classifier, resulting in low projection error. Conversely, poor synthetic data fails to span these directions, leading to higher error. Across multiple datasets and architectures, we show that this metric exhibits strong correlation with downstream classification performance of CNNs trained on mixtures of real negative and synthetic positive data. These findings suggest that the proposed metric serves as a practical and informative tool for evaluating synthetic data quality in data-scarce settings.

23.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Gaussian superpositions for bosonic encodings

arXiv:2603.15258v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Non-Gaussian bosonic states are ubiquitous in interacting light–matter systems, many-body platforms, and relativistic quantum field settings, but their quantitative characterization is hindered by the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space and by the poor scalability of Fock-space truncation methods. We introduce an exact finite-manifold encoding for states supported on a finite span of Gaussian branches, enabling the use of standard finite-dimensional quantum-information tools directly on an effective density matrix whose entries are determined by Gaussian overlaps. As demonstrations, we obtain closed-form and numerically stable evaluations of entropies and relative-entropy non-Gaussianity, and derive an analytic expression for the bipartite entanglement negativity of arbitrary multimode two-branch Gaussian superpositions, including a minimal which-branch dephasing model. Our framework provides a practical bridge between experimentally accessible continuous-variable resources (e.g., cat-like and measurement-conditioned states) and discrete-variable information measures, with immediate applications to benchmarking non-Gaussian resources in several quantum technology platforms.

24.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-15

Stability of Synthetic Ricci Curvature Lower Bounds for Inverse Limit Extended Metric Measure Spaces

arXiv:2606.14322v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We show that every Polish extended metric measure space arises as an inverse limit of metric measure spaces up to isomorphism. We then prove that synthetic Ricci curvature lower bounds and several functional inequalities, including the log-Sobolev, Talagrand, Poincaré, and dimension-free Harnack inequalities are stable under inverse limit. We discuss applications to infinite-dimensional spaces, including abstract Wiener spaces and their quotient spaces.

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

LM-SPT: LM-Aligned Semantic Distillation for Speech Tokenization

With the rapid progress of speech language models (SLMs), discrete speech tokens have emerged as a core interface between speech and text, enabling unified modeling across modalities. Recent speech tokenization approaches aim to isolate semantic information from low-level acoustics to better align with language models (LMs). In particular, previous methods use self-supervised learning (SSL) teachers such as HuBERT to extract semantic representations, which are then distilled into a semantic quantizer to suppress acoustic redundancy as well as capture content-related latent structures. However, these tokenizers often operate at relatively high frame rates, producing token sequences significantly longer than their textual counterparts and hindering seamless integration with pretrained LMs. Although recent methods attempt to reduce the token rate by applying uniform average pooling to SSL features, this can over-smooth content-bearing regions and dilute the structural information, thereby potentially limiting the LM alignment. To address this, we propose LM-SPT, an LM-aligned speech tokenization method based on semantic speech-resynthesis distillation. Instead of directly matching teacher and student features via pooling, LM-SPT resynthesizes speech from semantic tokens only and minimizes the discrepancy between representations extracted from the original and resynthesized waveforms using a frozen, LM-aligned speech encoder. This indirect supervision avoids rigid temporal alignment and encourages dedicated semantic units that are more semantically aligned with LMs under reduced frame rates. Experimental results show that the proposed LM-SPT consistently outperforms previous semantic-enhanced speech tokenizers when applied to SLMs for the tasks of automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech, even without compromising the speech reconstruction fidelity at the codec level.