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The origin of the correlation between the effective spins ($\chi_{\rm eff}$) and mass ratios ($q$) of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's binary black holes (BBHs) is still an open question. Motivated by recent identification of two subpopulations of the BBHs, in this work we investigate the potential $\chi_{\rm eff}-q$ correlation for each subpopulation. Surprisingly, the $\chi_{\rm eff}$-$q$ correlation vanishes for the low-mass subpopulation if we introduce a second $\chi_{\rm eff}$ distribution for the high-mass subpopulation likely originating from hierarchical mergers. The first subpopulation has a narrow $\chi_{\rm eff}$ distribution peaking at $\sim0.05$, whose primary-mass function cuts off at $\sim 45M_{\odot}$, in agreement with first-generation BBHs. The second $\chi_{\rm eff}$ distribution is broad and peaks at $\mu_{\chi,2}=0.35^{+0.18}_{-0.22}$, consistent with the expectation of hierarchical mergers formed in the disks of active galactic nucleus (AGNs). We infer $\mu_{\chi,2}>0$ at 98.7\% credible level, and a symmetric $\chi_{\rm eff}$ distribution for the second subpopulation is disfavored by $\mathcal{B}\sim5$. However, negative values of $\chi_{\rm eff}$ are also measured, indicating that the hierarchical mergers may take place within both star clusters and AGN disks. We find a Bayes factor of $\ln\mathcal{B}=5.2$ for two distinct $\chi_{\rm eff}$ distributions relative to single $\chi_{\rm eff}$ distribution that conditioned on mass ratios. Therefore we conclude that the $\chi_{\rm eff}$-$q$ correlation in the entire population can be explained as the superposition of two subpopulations. Additionally, we suggest to use a flexible mass function to reduce the bias in $\chi_{\rm eff}$-$q$ correlation that may be introduced by model mis-specification., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, comments welcome!

Let $Q_0$ and $Q_1$ be two Lagrangian spheres in a $6$-dimensional symplectic manifold. Assume that $Q_0$ and $Q_1$ intersect cleanly along a circle that is unknotted in both $Q_0$ and $Q_1$. We prove that there is no nearby Hamiltonian isotopy of $Q_0$ and $Q_1$ to a pair of Lagrangian spheres meeting cleanly along a circle that is knotted in either component. The proof is based on a classification for spherical Lagrangians in a Stein neighborhood of the union $Q_0\cup Q_1$ and the deep result that lens space rational Dehn surgeries characterizes the unknot., Comment: 46 pages, 18 figures. Comments welcome

We consider a natural class of extensions of the Anderson model on $\mathbb Z^d$, called random block Schr\"odinger operators (RBSOs), which feature a random block potential. They are defined on the $d$-dimensional lattice $(\mathbb Z/L\mathbb Z)^d$ and take the form $H=V + \lambda \Psi$, where $V$ is a diagonal block matrix with diagonal blocks that are i.i.d. $W^d\times W^d$ GUE, $\Psi$ describes the interactions between neighboring blocks, and $0<\lambda\ll 1$ is a small coupling parameter (making $H$ a perturbation of $V$). We focus on three specific RBSOs: (1) the block Anderson model, where $\Psi$ is the Laplacian operator on $\mathbb Z^d$; (2) the Anderson orbital model, where $\Psi$ is a block Laplacian operator; (3) the Wegner orbital model, where the nearest-neighbor blocks of $\Psi$ are random matrices. Assuming $d\ge 7$ and $W\ge L^\varepsilon$ for a small constant $\varepsilon>0$, under certain lower bound on $\lambda$, we prove delocalization and quantum unique ergodicity for the bulk eigenvectors, as well as a quantum diffusion estimate for the Green's function. Together with the localization result established in arXiv:1608.02922, our results rigorously demonstrate the existence of an Anderson localization-delocalization transition for RBSOs as $\lambda$ varies. Our proof is based on the $T$-expansion method and the concept of self-energy renormalization developed for random band matrices in arXiv:2104.12048. Additionally, we explore a conceptually new idea called coupling renormalization. This phenomenon extends the self-energy renormalization and is prevalent in quantum field theory, yet it is identified here for the first time within the context of random Schr\"odinger operators. We anticipate that our techniques can be adapted to real or non-Gaussian block potentials and more general interactions $\Psi$., Comment: 123 pages. Minor updates

Superradiance can lead to the formation of a black hole (BH) condensate system. We thoroughly investigate the accretion effect on the evolution of this system, and the gravitational wave signals it emits in the presence of multiple superradiance modes. Assuming the multiplication of the BH mass and scalar mass as a small number, we obtain the analytical approximations of all important quantities, which can be directly applied to phenomenological studies. In addition, we confirm that accretion could significantly enhance the gravitational wave (GW) emission and reduce its duration, and show that the GW beat signature is similarly modified., Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have gained considerable attention in recent years for traffic flow prediction due to their ability to learn spatio-temporal pattern representations through a graph-based message-passing framework. Although GNNs have shown great promise in handling traffic datasets, their deployment in real-life applications has been hindered by scalability constraints arising from high-order message passing. Additionally, the over-smoothing problem of GNNs may lead to indistinguishable region representations as the number of layers increases, resulting in performance degradation. To address these challenges, we propose a new knowledge distillation paradigm termed LightST that transfers spatial and temporal knowledge from a high-capacity teacher to a lightweight student. Specifically, we introduce a spatio-temporal knowledge distillation framework that helps student MLPs capture graph-structured global spatio-temporal patterns while alleviating the over-smoothing effect with adaptive knowledge distillation. Extensive experiments verify that LightST significantly speeds up traffic flow predictions by 5X to 40X compared to state-of-the-art spatio-temporal GNNs, all while maintaining superior accuracy., Comment: 9 pages

Based on a data sample of $(10087 \pm 44) \times 10^6$ $J/\psi$ events taken with the BESIII detector, we search for the flavor-changing neutral current charmonium decay $J/\psi \to D^{0} \mu^{+} \mu^{-} + \text{c.c.}$. No significant signal above the background is observed, and the upper limit on its branching fraction is set to be $\mathcal{B}(J/\psi \to D^{0}\mu^{+}\mu^{-} + \text{c.c.} ) < 1.1 \times 10^{-7}$ at the 90% confidence level. This marks the first search for a flavor-changing neutral current charmonium decay involving muons in the final state., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures

