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01.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

DVD: Discrete Voxel Diffusion for 3D Generation and Editing

We introduce Discrete Voxel Diffusion (DVD), a discrete diffusion framework to generate, assess, and edit sparse voxels for SLat (Structured LATent) based 3D generative pipelines. Although discrete diffusion has not generally displaced continuous diffusion in image-like generation, we show that it can be an effective first-stage prior for sparse voxel scaffolds. By treating voxel occupancy as a native discrete variable, DVD avoids continuous-to-discrete thresholding and provides a simple framework for voxel generation, uncertainty estimation, and editing. Beyond quality gains, DVD provides more interpretable generation dynamics through explicit categorical modeling. Furthermore, we leverage the predictive entropy as a robust uncertainty metric to identify ambiguous voxel regions and complicated samples, facilitating tasks such as data filtering and quality assessment. Finally, we propose a lightweight fine-tuning strategy using block-structured perturbation patterns. This approach empowers the model to inpaint and edit voxels within a single sampling round, requiring negligible auxiliary computation and no additional model evaluations. Code is available at https://github.com/TeCai/DVD.

02.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Mechanistic Analysis of Catastrophic Forgetting in Large Language Models During Continual Fine-tuning

Sequential fine-tuning of Large Language Models (LLMs) adaptation to target tasks often triggers catastrophic forgetting, where the acquisition of novel target skills degrades ancestral capabilities. This paper presents a systematic comparative study of catastrophic forgetting across twenty premier models representing the state-of-the-art in mid-2026. We categorize our investigation into two primary research lines: (i) a behavioral and semantic output drift analysis of ten leading closed-source models (including Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.5 High, and Gemini 3.5 Flash), and (ii) a deep mechanistic interpretation of ten prominent open-weight architectures (such as DeepSeek-V4-Pro, Llama 4 Maverick, and Qwen 3.6-27B). Through weight-space trajectory tracking, Centered Kernel Alignment (CKA), and routing gate drift calculations in Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) layers, we localize the neural circuits highly susceptible to parameter overwriting. Our findings indicate that early-layer attention heads exhibit systemic entropic dispersion, while mid-to-deep feed-forward networks (or sparse expert blocks) suffer localized representation collapse. Informed by these insights, we introduce Low-Rank Circuit Projection (LRCP), a subspace-regularized training intervention. Empirical evaluations show that LRCP successfully mitigates up to 94.2% of ancestral capabilities in open-weight configurations and matches the adaptation velocity of standard PEFT baselines.

03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

The Insurability Frontier of AI Risk: Mapping Threats to Affirmative Coverage, Silent Exposures, and Exclusions

arXiv:2605.18784v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The rapid diffusion of agentic AI has created a new coverage problem for commercial insurance: some AI-mediated losses are now affirmatively insured, some create silent-AI exposure under legacy cyber, technology errors-and-omissions (E&O), directors-and-officers (D&O), employment practices liability (EPLI), crime, and media policies, and others are being actively excluded. This paper maps that emerging boundary by coding 55 AI threat classes against 26 insurance products, endorsements, and exclusion regimes using public carrier materials and OWASP/MITRE threat catalogs. We identify a four-tier insurability frontier: affirmatively insured perils, silent-AI exposures, actively excluded perils, and perils outside conventional private insurance structures. Our coding measures publicly claimed positioning rather than executed contract wording; the headline statistics describe what carriers publicly state about coverage, not what would be paid in any specific claim. Three patterns emerge. First, affirmative AI coverage is beginning to differentiate by primary risk emphasis: public materials often position Munich Re around model performance and drift, Armilla and parts of the Lloyd's market around hallucination and broader AI liability, Tokio Marine Kiln and CFC around IP and technology E&O concerns, Apollo ibott around emerging autonomous system liability, and Coalition around deepfake and AI-enabled cyber response. Second, legacy lines retain silent-AI exposure where AI is an instrumentality rather than the legal cause of loss. Third, foundation model concentration is the clearest genuinely novel insurability frontier because upstream model failure can correlate losses across many cedents at once; the relevant market design question is which insurability constraint each candidate structure relaxes, not merely which systemic risk template exists.

