Traditional database fuzzing techniques primarily focus on syntactic correctness and general SQL structures, leaving critical yet obscure DBMS features, such as system-level modes (e.g., GTID), programmatic constructs (e.g., PROCEDURE), advanced process commands (e.g., KILL), largely underexplored. Although rarely triggered by typical inputs, these features can lead to severe crashes or security issues when executed under edge-case conditions. In this paper, we present FuzzySQL, a novel LLM-powered adaptive fuzzing framework designed to uncover subtle vulnerabilities in DBMS special features. FuzzySQL combines grammar-guided SQL generation with logic-shifting progressive mutation, a novel technique that explores alternative control paths by negating conditions and restructuring execution logic, synthesizing structurally and semantically diverse test cases. To further ensure deeper execution coverage of the back end, FuzzySQL employs a hybrid error repair pipeline that unifies rule-based patching with LLM-driven semantic repair, enabling automatic correction of syntactic and context-sensitive failures. We evaluate FuzzySQL across multiple DBMSs, including MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, PostgreSQL and Clickhouse, uncovering 64 vulnerabilities, 27 of which are tied to under-tested DBMS special features. As of this writing, 60 cases have been confirmed with 9 assigned CVE identifiers, 31 already fixed by vendors, and additional vulnerabilities scheduled to be patched in upcoming releases. Our results highlight the limitations of conventional fuzzers in semantic feature coverage and demonstrate the potential of LLM-based fuzzing to discover deeply hidden bugs in complex database systems.

Observations of supermassive black holes by the Event Horizon Telescope reveal significant inhomogeneities, most likely related to density and magnetic field perturbations. To model these features, we conduct high-resolution 2D general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulations of a Fishbone-Moncrief torus around a Kerr black hole using the Black Hole Accretion Code $\texttt{BHAC}$. We compare unperturbed accretion with a case featuring plasma density bubbles with pressure balanced magnetic islands of different amplitudes. Power spectrum analysis of accretion time series, performed via the Blackman-Tukey method, shows that the perturbed case exhibits (1) steeper spectral indices compared to the unperturbed case, deviating from the characteristic $1/ω$ noise spectrum, and (2) increased correlation times, providing evidence for absorption of macro-structures at the event horizon. Spatial auto-correlation analysis of near-horizon turbulence confirms larger energy-containing coherent structures in the perturbed case altering the accretion rate. These results provide new insights for interpreting observations of supermassive black hole environments, where near-horizon turbulence may play a key role in the accretion process.

The Euler characteristic transform (ECT) is an emerging and powerful framework within topological data analysis for quantifying the geometry of shape. The applicability of ECT has been limited due to its sensitivity to noisy data. Here, we introduce SampEuler, a novel ECT-based shape descriptor designed to achieve enhanced robustness to perturbations. We provide a theoretical analysis establishing the stability of SampEuler and validate these properties empirically through pairwise similarity analyses on a benchmark dataset and showcase it on a thymus dataset. The thymus is a primary lymphoid organ that is essential for the maturation and selection of self-tolerant T cells, and within the thymus, thymic epithelial cells are organized in complex three-dimensional architectures, yet the principles governing their formation, functional organization, and remodeling during age-related involution remain poorly understood. Addressing these questions requires robust and informative shape descriptors capable of capturing subtle architectural changes across developmental stages. We develop and apply SampEuler to a newly generated two-dimensional imaging dataset of mouse thymi spanning multiple age groups, where SampEuler outperforms both persistent homology--based methods and deep learning models in detecting subtle, localized morphological differences associated with aging. To facilitate interpretation, we develop a vectorization and visualization framework for SampEuler, which preserves rich morphological information and enables identification of structural features that distinguish thymi across age groups. Collectively, our results demonstrate that SampEuler provides a robust and interpretable approach for quantifying thymic architecture and reveals age-dependent structural changes that offer new insights into thymic organization and involution.