This article investigates the adaptive resource allocation scheme for digital twin (DT) synchronization optimization over dynamic wireless networks. In our considered model, a base station (BS) continuously collects factory physical object state data from wireless devices to build a real-time virtual DT system for factory event analysis. Due to continuous data transmission, maintaining DT synchronization must use extensive wireless resources. To address this issue, a subset of devices is selected to transmit their sensing data, and resource block (RB) allocation is optimized. This problem is formulated as a constrained Markov process (CMDP) problem that minimizes the long-term mismatch between the physical and virtual systems. To solve this CMDP, we first transform the problem into a dual problem that refines RB constraint impacts on device scheduling strategies. We then propose a continual reinforcement learning (CRL) algorithm to solve the dual problem. The CRL algorithm learns a stable policy across historical experiences for quick adaptation to dynamics in physical states and network capacity. Simulation results show that the CRL can adapt quickly to network capacity changes and reduce normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) between physical and virtual states by up to 55.2%, using the same RB number as traditional methods., Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures

This paper presents a comprehensive study on low-complexity waveform, modulation and coding (WMC) designs for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Ambient Internet of Things (A-IoT). A-IoT is a low-cost, low-power IoT system inspired by Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and aims to leverage existing cellular network infrastructure for efficient RF tag management. The paper compares the physical layer (PHY) design challenges and requirements of RFID and A-IoT, particularly focusing on backscatter communications. An overview of the standardization for PHY designs in Release 19 A-IoT is provided, along with detailed schemes of the proposed low-complex WMC designs. The performance of device-to-reader link designs is validated through simulations, demonstrating 6 dB improvements of the proposed baseband waveform with coherent receivers compared to RFID line coding-based solutions with non-coherent receivers when channel coding is adopted., Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE (IEEE Communications Standards Magazine, Special Issue for Ambient IoT) for possible publication

Large language models excel at interpreting complex natural language instructions, enabling them to perform a wide range of tasks. In the life sciences, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data serves as the "language of cellular biology", capturing intricate gene expression patterns at the single-cell level. However, interacting with this "language" through conventional tools is often inefficient and unintuitive, posing challenges for researchers. To address these limitations, we present InstructCell, a multi-modal AI copilot that leverages natural language as a medium for more direct and flexible single-cell analysis. We construct a comprehensive multi-modal instruction dataset that pairs text-based instructions with scRNA-seq profiles from diverse tissues and species. Building on this, we develop a multi-modal cell language architecture capable of simultaneously interpreting and processing both modalities. InstructCell empowers researchers to accomplish critical tasks-such as cell type annotation, conditional pseudo-cell generation, and drug sensitivity prediction-using straightforward natural language commands. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that InstructCell consistently meets or exceeds the performance of existing single-cell foundation models, while adapting to diverse experimental conditions. More importantly, InstructCell provides an accessible and intuitive tool for exploring complex single-cell data, lowering technical barriers and enabling deeper biological insights., Comment: 37 pages; 13 figures; Code: https://github.com/zjunlp/Instructcell, Models: https://huggingface.co/zjunlp/Instructcell-chat, https://huggingface.co/zjunlp/InstructCell-instruct

Temporal Ghost Imaging (TGI), which reconstructs fast temporal signals using a slow detector, holds significant potential in optical communication, high-speed imaging, and quantum information processing. However, achieving high-quality information reconstruction has been a major challenge for the practical application of TGI. A theoretical model [\emph{ Applied Optics}, 62(5): 1175-1182 (2023)] was proposed to investigate the influence of experimental parameters of the slow detector on image quality; however, its experimental verification was hitherto lacking. In this study, we implemented a multi-bit information transmission scheme based on both quantum and classical TGI methods. Experimental validation confirmed the accuracy of the theoretical model and demonstrated its application in encrypting noisy multi-bit information. The experimental results demonstrate that as the information coding density increases, the decoding accuracy becomes highly sensitive to the detection accuracy and threshold of the slow detector. When these parameters degrade, the decoding quality deteriorates significantly. Additionally, our system shows notable robustness against detection noise, but loses the ability to accurately decode when the noise amplitude becomes too high. Our work endows TGI with optical information encryption capabilities in practical systems and furnishes comprehensive guidelines for the further application of TGI.

The recently introduced resource theory of imaginarity facilitates a systematic investigation into the role of complex numbers in quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. In this work, we propose well-defined measures of imaginarity using various distance metrics, drawing inspiration from recent advancements in quantum entanglement and coherence. Specifically, we focus on quantitatively evaluating imaginarity through measures such as Tsallis relative $\alpha$-entropy, Sandwiched R\'{e}nyi relative entropy, and Tsallis relative operator entropy. Additionally, we analyze the decay rates of these measures. Our findings reveal that the Tsallis relative $\alpha$-entropy of imaginarity exhibits higher decay rate under quantum channels compared to other measures. Finally, we examine the ordering of single-qubit states under these imaginarity measures, demonstrating that the order remains invariant under the bit-flip channel for specific parameter ranges. This study enhances our understanding of imaginarity as a quantum resource and its potential applications in quantum information theory.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) demonstrates remarkable performance across tasks in open-domain question-answering. However, traditional search engines may retrieve shallow content, limiting the ability of LLMs to handle complex, multi-layered information. To address it, we introduce WebWalkerQA, a benchmark designed to assess the ability of LLMs to perform web traversal. It evaluates the capacity of LLMs to traverse a website's subpages to extract high-quality data systematically. We propose WebWalker, which is a multi-agent framework that mimics human-like web navigation through an explore-critic paradigm. Extensive experimental results show that WebWalkerQA is challenging and demonstrates the effectiveness of RAG combined with WebWalker, through the horizontal and vertical integration in real-world scenarios.

Though many learning-based approaches have been proposed for unit test generation and achieved remarkable performance, they still have limitations in relying on task-specific datasets. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) guided by prompt engineering have gained attention for their ability to handle a broad range of tasks, including unit test generation. Despite their success, LLMs may exhibit hallucinations when generating unit tests for focal methods or functions due to their lack of awareness regarding the project's global context. These hallucinations may manifest as calls to non-existent methods, as well as incorrect parameters or return values, such as mismatched parameter types or numbers. While many studies have explored the role of context, they often extract fixed patterns of context for different models and focal methods, which may not be suitable for all generation processes (e.g., excessive irrelevant context could lead to redundancy, preventing the model from focusing on essential information). To overcome this limitation, we propose RATester, which enhances the LLM's ability to generate more repository-aware unit tests through global contextual information injection. To equip LLMs with global knowledge similar to that of human testers, we integrate the language server gopls, which provides essential features (e.g., definition lookup) to assist the LLM. When RATester encounters an unfamiliar identifier (e.g., an unfamiliar struct name), it first leverages gopls to fetch relevant definitions and documentation comments, and then uses this global knowledge to guide the LLM. By utilizing gopls, RATester enriches the LLM's knowledge of the project's global context, thereby reducing hallucinations during unit test generation.