04.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-10

"We don't complain; it's just part of being a woman": frequency, knowledge, and sociocultural beliefs about dysmenorrhoea in a South African university cohort

Introduction Dysmenorrhoea is highly prevalent globally and interferes with engagement in education, work, social participation, and quality of life. Although evidence suggests that sociocultural beliefs influence how menstrual pain is understood and managed, relatively little research has explored dysmenorrhoea-related knowledge and beliefs within South Africa. This study aimed to (1) determine the frequency of dysmenorrhoea, (2) assess dysmenorrhoea-related knowledge and compare knowledge between menstruating and non-menstruating individuals, and (3) explore commonly held generational, cultural, and religious beliefs related to dysmenorrhoea in a South African university cohort. Methods We analysed data collected as part of a cross-sectional survey conducted among staff and students at a South African university. Participants completed demographic questions, items assessing dysmenorrhoea-related knowledge, and an adapted Working Ability, Location, Intensity, Days of Pain, Dysmenorrhoea (WaLIDD) questionnaire. Participants were also invited to provide free-text responses describing generational, cultural, and religious beliefs about dysmenorrhoea. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively and compared between menstruating and non-menstruating participants. Free-text responses were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results A total of 863 participants completed the survey, including 578 current or past menstruators. The frequency (95%CI) of dysmenorrhoea was 75.4% (71.7-78.9). Most participants were classified as having moderate (53%) or severe (31%) dysmenorrhoea on the WaLIDD scale. Awareness of dysmenorrhoea was higher among participants who had menstruated than among those who had never menstruated (80.4% vs 55.3%, p

05.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

Universal Speed Limit in a Far-from-Equilibrium Bose Gas: Symmetry and Dynamical Decoherence

arXiv:2605.11895v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Predicting universal transport coefficients in far-from-equilibrium quantum systems remains a fundamental challenge. A paradigmatic example is the non-thermal fixed point (NTFP) of isolated Bose gases, where coherence spreads as $\ell^2(t) = C\hbar t/m$ with a universal constant $C$. While the scaling exponent $z=2$ is well established, the amplitude $C$ has remained elusive because the underlying particle cascade $n(k)\sim k^{-4}$ leads to a divergent kinetic energy, threatening the very existence of a constant speed limit. Here we resolve this paradox and present the first analytical, parameter-free prediction of a universal amplitude $C$. A deep interplay between symmetry and dissipation is uncovered. The emergent weak U(1) symmetry at the NTFP enforces a conserved total current, forcing the low-energy phase dynamics to obey a diffusive Langevin equation with noise entering as the divergence of a stochastic current. This structure, combined with dynamical decoherence of high-momentum modes, yields a universal power-law momentum distribution $\tilde{f}(v)\sim(1+v^2)^{-3}$ (with $v=k\ell$) that naturally regularizes the ultraviolet divergence. From this, a parameter-free geometric baseline $C=3$ is obtained, independent of microscopic details. The experimental value $C=3.4(3)$ [Martirosyan et al., Nature 647, 608 (2025)] is then shown to be quantitatively consistent with universal logarithmic corrections arising from a marginally irrelevant coupling at the fixed point. A new paradigm is thus established for predicting transport coefficients in strongly correlated non-equilibrium systems: symmetry constraints determine the low-energy effective theory, dynamical decoherence provides a natural ultraviolet completion, and scaling analysis delivers testable predictions moving beyond scaling exponents to quantitative amplitude prediction.

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

FLiP: Towards understanding and interpreting multimodal multilingual sentence embeddings

This paper presents factorized linear projection (FLiP) models for understanding pretrained sentence embedding spaces. We train FLiP models to recover the lexical content from multilingual (LaBSE), multimodal (SONAR) and API-based (Gemini) sentence embedding spaces in several high- and mid-resource languages. We show that FLiP can recall more than 75% of lexical content from the embeddings, significantly outperforming existing non-factorized baselines. Using this as a diagnostic tool, we uncover the modality and language biases across the selected sentence encoders and provide practitioners with intrinsic insights about the encoders without relying on conventional downstream evaluation tasks. Our implementation is public https://github.com/BUTSpeechFIT/FLiP.

