Ban&Pick: Achieving Free Performance Gains and Inference Speedup via Smarter Routing in MoE-LLMs

Published: 2025-09-08 05:38:10

Authors: Yuanteng Chen, Peisong Wang, Yuantian Shao, Jian Cheng

Categories: cs.LG, cs.AI

Abstract:
Sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) has become a key architecture for scaling large language models (LLMs) efficiently. Recent fine-grained MoE designs introduce hundreds of experts per layer, with multiple experts activated per token, enabling stronger specialization. However, during pre-training, routers are optimized mainly for stability and robustness: they converge prematurely and enforce balanced usage, limiting the full potential of model performance and efficiency. In this work, we uncover two overlooked issues: (i) a few highly influential experts are underutilized due to premature and balanced routing decisions; and (ii) enforcing a fixed number of active experts per token introduces substantial redundancy. Instead of retraining models or redesigning MoE architectures, we introduce Ban&Pick, a post-training, plug-and-play strategy for smarter MoE routing. Pick discovers and reinforces key experts-a small group with outsized impact on performance-leading to notable accuracy gains across domains. Ban complements this by dynamically pruning redundant experts based on layer and token sensitivity, delivering faster inference with minimal accuracy loss. Experiments on fine-grained MoE-LLMs (DeepSeek, Qwen3) across math, code, and general reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that Ban&Pick delivers free performance gains and inference acceleration without retraining or architectural changes. For instance, on Qwen3-30B-A3B, it improves accuracy from 80.67 to 84.66 on AIME2024 and from 65.66 to 68.18 on GPQA-Diamond, while accelerating inference by 1.25x under the vLLM.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:00 UTC)

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Score: 0

Proof of a conjecture of Voss on bridges of longest cycles

Published: 2025-09-08 05:34:53

Authors: Jie Ma, Rongxing Xu

Categories: math.CO

Abstract:
Bridges are a classical concept in structural graph theory and play a fundamental role in the study of cycles. A conjecture of Voss from 1991 asserts that if disjoint bridges $B_1, B_2, \ldots, B_k$ of a longest cycle $L$ in a $2$-connected graph overlap in a tree-like manner (i.e., induce a tree in the {\it overlap graph} of $L$), then the total {\it length} of these bridges is at most half the length of $L$. Voss established this for $k \leq 3$ and used it as a key tool in his 1991 monograph on cycles and bridges. In this paper, we confirm the conjecture in full via a reduction to a cycle covering problem.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:01 UTC)

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Score: 0

Objective Bayesian inference for the Dhillon distribution

Published: 2025-09-08 05:33:50

Authors: Pedro Luiz Ramos, Enrique Achire Quispe, Ricardo Puziol de Oliveira, Jorge A. Achcar

Categories: stat.ME

Abstract:
In this work, we develop an objective Bayesian framework for the Dhillon probability distribution. We explicitly derive three objective priors: the Jeffreys prior, the overall reference prior, and the maximal data information prior. We show that both Jeffreys and reference priors yields a proper posterior distribution, whereas the maximal data information prior leads to an improper posterior. Moreover, we establish sufficient conditions for the existence of its respective posterior moments. Bayesian inference is carried out via Markov chain Monte Carlo, using the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. A comprehensive simulation study compares the Bayesian estimators to maximum likelihood estimators in terms of bias, mean squared error, and coverage probability. Finally, a real-data application illustrates the practical utility of the proposed Bayesian approach.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:01 UTC)

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Score: 0

Cloud Detection using Night Sky Background Light at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Published: 2025-09-08 05:33:02

Authors: Fedor Tairli

Categories: astro-ph.IM

Abstract:
Rejection of cloud-contaminated data is a complex and important process at the Pierre Auger Observatory, one which combines information from several sources, including IR cameras, lidars, and satellite imaging. With the deteriorating quality of the IR cameras and challenges in using other sources, we propose a new method. We use continuous detector monitoring measurements to build a large database of night sky background fluxes for each pixel across 27 telescopes. Using this database, we generate the expected background flux and define cloud rejection thresholds. Through a straightforward analysis we construct boolean cloud-contamination masks. We demonstrate some results of the analysis, including comparisons with cloud detected using infra-red observations.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:01 UTC)

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Score: 0

Towards bridging the gap: Systematic sim-to-real transfer for diverse legged robots

Published: 2025-09-08 05:32:28

Authors: Filip Bjelonic, Fabian Tischhauser, Marco Hutter

Categories: cs.RO

Abstract:
Legged robots must achieve both robust locomotion and energy efficiency to be practical in real-world environments. Yet controllers trained in simulation often fail to transfer reliably, and most existing approaches neglect actuator-specific energy losses or depend on complex, hand-tuned reward formulations. We propose a framework that integrates sim-to-real reinforcement learning with a physics-grounded energy model for permanent magnet synchronous motors. The framework requires a minimal parameter set to capture the simulation-to-reality gap and employs a compact four-term reward with a first-principle-based energetic loss formulation that balances electrical and mechanical dissipation. We evaluate and validate the approach through a bottom-up dynamic parameter identification study, spanning actuators, full-robot in-air trajectories and on-ground locomotion. The framework is tested on three primary platforms and deployed on ten additional robots, demonstrating reliable policy transfer without randomization of dynamic parameters. Our method improves energetic efficiency over state-of-the-art methods, achieving a 32 percent reduction in the full Cost of Transport of ANYmal (value 1.27). All code, models, and datasets will be released.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:03 UTC)

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Score: 0

Evaluating Multi-Turn Bargain Skills in LLM-Based Seller Agent

Published: 2025-09-08 05:12:03

Authors: Issue Yishu Wang, Kakam Chong, Xiaofeng Wang, Xu Yan, DeXin Kong, Chen Ju, Ming Chen, Shuai Xiao, Shuguang Han, jufeng chen

Categories: cs.AI

Abstract:
In online second-hand marketplaces, multi-turn bargaining is a crucial part of seller-buyer interactions. Large Language Models (LLMs) can act as seller agents, negotiating with buyers on behalf of sellers under given business constraints. A critical ability for such agents is to track and accurately interpret cumulative buyer intents across long negotiations, which directly impacts bargaining effectiveness. We introduce a multi-turn evaluation framework for measuring the bargaining ability of seller agents in e-commerce dialogues. The framework tests whether an agent can extract and track buyer intents. Our contributions are: (1) a large-scale e-commerce bargaining benchmark spanning 622 categories, 9,892 products, and 3,014 tasks; (2) a turn-level evaluation framework grounded in Theory of Mind (ToM) with annotated buyer intents, moving beyond outcome-only metrics; and (3) an automated pipeline that extracts reliable intent from massive dialogue data.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:03 UTC)

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Score: 0

A flat-mode perspective on the boson peak in amorphous solids

Published: 2025-09-08 05:10:18

Authors: Shivam Mahajan, Long-Zhou Huang, Cunyuan Jiang, Yun-Jiang Wang, Massimo Pica Ciamarra, Jie Zhang, Matteo Baggioli

Categories: cond-mat.soft

Abstract:
The boson peak is a characteristic anomaly of amorphous solids broadly defined as a low-energy excess in the density of states and heat capacity compared to the textbook predictions of Debye theory. The origin of this anomaly has long been the subject of ongoing debate and remains a topic of active controversy. While remaining agnostic about the microscopic origin of the phenomenon, we propose that the boson peak (BP) may universally originate from a dispersionless, optic-like excitation, which we refer to as the 'flat mode'. We revisit both experimental and simulation data from the literature through this lens and conduct further simulations in 2D and 3D amorphous systems. These analyses collectively provide supporting evidence for this interpretation. Notably, if this is indeed the case, a striking analogy emerges with similar anomalies observed in crystalline materials, where the nonphononic flat mode is effectively replaced by anomalously low-energy optical phonons.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:04 UTC)

