Describe an animal without using the verb look. Can you effectively provide an alternative method for interpreting complex microscopy images while preserving the length scale? The world is filled with features too small for our eyes to see: the setae on a gecko's feet, the cuticles covering a rat's whisker, or the fuzziness of a bat's wing. Furthermore, these structures are non-homogeneous, often shifting from stiff to soft. We provide a workflow for producing low-data, low-cost, and open-source lithograph files, allowing tactile accessibility in microscopy images. The lithographs made with this workflow can be printed on a 350 USD 3D printer using 3D files under 100 Mb, for a total cost per print of 0.75 USD. This work seeks to leverage advanced 3D printing to create tactile graphics and art that make science more accessible and enable tactile exploration of biological structures. This framework in this text is aligned with a GitHub repository that will be constantly updated, allowing tactile media to be created as 3D printing and lithography become more streamlined in the years to come.

This letter presents an optimal-transport (OT)-driven, distributionally robust attack detection algorithm, OT-DETECT, for cyber-physical systems (CPS) modeled as partially observed linear stochastic systems. The underlying detection problem is formulated as a minmax optimization problem using 1-Wasserstein ambiguity sets constructed from observer residuals under both the nominal (attack-free) and attacked regimes, and show that the minmax detection problem can be reduced to a finite-dimensional linear program for computing the worst-case distribution (WCD). Off-support residuals are handled via a kernel-smoothed score function that drives a CUSUM procedure for sequential detection. We also establish a non-asymptotic tail bound on the false-positive error of the CUSUM statistic under the nominal (attack-free) condition, under mild assumptions. Numerical illustrations are provided to evaluate the robustness properties of OT-DETECT.

Action-detected two-dimensional (2D) spectroscopy resolves the time-dependent nonlinear optical response of a quantum system by recording incoherently detected observables such as fluorescence, photoelectrons, or photocurrents which reflect the system's excited-state population. Processes such as exciton-exciton annihilation alter this population and obscure, for instance, energy transfer processes. This limits the information available from action-detected 2D spectra compared to their coherently detected counterparts. Here we investigate time gating and kinetic-energy filtering in photoelectron-detected 2D spectroscopy to disentangle various processes. We implement a numerical simulation protocol that allows us to calculate photoelectron-detected 2D spectra for various systems, demonstrating that time gating can extract the same information as coherently detected 2D spectroscopy, even when annihilation is present. Furthermore, we can directly infer annihilation dynamics. Kinetic-energy filtering additionally enables the isolation of specific excited-state dynamics. Our simulations demonstrate that time gating and kinetic-energy filtering are promising extensions for photoelectron-detected 2D spectroscopy.

We study Schrödinger operators on $\mathbb R^3$ with finitely many concentric spherical $δ$-shell interactions. The operators are defined by the quadratic form method and are described by continuity across each shell together with the usual jump condition for the radial derivative. Using a boundary integral approach based on the free Green kernel and single-layer potentials, we derive an explicit resolvent representation for an arbitrary number of shells with bounded coupling strengths. This yields a concrete Kre\uın-type formula and a boundary operator whose noninvertibility characterizes the discrete spectrum, and it is compatible with a partial-wave reduction under rotational symmetry. We then specialize to the two-shell case with constant couplings and obtain a detailed description of the negative spectrum. In particular, we show that the ground state (when it exists) lies in the $s$-wave sector and derive an explicit secular equation for bound states. For large shell separation, each bound level approaches the corresponding single-shell level with exponentially small corrections, while a genuine tunneling splitting appears when the single-shell levels are tuned to coincide. As a simple calibration, we relate the two-shell parameters to representative core-shell quantum dot scales. At the level of order-of-magnitude and qualitative trends, Type~I configurations yield a relatively strongly confined state, whereas Type~II configurations produce a comparatively shallow outer-shell state.

Thom polynomials are universal cohomological obstructions to the appearance of singularities of given types in differentiable maps. As an application, various invariants of immersions have been expressed in terms of singularities of their extension maps, known as singular Seifert surfaces. To place these results in a unified framework, we aim in this paper to establish a relative version of Thom polynomial theory. Our results consist of four parts. (1) We introduce Thom polynomials relative to prescribed maps around the boundary (or a closed codimension-zero submanifold) that avoid singularities of given types. (2) We show a structure theorem for Thom polynomials relative to framable immersions. It expresses them as the sum of the term obtained by substituting Kervaire's relative characteristic classes into the absolute Thom polynomial and a universal correction term. (3) We determine correction terms in several cases, not only reinterpreting earlier works as instances of relative Thom polynomials but also recovering some of them. Most earlier formulas are summarized as the vanishing of correction terms. (4) We give suggestive evidence for the relative Thom polynomials of multi-singularity types $A_0^k$, with an application.