Maintaining and refactoring React web applications is challenging, as React code often becomes complex due to its core API called Hooks. For example, Hooks often lead developers to create complex dependencies among components, making code behavior unpredictable and reducing maintainability, i.e., anti-patterns. To address this challenge, we present HookLens, an interactive visual analytics system that helps developers understand howHooks define dependencies and data flows between components. Informed by an iterative design process with experienced React developers, HookLens supports users to efficiently understand the structure and dependencies between components and to identify anti-patterns. A quantitative user study with 12 React developers demonstrates that HookLens significantly improves participants' accuracy in detecting anti-patterns compared to conventional code editors. Moreover, a comparative study with state-of-the-art LLM-based coding assistants confirms that these improvements even surpass the capabilities of such coding assistants on the same task.

We present theoretical and experimental evidence for a new phase of matter in neutron-rich systems that we call multimodal superfluidity. Using ab initio lattice calculations, we show that the condensate consists of coexisting s-wave pairs, p-wave pairs in entangled double pair combinations, and quartets composed of bound states of two s-wave pairs. We identify multimodal superfluidity as a general feature of single-flavor spin-1/2 fermionic systems with attractive s-wave and p-wave interactions, provided the system is stable against collapse into a dense droplet. Beyond neutrons at sub-saturation densities, we demonstrate that this phase appears in generalized attractive extended Hubbard models in one, two, and three dimensions. We elucidate the mechanism for this coexistence using self-consistent few-body Cooper models and compare with Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory. We also derive the form of the effective action and show that spin, rotational, and parity symmetries remain unbroken. Finally, we analyze experimental data to show that p-wave pair gaps and quartet gaps are present in atomic nuclei, and we discuss the consequences of this new phase for the structure and dynamics of neutron star crusts.

Frankl--Pach and Erdős conjectured that any $(d+1)$-uniform set family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq \binom{[n]}{d+1}$ with VC-dimension at most $d$ has size at most $\binom{n-1}{d}$ when $n$ is sufficiently large. Ahlswede and Khachatrian showed that the conjecture is false by giving a counterexample of size $\binom{n-1}{d}+\binom{n-4}{d-2}$. For a set family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq \binom{[n]}{d+1}$, the condition that its VC-dimension is at most $d$ can be reformulated as follows: for any $F\in\mathcal{F}$, there exists a set $B_F\subseteq F$ such that $F\cap F'\neq B_F$ for all $F'\in\mathcal{F}$. In this direction, the first author, Xu, Yip, and Zhang conjectured that the bound $\binom{n-1}{d}$ holds if we further assume that $|B_F|=s$ for every $F\in \mathcal{F}$ and for some fixed $0\leq s\leq d$. The case $s=0$ is exactly the Erdős--Ko--Rado theorem, and the cases $s\in \{1,d\}$ were proved in the paper by the first author, Xu, Yip, and Zhang. In this short note, we show that the conjecture holds when $s\leq d/2$, and the maximal constructions are stars. Moreover, we construct non-star set families of size $\binom{n-1}{d}$ satisfying the condition for $d/2<s\leq d-1$, which suggests that the problem is substantially different in these cases.

The $R\mathrm{Te}_3$ ($R = \text{rare earth}$) family of layered van der Waals (vdW) compounds hosts coexisting magnetic and charge density wave (CDW) orders, yet the interplay between these degrees of freedom remains little explored. Combining polarized and unpolarized neutron diffraction on single-crystal $\mathrm{HoTe}_3$, we identify two distinct antiferromagnetic (AFM) phases, both exhibiting a collinear $\uparrow\uparrow\downarrow\downarrow$ motif within individual vdW layers. The two phases are distinguished by the vdW stacking of magnetic layers: ferromagnetic (FM) stacking in the higher-temperature AFM-II phase, here termed ``vertical-stripe'', and AFM stacking in the AFM-I ground state, here termed ``tilted-stripe''; the two phases have propagation vectors $\boldsymbol{q}_{\mathrm{m2}} = (0.48, 0, 0)$ and $\boldsymbol{q}_{\mathrm{m1}} = (0.5, 0.5, 0)$, respectively. In contrast to the CDW-driven exotic magnetism in $\mathrm{DyTe}_3$, $\mathrm{TbTe}_3$, and $\mathrm{GdTe}_3$, we find no evidence for coupling between magnetism and CDW in $\mathrm{HoTe}_3$. The relative alignment between AFM and CDW propagation vectors, as well as single-ion anisotropy, are likely essential for generating coupled spin/charge orders in layered vdW systems.