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Score: 0

Understanding the well-rounded deformation retraction of Teichmüller space

Published: 2025-09-08 05:01:05

Authors: Ingrid Irmer

Categories: math.GT, math.GR

Abstract:
In [10] it was shown that there is a mapping class group-equivariant deformation retraction of the Teichm\"uller space of a closed surface onto a CW complex with dimension equal to the virtual cohomological dimension of the mapping class group. This paper studies the image of this deformation retraction and shows that when the analogy with the well-rounded deformation retraction of $SL(n,\mathbb{Z})$ is defined correctly via a notion of duality, this deformation retraction is analogous to the well-rounded deformation retractions of [2], [24] and [26]. In the process, an elementary necessary condition is derived for a cycle in the geometric realisation of Harvey's curve complex to represent a nontrivial homology class.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:05 UTC)

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Score: 0

Embedding Poisoning: Bypassing Safety Alignment via Embedding Semantic Shift

Published: 2025-09-08 05:00:58

Authors: Shuai Yuan, Zhibo Zhang, Yuxi Li, Guangdong Bai, Wang Kailong

Categories: cs.CR, cs.LG

Abstract:
The widespread distribution of Large Language Models (LLMs) through public platforms like Hugging Face introduces significant security challenges. While these platforms perform basic security scans, they often fail to detect subtle manipulations within the embedding layer. This work identifies a novel class of deployment phase attacks that exploit this vulnerability by injecting imperceptible perturbations directly into the embedding layer outputs without modifying model weights or input text. These perturbations, though statistically benign, systematically bypass safety alignment mechanisms and induce harmful behaviors during inference. We propose Search based Embedding Poisoning(SEP), a practical, model agnostic framework that introduces carefully optimized perturbations into embeddings associated with high risk tokens. SEP leverages a predictable linear transition in model responses, from refusal to harmful output to semantic deviation to identify a narrow perturbation window that evades alignment safeguards. Evaluated across six aligned LLMs, SEP achieves an average attack success rate of 96.43% while preserving benign task performance and evading conventional detection mechanisms. Our findings reveal a critical oversight in deployment security and emphasize the urgent need for embedding level integrity checks in future LLM defense strategies.

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:05 UTC)

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Score: 0

Large Language Models as Virtual Survey Respondents: Evaluating Sociodemographic Response Generation

Published: 2025-09-08 04:59:00

Authors: Jianpeng Zhao, Chenyu Yuan, Weiming Luo, Haoling Xie, Guangwei Zhang, Steven Jige Quan, Zixuan Yuan, Pengyang Wang, Denghui Zhang

Categories: cs.AI

Abstract:
Questionnaire-based surveys are foundational to social science research and public policymaking, yet traditional survey methods remain costly, time-consuming, and often limited in scale. This paper explores a new paradigm: simulating virtual survey respondents using Large Language Models (LLMs). We introduce two novel simulation settings, namely Partial Attribute Simulation (PAS) and Full Attribute Simulation (FAS), to systematically evaluate the ability of LLMs to generate accurate and demographically coherent responses. In PAS, the model predicts missing attributes based on partial respondent profiles, whereas FAS involves generating complete synthetic datasets under both zero-context and context-enhanced conditions. We curate a comprehensive benchmark suite, LLM-S^3 (Large Language Model-based Sociodemographic Survey Simulation), that spans 11 real-world public datasets across four sociological domains. Our evaluation of multiple mainstream LLMs (GPT-3.5/4 Turbo, LLaMA 3.0/3.1-8B) reveals consistent trends in prediction performance, highlights failure modes, and demonstrates how context and prompt design impact simulation fidelity. This work establishes a rigorous foundation for LLM-driven survey simulations, offering scalable and cost-effective tools for sociological research and policy evaluation. Our code and dataset are available at: https://github.com/dart-lab-research/LLM-S-Cube-Benchmark

Summary (gpt-4o-mini — added 2025-09-11 16:06 UTC)

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Score: 0

Multi View Slot Attention Using Paraphrased Texts For Face Anti-Spoofing

Published: 2025-09-08 04:53:46

Authors: Jeongmin Yu, Susang Kim, Kisu Lee, Taekyoung Kwon, Won-Yong Shin, Ha Young Kim

Categories: cs.CV, cs.AI, cs.CR

Abstract:
Recent face anti-spoofing (FAS) methods have shown remarkable cross-domain performance by employing vision-language models like CLIP. However, existing CLIP-based FAS models do not fully exploit CLIP's patch embedding tokens, failing to detect critical spoofing clues. Moreover, these models rely on a single text prompt per class (e.g., 'live' or 'fake'), which limits generalization. To address these issues, we propose MVP-FAS, a novel framework incorporating two key modules: Multi-View Slot attention (MVS) and Multi-Text Patch Alignment (MTPA). Both modules utilize multiple paraphrased texts to generate generalized features and reduce dependence on domain-specific text. MVS extracts local detailed spatial features and global context from patch embeddings by leveraging diverse texts with multiple perspectives. MTPA aligns patches with multiple text representations to improve semantic robustness. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MVP-FAS achieves superior generalization performance, outperforming previous state-of-the-art methods on cross-domain datasets. Code: https://github.com/Elune001/MVP-FAS.

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Score: 0

Harnessing Object Grounding for Time-Sensitive Video Understanding

Published: 2025-09-08 04:52:00

Authors: Tz-Ying Wu, Sharath Nittur Sridhar, Subarna Tripathi

Categories: cs.CV

Abstract:
We propose to improve the time-sensitive video understanding (TSV) capability of video large language models (Video-LLMs) with grounded objects (GO). We hypothesize that TSV tasks can benefit from GO within frames, which is supported by our preliminary experiments on LITA, a state-of-the-art Video-LLM for reasoning temporal localization. While augmenting prompts with textual description of these object annotations improves the performance of LITA, it also introduces extra token length and susceptibility to the noise in object level information. To address this, we propose GO-Tokenizer, a lightweight add-on module for Video-LLMs leveraging off-the-shelf object detectors to encode compact object information on the fly. Experimental results demonstrate that pretraining with GO-Tokenizer outperforms the vanilla Video-LLM and its counterpart utilizing textual description of objects in the prompt. The gain generalizes across different models, datasets and video understanding tasks such as reasoning temporal localization and dense captioning.

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Score: 0

Optimal Average Disk-Inspection via Fermat's Principle

Published: 2025-09-08 04:43:28

Authors: Konstantinos Georgiou

Categories: cs.DM

Abstract:
This work resolves the optimal average-case cost of the Disk-Inspection problem, a variant of Bellman's 1955 lost-in-a-forest problem. In Disk-Inspection, a mobile agent starts at the center of a unit disk and follows a trajectory that inspects perimeter points whenever the disk does not obstruct visibility. The worst-case cost was solved optimally in 1957 by Isbell, but the average-case version remained open, with heuristic upper bounds proposed by Gluss in 1961 and improved only recently. Our approach applies Fermat's Principle of Least Time to a recently proposed discretization framework, showing that optimal solutions are captured by a one-parameter family of recurrences independent of the discretization size. In the continuum limit these recurrences give rise to a single-parameter optimal control problem, whose trajectories coincide with limiting solutions of the original Disk-Inspection problem. A crucial step is proving that the optimal initial condition generates a trajectory that avoids the unit disk, thereby validating the optics formulation and reducing the many-variable optimization to a rigorous one-parameter problem. In particular, this disproves Gluss's conjecture that optimal trajectories must touch the disk. Our analysis determines the exact optimal average-case inspection cost, equal to $3.549259\ldots$ and certified to at least six digits of accuracy.