We construct exact strong zero mode operators (ESZM) in integrable quantum circuits and the spin-1/2 XXZ chain for general open boundary conditions, which break the bulk U(1) symmetry of the time evolution operators. We show that the ESZM is localized around one of the boundaries and induces infinite boundary coherence times. Finally, we prove that the ESZM becomes spatially non-local under the map that relates the spin-1/2 XXZ chain to the asymmetric simple exclusion process, which suggests that it does not play a significant role in the dynamics of the latter.

Carbon nanotube (CNT) films are widely considered as prospective building blocks for advanced electronic and nanostructured materials. In particular, electrical transport in high-density CNT films results from a complex interplay between network morphology and CNT connectivity, which remains challenging to characterize quantitatively. To identify the structural parameters that govern the electrical current in CNT films, we employed coarse-grained molecular dynamics to construct dense mesoscale CNT film models that include CNTs with different chiralities and lengths. The effects of CNT geometrical features on the film morphologies were quantified by devising a set of structural descriptors and analyzing their mutual correlations. The impact of varying the concentration of amorphous carbon (aC) inclusions on the film structure was assessed. Finally, we employed a nodal analysis framework to compute the electrical current across the networks and correlate the charge transport characteristics to the underlying structural descriptors. The current is found to be enhanced in films that exhibit high curvature and buckling, low bundling, and strong connectivity. We discuss how the presence of aC inclusions modifies these morphological and current characteristics. This work provides a mesoscale modeling framework for modeling structure-transport relationships in dense CNT films and highlights the role of morphological descriptors in guiding the interpretation of electrical transport in complex nanostructured networks.

The basic reproduction ratio is a crucial threshold parameter in infectious disease models. In nonlocal dispersal systems, its variational characterization is challenging due to the possible absence of a principal eigenvalue caused by non-compactness. In this paper, we aim to establish such a characterization even when the principal eigenvalue does not exist. To this end, we first study the spectral bound of a class of nonlocal dispersal operators, establishing a Collatz-Wielandt characterization as well as a Rayleigh-Ritz characterization when the operator is self-adjoint. Using this, we characterize the unique parameter value at which the spectral bound equals zero, covering both non-degenerate and partially degenerate cases, and subsequently obtain an explicit expression for the basic reproduction ratio. To demonstrate the utility of our theoretical framework, we apply it to a nonlocal dispersal SIS epidemic model with saturated incidence rate. The analysis shows that, in the degenerate case of the saturation coefficient, the limiting behavior of the basic reproduction ratio as the total population tends to zero is strikingly different from that in local diffusion case.

We consider a random walk on a homogeneous space $G/Λ$ where $G$ is $\mathrm{SO}(2,1)$ or $\mathrm{SO}(3,1)$ and $Λ$ is a lattice. The walk is driven by a probability measure $μ$ on $G$ whose support generates a Zariski-dense subgroup. We show that for every starting point $x \in G/Λ$ which is not trapped in a finite $μ$-invariant set, the $n$-step distribution $μ^{*n}*δ_{x}$ of the walk equidistributes toward the Haar measure. Moreover, under arithmetic assumptions on the pair $(Λ, μ)$, we show the convergence occurs at an exponential rate, tempered by the obstructions that $x$ may be high in a cusp or close to a finite orbit. Our approach is substantially different from that of Benoist-Quint, whose equidistribution statements only hold in Cesàro average and are not quantitative, that of Bourgain-Furman-Lindenstrauss-Mozes concerning the torus case, and that of Lindenstrauss-Mohammadi-Wang and Yang about the analogous problem for unipotent flows. A key new feature of our proof is the use of a new phenomenon which we call multislicing. The latter is a generalization of the discretized projection theorems à la Bourgain and we believe it presents independent interest.

