Modern LLM reasoning relies on extensive test-time computation, driven by internal model training and external agentic orchestration. However, this synergy is often inefficient, as model verbosity and poor instruction following lead to wasted compute. We analyze this capability-cost trade-off and introduce an optimized reasoning workflow (\cepo) that empowers smaller open-source models to outperform models multiple times their size. We will open-source this workflow to enable further research. Our work demonstrates a clear path toward co-designing orchestration frameworks with the underlying model capabilities to unlock powerful reasoning in small-to-medium sized models.

This research presents a novel method for non-invasive arterial blood pressure (ABP) prediction using speech signals, employing a BERT -based regression model. Arterial blood pressure is a vital indicator of cardiovascular health, and accurate monitoring is essential in preventing hypertension-related complications. Traditional cuff-based methods often yield inconsistent results due to factors like white-coat and masked hypertension. Our approach leverages the acoustic characteristics of speech, capturing voice features to establish correlations with blood pressure levels. Utilizing advanced deep learning techniques, we analyze speech signals to extract relevant patterns, enabling real-time monitoring without the discomfort of conventional methods.

Driven by the demand for personalized AI systems, there is growing interest in aligning the behavior of large language models (LLMs) with human traits such as personality. Previous attempts to induce personality in LLMs have shown promising results, but they struggle to capture the continuous and multidimensional nature of human traits. In this work, we propose a novel method for personality modulation in LLMs via model merging. Specifically, we construct personality vectors by subtracting the weights of a pre-trained model from those of the fine-tuned model on a given personality trait. By merging personality vectors, we enable LLMs to exhibit desired personality traits without additional training. Extensive experiments show that personality vectors enable continuous control over trait intensity and support the composition of multiple traits. Furthermore, personality vectors transfer across diverse downstream models, suggesting that they encode generalizable representations of personality. Our code is available at here.

Given the inherent limitations of traditional Variational Quantum Eigensolver(VQE) algorithms, the integration of deep generative models into hybrid quantum-classical frameworks, specifically the Generative Quantum Eigensolver(GQE), represents a promising innovative approach. However, taking the Unitary Coupled Cluster with Singles and Doubles(UCCSD) ansatz which is widely used in quantum chemistry as an example, different molecular systems require constructions of distinct quantum operators. Considering the similarity of different molecules, the construction of quantum operators utilizing the similarity can reduce the computational cost significantly. Inspired by the SMILES representation method in computational chemistry, we developed a text-based representation approach for UCCSD quantum operators by leveraging the inherent representational similarities between different molecular systems. This framework explores text pattern similarities in quantum operators and employs text similarity metrics to establish a transfer learning framework. Our approach with a naive baseline setting demonstrates knowledge transfer between different molecular systems for ground-state energy calculations within the GQE paradigm. This discovery offers significant benefits for hybrid quantum-classical computation of molecular ground-state energies, substantially reducing computational resource requirements.

We present a comprehensive real-world evaluation of AI-assisted software development tools deployed at enterprise scale. Over one year, 300 engineers across multiple teams integrated an in-house AI platform (DeputyDev) that combines code generation and automated review capabilities into their daily workflows. Through rigorous cohort analysis, our study demonstrates statistically significant productivity improvements, including an overall 31.8% reduction in PR review cycle time. Developer adoption was strong, with 85% satisfaction for code review features and 93% expressing a desire to continue using the platform. Adoption patterns showed systematic scaling from 4% engagement in month 1 to 83% peak usage by month 6, stabilizing at 60% active engagement. Top adopters achieved a 61% increase in code volume pushed to production, contributing to approximately 30 to 40% of code shipped to production through this tool, accounting for an overall 28% increase in code shipment volume. Unlike controlled benchmark evaluations, our longitudinal analysis provides empirical evidence from production environments, revealing both the transformative potential and practical deployment challenges of integrating AI into enterprise software development workflows.