Finite nuclear mass $(Z\,α)^2\,m/M\,E_F$ corrections to the hyperfine splitting in hydrogenic systems are calculated using a combined relativistic heavy particle and nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics. The obtained results are in disagreement with previous calculations by Bodwin and Yennie [Phys. Rev. D {\bf 37}, 498 (1988)]. The comparison of improved theoretical predictions with the corresponding measurements in hydrogen reveals $2\,σ$ discrepancy, which may indicate problems with the proton structure corrections.

In this article we prove the existence of sets $E \subseteq \mathbb{R}$ of zero Fourier dimension such that it is possible to restrict the Fourier transform to $E$ on a certain non-trivial range $[1,\tilde{p})$ with $1<\tilde{p}<2$. This builds upon Mockenhaupt's Restriction Theorem; while this theorem could only be applied to sets of positive Fourier dimension, we show that the existence of a measure with polylogarithmic Fourier decay combined with full Hausdorff dimension 1 on the real line is enough to guarantee restriction. In order to achieve this, we combine two different tools: a modification of a construction from a recent work of Li and Liu to produce a set with specific Hausdorff and Fourier dimensions, and a generalization of the Stein-Tomas-Mockenhaupt Restriction Theorem.

We describe all supergroups with the largest even supersubgroups being isomorphic to $\mathrm{GL}_2, \mathrm{SL}_2$ or $\mathrm{PSL}_2$. These results are applied to the description of centralizers of certain tori in the quasi-reductive supergroups.

Two-stage orthogonalization is essential in numerical algorithms such as Krylov subspace methods. For this task we need to orthogonalize a matrix $A$ against another matrix $V$ with orthonormal columns. A common approach is to employ the block Gram--Schmidt algorithm. However, its stability largely depends on the condition number of $[V,A]$. While performing a Householder orthogonalization on $[V,A]$ is unconditionally stable, it does not utilize the knowledge that $V$ has orthonormal columns. To address these issues, we propose a two-stage Householder orthogonalization algorithm based on the generalized Householder transformation. Instead of explicitly orthogonalizing the entire $V$, our algorithm only needs to orthogonalizes a square submatrix of $V$. Theoretical analysis and numerical experiments demonstrate that our method is also unconditionally stable.

The dynamics of anisotropic particles in viscous flows underpin a wide range of processes in soft matter, microfluidics, and targeted drug delivery. Here, we investigate the motion of externally driven prolate and oblate spheroids suspended in a Newtonian fluid and confined within a square microchannel. Using lattice Boltzmann simulations, complemented by far-field hydrodynamic theory based on superposition of wall interactions, we systematically quantify how particle aspect ratio, strength of confinement, and fluid inertia influence the dynamics of a spheroid. For unconfined spheroids, we show that the translational velocity is maximized not for a sphere but for a prolate (end-on) or oblate (broadside-on) spheroid of a specific aspect ratio. Under confinement, the optimal aspect ratio shifts toward oblate shapes due to the dominant contribution of wall-induced frictional resistance. Off-center positioning introduces strong translation-rotation coupling, giving rise to two families of oscillatory trajectories - glancing and reversing - whose existence and structure are captured as closed orbits in phase space. Weak fluid inertia breaks these closed loops: glancing trajectories spiral outward and merge with reversing trajectories, and new stable fixed points emerge. Together, these results reveal how modest deviations from sphericity or creeping-flow conditions profoundly alter the dynamics of driven particles in confined geometries. The predictions offer guidelines for optimizing particle shape in microfluidic transport and highlight the rich nonlinear behavior accessible in confined suspensions of nonspherical colloids.