Let $G$ be a discrete abelian group. Følner showed that if $A \subseteq G$ has positive upper Banach density, then $A - A$ contains an almost Bohr set -- a set of the form $B \setminus E$ where $B$ is a Bohr set and $E$ has zero Banach density. We study the sets $S \subseteq G$ for which $A - A + S$ contains a Bohr set for every $A \subseteq G$ of positive upper Banach density. For $G = \mathbb{Z}$, we show that the sets $\{n^2: n \in \mathbb{N}\}$, $\{p - 1: p \text{ prime}\}$, and $\{ \lfloor n^c \rfloor: n \in \mathbb{N} \}$ with $c > 0$, have this property. Moreover, we prove that there are sets $A, B \subseteq \mathbb{Z}$ such that $A$ is dense in the Bohr topology of $\mathbb{Z}$, $d^*(B) > 0$, while $A + B$ is not piecewise Bohr, answering two questions of the second author in [31]. We also study those sets $S$ such that $A + S$ contains a Bohr set for every almost Bohr set $A$. As applications, we prove: (i) If $ϕ_1, ϕ_2: G \to G$ are (not necessarily commuting) homomorphisms with finite indices $[G: ϕ_i(G)]$, and $C \subseteq G$ is a central set, then $ϕ_1(C) - ϕ_1(C) + ϕ_2(C)$ contains a Bohr set. This answers one of our questions in [35] and generalizes results in [44, 48]; (ii) Every set of pointwise recurrence in $\mathbb{Z}$ is a set of nice recurrence and a van der Corput set, extending known properties of sets of pointwise recurrence studied in [26, 27, 40].

Let $(X,\mathcal{E})$ be a hypergraph. A support is a graph $Q$ on $X$ such that for each $E\in\mathcal{E}$, the subgraph of $Q$ induced on the elements in $E$ is connected. We consider the problem of constructing a support for hypergraphs defined by connected subgraphs of a host graph. For a graph $G=(V,E)$, let $\mathcal{H}$ be a set of connected subgraphs of $G$. Let the vertices of $G$ be partitioned into two sets the \emph{terminals} $\mathbf{b}(V)$ and the \emph{non-terminals} $\mathbf{r}(V)$. We define a hypergraph on $\mathbf{b}(V)$, where each $H\in\mathcal{H}$ defines a hyperedge consisting of the vertices of $\mathbf{b}(V)$ in $H$. We also consider the problem of constructing a support for the \emph{dual hypergraph} - a hypergraph on $\mathcal{H}$ where each $v\in \mathbf{b}(V)$ defines a hyperedge consisting of the subgraphs in $\mathcal{H}$ containing $v$. In fact, we construct supports for a common generalization of the primal and dual settings called the \emph{intersection hypergraph}. As our main result, we show that if the host graph $G$ has bounded genus and the subgraphs in $\mathcal{H}$ satisfy a condition of being \emph{cross-free}, then there exists a support that also has bounded genus. Our results are a generalization of the results of Raman and Ray (Rajiv Raman, Saurabh Ray: Constructing Planar Support for Non-Piercing Regions. Discret. Comput. Geom. 64(3): 1098-1122 (2020)). Our techniques imply a unified analysis for packing and covering problems for hypergraphs defined on surfaces of bounded genus. We also describe applications of our results for hypergraph colorings.

Microservices are a dominant architecture in cloud computing, offering scalability and modularity, but also posing complex deployment challenges. As data centers contribute significantly to global carbon emissions, carbon-aware scheduling has emerged as a promising mitigation strategy. However, most existing solutions target batch, high-performance, or serverless workloads and assume access to global-scale infrastructure. Such an assumption does not hold for many national or regional small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with microservice applications, which represent the real-world majority. In this paper, we present HuntMS, an Adaptive Carbon and Efficiency-aware placement for microservices that considers carbon, cost, and latency constraints. HuntMS dynamically places microservices across geographically constrained regions using a scalable optimization strategy that leverages insight-based search space pruning techniques. Evaluation on a real-world deployment shows that HuntMS quickly adapts to real-time changes in workload and carbon intensity and reduces carbon emissions by 37.4% and operational cost by 3.6%, on average, compared to a static deployment within a single country, while consistently meeting SLOs. In this way, HuntMS enables carbon- and cost-aware microservice deployment for latency-sensitive applications in regionally limited infrastructures for SMEs.