Antiferromagnetism, characterized by magnetic moments aligned in alternating directions with a vanished ensemble average, has garnered renewed interest for its potential applications in spintronics and axion dynamics. The synergy between antiferromagnetism and topology can lead to the emergence of an exotic topological phase unique to certain magnetic order, termed antiferromagnetic topological insulators (AF TIs). A hallmark signature of AF TIs is the presence of a single surface Dirac cone--a feature typically associated with strong three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators--only on certain symmetry-preserving crystal terminations. However, the direct observation of this phenomenon poses a significant challenge. Here, we have theoretically and experimentally discovered a 3D photonic AF TI hosting a single surface Dirac cone protected by the combined symmetry of time reversal and half-lattice translation. Conceptually, our setup can be viewed as a z-directional stack of two-dimensional Chern insulators, with adjacent layers oppositely magnetized to form a 3D type-A AF configuration. By measuring both bulk and surface states, we have directly observed the symmetry-protected gapless single-Dirac-cone surface state, which shows remarkable robustness against random magnetic disorders. Our work constitutes the first realization of photonic AF TIs and photonic analogs of strong topological insulators, opening a new chapter for exploring novel topological photonic devices and phenomena that incorporate additional magnetic degrees of freedom., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures

Object removal, as a sub-task of image inpainting, has garnered significant attention in recent years. Existing datasets related to object removal serve a valuable foundation for model validation and optimization. However, they mainly rely on inpainting techniques to generate pseudo-removed results, leading to distribution gaps between synthetic and real-world data. While some real-world datasets mitigate these issues, they face challenges such as limited scalability, high annotation costs, and unrealistic representations of lighting and shadows. To address these limitations, we propose a novel video-based annotation pipeline for constructing a realistic illumination-aware object removal dataset. Leveraging this pipeline, we introduce VDOR, a dataset specifically designed for object removal tasks, which comprises triplets of original frame images with objects, background images without objects, and corresponding masks. By leveraging continuous real-world video frames, we minimize distribution gaps and accurately capture realistic lighting and shadow variations, ensuring close alignment with real-world scenarios. Our approach significantly reduces annotation effort while providing a robust foundation for advancing object removal research., Comment: technical report

Semantic segmentation plays a crucial role in remote sensing applications, where the accurate extraction and representation of features are essential for high-quality results. Despite the widespread use of encoder-decoder architectures, existing methods often struggle with fully utilizing the high-dimensional features extracted by the encoder and efficiently recovering detailed information during decoding. To address these problems, we propose a novel semantic segmentation network, namely DeepKANSeg, including two key innovations based on the emerging Kolmogorov Arnold Network (KAN). Notably, the advantage of KAN lies in its ability to decompose high-dimensional complex functions into univariate transformations, enabling efficient and flexible representation of intricate relationships in data. First, we introduce a KAN-based deep feature refinement module, namely DeepKAN to effectively capture complex spatial and rich semantic relationships from high-dimensional features. Second, we replace the traditional multi-layer perceptron (MLP) layers in the global-local combined decoder with KAN-based linear layers, namely GLKAN. This module enhances the decoder's ability to capture fine-grained details during decoding. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments are conducted on two well-known fine-resolution remote sensing benchmark datasets, namely ISPRS Vaihingen and ISPRS Potsdam. The results demonstrate that the KAN-enhanced segmentation model achieves superior performance in terms of accuracy compared to state-of-the-art methods. They highlight the potential of KANs as a powerful alternative to traditional architectures in semantic segmentation tasks. Moreover, the explicit univariate decomposition provides improved interpretability, which is particularly beneficial for applications requiring explainable learning in remote sensing., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures

A high-precision calibration method for all-sky cameras has been realized using images from the Ali observatory in Tibet, providing application results for atmospheric extinction, night sky brightness, and known variable stars. This method achieves high-precision calibration for individual all-sky images, with the calibration process introducing deviations of less than 0.5pixels. Within a 70-degree zenith angle, the calibration deviation of the images is less than 0.25pixels. Beyond this angle, the calibration deviation increases significantly due to the sparser distribution of stars. Increasing the number of stars with zenith angles greater than 70degrees used for calibration can improve the calibration accuracy for areas beyond the 70-degree zenith angle, reducing the calibration deviation at an 85-degree zenith angle to 0.2pixels. Analysis of the all-sky images indicates that the atmospheric extinction coefficient at the Ali Observatory is approximately 0.20, and the night sky background brightness is about 21 magnitudes per square arcsecond, suggesting the presence of urban light pollution., Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures, and 5 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present AlphaNet, a local frame-based equivariant model designed to achieve both accurate and efficient simulations for atomistic systems. Recently, machine learning force fields (MLFFs) have gained prominence in molecular dynamics simulations due to their advantageous efficiency-accuracy balance compared to classical force fields and quantum mechanical calculations, alongside their transferability across various systems. Despite the advancements in improving model accuracy, the efficiency and scalability of MLFFs remain significant obstacles in practical applications. AlphaNet enhances computational efficiency and accuracy by leveraging the local geometric structures of atomic environments through the construction of equivariant local frames and learnable frame transitions. We substantiate the efficacy of AlphaNet across diverse datasets, including defected graphene, formate decomposition, zeolites, and surface reactions. AlphaNet consistently surpasses well-established models, such as NequIP and DeepPot, in terms of both energy and force prediction accuracy. Notably, AlphaNet offers one of the best trade-offs between computational efficiency and accuracy among existing models. Moreover, AlphaNet exhibits scalability across a broad spectrum of system and dataset sizes, affirming its versatility., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures

Fluid antenna multiple access (FAMA), enabled by the fluid antenna system (FAS), offers a new and straightforward solution to massive connectivity. Previous results on FAMA were primarily based on narrowband channels. This paper studies the adoption of FAMA within the fifth-generation (5G) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) framework, referred to as OFDM-FAMA, and evaluate its performance in broadband multipath channels. We first design the OFDM-FAMA system, taking into account 5G channel coding and OFDM modulation. Then the system's achievable rate is analyzed, and an algorithm to approximate the FAS configuration at each user is proposed based on the rate. Extensive link-level simulation results reveal that OFDM-FAMA can significantly improve the multiplexing gain over the OFDM system with fixed-position antenna (FPA) users, especially when robust channel coding is applied and the number of radio-frequency (RF) chains at each user is small., Comment: Submitted, under review

The Segment Anything Model (SAM) has demonstrated strong and versatile segmentation capabilities, along with intuitive prompt-based interactions. However, customizing SAM for medical image segmentation requires massive amounts of pixel-level annotations and precise point- or box-based prompt designs. To address these challenges, we introduce PGP-SAM, a novel prototype-based few-shot tuning approach that uses limited samples to replace tedious manual prompts. Our key idea is to leverage inter- and intra-class prototypes to capture class-specific knowledge and relationships. We propose two main components: (1) a plug-and-play contextual modulation module that integrates multi-scale information, and (2) a class-guided cross-attention mechanism that fuses prototypes and features for automatic prompt generation. Experiments on a public multi-organ dataset and a private ventricle dataset demonstrate that PGP-SAM achieves superior mean Dice scores compared with existing prompt-free SAM variants, while using only 10\% of the 2D slices., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, Accepted at ISBI 2025