Parrondo's paradox (PP) is a fundamental principle in nonlinear science where the alternation of individually losing strategies leads to a winning outcome. In this topical review, we provide the first systematic panorama of the synergy between PP and chaos. We observe a bidirectional connection between the two areas. The first direction is the translation of PP into the interplay between Order and Chaos through either Chaos + Chaos $\to$ Order (CCO) or Order + Order $\to$ Chaos (OOC). In this vein, many quantifiers, such as Lyapunov Exponents, $λ$, and entropic measures, are used. Second, we note that chaos can be used to engineer switching protocols that can lead to nontrivial effects in diverse PP cases. Our review clarifies the universality of PP and highlights its robust theoretical and practical applications across several areas of science and technology. Finally, we delineate key open questions, emphasizing the unresolved theoretical limits, the role of high-dimensional maps and continuous flows, and the critical need for more experimental verification of the dynamic PP in chaotic systems. For completeness, we also provide a full Python code that allows the reader to observe the many facets of the PP.

Weakly coupled oscillators adjust their dynamics to work in unison: they synchronize. This ubiquitous phenomenon is observed for oscillating pendulum, electronic devices, as well as clapping crowds or flashing fireflies. In effect, synchronization constitutes an efficient mean to translate microscopic into large scale dynamics. While broadly studied theoretically, experimental investigations of synchronization of systems at the microscale are limited. Here we devise and study a model system of noisy and "measurably imperfect" colloidal oscillators: autonomous clocks made of an active swimmer revolving around a passive sphere. The distribution of natural frequency of the clock is achieved using passive spheres of various sizes, thus without altering the (phoretic) coupling between clocks. We observe that pairs of oscillators lock phases before slipping and returning to sync, and we characterize the synchronicity of the pair. We rationalize our findings with a stochastic model, formalizing synchronization as a classical Kramers escape problem in an adequate potential. This provides an analytical expression for the rate of synchronization of a pair set by the ratio between differences of natural frequency and environmental noise, and agrees qualitatively with the experiment. Our results set a blueprint for synchronization with micrometric autonomous systems.

Recent advent of smart photodetectors, where in-situ tuning of responsivity enables the reconstruction of light intensity, polarization and spectrum by a single device, has revolutionized the field of optoelectronics. So far, most such reconstructive detectors were realized with non-scalable technology of van der Waals stacking. Here, we demonstrate the infrared reconstructive polarimetry with photodetectors based on conventional gated graphene-metal junctions. The reconstruction exploits the gate tuning of polarization contrast, which enables the determination of both infrared power and polarization angle from photovoltage measurements at two different gate voltages. The physics enabling the polarimetry lies in polarization-dependent shift of the electron hot spot near the contact, and the gate tuning of photosensitive barrier width. We further show the universality of polarization reconstruction, i.e. its feasibility with different geometries of the junction, and with graphene of different quality, from boron-nitride encapsulated flakes to the scalable chemical vapor deposited films.

In standard treatments of electron transport, momentum relaxation in a perfect, defect-free crystal is linked with phonon creation or annihilation. In this work, we reconsider this problem for a finite, isolated crystal, retaining the lattice center-of-mass (recoil) degree of freedom and enforcing conservation of total mechanical momentum together with discrete crystal pseudomomentum. Starting from the density-density form of the electron-lattice interaction, we show that an electron in the interior of a perfect crystal admits elastic momentum-transfer channels in which total momentum is conserved by recoil of the lattice background without phonon excitation. These elastic channels can provide the leading contribution to momentum relaxation. We further identify mixed quasi-elastic and superelastic processes in which phonon occupations change but do not account entirely for the electron's momentum transfer. The elastic channels arise within the standard microscopic Hamiltonian and do not require additional disorder or defects. The resulting framework provides a complementary microscopic perspective on momentum relaxation in clean crystals and is consistent with experimental phenomena such as weak localization, quantum oscillations, ultrasonic attenuation, and the observed separation of momentum and energy relaxation times.

In this paper, we study the Łojasiewicz-Simon gradient inequality for the mathematical model of grain boundary motion. We first derive a curve shortening equation with time-dependent mobility, which guarantees the energy dissipation law for the grain boundary energy, including the difference between orientations of the constituent grains as a state variable. Next, we discuss the Łojasiewicz-Simon gradient inequality for the grain boundary energy. Finally, we give applications of the inequality to the energy.

