We propose a hybrid variational framework that enhances Neural Quantum States (NQS) with a Normalising Flow-based sampler to improve the expressivity and trainability of quantum many-body wavefunctions. Our approach decouples the sampling task from the variational ansatz by learning a continuous flow model that targets a discretised, amplitude-supported subspace of the Hilbert space. This overcomes limitations of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and autoregressive methods, especially in regimes with long-range correlations and volume-law entanglement. Applied to the transverse-field Ising model with both short- and long-range interactions, our method achieves comparable ground state energy errors with state-of-the-art matrix product states and lower energies than autoregressive NQS. For systems up to 50 spins, we demonstrate high accuracy and robust convergence across a wide range of coupling strengths, including regimes where competing methods fail. Our results showcase the utility of flow-assisted sampling as a scalable tool for quantum simulation and offer a new approach toward learning expressive quantum states in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces.

We propose XPG-RL, a reinforcement learning framework for mechanical search tasks. XPG-RL leverages task-guided action prioritization and learns context-aware switching over action primitives, effectively reducing redundant manipulations and improving task efficiency. The figure shows the manipulator successfully grasping a target object ( banana) in a densely cluttered real-world scene. Abstract --Mechanical search (MS) in cluttered environments remains a significant challenge for autonomous manipulators, requiring long-horizon planning and robust state estimation under occlusions and partial observability. In this work, we introduce XPG-RL, a reinforcement learning framework that enables agents to efficiently perform MS tasks through explainable, priority-guided decision-making based on raw sensory inputs. XPG-RL integrates a task-driven action prioritization mechanism with a learned context-aware switching strategy that dynamically selects from a discrete set of action primitives such as target grasping, occlusion removal, and viewpoint adjustment. Within this strategy, a policy is optimized to output adaptive threshold values that govern the discrete selection among action primitives. The perception module fuses RGB-D inputs with semantic and geometric features to produce a structured scene representation for downstream decision-making.

In this paper, we investigate tree-indexed Markov chains (Gibbs measures) defined by a Hamiltonian that couples two Ising layers: hidden spins \(s(x) \in \{\pm 1\}\) and observed spins \(σ(x) \in \{\pm 1\}\) on a Cayley tree. The Hamiltonian incorporates Ising interactions within each layer and site-wise emission couplings between layers, extending hidden Markov models to a bilayer Markov random field. Specifically, we explore translation-invariant Gibbs measures (TIGM) of this Hamiltonian on Cayley trees. Under certain explicit conditions on the model's parameters, we demonstrate that there can be up to three distinct TIGMs. Each of these measures represents an equilibrium state of the spin system. These measures provide a structured approach to inference on hierarchical data in machine learning. They have practical applications in tasks such as denoising, weakly supervised learning, and anomaly detection. The Cayley tree structure is particularly advantageous for exact inference due to its tractability.

Owing to its rapid progress and broad application prospects, few-shot action recognition has attracted considerable interest. However, current methods are predominantly based on limited single-modal data, which does not fully exploit the potential of multimodal information. This paper presents a novel framework that actively identifies reliable modalities for each sample using task-specific contextual cues, thus significantly improving recognition performance. Our framework integrates an Active Sample Inference (ASI) module, which utilizes active inference to predict reliable modalities based on posterior distributions and subsequently organizes them accordingly. Unlike reinforcement learning, active inference replaces rewards with evidence-based preferences, making more stable predictions. Additionally, we introduce an active mutual distillation module that enhances the representation learning of less reliable modalities by transferring knowledge from more reliable ones. Adaptive multimodal inference is employed during the meta-test to assign higher weights to reliable modalities. Extensive experiments across multiple benchmarks demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms existing approaches.

This paper develops a novel multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework for reinsurance treaty bidding, addressing long-standing inefficiencies in traditional broker-mediated placement processes. We pose the core research question: Can autonomous, learning-based bidding systems improve risk transfer efficiency and outperform conventional pricing approaches in reinsurance markets? In our model, each reinsurer is represented by an adaptive agent that iteratively refines its bidding strategy within a competitive, partially observable environment. The simulation explicitly incorporates institutional frictions including broker intermediation, incumbent advantages, last-look privileges, and asymmetric access to underwriting information. Empirical analysis demonstrates that MARL agents achieve up to 15% higher underwriting profit, 20% lower tail risk (CVaR), and over 25% improvement in Sharpe ratios relative to actuarial and heuristic baselines. Sensitivity tests confirm robustness across hyperparameter settings, and stress testing reveals strong resilience under simulated catastrophe shocks and capital constraints. These findings suggest that MARL offers a viable path toward more transparent, adaptive, and risk-sensitive reinsurance markets. The proposed framework contributes to emerging literature at the intersection of algorithmic market design, strategic bidding, and AI-enabled financial decision-making.