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Score: 0

Multi-Modal Camera-Based Detection of Vulnerable Road Users

Published: 2025-09-08 04:39:07

Authors: Penelope Brown, Julie Stephany Berrio Perez, Mao Shan, Stewart Worrall

Categories: cs.CV, cs.RO

Abstract:
Vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists represent more than half of global traffic deaths, yet their detection remains challenging in poor lighting, adverse weather, and unbalanced data sets. This paper presents a multimodal detection framework that integrates RGB and thermal infrared imaging with a fine-tuned YOLOv8 model. Training leveraged KITTI, BDD100K, and Teledyne FLIR datasets, with class re-weighting and light augmentations to improve minority-class performance and robustness, experiments show that 640-pixel resolution and partial backbone freezing optimise accuracy and efficiency, while class-weighted losses enhance recall for rare VRUs. Results highlight that thermal models achieve the highest precision, and RGB-to-thermal augmentation boosts recall, demonstrating the potential of multimodal detection to improve VRU safety at intersections.

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Score: 0

A Fragile Number Sense: Probing the Elemental Limits of Numerical Reasoning in LLMs

Published: 2025-09-08 04:31:12

Authors: Roussel Rahman, Aashwin Ananda Mishra

Categories: cs.LG, cs.AI

Abstract:
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable emergent capabilities, yet the robustness of their numerical reasoning remains an open question. While standard benchmarks evaluate LLM reasoning on complex problem sets using aggregated metrics, they often obscure foundational weaknesses. In this work, we probe LLM mathematical numeracy by evaluating performance on problems of escalating complexity, from constituent operations to combinatorial puzzles. We test several state-of-the-art LLM-based agents on a 100-problem challenge comprising four categories: (1) basic arithmetic, (2) advanced operations, (3) primality checking, and (4) the Game of 24 number puzzle. Our results show that while the agents achieved high accuracy on the first three categories, which require deterministic algorithmic execution, they consistently failed at the number puzzle, underlining its demand for a heuristic search over a large combinatorial space to be a significant bottleneck. These findings reveal that the agents' proficiency is largely confined to recalling and executing known algorithms, rather than performing generative problem-solving. This suggests their apparent numerical reasoning is more akin to sophisticated pattern-matching than flexible, analytical thought, limiting their potential for tasks that require novel or creative numerical insights.

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Score: 0

Quantitative Currency Evaluation in Low-Resource Settings through Pattern Analysis to Assist Visually Impaired Users

Published: 2025-09-08 04:24:31

Authors: Md Sultanul Islam Ovi, Mainul Hossain, Md Badsha Biswas

Categories: cs.CV

Abstract:
Currency recognition systems often overlook usability and authenticity assessment, especially in low-resource environments where visually impaired users and offline validation are common. While existing methods focus on denomination classification, they typically ignore physical degradation and forgery, limiting their applicability in real-world conditions. This paper presents a unified framework for currency evaluation that integrates three modules: denomination classification using lightweight CNN models, damage quantification through a novel Unified Currency Damage Index (UCDI), and counterfeit detection using feature-based template matching. The dataset consists of over 82,000 annotated images spanning clean, damaged, and counterfeit notes. Our Custom_CNN model achieves high classification performance with low parameter count. The UCDI metric provides a continuous usability score based on binary mask loss, chromatic distortion, and structural feature loss. The counterfeit detection module demonstrates reliable identification of forged notes across varied imaging conditions. The framework supports real-time, on-device inference and addresses key deployment challenges in constrained environments. Results show that accurate, interpretable, and compact solutions can support inclusive currency evaluation in practical settings.

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Score: 0

Exploring approaches to computational representation and classification of user-generated meal logs

Published: 2025-09-08 04:23:48

Authors: Guanlan Hu, Adit Anand, Pooja M. Desai, Iñigo Urteaga, Lena Mamykina

Categories: cs.LG

Abstract:
This study examined the use of machine learning and domain specific enrichment on patient generated health data, in the form of free text meal logs, to classify meals on alignment with different nutritional goals. We used a dataset of over 3000 meal records collected by 114 individuals from a diverse, low income community in a major US city using a mobile app. Registered dietitians provided expert judgement for meal to goal alignment, used as gold standard for evaluation. Using text embeddings, including TFIDF and BERT, and domain specific enrichment information, including ontologies, ingredient parsers, and macronutrient contents as inputs, we evaluated the performance of logistic regression and multilayer perceptron classifiers using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score against the gold standard and self assessment. Even without enrichment, ML outperformed self assessments of individuals who logged meals, and the best performing combination of ML classifier with enrichment achieved even higher accuracies. In general, ML classifiers with enrichment of Parsed Ingredients, Food Entities, and Macronutrients information performed well across multiple nutritional goals, but there was variability in the impact of enrichment and classification algorithm on accuracy of classification for different nutritional goals. In conclusion, ML can utilize unstructured free text meal logs and reliably classify whether meals align with specific nutritional goals, exceeding self assessments, especially when incorporating nutrition domain knowledge. Our findings highlight the potential of ML analysis of patient generated health data to support patient centered nutrition guidance in precision healthcare.

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Score: 0

Towards scalable organ level 3D plant segmentation: Bridging the data algorithm computing gap

Published: 2025-09-08 04:21:27

Authors: Ruiming Du, Guangxun Zhai, Tian Qiu, Yu Jiang

Categories: cs.CV, q-bio.QM

Abstract:
The precise characterization of plant morphology provides valuable insights into plant environment interactions and genetic evolution. A key technology for extracting this information is 3D segmentation, which delineates individual plant organs from complex point clouds. Despite significant progress in general 3D computer vision domains, the adoption of 3D segmentation for plant phenotyping remains limited by three major challenges: i) the scarcity of large-scale annotated datasets, ii) technical difficulties in adapting advanced deep neural networks to plant point clouds, and iii) the lack of standardized benchmarks and evaluation protocols tailored to plant science. This review systematically addresses these barriers by: i) providing an overview of existing 3D plant datasets in the context of general 3D segmentation domains, ii) systematically summarizing deep learning-based methods for point cloud semantic and instance segmentation, iii) introducing Plant Segmentation Studio (PSS), an open-source framework for reproducible benchmarking, and iv) conducting extensive quantitative experiments to evaluate representative networks and sim-to-real learning strategies. Our findings highlight the efficacy of sparse convolutional backbones and transformer-based instance segmentation, while also emphasizing the complementary role of modeling-based and augmentation-based synthetic data generation for sim-to-real learning in reducing annotation demands. In general, this study bridges the gap between algorithmic advances and practical deployment, providing immediate tools for researchers and a roadmap for developing data-efficient and generalizable deep learning solutions in 3D plant phenotyping. Data and code are available at https://github.com/perrydoremi/PlantSegStudio.

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Score: 0

A Celestial Soft Symmetry Algebra in the ${\cal N}=8$ Supergravity

Published: 2025-09-08 04:21:04

Authors: Changhyun Ahn, Man Hea Kim

Categories: hep-th

Abstract:
From the classical $SO({\cal N}=8)$ extended superconformal algebra between the lowest ${\cal N}=8$ multiplet in two dimensions obtained by Ademollo et al. (1976), we generalize it for the arbitrary ${\cal N}=8$ multiplet with manifest $SU(8)$ symmetry containing the bosonic $w_{1+\infty}$ algebra. By modifying this ${\cal N}=8$ supersymmetric $w_{1+\infty}$ algebra, we show that the celestial soft current algebra between the graviton, the gravitinos, the graviphotons, the graviphotinos, and the scalars in two dimensions appears in the ${\cal N}=8$ supergravity theory with $SO(8)$ (or $SU(8)$) global symmetry in four dimensions initiated by de Wit and Freedman (at Stony Brook in 1977). The twenty five couplings in this celestial algebra can be written in terms of eight arbitrary couplings via the Jacobi identity.