Vertex-reconstructed muon-spin spectroscopy (vx-μSR) based on silicon pixel detectors has recently demonstrated unprecedented lateral resolution and operation at muon stop rates exceeding 400 kHz. However, the intrinsic timing resolution of current silicon pixel detector technology limits the accessible frequency range and restricts μSR measurements with fast relaxation rates. In this work, we report on the integration of plastic scintillator detectors (PSD) read out with the MuTRiG ASIC into the MuSiP vx-μSR spectrometer. This complements the spatial resolution achieved by using silicon pixel detectors with high-precision timing information for incoming muons and decay positrons. We demonstrate stable operation of MuTRiG in vacuum and achieve sub-300 ps time resolution after time-walk correction. Standard transverse-field μSR measurements on a SiO$_2$ sample confirm that the combined MuTRiG-PSD system resolves precession frequencies beyond 50 MHz, far exceeding the capabilities of silicon pixel detectors alone. These results establish a viable and scalable path towards high-rate, high-resolution μSR with both excellent spatial and temporal performance.

We compute all the planar three-loop master integrals relevant for the leading colour N3LO QCD corrections to the production of two massive or off-shell vector bosons at hadron colliders. These integrals are organised into nine four-point integral families with massless internal propagators and two external massive legs. For each family, we construct a basis of pure master integrals and we reconstruct the corresponding canonical differential equations using finite field techniques. We evaluate the master integrals by solving the differential equations using generalised power series expansions.

A reliable communication primitive guarantees the delivery, integrity, and authorship of messages exchanged between correct processes of a distributed system. We investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions for reliable communication in dynamic networks, where the network topology evolves over time despite the presence of a limited number of Byzantine faulty processes that may behave arbitrarily (i.e., in the globally bounded Byzantine failure model). We identify classes of dynamic networks where such conditions are satisfied, and extend our analysis to message losses, local computation with unbounded finite delay, and authenticated messages.

The capability of reconstructing the past star formation history of dwarf elliptical galaxies out of the Local Volume relies on modelling bright stellar populations currently evolving through the red giant branch (RGB) and the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phases. Recent studies proposed the use of the relative fractions of RGB and AGB stars populating specific boxes in the observational colour-magnitude plane to infer the epoch within which 90\% of the stellar population of the galaxy formed (T90). We aim at understanding the physical process of stellar evolution that are constrained by the relationship between the relative fraction of AGB and RGB stars of dwarf galaxies and the T90 epoch. We use updated stellar models that include the description of dust formation in the wind, to undertake a population synthesis approach, to allow monitoring the variation of the NAGB/NRGB ratio with time. The effects of some specific ingredients, such as the mass loss experienced by low-mass stars during the RGB phase, and the details of the time variation of the star formation rate, are extensively explored and tested against data. The mass lost by low-mass stars during the RGB evolution proves the most relevant ingredients affecting the time variation of NAGB/NRGB: at metallicities ~ 1/10 solar, a mass loss ~ 0.25Msun is required to reproduce the observations. This analysis allows to derive a relationship between NAGB/NRGB and T90, with a ~ 1 Gyr uncertainty on T90.

Corrosion testing is slow, labor-intensive, and sensitive to operator technique, limiting the generation of large, high-quality datasets for data-driven materials discovery. The Materials Acceleration Platform for Electrochemistry (MAP-E) is an autonomous, high-throughput system, capable of performing parallel electrochemical experiments. It integrates robotic liquid handling, sample transfer with a multi-channel potentiostatic control to extract corrosion metrics without human intervention. Validation against an ASTM G61-analog benchmark demonstrates good reproducibility, with a standard deviation of 75 mV in pitting potential across 32 automated measurements. The platform was then employed to autonomously construct pH-chloride stability diagrams for 304 stainless steel using an uncertainty-driven sampling strategy on a Gaussian process surrogate model. This approach reduces operator involvement and accelerates the exploration of environmental spaces. The MAP-E establishes a framework for autonomous electrochemical experimentation, enabling generation of corrosion datasets that inform materials discovery, alloy design, and durability assessment in service environments.

Cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) harnesses light-matter interactions to produce nonclassical light states. However, a fundamental challenge lies in simultaneously achieving Purcell enhancement and tailored wavefront control within a single cavity, due to conflicting resonator requirements. Here, we overcome this limitation by demonstrating triggered single-photon emission with customizable wavefronts from semiconductor quantum dots embedded in geometric-phase metacavities. These monolithic devices - only 200 nm thick - deliver Purcell-enhanced emission alongside spin-momentum-locked radiation, vortex beams, and holographic patterns. The meta-atom lattice provides high-Q optical confinement, while spatially modulated orientations enable efficient outcoupling of photons with designed states. This work establishes a new paradigm for intrinsically multiplexing metasurface-based wavefront shaping with cQED, enabling high-performance quantum light sources from subwavelength-scale monolithic platforms.

