Graphical User Interface (GUI) agents require effective use of historical context to perform sequential navigation tasks. While incorporating past actions and observations can improve decision making, naive use of full history leads to excessive computational overhead and distraction from irrelevant information. To address this, we introduce HiconAgent, a GUI agent trained with History Context-aware Policy Optimization (HCPO) for efficient and effective utilization of historical information. HCPO optimizes history usage in both sampling and policy updates through two complementary components: (1) Dynamic Context Sampling (DCS) presents the agent with variable length histories during sampling, enabling adaptive use of the most relevant context; (2) Anchor-guided History Compression (AHC) refines the policy update phase with a dual branch strategy where the compressed branch removes history observations while keeping history actions as information flow anchors. The compressed and uncompressed branches are coupled through a history-enhanced alignment loss to enforce consistent history usage while maintaining efficiency. Experiments on mainstream GUI navigation benchmarks demonstrate strong performance. Despite being smaller, HiconAgent-3B outperforms GUI-R1-7B by +8.46 percent grounding accuracy and +11.32 percent step success rate on GUI-Odyssey, while achieving comparable results on AndroidControl and AITW with up to 2.47x computational speedup and 60 percent FLOPs reduction.
Existing recommendation systems either rely on user interaction logs, such as online shopping history for shopping recommendations, or focus on text signals. However, item-based histories are not always accessible, and are not generalizable for multimodal recommendation. We hypothesize that a user's visual history -- comprising images from daily life -- can offer rich, task-agnostic insights into their interests and preferences, and thus be leveraged for effective personalization. To this end, we propose VisualLens, a novel framework that leverages multimodal large language models (MLLMs) to enable personalization using task-agnostic visual history. VisualLens extracts, filters, and refines a spectrum user profile from the visual history to support personalized recommendation. We created two new benchmarks, Google-Review-V and Yelp-V, with task-agnostic visual histories, and show that VisualLens improves over state-of-the-art item-based multimodal recommendations by 5-10% on Hit@3, and outperforms GPT-4o by 2-5%. Further analysis shows that VisualLens is robust across varying history lengths and excels at adapting to both longer histories and unseen content categories.
Alexander W. Raymond, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Keiichi Asada
et al.
The first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) detections at 870 μ m wavelength (345 GHz frequency) are reported, achieving the highest diffraction-limited angular resolution yet obtained from the surface of the Earth and the highest-frequency example of the VLBI technique to date. These include strong detections for multiple sources observed on intercontinental baselines between telescopes in Chile, Hawaii, and Spain, obtained during observations in 2018 October. The longest-baseline detections approach 11 G λ , corresponding to an angular resolution, or fringe spacing, of 19 μ as. The Allan deviation of the visibility phase at 870 μ m is comparable to that at 1.3 mm on the relevant integration timescales between 2 and 100 s. The detections confirm that the sensitivity and signal chain stability of stations in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) array are suitable for VLBI observations at 870 μ m. Operation at this short wavelength, combined with anticipated enhancements of the EHT, will lead to a unique high angular resolution instrument for black hole studies, capable of resolving the event horizons of supermassive black holes in both space and time.
Ioanna Dagla, Evagelos Gikas, Anthony Tsarbopoulos
The use of e-cigarettes (ECs) has become increasingly popular worldwide, even though scientific results have not established their safety. Diacetyl (DA) and acetylpropionyl (AP), which can be present in ECs, are linked with lung diseases. Ethyl maltol (EM)—the most commonly used flavoring agent—can be present in toxic concentrations. Until now, there is no methodology for the determination of nicotine, propylene glycol (PG), vegetable glycerin (VG), EM, DA, and acetylpropionyl in e-liquids that can be used as a quality control procedure. Herein, gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was applied for the development of analytical methodologies for these substances. Two GC-MS methodologies were developed and fully validated, fulfilling the standards for the integration in a routine quality control procedure by manufacturers. As proof of applicability, the methodology was applied for the analysis of several e-liquids. Differences were observed between the labeled and the experimental levels of PG, VG, and nicotine. Three samples contained EM at higher concentrations compared to the other samples, while only one contained DA. These validated methodologies can be used for the quality control analysis of EC liquid samples regarding nicotine, PG, and VG amounts, as well as for the measurement of the EM.