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Score: 0

Coexistence of Two Types of Liquid Structures at Platinum-Water Interfaces

Published: 2025-09-08 04:21:01

Authors: Yitong Li, Qian Ai, Lalith Krishna Samanth Bonagiri, Yingjie Zhang

Categories: cond-mat.mtrl-sci, physics.chem-ph

Abstract:
Platinum-water interfaces underpin many electrochemical energy conversion processes. However, despite decades of research, the real-space liquid structure of these interfaces remains elusive. Using three-dimensional atomic force microscopy (3D-AFM), we mapped Pt-water interface in real space with angstrom-level resolution. Topographic imaging revealed atomically flat (type I) and stripe-like (type II) surface nanodomains. Force-distance profiles above type I domains exhibited oscillatory decay patterns with periodicity of ~0.33 nm, consistent with water. In contrast, type II domains showed stronger oscillations with larger periodicity of ~0.45 nm and extended decay lengths, indicative of a different liquid structure with stronger correlation and ordering. Wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) measurements of pure water and a series of liquid n-alkanes revealed peaks at ~0.31 nm and ~0.46 nm, in agreement with 3D-AFM observations of type I and type II structures, respectively. Our findings uncover the coexistence of two types of liquid structures at Pt-water interfaces modulated by surface heterogeneity, enabling new understandings and design principles for energy conversion applications.

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Score: 0

AttestLLM: Efficient Attestation Framework for Billion-scale On-device LLMs

Published: 2025-09-08 04:17:02

Authors: Ruisi Zhang, Yifei Zhao, Neusha Javidnia, Mengxin Zheng, Farinaz Koushanfar

Categories: cs.CR, cs.AI

Abstract:
As on-device LLMs(e.g., Apple on-device Intelligence) are widely adopted to reduce network dependency, improve privacy, and enhance responsiveness, verifying the legitimacy of models running on local devices becomes critical. Existing attestation techniques are not suitable for billion-parameter Large Language Models (LLMs), struggling to remain both time- and memory-efficient while addressing emerging threats in the LLM era. In this paper, we present AttestLLM, the first-of-its-kind attestation framework to protect the hardware-level intellectual property (IP) of device vendors by ensuring that only authorized LLMs can execute on target platforms. AttestLLM leverages an algorithm/software/hardware co-design approach to embed robust watermarking signatures onto the activation distributions of LLM building blocks. It also optimizes the attestation protocol within the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), providing efficient verification without compromising inference throughput. Extensive proof-of-concept evaluations on LLMs from Llama, Qwen, and Phi families for on-device use cases demonstrate AttestLLM's attestation reliability, fidelity, and efficiency. Furthermore, AttestLLM enforces model legitimacy and exhibits resilience against model replacement and forgery attacks.

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Score: 0

Ferroelectricity in antiferromagnetic wurtzite nitrides

Published: 2025-09-08 04:13:57

Authors: Steven M. Baksa, Lin-Ding Yuan, Stephen D. Wilson, James M. Rondinelli

Categories: cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Abstract:
Wurtzite-type nitrides have recently emerged as promising candidates for ferroelectric applications, yet their magnetic counterparts remain largely unexplored. Here, we establish MnSiN$_2$ and MnGeN$_2$ as aristotypes of a new multiferroic wurtzite family that simultaneously exhibits ferroelectricity and antiferromagnetism. These Mn(II)-based nitrides crystallize in polar structures and display robust G-type antiferromagnetism at room temperature. First-principles calculations reveal that nonmagnetic analogs incorporating Zn and Mg possess high polarization reversal barriers (0.735 and 0.683 eV per formula unit) and wide band gaps (4.0 and 4.8 eV), making them ideal ferroelectric candidates. In contrast, MnSiN$_2$ and MnGeN$_2$ exhibit strong antiferromagnetic exchange interactions (5--9 meV per Mn site) and moderate band gaps (1.6 and 1.0 eV), with reversal barriers of 0.963 and 0.460 eV per formula unit, respectively. Despite their limited magnetoelectric coupling, we show this family of Type-1 multiferroics exhibits altermagnetic spin splitting which reverses sign upon polarization switching. By strategically substituting alkaline-earth metals, we engineer multiple materials with coexisting switchable polarization, spin texture, and magnetic order. These findings open new avenues for the design of nitride-based altermagnetic multiferroics, offering a platform for integrated antiferromagnetic spintronic devices.

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Score: 0

A Generic and Efficient Python Runtime Verification System and its Large-scale Evaluation

Published: 2025-09-08 04:11:28

Authors: Zhuohang Shen, Mohammed Yaseen, Denini Silva, Kevin Guan, Junho Lee, Marcelo d'Amorim, Owolabi Legunsen

Categories: cs.SE

Abstract:
Runtime verification (RV) now scales for testing thousands of open-source Java projects, helping find hundreds of bugs. The popular Python ecosystem could use such benefits. But, today's Python RV systems are limited to a domain or specification logic, or slow. We propose PyMOP, a generic, extensible, and efficient RV system for Python. PyMOP supports five logics, implements five existing monitoring algorithms, ships with 73 API specs of Python and widely-used libraries, supports three instrumentation strategies, and users can easily add more of these. On 290,133 unit tests in 1,463 GitHub projects, we find mainly that (i) the default monitoring algorithm for Java is often not the fastest for Python; (ii) PyMOP is up to 1,168.3x faster than two recent dynamic analysis systems; and (iii) 44 of 121 bugs that PyMOP helped find so far were fixed by developers. PyMOP's generality and efficiency position it well as an excellent platform for the next advances on RV for Python.

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Score: 0

Hydrogen-induced fast fracture in a 1.5 GPa dual-phase steel

Published: 2025-09-08 04:09:52

Authors: Rama Srinivas Varanasi, Motomichi Koyama, Shuya Chiba, Saya Ajito, Eiji Akiyama

Categories: cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Abstract:
This study clarifies the hydrogen embrittlement (HE) behavior in a 1.5 GPa ferrite-martensite dual-phase (DP) steel. Hydrogen pre-charging (3.8 mass ppm diffusible hydrogen), followed by slow strain tensile testing (10-4 s-1), resulted in a brittle fracture at 900 MPa within the elastic regime. Fractographic studies indicated that surface crack initiation consists of intergranular and quasi-cleavage morphology; site-specific transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations revealed sub-surface secondary crack blunting by ferrite. A mixed-mode morphology consisting of ductile and brittle features was observed adjacent to crack initiation. It differs from the previous investigation of uncharged DP steel, wherein a predominant brittle fracture was observed. Following significant crack growth, the pre-charged specimen exhibited predominant brittle fracture; site-specific TEM and transmission Kikuchi diffraction studies revealed {100} ferrite cleavage cracking. Electron backscatter diffraction studies were performed on the cross-sectional cracks. We explain the HE via hydrogen-induced fast fracture mechanism. During loading, hydrogen diffuses to the prior austenite grain boundary, resulting in hydrogen-induced decohesion. Subsequent hydrogen diffusion to the crack tip promotes brittle fracture at high crack velocity (>Vcrit). The high crack velocity effectively inhibits crack blunting via dislocation emission, ensuring sustained brittle crack growth even after hydrogen depletion at the crack tip, resulting in {100} ferrite cleavage cracking. Based on TEM observations, we explain the formation of river pattern features on the {100} cleavage surface.

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Score: 0

Text-Trained LLMs Can Zero-Shot Extrapolate PDE Dynamics

Published: 2025-09-08 04:08:50

Authors: Jiajun Bao, Nicolas Boullé, Toni J. B. Liu, Raphaël Sarfati, Christopher J. Earls

Categories: cs.LG

Abstract:
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated emergent in-context learning (ICL) capabilities across a range of tasks, including zero-shot time-series forecasting. We show that text-trained foundation models can accurately extrapolate spatiotemporal dynamics from discretized partial differential equation (PDE) solutions without fine-tuning or natural language prompting. Predictive accuracy improves with longer temporal contexts but degrades at finer spatial discretizations. In multi-step rollouts, where the model recursively predicts future spatial states over multiple time steps, errors grow algebraically with the time horizon, reminiscent of global error accumulation in classical finite-difference solvers. We interpret these trends as in-context neural scaling laws, where prediction quality varies predictably with both context length and output length. To better understand how LLMs are able to internally process PDE solutions so as to accurately roll them out, we analyze token-level output distributions and uncover a consistent ICL progression: beginning with syntactic pattern imitation, transitioning through an exploratory high-entropy phase, and culminating in confident, numerically grounded predictions.

