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01.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Dark state spectroscopy in nonlinear waveguide quantum electrodynamics

arXiv:2606.11997v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Quantum systems face a fundamental trade-off: they must remain decoupled from the environment to maintain long coherence times, yet they require interactions with the environment to be accessible for measurement. As a prime example, emitter arrays coupled to waveguides facilitate collective modes that, owing to interference, can suppress radiation into the waveguide. While complete destructive interference creates perfectly dark states with infinite lifetimes, their inherent decoupling makes them unmeasurable in standard waveguide quantum electrodynamics. Consequently, current approaches must rely on system non-idealities that permit measurement but limit the coherence times. In this work, we lift this limitation by proposing the use of weakly squeezed light generated in \{chi}(2) nonlinear waveguides for the spectroscopy of completely dark states. We show that the fluorescence spectrum probes transitions between the dressed dark states of the emitter array. This work paves the way towards the measurement and control of dark states, with applications for robust quantum memories, computation, and communication.

02.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Proper and improper mixed states serve as different prior beliefs for quantum state retrodiction

arXiv:2502.10030v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A mixed quantum state can be taken as capturing an unspecified form of ignorance; or as describing the lack of knowledge about the true pure state of the system ("proper mixture"); or as arising from entanglement with another system that has been disregarded ("improper mixture"). These different views yield identical density matrices and therefore identical predictions for future measurements. But when used as prior beliefs for inferring the past state from later observations ("retrodiction"), they lead to different updated beliefs. This is a purely quantum feature of Bayesian agency. Based on this observation, we establish a framework for retrodicting on any quantum belief and we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the equivalence of beliefs. We also illustrate how these differences have operational consequences in quantum state recovery.

03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Human-like autonomy emerges from self-play and a pinch of human data

arXiv:2606.19370v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Self-play reinforcement learning has recently emerged as a way to train driving policies without any human data. It uses cheap, large-scale simulations to substitute expensive, large-scale human driving demonstrations. A key limitation of this approach is that policies trained through pure self-play can learn effective but alien driving conventions incompatible with people. Previous works attempt to mitigate such behavioral misalignments through extensive reward engineering and domain randomization, which are brittle and labor-intensive. Instead of completely discarding human demonstrations, our method treats them as a regularization objective on top of a minimal safe goal-reaching reward. Like the spice in a good stew, we find that a little human data goes a long way: our method uses only 30 minutes of human demonstrations, 2500x fewer than comparable imitation learning approaches. Resulting policies coordinate with held-out human trajectories and complete training in 15 hours on a single consumer-grade GPU. Videos and full source code are available at https://spiced-self-play.com/.

04.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Physics-IQ Verified

Video generative models ( VGMs) have become a new frontier that can be used not just for video generation but for a multitude of downstream tasks, including world modeling. To advance these tasks, a good video model must understand the physical reality of the world. Evaluating this understanding is an emerging field and has led to the Physics-IQ benchmark, which quantifies this explicitly by comparing model-generated videos to real-world videos of physical experiments. In this work, we present a systematic audit of the Physics-IQ benchmark, expose shortcomings and propose three solutions that sharpen how we can measure physical understanding of VGMs. Specifically, we improve prompt and ground-truth quality to reduce the influence of confounding factors and further introduce a sample-level scoring system that weights each sample and metric equally. Our resulting benchmark, Physics-IQ Verified, refines 57.6\% of all samples and improves over 34.8\% of prompts. In a comparison study using six image-to-video generative models, we observe moderate but meaningful ranking changes (Kendall's $\tau = 0.46$). We hope Physics-IQ Verified advances the community by providing a more reliable signal toward physically accurate VGMs. The code for the benchmark can be accessed at https://github.com/google-deepmind/physics-iq-benchmark