Advanced test-time computing strategies are essential for scaling reasoning models, but their effectiveness is capped by the models' poor self-evaluation. We propose a pairwise Explanatory Verifier, trained via reinforcement learning (GRPO), that produces calibrated confidence scores and associated natural language reasoning for generated solutions. Our verifier improves the accuracy and efficiency of test-time strategies like best-of-n and self-reflection. Crucially, it excels at identifying challenging failure modes, such as when both candidate solutions are identically incorrect, succeeding where standard methods like majority voting fail.

As LLMs gain adoption in high-stakes domains like mental health, domain experts are increasingly consulted to provide input into policies governing their behavior. From an observation of 19 policymaking workshops with 9 experts over 15 weeks, we identified opportunities to better support rapid experimentation, feedback, and iteration for collaborative policy design processes. We present PolicyPad, an interactive system that facilitates the emerging practice of LLM policy prototyping by drawing from established UX prototyping practices, including heuristic evaluation and storyboarding. Using PolicyPad, policy designers can collaborate on drafting a policy in real time while independently testing policy-informed model behavior with usage scenarios. We evaluate PolicyPad through workshops with 8 groups of 22 domain experts in mental health and law, finding that PolicyPad enhanced collaborative dynamics during policy design, enabled tight feedback loops, and led to novel policy contributions. Overall, our work paves participatory paths for advancing AI alignment and safety.

ABSTRACT We propose a framework that enables neural models to "think while listening" to everyday sounds, thereby enhancing audio classification performance. Motivated by recent advances in the reasoning capabilities of large language models, we address two central questions: (i) how can thinking be incorporated into existing audio classification pipelines to enable reasoning in the category space and improve performance, and (ii) can a new architecture be designed from the ground up to support both thinking and test-time scaling? We demonstrate that in both settings, our models exhibit improved classification accuracy. Leveraging test-time scaling, we observe consistent gains as the number of sampled traces increases. Furthermore, we evaluate two open-source reasoning models, GPT -OSS-20B and Qwen3-14B, showing that while such models are capable of zero-shot reasoning, a lightweight approach--retraining only the embedding matrix of a frozen, smaller model like GPT -2 can surpass the performance of billion-parameter text-based reasoning models.

Pedestrian safety is a critical component of urban mobility and is strongly influenced by the interactions between pedestrian decision-making and driver yielding behavior at crosswalks. Modeling driver--pedestrian interactions at intersections requires accurately capturing the complexity of these behaviors. Traditional machine learning models often struggle to capture the nuanced and context-dependent reasoning required for these multifactorial interactions, due to their reliance on fixed feature representations and limited interpretability. In contrast, large language models (LLMs) are suited for extracting patterns from heterogeneous traffic data, enabling accurate modeling of driver-pedestrian interactions. Therefore, this paper leverages multimodal LLMs through a novel prompt design that incorporates domain-specific knowledge, structured reasoning, and few-shot prompting, enabling interpretable and context-aware inference of driver yielding behavior, as an example application of modeling pedestrian--driver interaction. We benchmarked state-of-the-art LLMs against traditional classifiers, finding that GPT-4o consistently achieves the highest accuracy and recall, while Deepseek-V3 excels in precision. These findings highlight the critical trade-offs between model performance and computational efficiency, offering practical guidance for deploying LLMs in real-world pedestrian safety systems.

The surge in the significance of time series in digital health domains necessitates advanced methodologies for extracting meaningful patterns and representations. Self-supervised contrastive learning has emerged as a promising approach for learning directly from raw data. However, time series data in digital health is known to be highly noisy, inherently involves concept drifting, and poses a challenge for training a generalizable deep learning model. In this paper, we specifically focus on data distribution shift caused by different human behaviors and propose a self-supervised learning framework that is aware of the bag-of-symbol representation. The bag-of-symbol representation is known for its insensitivity to data warping, location shifts, and noise existed in time series data, making it potentially pivotal in guiding deep learning to acquire a representation resistant to such data shifting. We demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve significantly better performance where significant data shifting exists.