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The federal government has prescribed nutritional requirements for school meals since the authorization of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in 1946. Such requirements have changed throughout the course of history. Current law requires the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe "minimum nutritional requirements" based on "tested nutritional research." In addition, school meal nutrition standards must be "consistent with the goals of the most recent Dietary Guidelines [for Americans]" (DGAs). Under these parameters, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has established detailed nutritional requirements in regulations. This report discusses the latest revision of nutritional requirements for school meals, as promulgated by the USDA in a final rule on April 25, 2024. According to USDA, the rule was informed by the DGAs and feedback from stakeholders on a proposed rule. In addition to summarizing the contents of the final rule, this report provides a recent history of changes to the nutrition standards and discusses reactions to and potential implications of the rule. While the report covers most of the finalized changes, it does not detail every requirement included in the final rule.

Is field space infinite? If not, it either loops back on itself or ends altogether. Periodic boundary conditions are of course familiar, but field space endpoints--which appear in real-world systems--are far less explored. In this paper we argue that boundaries in field space are generic, radiatively stable structures that allow for new physics at very low scales not ruled out by experiment. Such boundaries are delocalized in field space from the vacuum, so they can only be accessed by coherent fields or high multiplicity processes, both of which are weakly constrained observationally. Low multiplicity interactions do not detect the boundary and instead perceive a "mirage cutoff" that is parametrically higher than the true cutoff of the theory. Hence, field space boundaries are deformations of the standard model that are Lorentz invariant, local, unitary at low energies, and experimentally unconstrained. We comment on the possibility of field space boundaries on the long-range force carriers and the Higgs, as well as possible implications for the hierarchy problem., Comment: 5 pages (+ 6 pages supplemental)

A statistical framework we call CQUESST (Carbon Quantification and Uncertainty from Evolutionary Soil STochastics), which models carbon sequestration and cycling in soils, is applied to a long-running agricultural experiment that controls for crop type, tillage, and season. The experiment, known as the Millenium Tillage Trial (MTT), ran on 42 field-plots for ten years from 2000-2010; here CQUESST is used to model soil carbon dynamically in six pools, in each of the 42 agricultural plots, and on a monthly time step for a decade. We show how CQUESST can be used to estimate soil-carbon cycling rates under different treatments. Our methods provide much-needed statistical tools for quantitatively inferring the effectiveness of different experimental treatments on soil-carbon sequestration. The decade-long data are of multiple observation types, and these interacting time series are ingested into a fully Bayesian model that has a dynamic stochastic model of multiple pools of soil carbon at its core. CQUESST's stochastic model is motivated by the deterministic RothC soil-carbon model based on nonlinear difference equations. We demonstrate how CQUESST can estimate soil-carbon fluxes for different experimental treatments while acknowledging uncertainties in soil-carbon dynamics, in physical parameters, and in observations. CQUESST is implemented efficiently in the probabilistic programming language Stan using its MapReduce parallelization, and it scales well for large numbers of field-plots, using software libraries that allow for computation to be shared over multiple nodes of high-performance computing clusters.

Cardiovascular diseases are best diagnosed using multiple modalities that assess both the heart's electrical and mechanical functions. While effective, imaging techniques like echocardiography and nuclear imaging are costly and not widely accessible. More affordable technologies, such as simultaneous electrocardiography (ECG) and phonocardiography (PCG), may provide valuable insights into electromechanical coupling and could be useful for prescreening in low-resource settings. Using physical stress test data from the EPHNOGRAM ECG-PCG dataset, collected from 23 healthy male subjects (age: 25.4+/-1.9 yrs), we investigated electromechanical intervals (RR, QT, systolic, and diastolic) and their interactions during exercise, along with hysteresis between cardiac electrical activity and mechanical responses. Time delay analysis revealed distinct temporal relationships between QT, systolic, and diastolic intervals, with RR as the primary driver. The diastolic interval showed near-synchrony with RR, while QT responded to RR interval changes with an average delay of 10.5s, and the systolic interval responded more slowly, with an average delay of 28.3s. We examined QT-RR, systolic-RR, and diastolic-RR hysteresis, finding narrower loops for diastolic RR and wider loops for systolic RR. Significant correlations (average:0.75) were found between heart rate changes and hysteresis loop areas, suggesting the equivalent circular area diameter as a promising biomarker for cardiac function under exercise stress. Deep learning models, including Long Short-Term Memory and Convolutional Neural Networks, estimated the QT, systolic, and diastolic intervals from RR data, confirming the nonlinear relationship between RR and other intervals. Findings highlight a significant cardiac memory effect, linking ECG and PCG morphology and timing to heart rate history.

