Recent lbnl items

Leveraging a synthetic biology approach to enhance BCG-mediated expansion of Vγ9Vδ2 T cells

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is an urgent need to develop a more efficacious anti-tuberculosis vaccine as the current live-attenuated vaccine strain BCG fails to prevent pulmonary infection in adults. In this study, we leverage a synthetic biology approach to engineer BCG to produce more (E)-4-hydroxy-3-methyl-but-2-enyl pyrophosphate (HMBPP), an intermediate of bacterial-but not host-isoprenoid biosynthesis via the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway. HMBPP strongly activates and expands Vγ9Vδ2 T cells, which are unique to higher-order primates and protect against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. BCG has been engineered to produce specific ligands and antigens to some success; in contrast, our strategy exploits a self-nonself recognition mechanism in the host via HMBPP sensing, which has not been attempted before. To inform the design of our recombinant strains, we performed synteny analyses of >63 mycobacterial species and found that isoprenoid biosynthetic genes are not operonic across...

Identification of Solid-Electrolyte Interphase Species by Joint Characterization of Li-Ion Battery Chemistry by Mass Spectrometry and Electrochemical Reaction Networks.

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The formation and stability of the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) play central roles in determining the long-term performance and safety of modern electrochemical energy storage systems. Despite decades of research, the SEI's heterogeneous, dynamic, and multiphase nature has defied comprehensive molecular-level characterization, creating a critical knowledge gap that limits rational battery design. In this work, we introduce a computational-experimental framework that integrates high-throughput quantum chemistry calculations, data-driven electrochemical reaction networks (eCRNs), stochastic algorithms, and laser desorption/ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (LDI-FTICR-MS) to unravel SEI formation in carbonate-based electrolytes without imposing predefined mechanisms. We constructed the most comprehensive eCRN to date, spanning over 10,000 species and 209 million reactions. Through stochastic network analysis, we successfully recovered 27...

High-order cumulants and correlation functions near the critical point from molecular dynamics

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We present a systematic investigation of particle-number fluctuations in the crossover region near the critical end point of a first-order phase transition using molecular dynamics simulations of the classical Lennard-Jones fluid. We extend our prior studies to third- and fourth-order cumulants in both coordinate- and momentum-space acceptances and integrated correlation functions (factorial cumulants). We find that, even near the critical point, non-Gaussian cumulants equilibrate on timescales comparable to those of the second-order cumulants, but show stronger finite-size effects. The presence of interactions and of the critical point leads to strong deviations of the cumulants from the ideal-gas baseline in coordinate space; these deviations are expected to persist in momentum space in the presence of collective expansion. In particular, the kurtosis becomes strongly negative, , on the crossover side of the critical point. However, this signal is significantly diluted once...

Enhanced Interlayer Coupling and Excitons in Twin-Stacked Two-Dimensional Magnetic CrSBr Bilayers

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The degree of electronic coupling between individual layers in van der Waals heterostructures offers a route to engineer their magnetic, electronic, and optical functionalities. Using state-of-the-art first-principles calculations, we demonstrate that the electronic coupling between two monolayers of CrSBr─an anisotropic two-dimensional magnetic semiconductor─is highly nonlinear and nonmonotonic with respect to their relative twist angle, exhibiting a pronounced maximum at the twin-stacking configuration. The coupling strength scales with both the degree of overlap of Br orbitals adjacent to the van der Waals gap and the cosine of half of the interlayer spin angle. This enhanced interlayer electronic coupling leads to excitons delocalized across the two layers, with a polarization dependence that reflects the interlayer spin alignment. Our results reveal a sensitive interplay among twist angle, magnetism, and excitonic properties in twin-stacked CrSBr bilayers, suggesting twin...

Forward modeling approach to nuclear reaction cross sections: Applications in neutron inelastic scattering

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The development of nuclear reaction models for the production of evaluated nuclear data has traditionally been performed by comparing measured cross sections with predictions from reaction model codes whose physical input parameters are adjusted to obtain the best agreement between measured and modeled results. To more directly probe reaction model inputs, this work introduces a forward modeling approach to experimental reaction cross-section determination, where the most important physical input parameters to reaction model calculations are obtained via minimization between measured and calculated observables. This was demonstrated using data collected by the Gamma Energy Neutron Energy Spectrometer for Inelastic Scattering (GENESIS) at the 88-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a detection array consisting of organic liquid scintillators and high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors. Using a broad-spectrum neutron beam and a -enriched target, GENESIS...

Structure and sequence evolution in the pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) pangenome

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Eukaryotic genomes harbor many forms of variation, including nucleotide diversity and structural polymorphisms, which experience natural selection and contribute to genome evolution and biodiversity. Harnessing this variation for agriculture hinges on our ability to detect, quantify, catalog, and deploy genetic diversity. Here, we explore seven complete genomes of the emerging biofuel crop pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) drawn from across the species' current genetic diversity to catalog variation in genome structure and content. Across this new pangenome resource, we find contrasting evolutionary modes in different genomic zones. Gene-poor, repeat-rich pericentromeric regions experience frequent rearrangements, including repeated centromere repositioning. By contrast, conserved gene-dense chromosome arms maintain large-scale synteny across accessions even in fast-evolving NOD-like receptor immune genes, where microsynteny breaks down across species, but gene cluster positioning...

Reverse segregation and self-organization in inclined chute flows of bidisperse granular mixtures

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the usual segregation scenario for stable inclined chute flows of bidisperse mixtures of fine and coarse spherical particles, coarse particles rise toward the free surface, forming a coarse-rich region atop the flowing pile. Beyond a threshold coarse-to-fine diameter ratio of approximately 4, conversely, the weight of the coarse particles exceeds the segregation driving forces, causing individual coarse particles to sink within the pile and producing a reversed segregation state. However, an understanding of the collective evolution of the pile structure is still lacking when the particle diameter ratio exceeds 4 and the coarse-particle mass fraction is appreciable. To explore this broadly bidisperse limit, we perform discrete element method simulations considering mean particle diameter ratios of up to 8 and coarse-particle mass fractions spanning 0.1 to 0.9. The steady-state flow profiles reveal several intriguing behaviors that depend on the diameter ratio and mass fraction....

Single domain spectroscopic signatures of a magnetic kagome metal

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Magnetic kagome metals host complex electronic states and real-space magnetic textures, but their small and temperature-dependent magnetic domains make experimental access difficult. Here we show that micro-focused circular-dichroic photoemission spectroscopy enables spectroscopic access to individual magnetic domains in the kagome metal DyMn6Sn6 at low temperature. By tuning to element-specific electronic states, we image domain contrast associated with Dy 4f levels and detect corresponding signatures from Mn core states. The energy dependence of the dichroic response is consistent with modeling and indicates ferrimagnetic alignment between Dy and Mn local moments. Measurements of Mn 3d-derived valence bands, supported by first-principles calculations, reveal features related to orbital magnetization. These results establish element- and orbital-resolved spectroscopy of single magnetic domains and enable studies of magnetic textures and electronic structure in complex magnetic...

Spin Polarization from Circularly Polarized Light Induced Charge Transfer

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We show how a spin polarization can be generated through the photoinduced electron transfer of an achiral donor-acceptor complex following chiral light excitation. In particular, we illustrate the basic energetic and symmetry requirements for chirality induced spin selectivity where the chirality emerges from the electronic degrees of freedom following excitation with circularly polarized light. We study this effect in a simple model of a metalloporphyrin complex with an axial acceptor ligand using quantum mechanical rate theories and numerical simulations. We find that the spin polarization emerges due to the selective excitation of a ring current within the porphryin, breaking the degeneracy of the two degenerate spin states. The resultant spin polarization increases with the spin orbit coupling between the metal in the porphyrin and the axial ligand, and is transient, with a lifetime dependent on the rate of dephasing from the Jahn-Teller distortion mode. This proposed effect...

Exploring the QCD phase diagram through correlations and fluctuations

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The exploration of the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram is a central goal of relativistic heavy-ion collision experiments. This review focuses on the role of fluctuations and correlations as sensitive probes of the phase structure. We discuss theoretical advancements and experimental methodologies employed to map the QCD phase diagram, highlighting constraints derived from both lattice QCD calculations and existing experimental data. Key observables, such as cumulants and factorial cumulants of conserved charges (e.g., net proton, net charge), are explored as promising signatures of phase transitions and the QCD critical point. We discuss how these quantities are measured experimentally and compared with theoretical predictions, addressing challenges and best practices for meaningful comparisons. Special attention is given to predictions and current experimental results at high baryon density, including recent findings from the STAR collaboration at RHIC. Finally, we...

Identifying Barriers to Solar and Storage Hybrids: Modeled vs. empirical wholesale market value and net-value for co-located solar + storage projects

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Large-scale (1MW+) co-located solar and battery storage projects are expanding rapidly in the United States, but their realized contribution to the bulk power system remains poorly understood because public project-level operating data are limited. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates the wholesale market value of 280 operational photovoltaic-plus-storage (PV+S) projects across the seven ISOs/RTOs and 19 additional balancing authorities, representing roughly 95% of the U.S. PV+S fleet in 2024. We model optimized hourly dispatch under energy, capacity, and ancillary-service market opportunities and compare the resulting value with standalone PV value, project-specific levelized cost estimates, and empirical operating or revenue data where available. According to optimized dispatch with perfect price foresight, adding batteries could have increased the national generation-weighted market value of solar from $29/MWh to $75/MWh in 2024, primarily through higher capacity...