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Score: 0

Text4Seg++: Advancing Image Segmentation via Generative Language Modeling

Published: 2025-09-08 04:07:14

Authors: Mengcheng Lan, Chaofeng Chen, Jiaxing Xu, Zongrui Li, Yiping Ke, Xudong Jiang, Yingchen Yu, Yunqing Zhao, Song Bai

Categories: cs.CV

Abstract:
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have shown exceptional capabilities in vision-language tasks. However, effectively integrating image segmentation into these models remains a significant challenge. In this work, we propose a novel text-as-mask paradigm that casts image segmentation as a text generation problem, eliminating the need for additional decoders and significantly simplifying the segmentation process. Our key innovation is semantic descriptors, a new textual representation of segmentation masks where each image patch is mapped to its corresponding text label. We first introduce image-wise semantic descriptors, a patch-aligned textual representation of segmentation masks that integrates naturally into the language modeling pipeline. To enhance efficiency, we introduce the Row-wise Run-Length Encoding (R-RLE), which compresses redundant text sequences, reducing the length of semantic descriptors by 74% and accelerating inference by $3\times$, without compromising performance. Building upon this, our initial framework Text4Seg achieves strong segmentation performance across a wide range of vision tasks. To further improve granularity and compactness, we propose box-wise semantic descriptors, which localizes regions of interest using bounding boxes and represents region masks via structured mask tokens called semantic bricks. This leads to our refined model, Text4Seg++, which formulates segmentation as a next-brick prediction task, combining precision, scalability, and generative efficiency. Comprehensive experiments on natural and remote sensing datasets show that Text4Seg++ consistently outperforms state-of-the-art models across diverse benchmarks without any task-specific fine-tuning, while remaining compatible with existing MLLM backbones. Our work highlights the effectiveness, scalability, and generalizability of text-driven image segmentation within the MLLM framework.

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Score: 0

On the Casimir number and formal codegree of Haagerup-Izumi fusion rings

Published: 2025-09-08 04:05:38

Authors: Ying Zheng, Jiacheng Bao, Zhiqiang Yu

Categories: math.QA, 18M20

Abstract:
For any cyclic group $\mathbb{Z}_n$, we first determine the Casimir number and determinant of the Haagerup-Izumi fusion ring $\mathcal{HI}_{\mathbb{Z}_n}$, it turns out that they do not share the same set of prime factors. Then we show that all finite-dimensional irreducible representations of $\mathcal{HI}_{\mathbb{Z}_n}$ are defined over certain cyclotomic fields. As a direct result, we obtain the formal codegrees of $\mathcal{HI}_{\mathbb{Z}_n}$, which satisfy the pseudo-unitary inequality.

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Score: 0

Thermal Fluctuation Driven Structural Relaxation in Undeformed Glasses: Unraveling the Evolution of Mechanical Stability

Published: 2025-09-08 03:59:41

Authors: Avinash Kumar Jha, Shiladitya Sengupta

Categories: cond-mat.soft, cond-mat.dis-nn, cond-mat.stat-mech

Abstract:
Glasses are mechanically rigid, still undergo structural relaxation which changes their properties and affects potential technological applications. Understanding the underlying physical processes is a problem of broad theoretical and practical interest. We investigate intermittent structural relaxation events or ``avalanches'' occurring inside glassy regime. Contrary to the more well-known avalanches due to shear, here they are induced by thermal fluctuations in undeformed glass. By analyzing changes in structural, mechanical, dynamical, topological and vibrational properties of the system, we provide a multi-faceted characterization of avalanches. Overall we find that the system softens due to avalanches. Further, we develop a formalism to extract local measures of non-Affine displacement and tensorial strain for thermal amorphous solids in absence of any external deformation. Our analysis highlights a key difference between two types of driving: while the shear deformation response is dominated by volume preserving deviatoric strain, changes in local density must be considered to model response of undeformed glass under thermal noise. The observations suggest the idea of Generalized Strain Transformation Zones (GSTZ), where coupled shear and volume-changing deformations govern thermally-mediated plasticity. Our work paves the way for a unified description of elasto-plastic response of (athermal) mechanically deformed and thermally driven undeformed glasses.

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Score: 0

Schrodinger's Toolbox: Exploring the Quantum Rowhammer Attack

Published: 2025-09-08 03:55:17

Authors: Devon Campbell

Categories: quant-ph, cs.CR

Abstract:
Residual cross-talk in superconducting qubit devices creates a security vulnerability for emerging quantum cloud services. We demonstrate a Clifford-only Quantum Rowhammer attack-using just X and CNOT gates-that injects faults on IBM's 127-qubit Eagle processors without requiring pulse-level access. Experiments show that targeted hammering induces localized errors confined to the attack cycle and primarily manifests as phase noise, as confirmed by near 50% flip rates under Hadamard-basis probing. A full lattice sweep maps QR's spatial and temporal behavior, revealing reproducible corruption limited to qubits within two coupling hops and rapid recovery in subsequent benign cycles. Finally, we leverage these properties to outline a prime-and-probe covert channel, demonstrating that the clear separability between hammered and benign rounds enables highly reliable signaling without error correction. These findings underscore the need for hardware-level isolation and scheduler-aware defenses as multi-tenant quantum computing becomes standard.

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Score: 0

$\mathcal{H}_\infty$ Optimal Navigation in the Cislunar Space with LFT Models

Published: 2025-09-08 03:47:28

Authors: Tanay Kumar, Raktim Bhattacharya

Categories: math.OC

Abstract:
Navigation in the cislunar domain presents significant challenges due to chaotic and unmodeled dynamics, as well as state-dependent sensor errors. This paper develops a robust estimation framework based on Linear Fractional Transformation (LFT) models, and state estimation in $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ and $\mu$ synthesis framework to address these challenges. The cislunar dynamics are embedded into an LFT form that captures nonlinearities in the gravitational model and state-dependent sensor errors as structured uncertainty. A nonlinear estimator is then synthesized in the $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ sense to ensure robust performance guarantees in the presence of the stated uncertainties. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the estimator for navigation in a surveillance constellation.

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Score: 0

Single-Shot Decoding of Biased-Tailored Quantum LDPC Codes

Published: 2025-09-08 03:43:22

Authors: Devon Campbell

Categories: quant-ph, cs.IT, math.IT

Abstract:
Quantum processors are often affected by biased noise and noisy readout, which reduce reliability and reproducibility. This work combines two complementary strategies to address these challenges. The first is bias tailoring, which aligns stabilizers with the dominant error type. The second is single-shot (SS) decoding, which uses metachecks to identify measurement faults from just one noisy round. We implement these ideas in a four-dimensional lifted hypergraph product (4D-LHP) code constructed from quasi-cyclic protograph seeds. Simulation results show that bias tailoring lowers the word-error rate (WER) by 20-60 percent across realistic Z:X bias ratios (from 1:1 up to 1000:1), with the largest improvements at moderate bias. When measurement noise is present, a single SS round recovers more than one third of the performance lost to readout errors. Moreover, metachecks identify over 99.8 percent of faulty syndromes, providing near-complete fault visibility even with limited correction power. Together, these findings demonstrate that 4D-LHP codes maintain strong resilience under realistic noise, making them promising candidates for integration into orchestrated QPU-CPU workflows.