We analyze the application of the history state formalism to quantum walks. The formalism allows one to describe the whole walk through a pure quantum history state, which can be derived from a timeless eigenvalue equation. It naturally leads to the notion of system-time entanglement of the walk, which can be considered as a measure of the number of orthogonal states visited in the walk. We then focus on one-dimensional discrete quantum walks, where it is shown that such entanglement is independent of the initial spin orientation for real Hadamard-type coin operators and real initial states (in the standard basis) with definite site parity. Moreover, in the case of an initially localized particle it can be identified with the entanglement of the unitary global operator that generates the whole history state, which is related to its entangling power and can be analytically evaluated. Besides, it is shown that the evolution of the spin subsystem can also be described through a spin history state with an extended clock. A connection between its average entanglement (over all initial states) and that of the operator generating this state is also derived. A quantum circuit for generating the quantum walk history state is provided as well.
With the widespread availability of high-speed networks, it becomes feasible to outsource computing to remote providers and to federate resources from many locations. Such observations motivated the development, from the mid-1990s onwards, of a range of innovative Grid technologies, applications, and infrastructures. We review the history, current status, and future prospects for Grid computing.
Based on string theory's framework, the gauge/gravity duality, also known as holography, has the ability to solve practical problems in low energy physical systems like metals and fluids. Holographic applications open a path for conversation and collaboration between the theory-driven, high energy culture of string theory and fields like nuclear and condensed matter physics, which in contrast place great emphasis on the empirical evidence that experiment provides. This paper takes a look at holography's history, from its roots in string theory to its present-day applications that are challenging the cultural identity of the field. I will focus on two of these applications: holographic QCD and holographic superconductivity, highlighting some of the (often incompatible) historical influences, motives, and epistemic values at play, as well as the subcultural shifts that help the collaborations work. The extent to which holographic research -- arguably string theory's most successful and prolific area -- must change its subcultural identity in order to function in fields outside of string theory reflects its changing nature and the field's uncertain future. Does string theory lose its identity in the low-energy applications that holography provides? Does holography still belong under string theory's umbrella, or is it destined to form new subcultures with each of its fields of application? I find that the answers to these questions are dynamic, interconnected, and highly dependent on string theory's relationship with its field of application. In some cases, holography can maintain the goals and values it inherited from string theory. In others, it instead adopts the goals and values of the field in which it is applied. These examples highlight a need for the STS community to expand its treatment of string theory beyond its relationship with empiricism and role as a theory of quantum gravity.
Automata models between determinism and nondeterminism/alternations can retain some of the algorithmic properties of deterministic automata while enjoying some of the expressiveness and succinctness of nondeterminism. We study three closely related such models -- history determinism, good for gameness and determinisability by pruning -- on quantitative automata. While in the Boolean setting, history determinism and good for gameness coincide, we show that this is no longer the case in the quantitative setting: good for gameness is broader than history determinism, and coincides with a relaxed version of it, defined with respect to thresholds. We further identify criteria in which history determinism, which is generally broader than determinisability by pruning, coincides with it, which we then apply to typical quantitative automata types. As a key application of good for games and history deterministic automata is synthesis, we clarify the relationship between the two notions and various quantitative synthesis problems. We show that good-for-games automata are central for "global" (classical) synthesis, while "local" (good-enough) synthesis reduces to deciding whether a nondeterministic automaton is history deterministic.
The rise of intelligent assistant systems like Siri and Alexa have led to the emergence of Conversational Search, a research track of Information Retrieval (IR) that involves interactive and iterative information-seeking user-system dialog. Recently released OR-QuAC and TCAsT19 datasets narrow their research focus on the retrieval aspect of conversational search i.e. fetching the relevant documents (passages) from a large collection using the conversational search history. Currently proposed models for these datasets incorporate history in retrieval by appending the last N turns to the current question before encoding. We propose to use another history selection approach that dynamically selects and weighs history turns using the attention mechanism for question embedding. The novelty of our approach lies in experimenting with soft attention-based history selection approach in an open-retrieval setting.