In this communication we demonstrate the existence of a first-order prewetting transition of a supracritical model polymer solution adjacent to an attractive surface. The model fluid we use mimics (qualitatively) an aqueous polyethylene oxide solution and, like the actual solution, displays a closed loop 2-phase region with an upper and lower critical solution temperature. The model fluid is shown to undergo a prewetting transition at an adjacent attractive surface even at temperatures below the lower critical solution temperature (supracriticality). This phenomenon follows from non-local thermodynamics when the lengthscale of the relevant fluid structures of surface films are commensurate or smaller than the range of intermolecular interactions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated significant potential in ECG analysis and cardiovascular disease assessment. Recently, foundation models have played a remarkable role in advancing medical AI. The development of an ECG foundation model holds the promise of elevating AI-ECG research to new heights. However, building such a model faces several challenges, including insufficient database sample sizes and inadequate generalization across multiple domains. Additionally, there is a notable performance gap between single-lead and multi-lead ECG analyses. We introduced an ECG Foundation Model (ECGFounder), a general-purpose model that leverages real-world ECG annotations from cardiology experts to broaden the diagnostic capabilities of ECG analysis. ECGFounder was trained on over 10 million ECGs with 150 label categories from the Harvard-Emory ECG Database, enabling comprehensive cardiovascular disease diagnosis through ECG analysis. The model is designed to be both an effective out-of-the-box solution, and a to be fine-tunable for downstream tasks, maximizing usability. Importantly, we extended its application to lower rank ECGs, and arbitrary single-lead ECGs in particular. ECGFounder is applicable to supporting various downstream tasks in mobile monitoring scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that ECGFounder achieves expert-level performance on internal validation sets, with AUROC exceeding 0.95 for eighty diagnoses. It also shows strong classification performance and generalization across various diagnoses on external validation sets. When fine-tuned, ECGFounder outperforms baseline models in demographic analysis, clinical event detection, and cross-modality cardiac rhythm diagnosis. The trained model and data will be publicly released upon publication through the bdsp.io. Our code is available at https://github.com/bdsp-core/ECGFounder, Comment: working in progress

Nuclear spin hyperpolarization utilizing parahydrogen (pH2) has broad applications in chemistry, biochemistry, and medicine. This review focuses on examining the less traveled roads associated with parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) leading to MR signal enhancement. We begin with photo-induced PHIP, which allows the investigation of short-lived processes and photo-activated catalysis on timescales as short as microseconds. Next, we review the partially negative line (PNL) effect, in which distinctive lineshape helps to reveal information about rapid exchange with pH2 and the role of short lived catalytic species. The signal enhancement of a single proton in oneH-PHIP is discussed which challenges the underpinning concept of pairwise hydrogenation. Furthermore, we examine metal-free PHIP facilitated by novel molecular tweezers and radicaloids, thereby demonstrating alternative routes to conventional hydrogenation using metal-based catalysts. Although symmetric molecules incorporating pH2 are NMR silent, we showcase methods that reveal hyperpolarized states through post-hydrogenation reactions. Additionally, we discuss chemical exchange processes that mediate polarization transfer between pH2 and a molecular target, expanding the reach of PHIP without synthesizing specialized precursors. We conclude this review by highlighting the role PHIP has played in uncovering the H2 activation mechanisms of hydrogenases. By providing a detailed review of these diverse phenomena, we aim to broaden the understanding and hidden potential of PHIP, which keeps evolving rapidly close to 40 years after its first discovery., Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures

Background: Quantification of cardiac motion on pre-treatment CT imaging for stereotactic arrhythmia radiotherapy patients is difficult due to the presence of image artifacts caused by metal leads of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs). New methods are needed to accurately reduce the metal artifacts in already reconstructed CTs to recover the otherwise lost anatomical information. Purpose: To develop a methodology to automatically detect metal artifacts in cardiac CT scans and inpaint the affected volume with anatomically consistent structures and values. Methods: ECG-gated 4DCT scans of 12 patients who underwent cardiac radiation therapy for treating ventricular tachycardia were collected. The metal artifacts in the images were manually contoured. A 2D U-Net deep learning (DL) model was developed to segment the metal artifacts. A dataset of synthetic CTs was prepared by adding metal artifacts from the patient images to artifact-free CTs. A 3D image inpainting DL model was trained to refill the metal artifact portion in the synthetic images with realistic values. The inpainting model was evaluated by analyzing the automated segmentation results of the four heart chambers on the synthetic dataset. Additionally, the raw cardiac patient cases were qualitatively inspected. Results: The artifact detection model produced a Dice score of 0.958 +- 0.008. The inpainting model was able to recreate images with a structural similarity index of 0.988 +- 0.012. With the chamber segmentations improved surface Dice scores from 0.684 +- 0.247 to 0.964 +- 0.067 and the Hausdorff distance reduced from 3.4 +- 3.9 mm to 0.7 +- 0.7 mm. The inpainting model's use on cardiac patient CTs was visually inspected and the artifact-inpainted images were visually plausible. Conclusion: We successfully developed two deep models to detect and inpaint metal artifacts in cardiac CT images.

We introduce the ECG-Image-Database, a large and diverse collection of electrocardiogram (ECG) images generated from ECG time-series data, with real-world scanning, imaging, and physical artifacts. We used ECG-Image-Kit, an open-source Python toolkit, to generate realistic images of 12-lead ECG printouts from raw ECG time-series. The images include realistic distortions such as noise, wrinkles, stains, and perspective shifts, generated both digitally and physically. The toolkit was applied to 977 12-lead ECG records from the PTB-XL database and 1,000 from Emory Healthcare to create high-fidelity synthetic ECG images. These unique images were subjected to both programmatic distortions using ECG-Image-Kit and physical effects like soaking, staining, and mold growth, followed by scanning and photography under various lighting conditions to create real-world artifacts. The resulting dataset includes 35,595 software-labeled ECG images with a wide range of imaging artifacts and distortions. The dataset provides ground truth time-series data alongside the images, offering a reference for developing machine and deep learning models for ECG digitization and classification. The images vary in quality, from clear scans of clean papers to noisy photographs of degraded papers, enabling the development of more generalizable digitization algorithms. ECG-Image-Database addresses a critical need for digitizing paper-based and non-digital ECGs for computerized analysis, providing a foundation for developing robust machine and deep learning models capable of converting ECG images into time-series. The dataset aims to serve as a reference for ECG digitization and computerized annotation efforts. ECG-Image-Database was used in the PhysioNet Challenge 2024 on ECG image digitization and classification.

This paper is concerned with universality properties of composition operators $C_f$, where the symbol $f$ is given by a transcendental entire function restricted to parts of its Fatou set. We determine universality of $C_f$ when $f$ is restricted to (subsets of) Baker and wandering domains. We then describe the behaviour of universal vectors, under the action of iterates of the symbol $f$, near periodic points of $f$ or near infinity. Finally, we establish a principal universality theorem for the more general class of weighted composition operators, which we then apply to uncover universality results in the context of various types of Fatou components of the associated symbol.

This paper constructs sequences of solutions to the Vafa-Witten equations with non-zero (but small) mass term on the product of a 2-dimensional torus with a Riemann surface of genus greater than 1. These are divergent sequences (modulo principle bundle automorphisms) that converge after renormalization to define an 'interesting' $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ harmonic 2-form data set. This data set consists of a non-empty, codimension 2 submanifold, a real line bundle defined on the complement of that submanifold with no extension across it, and a self-dual, harmonic 2-form with values in that line bundle that does not extend over the submanifold. Even so, the norm of this 2-form does extend as a H\"older continuous function with that submanifold being its zero locus.