05.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

Skeleton Sparsification and Densification Scale-Spaces

The Hamilton-Jacobi skeleton, also known as the medial axis, is a powerful shape descriptor that represents binary objects in terms of the centres of maximal inscribed discs. Despite its broad applicability, the medial axis suffers from sensitivity to noise: Minor boundary variations can lead to disproportionately large and undesirable expansions of the skeleton. Classical pruning methods mitigate this shortcoming by systematically removing extraneous skeletal branches. This sequential simplification of skeletons resembles the principle of sparsification scale-spaces that embed images into a family of reconstructions from increasingly sparse pixel representations. We combine both worlds by introducing skeletonisation scale-spaces: They leverage sparsification of the medial axis to achieve hierarchical simplification of shapes. Unlike conventional pruning, our framework inherently satisfies key scale-space properties such as hierarchical architecture, controllable simplification, and equivariance to geometric transformations. We provide a rigorous theoretical foundation in both continuous and discrete formulations and extend the concept further with densification. By growing the skeleton successively instead of shrinking it, we allow inverse progression from coarse to fine scales. Densification scale-spaces can even reach beyond the original skeleton to produce overcomplete shape representations with relevancy for practical applications. Through proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework for practical tasks including robust skeletonisation, shape compression, and stiffness enhancement for additive manufacturing.

06.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-17

Convergence Analysis of the Random Bisection Method

arXiv:2603.20483v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose a generalized version of the bisection method where the cutting point between the two subintervals is chosen at random following an arbitrary distribution. We compute expected convergence rates with respect to any arbitrary a priori distribution for the position of the root in the initial interval and proved that it depends only on the the expectation $\mathbb{E}[c(1-c)]$ of the cut $c$. We also provide a generalization of the method for $K$ random cuts and study its convergence properties. Most probabilistic derivations are kept fairly simple for the ease of understanding of a larger audience. Our theoretical results are then validated numerically using statistical simulation.

07.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-17

Persistence diagrams of random triangular matrices over finite fields

arXiv:2606.17895v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Let us consider a random infinite lower triangular matrix, where the entries on and below the diagonal are i.i.d. uniform random elements of a fixed finite field. We investigate the evolution of the span of the first $n$ rows of this matrix as $n$ grows. Many properties of this evolving subspace can be captured with the help of the verbose persistence diagram, which is a standard tool in stochastic topology and topological data analysis. We give an explicit formula for the distribution of the persistence diagram. We prove a law of large numbers for the distribution of lifetimes. We also describe the fluctuations of the persistent Betti numbers.

08.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Non-Hermitian Delocalization Realizes Random Dirac Criticality in One Dimension

arXiv:2606.12089v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Non-Hermitian systems can evade Anderson localization and exhibit delocalized states even in one dimension. Here, we show that such non-Hermitian delocalized states under periodic boundary conditions (PBC) are intrinsically critical, realizing the universality class of one-dimensional random Dirac fermions. By linking spectral winding to topological Anderson transitions via Hermitization, we demonstrate that the delocalized PBC states exhibit a Dirac-type criticality with universal algebraic correlations. In contrast to Hermitian systems, where this criticality occurs only at fine-tuned transition points, it emerges generically in non-Hermitian systems as a consequence of spectral topology. These results identify a universal mechanism by which non-Hermiticity promotes criticality, providing a unified description of non-Hermitian delocalization in one dimension.

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

Acquisition state behaves as a structured, measurable variable governing lung-nodule AI: kernel-driven measurement instability and noise-driven detection fragility, invisible to DICOM metadata