While an integration by parts formula for the bilinear form of the hypersingular boundary integral operator for the transient heat equation in three spatial dimensions is available in the literature, a proof of this formula seems to be missing. Moreover, the available formula contains an integral term including the time derivative of the fundamental solution of the heat equation, whose interpretation is difficult at second glance. To fill these gaps we provide a rigorous proof of a general version of the integration by parts formula and an alternative representation of the mentioned integral term, which is valid for a certain class of functions including the typical tensor-product discretization spaces.
Homayon Shekari, Ebrahim Rahimi Zangene, vahid mobarak
Abstract In the current research, writers aim to specify that Ruzbahan has used "Eltebas" with the meaning that "Plotinus" have used emanation. "Eltebas" is a Peculiar Lexicon in Ruzbahan Baqli-e-Shirazi's Intellectual System. He has Used This Metaphorical Title for naming appearance of God. In his point of view, due to Eltebas, right, appears in the universe. This Thought has been seen previously in Greece philosophy, especially in Plato & Plotinus 'ideas have entered Islam world via translation of his work, companionship with Christians,…and had had an impression on intellectual stream of the Islam World. Ruzbahan's ideas about the relationship between creator & creatures are close to Plato& Plotinus's ideas in a way that they have the same allegory. By considering cultural exchanges between East & west Mediterranean it has to be said that this similarity is in a way that it proves that Ruzbahan had been impressed with these Greek philosopher. And it's not false to call him "Neo-platonic". Muslims were familiar with Plato’s (347 BC) name, his beliefs, and his works, but Plotinus (270 CE) does not appear in their work. In certain works of Islamic philosophy as well as those of sects and creeds, a person is mentioned as “the Greek master.” In contemporary scholarships, it has been determined that this person was Plotinus (see Badawi 1955:1). The Greek master is mentioned in Ṣiwān al-ḥikma, Al-ḥikmat al-khālida and Al-milal wa-l-niḥal, where some of his remarks are cited. The author of Al-ḥikmat al-khālida refers to the Greek master as having a particular philosophy, although he does not refer to his main beliefs (see Miskawayh 1358:216). It should be acknowledged that “in the history of Islamic philosophy, Plotinus was undoubtedly one of the most influential Greek philosophers, who was directly or indirectly considered throughout the history of philosophy in Islam” (Pourjavadi 1378:98). Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that he is at least as influential as Aristotle (322 BC): “his influence in the Islamic thought is not by any means less than that of Aristotle” (Badawi 1955:2). Of Plotinus’s work, his Enneads (nine essays) is available to us. Summaries of the fourth, fifth, and sixth essays were translated into Arabic in the third century AH (ninth century CE) under Theologia. In this research, this work is more important than Enneads, because Muslims learned about Plotinus’s views through this Arabic translation. The essay was translated by a Christian scholar ‘Abd al-Masīḥ ibn ‘Abd Allāh Nā‘ima al-Ḥimṣī(third century AH). The work was misattributed to Aristotle (see Badawi 1955:1-18). It should be noted that Muslims’ acquaintance with Plotinus’s doctrines was not limited to Theologia. In fact, “they were familiar with the work of other Neo-Platonists, particularly Pyrphyry and Proclus” (Pourjavadi 1387:104). With these preliminaries and having in mind that a sort of unity in creation is articulated in the work translated from Plotinus and his studies into Arabic, it can be said that the most prominent impact of Plotinus on Muslims is where the theory of the unity of existence is developed (see O’Leary 1374:42). Plotinus says there is no doubt that we should not talk about observations, but about the observer and the observed, and one should dare talk about the pure unity (Stace 1388:243). On this account, it should be acknowledged that, in addition to Muslim philosophers, Islamic mysticism, particularly beauty-centered mysticism, is influenced by Plotinus’s doctrines. 2. Methodology and Material The method of research here is based on historical method and content analysis. We first examined data about how the Greek intellectual heritage, particularly that of Plato and Plotinus, was transmitted to eastern neighbors of Greece and Rome. We have then examined the understanding of eastern intellectuals, particularly Rūzbahān Baqlī Shīrāzī. It is noteworthy that, of different dimensions of the impact of the heritages of Plato and Plotinus, this research focuses on the relation between the one and phenomena. We conclude that Rūzbahān was influenced by Plotinus’s views. 