Let $A$ be an abelian surface over an algebraically closed field $\overline{k}$ with an embedding $\overline{k}\hookrightarrow\mathbb{C}$. When $A$ is isogenous to a product of elliptic curves, we describe a large collection of pairwise non-isomorphic hyperelliptic curves mapping birationally into $A$. For infinitely many integers $g\geq 2$, this collection has infinitely many curves of genus $g$, and no two curves in the collection have the same image under any isogeny from $A$. Using these hyperelliptic curves, we find many rational equivalences in the Chow group of zero-cycles $\text{CH}_0(A)$. We use these results to give some progress towards Beilinson's conjecture for zero-cycles, which predicts that for a smooth projective variety $X$ over $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$ the kernel of the Albanese map of $X$ is zero.

The observation of high-energy neutrinos from the direction of the nearby active galaxy, NGC 1068, was a major step in identifying the origin of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. The multimessenger data imply that high-energy neutrinos originate from the hearts of active galaxies which are opaque to GeV-TeV $γ$-rays. This realization is reinforced by the excess of neutrinos in the direction of NGC 4151 and Circinus Galaxy, other nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Understanding the vicinity of supermassive black holes with electromagnetic radiation is often challenging due to uncertainties associated with the absorption of emission in these dense environments, and neutrinos can be used as a powerful probe of the inner parts of the active galaxies. Considering the five brightest neutrino-active galaxies, NGC 1068, NGC 4151, CGCG 420-15, Circinus Galaxy, and NGC 7469, we employ the measured neutrino spectra together with the sub-GeV $γ$-ray emission measured by the {\em Fermi} satellite to break the degeneracy and narrow in on the parameter space of neutrino emission from turbulent coronae of AGNs. We also study contributions of jet-quiet AGNs, whose properties are similar to NGC 1068 and NGC 7469, to the isotropic neutrino background flux, through exploring possibilities that the neutrino luminosity function may deviate from the X-ray luminosity function. Our results will help estimate the prospects for identifying additional neutrino-active galaxies and guide future targeted analyses.

We present the first simultaneous, spatially-resolved measurement of all three velocity components (radial, azimuthal, and axial) in an annular magnetized argon gas-puff Z-pinch, performed using Collective Thomson Scattering along three orthogonal lines of sight from the same scattering volume at each time step. Measurements were carried out on the Llamp{ü}dke{ñ} pulse-power generator (400 kA peak, 200 ns rise time), for applied axial fields ranging from 0.04 to 0.26 T using two coil configurations: a double coil with negligible initial radial field at the probed plane ($z = 8$ mm), and a single coil that imposes a finite initial radial field. Three principal results are reported. First, the axial velocity component, which had not previously been measured experimentally in this configuration, reaches 60--70~km\,s$^{-1}$ near the axis at low applied fields ($B_{z0} < 0.1$ T) and is suppressed to within $\pm 20$~km\,s$^{-1}$ for stronger applied fields, in correlation with the reduction of the zippering angle, with direct implications for the implosion energy balance. Second, the self-generated rotation extends across the full plasma diameter, not only at the periphery, and the diametrical profile of the azimuthal velocity decreases toward the axis with an exponential-like shape consistent with the underlying current density distribution; this feature was not visible in previous edge-localized measurements. Third, rotation persists in the double-coil case ($B_{r0} \approx 0$) and is enhanced in the single-coil case (finite $B_{r0}$), supporting the interpretation that $B_r$ develops self-consistently during the implosion and drives the rotation through a $J_z \times B_r$ torque. These results constrain the role of each magnetic-field component and motivate direct measurement of $B_r$ and the current density distribution as the next step.