AI governance for medical imaging is formalizing: the 2026 ACR-SIIM Practice Parameter recommends local acceptance testing and ongoing drift monitoring, and the ACR Assess-AI registry monitors AI outputs using DICOM metadata for context. We argue that a necessary, currently unmonitored layer sits beneath output metrics: whether incoming studies remain within the acquisition envelope a model was validated on. Using a LUNA16-trained MONAI RetinaNet lung-nodule detector, we test whether acquisition state behaves as a structured, measurable variable. On real paired CT differing only in reconstruction kernel (NLST B30f vs B80f), kernel alone shifted AI-measured diameter and flipped a Fleischner size category in 5.2% (8 of 155) of nodules at fixed patient and acquisition, while detection confidence was unchanged (Wilcoxon p=0.22). Under controlled LIDC-IDRI perturbations the effects dissociated by axis: the noise axis degraded detection confidence (p=5.9e-32, concentrated in nodules under 6 mm) but not measurement, while the frequency/kernel axis corrupted measurement (p=8.6e-13) but not detection. A 4-feature pixel fingerprint recovered reconstruction identity (patient-level AUC about 0.95 on real CT, 0.995 on a QIBA phantom) where the ConvolutionKernel DICOM tag was uninformative (identical labels across reconstructions). The kernel axis transported across four manufacturers (leave-one-vendor-out AUC 0.94-0.98, matching the within-vendor ceiling). Acquisition state thus maps to distinct AI failure modes, frequency content to measurement reliability and noise to detection sensitivity, and is not recoverable from metadata. Acquisition-aware, input-side validation is the missing layer for the acceptance-testing and drift-monitoring requirements now entering imaging-AI accreditation.

10.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-10

Measurement of reactor neutrino oscillation with the first JUNO data

Neutrino oscillations (see refs. 1,2 and references therein), a quantum effect manifesting at macroscopic scales, are governed by lepton flavour mixing angles and neutrino mass-squared differences3 that are fundamental parameters of particle physics, representing phenomena beyond the Standard Model. Precision measurements of these parameters are essential for testing the completeness of the three-flavour framework, determining the mass ordering of neutrinos and probing possible new physics. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO)4 is a 20-ktonne liquid-scintillator detector located 52.5 km from multiple reactor cores, designed to resolve the interference pattern of reactor neutrinos with sub-percent precision5,6. Here we report, using the first 59.1 days of data collected since detector completion in August 2025, the first simultaneous high-precision determination of two neutrino oscillation parameters, $${\sin }^{2}{\theta }_{12}=0.3092\,\pm \,0.0087$$ and $$\Delta {m}_{21}^{2}=(7.50\,\pm \,0.12)\times 1{0}^{-5}\,{\mathrm{eV}}^{2}$$ for the normal mass ordering scenario, improving the precision by a factor of 1.6 relative to the combination of all previous measurements. These results advance the basic understanding of neutrinos, validate the design of the detector and indicate the readiness of JUNO for resolving the neutrino mass ordering with a larger dataset. The rapid achievement with a short exposure highlights the potential of JUNO to push the frontiers of precision neutrino physics and paves the way for its broad scientific programme. The first data of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory deliver high-precision neutrino oscillation parameters, improving measurements and demonstrating readiness to determine neutrino mass ordering.

11.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

A Variational Framework for LLM Generator-Regulator Games

作者:

arXiv:2606.18424v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper develops a variational framework for regulated language generation. Starting from autoregressive token sampling, we derive the induced distribution over complete messages and relate it to an entropy-regularized Gibbs law. Regulation is modeled as an optimal discriminator whose convex-dual value is an f-divergence, and the generator-regulator interaction is formulated as a saddle-point problem. The framework applies to moderation, censorship, AI deception detection, compliance auditing, phishing defense, and manipulation control, where regulation concerns a distribution over possible messages rather than a single output. The equilibrium clarifies the tradeoff among utility, entropy, regulatory alignment, and finite-length detectability. Two finite-vocabulary case studies, censorship filtering and phishing defense, illustrate how the theory can be evaluated through utility, entropy, divergence, receiver-side scores, and detection probability.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Capability Minimization as a Safety Primitive: Risk-Aware Causal Gating for Least-Privilege LLM Agents

