HiconAgent: History Context-aware Policy Optimization for GUI Agents
Xurui Zhou, Gongwei Chen, Yuquan Xie
et al.
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.
Portuguese consensus on first line treatment of moderate-to-severe psoriasis with a non-TNF inhibitor therapy – a delphi methodology
Tiago Torres, Sofia Magina, Maria João Paiva Lopes
Introduction Psoriasis (PsO) is a common chronic, inflammatory, immune-mediated disease. In 2023, a 4.4% prevalence of PsO was reported in Portugal. Currently, Tumor Necrosis Factor inhibitors (TNFi) are the recommended first-line (1 L) biologic agents in Portugal given their lower cost. However, TNFi may not be suitable for several patients. In these patients, interleukin inhibitors (ILi) should be considered as they provide more effective outcomes and a better safety profile.Methods Qualitative interviews with PsO experts were conducted to identify PsO biologic treatment needs, resulting in an online survey to explore clinical cases focused on subpopulations of PsO. A delphi study evaluated consensus on clinical criteria to initiate non-TNFi therapy in seven predefined subpopulations of patients.Results This study highlights the benefit of starting non-TNFi therapy in all PsO predefined subpopulations. Patients with infection risk, mild heart failure and associated comorbidities, autoimmune diseases and family history of demyelinating disease consensually benefit from starting non-TNFi therapy in 1 L. Several risks associated with latent tuberculosis, advanced age and oncological disease were also evaluated.Conclusion Given the existence of various risks associated with TNFi usage, this clinical perspective overview of Portuguese experts in PsO treatment emphasizes the need for a tailored therapeutic framework in the management of PsO.
Educar para a missão: A presença das Irmãs de São José de Cluny em Coimbra e o Colégio da Rainha Santa Isabel (1875-1941)
Filipe Miguel de Andrade Campos
No âmbito das celebrações dos 150 anos da fundação do Colégio da Rainha Santa Isabel, de Coimbra, e dos 400 anos da canonização do seu orago, apresenta-se o seguinte artigo, que tem como finalidade dar a conhecer a história desta instituição de ensino, confiada à Congregação das Irmãs de São José de Cluny, a partir de 1930. A presença das religiosas na cidade não começou no Colégio da Rainha Santa Isabel, nem este foi fundado por elementos deste instituto, pelo que reconstruiremos o percurso da congregação e da instituição de ensino até os seus destinos se cruzarem. Em 1941, as religiosas transferiram o Colégio para as atuais instalações. Recorremos a documentação da congregação e do Colégio que se encontra sediada no Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra e no Acervo Histórico do Colégio da Rainha Santa Isabel.
History of Portugal, History (General)
Space and time correlations in quantum histories
Leonardo Castellani, Anna Gabetti
The formalism of generalized quantum histories allows a symmetrical treatment of space and time correlations, by taking different traces of the same history density matrix. We recall how to characterize spatial and temporal entanglement in this framework. An operative protocol is presented, to map a history state into the ket of a static composite system. We show, by examples, how the Leggett-Garg and the temporal CHSH inequalities can be violated in our approach.
VisualLens: Personalization through Task-Agnostic Visual History
Wang Bill Zhu, Deqing Fu, Kai Sun
et al.
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.
First Very Long Baseline Interferometry Detections at 870 μm
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.
Juventudes e Marcadores Sociais da Diferença nos Planos Estaduais de Juventude do Brasil
Rogério de Oliveira Araújo, Olívia Cristina Perez
A presente pesquisa analisa como as juventudes são compreendidas por documentos que orientam as políticas públicas para os jovens. A pesquisa qualitativa utilizou
como técnica a análise documental de Planos Estaduais para as Juventudes das 27 regiões
administrativas em que o Brasil é dividido. Especificamente analisamos: 1) em que contexto os Planos foram criados; 2) quem são as juventudes conforme diretrizes dos Planos; 3) quais clivagens sociais importam para as políticas públicas previstas nos Planos. Os resultados apontam que: os Planos de Juventude se desenvolveram especialmente sob a influência dos governos progressistas; variam quanto às definições de juventude, indo desde uma delimitação estritamente legalista até considerações sociológicas; e destacam diversos marcadores sociais como marcos para as políticas públicas voltadas aos jovens.