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Score: 0

A long period transient search method for the Murchison Widefield Array

Published: 2025-09-08 03:40:58

Authors: Csanád Horváth, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Samuel J. McSweeney, Timothy J. Galvin, John Morgan

Categories: astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.HE

Abstract:
We present an automated search method for radio transients on the minute timescale focused on the emerging long period transients (LPTs) in image-plane radio data. The method is tuned for use with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and tested on archival observations from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-Sky MWA Extended Survey (GLEAM-X) in the 70--300 MHz range. The images are formed from model-subtracted visibilities, before applying three filters to the time series of each pixel in an image, with each filter designed to be sensitive to a different transient behaviour. Due to the nature of radio interferometry and the refraction of the fluctuating ionosphere, the vast majority of candidates at this stage are artefacts which we identify and remove using a set of flagging measures. Of the 336 final candidates, 7 were genuine transients; 1 new LPT, 1 new pulsar, and 5 known pulsars. The performance of the method is analysed by injecting modelled transient pulses into a subset of the observations and applying the method to the result.

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Score: 0

Evaluating the Efficiency of Latent Spaces via the Coupling-Matrix

Published: 2025-09-08 03:36:47

Authors: Mehmet Can Yavuz, Berrin Yanikoglu

Categories: cs.LG, cs.CV

Abstract:
A central challenge in representation learning is constructing latent embeddings that are both expressive and efficient. In practice, deep networks often produce redundant latent spaces where multiple coordinates encode overlapping information, reducing effective capacity and hindering generalization. Standard metrics such as accuracy or reconstruction loss provide only indirect evidence of such redundancy and cannot isolate it as a failure mode. We introduce a redundancy index, denoted rho(C), that directly quantifies inter-dimensional dependencies by analyzing coupling matrices derived from latent representations and comparing their off-diagonal statistics against a normal distribution via energy distance. The result is a compact, interpretable, and statistically grounded measure of representational quality. We validate rho(C) across discriminative and generative settings on MNIST variants, Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10, and CIFAR-100, spanning multiple architectures and hyperparameter optimization strategies. Empirically, low rho(C) reliably predicts high classification accuracy or low reconstruction error, while elevated redundancy is associated with performance collapse. Estimator reliability grows with latent dimension, yielding natural lower bounds for reliable analysis. We further show that Tree-structured Parzen Estimators (TPE) preferentially explore low-rho regions, suggesting that rho(C) can guide neural architecture search and serve as a redundancy-aware regularization target. By exposing redundancy as a universal bottleneck across models and tasks, rho(C) offers both a theoretical lens and a practical tool for evaluating and improving the efficiency of learned representations.

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Score: 0

Nonlinear planar Hall effect from superconducting vortex motion

Published: 2025-09-08 03:36:44

Authors: Mio Hashimoto, Takako Konoike, Tomoki Kobayashi, Shintaro Hoshino, Takuya Kawada, Tomoyuki Yokouchi, Shinya Uji, Atsutaka Maeda, Yuki Shiomi

Categories: cond-mat.supr-con

Abstract:
We report the nonreciprocal charge transport along the longitudinal and transverse directions in the vortex flow regime of FeSe superconducting films. Clear nonreciprocal signals under an inplane magnetic field reveals symmetry breaking at the film surfaces since the crystal structure of FeSe is centrosymmetric. Although the symmetry in such polar superconductors allows the nonreciprocal transverse response under a magnetic field parallel to the electric current, its observation is physically counterintuitive because vortex motion is not expected in this configuration. We propose that thermally excited (anti)vortices due to the two-dimensional nature of FeSe give rise to the nonreciprocal transverse signals when the mirror symmetry is broken by the inplane magnetic field.

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Score: 0

Enhancing Low-Altitude Airspace Security: MLLM-Enabled UAV Intent Recognition

Published: 2025-09-08 03:34:56

Authors: Guangyu Lei, Tianhao Liang, Yuqi Ping, Xinglin Chen, Longyu Zhou, Junwei Wu, Xiyuan Zhang, Huahao Ding, Xingjian Zhang, Weijie Yuan, Tingting Zhang, Qinyu Zhang

Categories: eess.SY, cs.LG, cs.SY, 68T07, 68T45, 93C85, 94A12, I.2.10; I.2.6; I.2.9; C.2.1

Abstract:
The rapid development of the low-altitude economy emphasizes the critical need for effective perception and intent recognition of non-cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The advanced generative reasoning capabilities of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) present a promising approach in such tasks. In this paper, we focus on the combination of UAV intent recognition and the MLLMs. Specifically, we first present an MLLM-enabled UAV intent recognition architecture, where the multimodal perception system is utilized to obtain real-time payload and motion information of UAVs, generating structured input information, and MLLM outputs intent recognition results by incorporating environmental information, prior knowledge, and tactical preferences. Subsequently, we review the related work and demonstrate their progress within the proposed architecture. Then, a use case for low-altitude confrontation is conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture and offer valuable insights for practical system design. Finally, the future challenges are discussed, followed by corresponding strategic recommendations for further applications.

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Score: 0

WindFM: An Open-Source Foundation Model for Zero-Shot Wind Power Forecasting

Published: 2025-09-08 03:26:18

Authors: Hang Fan, Yu Shi, Zongliang Fu, Shuo Chen, Wei Wei, Wei Xu, Jian Li

Categories: cs.LG

Abstract:
High-quality wind power forecasting is crucial for the operation of modern power grids. However, prevailing data-driven paradigms either train a site-specific model which cannot generalize to other locations or rely on fine-tuning of general-purpose time series foundation models which are difficult to incorporate domain-specific data in the energy sector. This paper introduces WindFM, a lightweight and generative Foundation Model designed specifically for probabilistic wind power forecasting. WindFM employs a discretize-and-generate framework. A specialized time-series tokenizer first converts continuous multivariate observations into discrete, hierarchical tokens. Subsequently, a decoder-only Transformer learns a universal representation of wind generation dynamics by autoregressively pre-training on these token sequences. Using the comprehensive WIND Toolkit dataset comprising approximately 150 billion time steps from more than 126,000 sites, WindFM develops a foundational understanding of the complex interplay between atmospheric conditions and power output. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our compact 8.1M parameter model achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot performance on both deterministic and probabilistic tasks, outperforming specialized models and larger foundation models without any fine-tuning. In particular, WindFM exhibits strong adaptiveness under out-of-distribution data from a different continent, demonstrating the robustness and transferability of its learned representations. Our pre-trained model is publicly available at https://github.com/shiyu-coder/WindFM.

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Score: 0

A Deep SETI Search for Technosignatures in the TRAPPIST-1 System with FAST

Published: 2025-09-08 03:23:39

Authors: Guang-Yuan Song, Zhen-Zhao Tao, Bo-Lun Huang, Yan Cui, Bo Yu, Tong-Jie Zhang

Categories: astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.EP

Abstract:
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is one of its five key science objectives. We conducted a targeted narrowband search toward the TRAPPIST-1 system using FAST. The observations consisted of five independent L-band pointings, each with a 20-minute integration, for a total on-source time of 1.67h. The frequency coverage spanned 1.05--1.45GHz with a spectral resolution of ~7.5Hz. We searched for narrowband drifting signals with Doppler drift rates within +_4Hz/s and a signal-to-noise ratio threshold of S/N>10 in two orthogonal linear polarizations separately.Based on the system parameters adopted in this work, we estimate a minimum detectable equivalent isotropic radiated power of 2.04x10^10W, placing one of the most stringent constraints to date on persistent or high-duty-cycle narrowband transmitters in this system. No credible technosignature candidates were identified within the searched parameter space. Nevertheless,TRAPPIST-1 remains a compelling target for future SETI efforts. We plan to extend our search to other signal types, such as periodic or transient transmitters, and to carry out broader surveys of nearby exoplanetary systems with FAST.