3. Results and Discussion A problem raised in Plato’s and then in Plotinus’s philosophy is whether the Monad (the unified essence) is related with creatures? In discussions of his theory of Forms, Plato has deployed the metaphor of “participation” (methexis) in answering the question. This was strongly opposed by his student Aristotle. Later, Plotinus combined their views to provide a more rational structure of the issue. He explains the presence of the “one” in the world by drawing upon the metaphor of “emanation” or “issuance.” Plotinus likens the one to a bright volume from which light and warmth emanates involuntarily and without it undergoing a diminution or multiplicity. In this way, he describes how the one is related with other stages of creation. With this revision, Plato’s view found a less flawed form in Neo-Platonic philosophy. Rūzbahān Baqlī Shīrāzī (606 AH/1209 CE) was influenced by Plotinus’s doctrines. In his work, he was inspired by Neo-Platonic theology. An investigation of this reveals the great extent to which beauty-oriented mystics were influenced by Greek philosophical theology. For this reason, it is necessary to specify different dimensions of this influence. The outline of Rūzbahān’s intellectual system led him to offer an answer to the problem of the relation between the creator and creatures in line with his religious beliefs. He portrays the original creation in the same way as Neo-Platonic philosophers. He suggests that the creation is constituted by necessity and the principle of emanation, but instead of equivalents of “emanation” or “issuance,” he uses the term “iltibās” (clothing). (Baqlī Shīrāzī 1389:53-54) 4. Conclusion Drawing upon the notion of “participation,” Plato tried to argue that creatures participate in the divine essence. Thus, the world was portrayed as a fundamental unity, despite its multiplicity. Just like Plato, Plotinus believed in unity in multiplicity. Plato recognized that there is a separation between the worlds of ideas and senses in Plato’s view, Plotinus deployed “issuance” or “emanation” in his theory. In his view, the world results from the issuance of the one, where issuance does not lead to diminution, multiplicity, imperfection, and the like. Unity in multiplicity was characteristically acceptable to Muslims, as it was based on Quranic doctrines. The theory was deployed by philosophers and then mystics. Rūzbahān is obviously influenced by Plotinus’s theory. In his view, the creation of the world begins from God, and then ends in reason, spirit, and finally matter. The process is explained in line with Plotinus’s philosophy in his ‘Abhar al-‘āshiqīn and Sharḥ shaṭaḥiyyāt. In contrast to emanation, he uses the term iltibās. He views the mundane world as the abode of iltibās, which is God’s manifestation in the world. In other words, God’s iltibās is the manifestation or revelation of divine essence in sensible things. This is inevitable in the course of creation. On this account, Rūzbahān’s description of the creation of the world corresponds to Plotinus’s doctrines as they are generally received in the Islamic world, which indicates Rūzbahān Baqlī Shīrāzī’s evident influence from Plotinus’s views. Rūzbahān should, thus, be deemed a Neo-Platonic philosopher.
Galaxy clusters can play a key role in modern cosmology provided their evolution is properly understood. However, observed clusters give us only a single timeframe of their dynamical state. Therefore, finding present observable data of clusters that are well correlated to their assembly history constitutes an inestimable tool for cosmology. Former studies correlating environmental descriptors of clusters to their formation history are dominated by halo mass - environment relations. This paper presents a mass-free correlation between the present neighbor distribution of cluster-size halos and the latter mass assembly history. From the Big Multidark simulation, we extract two large samples of random halos with masses ranging from Virgo to Coma cluster sizes. Additionally, to find the main environmental culprit for the formation history of the Virgo cluster, we compare the Virgo-size halos to 200 Virgo-like halos extracted from simulations that resemble the local Universe. The number of neighbors at different cluster-centric distances permits discriminating between clusters with different mass accretion histories. Similarly to Virgo-like halos, clusters with numerous neighbors within a distance of about 2 times their virial radius experience a transition at z~1 between an active period of mass accretion, relative to the mean, and a quiet history. On the contrary, clusters with few neighbors share an opposite trend: from passive to active assembly histories. Additionally, clusters with massive companions within about 4 times their virial radius tend to have recent active merging histories. Therefore, the radial distribution of cluster neighbors provides invaluable insights into the past history of these objects.