In order to solve problems of practical importance, quantum computers will likely need to incorporate quantum error correction, where a logical qubit is redundantly encoded in many noisy physical qubits. The large physical-qubit overhead typically associated with error correction motivates the search for more hardware-efficient approaches. Here, using a microfabricated superconducting quantum circuit, we realize a logical qubit memory formed from the concatenation of encoded bosonic cat qubits with an outer repetition code of distance $d=5$. The bosonic cat qubits are passively protected against bit flips using a stabilizing circuit. Cat-qubit phase-flip errors are corrected by the repetition code which uses ancilla transmons for syndrome measurement. We realize a noise-biased CX gate which ensures bit-flip error suppression is maintained during error correction. We study the performance and scaling of the logical qubit memory, finding that the phase-flip correcting repetition code operates below threshold, with logical phase-flip error decreasing with code distance from $d=3$ to $d=5$. Concurrently, the logical bit-flip error is suppressed with increasing cat-qubit mean photon number. The minimum measured logical error per cycle is on average $1.75(2)\%$ for the distance-3 code sections, and $1.65(3)\%$ for the longer distance-5 code, demonstrating the effectiveness of bit-flip error suppression throughout the error correction cycle. These results, where the intrinsic error suppression of the bosonic encodings allows us to use a hardware-efficient outer error correcting code, indicate that concatenated bosonic codes are a compelling paradigm for reaching fault-tolerant quantum computation., Comment: Comments on the manuscript welcome!

Learning with limited labelled data is a challenging problem in various applications, including remote sensing. Few-shot semantic segmentation is one approach that can encourage deep learning models to learn from few labelled examples for novel classes not seen during the training. The generalized few-shot segmentation setting has an additional challenge which encourages models not only to adapt to the novel classes but also to maintain strong performance on the training base classes. While previous datasets and benchmarks discussed the few-shot segmentation setting in remote sensing, we are the first to propose a generalized few-shot segmentation benchmark for remote sensing. The generalized setting is more realistic and challenging, which necessitates exploring it within the remote sensing context. We release the dataset augmenting OpenEarthMap with additional classes labelled for the generalized few-shot evaluation setting. The dataset is released during the OpenEarthMap land cover mapping generalized few-shot challenge in the L3D-IVU workshop in conjunction with CVPR 2024. In this work, we summarize the dataset and challenge details in addition to providing the benchmark results on the two phases of the challenge for the validation and test sets., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, and 2 tables

This study investigates the 5$f$-electron-conduction electron hybridization process in the heavy fermion superconductor UPd$_2$Al$_3$ using a combination of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (tr-PES). ARPES measurements reveal the formation of a hybridization gap at a temperature of approximately 75 K, which becomes more pronounced as the temperature decreases. Notably, the persistence of a flat U 5$f$ band at temperatures well above the hybridization onset challenges conventional understanding. Our findings demonstrate a non-monotonic temperature dependence of the quasiparticle relaxation time, with an anomalous decrease at 20 K, suggesting complex electronic and magnetic interactions. These findings provide detailed insights into the 5$f$-electron hybridization process in UPd$_2$Al$_3$, with significant implications for the understanding of heavy fermion superconductivity and the role of 5$f$-electron hybridization in uranium-based materials., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The Next-generation Extended Wavelength-MUltiband Sub/millimeter Inductance Camera (NEW-MUSIC) on the Leighton Chajnantor Telescope (LCT) will be a first-of-its-kind, six-band, transmillimeter-wave ("trans-mm") polarimeter covering 2.4 octaves of spectral bandwidth to open a new window on the trans-mm time-domain frontier, in particular new frontiers in energy, density, time, and magnetic field. NEW-MUSIC's broad spectral coverage will also enable the use of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effects to study accretion, feedback, and dust content in the hot gaseous haloes of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Six-band spectral energy distributions, with polarization information, will yield new insights into stellar and planetary nurseries. NEW-MUSIC will employ hierarchical, phased arrays of polarization-sensitive superconducting slot-dipole antennas, coupled to photolithographic bandpass filters, to nearly optimally populate LCT's 14' field-of-view with six spectral bands over 80-420 GHz (1:5.25 spectral dynamic range; 2.4 octaves). Light will be routed to Al or AlMn microstripline-coupled, parallel-plate capacitor, lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors (MS-PPC-LEKIDs), an entirely new KID architecture that substantially enhances design flexibility while providing background-limited performance. Innovative, wide-bandwidth, etched silicon structures will be used to antireflection-treat the back-illuminated focal plane. NEW-MUSIC will cost-effectively reuse much of the MUSIC instrument, initially deploying a quarter-scale focal plane capable of the bulk of NEW-MUSIC science followed later by a full-FoV focal plane needed for NEW-MUSIC wide-area survey science., Comment: 42 pages, 16 figures. This version includes minor corrections relative to the version published at the SPIE website. Versions 2 and 3 include only affiliation corrections