Chemical reasoning usually involves complex, multi-step processes that demand precise calculations, where even minor errors can lead to cascading failures. Furthermore, large language models (LLMs) encounter difficulties handling domain-specific formulas, executing reasoning steps accurately, and integrating code effectively when tackling chemical reasoning tasks. To address these challenges, we present ChemAgent, a novel framework designed to improve the performance of LLMs through a dynamic, self-updating library. This library is developed by decomposing chemical tasks into sub-tasks and compiling these sub-tasks into a structured collection that can be referenced for future queries. Then, when presented with a new problem, ChemAgent retrieves and refines pertinent information from the library, which we call memory, facilitating effective task decomposition and the generation of solutions. Our method designs three types of memory and a library-enhanced reasoning component, enabling LLMs to improve over time through experience. Experimental results on four chemical reasoning datasets from SciBench demonstrate that ChemAgent achieves performance gains of up to 46% (GPT-4), significantly outperforming existing methods. Our findings suggest substantial potential for future applications, including tasks such as drug discovery and materials science. Our code can be found at https://github.com/gersteinlab/chemagent

Based on $(1.0087\pm0.0044)\times10^{10}$ $J/\psi$ events collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII $e^+e^-$ storage ring, we search for $K_{S}^{0}$ invisible decays via the $J/\psi \to \phi K_{S}^{0} K_{S}^{0}$ process. No significant signal is observed, and the upper limit of the branching fraction of these invisible decays is set at 8.4 $\times$ $10^{-4}$ at the 90\% confidence level. This is the first experimental search for $K^0_S$ invisible decays.

Program synthesis has traditionally relied on human-provided specifications, examples, or prior knowledge to generate functional algorithms. Existing methods either emulate human-written algorithms or solve specific tasks without generating reusable programmatic logic, limiting their ability to create novel algorithms. We introduce AlgoPilot, a groundbreaking approach for fully automated program synthesis without human-written programs or trajectories. AlgoPilot leverages reinforcement learning (RL) guided by a Trajectory Language Model (TLM) to synthesize algorithms from scratch. The TLM, trained on trajectories generated by random Python functions, serves as a soft constraint during the RL process, aligning generated sequences with patterns likely to represent valid algorithms. Using sorting as a test case, AlgoPilot demonstrates its ability to generate trajectories that are interpretable as classical algorithms, such as Bubble Sort, while operating without prior algorithmic knowledge. This work establishes a new paradigm for algorithm discovery and lays the groundwork for future advancements in autonomous program synthesis.

Figures and their captions play a key role in scientific publications. However, despite their importance, many captions in published papers are poorly crafted, largely due to a lack of attention by paper authors. While prior AI research has explored caption generation, it has mainly focused on reader-centered use cases, where users evaluate generated captions rather than actively integrating them into their writing. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how paper authors incorporate AI-generated captions into their writing process through a user study involving 18 participants. Each participant rewrote captions for two figures from their own recently published work, using captions generated by state-of-the-art AI models as a resource. By analyzing video recordings of the writing process through interaction analysis, we observed that participants often began by copying and refining AI-generated captions. Paper writers favored longer, detail-rich captions that integrated textual and visual elements but found current AI models less effective for complex figures. These findings highlight the nuanced and diverse nature of figure caption composition, revealing design opportunities for AI systems to better support the challenges of academic writing., Comment: This paper will appear at AAAI 2025 Workshop (2nd AI4Research Workshop: Towards a Knowledge-grounded Scientific Research Lifecycle)

Whole Slide Image (WSI) analysis plays a crucial role in modern digital pathology, enabling large-scale feature extraction from tissue samples. However, traditional feature extraction pipelines based on tools like CellProfiler often involve lengthy workflows, requiring WSI segmentation into patches, feature extraction at the patch level, and subsequent mapping back to the original WSI. To address these challenges, we present PySpatial, a high-speed pathomics toolkit specifically designed for WSI-level analysis. PySpatial streamlines the conventional pipeline by directly operating on computational regions of interest, reducing redundant processing steps. Utilizing rtree-based spatial indexing and matrix-based computation, PySpatial efficiently maps and processes computational regions, significantly accelerating feature extraction while maintaining high accuracy. Our experiments on two datasets-Perivascular Epithelioid Cell (PEC) and data from the Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP)-demonstrate substantial performance improvements. For smaller and sparse objects in PEC datasets, PySpatial achieves nearly a 10-fold speedup compared to standard CellProfiler pipelines. For larger objects, such as glomeruli and arteries in KPMP datasets, PySpatial achieves a 2-fold speedup. These results highlight PySpatial's potential to handle large-scale WSI analysis with enhanced efficiency and accuracy, paving the way for broader applications in digital pathology.

In this paper, we propose a novel second-order dynamical low-rank mass-lumped finite element method for solving the Allen-Cahn (AC) equation, a semilinear parabolic partial differential equation. The matrix differential equation of the semi-discrete mass-lumped finite element scheme is decomposed into linear and nonlinear components using the second-order Strang splitting method. The linear component is solved analytically within a low-rank manifold, while the nonlinear component is discretized using a second-order augmented basis update & Galerkin (BUG) integrator, in which the $S$-step matrix equation is solved by the explicit 2-stage strong stability-preserving Runge-Kutta method. The algorithm has lower computational complexity than the full-rank mass-lump finite element method. The dynamical low-rank finite element solution is shown to conserve mass up to a truncation tolerance for the conservative Allen-Cahn equation. Meanwhile, the modified energy is dissipative up to a high-order error and is hence stable. Numerical experiments validate the theoretical results. Symmetry-preserving tests highlight the robustness of the proposed method for long-time simulations and demonstrate its superior performance compared to existing methods., Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures

Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL) can leverage abundant unlabeled data to boost model performance. However, the class-imbalanced data distribution in real-world scenarios poses great challenges to SSL, resulting in performance degradation. Existing class-imbalanced semi-supervised learning (CISSL) methods mainly focus on rebalancing datasets but ignore the potential of using hard examples to enhance performance, making it difficult to fully harness the power of unlabeled data even with sophisticated algorithms. To address this issue, we propose a method that enhances the performance of Imbalanced Semi-Supervised Learning by Mining Hard Examples (SeMi). This method distinguishes the entropy differences among logits of hard and easy examples, thereby identifying hard examples and increasing the utility of unlabeled data, better addressing the imbalance problem in CISSL. In addition, we maintain a class-balanced memory bank with confidence decay for storing high-confidence embeddings to enhance the pseudo-labels' reliability. Although our method is simple, it is effective and seamlessly integrates with existing approaches. We perform comprehensive experiments on standard CISSL benchmarks and experimentally demonstrate that our proposed SeMi outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods on multiple benchmarks, especially in reversed scenarios, where our best result shows approximately a 54.8\% improvement over the baseline methods., Comment: 11 pages,6 figures, conference