We study a stochastic anchored gradient scheme, namely HalpernSGD, which combines the classical Halpern iteration for finding a minimizer of a convex and $L$-smooth objective function with a stochastic {first-order} oracle. The algorithm is simple and does not require projections, line-search, or similar techniques. This provides, to the best of our knowledge, the first almost sure convergence guarantee for a Halpern-type stochastic gradient scheme, without requiring variance reduction or multi-point oracle mechanisms. Under standard stepsize assumptions, we prove that the iterates converge almost surely to the anchor-selected minimizer $x^*=P_S(u)$. In addition, for a natural choice of the step sequences, we derive a sublinear asymptotic estimate for the expected optimality gap, namely \( \liminf_{n\to\infty}\sqrt{n+1}\,\mathbb{E}\bigl[f(X_n)-f(x^*)\bigr]=0. \) As shown, a full last iterate rate estimate cannot be reached in the present setting.

Non-destructive beam diagnostics are essential for low-energy medical cyclotrons, where even thin interceptive devices can severely degrade beam quality. We investigate an external fiber monitor (EFM) based on Ce-doped silica scintillating fibers that detects secondary radiation generated at existing beamline components of the 18 MeV Bern Medical Cyclotron beam transfer line (BTL). Three use cases were studied: (i) beam intensity monitoring around an electrically isolated, water-cooled beam dump; (ii) beam-loss monitoring around a 10 mm collimator under varying the beam focusing; and (iii) by steering a 6.5 mm $\times$ 6.5 mm beam spot on a beam dump. For case (i), the summed EFM signal exhibits a linear dependence on the current on target over nearly three orders of magnitude. In case (ii), a normalized EFM-based beam-loss proxy scales monotonically with an electrical loss proxy across several focusing settings. Furthermore, opposing-fiber signal ratios provide decoupled, monotonic sensitivity to horizontal and vertical beam displacements.

We identify an oscillatory solution that exists as a long-lived, bubble-like closed domain wall in the two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) under a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry constraint, and these structures emerge naturally during the late stages of domain wall decay. \\ \\ The longevity of these structures is attributed to a potential landscape characterized by two distinct vacuum regions, the oscillating region lies in one vacuum, while the constant outer region lies in the other. The lifetime of the structure depends on the parameter in the Lagrangian, we identify a specific parameter space where radiation is suppressed, the solution exhibits a maximum lifetime that goes up to infinity. \\ \\ The simpler two-complex-field system is first used to introduce the mathematical requirements of the structure before extending it to the more physical but complex 2HDM. Further Numerical verification via Floquet analysis shows these structures are stable under perturbation.

It is widely recognized that finite temperatures degrade quantum coherence and can induce thermalization. Here, we study the effect of finite temperature on a kicked Tonks--Girardeau gas, which is known to exhibit many--body dynamical localization and delocalization under periodic and quasiperiodic kicks, respectively. We find that many--body dynamical localization persists at finite--and even high--temperatures, although the coherence of the localized state is further degraded. In particular, we demonstrate a modified effective thermalization of the localized state by considering the initial temperature. Moreover, we show many--body dynamical localization transition at intermediate temperature. Our work extends the study of many--body dynamical localization and delocalization to the finite--temperature regime, providing guidance for cold-atom experiments, particularly in the strongly-interacting regime.

Patterning of precipitates along dislocation lines arising from nonequilibrium segregation during ion irradiation is investigated in model binary alloys. Lattice kinetic Monte Carlo simulations reveal that the competition between solute advection by point defects to the dislocation and thermal diffusion along the dislocation can stabilize self-organized nanostructures with distinct morphologies, including tubes and quasi-periodic necklaces. The stabilization of nano-necklaces is rationalized by heavy-tail power-law distributions for solute redistribution along the dislocation due to advection.

We have used Auriga --a set of state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-size systems-- to study the impact of baryons on the Galactic subhalo population. A DM-only run counterpart of Auriga allows us to compare results with and without baryons. We repopulate the original suites with low-mass subhalos orders of magnitude lighter than the mass resolution limit, starting from a detailed characterization of Auriga data in the well-resolved subhalo mass range. The survival of low-mass subhalos to tidal forces is unclear and under debate nowadays, thus in our study we stay agnostic and consider two different levels of subhalo resilience to tidal stripping ('fragile' and 'resilient' subhalos). We find baryons to alter the Galactic substructure significantly, by decreasing its overall abundance by a factor $\sim2.4$ (fragile) and $\sim1.9$ (resilient) and subhalo concentration --here defined in terms of maximum circular velocity-- by $\sim1.5$ with respect to the DM-only scenario. This has important consequences for indirect searches of DM. As an example, we investigated the case of using unidentified gamma-ray sources to set constraints on the DM particle properties, assuming some of them may be dark satellites. Our results show the importance of including baryons to properly characterize the Galactic subhalo population, as well as to propose the most optimal subhalo search strategies, not only via its potential DM annihilation products but also through their gravitational signatures (e.g.~stellar streams, strong lensing).