07.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Large Language Models as Optimizers: A Survey of Direct vs. Tool-Augmented Approaches and Their Performance Frontiers

arXiv:2606.15577v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly involved in complex mathematical optimization, even if the pragmatic user who triggers them is unaware of it. After all, many real-world problems reduce to the search for better or the best solutions. The field of LLM-as-optimizer has three paradigms: direct optimization, tool-augmented optimization, and tool-creating optimization. Direct optimization uses iterative prompting and heuristic generation to navigate solution spaces. Tool-augmented optimization translates natural language problems into formal specifications and orchestrates external solvers. Tool-creating optimization goes further, using LLMs to discover reusable algorithms or heuristics that can be deployed at zero marginal LLM cost. We describe current performance frontiers based on the benchmarks from the literature. We identify the critical reasoning gap in current architectures and argue for trade-offs between the future potential of direct optimization and the auditability of tool-augmented optimization. Even future, more powerful models might opt for tool-making to improve operational efficiency for repetitive families of problems.

08.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Weighted Random Dot Product Graphs

arXiv:2505.03649v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Modeling of intricate relational patterns has become a cornerstone of contemporary statistical research and related data science fields. Networks, represented as graphs, offer a natural framework for this analysis. This paper extends the Random Dot Product Graph (RDPG) model to accommodate weighted graphs, markedly broadening the model's scope to scenarios where edges exhibit heterogeneous weight distributions. We propose a nonparametric weighted (W)RDPG model that assigns a sequence of latent positions to each node. Inner products of these nodal vectors specify the moments of their incident edge weights' distribution via moment-generating functions. In this way, and unlike prior art, the WRDPG can discriminate between weight distributions that share the same mean but differ in other higher-order moments. We derive statistical guarantees for an estimator of the nodal's latent positions adapted from the workhorse adjacency spectral embedding, establishing its consistency and asymptotic normality. We also contribute a generative framework that enables sampling of graphs that adhere to a (prescribed or data-fitted) WRDPG, facilitating, e.g., the analysis and testing of observed graph metrics using judicious reference distributions. The paper is organized to formalize the model's definition, the estimation (or nodal embedding) process and its guarantees, as well as the methodologies for generating weighted graphs, all complemented by illustrative and reproducible examples showcasing the WRDPG's effectiveness in various network analytic applications.

09.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Pretrained self-supervised speech models can recognize unseen consonants

Modern pretrained self-supervised automatic speech recognition models are trained on large-scale audio data to encode speech into contextualized representations. However, their training data are heavily skewed toward high-resource languages with little data from low-resource languages, raising concerns about the potential underrepresentation of typologically uncommon speech sounds such as click consonants primarily found in Khoisan languages. This leads to our central research question: Can these models recognize click consonants as accurately as other speech sounds? To address this question, we fine-tune and compare pretrained self-supervised speech models (Wav2Vec2 and HuBERT) on data from two click-rich Khoisan languages (G|ui and West !Xoon). Our results reveal that the fine-tuned models consistently recognize clicks more accurately than non-clicks, suggesting that self-supervision enables generalization across human speech sounds including rare phonemes.

10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Quest for quantum advantage: Monte Carlo wave-function simulations of the Coherent Ising Machine

arXiv:2501.02681v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The Coherent Ising Machine (CIM) is a quantum network of optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) intended to find ground states of the Ising model. This is an NP-hard problem, related to several important minimization problems, including the max-cut graph problem. In order to enhance its potential performance, we analyze the coherent coupling strategy for the CIM in a highly quantum regime. To explore this limit, without assuming gaussianity, we employ accurate numerical simulations. Due to the inherent complexity of the system, the maximum network size is limited. While master equation methods can be used, their scalability diminishes rapidly for larger systems. Instead, we use Monte Carlo wave-function methods, which scale as the wave-function dimension, and use large numbers of samples. These simulations involve Hilbert spaces exceeding $10^{7}$ dimensions. To evaluate success probabilities, we use quadrature probabilities. We demonstrate the potential for quantum computational advantage by reducing the time required to reach maximum success probability in a low-dissipation regime enabled by initial quantum superpositions and entanglement. Furthermore, we demonstrate that tailored time-dependent couplings can amplify these quantum effects. Comparisons with classical CIM models give evidence that quantum tunneling effects in this strong coupling limit can overcome trapping in false minima. This can greatly increase success rates, indicating a potential for quantum advantage. Finally, we perform a coherence analysis based on the state purity to examine the role of quantum coherence in CIM performance and to determine how state purity correlates with improved optimization outcomes.

