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It is usually assumed that the memory of any thermo-mechanical protocol applied to a glass can be erased by heating the material in the supercooled liquid. While this is true for thermally treated amorphous solids, we show that hydrostatic compression can irreversibly modify the atomic motion, thermodynamic state and structure of a prototypical metallic glass-former, in a way which depends on the degree of ergodicity reached by the material during compression. While enhanced kinetic and thermodynamic stability can be obtained by quenching the dense liquid, high-pressure annealing in the glass leads to thermal rejuvenation and complex structural rearrangements at the level of the short and medium range order. When heated above their glass transition temperature, these compressed glasses do not convert into the pristine supercooled liquid but rather transform into different systems, challenging the generally accepted idea of an equilibrium recovery controlled solely by the microscopic $\alpha$-relaxation process.

A new experimental setup combining X-Ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (XPCS) in the hard x-ray regime and a high-pressure sample environment is developed to monitor the pressure dependence of the internal motion of complex systems down to the atomic scale in the multi-GPa range, from room temperature to 600K. The high flux of coherent high energy x-rays at 4th generation synchrotron source solves the problems caused by the absorption of the Diamond Anvil Cells used to generate the high pressure, enabling the measurement of the intermediate scattering function over 6 orders of magnitude in time, from $10^{-3}$ s to $10^{3}$s. The constraints posed by the high-pressure generation such as the preservation of the x-ray's coherence, as well as the sample, pressure and temperature stability are discussed, and the feasibility of high pressure XPCS is demonstrated through results obtained on metallic glasses.

In this work, we measure and model tilted x-ray refractive lenses to investigate their effects on an x-ray beam. The modelling is benchmarked against at-wavelength metrology obtained with x-ray speckle vector tracking experiments (XSVT) at the BM05 beamline at the ESRF-EBS light source, showing very good agreement. This validation permits us to explore possible applications of tilted x-ray lenses in optical design: we demonstrate that tilting 1D lenses around their focusing direction can be used for fine-tuning their focal length with possible applications in beamline optical design., Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, 38 references to be submitted to Optics Express

Sequential experimental design to discover interventions that achieve a desired outcome is a key problem in various domains including science, engineering and public policy. When the space of possible interventions is large, making an exhaustive search infeasible, experimental design strategies are needed. In this context, encoding the causal relationships between the variables, and thus the effect of interventions on the system, is critical for identifying desirable interventions more efficiently. Here, we develop a causal active learning strategy to identify interventions that are optimal, as measured by the discrepancy between the post-interventional mean of the distribution and a desired target mean. The approach employs a Bayesian update for the causal model and prioritizes interventions using a carefully designed, causally informed acquisition function. This acquisition function is evaluated in closed form, allowing for fast optimization. The resulting algorithms are theoretically grounded with information-theoretic bounds and provable consistency results for linear causal models with known causal graph. We apply our approach to both synthetic data and single-cell transcriptomic data from Perturb-CITE-seq experiments to identify optimal perturbations that induce a specific cell state transition. The causally informed acquisition function generally outperforms existing criteria allowing for optimal intervention design with fewer but carefully selected samples.

We simulate the focusing of a partially-coherent X-ray beam emitted by an undulator in a fourth-generation storage ring performing coherent mode decomposition and wave optics propagation. The focus position is shifted, and its size is enlarged when an entrance slit crops the beam. This is the usual case when a slit is used to select the coherent fraction. The pairing of two focusing elements (mirrors, lenses or transfocators) to ensure a fixed focal position is also analyzed. Our results show that the image of a partially coherent source, such an undulator in a low-emittance storage ring, is a non-trivial function of the aperture used to control the coherence fraction., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2110.05957

The mixed-membership stochastic block model (MMSBM) is a common model for social networks. Given an $n$-node symmetric network generated from a $K$-community MMSBM, we would like to test $K=1$ versus $K>1$. We first study the degree-based $\chi^2$ test and the orthodox Signed Quadrilateral (oSQ) test. These two statistics estimate an order-2 polynomial and an order-4 polynomial of a "signal" matrix, respectively. We derive the asymptotic null distribution and power for both tests. However, for each test, there exists a parameter regime where its power is unsatisfactory. It motivates us to propose a power enhancement (PE) test to combine the strengths of both tests. We show that the PE test has a tractable null distribution and improves the power of both tests. To assess the optimality of PE, we consider a randomized setting, where the $n$ membership vectors are independently drawn from a distribution on the standard simplex. We show that the success of global testing is governed by a quantity $\beta_n(K,P,h)$, which depends on the community structure matrix $P$ and the mean vector $h$ of memberships. For each given $(K, P, h)$, a test is called $\textit{ optimal}$ if it distinguishes two hypotheses when $\beta_n(K, P,h)\to\infty$. A test is called $\textit{optimally adaptive}$ if it is optimal for all $(K, P, h)$. We show that the PE test is optimally adaptive, while many existing tests are only optimal for some particular $(K, P, h)$, hence, not optimally adaptive., Comment: 78 pages, 6 figures