arXiv:2606.13884v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modern decision systems increasingly rely on learned components whose outputs may be confident yet wrong, exposing downstream actions to costly errors. We introduce Risk-Aware Causal Gating (RACG), a framework that decides whether to act on, defer, or abstain from a model's prediction by combining causal effect estimation with calibrated risk control. RACG models the causal pathway from candidate actions to outcomes and gates each decision according to an estimated counterfactual risk rather than raw predictive confidence. To make gating reliable, we derive distribution-free bounds on the probability of acting under high-risk conditions and show how these bounds translate into operating thresholds that satisfy user-specified safety constraints. We further propose an adaptive gating policy that adjusts to distribution shift by monitoring discrepancies between predicted and realized outcomes, tightening the gate when causal assumptions appear violated. Across simulated interventions and real-world decision benchmarks, RACG reduces high-cost errors substantially while preserving most of the utility of an ungated policy, and it outperforms confidence-based and selective-prediction baselines at matched abstention rates. Our results indicate that explicitly separating causal risk from predictive uncertainty yields decision systems that are both safer and more transparent, offering a principled mechanism for trustworthy automation in high-stakes settings.

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

Characterizing the Impact of NVFP4 Quantization for Low-Power Edge AI Deployment

arXiv:2606.06527v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Energy-efficient neural-network inference at the edge requires reducing arithmetic cost, memory traffic, computation energy, and storage overhead while maintaining acceptable accuracy. This paper presents an ablation-focused study of NVFP4 quantization for edge-efficient neural networks, with emphasis on the relationship between activation precision, weight precision, block-size scaling, retraining, and model accuracy. NVFP4 activations are represented using 4-bit FP4 data, an FP8 block scale, and an FP32 tensor scale, enabling ultra-low precision inference while preserving activation dynamic range. A block-size ablation over six edge-efficient models shows that block size B = 16 provides a practical accuracy/storage trade-off, requiring only 4.5078 bits per input for N = 4096. A weight precision ablation further shows that FP8 and FP16 weights provide only modest gains over FP4 weights under the same NVFP4 activation path, suggesting that activation quantization and scaling dominate much of the accuracy behavior. To isolate the benefit of the NVFP4 data type, this work compares conventional unscaled FP4 activation inference and NVFP4 activation inference with and without retraining. The results show that conventional FP4 inference collapses accuracy for most compact models, while NVFP4 without retraining already recovers substantial accuracy by restoring activation dynamic range through FP8 block scaling and FP32 tensor scaling. When combined with retraining, NVFP4 achieves the best accuracy across the evaluated models, demonstrating the effectiveness of scaling-aware FP4 (NVFP4) inference. These findings provide general design guidance for hardware-software co-design of low power edge inference across a broad range of accelerator platforms, including GPUs, Tensor Cores, FPGAs, domain-specific AI accelerators, near-memory computing systems, and emerging edge-computing architectures.

14.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Optimal Hidden-Target Learning for Online Inventory Optimization on General Convex Sets

arXiv:2606.14679v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Online inventory optimization (OIO) is online convex optimization with physical memory: inventory carryover makes the feasible action set depend on the past. A natural principle, used in stochastic inventory learning and recently in OIO under a single linear capacity constraint, is to maintain a hidden target chosen by an online learner and implement its projection onto the currently feasible order-up-to set. We prove that this simple principle is optimal for OIO on arbitrary bounded convex capacity sets. With online gradient descent as the base learner, the method improves the best known regret guarantee for OIO on general convex sets from inverse to inverse-square-root dependence on the common-demand probability, and we prove a matching lower bound. The same principle gives the first polylogarithmic regret guarantee for strongly convex losses and the first dynamic regret guarantee adapting to Euclidean path variation on general convex capacity sets. The analysis introduces a norm alignment principle: the right state variable is the distance from the hidden target to the feasible set, measured in the same norm as the projection. Under norm alignment, this distance evolves pathwise as a scalar queue, with target movement as arrival and common demand as service. This reduction to one-dimensional queue control resolves the state dependence and extends the guarantees to general convex capacity sets, beyond the reach of prior productwise approaches. Experiments on synthetic and real-world inventory data corroborate the theory.

15.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-11

Construction of ergodic IDLA forests in $\mathbb{Z}^d$

arXiv:2506.10476v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We prove the existence of infinite-volume IDLA forests in $\mathbb{Z}^d$ , with $d \geq 2$, based on a multi-source IDLA protocol. Unlike IDLA aggregates, the laws of the IDLA forests studied here depend on the trajectories of particles, and then do not satisfy the famous Abelian property. Their existence is due to a stabilization result (Theorem 1.1, our main result) that we establish using percolation tools. Although the sources are infinitely many, we also prove that each of them play the same role in the building procedure, which results in an ergodicity property for the IDLA forests (Theorem 1.2).