11.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

M*: A Modular, Extensible, Serving System for Multimodal Models

arXiv:2606.12688v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We are entering a new era of composite model architectures that integrate diverse components such as vision encoders, language backbones, diffusion and flow heads, audio codecs, action generators, and world-model predictors. Such architectures underpin a broad class of multimodal models, including unified multimodal models, omni models, speech-language models, vision-language-action policies, and world models. However, existing model serving frameworks were built on narrow assumptions about model structure, making them ill-suited to accommodate this new architectural diversity. Here we present M*, a universal serving system for efficient serving of composite AI models. M* represents models as dataflow graphs, processing requests spanning diverse modalities and tasks as traversals over these graphs. The core insight is a modular abstraction that supports arbitrary composition of model components, flexible placement onto a physical cluster, and model-agnostic optimizations within a distributed runtime. We call this abstraction the Walk Graph and show how it can concisely capture composite models from a broad range of families. We instantiate M* on representative models and find that it achieves, on average, 20% lower end-to-end latency than vLLM-Omni for text-to-image workloads on BAGEL, while delivering up to 2.9x lower real-time factor and 2.7x higher throughput for text-to-speech workloads on Qwen3-Omni. M* also outperforms the V-JEPA 2-AC rollout baseline for robotic planning by up to 12.5x. Thus, our work paves the road towards more efficient serving of complex models with minimal developer effort.

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

Beyond Self-Attention: Sub-Quadratic Vision Transformers for Fast Image Captioning

Image captioning is a challenging and significant task that aims to generate coherent and semantically meaningful textual descriptions for given images. To accomplish this task, it requires a deep understanding of visual content along with the ability to express that understanding in natural language. Despite remarkable progress with transformer-based architectures, existing approaches often suffer from limitations, such as a lack of rich local feature representations and the high computational cost of quadratic self-attention. The proposed model focuses on improving computational efficiency by restructuring the vision transformer architecture. In designing this approach, the standard self-attention mechanism in Vision Transformers is replaced with a probabilistic transformer approach based on a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), a soft-clustering technique. Instead of computing pairwise attention among all image patches, the model groups similar patches into a fixed number of clusters using an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. This clustering-based mechanism reduces the computational complexity from quadratic O(n^2) to linear O(nK), where K

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

ELVA: Exploring Ranking-Driven Universal Multimodal Retrieval

arXiv:2606.20280v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Leveraging Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) via contrastive learning has become a mainstream paradigm for improving the performance of Universal Multimodal Retrieval (UMR). However, previous works have ignored the grain blindness when adapting the contrastive paradigm into retrieval tasks. Grain blindness refers to the tendency of the model to overlook grain-level information contained in the query, which is crucial for effectively handling complex queries. This stems from contrastive learning treating samples as a binary classification (positive/negative), while ignoring the different information carried by each negative sample. To address this, we argue that negatives should be treated differently according to their similarity to the positive sample, enabling the model to learn distinct grain information from each negative. In this paper, we introduce a simple but effective framework, called ELVA, a novel rule-based RL framework that mitigates grain blindness through ranking-driven MLLMs. 1) Instead of relying on reward models, we extend Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) to retrieval tasks, allowing the model to explore new ranking behaviors without explicit ranking labels. 2) By utilizing rule-based rewards, our approach jointly optimizes the ranking of negative samples while enlarging the similarity gap between positive and negative. To more precisely measure grain blindness, we further introduce MRBench, a new benchmark specifically designed for multi-grain query scenarios. ELVA achieves state-of-the-art results across standard retrieval benchmarks, and its notable 13.1% improvement on MRBench further demonstrates its effectiveness in alleviating grain blindness.

