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Online library learning in human visual puzzle solving

arXiv:2603.23244v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: When learning a novel complex task, people often form efficient reusable abstractions that simplify future work, despite uncertainty about the future. We study this process in a visual puzzle task where participants define and reuse helpers -- intermediate constructions that capture repeating structure. In an online experiment, participants solved puzzles of increasing difficulty. Early on, they created many helpers, favouring completeness over efficiency. With experience, helper use became more selective and efficient, reflecting sensitivity to reuse and cost. Access to helpers enabled participants to solve puzzles that were otherwise difficult or impossible. Computational modelling shows that human decision times and number of operations used to complete a puzzle increase with search space estimated by a program induction model with library learning. In contrast, raw program length predicts failure but not effort. Together, these results point to online library learning as a core mechanism in human problem solving, allowing people to flexibly build, refine, and reuse abstractions as task demands grow.

Founder effects shape the evolutionary dynamics of multimodality in open LLM families

arXiv:2603.22287v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) families are improving rapidly, yet it remains unclear how quickly multimodal capabilities emerge and propagate within open families. Using the ModelBiome AI Ecosystem dataset of Hugging Face model metadata and recorded lineage fields (>1.8x10^6 model entries), we quantify multimodality over time and along recorded parent-to-child relations. Cross-modal tasks are widespread in the broader ecosystem well before they become common within major open LLM families: within these families, multimodality remains rare through 2023 and most of 2024, then increases sharply in 2024-2025 and is dominated by image-text vision-language tasks. Across major families, the first vision-language model (VLM) variants typically appear months after the first text-generation releases, with lags ranging from ~1 month (Gemma) to more than a year for several families and ~26 months for GLM. Lineage-conditioned transition rates show weak cross-type transfer: among fine-tuning edges from text-generation parents, only 0.218% yield VLM descendants. Instead, multimodality expands primarily within existing VLM lineages: 94.5% of VLM-child fine-tuning edges originate from VLM parents, versus 4.7% from text-generation parents. At the model level, most VLM releases appear as new roots without recorded parents (~60%), while the remainder are predominantly VLM-derived; founder concentration analyses indicate rapid within-lineage amplification followed by diversification. Together, these results show that multimodality enters open LLM families through rare founder events and then expands rapidly within their descendant lineages, producing punctuated adoption dynamics that likely induce distinct, transfer-limited scaling behavior for multimodal capabilities.

ReqFusion: A Multi-Provider Framework for Automated PEGS Analysis Across Software Domains

arXiv:2603.23482v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Requirements engineering is a vital, yet labor-intensive, stage in the software development process. This article introduces ReqFusion: an AI-enhanced system that automates the extraction, classification, and analysis of software requirements utilizing multiple Large Language Model (LLM) providers. The architecture of ReqFusion integrates OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, and Groq models to extract functional and non-functional requirements from various documentation formats (PDF, DOCX, and PPTX) in academic, industrial, and tender proposal contexts. The system uses a domain-independent extraction method and generates requirements following the Project, Environment, Goal, and System (PEGS) approach introduced by Bertrand Meyer. The main idea is that, because the PEGS format is detailed, LLMs have more information and cues about the requirements, producing better results than a simple generic request. An ablation study confirms this hypothesis: PEGS-guided prompting achieves an F1 score of 0.88, compared to 0.71 for generic prompting under the same multi-provider configuration. The evaluation used 18 real-world documents to generate 226 requirements through automated classification, with 54.9% functional and 45.1% nonfunctional across academic, business, and technical domains. An extended evaluation on five projects with 1,050 requirements demonstrated significant improvements in extraction accuracy and a 78% reduction in analysis time compared to manual methods. The multi-provider architecture enhances reliability through model consensus and fallback mechanisms, while the PEGS-based approach ensures comprehensive coverage of all requirement categories.

Operational machine learning for remote spectroscopic detection of CH$_{4}$ point sources

arXiv:2511.07719v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Mitigating anthropogenic methane sources is one of the most cost-effective levers to slow down global warming. While satellite-based imaging spectrometers, such as EMIT, PRISMA, and EnMAP, can detect these point sources, current methane retrieval methods based on matched filters produce a high number of false detections requiring manual verification. To address this challenge, we deployed a ML system for detecting methane emissions within the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) of UNEP's IMEO. This represents the first operational deployment of automated methane point-source detection using spaceborne imaging spectrometers, providing regular global coverage and scalability to future constellations with even higher data volumes. This task required several technical advances. First, we created one of the largest and most diverse and global ML ready datasets to date of annotated methane plumes from three imaging spectrometer missions, and quantitatively compared different deep learning model configurations. Second, we extended prior evaluation methodologies from small, tiled datasets to full granules that are more representative of operational use. This revealed that deep learning models still produce a large number of false detections, a problem we addressed with model ensembling, which reduced false detections by over 74%. During 11 months of operational deployment, our system processed more than 25,000 hyperspectral products faciliting the verification of 2,851 distinct methane leaks, which resulted in 834 stakeholder notifications. We further demonstrate the model's utility in verifying mitigation success through case studies in Libya, Argentina, Oman, and Azerbaijan. Our work represents a critical step towards a global AI-assisted methane leak detection system, which is required to process the dramatically higher data volumes expected from current and future imaging spectrometers.

Moderate global warming does not rule out extreme global climate outcomes

Nature, Published online: 25 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10237-9

Extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate 2 °C warming and may turn out to be more extreme than model-averaged projections at 3 °C or 4 °C warming.

Human-specific features of the cerebellum and ZP2-regulated synapse development

Human-specific transcriptomic and regulatory features are present in the cerebellum, with ZP2 playing a key role in synapse regulation. ZP2 expression is induced by pontine mossy fibers, leading to decreased synaptic proteins and neuronal activity, which provides insights into the evolutionary development of the human cerebellum.
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