February 2026

arXiv:2602.09268v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion transformers typically incorporate textual information via attention layers and a modulation mechanism using a pooled text embedding. Nevertheless, recent approaches discard modulation-based text conditioning and rely exclusively on attention. In this paper, we address whether modulation-based text conditioning is necessary and whether it can provide any performance advantage. Our analysis shows that, in its conventional usage, the pooled embedding contributes little to overall performance, suggesting that attention alone is generally sufficient for […]

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arXiv:2602.09265v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a Galerkin boundary element method for clamped Kirchhoff–Love plates with piecewise smooth boundary. It is a direct method based on the representation formula and requires the inversion of the single-layer operator and an application of the double-layer operator to the Dirichlet data. We present trace approximation spaces of arbitrary order, required for both the Dirichlet data and the unknown Neumann trace. Our boundary element method is quasi-optimal with respect to the […]

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arXiv:2602.09263v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Cloud-mediated IoT architectures fragment authentication across vendor silos and create latency and availability bottlenecks for cross-vendor device-to-device (D2D) interactions. We present Atlas, a framework that extends the Web public-key infrastructure to IoT by issuing X.509 certificates to devices via vendor-operated ACME clients and vendor-controlled DNS namespaces. Devices obtain globally verifiable identities without hardware changes and establish mutual TLS channels directly across administrative domains, decoupling runtime authentication from cloud reachability. We prototype Atlas on […]

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arXiv:2602.09259v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS), reduced haptic feedback and depth cues increase reliance on expert visual perception, motivating gaze-guided training and learning-based surgical perception models. However, operative expert gaze is costly to collect, and it remains unclear how the source of gaze supervision, both expertise level (intermediate vs. novice) and perceptual modality (active execution vs. passive viewing), shapes what attention models learn. We introduce a paired active-passive, multi-task surgical gaze dataset collected […]

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arXiv:2602.09258v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deployed graph neural networks (GNNs) are frozen at deployment yet must fit clean data, generalize under distribution shifts, and remain stable to perturbations. We show that static inference induces a fundamental tradeoff: improving stability requires reducing reliance on shift-sensitive features, leaving an irreducible worst-case generalization floor. Instance-conditional routing can break this ceiling, but is fragile because shifts can mislead routing and perturbations can make routing fluctuate. We capture these effects via two decompositions […]

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arXiv:2602.09256v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As more young women in China live alone, they navigate entangled privacy, security, and safety (PSS) risks across smart homes, online platforms, and public infrastructures. Drawing on six participatory threat modeling (PTM) workshops (n = 33), we present a human-centered threat model that illustrates how digitally facilitated physical violence, digital harassment and scams, and pervasive surveillance by individuals, companies, and the state are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. We also document four mitigation strategies […]

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arXiv:2602.09255v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Mobile robots are often deployed over long durations in diverse open, dynamic scenes, including indoor setting such as warehouses and manufacturing facilities, and outdoor settings such as agricultural and roadway operations. A core challenge is to build a scalable long-horizon memory that supports an agentic workflow for planning, retrieval, and reasoning over open-ended instructions at variable granularity, while producing precise, actionable answers for navigation. We present STaR, an agentic reasoning framework that (i) […]

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arXiv:2602.09254v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Bystander privacy in smart homes has been widely studied in Western contexts, yet it remains underexplored in non-Western countries such as China. In this study, we analyze 49 Chinese smart home apps using a mixed-methods approach, including privacy policy review, UX/UI evaluation, and assessment of Apple App Store privacy labels. While most apps nominally comply with national regulations, we identify significant gaps between written policies and actual implementation. Our traceability analysis highlights inconsistencies […]

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arXiv:2602.09252v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Surgical image segmentation is essential for robot-assisted surgery and intraoperative guidance. However, existing methods are constrained to predefined categories, produce one-shot predictions without adaptive refinement, and lack mechanisms for clinician interaction. We propose IR-SIS, an iterative refinement system for surgical image segmentation that accepts natural language descriptions. IR-SIS leverages a fine-tuned SAM3 for initial segmentation, employs a Vision-Language Model to detect instruments and assess segmentation quality, and applies an agentic workflow that adaptively […]

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arXiv:2602.09246v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Ecuador is not a technological option but a strategic imperative to prevent institutional obsolescence and academic irrelevance in Latin America. This paper presents the IA593 Framework, a governance, ethics, and operational model designed for the Universidad Nacional de Loja (UNL) and scalable as a reference for the Ecuadorian higher education system. The current context reveals a critical urgency: the Latin American […]

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