Azimuthal anisotropies of muons from charm and bottom hadron decays are measured in Pb+Pb collisions at sNN=5.02TeV. The data were collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 and 2018 with integrated luminosities of 0.5nb−1 and 1.4nb−1, respectively. The kinematic selection for heavy-flavor muons requires transverse momentum 4<pT<30GeV and pseudorapidity |η|<2.0. The dominant sources of muons in this pT range are semi-leptonic decays of charm and bottom hadrons. These heavy-flavor muons are separated from light-hadron decay muons and punch-through hadrons using the momentum imbalance between the measurements in the tracking detector and in the muon spectrometers. Azimuthal anisotropies, quantified by flow coefficients, are measured via the event-plane method for inclusive heavy-flavor muons as a function of the muon pT and in intervals of Pb+Pb collision centrality. Heavy-flavor muons are separated into contributions from charm and bottom hadron decays using the muon transverse impact parameter with respect to the event primary vertex. Non-zero elliptic (v2) and triangular (v3) flow coefficients are extracted for charm and bottom muons, with the charm muon coefficients larger than those for bottom muons for all Pb+Pb collision centralities. The results indicate substantial modification to the charm and bottom quark angular distributions through interactions in the quark-gluon plasma produced in these Pb+Pb collisions, with smaller modifications for the bottom quarks as expected theoretically due to their larger mass.
Whoever wants to read Cornutus’s Summary of the Greek Theological Traditions must still employ the old and controversial edition published by C. Lang in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana in 1881. My contribution first analyses the multifarious problems which vitiate Lang’s edition. Its principal (and obvious) defect is the editor’s proclivity to identify as interpolated many passages of the text without an objective reason. Once that the possibility of rescuing Cornutus’s ipsissima verba as Lang intented is discarded, I present the materials on which a new critical edition of the Summary should be based. For this purpose it is underlined that the stemmatic analysis of Cornutus’s forty manuscripts published by P. Krafft in 1975 must be taken as a point of departure. Then, some critical decisions by the new Cornutus’s editor are proposed in relation to the linguistic form of the the transmitted text. It is likewise discussed the kind of conjectures that can be proposed to improve Cornutus’s text as it is read in the manuscripts.
Hisashi Hayakawa, Harufumi Tamazawa, Yusuke Ebihara
et al.
Records of observations of sunspots and auroras in pre-telescopic historical documents provide useful information about past solar activity both in long-term trends and short-term space weather events. In this study, we present the results of a comprehensive survey of the records of sunspots and aurora candidates in the Yuánshǐ and Míngshǐ, Chinese Official Histories spanning 1261-1368 and 1368-1644, based on continuous observations with well-formatted reportds conducted by contemporary professional astronomers. We then provide a brief comparison of these data with Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) as an indicator of the solar activity during the corresponding periods to show significant active phases between 1350s-80s and 1610s-30s. We then compared the former with contemporary Russian reports for naked-eye sunspots and the latter with contemporary sunspot drawings based on Western telescopic observations. Especially some of the latter are consistent with nitrate signals preserved in ice cores. These results show us some insights on not only minima and maxima of solar activity during 13th - 17th century.
Alexandros Makis, Athanasios Gkoutsias, Theodoros Palianopoulos
et al.
Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) in children has a varied course and according to duration is distinguished as newly diagnosed (<3 months), persistent (3–12), and chronic (>12) types. Several studies have evaluated the prognostic factors for the progression of the disease, but similar works have yet to be performed in Greece. We aimed to identify prognostic markers for the three forms of the disease in 57 Greek children during a 13-year period. Information regarding age, gender, preceding infection, bleeding type, duration of symptoms and platelets at diagnosis, treatment, disease course, and immunological markers was recorded. 39 children had newly diagnosed, 4 persistent, and 14 chronic disease. Chronic ITP children were more likely to be of age > 10 years (p=0.015) and have gradual initiation of the disease (p=0.001), platelets > 10 × 109/L (p=0.01), and impaired immunological markers (p<0.003) compared to newly diagnosed/persistent groups. Recent history of infection was found mainly in the newly diagnosed/persistent group (p=0.013). None of the children exhibited severe spontaneous bleeding. Conclusion. Even though ITP in children usually has a self-limited course, with rare serious bleeding complications, the chronic form of the disease is characterized by different predictive parameters, which can be used in clinical practice.