The child nutrition programs support meals and snacks served to children in schools, child care, summer programs, and other institutional settings in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories. This report starts with an overview of child nutrition programs' funding structure and then provides detail on each program, including a discussion of how they are administered, eligibility rules for institutions and participants, nutritional and other program requirements, and recent policy changes. Changes to child nutrition programs that have applied during the COVID-19 pandemic are briefly discussed in the "Child Nutrition Program Operations During the COVID19 Pandemic" text box below. The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program--not considered a child nutrition program--is not discussed in this report.

Experiments using the Surface Force Apparatus have found anomalously long-ranged interactions between charged surfaces in concentrated salt solutions. Meanwhile, theory and simulations have suggested ion clustering to be the possible origin of this behaviour. The popular Restricted Primitive Model of electrolyte solutions, in which the solvent is represented by a uniform relative dielectric screening factor, $\varepsilon_r$, is unable to resolve the anomalous underscreening observed in experiments. In this work, we modify the Restricted Primitive Model to account for local dielectric saturation within the ion hydration shell. The dielectric screening factor in our model locally decreases from the bulk value to a lower saturated value at the ionic surface. The parameters for the model are deduced so that typical salt solubilities are obtained. Our simulations for both bulk and slit geometries show that our model displays strong cluster formation and these give rise to long-ranged interactions between charged surfaces at distances similar to what has been observed in SFA measurements. An electrolyte model wherein the dielectric screening factor remains uniform does not display similar clusters, even with unreasonably low values of $\varepsilon_r$.

Programming instructors often conduct collaborative learning activities, such as Peer Instruction (PI), to enhance student motivation, engagement, and learning gains. However, the impact of group discussion and formation mechanisms on student performance remains unclear. To investigate this, we conducted an 11-session experiment in a large, in-person CS1 course. We employed both random and expertise-balanced grouping methods to examine the efficacy of different group mechanisms and the impact of expert students' presence on collaborative learning. Our observations revealed complex dynamics within the collaborative learning environment. Among 255 groups, 146 actively engaged in discussions, with 96 of these groups demonstrating improvement for poor-performing students. Interestingly, our analysis revealed that different grouping methods (expertise-balanced or random) did not significantly influence discussion engagement or poor-performing students' improvement. In our deeper qualitative analysis, we found that struggling students often derived benefits from interactions with expert peers, but this positive effect was not consistent across all groups. We identified challenges that expert students face in peer instruction interactions, highlighting the complexity of leveraging expertise within group discussions.

INTRODUCTION: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is characterized by a decline in cognitive functions beyond typical age and education-related expectations. Since, MCI has been linked to reduced social interactions and increased aimless movements, we aimed to automate the capture of these behaviors to enhance longitudinal monitoring. METHODS: Using a privacy-preserving distributed camera network, we collected movement and social interaction data from groups of individuals with MCI undergoing therapy within a 1700$m^2$ space. We developed movement and social interaction features, which were then used to train a series of machine learning algorithms to distinguish between higher and lower cognitive functioning MCI groups. RESULTS: A Wilcoxon rank-sum test revealed statistically significant differences between high and low-functioning cohorts in features such as linear path length, walking speed, change in direction while walking, entropy of velocity and direction change, and number of group formations in the indoor space. Despite lacking individual identifiers to associate with specific levels of MCI, a machine learning approach using the most significant features provided a 71% accuracy. DISCUSSION: We provide evidence to show that a privacy-preserving low-cost camera network using edge computing framework has the potential to distinguish between different levels of cognitive impairment from the movements and social interactions captured during group activities.