The recovery of types from stripped binaries is a key to exact decompilation, yet its practical realization suffers. For composite structures in particular, both layout and semantic fidelity are required to enable end-to-end reconstruction. Many existing approaches either synthesize layouts or infer names post-hoc, which weakens downstream usability. This is further aggravated by an excessive runtime overhead that is especially prohibitive in automated environments. We present XTRIDE, an improved n-gram-based approach that focuses on practicality: highly optimized throughput and actionable confidence scores allow for deployment in automated pipelines. When compared to the state of the art in struct recovery, our method achieves comparable performance while being between 70 and 2300 times faster. As our inference is grounded in real-world types, we achieve the highest ratio of fully-correct struct layouts. With an optimized training regimen, our model outperforms the current state of the art on the DIRT dataset by 5.09 percentage points, achieving 90.15% type inference accuracy overall. Furthermore, we show that n-gram-based type prediction generalizes to function signature recovery: conducting a case study on embedded firmware, we show that this efficient approach to function similarity can assist in typical reverse engineering tasks.

Let $X$ be a $K3$ surface over a $p$-adic field $k$ such that for some abelian surface $A$ isogenous to a product of two elliptic curves, there is an isomorphism over the algebraic closure of $k$ between $X$ and the Kummer surface associated to $A$. Under some assumptions on the reduction types of the elliptic curve factors of $A$, we prove that the Chow group $A_0(X)$ of zero-cycles of degree $0$ on $X$ is the direct sum of a divisible group and a finite group. This proves a conjecture of Raskind and Spiess and of Colliot-Thélène and it is the first instance for $K3$ surfaces when this conjecture is proved in full. This class of $K3$'s includes, among others, the diagonal quartic surfaces. In the case of good ordinary reduction we describe many cases when the finite summand of $A_0(X)$ can be completely determined. Using these results, we explore a local-to-global conjecture of Colliot-Thélene, Sansuc, Kato and Saito which, roughly speaking, predicts that the Brauer-Manin obstruction is the only obstruction to Weak Approximation for zero-cycles. We give examples of Kummer surfaces over a number field $F$ where the ramified places of good ordinary reduction contribute nontrivially to the Brauer set for zero-cycles of degree $0$ and we describe cases when an unconditional local-to-global principle can be proved, giving the first unconditional evidence for this conjecture in the case of $K3$ surfaces.

In this paper we present new ways to construct external subsets of nonstandard models of arithmetic using mostly internal sets, and show that if an ultraproduct of prime finite fields includes a copy of the algebraic real numbers then either this copy or its algebraic closure can be constructed in some of these ways. We also show that no copy of the field of real numbers inside such an ultraproduct can ever be constructed in any of these ways, but there is either a hyperreal field or an algebraically closed field of cardinality larger or equal to the continuum that can be.

The application of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to quasistatic loading is severely limited by the large separation between atomic vibration timescales and experimentally relevant deformation rates. In this work we employ the Practical Time Averaging (PTA) framework to overcome this limitation and enable atomistic simulations of crystalline solids under quasistatic loading conditions. PTA exploits the intrinsic separation of timescales by defining slow variables as time-averaged observables of the fast atomistic dynamics and their evolution on the slow loading timescale, thereby avoiding explicit integration of the fast dynamics. Using this approach, we simulate uniaxial deformation, in both tension and compression, of 4 to 20 nm cubic specimens of face centered cubic aluminum nanocrystals at applied strain rates approaching quasistatic conditions. We define slow variables as the averaged kinetic energy, potential energy, and normal stress in the loading direction, and track their evolution on the slow timescale. The stress-strain curves show yielding close to the theoretical stress for homogeneous nucleation, followed by successive load drops and rises caused by dislocation nucleation, motion, and exit from free surfaces. The "smaller is harder" effect is evident from the stress-strain response and from the variation of yield stress with sample size. Serrations in the response are more pronounced for smaller samples. The effects of applied strain rate and initial temperature are also studied. The method also captures the evolution of intricate dislocation microstructures on the slow timescale by tracking time-averaged atomic positions. The PTA framework enables simulations at strain rates several orders of magnitude lower than those accessible to conventional MD, demonstrating significant speedup in computational time while retaining full atomistic resolution.

In this paper, continuing the discussion about Species Quantum Mechanics, we investigate quantum mechanics in moduli spaces using a mini-superspace approach. From this perspective, moduli-dependent functions can be viewed as operators, and we explore how the taxonomic relations from the Emergent String Conjecture can constrain the non-commutativity between these operators. Next, we study wave functions on moduli spaces, and we find that the geometry of moduli space plays an important role and leads to excited wave functions localised in the bulks of moduli spaces, and with positive energy eigenvalues. For cases when potentials are present, these effects result in moduli localised away from classical minima, and often result in excited, positive energy states.

