Leonardo Voltarelli | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Debiasing the Lasso under Weaker Tail Assumptions

We consider the problem of high-dimensional inference with the lasso estimator. Different methods including 'double selection' techniques and multiple versions of the 'debiased lasso' have been proposed for this task with noticeable success. However, most guarantees assume strong hypotheses on the underlying data process and the errors in the linear regression model, such as subgaussian designs and independence between errors and the data itself. We show that 'standardizing' one's dataset -- a natural procedure in practical penalized regression -- leads to the same results under much weaker hypotheses, paying only a small price for not assuming light tails. The key technical point allowed by this step is exploiting the concentration properties of self-normalized processes. Importantly, we prove our results for two different methods closely related to the 'debiased lasso'. The second method performs valid inference even for a misspecified linear model, under mild sparsity conditions similar to the 'double selection' literature.

math.ST↗

arXiv2025

Precipitation nowcasting of satellite data using physically-aligned neural networks

Accurate short-term precipitation forecasts predominantly rely on dense weather-radar networks, limiting operational value in places most exposed to climate extremes. We present TUPANN (Transferable and Universal Physics-Aligned Nowcasting Network), a satellite-only model trained on GOES-16 RRQPE. Unlike most deep learning models for nowcasting, TUPANN decomposes the forecast into physically meaningful components: a variational encoder-decoder infers motion and intensity fields from recent imagery under optical-flow supervision, a lead-time-conditioned MaxViT evolves the latent state, and a differentiable advection operator reconstructs future frames. We evaluate TUPANN on both GOES-16 and IMERG data, in up to four distinct climates (Rio de Janeiro, Manaus, Miami, La Paz) at 10-180min lead times using the CSI and HSS metrics over 4-64 mm/h thresholds. Comparisons against optical-flow, deep learning and hybrid baselines show that TUPANN achieves the best or second-best skill in most settings, with pronounced gains at higher thresholds. Training on multiple cities further improves performance, while cross-city experiments show modest degradation and occasional gains for rare heavy-rain regimes. The model produces smooth, interpretable motion fields aligned with numerical optical flow and runs in near real time due to the low latency of GOES-16. These results indicate that physically aligned learning can provide nowcasts that are skillful, transferable and global.

cs.LG↗