In this paper, we introduce SAIL-VL (ScAlable Vision Language Model TraIning via High QuaLity Data Curation), an open-source vision language model (VLM) of state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance with 2B parameters. We introduce three key improvements that contribute to SAIL-VL's leading performance: (1) Scalable high-quality visual understanding data construction: We implement a visual understanding data construction pipeline, which enables hundred-million-scale high-quality recaption data annotation. Equipped with this pipeline, we curate SAIL-Caption, a large-scale caption dataset with large quantity and the highest data quality compared with opensource caption datasets. (2) Scalable Pretraining with High-Quality Visual Understanding Data: We scale SAIL-VL's pretraining budget up to 131B tokens and show that even a 2B VLM benefits from scaled up training data sizes, exhibiting expected data size scaling laws in visual understanding and instruction following performance. (3) Scalable SFT via quantity and quality scaling: We introduce general guidance for instruction data curation to scale up instruction data continuously, allowing us to construct a large SFT dataset with the highest quality. To further improve SAIL-VL's performance, we propose quality scaling, a multi-stage training recipe with curriculum learning, to improve model performance scaling curves w.r.t. data sizes from logarithmic to be near-linear. SAIL-VL obtains the highest average score in 19 commonly used benchmarks in our evaluation and achieves top1 performance among VLMs of comparable sizes on OpenCompass (https://rank.opencompass.org.cn/leaderboard-multimodal). We release our SAIL-VL-2B model at HuggingFace (https://huggingface.co/BytedanceDouyinContent/SAIL-VL-2B).

This paper introduces a novel approach for acoustic scene analysis by exploiting an ensemble of statistics extracted from a sub-band domain multi-hypothesis acoustic echo canceler (SDMH-AEC). A well-designed SDMH-AEC employs multiple adaptive filtering strategies with potentially complementary behaviours during convergence, perturbations, and steady-state conditions. By aggregating statistics across the sub-bands, we derive a feature vector that exhibits strong discriminative power for distinguishing different acoustic events and estimating acoustic parameters. The complementary nature of the SDMH-AEC filters provides a rich source of information that can be extracted at insignificant cost for acoustic scene analysis tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach experimentally with real data containing double-talk, echo path change and events where the full-duplex device is physically moved. The extracted features enable acoustic scene analysis using existing echo cancellation algorithms and techniques., Comment: ICASSP 2025

Existing benchmarks for evaluating long-context language models (LCLMs) primarily focus on long-context recall, requiring models to produce short responses based on a few critical snippets while processing thousands of irrelevant tokens. We introduce LongProc (Long Procedural Generation), a new benchmark that requires both the integration of highly dispersed information and long-form generation. LongProc consists of six diverse procedural generation tasks, such as extracting structured information from HTML pages into a TSV format and executing complex search procedures to create travel plans. These tasks challenge LCLMs by testing their ability to follow detailed procedural instructions, synthesize and reason over dispersed information, and generate structured, long-form outputs (up to 8K tokens). Furthermore, as these tasks adhere to deterministic procedures and yield structured outputs, they enable reliable rule-based evaluation. We evaluate 17 LCLMs on LongProc across three difficulty levels, with maximum numbers of output tokens set at 500, 2K, and 8K. Notably, while all tested models claim a context window size above 32K tokens, open-weight models typically falter on 2K-token tasks, and closed-source models like GPT-4o show significant degradation on 8K-token tasks. Further analysis reveals that LCLMs struggle to maintain long-range coherence in long-form generations. These findings highlight critical limitations in current LCLMs and suggest substantial room for improvement. Data and code available at: https://princeton-pli.github.io/LongProc

This work studies linear bandits under a new notion of gap-adjusted misspecification and is an extension of Liu et al. (2023). When the underlying reward function is not linear, existing linear bandits work usually relies on a uniform misspecification parameter $\epsilon$ that measures the sup-norm error of the best linear approximation. This results in an unavoidable linear regret whenever $\epsilon > 0$. We propose a more natural model of misspecification which only requires the approximation error at each input $x$ to be proportional to the suboptimality gap at $x$. It captures the intuition that, for optimization problems, near-optimal regions should matter more and we can tolerate larger approximation errors in suboptimal regions. Quite surprisingly, we show that the classical LinUCB algorithm -- designed for the realizable case -- is automatically robust against such $\rho$-gap-adjusted misspecification with parameter $\rho$ diminishing at $O(1/(d \sqrt{\log T}))$. It achieves a near-optimal $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret for problems that the best-known regret is almost linear in time horizon $T$. We further advance this frontier by presenting a novel phased elimination-based algorithm whose gap-adjusted misspecification parameter $\rho = O(1/\sqrt{d})$ does not scale with $T$. This algorithm attains optimal $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret and is deployment-efficient, requiring only $\log T$ batches of exploration. It also enjoys an adaptive $O(\log T)$ regret when a constant suboptimality gap exists. Technically, our proof relies on a novel self-bounding argument that bounds the part of the regret due to misspecification by the regret itself, and a new inductive lemma that limits the misspecification error within the suboptimality gap for all valid actions in each batch selected by G-optimal design., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2302.13252

Isoscalar dipole transitions are a distinctive fingerprint of cluster structures. A {1^-} resonance at 7.27(10) MeV, located just below the {\alpha}-emission threshold, has been observed in the deuteron inelastic scattering reactions off 10Be. The deformation lengths of the excited states in 10Be below 9 MeV have been inferred from the differential cross sections using coupled channel calculations. This observed {1^-} resonance has isoscalar characteristics and exhausts approximately 5{\%}-15{\%} of the isoscalar dipole energy-weighted sum rule, providing evidence for pronounced {\alpha} cluster structure in 10Be. The Gamow coupled channel approach supports this interpretation and suggests the near-threshold effect might be playing an important role in this excitation energy domain. The {\alpha}+{\alpha}+n+n four-body calculation reproduces the observed enhanced dipole strength, implying that the four-body cluster structure is essential to describe the {1^-} states in 10Be., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

Recent advancements in text-to-image (T2I) generation using diffusion models have enabled cost-effective video-editing applications by leveraging pre-trained models, eliminating the need for resource-intensive training. However, the frame-independence of T2I generation often results in poor temporal consistency. Existing methods address this issue through temporal layer fine-tuning or inference-based temporal propagation, but these approaches suffer from high training costs or limited temporal coherence. To address these challenges, we propose a General and Efficient Adapter (GE-Adapter) that integrates temporal-spatial and semantic consistency with Baliteral DDIM inversion. This framework introduces three key components: (1) Frame-based Temporal Consistency Blocks (FTC Blocks) to capture frame-specific features and enforce smooth inter-frame transitions via temporally-aware loss functions; (2) Channel-dependent Spatial Consistency Blocks (SCD Blocks) employing bilateral filters to enhance spatial coherence by reducing noise and artifacts; and (3) Token-based Semantic Consistency Module (TSC Module) to maintain semantic alignment using shared prompt tokens and frame-specific tokens. Our method significantly improves perceptual quality, text-image alignment, and temporal coherence, as demonstrated on the MSR-VTT dataset. Additionally, it achieves enhanced fidelity and frame-to-frame coherence, offering a practical solution for T2V editing.