History of Portugal, History of Spain
Catolicismo y comunismo: una alianza posible en los años treinta bajo la mirada de Murilo Mendes y Jacques Maritain
Laura Cabezas
El presente artículo indaga en la conformación en los años treinta de un imaginario que proponía tanto que el origen del marxismo era estrictamente cristiano como la posibilidad de que el catolicismo “reabsorbiera” los “logros” de la izquierda en la historia. Desde esta operación que expropiaba a los comunistas del “comunismo” se proyectó una suerte de catolicismo comunista, o comunismo católico. Nos concentraremos en las columnas políticas de Murilo Mendes, exponente de la vanguardia brasileña y del viaje a Buenos Aires que realiza en 1936 el filósofo francés Jacques Maritain gracias a la gestión de Victoria Ocampo, directora de la revista Sur. Los postulados de Maritain y los debates en los que se ve envuelto dialogan con la prosa satírica de Murilo, y entre ambas intervenciones se esbozan los límites y alcances de un catolicismo de izquierda que sienta las bases de la primacía de lo humano.
History of Portugal, History of Spain
History states of one-dimensional quantum walks
F. Lomoc, A. P. Boette, N. Canosa
et al.
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.
The History of the Grid
Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman
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.
Holography, Application, and String Theory's Changing Nature
Lauren Greenspan
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.
en
physics.hist-ph, gr-qc
Infodemic, disinformation and fake news
Jorge Revez, Luís Corujo
This study’s purpose is to systematically review the literature to identify the most recent library practices against fake news. Previous findings showed most studies emphasize academic libraries practices and are mainly focused on information literacy instruction. This article updates prior research aiming to acknowledge the tangible practices of libraries, discuss their efficiency, and continue a categorization of those practices. It was performed a systematic literature review of the last 12 months (October 2020-September 2021) to retrieve the most recent library practices. After the extraction, with a final set of 17 documents, a multi-step qualitative analysis, and a categorization were developed. The current debate is still around information literacy strategies that intend to reiterate an authority-based source evaluation versus the challenge to recognize an emotional-based reaction to fake news in a post-truth world. The role of libraries is cornered in an instructional framework, while disinformation is pervasive in several information ecosystems. The role of libraries in a Post-truth society is still an open debate, yet there is almost a consensus that libraries should engage in partnerships and be part of a multidisciplinary approach.
History of Portugal, History (General)
A história social sobre o período moderno em Portugal: um balanço dos últimos 40 anos, 1980-2020
Isabel dos Guimarães Sá
Social history became an expanding field in Portugal through a generation of historians who initiated or renovated the study of important topics within the framework of their doctorate theses. Although new studies kept social issues in their horizons, in the following decades this boom slowed its intensity, in part due to some devaluation of quantitative approaches, and also on account of the emergence of political and cultural history. This essay reviews some of the most important studies about the social history of early modern Portugal, covering the last 40 years. It also aims to draw an outline of a research agenda concerning the social history of Portugal and its empire.
Role of Attentive History Selection in Conversational Information Seeking
Somil Gupta, Neeraj Sharma
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.
An integration by parts formula for the bilinear form of the hypersingular boundary integral operator for the transient heat equation in three spatial dimensions
Raphael Watschinger, Günther Of
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.
Liberating host–virus knowledge from biological dark data
Nathan S Upham, PhD, Jorrit H Poelen, MSc, Deborah Paul, MSc
et al.