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Score: 0

Moment Dilations and Functional Calculus for Random Operators

Published: 2025-09-08 03:18:56

Authors: James Tian

Categories: math.FA, math.OA, Primary: 47A20, secondary: 46L53, 47A60, 47A63, 47B80

Abstract:
We develop a dilation theory for tuples of random operators on a Hilbert space. Their joint distribution defines a moment kernel by expectation of operator products. We prove that this kernel admits a dilation to a Cuntz family of isometries precisely when the associated shifted kernel is dominated in the positive-definite order. As consequences, we establish a mean-square version of von Neumann's inequality and construct a free functional calculus for random operators, extending from polynomials to the free disk algebra and the free Hardy algebra. These results extend classical dilation theory into a probabilistic setting and provide new tools for analyzing noncommutative random systems.

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Score: 0

Minimax optimal transfer learning for high-dimensional additive regression

Published: 2025-09-08 03:16:05

Authors: Seung Hyun Moon

Categories: stat.ML, cs.LG, math.ST, stat.TH

Abstract:
This paper studies high-dimensional additive regression under the transfer learning framework, where one observes samples from a target population together with auxiliary samples from different but potentially related regression models. We first introduce a target-only estimation procedure based on the smooth backfitting estimator with local linear smoothing. In contrast to previous work, we establish general error bounds under sub-Weibull($\alpha$) noise, thereby accommodating heavy-tailed error distributions. In the sub-exponential case ($\alpha=1$), we show that the estimator attains the minimax lower bound under regularity conditions, which requires a substantial departure from existing proof strategies. We then develop a novel two-stage estimation method within a transfer learning framework, and provide theoretical guarantees at both the population and empirical levels. Error bounds are derived for each stage under general tail conditions, and we further demonstrate that the minimax optimal rate is achieved when the auxiliary and target distributions are sufficiently close. All theoretical results are supported by simulation studies and real data analysis.

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Score: 0

Can AI Make Energy Retrofit Decisions? An Evaluation of Large Language Models

Published: 2025-09-08 03:13:47

Authors: Lei Shu, Dong Zhao

Categories: cs.AI

Abstract:
Conventional approaches to building energy retrofit decision making suffer from limited generalizability and low interpretability, hindering adoption in diverse residential contexts. With the growth of Smart and Connected Communities, generative AI, especially large language models (LLMs), may help by processing contextual information and producing practitioner readable recommendations. We evaluate seven LLMs (ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, Grok, Llama, and Claude) on residential retrofit decisions under two objectives: maximizing CO2 reduction (technical) and minimizing payback period (sociotechnical). Performance is assessed on four dimensions: accuracy, consistency, sensitivity, and reasoning, using a dataset of 400 homes across 49 US states. LLMs generate effective recommendations in many cases, reaching up to 54.5 percent top 1 match and 92.8 percent within top 5 without fine tuning. Performance is stronger for the technical objective, while sociotechnical decisions are limited by economic trade offs and local context. Agreement across models is low, and higher performing models tend to diverge from others. LLMs are sensitive to location and building geometry but less sensitive to technology and occupant behavior. Most models show step by step, engineering style reasoning, but it is often simplified and lacks deeper contextual awareness. Overall, LLMs are promising assistants for energy retrofit decision making, but improvements in accuracy, consistency, and context handling are needed for reliable practice.

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Score: 0

Video-based Generalized Category Discovery via Memory-Guided Consistency-Aware Contrastive Learning

Published: 2025-09-08 03:12:57

Authors: Zhang Jing, Pu Nan, Xie Yu Xiang, Guo Yanming, Lu Qianqi, Zou Shiwei, Yan Jie, Chen Yan

Categories: cs.CV

Abstract:
Generalized Category Discovery (GCD) is an emerging and challenging open-world problem that has garnered increasing attention in recent years. Most existing GCD methods focus on discovering categories in static images. However, relying solely on static visual content is often insufficient to reliably discover novel categories. To bridge this gap, we extend the GCD problem to the video domain and introduce a new setting, termed Video-GCD. Thus, effectively integrating multi-perspective information across time is crucial for accurate Video-GCD. To tackle this challenge, we propose a novel Memory-guided Consistency-aware Contrastive Learning (MCCL) framework, which explicitly captures temporal-spatial cues and incorporates them into contrastive learning through a consistency-guided voting mechanism. MCCL consists of two core components: Consistency-Aware Contrastive Learning(CACL) and Memory-Guided Representation Enhancement (MGRE). CACL exploits multiperspective temporal features to estimate consistency scores between unlabeled instances, which are then used to weight the contrastive loss accordingly. MGRE introduces a dual-level memory buffer that maintains both feature-level and logit-level representations, providing global context to enhance intra-class compactness and inter-class separability. This in turn refines the consistency estimation in CACL, forming a mutually reinforcing feedback loop between representation learning and consistency modeling. To facilitate a comprehensive evaluation, we construct a new and challenging Video-GCD benchmark, which includes action recognition and bird classification video datasets. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms competitive GCD approaches adapted from image-based settings, highlighting the importance of temporal information for discovering novel categories in videos. The code will be publicly available.

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Score: 0

Efficient Convex Optimization for Bosonic State Tomography

Published: 2025-09-08 03:12:36

Authors: Shengyong Li, Yanjin Yue, Ying Hu, Rui-Yang Gong, Qianchuan Zhao, Zhihui Peng, Pengtao Song, Zeliang Xiang, Jing Zhang

Categories: quant-ph

Abstract:
Quantum states encoded in electromagnetic fields, also known as bosonic states, have been widely applied in quantum sensing, quantum communication, and quantum error correction. Accurate characterization is therefore essential yet difficult when states cannot be reconstructed with sparse Pauli measurements. Tomography must work with dense measurement bases, high-dimensional Hilbert spaces, and often sample-based data. However, existing convex optimization-based techniques are not efficient enough and scale poorly when extended to large and multi-mode systems. In this work, we explore convex optimization as an effective framework to address problems in bosonic state tomography, introducing three techniques to enhance efficiency and scalability: efficient displacement operator computation, Hilbert space truncation, and stochastic convex optimization, which mitigate common limitations of existing approaches. Then we propose a sample-based, convex maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) method specifically designed for flying mode tomography. Numerical simulations of flying four-mode and nine-mode problems demonstrate the accuracy and practicality of our methods. This method provides practical tools for reliable bosonic mode quantum state reconstruction in high-dimensional and multi-mode systems.

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Score: 0

Hyperon Physics at BESIII

Published: 2025-09-08 03:11:51

Authors: Hai-Bo Li, Hong-Fei Shen

Categories: hep-ex

Abstract:
This proceeding presents recent advances in the study of hyperon physics using data from the BESIII experiment. The BESIII detector has been in full operation at the BEPCII collider since 2008, providing excellent resolution, particle identification (PID), and large coverage for both neutral and charged particles. Leveraging the outstanding capability of the detector, the BESIII experiment has collected 10 billion $J/\psi$ and 2.7 billion $\psi(3686)$ events. In recent years, BESIII has conducted a series of analyses focusing on hyperon physics, utilizing the pair production of quantum-entangled hyperon-antihyperon pairs from these charmonium decays. The transverse polarizations of the $\Lambda$, $\Sigma^{+,0}$, and $\Xi^{-,0}$ hyperons have been observed in $J/\psi$ and $\psi(3686)$ decays, providing excellent opportunities to search for the CP violation in hyperon decays. Additionally, BESIII investigates weak radiative hyperon decays, semi-leptonic hyperon decays, and hyperon-nucleon interactions.