16.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Routine use of oral iron for people with heart failure and iron deficiency in primary care; retrospective cohort study

Aims: Iron deficiency is common among people with heart failure and associated with morbidity and mortality. While intravenous iron improves clinical outcomes, oral iron continues to be prescribed in routine practice despite limited evidence of benefit. Methods: We completed a retrospective primary care cohort study (2016 to 2021) to investigate the proportion of people with an incident diagnosis of heart failure who had iron deficiency identified (defined as ferritin

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

FBSDiff++: Improved Frequency Band Substitution of Diffusion Features for Efficient and Highly Controllable Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation

With large-scale text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models achieving significant advancements in open-domain image creation, increasing attention has been focused on their natural extension to the realm of text-driven image-to-image (I2I) translation, where a source image acts as visual guidance to the generated image in addition to the textual guidance provided by the text prompt. We propose FBSDiff, a novel framework adapting off-the-shelf T2I diffusion model into the I2I paradigm from a fresh frequency-domain perspective. Through dynamic frequency band substitution of diffusion features, FBSDiff realizes versatile and highly controllable text-driven I2I in a plug-and-play manner (without need for model training, fine-tuning, or online optimization), allowing appearance-guided, layout-guided, and contour-guided I2I translation by progressively substituting low-frequency band, mid-frequency band, and high-frequency band of latent diffusion features, respectively. In addition, FBSDiff flexibly enables continuous control over I2I correlation intensity simply by tuning the bandwidth of the substituted frequency band. To further promote image translation efficiency, flexibility, and functionality, we propose FBSDiff++ which improves upon FBSDiff mainly in three aspects: (1) accelerate inference speed by a large margin (8.9$\times$ speedup in inference) with refined model architecture; (2) improve the Frequency Band Substitution module to allow for input source images of arbitrary resolution and aspect ratio; (3) extend model functionality to enable localized image manipulation and style-specific content creation with only subtle adjustments to the core method. Extensive qualitative and quantitative experiments verify superiority of FBSDiff++ in I2I translation visual quality, efficiency, versatility, and controllability compared to related advanced approaches.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

CADO: From Imitation to Cost Minimization for Heatmap-based Solvers in Combinatorial Optimization

arXiv:2602.08210v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Heatmap-based solvers have emerged as a promising paradigm for Combinatorial Optimization (CO). However, we argue that the dominant Supervised Learning (SL) training paradigm suffers from a fundamental objective mismatch: minimizing imitation loss (e.g., cross-entropy) does not guarantee solution cost minimization. We dissect this mismatch into two deficiencies: Decoder-Blindness (being oblivious to the non-differentiable decoding process) and Cost-Blindness (prioritizing structural imitation over solution quality). We empirically demonstrate that these intrinsic flaws impose a hard performance ceiling. To overcome this limitation, we propose CADO (Cost-Aware Diffusion models for Optimization), a streamlined Reinforcement Learning fine-tuning framework that formulates the diffusion denoising process as an MDP to directly optimize the post-decoded solution cost. We introduce Label-Centered Reward, which repurposes ground-truth labels as unbiased baselines rather than imitation targets, and Hybrid Fine-Tuning for parameter-efficient adaptation. CADO achieves state-of-the-art performance across diverse benchmarks, validating that objective alignment is essential for unlocking the full potential of heatmap-based solvers.