A new algorithm to perform coherent mode decomposition of the undulator radiation is proposed. It is based in separating the horizontal and vertical directions, reducing the problem by working with one-dimension wavefronts. The validity conditions of this approximation are discussed. Simulations require low computer resources, and run interactively in a laptop. We study the focusing with lenses of the radiation emitted by an undulator in a fourth-generation storage ring (EBS-ESRF). Results are compared against multiple optics packages implementing a variety of methods for dealing with partial coherence: full 2D coherent mode decomposition, Monte-Carlo combination of wavefronts from electrons entering the undulator with different initial conditions, and hybrid ray-tracing correcting geometrical optics with wave optics., Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures

Moir\'e structures in van der Waals heterostructures lead to emergent phenomena including superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene and optically accessible strongly-correlated electron states in transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers. Dual periodicity moir\'e structures (DPMS) formed in layered structures with more than two layers have been shown to lead to ferromagnetism and multiple secondary Dirac points in TBG. Whilst in principle it is possible to obtain DPMS in bilayers there has not been clear experimental evidence of this yet. In this paper we present signatures of DPMS in a twisted MoSe$_2$/WSe$_2$ bilayer revealed by resonance Raman spectroscopy. We observed zone-folded acoustic and optical phonon modes with a wavevector twice of the moir\'e wavevector, evidence of a dual periodicity moir\'e heterostructure. These results simultaneously open up opportunities for new emergent phenomena and an optical method for characterising DPMS in a wide range of van der Waals heterostructures., Comment: 16 pages, 3 Figures, 1 Table

Given the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a major challenge is to rapidly repurpose existing approved drugs for clinical interventions. While a number of data-driven and experimental approaches have been suggested in the context of drug repurposing, a platform that systematically integrates available transcriptomic, proteomic and structural data is missing. More importantly, given that SARS-CoV-2 pathogenicity is highly age-dependent, it is critical to integrate aging signatures into drug discovery platforms. We here take advantage of large-scale transcriptional drug screens combined with RNA-seq data of the lung epithelium with SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as the aging lung. To identify robust druggable protein targets, we propose a principled causal framework that makes use of multiple data modalities. Our analysis highlights the importance of serine/threonine and tyrosine kinases as potential targets that intersect the SARS-CoV-2 and aging pathways. By integrating transcriptomic, proteomic and structural data that is available for many diseases, our drug discovery platform is broadly applicable. Rigorous in vitro experiments as well as clinical trials are needed to validate the identified candidate drugs.

X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) is a widely used X-ray diagnostic method. While synchrotrons have large communities of XAS users, its use on X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL) facilities has been rather limited. At a first glance, the relatively narrow bandwidth and the highly fluctuating spectral structure of XFEL sources seem to prevent high-quality XAS measurements without accumulating over many shots. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the collection of single-shot XAS spectra on an XFEL, with error bars of only a few percent, over tens of eV. We show how this technique can be extended over wider spectral ranges towards Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) measurements, by concatenating a few tens of single-shot measurements. Such results open indisputable perspectives for future femtosecond time resolved XAS studies, especially for transient processes that can be initiated at low repetition rate., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

Thanks to the remarkable developments of ultrafast science, one of today's challenges is to modify material state by controlling with a light pulse the coherent motions that connect two different phases. Here we show how strain waves, launched by electronic and structural precursor phenomena, determine a macroscopic transformation pathway for the semiconducting-to-metal transition with large volume change in bistable Ti$_3$O$_5$ nanocrystals. Femtosecond powder X-ray diffraction allowed us to quantify the structural deformations associated with the photoinduced phase transition on relevant time scales. We monitored the early intra-cell distortions around absorbing metal dimers, but also long range crystalline deformations dynamically governed by acoustic waves launched at the laser-exposed Ti$_3$O$_5$ surface. We rationalize these observations with a simplified elastic model, demonstrating that a macroscopic transformation occurs concomitantly with the propagating acoustic wavefront on the picosecond timescale, several decades earlier than the subsequent thermal processes governed by heat diffusion., Comment: 30 pages (including supplementary text), 5 main figures, 9 supplementary figures; corrected author list

Autonomous vehicles require precise knowledge of their position and orientation in all weather and traffic conditions for path planning, perception, control, and general safe operation. Here we derive these requirements for autonomous vehicles based on first principles. We begin with the safety integrity level, defining the allowable probability of failure per hour of operation based on desired improvements on road safety today. This draws comparisons with the localization integrity levels required in aviation and rail where similar numbers are derived at 10^-8 probability of failure per hour of operation. We then define the geometry of the problem, where the aim is to maintain knowledge that the vehicle is within its lane and to determine what road level it is on. Longitudinal, lateral, and vertical localization error bounds (alert limits) and 95% accuracy requirements are derived based on US road geometry standards (lane width, curvature, and vertical clearance) and allowable vehicle dimensions. For passenger vehicles operating on freeway roads, the result is a required lateral error bound of 0.57 m (0.20 m, 95%), a longitudinal bound of 1.40 m (0.48 m, 95%), a vertical bound of 1.30 m (0.43 m, 95%), and an attitude bound in each direction of 1.50 deg (0.51 deg, 95%). On local streets, the road geometry makes requirements more stringent where lateral and longitudinal error bounds of 0.29 m (0.10 m, 95%) are needed with an orientation requirement of 0.50 deg (0.17 deg, 95%)., Comment: Under review with the SAE Journal of Connected and Automated Vehicles