Summary: Connecting basic data about bats and other potential hosts of SARS-CoV-2 with their ecological context is crucial to the understanding of the emergence and spread of the virus. However, when lockdowns in many countries started in March, 2020, the world's bat experts were locked out of their research laboratories, which in turn impeded access to large volumes of offline ecological and taxonomic data. Pandemic lockdowns have brought to attention the long-standing problem of so-called biological dark data: data that are published, but disconnected from digital knowledge resources and thus unavailable for high-throughput analysis. Knowledge of host-to-virus ecological interactions will be biased until this challenge is addressed. In this Viewpoint, we outline two viable solutions: first, in the short term, to interconnect published data about host organisms, viruses, and other pathogens; and second, to shift the publishing framework beyond unstructured text (the so-called PDF prison) to labelled networks of digital knowledge. As the indexing system for biodiversity data, biological taxonomy is foundational to both solutions. Building digitally connected knowledge graphs of host–pathogen interactions will establish the agility needed to quickly identify reservoir hosts of novel zoonoses, allow for more robust predictions of emergence, and thereby strengthen human and planetary health systems.
The Past History of Galaxy Clusters told by their present neighbors
Jenny G. Sorce, Stefan Gottlöber, Gustavo Yepes
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.
Dos “bons tempos” à “última era dos mártires”: as petições de Alexandre Herculano em favor dos frades e das freiras
Eduardo Soczek Mendes
O processo de instalação do Liberalismo em Portugal foi paulatino e complexo, sendo que uma das mais importantes acções do Governo Liberal foi a extinção, em 1834, das ordens religiosas e confisco dos bens dos regulares. Mesmo tendo tomado partido pelo novo regime, Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877) redigiu dois opúsculos intercedendo pelos frades, “Os Egressos” (1842), e pelas monjas, “As freiras de Lorvão” (1853). São esses dois textos que escolhemos para a nossa análise neste estudo, sempre pensando no conjunto da obra de Herculano e em seu contexto. Para tanto, o diálogo com as propostas de Carlos Eduardo da Cruz (2010), Eduardo Lourenço (1992), Luís Machado de Abreu (2004), Manuel Clemente (1994) e Rute Rodrigues (2017) nos conduzirão, a fim de compreendermos o lugar de Herculano na conjuntura oitocentista em Portugal.
The mitochondrial phylogeny of land plants shows support for Setaphyta under composition-heterogeneous substitution models
Filipe Sousa, Peter Civáň, João Brazão
et al.
Congruence among analyses of plant genomic data partitions (nuclear, chloroplast and mitochondrial) is a strong indicator of accuracy in plant molecular phylogenetics. Recent analyses of both nuclear and chloroplast genome data of land plants (embryophytes) have, controversially, been shown to support monophyly of both bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts) and tracheophytes (lycopods, ferns, and seed plants), with mosses and liverworts forming the clade Setaphyta. However, relationships inferred from mitochondria are incongruent with these results, and typically indicate paraphyly of bryophytes with liverworts alone resolved as the earliest-branching land plant group. Here, we reconstruct the mitochondrial land plant phylogeny from a newly compiled data set. When among-lineage composition heterogeneity is accounted for in analyses of codon-degenerate nucleotide and amino acid data, the clade Setaphyta is recovered with high support, and hornworts are supported as the earliest-branching lineage of land plants. These new mitochondrial analyses demonstrate partial congruence with current hypotheses based on nuclear and chloroplast genome data, and provide further incentive for revision of how plants arose on land.
Medicine, Biology (General)
A search for the Zγ decay mode of the Higgs boson in pp collisions at s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
G. Aad, B. Abbott, D.C. Abbott
et al.
A search for the Zγ decay of the Higgs boson, with Z boson decays into pairs of electrons or muons is presented. The analysis uses proton–proton collision data at s = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1 recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The observed data are consistent with the expected background with a p-value of 1.3%. An upper limit at 95% confidence level on the production cross-section times the branching ratio for pp→H→Zγ is set at 3.6 times the Standard Model prediction while 2.6 times is expected in the presence of the Standard Model Higgs boson. The best-fit value for the signal yield normalised to the Standard Model prediction is 2.0−0.9+1.0 where the statistical component of the uncertainty is dominant.