Observing early optical emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) contemporaneous with the MeV prompt emission phase remains rare, requiring rapid-response robotic facilities. The Ondřejov D50 telescope detected the optical counterpart of GRB 250702F at z = 1.520 only 27.8 s after trigger, enabling high-cadence monitoring during the brightest prompt emission pulses. The optical light curve reveals two distinct flares. The first (30 - 100 s) is spectrally consistent with the MeV prompt emission. The second flare (100 - 1400 s) exhibits an unusual morphology (F_nu ~ t^-alpha): a rapid rise to a plateau, followed by a steep decay (alpha ~ 1.6) before transitioning to a standard power-law afterglow (alpha = 0.79). This steep decay phase cannot be explained by nonthermal electrons accelerated at the forward shock, and reverse-shock scenario is disfavored due to the long duration of the flare and the temporal offset from the underlying deceleration time. We interpret the steep decay as the synchrotron frequency of a thermal (Maxwellian) electron population sweeping through the optical band. Modeling yields a non-thermal energy fraction delta ~ 0.8 with the remaining energy heating electrons at characteristic Lorentz factor gamma_th ~ 900. These observations provide evidence for thermal electron signatures in GRB afterglows, consistent with predictions from particle-in-cell simulations of ultra-relativistic collisionless shocks.

An important limitation of Inverter-Based Resources (IBR) is their reduced contribution to Short-Circuit Current (SCC), as compared to that of Synchronous Generators (SGs). With increasing penetration of IBR in most power systems, the reducing SCC poses challenges to a secure system operation, as line protections may not trip when required. In order to address this issue, the SCC ancillary service could be procured via an economic mechanism, aiming at securing adequate SCC on all buses. However, the suitability of markets for SCC services is not well understood, given that these could be prone to market power issues: since the SCC contributions from various SGs to a certain bus are determined by the electrical topology of the grid, this is a highly local service. It is necessary to understand if SGs at advantageous electrical locations could exert market power and, if so, how it could be mitigated. In order to fill this gap, this paper, for the first time, adopts an SCC-constrained bilevel model to investigate strategic behaviors of SGs. To address the non-convexity due to unit commitment variables, the model is restructured through a primal-dual formulation. Based on a modified IEEE 30-bus system, cases with strategic SGs placed at different buses are analyzed. These studies demonstrate that strategic agents exerting market power by manipulating service prices and extending operating periods could achieve up to triple revenues from SCC provision, which reduces market efficiency and would increase the financial burden on consumers. These findings highlight the need for careful market design, for which potential measures to mitigate these market power issues are also discussed.

High intermittent renewable penetration in the energy mix presents challenges in robustness for the management of power systems' operation. If a tail realization of the distribution of weather yields a prolonged period of time during which solar irradiation and wind speed are insufficient for satisfying energy demand, then it becomes critical to ramp up the generation of conventional power plants with adequate foresight. This event trigger is costly, and inaccurate forecasting can either be wasteful or yield catastrophic undersupply. This encourages particular attention to accurate modeling of the noise and the resulting dynamics within the aforementioned scenario. In this work we present a method for rare event-aware control of power systems using multi-stage scenario-based stochastic programming. A Fleming-Viot particle approach is used to bias the scenario generation towards rare realizations of very low wind power, in order to obtain a cost-effective control of conventional power plants that is robust under prolonged renewable energy shortfalls.

The forward-backward asymmetry ($A_{FB}$) in light-quark production is a sensitive probe of the electroweak sector and potential flavour-dependent BSM effects. We present a study of $e^+e^- \rightarrow s\bar{s}$ at $\sqrt{s}=250$ GeV at future linear colliders, using full ILD simulation and reconstruction tools for ILC and LCF@CERN. We assess the impact of particle identification on charge reconstruction and $A_{FB}$ extraction, considering software improvements using Comprehensive PID (CPID) for optimal $dE/dx$ usage, as well as hardware scenarios including cluster counting ($dN/dx$) and ideal TPC performance. Statistical precision gains are evaluated, with corrections for charge misidentification and acceptance applied. Results indicate that precise $A_{FB}^{s\bar{s}}$ measurements are feasible and that advanced PID is key to maximising sensitivity to electroweak and new-physics effects.