Investigating charm quark energy loss in medium with the nuclear modification factor of D 0 -tagged jets

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The nuclear modification factor R AA of charm jets, identified by the presence of a D0 meson among the jet constituents, has been measured for the first time in Pb–Pb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair s NN = 5.02 TeV with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The D0 mesons and their charge conjugates are reconstructed from the hadronic decay D 0 → K − π + . Jets are reconstructed from D0-meson candidates and charged particles using the anti-k T algorithm with jet resolution parameter R = 0.3 , in the jet transverse momentum (p T) range 5 < p T ch jet < 50 GeV/c and pseudorapidity |η ch jet| < 0.6. A hint of reduced suppression in the charm-jet R AA is observed in comparison to inclusive jets in central Pb–Pb collisions with a significance of about 2σ in 20 < p T ch jet < 50 GeV/c, suggesting the in-medium energy loss to depend on both the difference between quark and gluon coupling strength (Casimir colour-charge effect) and quark mass (dead-cone effect)....

A rapid embodied carbon assessment tool for priority materials

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Embodied carbon limits within building materials are a driving factor in global trade, generating new research and analysis tools in industry. These product assessments, which require utilizing life-cycle assessment (LCA) across broad supply chains, can be expensive, time and data-intensive, and subject to significant variations. Existing methods and tools, such as specific environmental product declarations, typically do not capture these variations and dynamics in supply and manufacturing. Moreover, models and tools must enable stakeholders to assess customized supply chains and future scenarios. In this study, we present the Rapid Embodied Carbon Assessment and Target-setting for Emissions-intensive Materials (REDuCE) tool for building materials. We developed a tool that allows users to select production technologies, transportation mode and distances, concrete carbonation, fuel sources, and regional electricity mixes to supply customization for cement and concrete produced...

Real-time estimators for scattering observables: A full account of finite-volume errors for quantum simulation

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The real-time correlators of quantum field theories can be directly probed through new approaches to simulation, such as quantum computing and tensor networks. This provides a new framework for computing scattering observables in lattice formulations of strongly interacting theories, such as lattice quantum chromodynamics. In this paper, we prove that the proposal of real-time estimators of scattering observables is universally applicable to all scattering observables of gapped quantum field theories. All finite-volume errors are exponentially suppressed, and the rate of this suppression is controlled by the regulator considered, namely, a displacement of the spectrum of the theory into the complex plane. A partial restoration of Lorentz symmetry by averaging over different boosts gives an additional suppression of finite volume errors. Our results also apply to the simulation of wave packet scattering, where a similar averaging is performed to construct the wave packets that...

Revealing short- and long-range Li-ion diffusion in Li 2 MnO 3 from finite-temperature dynamical mean field theory

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Li 2 MnO 3 is a key component of Li-excess layered cathodes of the form (1 − x ), LiMO 2 + x , Li 2 MnO 3 (M = Mn, Ni, Co, …), yet its role in setting Li-ion transport limitations remains under debate. Li 2 MnO 3 is a key component of Li-excess layered cathodes of the form (1 − x ), LiMO 2 + x , Li 2 MnO 3 (M = Mn, Ni, Co, …), yet its role in setting Li-ion transport limitations remains under debate. Here we combine DFT+U, finite-temperature DFT+DMFT with a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver, and nudged-elastic-band (NEB) calculations to study Li + migration in paramagnetic Li 2 MnO 3 in the presence of a single Li vacancy. Evaluating DMFT total energies along the DFT+U NEB geometries reveals that dynamical correlations strongly renormalize the lowest-barrier processes, reducing the activation energies to E a = 0.18 eV for the shortest-range hop and E a = 0.50 eV for the next-lowest (transport-controlling) step. The 0.18 eV barrier quantitatively reproduces...

Evidence for Neutrino Emission from X-Ray Bright Seyfert Galaxies in the Southern Hemisphere Using Enhanced Starting Track Events with IceCube

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

IceCube recently reported the observation of TeV neutrinos from the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068, and the corresponding neutrino flux is significantly higher than the upper limit implied by observations of GeV–TeV gamma rays. This suggests that neutrinos are produced near the supermassive black hole, where the radiation density is high enough to obscure gamma rays. We use a set of muon neutrinos with interaction vertices inside the detector, which have good sensitivity to sources in the southern sky, from IceCube data recorded between 2011 and 2021. We then search for individual and collective neutrino signals from 14 Seyfert galaxies in the southern sky selected from the Swift Burst Alert Telescope AGN Spectroscopic Survey. Using the correlations between keV X-rays and TeV neutrinos predicted by disk–corona models, and assuming production characteristics similar to NGC 1068, a collective neutrino signal search reveals an excess of 6.7−3.2+4.0 events, which is inconsistent with...

What is quantum biology?

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Quantum biology is the field at the intersection of quantum-related physics and the biology of living systems. The goal of the field is to determine if quantum phenomena underpin biological function at the macroscale. Such results, supported by compelling experimental evidence, will be important because they will show how quantum effects can have functional relevance, even in very complex and nominally classical systems. Here, we attempt to define the scope of quantum biology with a forward-facing view to help focus the research agenda. To that end, we propose open questions fundamental to consolidating the field of quantum biology. These open questions highlight the importance of developing suitable probes at the quantum scale, the possibility that classical biological machinery might simply mimic quantum systems, and of elucidating the ways quantum function can be amplified to the macroscale.

StochasticGW-GPU: Rapid Quasi-Particle Energies for Molecules beyond 10,000 Atoms

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

StochasticGW is a code for computing accurate quasi-particle (QP) energies of molecules and material systems in the GW approximation. StochasticGW utilizes the stochastic Resolution of the Identity (sROI) technique to enable a massively parallel implementation with computational costs that scale semilinearly with system size, allowing the method to access systems with tens of thousands of electrons. We introduce a new implementation, StochasticGW-GPU, for which the main bottleneck steps have been ported to GPUs and give substantial performance improvements over previous versions of the code. We showcase the new code by computing band gaps of hydrogenated silicon clusters (Si_xH_y) containing up to 10,001 atoms and 35,144 electrons, and we obtain individual QP energies with a statistical precision of better than ±0.03 eV with times-to-solution of less than 1 h.

MCP-enabled agentic AI workflow for building energy modelling: framework and use cases

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Traditional building energy modelling workflows remain labor-intensive and error-prone, requiring specialized expertise that limits broader adoption. This paper introduces a novel Model Context Protocol (MCP)-enabled framework that connects AI assistants to EnergyPlus through MCP, a standardized interface for tool invocation and context management. Two complementary integration paradigms are presented and compared: conversational integration, where users interact through natural language while an AI assistant orchestrates MCP tools on demand, and agentic workflow integration, where specialized agents coordinate autonomously to complete multi-step tasks. Using an experimental testbed for residential buildings, the end-to-end workflows are demonstrated. The conversational approach reduced typical inspection and modification tasks from 1-2 h to under 15 min, while maintaining full transparency through visible tool invocations. The agentic approach automated parametric analysis. These...

pyDiSCaMB: enabling the use of multipolar scattering factors in Phenix

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Multipolar scattering models, such as the transferable aspherical atom model, account for atomic chemical interactions and provide a more accurate representation of experimental data. However, the simpler independent atom model (IAM), which assumes non-interacting atoms, is the only model available in the most widely used macromolecular refinement programs. This is primarily because IAM offers a hard-to-beat combination of computational efficiency and modelling power at typical macromolecular resolutions. By contrast, more accurate multipolar modelling has historically been limited due to its computational cost and the absence of an interface between software capable of calculating structure factors and gradients based on multipolar models and software designed for macromolecular refinement. This work introduces pyDiSCaMB, a Python software package designed to integrate between the computational crystallography toolbox (cctbx) and the quantum crystallography library DiSCaMB (Densities...

Advanced pathways for hydrogen production: a collective view from a technical experts meeting

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The current status of advanced water splitting pathways (using photoelectrochemical, biological and thermochemical platforms) toward viable technologies to produce renewable and sustainable hydrogen is assessed in a virtual international meeting. Hydrogen is an essential fuel and feedstock that can be produced in multiple ways to meet requirements for technological sectors that include energy storage, transportation, petroleum refining, and ammonia synthesis. To consider the future state of hydrogen manufacturing, a team of experts has assembled and examined three emerging hydrogen production technologies – photoelectrochemical, biological, and thermochemical. Each of these emerging technologies holds significant long-term potential for cost reduction while lowering industrial emissions associated with conventional methods of hydrogen manufacture ( e.g. , steam methane reforming) by using sunlight and renewable resources as primary sources of energy and feedstock, respectively....

Backward-Angle Electroproduction of η′ Mesons off Protons at W = 2.13 GeV and Q2 = 0.46 (GeV/c)2

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The electroproduction of (Formula presented) mesons from a (Formula presented) target at (Formula presented), (Formula presented), and (Formula presented) has been experimentally measured. The differential cross section of virtual photoproduction has been obtained as (Formula presented) in the One-Photon-Exchange Approximation. This value is one-sixth of that of real photoproduction at backward angles. A comparison with newly developed isobar model calculations not only shows the validity of the theoretical framewark employed, but also imposes new constraints on coupling strength between the (Formula presented) final state and nucleon resonances.

Out-of-time-order correlators bridge classical transport and quantum dynamics.

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) has emerged as a central tool for quantifying decoherence across wide-ranging physical platforms. Here, we demonstrate its direct measurement in a classical ensemble using nuclear magnetic resonance with a modulated gradient spin echo sequence and extend the method into a multidimensional correlation to track exchange phenomena. Position is encoded through magnetic field gradients and momentum through the velocity autocorrelation function, enabling experimental access to OTOCs for proton motion confined within the self-similar lattice of the metal-organic framework MOF-808. Here, water confined to specified geometries within the MOF pores gives rise to spatially distinct diffusive eigenmodes with characteristic relative entropies. We demonstrate that periodic radio frequency driving combined with gradient modulation yields entropy evolution through the selection of distinct diffusion modes. Frequency-resolved diffusion spectra connect these...