We study the features of scarred eigenstates of relativistic neutrino billiards (NBs), graphene billiards (GBs) and Haldane graphene billiards (HGBs) and recapitulate those for nonrelativistic quantum billiards (NRQBs) with the shapes of a full- and quarter-stadium billiard. Here, we restrict for the GBs and HGBs to the region of linear dispersion around the Fermi energy, where they are effectively described by the same Dirac equation for massless spin-1/2 particles as NBs. Scarred wave functions of the nonrelativistic billiards and spinor functions of the relativistic ones are localized along the same types of periodic orbits, the most prominent ones being bouncing-ball orbits. The objective is to demonstrate that the properties of the scarred eigenstates observed in the full- and quarter-stadium GB \emph{do not comply} with those of relativistic quantum systems. For this we apply the semiclassical approach associated with such non-generic contributions, which was developed for the spectral density of NRQBs and NBs. It provides semiclassical trace formulas in terms of the periodic orbits associated with a scarred wave function and a procedure to extract such contributions from the eigenvalue spectra. Furthermore, we analyze momentum distributions and Husimi functions of such scarred states and employ them to classify scarred wave functions according to the periodic orbits along which they are localized. We show that for the GB the semiclassical approach, the spectral properties, the symmetry properties and generally properties of the wave functions all comply with those of the NRQB, whereas for the HGB they agree well with those of the NB. Thus, even though around the Fermi energy GBs are described by the relativistic Dirac equation the quantum scars, or generally, the quantum scarred eigenstates observed in GBs do not exhibit those of relativistic ones.

We investigate the build-up of elliptic flow of charm quarks produced in the early pre-equilibrium stage of high-energy proton--nucleus collisions. The initial stage is modeled within the Color Glass Condensate framework as an evolving glasma, initialized through the McLerran--Venugopalan model. Subnucleonic fluctuations have been implemented as constituent-quark hotspots for both the proton and the nuclear participants. Charm quarks are propagated in the evolving non-Abelian background by solving the relativistic Wong equations for their coordinates, momenta, and color charges. First, we compute the nuclear modification factor of charm quarks, finding a slight migration towards higher $p_T$ states in agreement with previous results in the literature. Then, we focus on the azimuthal anisotropies acquired through the interaction with glasma fields. We find that glasma-induced momentum anisotropies are efficiently transmitted to heavy quarks within $τ\sim 0.4~\mathrm{fm/c}$, leading to a sizeable charm-quark $v_2$, with a magnitude that increases with the strength of the initial fields and with the number of nuclear participants. Remarkably, we show that the early-stage contribution alone can account for a significant fraction of the experimentally observed $J/ψ$ elliptic flow in p-Pb collisions, indicating that pre-hydrodynamic dynamics can play a non-negligible role in the final-state heavy-flavor collectivity, especially in small systems.

Reported electron and hole mobilities, and their saturation velocities, in diamond span orders of magnitude across the literature. We attribute this dispersion primarily to (i) the electric-field window probed in TCT measurements, (ii) the choice of mobility model, and (iii) the excitation source (alpha, laser, or electron). Using an aggregated literature dataset, we benchmark the Trofimenkoff and Caughey-Thomas parameterisations together with a new piecewise model for both conduction- and valence-band transport. For electrons, the piecewise model provides the best global description over a broad electric-field range and is shown to arise as the room-temperature limit of a more general superposition framework that explicitly incorporates intervalley repopulation in the conduction band. For holes, the Caughey-Thomas model remains the statistically preferred description, in line with the absence of a strong repopulation effect in the accessible data. Furthermore, we demonstrate a systematic source dependence (alpha versus laser) and quantify its impact on fitted mobility and saturation-velocity values. We provide temperature scalings over narrow intervals around room temperature and recommend parameter sets for implementation in device and detector simulation frameworks. Together, these results reconcile much of the apparent inconsistency in the literature and offer clear guidance for model selection, experimental design, and device-level simulation of charge transport in intrinsic diamond.