The simplification and reorganization of complex expressions lies at the core of scientific progress, particularly in theoretical high-energy physics. This work explores the application of machine learning to a particular facet of this challenge: the task of simplifying scattering amplitudes expressed in terms of spinor-helicity variables. We demonstrate that an encoder-decoder transformer architecture achieves impressive simplification capabilities for expressions composed of handfuls of terms. Lengthier expressions are implemented in an additional embedding network, trained using contrastive learning, which isolates subexpressions that are more likely to simplify. The resulting framework is capable of reducing expressions with hundreds of terms - a regular occurrence in quantum field theory calculations - to vastly simpler equivalent expressions. Starting from lengthy input expressions, our networks can generate the Parke-Taylor formula for five-point gluon scattering, as well as new compact expressions for five-point amplitudes involving scalars and gravitons. An interactive demonstration can be found at https://spinorhelicity.streamlit.app ., Comment: 25+15 pages, 9+6 figures

We analyze the long-term evolution of hierarchical triple systems in Newtonian gravity to second order in the quadrupolar perturbation parameter, and to sixth order in $\epsilon = a/A$, the ratio of the semimajor axes of the inner and outer orbits. We apply the ``two-timescale'' method from applied mathematics to the Lagrange Planetary Equations for the inner and outer orbits, in which each osculating orbit element is split into an orbit averaged part that evolves on the long perturbative timescale, and an ``average-free'' part that is oscillatory in the orbital timescales. Averages over the two orbital timescales are performed using the well-known secular approximation. We also incorporate perturbative corrections to the relation between time and the orbital phases. We place no restrictions on the masses, on the relative orbit inclinations or on the eccentricities, beyond the requirement that the quadrupolar parameter and $\epsilon$ both be small. The result is a complete set of long-timescale evolution equations for the averaged elements of the inner and outer orbits. At first order in perturbation theory, we obtain the dotriacontapole contributions explicitly at order $\epsilon^6$. At second order in perturbation theory, i.e. quadratic in the quadrupole perturbation amplitude, we find contributions that scale as $\epsilon^{9/2}$ (found in earlier work), $\epsilon^{5}$, $\epsilon^{11/2}$, and $\epsilon^{6}$. At first perturbative order and dotriacontapole order, the two averaged semimajor axes are constant in time (and we prove that this holds to arbitrary multipole orders); but at second perturbative order, beginning at $O( \epsilon^{5})$, they are no longer constant. Nevertheless we verify that the total averaged energy of the system is conserved, and we argue that this behavior is not incompatible with classical theorems on secular evolution of the semimajor axes., Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, minor changes to align with published version

The Veneziano amplitude has recently been uniquely bootstrapped from crossing symmetry, faster than power-law falloff at high energies, and a property dubbed level truncation. In this paper we apply this bootstrap approach to fully permutation invariant amplitudes, deriving new deformations of the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude for graviton scattering in string theory. Superpolynomially soft Regge behavior yields the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude as the unique solution, and we find the string spectrum as an output rather than an input of the bootstrap. While the remaining variations exhibit the same Regge scaling as pure gravity, in the tensionless limit they reproduce remarkable extremal amplitudes that have appeared in bottom-up studies of positivity., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

Traditional sperm morphology analysis is based on tedious manual annotation. Automated morphology analysis of a high number of sperm requires accurate segmentation of each sperm part and quantitative morphology evaluation. State-of-the-art instance-aware part segmentation networks follow a "detect-then-segment" paradigm. However, due to sperm's slim shape, their segmentation suffers from large context loss and feature distortion due to bounding box cropping and resizing during ROI Align. Moreover, morphology measurement of sperm tail is demanding because of the long and curved shape and its uneven width. This paper presents automated techniques to measure sperm morphology parameters automatically and quantitatively. A novel attention-based instance-aware part segmentation network is designed to reconstruct lost contexts outside bounding boxes and to fix distorted features, by refining preliminary segmented masks through merging features extracted by feature pyramid network. An automated centerline-based tail morphology measurement method is also proposed, in which an outlier filtering method and endpoint detection algorithm are designed to accurately reconstruct tail endpoints. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed network outperformed the state-of-the-art top-down RP-R-CNN by 9.2% [AP]_vol^p, and the proposed automated tail morphology measurement method achieved high measurement accuracies of 95.34%,96.39%,91.2% for length, width and curvature, respectively., Comment: Accepted to ICRA 2024