Extended Rice–Thomson analysis and atomistic simulations revealing grain boundary effects on fracture in refractory high-entropy alloys

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding how grain boundaries mediate fracture remains a critical challenge in designing ductile, high-performance refractory alloys. Here, we extend the Rice-Thomson criterion to account for the angle between cracks and the impinging grain boundaries (GBs), capturing the competition between intergranular fracture and dislocation-mediated plasticity. Using machine learning interatomic potentials, we performed molecular statics simulations to probe fracture mechanisms in nanocrystalline NbMoTaW and Nb₄₅Ta₂₅Ti₁₅Hf₁₅, each with two different grain sizes, revealing trends consistent with experimental observations and the extended Rice model. Comparison with averaged R-curves for bulk samples demonstrates that GBs enhance ductility in Nb₄₅Ta₂₅Ti₁₅Hf₁₅ in both grain sizes investigated. In contrast, GBs only locally improve fracture resistance in NbMoTaW when cracks are temporarily pinned at...

Multiomics and deep learning dissect regulatory syntax in human development

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Transcription factors establish cell identity during development by binding regulatory DNA in a sequence-specific manner, often promoting local chromatin accessibility and regulating gene expression1. Mapping accessible chromatin offers critical insights into transcriptional control, but available datasets for human development are restricted to bulk tissue, single organs or single modalities2. Here we present the Human Development Multiomic Atlas, a single-cell atlas of chromatin accessibility and gene expression from 817,740 fetal cells across 12 organs, spanning 203 cell types and more than 1 million candidate cis-regulatory elements, many of which exhibit organ-specific in vivo enhancer activity. Deep learning models trained to predict accessibility from local DNA sequence unravel a comprehensive lexicon of motifs that influence accessibility, including composite motifs exhibiting distinct syntactic constraints that are predicted to mediate transcription factor cooperativity....

Symmetry-Protected Moiré Band Engineering and Enhanced Electron–Phonon Coupling in Xe/Bi2Se3 Superlattices: Path to Topological Superconductivity

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Observation of superconductivity, magnetism, and correlated insulating phases driven by the moiré potential in twisted graphene bilayer has opened the exciting new field of "twistronics". Even richer physics is expected if moiré superlattice could be generated on topological insulators; however, until now, experimental studies have been scarce. Here, we demonstrate topological moirés generated by adsorbing a monolayer of noble gas on a topological insulator. By angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we show that the moiré potential replicates the topological surface state and affects it in a way fundamentally different from the trivial states. Replicated Dirac cones generally avoid crossings, except at the time-reversal invariant momenta that remain gapless. This creates van Hove singularities at the moiré Brillouin zone corners, providing the mechanism of enhancing correlations. Indeed, we observe a strong enhancement of the electron-phonon coupling strength that, if properly...

The Interplay of Pauli Repulsion, Electrostatics, and Field Inhomogeneity for Blueshifting and Redshifting Vibrational Probe Molecules

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Many molecules' vibrational frequencies are sensitive to intermolecular electric fields, enabling them to probe the field in complex molecular environments. However, it is often unclear whether the probe is responding to the local electric field or other types of intermolecular interactions, inhibiting interpretation of the frequency and effectiveness as probes. This is especially true for molecules whose vibrational frequencies blueshift instead of the more typical redshift in hydrogen bonding configurations. Here, we computationally investigate the causes of redshifting versus blueshifting over a range of vibrational reporters. First, we apply adiabatic energy decomposition analysis to a paradigmatic set of probes, finding that redshifting only occurs when electrostatic interactions are strong enough to overcome the dominant and large blueshifting contribution of Pauli repulsion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that field inhomogeneity can further shift the frequency of many probes...

CMIP7 data request: Earth system priorities and opportunities

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 7 (CMIP7) request for data pertaining to Earth systems science, and provides justification for the resources needed to produce this data. Topics within the CMIP7 Earth System (CMIP7-ES) theme centre around tracking of flows of energy, carbon, water and other fluxes across domains, and constraining feedbacks between these cycles and the climate system. These topics are summarized in this paper as scientific “opportunities” describing specific model intercomparison experiments and use cases for next-generation Earth System Model (ESM) output. These opportunities were submitted by modelling groups and scientific consortia following an extended public consultation process. Contained within each opportunity are requests for groups of Climate & Forecasting (CF) variables, which are bundled into variable groups representing all data required to address...

The DESI DR1 peculiar velocity survey: Growth rate measurements from the galaxy power spectrum

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The large-scale structure of the Universe and its evolution encapsulate a wealth of cosmological information. A powerful means of unlocking this knowledge lies in measuring the auto-power spectrum and/or the cross-power spectrum of the galaxy density and momentum fields, followed by the estimation of cosmological parameters based on these spectrum measurements. In this study, we generalize the cross-power spectrum model to accommodate scenarios in which the density and momentum fields are derived from distinct galaxy surveys. The growth rate of the large-scale structures of the Universe, commonly represented as fσ 8 , was extracted by jointly fitting the monopole and quadrupole moments of the auto-density power spectrum, the monopole of the auto-momentum power spectrum, and the dipole of the cross-power spectrum. Our estimators, theoretical models, and parameter-fitting framework were tested using mocks, confirming their robustness and accuracy in retrieving the fiducial growth...

A Fast Algorithm for Computing Zigzag Representatives

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: Zigzag filtrations of simplicial complexes generalize the usual filtrations by allowing simplex deletions in addition to simplex insertions. The barcodes computed from zigzag filtrations encode the evolution of homological features. Although one can locate a particular feature at any index in the filtration using existing algorithms, the resulting representatives may not be compatible with the zigzag: a representative cycle at one index may not map into a representative cycle at its neighbor. For this, one needs to compute compatible representative cycles along each bar in the barcode. It is known that the barcode for a zigzag filtration with m insertions and deletions can be computed in $$O(m^\omega )$$ ...

Ecological and genomic variation in ectomycorrhizal fungal exploration types

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) produce mycelia with variable extension and complexity, which can be classified according to soil 'exploration types' (ETs). ETs have received attention as one of the few mycorrhizal trait frameworks, but without an empirical classification of ET functional diversity and environmental preferences, understanding and interpreting EMF biogeographic patterns has been difficult. We conducted a synthesis combining: comparative EMF genomics to describe functional divergence in decomposition and nutrient cycling genes across ETs; and EMF trait distribution modeling across continental Europe, pairing soil and root EMF surveys to establish biogeographic ET niche profiles. We demonstrate a signature of ETs encoded in EMF genomes, which is independent from phylogeny and linked to biomass production strategies. EMF ET relative abundances were separated by soil, root, and dominant tree leaf type habitats and exhibited unique correlations with forest biotic (e.g....

Practical considerations for measuring global spin density matrix elements of vector mesons in heavy-ion collisions

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Practical considerations for measuring global spin density matrix elements of vector mesons in heavy-ion collisions

Orbital-Dependent Coulomb Drag in Electron-Hole Bilayer Graphene Heterostructures

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We report Coulomb drag studies in an electron-hole bilayer graphene heterostructure in a magnetic field, where the orbital, spin, and valley degrees of freedom are lifted by the combined effects of exchange interaction, Zeeman energy, and a vertical displacement field. Our device enables the application of a large vertical displacement field across both layers. In addition to the well-established strong Coulomb drag between the Landau levels with an orbital quantum number N=0, we observe a Coulomb drag signal between the N=1 Landau levels under a suitable vertical displacement field. As the vertical displacement field increases further, the Coulomb drag signal between N=1 Landau levels weakens, and a Coulomb drag signal emerges between the N=0 and N=1 Landau levels. These findings suggest the important roles of the orbital index and the vertical displacement field in interlayer Coulomb interaction within the quantum Hall regime of coupled bilayer systems.

In situ quantification of fracture slip induced by hydraulic injections in a deep borehole: A comparison of two different borehole techniques

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In situ measurements of fracture deformation during fluid injection are rare, yet essential for understanding the mechanical response of fractured rock. In this study, we evaluate the reliability of two methods by comparing their slip vector estimates: high-resolution borehole acoustic televiewer images captured before and after injection tests, and displacement data from a three-component borehole deformation probe recorded during the injections. Acoustic televiewer images capture only final in-plane displacement, whereas three-component borehole deformation measurements provide full 3D, transient fracture movement. Four injection tests in a fractured granitic rock mass along an inclined borehole at the Bedretto Underground Laboratory (Switzerland), beneath more than 1100 m of overburden, were analyzed. The two methods yielded consistent kinematics and comparable slip magnitudes, typically in the range of 0.2 – 0.6 mm. Angular differences between estimated slip directions...

Improvements in optical metrology for high-performance variable-line-spacing x-ray gratings

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We discuss a project to develop a precision metrology system for variable-line-spacing x-ray gratings using interferometric microscopes. We are developing test standards and calibration techniques to measure and correct for geometrical distortion and blur, and data processing techniques to combine multiple measurements and measure line spacing with high accuracy.