A substantial fraction of metal-poor stars in the local Milky Way halo exhibit large overabundances of carbon. These stars, dubbed Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars, provide crucial constraints on the nature of the early universe including the earliest nucleosynthetic events. Whether these stars exist at similar rates in nearby galaxies is a major open question with implications for the environmental dependence of early chemical evolution. Here, we present the discovery of the first five CEMP stars in the Milky Way's largest dwarf companion, the LMC, using SDSS-V spectra from the BOSS instrument. We measure metallicities ranging from [Fe/H] = -2.1 to -3.2 and evolutionary state corrected carbon enhancements of [C/Fe] = +1.2 to +2.4, placing these stars among the most metal-poor and carbon-rich ever identified in the LMC. Their absolute carbon abundances and metallicities classify them as Group I CEMP stars, suggesting binary mass-transfer origins, though neutron-capture abundance measurements are required to confirm whether this classification scheme applies beyond the Milky Way. Although these stars were selected as the most promising CEMP candidates from the SDSS-V sample, likely biasing this initial sample toward higher absolute carbon abundances, their discovery suggests that previous null detections of CEMP stars in the LMC were caused by metallicity-sensitive photometric targeting biases against high [C/H] stars. A forthcoming analysis of the full spectroscopic sample will push to lower carbon abundances, providing a more complete census and enabling critical tests of whether environmental differences shape the formation channels and frequencies of CEMP stars in this system.

We establish concentration rates for estimation of treatment effects in experiments that incorporate prior sources of information -- such as past pilots, related studies, or expert assessments -- whose external validity is uncertain. Each source is modeled as a Gaussian prior with its own mean and precision, and sources are combined using Bayesian model averaging (BMA), allowing data from the new experiment to update posterior weights. To capture empirically relevant settings in which prior studies may be as informative as the current experiment, we introduce a nonstandard asymptotic framework in which prior precisions grow with the experiment's sample size. In this regime, posterior weights are governed by an external-validity index that depends jointly on a source's bias and information content: biased sources are exponentially downweighted, while unbiased sources dominate. When at least one source is unbiased, our procedure concentrates on the unbiased set and achieves faster convergence than relying on new data alone. When all sources are biased, including a deliberately conservative (diffuse) prior guarantees robustness and recovers the standard convergence rate.

The calculation of precise predictions for Higgs decays is a necessary ingredient for determining Higgs properties at the LHC and future colliders. We compute all two- and three-body Higgs decays at next-to-leading order (NLO) in both QCD and electroweak interactions using the dimension-6 Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). Results for four-body Higgs decays that are accurate to NLO QCD/electroweak order in the SMEFT are obtained using the narrow width approximation. Our results are contained in a flexible Monte Carlo program, NEWiSH, that is publicly available and we illustrate the impact of the NLO electroweak corrections for HL-LHC, Tera-Z, and Higgstrahlung projections.

Linac-based free-electron lasers (FELs) feature high brightness, narrow bandwidth, controllable polarization, and wide wavelength tunability. With the rapid development of superconducting radio-frequency technology, linacs can now operate at MHz-level repetition rates, enabling FELs with both high repetition rates and high average power. Beyond extreme ultraviolet (BEUV) radiation is of great interest for scientific research and industrial applications, especially for next-generation lithography. Owing to the main design parameters of SHINE, the generation of BEUV radiation is a natural capability of the facility. The BEUV characteristics at SHINE are investigated and its achievable performance as a high-average-power light source is evaluated. By applying undulator tapering to enhance the energy extraction efficiency, kilowatt-level BEUV radiation with controllable polarization is shown to be achievable. These results demonstrate that SHINE can provide a high-performance BEUV source, offering a realistic pathway toward a high-average-power light source for next-generation high-resolution lithography.