#01Oct 16, 2026
stat.ML
ENFR: Evidence Networks with Flow-Matched References for Amortized Simulation-Based Model Inference
Kai Lehman, Jameson Dong, Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro and 5 more
The evidence, $\mathcal{Z} = p(x | \mathcal{M})$, of a data-generating model $\mathcal{M}$ is a powerful tool in Bayesian frameworks: it enables model inference, model misspecification tests, and goodness-of-fit assessment as an alternative to standard discrepancy statistics, e.g. $χ^2$. While versatile, the evidence is notoriously difficult to compute, even when the likelihood is available. In both likelihood-based and simulation-based inference, estimating $\mathcal{Z}$ provides an immediate solution to high-dimensional goodness-of-fit or model misspecification tests: using $\mathcal{Z}(x)$ as the test statistic induces a minimum-volume level-$α$ test. Such tests are essential to assess model fidelity, which is necessary to trust simulation-based parameter inference. Existing learned approaches largely target Bayes factors, which only measure evidence ratios. Instead, we provide accurate, fast, and amortized estimates of the absolute evidence. We present ENFR: Evidence Networks with Flow-matched References. Building on the Evidence Network framework of Jeffrey & Wandelt (2024), the proposed method first learns Bayes factors with respect to a flow-matched reference, from which the absolute evidence is recovered. We show improvement in estimation of $\mathcal{Z}$ over the flow-based baseline in all applications considered and the best performance of all density estimation methods considered in our benchmarks. We furthermore introduce and provide the proof for an architecture that jointly learns the individual evidences of a set of models $\{\mathcal{M}_i\}$. We demonstrate the performance and scaling behavior of these approaches on data from a variety of scientific applications.
#02Oct 16, 2026
cs.CL
DLite: History-free Speculative Decoding for Agentic AI
Jiaming Xu, Hanzhen Wang, Tianlang Zhao and 7 more
Speculative decoding has become a mainstream technique for accelerating large language model (LLM) inference by using a lightweight draft model to generate candidate tokens that are subsequently verified by the target model. However, agentic workloads introduce long and continuously evolving contexts and frequent multi-turn interactions. Under such workloads, we observe that existing draft models suffer from up to an 80% degradation in acceptance length, while maintaining their historical KV cache introduces substantial system overhead. In this paper, we identify the growing historical context as a common source of both problems and introduce DLite, a history-free speculative decoding framework for agentic AI. DLite directly reuses contextual hidden states from the target model and performs local speculative prediction without explicitly maintaining the historical context, transforming an increasingly complex modeling problem into local simple prediction problem. A lightweight sequential head further restores intra-block causal dependencies with low overhead. To effectively train this heterogeneous history-free architecture, we introduce a tailored two-stage training strategy. Experiments on general-purpose, long-context and agentic workloads show that DLite achieves 2-6 acceptance length and outperforms the state-of-the-art speculative decoding method, DSpark, up to 70%.
#03Oct 16, 2026
cs.LG
Explainable Machine Learning Analysis of Temperature Effects on Mechanical Strength of Fiber-Reinforced High-Performance Concrete
Jagaran Chakma, Zhiguang Zhou, Badhan Chakma and 1 more
Predicting the compressive strength of fiber-reinforced high-performance concrete subjected to temperature exposure is challenging because to the intricate interdependencies of mixture composition, fiber properties, curing conditions, and temperature. A data-driven framework to predict compressive strength utilizing 1,204 experimental records containing a diverse array of material designs and exposure situations. This study evaluates eight machine-learning models and demonstrate that ensemble approaches routinely surpass individual learners. Both gradient boosting and extreme gradient boosting exhibit superior performance on unseen data, each attaining a R^2 of 0.903. Gradient boosting produces the minimal root mean square error (6.67 MPa), whereas extreme gradient boosting achieves the lowest mean absolute error (3.97 MPa) and mean absolute percentage error (10.60%). The models are further interpreted utilizing Shapley additive explanations and partial dependence analysis, which reveal temperature as the primary factor influencing compressive strength, succeeded by fine aggregate, superplasticizer, cement content, water-to-binder ratio, and water content. Strength diminishes significantly with rising temperature, albeit the extent of deterioration is contingent upon the specific combination design. The best performing models are subsequently implemented in a Python-based graphical user interface for expedited prediction. Our findings offer a precise and comprehensible methodology for evaluating temperature-dependent compressive strength and facilitate the practical, data-driven design of fiber-reinforced high-performance concrete.
#04Oct 16, 2026
cs.LG
Waiting Buys Exactly Two Moments: Endogenous Identification in Prediction-Driven Allocation
Rama AlHamidi, Rasul Khanbayov, Erchin Serpedin and 1 more
A planner with a fixed budget of preventive help must decide whom to help and when. Waiting reveals risk but removes intervention opportunities as higher-risk individuals leave first. We characterize this tradeoff under repeated noisy signals and risk-dependent attrition: in the canonical model, a length-$τ$ observation prefix identifies exactly the latent risk moments $m_j=\mathbb E[p^j]$ for $j=0,\ldots,2τ-1$, buying two new moments per additional period. These identify average next-period attrition among survivors but need not identify allocation welfare or attrition among those prioritized for treatment. Our observationally equivalent constructions establish unavoidable timing regret at any sample size for a fixed observation length, while exact certificates determine whether all compatible populations share a unique optimal date. Matched experiments separate the effects of estimation, bootstrap averaging, and regret weighting. Longer observation often resolves timing ambiguity, but the optimal date may already have passed. In our experiments, bootstrap averaging and early stopping improve decisions, while regret weighting adds no improvement in pooled mean squared regret: better statistical fit need not yield better allocation welfare. The code and artifacts are available at https://github.com/KurbanIntelligenceLab/waiting-buys-two-moments.
#05Oct 16, 2026
cs.CV
The Collection of a Real-World, Large-Scale Dataset for Automated Skill Evaluation in Central Line Dressing Change
Ummey Tanin, Shannan K. Hamlin, Hsin-Mei Chen and 2 more
Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) remain a major source of preventable morbidity and mortality in healthcare settings. Proper execution of the central line dressing change (CLDC) procedure is essential for infection prevention, yet current approaches to competency assessment rely primarily on manual ob- servation by clinical educators, making evaluation time-intensive, difficult to scale, and limited in consistency and granularity. These challenges highlight the need for AI-assisted skill evaluation methods that can support more objective, reproducible, and scalable assessment of clinical performance. However, progress in this area has been constrained by the lack of broad-scale, clinically grounded datasets for developing and evaluating such methods. In this work, we present the collection process of a large-scale video dataset for CLDC skill evaluation, comprising 365 recordings of registered nurses collected during the 2026 annual competency exam at Houston Methodist Hospital. Each video is paired with subtask-level temporal annotations and clinical performance assessments spanning 17 subtasks of the procedure. We describe the data collection and curation pipeline, including pilot testing of record- ing configurations, annotation protocol design, and post-collection processing. We further establish the feasibility of video-based skill assessment through benchmark experiments with spatiotemporal deep learning models. This dataset provides a foundation for future research on automated clinical skill assessment, feedback generation, and AI-assisted training in nursing education.