A Flexible Forwarding Scheme to Improve Latency-Bound Irregular P2P Communication in MPI

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We propose an algorithm to efficiently perform latency-bound communication scenarios that consist of many small messages. In these parallel scenarios, processes typically pass around a lot of small-sized messages of a few KBs of size. Performing communication operations with P2P MPI routines or collective MPI routines (including neighborhood collectives) in such scenarios may not always yield the optimal results and may not resolve the latency bottleneck. To this end, we develop a regular structure called virtual process topology (VPT) on which the messages can be communicated in a structured and controlled manner. Using parameters of this topology, one can tune the rate of aggression in tackling the latency costs. We demonstrate that our communication algorithm is preferable to MPI P2P and collective routines for latency-bound communication and it can easily be adapted only by replacing calls to MPI routines in a parallel application. We show how to adapt existing topology-aware...

Geomechanical properties of the Meletta sandstone - the high-temperature heat storage reservoir rock of DeepStor

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The DeepStor project aims at storing excess heat at temperatures up to 140 °C in the depleted Leopoldshafen oil field at a depth of about 1300 m. In order to gain knowledge on the target horizons, the different layers of the Meletta sandstone, samples cored in a block retrieved in a quarry near Nussloch where the Meletta sandstone outcrops were studied. Several petrophysical properties were investigated including mineralogy, porosity, permeability, thermal conductivity, P- and S-wave velocities and quality factor. A mechanical study focused on compressive strength under uniaxial and triaxial stress conditions, tensile strength, critical pressure and stress-dependence of physical properties. Our results show that the Meletta sandstone is heterogeneous, anisotropic, mechanically weak, stress-sensitive and prone to water weakening. Petrophysical measurements on few Meletta sandstone cores retrieved in boreholes at about 1250 m depth showed that the outcrop samples are significantly...

New Materials for Photoelectrochemical Energy Conversion

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This review concerns light-to-chemical energy conversion, focusing on approaches that could be driven by terrestrial sunlight to produce hydrogen and/or reduce carbon dioxide. Recent advances in photocatalytic (PC) and photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) materials are covered. In both approaches, the electron-hole pairs that are created by photon absorption must travel in specific directions to the sites that mediate multielectron bond making/breaking redox reactions. Thermodynamic requirements for materials stability are described, although some recently discovered materials appear to be exceptions. For PC materials, the importance of rate matching between reduction and oxidation processes and the mass transfer of intermediates and products is emphasized. Surprisingly, metal sulfides appear to be promising for PC carbon dioxide reduction. For PEC materials, recent work elucidating the elementary step mechanism for oxygen evolution on metal oxides and the discovery of chalcogen-based...

Many paths, similar destinations: viruses and bacterial microcompartments form polyhedra inside cells.

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A large number of biological entities assemble into icosahedral structures, and these are ubiquitous throughout nature. Examples include eukaryotic and prokaryotic viral capsids and more recently discovered bacterial microcompartments. Viral capsids and bacterial microcompartments are both composed of pentameric and hexameric subunits; however, they differ in the type of cargo they encapsulate: nucleic acid or protein. Also, both depart from strict icosahedral symmetry: while this is less common in viruses, among bacterial microcompartments, diverse and heterogeneous polyhedra are common. We review shared principles and key distinctions between the self-directed assembly of various icosahedral architectures and their polyhedral variants in nature and explore the concept that there are multiple paths, influenced by their cargo, to arriving at similar protein cage morphologies.

Comparison of theory with the experimental characterization of the spatial frequency response of interferometers using a binary pseudo-random array sample

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Experimental evaluations of the surface height response of an interference microscope using a binary pseudo-random array test sample are compared with a theory based on a Fourier optics model. Measurements of key instrument characteristics, including the illumination, imaging, and obscuring apertures of three different Mirau objectives, support the theoretical calculations. Agreement between experimental and theoretical modeling confirms the predictability of the spatial frequency response for the purpose of specification and optimization of instrument configuration for specific metrology tasks. The results also provide confidence in methods of compensating for the decrease in instrument response with spatial frequency.

Machine learning-enhanced MPC for demand flexibility in small commercial buildings: An experimental study

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Small- and medium-sized commercial buildings (SMCBs) represent the majority of U.S. commercial building stock and a significant share of peak electricity demand, yet they often lack centralized building automation systems, representing a significant untapped resource for urban energy management. This infrastructure gap makes advanced control implementation challenging, limiting the potential for widespread demand flexibility. Model Predictive Control (MPC) has shown strong potential for load shifting, peak demand reduction, and cost savings, but its effectiveness is hindered by unmeasured disturbances such as internal heat gains. This paper presents a Hybrid MPC framework that integrates a physics-based gray-box building thermal model, identified using a lumped disturbance (LD) approach, with a machine learning (ML) model for forecasting unmeasured disturbances. The hybrid approach is designed for buildings with multiple individually controlled heat pump and thermostat pairs,...

Comparative genomics provides insights into the cold adaptation of endophytic fungi associated with Deschampsia antarctica

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Endophytic fungi from Deschampsia antarctica, the southernmost flowering plant, provide insights into the cold adaptation mechanisms of plant-associated fungi in extreme environments. This study presents the genome sequences and comparative analysis of eight fungal isolates from D. antarctica leaves. These Antarctic fungal isolates were analyzed alongside 121 plant-associated fungal genomes to uncover signatures of adaptation and endophytic specialization. Antarctic endophytes show striking patterns, including reduced genome size (∼26.3 Mb on average), streamlined gene content (∼8844 genes), and notably small secretomes (∼288 proteins). Despite this reduced gene repertoire, they maintain a robust set of genes encoding carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) but lack those for lignin and bacterial cell wall degradation, indicating a symbiotic lifestyle that avoids host damage and predation. One isolate, Alternaria sp. UNIPAMPA017 stood out, with 26% of its genome occupied by...

The phage nucleus synergizes with an anti-defense protein to resist bacterial immunity

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Chimallivirus bacteriophages enclose their replicating genomes in a protein-based compartment termed the phage nucleus. While the phage nucleus segregates phage DNA from host immune proteins, it is not known if additional factors are required to protect against DNA-targeting host defenses. Here, we identify a chimallivirus-encoded DarG2-like antitoxin that localizes to the phage nucleus and provides protection against phage-targeting DarTG2 toxin-antitoxin systems. This protein, which we term AdfM (anti-darT factor macro), contains a macrodomain and removes DarT2-mediated ADP-ribose modifications from DNA. In the absence of AdfM, DarT2 modifies phage DNA and restricts chimallivirus replication despite being largely excluded from the phage nucleus. Increasing the nuclear concentration of DarT2 while decreasing the nuclear concentration of AdfM reduces phage replication. These results show that the phage nucleus is insufficient to completely protect the chimallivirus genome from...

Quantifying Interconnect Energy Efficiency on Perlmutter: pJ/bit Measurements of NVLink, PCIe, Slingshot NICs, and Rosetta Switches

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the exascale era, comprehensive energy accounting is critical for sustainable HPC. Standard monitoring captures CPU and GPU power, but the energy footprint of interconnects, including switches, NICs, and PCIe/NVLinks, remains hidden due to limited hardware sensors. We address this with a software-centric methodology using targeted microbenchmarks on the Perlmutter (HPE Cray EX) system at NERSC. By correlating controlled stress on specific network components with job- and rack-level power telemetry, we isolate each component’s energy consumption, quantifying dynamic energy per bit (pJ/bit) for active communication while separating constant-power overhead. Integrating network bandwidth measurements from vendor tools such as NVIDIA DCGM and CrayPat enables fine-grained, application-level estimates of network energy use, unattainable with standard monitoring. This approach establishes a generalizable framework for evaluating network energy, providing actionable insights for designing...

Engineering micromotion in Floquet prethermalization via space-time symmetries

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We present a systematic framework for Floquet prethermalization under strong resonant driving, emphasizing the pivotal role of dynamical space-time symmetries. Our approach demonstrates how dynamical space-time symmetries map onto the projective static symmetry group of the prethermal Hamiltonian governing the prethermal regime. We introduce techniques for detecting dynamical symmetries through the time evolution of local observables, facilitating a detailed analysis of micromotion within each period and surpassing the limitations of conventional stroboscopic Floquet prethermal dynamics. To implement this framework, we present a prethermal protocol that preserves order-2 dynamical symmetry in a spin-ladder model, confirming the predicted relationships between the expectation values of local observables at distinct temporal points in the Floquet cycle, linked by this symmetry.

A highly utilized and practical lithium-sulfur positive electrode enabled in all-solid-state batteries

Fri, 8 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

All-solid-state batteries using sulfur-based positive electrodes (cathodes) offer a cost-effective route to achieve high specific energy. However, low active material utilization and cycle life hinder performance. Here, we demonstrate a positive electrode design that employs sulfide solid-state electrolytes, where a high energy synthesis approach forms a metastable and ionically conductive interphase on the active material surface. This interphase facilitates high active material utilization and contributes capacity with cycling. We also show that tailoring active material particle sizes to the micron-scale improves rate performance and cycling stability. Structural analysis reveals that the substantial volume change of sulfur-based positive electrodes during operation can partially offset that of the negative electrodes, thereby mitigating internal mechanical stress. The combined design principles enable sulfur areal capacities up to 11 mAh cm-2 while maintaining stable cycling...

A Central Plant Retrofit Assessment Guide for Owners

Fri, 8 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This document offers support to owners considering optimization upgrades, retrofits, or complete replacement of a central plant, with a particular focus on improving energy efficiency and reliability of the central plant, ultimately leading to reduced energy costs. It outlines recommended steps to prepare for and facilitate a thorough central plant assessment, empowering owners to move forward with the appropriate next steps. While the primary focus is on central plants serving commercial and institutional buildings, the principles and recommendations presented can also be adapted for use in other building types, such as industrial or manufacturing facilities.