The image compression model has long struggled with adaptability and generalization, as the decoded bitstream typically serves only human or machine needs and fails to preserve information for unseen visual tasks. Therefore, this paper innovatively introduces supervision obtained from multimodal pre-training models and incorporates adaptive multi-objective optimization tailored to support both human visual perception and machine vision simultaneously with a single bitstream, denoted as Unified and Generalized Image Coding for Machine (UG-ICM). Specifically, to get rid of the reliance between compression models with downstream task supervision, we introduce Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP) models into the training constraint for improved generalization. Global-to-instance-wise CLIP supervision is applied to help obtain hierarchical semantics that make models more generalizable for the tasks relying on the information of different granularity. Furthermore, for supporting both human and machine visions with only a unifying bitstream, we incorporate a conditional decoding strategy that takes as conditions human or machine preferences, enabling the bitstream to be decoded into different versions for corresponding preferences. As such, our proposed UG-ICM is fully trained in a self-supervised manner, i.e., without awareness of any specific downstream models and tasks. The extensive experiments have shown that the proposed UG-ICM is capable of achieving remarkable improvements in various unseen machine analytics tasks, while simultaneously providing perceptually satisfying images., Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, publised to AAAI 2025

The double sparse linear model, which has both group-wise and element-wise sparsity in regression coefficients, has attracted lots of attention recently. This paper establishes the sufficient and necessary relationship between the exact support recovery and the optimal minimum signal conditions in the double sparse model. Specifically, sharply under the proposed signal conditions, a two-stage double sparse iterative hard thresholding procedure achieves exact support recovery with a suitably chosen threshold parameter. Also, this procedure maintains asymptotic normality aligning with an OLS estimator given true support, hence holding the oracle properties. Conversely, we prove that no method can achieve exact support recovery if these signal conditions are violated. This fills a critical gap in the minimax optimality theory on support recovery of the double sparse model. Finally, numerical experiments are provided to support our theoretical findings., Comment: 50 pages, 5 figures

We present the first amplitude analysis and branching fraction measurement of the decay $D^+_s\to \pi^+\pi^+\pi^-\pi^0\pi^0$, using $e^+e^-$ collision data collected with the BESIII detector at center-of-mass energies between 4.128 and 4.226 GeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 7.33 fb$^{-1}$, and report the first observation of the pure $W$-annihilation decay $D_s^+ \to \omega\rho^+$ with a branching fraction of $(0.99\pm0.08_{\rm stat}\pm0.07_{\rm syst})\%$. In comparison to the low significance of the $\mathcal{D}$ wave in the decay $D_s^+ \to \phi\rho^+$, the dominance of the $\mathcal{D}$ wave over the $\mathcal{S}$ and $\mathcal{P}$ waves, with a fraction of $(51.85\pm7.28_{\rm stat}\pm7.90_{\rm syst})\%$ observed in the decay, provides crucial information for the``polarization puzzle", as well as for the understanding of charm meson decays. The branching fraction of $D^+_s\to \pi^+\pi^+\pi^-\pi^0\pi^0$ is measured to be $(4.41\pm0.15_{\rm stat}\pm0.13_{\rm syst})\%$. Moreover, the branching fraction of $D_s^+ \to \phi\rho^+$ is measured to be $(3.98\pm0.33_{\rm stat}\pm0.21_{\rm syst})\%$, and the $R_{\phi}= {\mathcal{B}(\phi\to\pi^+\pi^-\pi^0)}/{\mathcal{B}(\phi\to K^+K^-)}$ is determined to be $(0.222\pm0.019_{\rm stat}\pm0.016_{\rm syst}$), which is consistent with the previous measurement based on charm meson decays, but deviates from the results from $e^+e^-$ annihilation and $K$-$N$ scattering experiments by more than 3$\sigma$.

Decentralized federated learning (DFL) is inherently vulnerable to poisoning attacks, as malicious clients can transmit manipulated model gradients to neighboring clients. Existing defense methods either reject suspicious gradients per iteration or restart DFL aggregation after detecting all malicious clients. They overlook the potential accuracy benefit from the discarded malicious gradients. In this paper, we propose a novel gradient purification defense, named GPD, that integrates seamlessly with existing DFL aggregation to defend against poisoning attacks. It aims to mitigate the harm in model gradients while retaining the benefit in model weights for enhancing accuracy. For each benign client in GPD, a recording variable is designed to track the historically aggregated gradients from one of its neighbors. It allows benign clients to precisely detect malicious neighbors and swiftly mitigate aggregated malicious gradients via historical consistency checks. Upon mitigation, GPD optimizes model weights via aggregating gradients solely from benign clients. This retains the previously beneficial portions from malicious clients and exploits the contributions from benign clients, thereby significantly enhancing the model accuracy. We analyze the convergence of GPD, as well as its ability to harvest high accuracy. Extensive experiments over three datasets demonstrate that, GPD is capable of mitigating poisoning attacks under both iid and non-iid data distributions. It significantly outperforms state-of-the-art defenses in terms of accuracy against various poisoning attacks.