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

Multiscale Hypersonic Boundary Layer Reconstruction via Spectral Binning and Subdomain-wise Conditional Diffusion

arXiv:2606.15023v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We propose a multiscale probabilistic reconstruction framework for hypersonic Couette flow, where near-wall states are inferred from limited top-wall observations using conditional diffusion model. The boundary layer is divided into overlapping wall-normal subdomains, and a single height- and Mach-conditioned Elucidating Diffusion Model (EDM) is trained jointly for M=6,7,8 to sample velocity, density, pressure, and temperature fields conditioned on a top-wall boundary slice. A soft overlap inpainting strategy assembles subdomain predictions into full-volume reconstructions while maintaining inter-subdomain continuity and small-scale variability. To improve the spectral fidelity of the generated fields, we introduce a novel bounded binned spectral power (BSP) loss that preserves high-wavenumber content while remaining numerically stable across the diffusion noise schedule. Validation against direct numerical simulation data shows that the model recovers instantaneous structures, spectra, statistical profiles, correlations, and wall quantities across all training Mach numbers, while providing spatially structured uncertainty estimates. The reconstructed Mach-conditioned profiles also collapse under the Trettel-Larsson transformation, indicating consistency with compressibility scaling. These results establish the domain decomposed conditional diffusion model with a bounded binned spectral loss as an effective probabilistic surrogate for near-wall reconstruction in hypersonic wall-bounded turbulence.

15.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Measuring Biological Capabilities and Risks of AI Agents

arXiv:2606.19899v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper addresses a rapidly emerging policy challenge: how to generate and interpret credible evidence about the biological capabilities and risks of AI scientists, or agentic AI systems capable of autonomously or collaboratively performing multi-step scientific tasks. As these systems enter real research workflows, decision-makers increasingly face evaluation results whose meaning depends on underlying design choices that are often implicit or under-documented. We synthesize current evidence on AI-enabled biological risks and introduce biological agentic evaluations as a promising, but interpretation-sensitive, tool for assessing these systems. Our central contribution is a set of practical, experience-grounded considerations – drawing from our own evaluations – that show how choices around defining, designing, running, scoring, and documenting evaluations materially shape what results do and do not imply about risk. The analysis is intended to help policymakers interpret biological evaluation outputs with appropriate caution; guide public and private funders toward high-leverage investments in AI-biology evaluation research; and support biosecurity practitioners assessing emerging AI systems. A secondary audience includes researchers designing or conducting agentic evaluations within frontier AI labs, AI providers, scientific institutions, and third-party evaluation organizations.

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

Dual-Constrained Diffusion Image Compression for Operational Rate-Distortion-Perception Optimization

The rate-distortion-perception (RDP) trade-off extends classical rate–distortion theory by imposing a distributional constraint on reconstructions, providing a unified framework for neural image compression that jointly governs fidelity and perceptual realism. While prior work achieves near-optimal rate–perception trade-offs, practical frameworks explicitly realizing the full RDP surface remain scarce, primarily due to the difficulty of introducing common randomness at the decoder. We propose DCIC (Dual-Constrained Diffusion Image Compression), which integrates a learned codec with a diffusion-based decoder governed by joint distortion and idempotence constraints. The distortion constraint bounds reconstruction fidelity relative to the base codec output; the idempotence constraint – requiring that re-encoding the restored image recovers the base codec reconstruction – serves as a tractable surrogate for the distributional perception requirement. Together, they steer the reverse denoising process via iterative optimization with consistent noise injection, realizing common randomness without additional rate overhead. At fixed rate, dual attenuation factors $(K_D, K_P)$ jointly navigate the Pareto frontier of the distortion-perception plane, enabling continuously adjustable fidelity-realism trade-offs from a single bitstream. DCIC$_{RD}$ ($K_P{=}0$) and DCIC$_{RP}$ ($K_D{=}0$) arise as boundary curves, with DCIC$_{RDP}$ ($K_D = K_P=1$) realizing the optimal interior operating point. Experiments on CelebA-HQ, CLIC2020, and ImageNet-1K across CNN, Transformer, and hybrid architectures confirm that DCIC$_{RDP}$ achieves superior BD-PSNR over all perceptual codecs, while DCIC$_{RP}$ matches dedicated perception-oriented methods in BD-FID, validating the practical value of full RDP surface navigation.