Rapid identification and accurate documentation of interfering and high-risk behaviors in ASD, such as aggression, self-injury, disruption, and restricted repetitive behaviors, are important in daily classroom environments for tracking intervention effectiveness and allocating appropriate resources to manage care needs. However, having a staff dedicated solely to observing is costly and uncommon in most educational settings. Recently, multiple research studies have explored developing automated, continuous, and objective tools using machine learning models to quantify behaviors in ASD. However, the majority of the work was conducted under a controlled environment and has not been validated for real-world conditions. In this work, we demonstrate that the latest advances in video-based group activity recognition techniques can quantify behaviors in ASD in real-world activities in classroom environments while preserving privacy. Our explainable model could detect the episode of problem behaviors with a 77% F1-score and capture distinctive behavior features in different types of behaviors in ASD. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that shows the promise of objectively quantifying behaviors in ASD in a real-world environment, which is an important step toward the development of a practical tool that can ease the burden of data collection for classroom staff.

We show that random matrix models are a natural tool for understanding the appearance of a large gap in the microstate spectrum of black holes when there is a high degeneracy of states, in a variety of settings. While the most natural context is extended supersymmetry, where the number of BPS states scales as ${\rm e}^{S_0}$, where $S_0$ is the $T{=}0$ entropy, it is a robust feature that a large gap will appear whenever there is a mechanism producing a high degree of degeneracy. In random matrix model terms, the phenomenon is simply an extreme case of eigenvalue repulsion in the effective log gas description. We exhibit several examples for illustration, starting with the simple Wishart model, continuing with extensions of it that incorporate multicritical behaviour allowing for the emergence of gravity, and culminating in using such models to non-perturbatively construct ${N}{=}2$ and ${N}{=}4$ JT supergravity theories, the latter of which is new., Comment: 42 pages, 5 figures

Class imbalance poses a significant challenge in classification tasks, where traditional approaches often lead to biased models and unreliable predictions. Undersampling and oversampling techniques have been commonly employed to address this issue, yet they suffer from inherent limitations stemming from their simplistic approach such as loss of information and additional biases respectively. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that leverages learning theory and concentration inequalities to overcome the shortcomings of traditional solutions. We focus on understanding the uncertainty in a class-dependent manner, as captured by confidence bounds that we directly embed into the learning process. By incorporating class-dependent estimates, our method can effectively adapt to the varying degrees of imbalance across different classes, resulting in more robust and reliable classification outcomes. We empirically show how our framework provides a promising direction for handling imbalanced data in classification tasks, offering practitioners a valuable tool for building more accurate and trustworthy models., Comment: Accepted at ECAI 2024 main track

AI Infrastructure plays a key role in the speed and cost-competitiveness of developing and deploying advanced AI models. The current demand for powerful AI infrastructure for model training is driven by the emergence of generative AI and foundational models, where on occasion thousands of GPUs must cooperate on a single training job for the model to be trained in a reasonable time. Delivering efficient and high-performing AI training requires an end-to-end solution that combines hardware, software and holistic telemetry to cater for multiple types of AI workloads. In this report, we describe IBM's hybrid cloud infrastructure that powers our generative AI model development. This infrastructure includes (1) Vela: an AI-optimized supercomputing capability directly integrated into the IBM Cloud, delivering scalable, dynamic, multi-tenant and geographically distributed infrastructure for large-scale model training and other AI workflow steps and (2) Blue Vela: a large-scale, purpose-built, on-premises hosting environment that is optimized to support our largest and most ambitious AI model training tasks. Vela provides IBM with the dual benefit of high performance for internal use along with the flexibility to adapt to an evolving commercial landscape. Blue Vela provides us with the benefits of rapid development of our largest and most ambitious models, as well as future-proofing against the evolving model landscape in the industry. Taken together, they provide IBM with the ability to rapidly innovate in the development of both AI models and commercial offerings., Comment: Corresponding Authors: Talia Gershon, Seetharami Seelam,Brian Belgodere, Milton Bonilla