The correlation of topology and disorder has attracted great intention due to appropriate disorder could induce the phase transition between trivial and nontrivial topological states. While it is widely recognized that strong disorder can produce rich phase diagrams in topological nontrivial states, moderate disorder has been proposed to induce transitions into topologically nontrivial phases counter-intuitively, leading to the concept of topological Anderson insulators. This phenomenon has been theoretically explored and simulated in various systems, yet experimental realization in solid state systems has remained elusive due to challenges in controlling disorder. Here, we report the experimental observation of Chern insulator state signed by the coexistence of quantized Hall plateau and zero longitudinal resistance in monolayer MnBi$_4$Te$_7$ Hall bar device, which originally hosts a trivial insulating state with Chern number $C$ = 0 in clean limit. We demonstrate that the observed trivial to nontrivial transition in this monolayer device can be attributed to disorder, evidenced by universal conductance fluctuations. Our findings substantiate the existence of a long-sought topological Anderson Chern insulator in real materials, a unique variant of the topological Anderson insulator characterized by broken time-reversal-symmetry., Comment: 45 pages, 4 main figures, 5 extended data figures, 5 supplementary figures

Solar flares stronger than X10 (S-flares, >X10) are the highest class flares which significantly impact on the Sun's evolution and space weather. Based on observations of Geostationary Orbiting Environmental Satellites (GOES) at soft X-ray (SXR) wavelength and the daily sunspot numbers (DSNs) since 1975, we obtained some interesting and heuristic conclusions: (1) Both S-flares and the more powerful extremely strong flares (ES-flares, >X14.3) mostly occur in the late phases of solar cycles and low-latitude regions on the solar disk; (2) Similar to X-class flares, the occurrence of S-flares in each solar cycle is somewhat random, but the occurrence of ES-flares seems to be dominated by the mean DSN (Vm) and its root-mean-square deviation during the valley phase (Vd) before the cycle: the ES-flare number is strongly correlated with Vd, and the occurrence time of the first ES-flare is anti-correlated with Vd and Vm. These facts indicate that the higher the Vm and Vd, the stronger the solar cycle, the more the ES-flares and the earlier they occurred. We proposed that the Sun may have a low-latitude active zone (LAZ), and most ES-flares are generated from the interaction between LAZ and the newly emerging active regions. The correlations and the linear regression functions may provide an useful method to predict the occurrence of ES-flares in an upcoming solar cycle, which derives that solar cycle 25 will have about 2 ES-flares after the spring of 2027., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, accepted by ApJ Letters

Physical AI needs to be trained digitally first. It needs a digital twin of itself, the policy model, and a digital twin of the world, the world model. In this paper, we present the Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform to help developers build customized world models for their Physical AI setups. We position a world foundation model as a general-purpose world model that can be fine-tuned into customized world models for downstream applications. Our platform covers a video curation pipeline, pre-trained world foundation models, examples of post-training of pre-trained world foundation models, and video tokenizers. To help Physical AI builders solve the most critical problems of our society, we make our platform open-source and our models open-weight with permissive licenses available via https://github.com/NVIDIA/Cosmos.

In multi-task remote inference systems, an intelligent receiver (e.g., command center) performs multiple inference tasks (e.g., target detection) using data features received from several remote sources (e.g., edge sensors). Key challenges to facilitating timely inference in these systems arise from (i) limited computational power of the sources to produce features from their inputs, and (ii) limited communication resources of the channels to carry simultaneous feature transmissions to the receiver. We develop a novel computation and communication co-scheduling methodology which determines feature generation and transmission scheduling to minimize inference errors subject to these resource constraints. Specifically, we formulate the co-scheduling problem as a weakly-coupled Markov decision process with Age of Information (AoI)-based timeliness gauging the inference errors. To overcome its PSPACE-hard complexity, we analyze a Lagrangian relaxation of the problem, which yields gain indices assessing the improvement in inference error for each potential feature generation-transmission scheduling action. Based on this, we develop a maximum gain first (MGF) policy which we show is asymptotically optimal for the original problem as the number of inference tasks increases. Experiments demonstrate that MGF obtains significant improvements over baseline policies for varying tasks, channels, and sources.

Visual speech recognition (VSR), commonly known as lip reading, has garnered significant attention due to its wide-ranging practical applications. The advent of deep learning techniques and advancements in hardware capabilities have significantly enhanced the performance of lip reading models. Despite these advancements, existing datasets predominantly feature stable video recordings with limited variability in lip movements. This limitation results in models that are highly sensitive to variations encountered in real-world scenarios. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework, LipGen, which aims to improve model robustness by leveraging speech-driven synthetic visual data, thereby mitigating the constraints of current datasets. Additionally, we introduce an auxiliary task that incorporates viseme classification alongside attention mechanisms. This approach facilitates the efficient integration of temporal information, directing the model's focus toward the relevant segments of speech, thereby enhancing discriminative capabilities. Our method demonstrates superior performance compared to the current state-of-the-art on the lip reading in the wild (LRW) dataset and exhibits even more pronounced advantages under challenging conditions., Comment: This paper has been accepted for presentation at ICASSP 2025

We investigate the problem of synthesizing distributionally robust control policies for stochastic systems under safety and reach-avoid specifications. Using a game-theoretical framework, we consider the setting where the probability distribution of the disturbance at each time step is selected from an ambiguity set defined by the Wasserstein distance. The goal is to synthesize a distributionally robust control policy that ensures the satisfaction probability exceeds a specified threshold under any distribution within the ambiguity set. First, for both safety and reach-avoid specifications, we establish the existence of optimal policies by leveraging the dynamic programming principles. Then we demonstrate how the associated optimization problem can be efficiently solved using the dual representation of Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization. Furthermore, for safety specifications in particular, we introduce a novel concept of distributionally robust control barrier certificates and show how these enable the efficient synthesis of controllers through sum-of-squares programming techniques. Finally, our experimental results reveal that incorporating distributional robustness during the synthesis phase significantly improves the satisfaction probability during online execution, even with limited statistical knowledge of the disturbance distribution.

1. An understanding of how biodiversity confers ecosystem stability is crucial in managing ecosystems under major environmental changes. Multiple biodiversity drivers can stabilize ecosystem functions over time. However, we know little about how local environmental conditions can influence these biodiversity drivers, and consequently how they indirectly shape the ecological stability of ecosystems. 2. We hypothesized that environmental factors can have opposite influences (i.e., not necessarily either positive or negative) on the temporal stability of communities in different environmental ranges depending on the biodiversity drivers involved. We tested this novel hypothesis by using data from a 4-year-long field study of submerged macrophyte across a water depth gradient in 8 heterogeneous bays of Erhai lake (with total sample size of 30,071 quadrats), a large lentic system in China. 3. Results indicate that a unimodal pattern of stability in temporal biomass measurements occurred along the water-depth gradient, and that multiple biodiversity drivers (the asynchrony in species dynamics, and the stability of dominant species) generally increased the temporal stability of aquatic primary producers. However, the effect of water depth either increased or decreased the stability of biomass according to the environmental conditions associated with sites along the water depth gradient. 4. Synthesis. These results reveal the influence of local environmental conditions on the biodiversity drivers of stability may help predict the functional consequences of biodiversity change across different scenarios of environmental change.