Quantitative X‐ray scattering and reflectivity measurements of polymer thin films with 2D detectors

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract We describe a fully open‐sourced Python package to process raw X‐ray scattering data using a GANESHA SAXSLAB facility, and review in this manuscript the connection of X‐ray scattering theories with the open‐sourced package. This package affords researchers more flexibility in analyzing and visualizing X‐ray scattering and reflectivity data from what is now a commonplace facility at many universities and research laboratories engaged in polymer research. We briefly review the applications of X‐ray scattering and diffraction, followed by the scattering theories. A pedagogical introduction to processing X‐ray scattering data is provided using the modules in the Python package. We compare conventions to visualize and interpret transmission and grazing‐incidence scattering data using self‐assembled lamellar morphology of bottlebrush copolymers as an example, then describe how area detectors measure specular and off‐specular reflectivity. Examples of in‐house reflectivity and...

Bypassing the yellow phase for extremely stable formamidinium lead iodide perovskite solar cells.

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Using modeling and structural studies, we show that chloride incorporation in formamidinium lead iodide (FAPI) perovskites alters the energetics of both the formation and degradation pathways. We fabricated films with two coadditives [15 mole % FA chloride (FACl) and 0.5 mole % BA₂PbI₄, where BA is butylammonium)], in which FACl ensures chloride incorporation and both additives collectively create a compressive lattice strain that stabilizes the FAPI black phase and bypasses the formation of a yellow phase during degradation. The coadditive strategy revealed a favorable transition from face-sharing 2H, 4H, 6H, and 8H phases to the corner-sharing 3C black phase. Photovoltaic devices with a p-i-n architecture had an average power conversion efficiency (40 devices) of 24.1% and lost only 2% of their efficiency after 1200 hours at 85° ± 5°C, 1-sun illumination, and open-circuit conditions. Upon stressing at 15-sun illumination at 90°C for >400 hours, the stabilized...

Phenylpropanoid methyl esterase unlocks catabolism of aromatic biological nitrification inhibitors

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microbial nitrification of fertilizers represents is a significant global source of greenhouse gas emissions. This process increases emissions, fosters toxic algal blooms, and raises crop production costs. Some plants naturally release biological nitrification inhibitors to suppress ammonium-oxidizing microbes and reduce nitrification. Engineering nitrification inhibitor production into food and bioenergy crops via synthetic biology offers a promising mitigation strategy, but its success depends on addressing gaps in our understanding of inhibitor degradation in soil. This study begins to fill this gap by identifying a previously unknown microbial pathway for degrading phenylpropanoid methyl esters, a key class of aromatic nitrification inhibitors. Using transcriptomics and high-throughput functional genomics, we discovered genes essential for phenylpropanoid methyl ester degradation. Genetic and biochemical analyses revealed two novel enzymes, including a newly identified phenylpropanoid...

Absorption dissymmetry factor enhancement: A data-driven approach to unravel the synthesis knobs of chiral 2D perovskites

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Chiral 2D metal halide perovskites (MHPs) are promising for spin-optoelectronic applications, yet their absorption dissymmetry factor (g abs ) exhibits significant variability due to complex, co-dependent structural and experimental factors. We established a data-driven framework using Pearson’s correlation, ANOVA, and Gaussian process regression to identify and model key synthesis “knobs” governing these properties. The analysis revealed that solvent choice is the primary factor driving variability. For acetonitrile-based films, g abs was maximized by optimizing annealing temperature and film thickness. Conversely, films from higher boiling point solvents showed complex dependencies on annealing temperature, excitonic integral intensity, and film texture. These statistical correlations provide a roadmap for the rational design of high-performance chiral MHPs and establish a foundation for future machine learning-driven material exploration.

Contrasting effects of glutamate and branched-chain amino acid metabolism on acid tolerance in a Castellaniella isolate from acidic groundwater

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ABSTRACT Groundwater acidification co-occurring with nitrate pollution is a common, global environmental health hazard. Denitrifying bacteria have been leveraged for the in situ removal of nitrate in groundwater. However, co-existing stressors—such as low pH—reduce the efficacy of biological removal processes. Castellaniella sp. str. MT123 is a complete denitrifier that was isolated from acidic, nitrate-contaminated groundwater. The strain grows robustly by nitrate respiration at pH < 6.0, completely reducing nitrate to dinitrogen gas. Genomic analyses of MT123 revealed few previously characterized acid tolerance genes. Thus, we utilized a combination of proteomics, metabolomics, and competitive mutant fitness to characterize the genetic mechanisms of MT123 acclimation to growth under mildly acidic conditions. We found that glutamate accumulation is critical in the acid acclimation of MT123, possibly through consumption of intracellular protons via glutamate decarboxylation...

Operation-Induced BiVO4 Surface Reconstruction Modulates Photoelectrochemical Glycerol Photooxidation Stability and Activity

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Operation-Induced BiVO4 Surface Reconstruction Modulates Photoelectrochemical Glycerol Photooxidation Stability and Activity

Interfacial Inversion of Stealth Surfactants

Thu, 7 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Amphiphilic macromolecular surfactants segregate to liquid-liquid interfaces, thereby reducing the interfacial tension and free energy. We investigated "stealth surfactants" in the form of core-shell bottlebrush polymers comprised of pH-responsive diblock copolymer side chains forming a hydrophilic core and a hydrophobic shell, enabling solubility in oil. At liquid-liquid interfaces, these polymers undergo a structural "inversion", with hydrophilic blocks segregating into the aqueous phase and hydrophobic blocks residing in the oil phase. The reconfiguration kinetics and surfactant properties are influenced by multiple factors, including the molecular weights of the backbone and side chain components, the hydrophilic-to-hydrophobic balance of the side chains, and the pH of the aqueous phase. An observed nonmonotonic dependence of interfacial tension with time is attributed to a progressive structural inversion, where the projected area of the macromolecule onto the interface decreases....

Identification of the pygmy dipole resonance in a well deformed nucleus by combined isoscalar and isovector probes

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The low-energy electric dipole response in the axially deformed 154Sm nucleus was investigated for the first time using complementary probes. The isoscalar (IS) response was extracted from an (α, α′γ) coincidence experiment and the isovector (IV) response from polarization observables measured with the ( p → , p → ′ ) reaction at 0∘. Both the IS and IV responses exhibit a resonance-like structure at excitation energies 5.5-6 MeV identified as the pygmy dipole resonance. Its evolution with deformation is investigated by comparison to the spherical isotope 144Sm. The low-energy IV strength in 154Sm departs from the K-splitting picture that characterizes the IV giant dipole resonance in this nucleus. This finding is further supported by the absence of significant IS strength above 7 MeV.

Validating TCP Behavior in DISTRI: A Comparison of Simulated and Real-World Network Performance for Distributed Computing

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Distributed computing systems require accurate network simulation tools to optimize data transfer and resource allocation across geographically distributed facilities. We extend DISTRI, a discrete-event simulator for multi-facility distributed computing, with a comprehensive Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) stack supporting multiple congestion control algorithms (CCAs) and network topologies. This unified TCP implementation enables realistic simulation of both inter-facility wide-area and intra-facility local network communications. We validate DISTRI’s TCP stack accuracy by comparing inter-facility scenarios against real-world experiments on the FABRIC testbed. Using a dumbbell topology with competing data transfers, we analyze TCP Reno’s behavior through congestion window (CWND) evolution, round-trip time (RTT), throughput, and packet loss patterns. Results demonstrate that DISTRI accurately captures essential TCP dynamics, with behavioral trends closely matching real-world...

Probing the j dependence of angular distributions and N = 20 shell rigidity via the 36 S( p , d ) 35 S reaction

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Probing the j dependence of angular distributions and N = 20 shell rigidity via the 36 S( p , d ) 35 S reaction

The detection of marine microseismic activity with the CUORE tonne-scale cryogenic experiment

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Vibrations from experimental setups and the environment are a persistent source of noise for low-temperature calorimeters searching for rare events, including neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay or dark matter interactions. Such noise can significantly limit experimental sensitivity to the physics case under investigation. Here, we report the detection of marine microseismic vibrations using mK-scale calorimeters. This study employs a multi-device analysis correlating data from CUORE, the leading experiment in the search for 0νββ decay with mK-scale calorimeters, and the Copernicus Earth Observation program, revealing the seasonal impact of Mediterranean Sea activity on CUORE’s energy thresholds, resolution, and sensitivity over four years. The detection of marine microseisms underscores the need to address faint environmental noise in ultra-sensitive experiments. Understanding how such noise couples to the detector and developing mitigation strategies is essential for next-generation...

Time-series Forecasting for Network Utilization in Large-Scale Scientific Workflows

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As scientific workflows grow in scale, regional data caches are increasingly crucial for minimizing redundant data transfers and network congestion. To enhance cache management, we investigate the use of predictive models to forecast regional cache utilization. Leveraging historical data from the Southern California Petabyte Scale Cache, which supports a highenergy physics experiment, we evaluate the performance of eight time-series forecasting models in predicting daily cache hits. The models assessed include CNN-LSTM, LSTM-XGBoost, Seq2Seq with attention, TimeGrad, VARMAX, DeepGPVAR, Temporal Fusion Transformer, and ARIMA. Our analysis provides insights into the effectiveness of these models in optimizing cache management policies.

BBRv3 Startup Behavior: Analysis and Fairness Enhancements

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

BBRv3, the latest iteration of Google’s BBR congestion control algorithm, has shown significant performance improvements in high-bandwidth networks. However, our analysis reveals that BBRv3’s startup phase can lead to persistent fairness issues, where flows that initially acquire a larger bandwidth share maintain their advantage throughout the connection lifetime. To address this, we propose three enhanced BBRv3 variants that modify the startup behavior. Our evaluation on the FABRIC testbed demonstrates that these variants significantly improve fairness metrics, with BBRv3e1 achieving up to 15% improvement in Jain’s fairness index while preserving over 95% link utilization across diverse network scenarios. These improvements enable more equitable resource allocation in high-bandwidth networks, ensuring that BBRv3 can be deployed with confidence.