Reward models are critical for improving large language models (LLMs), particularly in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) or inference-time verification. Current reward modeling typically relies on scores of overall responses to learn the outcome rewards for the responses. However, since the response-level scores are coarse-grained supervision signals, the reward model struggles to identify the specific components within a response trajectory that truly correlate with the scores, leading to poor generalization on unseen responses. In this paper, we propose to leverage generation probabilities to establish reward consistency between processes in the response trajectory, which allows the response-level supervisory signal to propagate across processes, thereby providing additional fine-grained signals for reward learning. Building on analysis under the Bayesian framework, we develop an intra-trajectory consistency regularization to enforce that adjacent processes with higher next-token generation probability maintain more consistent rewards. We apply the proposed regularization to the advanced outcome reward model, improving its performance on RewardBench. Besides, we show that the reward model trained with the proposed regularization induces better DPO-aligned policies and achieves better best-of-N (BON) inference-time verification results. Our code is provided in https://github.com/chaoyang101/ICRM.

Due to hardware constraints and the inherent complexity of the robotic action space, achieving effective whole-body control (WBC) for adult-sized humanoid robots, such as the Unitree H1-2, remains a significant challenge. Recent studies on WBC have demonstrated promising advancements, enabling humanoid robots to perform versatile motions by learning from extensive human data [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Based on different task settings, WBC methodologies can be broadly categorized into three types: root velocity tracking [6], kinematic position tracking [1, 3], and local joint angle tracking [6, 2, 4]. Root velocity tracking emphasizes coarse-grained control, where the robot tracks a given velocity without relying on a specific reference pose. In contrast, kinematic position and local joint angle tracking focus on accurately reproducing a given trajectory of reference poses, which can be regarded as fine-grained control for humanoids.

The discovery began, as many breakthroughs do, with an observation that didn't quite make sense. In 1948, two French researchers, Paul Mandel and Pierre Métais, published a little-noticed paper in a scientific journal. Working in a laboratory in Strasbourg, they had been cataloguing the chemical contents of blood plasma--that river of life teeming with proteins, sugars, waste, nutrients, and cellular debris. Amid this familiar inventory, they'd spotted an unexpected presence: fragments of DNA drifting freely. The finding defied biological orthodoxy. DNA was thought to remain locked inside the nuclei of cells, and not float around on its own.

Opinion dynamics models such as the bounded confidence models (BCMs) describe how a population can reach consensus, fragmentation, or polarization, depending on a few parameters. Connecting such models to real-world data could help understanding such phenomena, testing model assumptions. To this end, estimation of model parameters is a key aspect, and maximum likelihood estimation provides a principled way to tackle it. Here, our goal is to outline the properties of statistical estimators of the two key BCM parameters: the confidence bound and the convergence rate. We find that their maximum likelihood estimators present different characteristics: the one for the confidence bound presents a small-sample bias but is consistent, while the estimator of the convergence rate shows a persistent bias. Moreover, the joint parameter estimation is affected by identifiability issues for specific regions of the parameter space, as several local maxima are present in the likelihood function. Our results show how the analysis of the likelihood function is a fruitful approach for better understanding the pitfalls and possibilities of estimating the parameters of opinion dynamics models, and more in general, agent-based models, and for offering formal guarantees for their calibration.

The widespread adoption of location-based services has led to the generation of vast amounts of mobility data, providing significant opportunities to model user movement dynamics within urban environments. Recent advancements have focused on adapting Large Language Models (LLMs) for mobility analytics. However, existing methods face two primary limitations: inadequate semantic representation of locations (i.e., discrete IDs) and insufficient modeling of mobility signals within LLMs (i.e., single templated instruction fine-tuning). To address these issues, we propose QT-Mob, a novel framework that significantly enhances LLMs for mobility analytics. QT-Mob introduces a location tokenization module that learns compact, semantically rich tokens to represent locations, preserving contextual information while ensuring compatibility with LLMs. Furthermore, QT-Mob incorporates a series of complementary fine-tuning objectives that align the learned tokens with the internal representations in LLMs, improving the model's comprehension of sequential movement patterns and location semantics. The proposed QT-Mob framework not only enhances LLMs' ability to interpret mobility data but also provides a more generalizable approach for various mobility analytics tasks. Experiments on three real-world dataset demonstrate the superior performance in both next-location prediction and mobility recovery tasks, outperforming existing deep learning and LLM-based methods.