17.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

Hantavirus Disease in Uruguay: Trends and Mortality Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Introduction: Hantavirus disease is an emerging and potentially severe zoonosis of global distribution. In Uruguay, it is transmitted by rodents inhabiting peridomestic, suburban, and rural areas. Global incidence is estimated at 150,000 to 200,000 cases per year, with up to 300 annual cases in the Americas. Since 1997, Uruguay's Ministry of Public Health (MPH) has monitored Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), the most common clinical presentation in the region. By 2019, a total of 271 cases had been identified in the country, with an estimated mortality rate of nearly 50%. Objectives: To describe the clinical, epidemiological, and occupational characteristics of patients with Hantavirus disease in Uruguay during the pre-pandemic (2018-2019) and pandemic (2020-2021) periods. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional, observational study was conducted, including all serologically confirmed cases of Hantavirus infection reported to the MPH between 2018 and 2021. Clinical and demographic data were extracted from the mandatory reporting form for zoonotic diseases. Incidence and case fatality rates were calculated, and factors associated with fatal outcomes were analyzed. Results: A total of 58 confirmed cases were identified between 2018 and 2021. Most patients were male (62%), with a mean age of 36.5 years (SD 16). A decline in incidence was observed during 2020-2021, with no significant change in case fatality. Direct rodent exposure was the most frequently associated risk factor. Montevideo and Canelones were the most affected departments. Renal and pulmonary involvement were significantly associated with mortality. Conclusion: Hantavirus remains a relevant public health concern in Uruguay. Although a decrease in incidence was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic years, case fatality rates remained high. The findings underscore the need for sustained surveillance and early recognition, particularly in urbanizing regions.

18.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

MedicalAgentsBench for Complex Medical Reasoning: Comparing Internalized Reasoning Models versus Externalized Agent-based Frameworks

Complex medical reasoning requires integrating heterogeneous clinical evidence across multiple inference steps. Large language models (LLMs) now approach this through two routes: internalized reasoning and externalized agent scaffolding (frameworks that decompose problems collaboratively amongst multiple LLMs). To determine whether these routes are exclusive or complementary, we introduce MedicalAgentsBench, a filtered benchmark of 862 complex clinical questions drawn from the union of eight medical datasets via difficulty-aware curation and contamination screening. Evaluating three internalized reasoning models (DeepSeek-R1, o1-mini, and o3-mini), seven base models, and nine externalized agent-based methods, we find that internalized and externalized approaches each independently improve performance, and that their benefits compound: the highest accuracy is achieved by layering agent workflows onto an internalized reasoning model (i.e., o3-mini + MDAgents with 35.1%). Pareto analysis shows this combination dominates the cost-performance frontier; moreover, lightweight optimization on inexpensive models offers an entry point for resource-constrained settings. Our benchmark is at https://github.com/gersteinlab/MedicalAgentsBench.

19.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Mucosal and Systemic Antibodies Associated with Clinical Protection in a Pertussis Controlled Human Infection Model

Background The engagement of mucosal and systemic immunity in preventing Bordetella pertussis colonization and infection in humans, the impact of prior vaccination on host immunity and protective outcomes, and the dynamics of the host response following exposure remain poorly understood. Methods Healthy adults were challenged with increasing colony-forming units (CFUs) doses, 106-108, of B. pertussis D420 intranasally (NCT05136599). Shedding (PCR and culturing) and symptom development were monitored up to 21 days post-challenge. Serum and nasal wash IgA and IgG were measured before challenge (baseline) and up to 6 months post-challenge. Findings Antibodies increased post-challenge only in infected individuals, primarily nasal IgA. Participants who remained uninfected had higher baseline levels of filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA)- specific mucosal IgA and IgG, and higher serum IgA against fimbriae 2/3 (FIM). FHA was negatively associated with bacterial load and was a key discriminator between shedders and non-shedders, up to one week post-challenge. By day 14 post-challenge, pertussis toxin (PT) IgG and FIM IgA in both serum and mucosal samples were negatively associated with bacterial colonization. The majority (96.7%) of acellular pertussis (aP) vaccine recipients (n=23, median age 2.0 years) became infected, compared to 69.4% of those who received whole-cell pertussis vaccine (n=36; median age 32.0 years), and their antibody responses remained distinct following infection. Interpretation Nasal FHA antibodies emerged as early predictors of protection against pertussis infection, while PT IgG and FIM IgA antibodies may reflect clearance after infection. aP-primed individuals were more susceptible to infection, despite their younger age and more recent vaccination. Funding CDC Contract #75D30122C15467 and CDC IPA Agreement #24IPA2417512 Disclaimer: The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Health and Human Services.