19.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-16

THEOBROMA: an aggregated open database of 1.13 million natural products with per-compound license auditing, three-tier classification, and stereochemistry-aware deduplication

Natural products remain one of the most productive sources of pharmacologically active compounds for drug discovery, yet the current open aggregator landscape attributes licenses at database rather than compound granularity, with consequences that have become tangible as the field grows. A recent relicensing event in one constituent source (the September 2024 transition of the Natural Products Atlas to CC BY-NC 4.0) demonstrates how database-level licensing propagates across an aggregate and motivates the per-compound audit framework presented here. The same peer cohort separately leaves classification provenance and stereoisomer-family relations coarser than either layer warrants. THEOBROMA, accessible at url{https://theobroma.l3s.uni-hannover.de}, integrates 1{,}133{,}004 natural products from 29 open sources under a per-compound license audit that resolves each compound's license tier across all attesting sources under a most-restrictive-wins rule, identifying 900{,}170 compounds (79.4%) under open-use licenses and exposing the per-source attestation chain and resolved tier through a dedicated audit endpoint and a query-time license filter. A three-tier classification stratifies 89.3% coverage into 35.1% curated, 43.9% high-confidence inferred, and 10.3% exploratory tiers, with 486{,}215 stereoisomer families preserved by full 27-character InChIKey deduplication and exposed via a dedicated texttt{/api/stereoisomers/} endpoint and a radial-family display. Per-compound license provenance is the primary differentiator. Classification stratification and stereoisomer-family exposure add finer-grained access to two related axes, supporting license-compatible virtual screening and isomer-specific bioactivity analysis at corpus scale. As an evolving open resource, THEOBROMA pairs continuous pipeline maintenance with interactive geographic, taxonomic, and chemical-space exploration.

20.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

Semantic Segmentation of Node and Edge Diagrams for Assistive Technology

In this paper, we present a novel set of related models for semantic segmentation of node-link diagrams. These diagrams are frequently used to represent mathematical graphs, relationships between concepts, and flowcharts. Such diagrams are difficult to access non-visually; while some assistive interfaces have been designed for node-link diagrams, they rely upon a machine-readable representation of the diagram, whereas such diagrams will generally be made available as bitmap images. Our compact deep learning models show excellent quantitative and qualitative performance on a large synthetic dataset of node-link diagrams, reaching per-pixel accuracy over 93\%.

21.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Closing the Auto-Research Loop: An AI Co-Scientist for Production Search Ranking

arXiv:2603.22376v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We present an AI Co-Scientist framework that closes the research loop for the production search-ranking system of a large online travel platform – pairing LLM agents with direct cloud-compute access so that idea generation, code implementation, GPU experimentation, and result analysis iterate end-to-end with a human scientist in the loop. The framework uses a hybrid agent architecture: single-LLM agents handle routine work, while multi-LLM consensus (GPT-5.2, Gemini Pro 3, Claude Opus 4.5) is invoked for higher-stakes decisions. On the production ranking task, a human-designed transformer baseline (V2) yielded $+0.118\%$ over a pre-transformer baseline (V1); the AI Co-Scientist's automated loop on top of V2 contributed an additional $+0.083\%$, for a combined $+0.201\%$ offline gain delivered in roughly one extra week of wall-clock time (single-run numbers; statistical limits discussed in the paper). The most useful AI proposals – unified long-sequence layouts, slot-type embeddings, and multi-phase learning-rate schedules – are standard practice in NLP and Vision but were absent from our production stack, suggesting that LLM agents can serve as cross-disciplinary connectors for ranking teams. We also report deployment context, negative results, and lessons learned.

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

Detect Before You Leap: Mirage Detection in Vision-Language Models

Vision-language models (VLMs) can produce confident visual answers even when the required visual evidence is missing, blank, or unrelated to the question. This failure mode, recently described as mirage (mirage2026), is especially concerning in medical and document VQA, where a plausible but visually ungrounded answer may be mistaken for image-based evidence. We study the complementary problem of pre-release mirage detection: given an image-question pair, determine whether the VLM should answer or abstain before generation. To that end, we propose a novel model-agnostic Text-Conditioned Layer-wise Internal Alignment (TC-LIA) method that probes patch-token representations across the layers of a CLIP ViT-H/14 vision encoder. The key idea is to project layer-wise image patch tokens into the final CLIP embedding space and measure their similarity with the question embedding, thereby tracking whether question-relevant visual evidence emerges across vision layers. TC-LIA summarizes this alignment trajectory using final image-text cosine similarity, late-layer top-k patch-text alignment, early-to-late gain, and layer-wise slope. These features are combined with pixel-statistic based blank/noise detection, zero-shot domain routing, and structured VLM self-assessment in an ensemble. Across five VQA domains with related, unrelated-real, and blank/noise inputs, and across twelve VLM backbones, Qwen2.5-VL-32B achieves the highest three-class detection accuracy of 94.7% with a 3.0% mirage rate, while Qwen2.5-VL-72B achieves 94.6% accuracy with a lower 2.8% mirage rate. Baseline mirage rates span 21.7-66.6%.