Predicting Dataset Popularity for Improved Distributed Content Caching in Scientific Workflows

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The vast amounts of data generated by large High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments pose significant challenges for data management and analysis. To mitigate these challenges, distributed caching systems, such as XCache, are used as regional in-network caches to buffer recently accessed data files. By reducing the need for repeated file transfers, in-network caching decreases data access latency and enhances analysis efficiency. To better understand the impact of data file popularity on cache effectiveness, we conducted a study of operational logs from Southern California from June 2020 - April 2025, comprising approximately 35 million file requests. Our extensive exploratory data analysis revealed that a small subset of datasets accounts for a disproportionate number of access requests, suggesting that prioritizing these popular datasets in the cache could simplify cache replacement policies and improve access efficiency. However, our analysis also showed that dataset popularity...

Oxygen-tolerant CO 2 capture using protected redox-driven reverse bias bipolar membrane electrodialysis

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Electrochemical methods for carbon capture potentially have the advantage of low cost and low energy consumption. The practical applicability of pH-swing carbon capture processes driven by proton-coupled redox-active molecules has been limited by the sensitivity of reduced molecules to oxidation by O2. In those CO2 capture processes, the molecules are reduced, basifying the electrolyte; the electrolyte containing the reduced molecules is exposed to air or flue gas containing CO2 but also containing enough O2 to oxidize the molecules. O2 sensitivity would not be problematic if the electrolyte that captures CO2 contains the oxidized form of the molecule instead; this can be accomplished by switching from an electron-driven system to an ion-driven system. We report the development and performance of a two-chamber flow cell incorporating a reverse-bias bipolar membrane (BPM) and non-proton-coupled redox-active molecules for ion-driven pH-swing. When using ferri/ferrocyanide electrolytes...

hashin_shtrikman_mp: a package for the optimal design and discovery of multi-phase composite materials

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

hashin_shtrikman_mp: a package for the optimal design and discovery of multi-phase composite materials

STREAMS guidelines: standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies

Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The interdisciplinary nature of microbiome research, coupled with the generation of complex multi-omics data, makes knowledge sharing challenging. The Strengthening the Organization and Reporting of Microbiome Studies (STORMS) guidelines provide a checklist for the reporting of study information, experimental design and analytical methods within a scientific manuscript on human microbiome research. Here, in this Consensus Statement, we present the standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies (STREAMS) guidelines. The guidelines expand on STORMS and include 67 items to support the reporting and review of environmental (for example, terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric and engineered), synthetic and non-human host-associated microbiome studies in a standardized and machine-actionable manner. Based on input from 248 researchers spanning 28 countries, we provide detailed guidance, including comparisons with STORMS, and case studies that demonstrate...

Probing axionlike particles near the neutral pion mass with KOTO data

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We demonstrate that novel limits on prompt axionlike particles (ALPs) in the hard-to-probe mass range near the neutral pion—the so-called pion chimney—may be obtained from recasting K L → 3 π 0 → 6 γ data taken by the J-PARC KOTO experiment, to search for K L → 2 π 0 a → 6 γ ...

Measurement of coherent exclusive J/ψ → μ+μ− production in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at sNN=5.36 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The ATLAS experiment has performed a measurement of coherent exclusive J/ψ → μ+μ− production in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at sNN=5.36$$ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}}=5.36 $$ TeV. The data was recorded at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during 2023, and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 79 μb−1. Exclusive J/ψ candidates were selected with a dedicated track-sensitive trigger based on the ATLAS transition radiation tracker. The analysis involves reconstruction of the dimuon invariant mass based on muon tracks from the inner detector, as the muon transverse momentum range of interest precludes the use of the standard muon reconstruction and identification algorithms. Differential cross sections are measured as a function of J/ψ rapidity and are compared with theoretical predictions. After extrapolation to sNN=5.02$$ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}}=5.02 $$ TeV, they are also compared with previous measurements performed by other experiments using data from LHC Run 2. While the results...

OpenScientist: evaluating an open agentic AI co-scientist to accelerate biomedical discovery

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background: Advances in medicine depend on analyzing large and complex data sources, but discovery is partly constrained by the limited time and domain expertise of human researchers. Agentic artificial intelligence (agentic AI) can accelerate discovery by automating components of the scientific workflow, including information retrieval, data analysis, and knowledge synthesis. Aim: OpenScientist, an open-source agentic AI co-scientist, aims to accelerate biomedical discovery by semi-autonomously investigating scientist-defined queries and generating clinically relevant, verifiable scientific insights. Methods: Domain experts evaluated OpenScientist for novel discoveries in four clinical case studies: (1) a prespecified analysis in a community-based Alzheimer's disease biomarker cohort, (2) unsupervised modeling for plasma proteomic survival prediction, (3) hypothesis investigation in single-cell transcriptomic data from neurons with neurofibrillary tangles, and (4) hypothesis...

Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in sNN=5.36TeV O16+O16 and Ne20+Ne20 collisions with the ATLAS detector

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents the first measurements of the azimuthal anisotropy coefficients , which quantify the -order Fourier modulation of charged-particle azimuthal distributions, for in and collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2025. The coefficients are measured as a function of transverse momentum ( ), collision centrality, and event multiplicity. They are extracted using two complementary methods: two-particle correlations with a template-fit subtraction of short-range nonflow contributions, and four-particle subevent cumulants, which intrinsically suppress nonflow effects and provide sensitivity to flow fluctuations. The results show a clear hierarchy and a nonmonotonic dependence on , reaching a maximum around , consistent with trends observed in heavy-ion collisions. Detailed comparisons between the two collision systems reveal an enhanced in central collisions, consistent with theory expectations based on the predicted...

The Simons Observatory: forecasted constraints on primordial gravitational waves with the expanded array of Small Aperture Telescopes

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We present updated forecasts for the scientific performance of the degree-scale (0.5 deg FWHM at 93 GHz), deep-field survey to be conducted by the Simons Observatory (SO). By 2027, the SO Small Aperture Telescope (SAT) complement will be doubled from three to six telescopes, including a doubling of the detector count in the 93 GHz and 145 GHz channels to 48,160 detectors. Combined with a planned extension of the survey duration to 2035, this expansion will significantly enhance SO's search for a B-mode signal in the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background, a potential signature of gravitational waves produced in the very early Universe. Assuming a 1/f noise model with knee multipole ℓknee = 50 and a moderately complex model for Galactic foregrounds, we forecast a 1σ (or 68% confidence level) constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r of σr = 1.2 × 10-3, assuming no primordial B-modes are present. This forecast assumes that 70% of the B-mode lensing signal can ultimately...

The Transition From Melt Accumulation to Eruption Initiation Recorded by Orthopyroxene Fe‐Mg Diffusion Timescales in Late Holocene Rhyolites, South Sister Volcano, Oregon Cascade Range

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract South Sister volcano, Oregon Cascade Range, USA, has repeatedly erupted rhyolite since ca. 40 ka. The youngest such eruptions are the ca. 2 ka Rock Mesa and Devils Chain rhyolites, erupted several hundred years apart from two multi‐vent complexes separated by 3–6 km. Fe‐Mg interdiffusion models of orthopyroxene rims from both rhyolites produce timescales up to several‐thousand years, but dominantly decades‐to‐centuries. Notably, the timescales of step‐normal zoned orthopyroxene rims (i.e., normally zoned with a steep chemical gradient) from the Rock Mesa rhyolite are longer than those of reversely zoned crystals, whereas the Devils Chain produced mostly decadal timescales for both zoning types. Despite the proximity and broadly similar products of these episodes, their respective timescales indicate distinct sequences of events leading up to each eruption. The Rock Mesa timescales record centuries of magma chamber growth followed by decades of predominantly...

Data-driven performance optimization of gamma spectrometers with many channels

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In gamma spectrometers with variable spectroscopic performance across many channels (e.g., many pixels or voxels), a tradeoff exists between including data from successively worse-performing readout channels and increasing efficiency. Bruteforce calculation of the optimal set of included channels is exponentially infeasible as the number of channels grows, and approximate methods are required. In this work, we present a data-driven framework for attempting to find near-optimal sets of included detector channels. The framework leverages non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) to learn the behavior of gamma spectra across the detector, and clusters similarly-performing detector channels together. Performance comparisons are then made between spectra with channel clusters removed, which is more feasible than brute force. The framework is general and can be applied to arbitrary, user-defined performance metrics depending on the application. We apply this framework to optimizing gamma...

Developing Methane Emissions Inventories by Fusing Airborne, Satellite, and Modeled Assessments: Comprehensive Surveys of the Anadarko and Haynesville Basin

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Developing Methane Emissions Inventories by Fusing Airborne, Satellite, and Modeled Assessments: Comprehensive Surveys of the Anadarko and Haynesville Basin

CAMP: a modular metagenomics analysis system for integrated multistep data exploration

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Computational analysis of large-scale metagenomics sequencing datasets provides valuable isolate-level taxonomic and functional insights from complex microbial communities. However, the ever-expanding ecosystem of metagenomics-specific methods and file formats makes designing scalable workflows and seamlessly exploring output data increasingly challenging. Although one-click bioinformatics pipelines can help organize these tools into workflows, they face compatibility and maintainability challenges that can prevent replication. To address the gap in easily extensible yet robustly distributable metagenomics workflows, we have developed the Core Analysis Modular Pipeline (CAMP), a module-based metagenomics analysis system written in Snakemake, with a standardized module and directory architecture. Each module can run independently or in sequence to produce target data formats (e.g. short-read preprocessing alone or followed by de novo assembly), and provides output summary...