20.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-18

novelBGC: An interactive dual-score framework for biosynthetic gene cluster novelty assessment and candidate prioritisation

Genome mining now yields tens of thousands of putative biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) per project, yet, separating genuinely novel candidates from rediscoveries of known compounds remains the rate-limiting step before experimental validation. Single-axis prioritisation tools, antiSMASH similarity, BiG-FAM GCF distance, and self-resistance-enzyme (SRE) filters such as ARTS, each surface a different facet of evidence, yet their isolated use systematically over-ranks rediscovery-prone BGCs and overlooks genuinely orphan clusters. We present novelBGC, a web-hosted framework that converts these disparate outputs into two deliberately non-inverse continuous metrics per BGC, a Novelty (N) and a Reference Similarity (RS) score which together define a 2D decision plane that resolves rediscoveries, divergent family members, contig-edge artefacts, and uncharted chemistry with interactive visualisations, with all component weights user-tuneable at submission. Retrospective validation across three independent experimental datasets demonstrates the utility of the framework for candidate prioritization. Within the first 186-BGC SRE-guided cloning study, every confirmed bioactive product fell within the low-to-mid N band whereas 55 high-N (N [≥] 0.50) BGCs were never selected. Moreover, in the other two studies, it correctly prioritised the fully orphan lariocidin BGC of Paenibacillus sp. M2 and the divergent within-family indanopyrrole-A idp BGC of Streptomyces sp. CNX-425. Together, these case studies demonstrate that the joint (N, RS) space facilitates prioritization decisions that are difficult to achieve using any single criterion alone. from identical input data. novelBGC requires no command-line expertise, no local tool installation, and no manual integration of intermediate output formats, addressing a well-documented accessibility barrier for wet-laboratory researchers engaging with genome-mining workflows. novelBGC is freely available at https://project.iith.ac.in/sharmaglab/novelbgc/.

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

Low-Rank Tensor Completion Based on Fractional Regularization with Ky Fan p-k Norm

This paper addresses low-rank tensor completion (LRTC) by proposing a novel nonconvex surrogate, namely the ratio of the tensor nuclear norm to the tensor Ky Fan p-k norm (TNPK), to accurately approximate the tensor tubal rank. The TNPK possesses appealing properties, including scale invariance, parameter flexibility, and the existence of closed-form solutions under specific choices of p and k. With specific parameter settings of p and k, it reduces to the ratio of the tensor nuclear norm to the tensor Ky Fan k norm (TNK) or the ratio of the tensor nuclear norm to the tensor Frobenius norm (TNF). We construct a LRTC model and, under the tensor null space property (NSP), prove that low-rank tensors are local minimizers of the proposed model. Moreover, we derive the proximal operator of the Ky Fan p-k inverse-norm and further develop an efficient alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm with guaranteed subsequential convergence under mild conditions. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets validate the superior performance of our method against state-of-the-art competitors.

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

G-Loss: Graph-Guided Fine-Tuning of Language Models

Traditional loss functions, including cross-entropy, contrastive, triplet, and su pervised contrastive losses, used for fine-tuning pre-trained language models such as BERT, operate only within local neighborhoods and fail to account for the global semantic structure. We present G-Loss, a graph-guided loss function that incorporates semi-supervised label propagation to use structural relationships within the embedding manifold. G-Loss builds a document-similarity graph that captures global semantic relationships, thereby guiding the model to learn more discriminative and robust embeddings. We evaluate G-Loss on five benchmark datasets covering key downstream classification tasks: MR (sentiment analysis), R8 and R52 (topic categorization), Ohsumed (medical document classification), and 20NG (news categorization). In the majority of experimental setups, G-Loss converges faster and produces semantically coherent embedding spaces, resulting in higher classification accuracy than models fine-tuned with traditional loss functions.

