Surrogate models are central to scientific machine learning, where they enable fast prediction, simulation, inference, and control for complex physical systems. For time-dependent problems, however, accurate interpolation of training trajectories is not sufficient: reliable surrogates should also respect the conservation laws, invariants, admissibility conditions, and dissipative structures that give those trajectories physical meaning. We introduce Physics-conforming Latent Twins, a framework for learning latent surrogate solution operators whose dynamics satisfy selected physical principles by design. The method builds on the Latent Twin formulation by jointly learning an encoder, a decoder, and a latent flow map between arbitrary time-indexed states, while constraining the latent dynamics to preserve or dissipate prescribed structural quantities. We develop a constraint-transfer viewpoint that separates pullback compatibility from latent conformity, connecting physical structure in the original state space with enforceable constraints in latent space, and prove structure-preservation bounds showing how latent enforcement improves control of physical defects after decoding. We also derive algebraic conditions for latent flow maps that preserve linear and quadratic invariants or enforce dissipative inequalities. Numerical experiments on representative ODE and PDE benchmarks demonstrate improved constraint satisfaction, structural fidelity, and qualitative long-time behavior while maintaining accurate surrogate prediction.
Large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP), providing a highly useful, task-agnostic foundation for a wide range of applications. However, directly applying LLMs to solve sophisticated problems in specific domains meets many hurdles, caused by the heterogeneity of domain data, the sophistication of domain knowledge, the uniqueness of domain objectives, and the diversity of the constraints (e.g., various social norms, cultural conformity, religious beliefs, and ethical standards in the domain applications). Domain specification techniques are key to make large language models disruptive in many applications. Specifically, to solve these hurdles, there has been a notable increase in research and practices conducted in recent years on the domain specialization of LLMs. This emerging field of study, with its substantial potential for impact, necessitates a comprehensive and systematic review to better summarize and guide ongoing work in this area. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey on domain specification techniques for large language models, an emerging direction critical for large language model applications. First, we propose a systematic taxonomy that categorizes the LLM domain-specialization techniques based on the accessibility to LLMs and summarizes the framework for all the subcategories as well as their relations and differences to each other. Second, we present an extensive taxonomy of critical application domains that can benefit dramatically from specialized LLMs, discussing their practical significance and open challenges. Last, we offer our insights into the current research status and future trends in this area.
Vision-language models (VLMs) have achieved impressive progress in natural image reasoning, yet their potential in medical imaging remains underexplored. Medical vision-language tasks demand precise understanding and clinically coherent answers, which are difficult to achieve due to complexity of medical data and the scarcity of high-quality expert annotations. These challenges limit the effectiveness of conventional supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and Chain-of-Thought (CoT) strategies that work well in general domains. To address these challenges, we propose Med-R1, a reinforcement learning (RL)-enhanced VLM designed to improve generalization and reliability in medical reasoning. Med-R1 adopts Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to encourage reward-guided learning beyond static annotations. We comprehensively evaluate Med-R1 across eight distinct medical imaging modalities. Med-R1 achieves a 29.94% improvement in average accuracy over its base model Qwen2-VL-2B, and even outperforms Qwen2-VL-72B-a model with $36\times $ more parameters. To assess cross-task generalization, we further evaluate Med-R1 on five question types. Med-R1 outperforms Qwen2-VL-2B by 32.06% in question-type generalization, also surpassing Qwen2-VL-72B. We further explore the thinking process in Med-R1, a crucial component of Deepseek-R1. Our results show that omitting intermediate rationales (No-Thinking Med-R1) not only improves cross-domain generalization with less training, but also challenges the common assumption that more reasoning always helps. Nevertheless, we also find that the Think-After Med-R1 variant further improves performance while maintaining interpretability. These findings suggest that, in medical VQA, the mere presence of explicit reasoning does not guarantee better performance. Instead, performance depends on the quality of the reasoning and the position where the reasoning is generated.
The identification of therapeutically actionable targets and the design of effective small-molecule modulators remain central challenges in drug discovery, particularly for complex diseases driven by dynamic, interconnected molecular networks. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are reshaping this landscape by enabling integrative analysis of large-scale biological data, systematic navigation of chemical space, and data-driven optimization of molecular properties. In this review, we outline how AI transforms small-molecule drug discovery by linking target discovery, tractability assessment, and chemical design within integrated, experiment-informed workflows. We highlight AI-enabled strategies for target discovery that integrate network biology, multimodal data fusion, and perturbation-aware modeling. These approaches identify context-specific, functionally actionable targets, including non-enzymatic proteins, protein-protein interactions, and other historically challenging classes. We then focus on advances most relevant to medicinal chemistry, including structure and complex prediction, docking and affinity modeling, ligand-based learning, generative molecular design, ADMET prediction, and synthetic feasibility assessment. Finally, we discuss current limitations related to data quality, generalizability, interpretability, and experimental translation. We emphasize the critical future role of integrated, context-aware AI workflows that connect target discovery with chemical design and experimental feedback. Together, these advances position AI as a robust framework for accelerating the discovery of therapeutically relevant targets and small-molecule modulators.