23.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Postoperative Cognitive Decline in Older Patients with Cardiovascular Disease and Preoperative Mild Cognitive Impairment

Objective. Older adults undergoing cardiac surgery may be vulnerable to postoperative cognitive decline. However, no studies have examined postoperative cognitive outcomes in older patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) according to preoperative mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study examined 12-month postoperative cognitive outcomes in older CVD patients according to preoperative MCI diagnosis and explored predictors of postoperative cognitive decline. Method. Twenty-two older CVD patients ([≥]65 years) and twenty-five controls were included. Neuropsychological assessment was conducted at baseline in both groups and repeated 12 months after surgery in the CVD group. MCI was diagnosed using current clinical criteria. Postoperative cognitive change was examined across preoperative MCI groups. Results. Fifty percent of patients met criteria for postoperative MCI, showing high diagnostic stability relative to preoperative frequency (45.5%). The preoperative CVD-MCI group showed a decline in working memory, executive functions, visual memory, and naming, whereas CVD-nMCI group declined only in verbal memory. Furthermore, CVD-MCI showed more heterogeneous postoperative cognitive trajectories of change than CVD-nMCI, who showed stability. Estimated IQ, APACHE-II score, and postoperative frailty were important variables in predicting the postoperative pattern. Conclusions. MCI frequency remained high and stable in older CVD patients across the preoperative and one-year postoperative period. However, this apparent diagnostic stability masks subclinical cognitive decline, particularly among patients with preoperative MCI, who showed greater susceptibility to further impairment. Estimated IQ, APACHE-II score, and postoperative frailty may be considered relevant predictors of outcome. These results highlight the value of preoperative neuropsychological assessment for characterizing postoperative cognitive risk in older CVD patients.

24.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-14

Prediction of parsimonious and temporally sensitive sets of cell fate engineering transcription factors with IMCell

Transcription factor (TF) cocktails used in cell identity reprogramming protocols have largely been developed from experimental approaches. A handful of computational approaches have been reported, though have not been widely adopted by the scientific community. To standardize their use and assess their performance, we built CompForce, a platform that integrates these tools. Using CompForce, we found that existing computational methods offer modest improvements over differential expression on both synthetic and literature-curated data, and that their lackluster and inconsistent performance could be attributed to a reliance on local centrality metrics. To improve upon these methods, we developed IMCell, a prediction method that is inspired by the influence maximization problem. Unlike existing tools, IMCell returns optimized TF sets rather than ranked TF lists. We demonstrate that IMCell vastly out-performs existing tools, and further extend it to dynamic, stepwise contexts. The tools presented here are available in the R packages CompForce and IMCell.

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

Connecting Speech to Words through Images

How can we learn the mapping between written words and their spoken counterparts in the absence of explicit textual supervision? We present a visually grounded method for building a vocabulary of spoken words using only images and their spoken descriptions. First, image captioning systems are used to build a vocabulary of written words representing salient visual concepts in the images. For each word, we then find utterances whose image captions contain that word. Then we use an unsupervised word discovery technique to align these utterances to locate instances of the target word. The result is spoken word segments that are linked to written words – all accomplished without any text supervision. In spoken word retrieval and keyword spotting experiments, the proposed approach outperforms a strong neural baseline while being more interpretable. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in English and motivate future work on low-resource languages without transcripts.