23.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Temporal Validation Changes the Apparent Public-Health Utility of Under-Five Mortality Prediction in Bangladesh: A Four-Round DHS Machine-Learning Study

arXiv:2602.03957v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Background: Under-five mortality in Bangladesh remains uneven despite national progress. DHS-based prediction models may guide targeted follow-up, but only if validation reflects future use. We examined how validation design changes apparent prediction performance. Methods: Four BDHS rounds (2011-2022; 33,962 children; 1,290 deaths) were analysed with a 26-feature pipeline and three model classes under four validation regimes, including cross-survey temporal validation (train 2011+2014, calibrate 2017, test 2022). A 32-unit ELU multilayer perceptron was selected via genetic-algorithm neural architecture search. AUROC used 2,000 bootstrap resamples; screening utility used sensitivity, PPV, and number needed to screen (NNS) at fixed capacity. Results: Validation regime altered public-health interpretation more than model class. NAS MLP AUROC ranged from 0.669 (2022-only random) to 0.775 (pooled random), with temporal AUROC 0.730. At the top-10% temporal threshold, NAS identified 152/355 deaths in 2022 (sensitivity 42.8%, PPV 13.2%, NNS 7.6). NNS across designs ranged from 5.6 to 11.0. Conclusions: Validation-regime choice changed screening workload and apparent policy value more than architecture. Temporal validation supports defensible estimates of follow-up and referral demand; DHS child-mortality studies should report sensitivity, PPV, and NNS before programmatic use.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Continuous Cross-Domain Traffic State Prediction via Memory-Augmented Graph Liquid Time-Constant Networks

arXiv:2606.15807v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Traffic state prediction is a fundamental task in intelligent transportation systems. In practical applications, some regions suffer from limited traffic observations due to insufficient sensing infrastructure, making cross-domain knowledge transfer an important solution for data-scarce traffic prediction. However, existing cross-domain traffic prediction methods still face several limitations, including coarse-grained source-target adaptation, limited capability in handling unseen target-domain patterns, and insufficient modeling of continuous traffic dynamics under irregular or heterogeneous temporal conditions. To address these issues, this paper proposes a continuous cross-domain traffic prediction framework, termed Memory-Augmented Graph Liquid Time-Constant Network (MA-GLTC). Specifically, we first construct spatio-temporal units (STUs) to decompose traffic networks into transferable local units, enabling fine-grained knowledge alignment across domains. Then, a graph liquid time-constant network (GLTC) is developed to model graph-coupled traffic evolution in continuous time. Different from generic graph neural ODE-based models, GLTC introduces graph-coupled recurrent conductance into liquid time-constant dynamics, allowing node states to evolve with leakage, adaptive time constants, and neighborhood-aware feedback. Furthermore, a Memory-based Transfer Storage (MTS) mechanism is designed to preserve source-domain knowledge, retrieve matched traffic patterns, and update reliable target-domain patterns when unseen states emerge. Experiments on five public traffic datasets demonstrate that MA-GLTC consistently outperforms representative innerdomain and cross-domain baselines in both short-term and longterm prediction tasks. Compared with the second-best method, MA-GLTC reduces the average prediction errors by 3.02%, 0.33%, 8.92%, 10.09%, and 2.11%, respectively.

25.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Steady-State Noise Signatures of Lindbladian Exceptional Points

arXiv:2606.13377v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Exceptional points (EPs) are non-Hermitian degeneracies at which two or more eigenvalues and their corresponding eigenvectors coalesce. In open quantum systems, exceptional points can arise in the Lindbladian governing the dissipative dynamics. Their signatures have so far been mainly identified in finite-time observables, such as transient currents, while steady-state average currents generally provide no direct evidence of the underlying exceptional-point structure. In this work, we demonstrate that signatures of Lindbladian EPs can nevertheless be accessed in the steady-state regime through current noise. We derive general expressions for current correlation functions within a Lindblad master-equation framework and show, in particular, how exceptional points affect their behaviour as a function of the time delay. We illustrate these results with the paradigmatic example of two interacting qubits coupled to two reservoirs, where the steady-state noise clearly distinguishes overdamped, underdamped, and critical regimes. Our results establish current correlation functions as a steady-state probe of Lindbladian EPs in open quantum systems.