Smart building HVAC control challenge: experience and solutions from the ADRENALIN project

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Smart building HVAC control challenge: experience and solutions from the ADRENALIN project

Processing-Dependent Structure and Poroelasticity of Nafion in Liquid Water

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ionomers act as the solid polymer electrolyte membrane in many modern electrochemical devices, yet the role of their nanostructure in modulating the poroelastic response remains poorly understood, especially in liquid water, where few techniques can measure simultaneous transport-mechanical properties. Poroelastic Relaxation Indentation (PRI) is uniquely suited for measuring time-dependent transport-mechanical properties of porous solids, specifically hydraulic diffusivity, elastic modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and intrinsic permeability, for porous solids. While ionomers such as Nafion are not porous in the typical sense, Nafion has a nanophase-segregated structure that, when fully swollen in liquid water, behaves as a poroelastic solid with a coupled mechanical-transport response. Using a poroelastic framework, we investigate how casting and pretreatment of Nafion membranes alter their poroelastic response in liquid environments. We characterize both extruded and dispersion-cast...

Data Release 1 of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In 2021 May the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration began a 5 yr spectroscopic redshift survey to produce a detailed map of the evolving three-dimensional structure of the Universe between z = 0 and z ≈ 4. DESI’s principal scientific objectives are to place precise constraints on the equation of state of dark energy, the gravitationally driven growth of large-scale structure, and the sum of the neutrino masses, and to explore the observational signatures of primordial inflation. We present DESI DR1, which consists of all data acquired during the first 13 months of the DESI main survey, as well as a uniform reprocessing of the DESI Survey Validation data, which were previously made public in the DESI Early Data Release. The DR1 main survey includes high-confidence redshifts for 18.7M objects, of which 13.1M are spectroscopically classified as galaxies, 1.6M as quasars, and 4M as stars, making DR1 the largest sample of extragalactic redshifts ever assembled....

Wireless Bioelectronic Modulation of Membrane Potential in Glioblastoma Using Carbon Nanotube Porins

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Disruption of membrane potential (V_mem) can activate pathways associated with cancer proliferation. Manipulating ion channels may therefore present an effective strategy for treating cancers that fail to respond to conventional therapies. One approach to target these channels is to manipulate the membrane charge, which involves the use of wireless bipolar electrodes such as carbon nanotube porins (CNTPs) inserted into cell membranes to modulate membrane charge and ionic flux. By utilizing membrane dyes, we observed alterations in V_mem induced by CNTPs and externally applied voltages. Analyses of cellular behaviors and processes indicated that V_mem is more receptive to stimuli in invasive cancers, while it leads to increased metabolism in less invasive cancers, with notable changes in the cell cycle occurring at approximately 48 h post-treatment in Glioblastoma (GB) cell lines. This work shows that CNTPs, in combination and with externally...

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: high-redshift measurement of structure growth from the cross-correlation of Quaia quasars and CMB lensing from ACT DR6 and Planck PR4

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We measure the amplitude of matter fluctuations over a wide range of redshifts by combining CMB lensing observations from ACT DR6 and Planck PR4 with the overdensity of quasars from Quaia, a Gaia and unWISE quasar catalog. Our analysis includes the CMB lensing power spectrum from ACT DR6, the auto-correlation of two Quaia quasar samples centered at z ≃ 1.0 and z ≃ 2.1, and their cross-correlations with CMB lensing from both ACT DR6 and Planck PR4. By performing a series of contamination and systematic null tests, we find no evidence for contamination in the lensing maps, contrary to what was suggested in previous Quaia cross-correlation analyses using Planck PR4 CMB lensing data. From the joint analysis of the quasar auto- and cross-correlations with CMB lensing, and including BOSS BAO data to break the degeneracy between Ω m and σ 8, we obtain σ 8 = 0.802+0.045 -0.057, consistent with ΛCDM predictions from Planck primary CMB measurements. We also find consistent results using...

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 maps

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We present Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropy at arcminute resolution over three frequency bands centered on 98, 150 and 220 GHz. The maps are based on data collected with the AdvancedACT camera over the period 2017–2022 and cover 19,000 square degrees with a median combined depth of 10 μK arcmin. We describe the instrument, mapmaking and map properties and illustrate them with a number of figures and tables. The ACT DR6 maps and derived products are available on LAMBDA at https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/actadv_prod_table.html. We also provide an interactive web atlas at https://phy-act1.princeton.edu/public/snaess/actpol/dr6/atlas and HiPS data sets in Aladin (e.g. https://alasky.cds.unistra.fr/ACT/DR4DR6/color_CMB).

Data-driven optimization of pixelated CdZnTe spectrometers for uranium enrichment assay

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In recent work [Vavrek et al. (2025)], we developed the performance optimization framework spectre-ml for gamma spectrometers with variable performance across many readout channels. The framework uses non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and clustering to learn groups of similarly-performing channels and sweep through various learned channel combinations to optimize the performance tradeoff of including worse-performing channels for better total efficiency. In this work, we integrate the pyGEM uranium enrichment assay code with our spectre-ml framework, and show that the U-235 enrichment relative uncertainty can be directly used as an optimization target. We find that this optimization reduces relative uncertainties after a 30 -minute measurement by an average of 20%, as tested on six different H3D M400 CdZnTe spectrometers, which can significantly improve uranium non-destructive assay measurement times in nuclear safeguards contexts. Additionally, this work demonstrates that...

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Mitigating the Impact of Extragalactic Foregrounds for the DR6 Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Analysis

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We investigate the impact and mitigation of extragalactic foregrounds for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing power spectrum analysis of Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 6 (DR6) data. Two independent microwave sky simulations are used to test a range of mitigation strategies. We demonstrate that finding and then subtracting point sources, finding and then subtracting models of clusters, and using a profile bias-hardened lensing estimator together reduce the fractional biases to well below statistical uncertainties, with the inferred lensing amplitude, A lens, biased by less than 0.2σ. We also show that another method where a model for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) contribution is deprojected and high-frequency data from Planck is included has similar performance. Other frequency-cleaned options do not perform as well, either incurring a large noise cost or resulting in biased recovery of the lensing spectrum. In addition to these simulation-based...

Patterned, Low-Temperature Growth of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides for Low Resistance Raised Contacts

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers are promising channel materials for next-generation electronic devices. A challenge is the high contact resistance between monolayer TMDs and metal contacts, especially for holes. In this regard, raised source/drain contacts are promising. However, the direct, patterned growth of raised contacts at CMOS-compatible temperatures remains largely unresolved. We present plasma-free selenization and sulfurization of metal oxides at substrate temperatures down to 400 °C, compatible with back-end-of-line thermal budgets. To achieve growth at such temperatures, gas-phase chalcogen precursors are first thermally activated at 950 °C. Films grown on single-crystal monolayer TMDs exhibit high crystal quality, as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. Raised contacts on WSe2 monolayers fabricated using this approach yield a low hole contact resistance of 0.3 kΩ·μm after chemical doping. This process is shown to be applicable to growing...

Unified and Consistent Structure Growth Measurements from Joint ACT, SPT, and Planck CMB Lensing

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We present the tightest cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing constraints to date on the growth of structure by combining CMB lensing measurements from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), the South Pole Telescope (SPT), and . Each of these surveys individually provides lensing measurements with similarly high statistical power, achieving signal-to-noise ratios of approximately 40. The combined lensing band powers represent the most precise CMB lensing power spectrum measurement to date with a signal-to-noise ratio of 61 and an amplitude of with respect to the theory prediction from the best-fit CMB -ACT cosmology. The band powers from all three lensing datasets, analyzed jointly, yield a 1.6% measurement of the parameter combination . Including dark energy spectroscopic instrument baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data improves the constraint on the amplitude of matter fluctuations to (a 1.1% determination). When combining with uncalibrated supernovae from , we present...

Search for Higgs bosons produced in association with a high-energy photon via vector-boson fusion and decaying to a pair of b-quarks in the ATLAS detector

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A search for Standard Model Higgs bosons produced in association with a high-energy photon and decaying to b b ¯ is performed using 133 fb − 1 of s = 13 TeV pp collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The photon requirement reduces the multijet background, and the H → b b ¯ decay is the dominant decay mode. Event selection requirements target events produced by vector-boson fusion, the dominant production mode in this channel. Several improvements enhance the search sensitivity compared to previous measurements. These improvements include better background modelling and characterization, the use of a neural-network classifier, and an updated signal extraction strategy adopting a direct binned-likelihood fit to the classifier output. With these improvements, the Higgs boson signal strength is measured to be 0.2 ± 0.7 relative to the Standard Model prediction. This corresponds to an observed significance of 0.3 standard deviations, compared...

Erratum: The environmental impact, carbon emissions and sustainability of computing in the ATLAS experiment

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The worldwide distribution of ATLAS computing, based on the amount of CPU provided, in HS23 (see Sect. 4.1 for the precise definition of HS23), on average in 2023–2024. Countries in gray did not contribute significant CPU One correction is noted for the paper [1], which does not affect the results reported. The vertical axis range of the legend of Fig. 1 is corrected as it was reversed in the original publication.