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has been widely adopted to align language models (LMs) with human preference. Prior RLHF works typically take a bandit formulation, which, though intuitive, ignores the sequential nature of LM generation and can suffer from the sparse reward issue. While recent works propose dense token-level RLHF, treating each token as an action may be oversubtle to proper reward assignment. In this paper, we seek to get the best of both by training and utilizing a segment-level reward model, which assigns a reward to each semantically complete text segment that spans over a short sequence of tokens. For reward learning, our method allows dynamic text segmentation and compatibility with standard sequence-preference datasets. For effective RL-based LM training against segment reward, we generalize the classical scalar bandit reward normalizers into location-aware normalizer functions and interpolate the segment reward for further densification. With these designs, our method performs competitively on three popular RLHF benchmarks for LM policy: AlpacaEval 2.0, Arena-Hard, and MT-Bench. Ablation studies are conducted to further demonstrate our method.

Federated learning (FL) has attracted considerable interest in the medical domain due to its capacity to facilitate collaborative model training while maintaining data privacy. However, conventional FL methods typically necessitate multiple communication rounds, leading to significant communication overhead and delays, especially in environments with limited bandwidth. One-shot federated learning addresses these issues by conducting model training and aggregation in a single communication round, thereby reducing communication costs while preserving privacy. Among these, one-shot federated ensemble learning combines independently trained client models using ensemble techniques such as voting, further boosting performance in non-IID data scenarios. On the other hand, existing machine learning methods in healthcare predominantly use unimodal data (e.g., medical images or textual reports), which restricts their diagnostic accuracy and comprehensiveness. Therefore, the integration of multi-modal data is proposed to address these shortcomings. In this paper, we introduce FedMME, an innovative one-shot multi-modal federated ensemble learning framework that utilizes multi-modal data for medical image analysis. Specifically, FedMME capitalizes on vision large language models to produce textual reports from medical images, employs a BERT model to extract textual features from these reports, and amalgamates these features with visual features to improve diagnostic accuracy. Experimental results show that our method demonstrated superior performance compared to existing one-shot federated learning methods in healthcare scenarios across four datasets with various data distributions. For instance, it surpasses existing one-shot federated learning approaches by more than 17.5% in accuracy on the RSNA dataset when applying a Dirichlet distribution with ($\alpha$ = 0.3).

This study developed the theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics for populations of low-temperature-differential (LTD) Stirling engines weakly-coupled in a general class of networks to clarify the effects of synchronous and asynchronous transitions on the power and thermal efficiency. We first show that synchronous (asynchronous) transitions increase (decrease) the power and thermal efficiency of weakly-coupled LTD Stirling engines based on quasilinear response relations between formally defined thermodynamic fluxes and forces. After that, we construct a conceptual model satisfying the quasilinear response relations to give a physical interpretation of the changes in power and thermal efficiency due to synchronous and asynchronous transitions, and justify the use of this conceptual model. We then show that the conceptual model, rather than the quasilinear response relations, preserves the irreversible nature in the relative motion of the original model and thus shows more accurate results than the analysis using the quasilinear response relations. Finally, we compare the dynamics between the original and the conceptual models for two-engine systems and show that the conceptual model roughly preserves the dynamical characteristics leading up to the synchronous transitions, while some detailed dynamical structures are lost.

In this paper, we fit the $B\to D$ vector transition form factor (TFF) by using the data measured by BABAR and Belle Collaborations within Monte Carlo (MC) method. Meanwhile, the $B\to D$ TFF is also calculated by using the QCD light-cone sum rules approach (LCSRs) within right-handed chiral current correlation function. In which, the $D$-meson leading-twist light-cone distribution amplitude (LCDA) serves as crucial input parameter is reconstructed with light-cone harmonic oscillator model where its longitudinal behavior primarily determined by the model-free parameter $B_{2;D}$. After matching the TFF with two scenarios from MC and LCSRs, we have $B_{2;D}=0.17$. Then, we present the curve of $D$-meson leading-twist LCDA in comparison with other theoretical approaches. Subsequently, the $B\to D$ TFF $f_{+}^{BD}(q^2)$ at the large recoil region is $f_{+}^{BD}(0)=0.625^{+0.087}_{-0.113}$, which is compared in detail with theoretical estimates and experimental measurements. Furthermore, we calculate the decay width and branching ratio of the Cabibbo-favored semileptonic decays $B\to D\ell \bar{\nu}_{\ell}$, which lead to the results $\mathcal{B}(B^0\to D^-\ell ^+\nu _{\ell}) =(1.96_{-0.55}^{+0.51})\times 10^{-2}$ and $\mathcal{B}(B^+\to \bar{D}^0\ell ^+\nu _{\ell}) =(2.12_{-0.59}^{+0.55})\times 10^{-2}$. Finally, we predict the CKM matrix element with two scenarios $|V_{cb}|_{\rm SR}=42.97_{-2.57}^{+2.42}\times 10^{-3}$ and $|V_{cb} |_{\rm MC}=42.82_{-1.29}^{+1.07}\times 10^{-3}$ from $B^0\to D^-\ell^+\nu_{\ell}$, $|V_{cb}|_{\rm SR}=41.93_{-1.05}^{+1.03}\times 10^{-3}$ and $|V_{cb} |_{\rm MC}=41.82_{-0.25}^{+0.23}\times 10^{-3}$ from $B^+\to \bar{D}^0\ell^+\nu_{\ell}$ which are in good agreement with theoretical and experimental predictions., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, comments welcome

Based on $(2712.4 \pm 14.3)\times 10^6$ $\psi(3686)$ events collected at the BESIII detector operating at the BEPCII collider, we present the first observation of the decay $\psi(3686) \to K^{-}\Lambda(1520)\bar{\Xi}^{+} + c.c.$. The product branching fraction ${\cal B}[\psi(3686) \to K^{-}\Lambda(1520)\bar{\Xi}^{+} + c.c.] \times {\cal B}[\Lambda(1520) \to pK^{-}]$ is measured to be $(9.5 \pm 0.8 \pm 1.1) \times 10^{-7}$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic.

Hard Thresholding Pursuit (HTP) has aroused increasing attention for its robust theoretical guarantees and impressive numerical performance in non-convex optimization. In this paper, we introduce a novel tuning-free procedure, named Full-Adaptive HTP (FAHTP), that simultaneously adapts to both the unknown sparsity and signal strength of the underlying model. We provide an in-depth analysis of the iterative thresholding dynamics of FAHTP, offering refined theoretical insights. In specific, under the beta-min condition $\min_{i \in S^*}|{\boldsymbol{\beta}}^*_i| \ge C\sigma (\log p/n)^{1/2}$, we show that the FAHTP achieves oracle estimation rate $\sigma (s^*/n)^{1/2}$, highlighting its theoretical superiority over convex competitors such as LASSO and SLOPE, and recovers the true support set exactly. More importantly, even without the beta-min condition, our method achieves a tighter error bound than the classical minimax rate with high probability. The comprehensive numerical experiments substantiate our theoretical findings, underscoring the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed FAHTP., Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, 1 table