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Score: 0

MOSAIC: Minimax-Optimal Sparsity-Adaptive Inference for Change Points in Dynamic Networks

Published: 2025-09-08 03:09:50

Authors: Yingying Fan, Jingyuan Liu, Jinchi Lv, Ao Sun

Categories: stat.ML, cs.LG, stat.ME

Abstract:
We propose a new inference framework, named MOSAIC, for change-point detection in dynamic networks with the simultaneous low-rank and sparse-change structure. We establish the minimax rate of detection boundary, which relies on the sparsity of changes. We then develop an eigen-decomposition-based test with screened signals that approaches the minimax rate in theory, with only a minor logarithmic loss. For practical implementation of MOSAIC, we adjust the theoretical test by a novel residual-based technique, resulting in a pivotal statistic that converges to a standard normal distribution via the martingale central limit theorem under the null hypothesis and achieves full power under the alternative hypothesis. We also analyze the minimax rate of testing boundary for dynamic networks without the low-rank structure, which almost aligns with the results in high-dimensional mean-vector change-point inference. We showcase the effectiveness of MOSAIC and verify our theoretical results with several simulation examples and a real data application.

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Score: 0

On the recognition problem for limits of entropy functions

Published: 2025-09-08 03:05:48

Authors: Geva Yashfe

Categories: math.CO, cs.IT, math.IT, 05B35, 68P30, 20F10

Abstract:
We prove that there is no algorithm to decide whether a given integer vector is in the closure of the entropic cone $\overline{\Gamma_{n}^{*}}$. Equivalently, there is no decision procedure to determine whether a given integer-valued function $h:\mathcal{P}(\{1,\ldots,n\})\rightarrow\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}$ is a pointwise limit of joint entropy functions. In other words, given such an $h$, it is undecidable whether for all $\varepsilon > 0$ there exists a finite probability space $(\Omega,P)$ with random variables $X_{1},\ldots,X_{n}$ such that their joint entropy $H$ satisfies $\max_{I\subseteq\{1,\ldots,n\}}\left|H\left(X_{I}\right)-h\left(I\right)\right|<\varepsilon$. This settles the last open case in a sequence of related undecidability results proved by L. K\"{u}hne and the author, with applications in algorithmic information theory. The main new tool is a Desargues'-type theorem for almost entropic polymatroids.

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Score: 0

Learning From Software Failures: A Case Study at a National Space Research Center

Published: 2025-09-08 03:02:53

Authors: Dharun Anandayuvaraj, Zain Hammadeh, Andreas Lund, Alexandra Holloway, James C. Davis

Categories: cs.SE

Abstract:
Software failures can have significant consequences, making learning from failures a critical aspect of software engineering. While software organizations are recommended to conduct postmortems, the effectiveness and adoption of these practices vary widely. Understanding how engineers gather, document, share, and apply lessons from failures is essential for improving reliability and preventing recurrence. High-reliability organizations (HROs) often develop software systems where failures carry catastrophic risks, requiring continuous learning to ensure reliability. These organizations provide a valuable setting to examine practices and challenges for learning from software failures. Such insight could help develop processes and tools to improve reliability and prevent recurrence. However, we lack in-depth industry perspectives on the practices and challenges of learning from failures. To address this gap, we conducted a case study through 10 in-depth interviews with research software engineers at a national space research center. We examine how they learn from failures: how they gather, document, share, and apply lessons. To assess transferability, we include data from 5 additional interviews at other HROs. Our findings provide insight into how engineers learn from failures in practice. To summarize: (1) failure learning is informal, ad hoc, and inconsistently integrated into SDLC; (2) recurring failures persist due to absence of structured processes; and (3) key challenges, including time constraints, knowledge loss from turnover and fragmented documentation, and weak process enforcement, undermine systematic learning. Our findings deepen understanding of how software engineers learn from failures and offer guidance for improving failure management practices.

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Score: 0

Dynamical Constraints on a Population of Massive Interstellar Objects

Published: 2025-09-08 03:02:03

Authors: Oem Trivedi, Abraham Loeb

Categories: astro-ph.EP, astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.SR

Abstract:
We investigate dynamical constraints on the population of large interstellar objects (ISOs) by combining encounter rate analysis, Eddington inversion, and Liouville mapping. Encounter rate scaling demonstrates that detections of kilometer-scale ISOs require flux enhancements beyond natural Maxwellian expectations. Using Eddington inversion, we show how steep density profiles imply phase-space biases consistent with strong gravitational focusing and we then develop a Liouville mapping formalism that propagates the interstellar velocity distribution inward under conservation of energy and angular momentum, revealing that low-angular momentum anisotropies can reproduce the observed size dependent detection rates. These results provide a self consistent dynamical framework for interpreting the observed population of ISOs and for assessing whether the required anisotropies arise from natural or artificial origins. The main results are framed in the context of the parameters for 3I/ATLAS, but the implications are general and go on to sharpen the distinction between natural dynamical mechanisms and potential artificial origins for ISOs.

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Score: 0

Continuous Recovery of Phase from Single Interferogram

Published: 2025-09-08 02:53:13

Authors: V. Berejnov, B. Y. Rubinstein

Categories: physics.optics

Abstract:
A new method for phase recovery from a single two-beam interferogram is presented. Conventional approaches, relying on trigonometric inversion followed by phase unfolding and unwrapping, are hindered by discontinuities, typically addressed through intricate algorithms. Our method bypasses the unfolding and unwrapping, instead formulating a first-order differential equation directly relating the phase to the interferogram. Integration of this equation enables continuous retrieval of phase along any straight path. Representing a new class of analytical tools for single-interferogram phase retrieval, this approach is derived from first principles and accommodates both Newton-type and Fizeau-type interferograms. Its performance is demonstrated on multiple idealized synthetic interferograms of increasing complexity, validating against the known seed phase.

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Score: 0

MCTuner: Spatial Decomposition-Enhanced Database Tuning via LLM-Guided Exploration

Published: 2025-09-08 02:52:45

Authors: Zihan Yan, Rui Xi, Mengshu Hou

Categories: cs.DB

Abstract:
Database knob tuning is essential for optimizing the performance of modern database management systems, which often expose hundreds of knobs with continuous or categorical values. However, the large number of knobs and the vast configuration space make it difficult to identify optimal settings efficiently. Although learning-based tuning has shown promise, existing approaches either ignore domain knowledge by relying solely on benchmark feedback or struggle to explore the high-dimensional knob space, resulting in high tuning costs and suboptimal performance. To address these challenges, we propose MCTuner, an adaptive knob tuning framework that minimizes exploration in ineffective regions of the configuration space. MCTuner employs a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) mechanism with specialized LLMs to identify performance-critical knobs. In further, MCTuner introduces the first spatial decomposition algorithm that recursively partitions the space into hierarchical subspaces, on which Bayesian Optimization is performed to efficiently search for near-optimal configurations. Evaluated on different benchmarks (OLAP, OLTP, and HTAP), MCTuner achieves up to 19.2% performance gains and 1.4x faster configuration discovery per iteration compared to state-of-the-art methods.

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Score: 0

LoaQ: Layer-wise Output Approximation Quantization

Published: 2025-09-08 02:50:11

Authors: Li Lin, Xiaojun Wan

Categories: cs.LG

Abstract:
A natural and intuitive idea in model quantization is to approximate each component's quantized output to match its original. Layer-wise post-training quantization (PTQ), though based on this idea, adopts a strictly local view and can achieve, at best, only activation-aware approximations of weights. As a result, it often leads to insufficient approximations and practical deviations from this guiding intuition. Recent work has achieved a more accurate approximation of linear-layer outputs within the framework of layer-wise PTQ, but such refinements remain inadequate for achieving alignment with the full model output. Based on a deeper understanding of the structural characteristics of mainstream LLMs, we propose $LoaQ$, an output-approximation method for layer-wise PTQ that explicitly targets output-level consistency. It better aligns with this intuition and can feature a simple closed-form solution, making it orthogonal to existing techniques and readily integrable into existing quantization pipelines. Experiments on the LLaMA and Qwen model families demonstrate that LoaQ performs effectively in both weight-only and weight-activation joint quantization. By integrating seamlessly with existing quantization strategies, it further enhances overall quantization quality and shows strong potential to advance the frontier of post-training quantization.

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Score: 0