Participatory modeling in the AI era

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

PM is a now established approach to improve the utility and actionability of modeling for decision making and management. With the advent of the AI era, there are multiple avenues for its use in the context of PM. We reviewed a number of recent papers that describe how various AI tools have been used to assist the PM process, both in improving the quality of modeling and the participation efficiency. We have identified AI applications that can help stakeholders in the process of knowledge acquisition and decision making during the steps of the PM process. We also looked at how AI has been put to several innovative uses in PM related areas, such as collective intelligence, deliberative democracy and participatory governance, and how these can be adopted and used in the PM process. These enhancements escalate in degree of AI intervention and autonomy. They start with augmenting approaches such as informing, modeling and data processing, and can lead to deeper AI engagement such...

Addressing Tensions in ΛCDM Cosmology by an Increase in the Optical Depth to Reionization

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Recent baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) are mildly discrepant (2.2σ) with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) when interpreted within ΛCDM. When analyzing these data with extended cosmologies this inconsistency manifests as a ≃3σ preference for subminimal neutrino mass or evolving dark energy. It is known that the preference for subminimal neutrino mass from the suppression of structure growth could be alleviated by increasing the optical depth to reionization τ. We show that, because the CMB-inferred τ is negatively correlated with the matter fraction, a larger optical depth resolves a similar preference from geometric constraints. Optical depths large enough to resolve the neutrino mass tension (τ∼0.09) reduce the preference for evolving dark energy from ≃3σ to ≃1.5σ and increase the CMB-inferred values of ns and H0 to 0.968±0.004 and 67.94±0.44 km/s/Mpc, respectively. Conversely, within ΛCDM the combination...

Cosmological limits on the neutrino mass sum for beyond-ΛCDM models

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The sum of neutrino masses can be measured cosmologically, as the sub-eV particles behave as “hot” dark matter whose main effect is to suppress the clustering of matter compared to a universe with the same amount of purely cold dark matter. Current astronomical data provide an upper limit on between 0.07–0.12 eV at 95% confidence, depending on the choice of data. This bound assumes that the cosmological model is Cold Dark Matter ( ), where dark energy is a cosmological constant, the spatial geometry is flat, and the primordial fluctuations follow a pure power law. Here, we update studies on how the mass limit degrades if we relax these assumptions. To existing data from the satellite we add new gravitational lensing data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the new Type Ia supernova sample from the , and baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. Using our fiducial data combination,...

Evidence for large baryonic feedback at low and intermediate redshifts from kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich observations with ACT and DESI photometric galaxies

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Recent advances in cosmological observations have provided an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the distribution of baryons relative to the underlying matter. In this work, we show that the gas is more extended than the dark matter, and the amount of baryonic feedback at z≲1 disfavors low-feedback models such as that of state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulation IllustrisTNG compared with high-feedback models such as that of the original Illustris simulation. This has important implications for bridging the gap between theory and observations and understanding galaxy formation and evolution. Furthermore, a better grasp of the baryon-dark matter link is critical to future cosmological analyses, which are currently impeded by our limited knowledge of baryonic feedback. Here, we measure the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, stacked on the luminous red galaxy sample of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) imaging survey....

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 constraints on extended cosmological models

Tue, 5 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We use new cosmic microwave background (CMB) primary temperature and polarization anisotropy measurements from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) to test foundational assumptions of the standard cosmological model, ΛCDM, and set constraints on extensions to it. We derive constraints from the ACT DR6 power spectra alone, as well as in combination with legacy data from the Planck mission. To break geometric degeneracies, we include ACT and Planck CMB lensing data and baryon acoustic oscillation data from DESI Year-1. To test the dependence of our results on non-ACT data, we also explore combinations replacing Planck with WMAP and DESI with BOSS, and further add supernovae measurements from Pantheon+ for models that affect the late-time expansion history. We verify the near-scale-invariance (running of the spectral index dns /d ln k = 0.0062 ± 0.0052) and adiabaticity of the primordial perturbations. Neutrino properties are consistent with Standard Model predictions:...

Enhancing supply resilience for critical materials: case study of gallium supply in the United States

Fri, 1 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Accelerating energy technology development will increase demand for critical raw materials, such as gallium, that enable clean energy technologies. Processing of gallium is concentrated in mainland China (98 % of global production in 2023), resulting in high supply risks for importing countries. To investigate pathways for more resilient supply, we develop a material flow analysis and apply it to the United States, showing the impacts of future domestic primary raw material production and end-of-life (EoL) product recycling on reducing import reliance of raw gallium metal. We complement this analysis with a techno-economic assessment of North American gallium production costs under various demand growth scenarios. Our results indicate that sufficient domestic feedstocks exist to meet U.S. demand under most scenarios by 2035, while EoL recycling can supply up to 50 % under a low-demand growth scenario. Domestic primary production shows significant cost advantages over gallium recycling.

Idiomatic Vibe Testing with Julienne

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Historically, the role of natural language in programs was confined primarily to comments that have no direct influence on runtime behavior. With the rise of vibe coding, natural language becomes central to code generation via prompt engineering with a large language model (LLM). One fundamental problem, however, lies in natural language’s inherent ambiguity. By contrast, standardized programming languages greatly reduce ambiguity by formally defining syntax and specifying detailed semantics in a written language standard. To leverage such formality and specifications in vibe coding, a user might consider replacing or augmenting natural language with code. If the prompt includes unit tests, then the tests serve both as instructions for what the LLM-generated code must do and a tool for verifying that the generated code accomplishes the desired task. This tutorial unifies the above two themes by enabling users to write unit tests that take the form of natural language using specific...

Author Correction: Ocean current patterns drive the worldwide colonization of eelgrass (Zostera marina)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the version of the article initially published, Yves Van de Peer’s name appeared incorrectly as Yves Van De Peer. In addition, two of Yves Van de Peer’s affiliations were wrongly combined into a single affiliation. These have been separated, and now read: Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium and VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, Gent, Belgium. These errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

Author Correction: Roadmap for naming uncultivated Archaea and Bacteria

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Correction for Osvatic et al., Global biogeography of chemosynthetic symbionts reveals both localized and globally distributed symbiont groups

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Correction for “Global biogeography of chemosynthetic symbionts reveals both localized and globally distributed symbiont groups,” by Jay T. Osvatic, Laetitia G. E. Wilkins, Lukas Leibrect, Matthieu Leray, Sarah Zauner, Julia Polzin, Yolanda Camacho, Olivier Gros, Jan A. van Gils, Jonathan A. Eisen, Jillian M. Petersen, and Benedict Yuen, which published July 16, 2021; 10.1073/pnas.2104378118 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2104378118). The authors note: “An error was made in Dataset S1. The wrong NCBI ID numbers were linked to the available MAGs. This also affects the data availability portion slightly. This requires a new Dataset S1 and slightly reworded data availability section.” The online version has been corrected and Dataset S1 has been updated.

Corrigendum: Teredinibacter haidensis sp. nov., Teredinibacter purpureus sp. nov. and Teredinibacter franksiae sp. nov., marine, cellulolytic endosymbiotic bacteria isolated from the gills of the wood-boring mollusc Bankia setacea (Bivalvia: Teredinidae) and emended description of the genus Teredinibacter.

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Corrigendum: Teredinibacter haidensis sp. nov., Teredinibacter purpureus sp. nov. and Teredinibacter franksiae sp. nov., marine, cellulolytic endosymbiotic bacteria isolated from the gills of the wood-boring mollusc Bankia setacea (Bivalvia: Teredinidae) and emended description of the genus Teredinibacter.

Electric Utility Distribution Costs: Scoping Study on Trends, Drivers, and Possible Response Strategies

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This scoping study synthesizes information that will help stakeholders understand the scope, scale, and drivers of recent increases in investor-owned utility (IOU) expenditures on local distribution power grids, while providing regulators and other decision-makers with potential strategies to keep electricity bills down. The study includes five distinct components. Drawing first on data from FERC Form 1, it summarizes key trends in past and recent IOU distribution costs. Next, through a review of a sample of distribution-system plans, it characterizes material drivers of planned distribution expenditures. Ultimately, regulators must approve cost recovery for IOU expenditures, including those for the distribution system. The study therefore also: examines trends in utility requests and regulatory approvals related to changes in retail rates and return on equity; identifies areas where utility shareholder and customer incentives may be misaligned; and develops a menu of options...

Front Matter: Volume 7969

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 7969, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

California Price Response Potential Study

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

California's energy landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the increasing integration of renewable energy sources, the increased adoption of distributed energy resources, the electrification of end-use loads, and the growing need for grid efficiency. To address these challenges, recent revisions to the State’s Load Management Standards (LMS) require all of California’s large utilities and community choice aggregators (CCAs) to offer dynamic electricity pricing options to customers by 2027. Dynamic pricing, which involves varying electricity rates based on real-time supply and demand conditions, offers a promising solution for optimizing grid operations, reducing costs, and incentivizing efficient use of grid capacity. Effective implementation of dynamic pricing requires understanding the potential impacts on customer bills, system load, and the cost-effectiveness of automation technologies. This study aims to evaluate the load response of various end-use...

Navigating the research landscape for hyper-NA EUV lithography and future patterning technologies

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hyper-Numerical Aperture (Hyper-NA) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is gathering growing support as the technology of choice to sustain the dimensional scaling trajectory of Moore's Law. This transition, which targets resolution down to 5 nm, necessitates several research advances across several key lithography areas, such as patterning materials, imaging with polarization control, and the optimization of the mask structure. In this paper, we briefly review the historical role of the government-industrial partnerships enabling Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO) pathfinding research for prior EUV lithography generations. We also highlight the role of the Department of Energy's Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) on High-Precision Patterning Science (CHiPPS) as a critical initiative to fundamentally address the pervasive stochastic challenges in materials science that limit the RLS (Resolution, Sensitivity, Line Edge Roughness) tradeoff, charting a path toward the Angstrom...