We explore a recently proposed effective field theory describing electromagnetically or gravitationally interacting massive particles in an expansion about their mass ratio, also known as the self-force (SF) expansion. By integrating out the deviation of the heavy particle about its inertial trajectory, we obtain an effective action whose only degrees of freedom are the lighter particle together with the photon or graviton, all propagating in a Coulomb or Schwarzschild background. The 0SF dynamics are described by the usual background field method, which at 1SF is supplemented by a "recoil operator" that encodes the wobble of the heavy particle, and similarly computable corrections appearing at 2SF and higher. Our formalism exploits the fact that the analytic expressions for classical backgrounds and particle trajectories encode dynamical information to all orders in the couplings, and from them we extract multiloop integrands for perturbative scattering. As a check, we study the two-loop classical scattering of scalar particles in electromagnetism and gravity, verifying known results. We then present new calculations for the two-loop classical scattering of dyons, and of particles interacting with an additional scalar or vector field coupling directly to the lighter particle but only gravitationally to the heavier particle., Comment: 77 pages, 10 figures (corrected minor typos and added minor clarifications)

Experiments using the Surface Force Apparatus (SFA) have found anomalously long ranged charge-charge underscreening in concentrated salt solutions. Meanwhile, theory and simulations have suggested ion clustering to be the possible origin of this behaviour. The popular Restricted Primitive Model of electrolyte solutions, in which the solvent is represented by a uniform relative dielectric constant, $\varepsilon_r$, is unable to resolve the anomalous underscreening seen in experiments. In this work, we modify the Restricted Primitive Model to account for local dielectric saturation within the ion hydration shell. The dielectric constant in our model locally decreases from the bulk value to a lower saturated value at the ionic surface. The parameters for the model are deduced so that typical salt solubilities are obtained. Our simulations for both bulk and slit geometries show that our model displays strong cluster formation and these give rise to long-ranged interactions between charged surfaces at distances similar to what has been observed in SFA measurements. An electrolyte model wherein the dielectric constant remains uniform does not display similar clusters, even with $\varepsilon_r$ equal to the saturated value at ion contact. Hence, the observed behaviours are not simply due to an enhanced Coulomb interaction.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a crucial tool to identify brain abnormalities in a wide range of neurological disorders. In focal epilepsy MRI is used to identify structural cerebral abnormalities. For covert lesions, machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms may improve lesion detection if abnormalities are not evident on visual inspection. The success of this approach depends on the volume and quality of training data. Herein, we release an open-source dataset of preprocessed MRI scans from 442 individuals with drug-refractory focal epilepsy who had neurosurgical resections, and detailed demographic information. The MRI scan data includes the preoperative 3D T1 and where available 3D FLAIR, as well as a manually inspected complete surface reconstruction and volumetric parcellations. Demographic information includes age, sex, age of onset of epilepsy, location of surgery, histopathology of resected specimen, occurrence and frequency of focal seizures with and without impairment of awareness, focal to bilateral tonic-clonic seizures, number of anti-seizure medications (ASMs) at time of surgery, and a total of 1764 patient years of post-surgical follow up. Crucially, we also include resection masks delineated from post-surgical imaging. To demonstrate the veracity of our data, we successfully replicated previous studies showing long-term outcomes of seizure freedom in the range of around 50%. Our imaging data replicates findings of group level atrophy in patients compared to controls. Resection locations in the cohort were predominantly in the temporal and frontal lobes. We envisage our dataset, shared openly with the community, will catalyse the development and application of computational methods in clinical neurology.

Visual Question Answering (VQA) is an important task in multimodal AI, and it is often used to test the ability of vision-language models to understand and reason on knowledge present in both visual and textual data. However, most of the current VQA models use datasets that are primarily focused on English and a few major world languages, with images that are typically Western-centric. While recent efforts have tried to increase the number of languages covered on VQA datasets, they still lack diversity in low-resource languages. More importantly, although these datasets often extend their linguistic range via translation or some other approaches, they usually keep images the same, resulting in narrow cultural representation. To address these limitations, we construct CVQA, a new Culturally-diverse multilingual Visual Question Answering benchmark, designed to cover a rich set of languages and cultures, where we engage native speakers and cultural experts in the data collection process. As a result, CVQA includes culturally-driven images and questions from across 30 countries on four continents, covering 31 languages with 13 scripts, providing a total of 10k questions. We then benchmark several Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) on CVQA, and show that the dataset is challenging for the current state-of-the-art models. This benchmark can serve as a probing evaluation suite for assessing the cultural capability and bias of multimodal models and hopefully encourage more research efforts toward increasing cultural awareness and linguistic diversity in this field., Comment: 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024) Track on Datasets and Benchmarks

There is considerable evidence that the superconductivity of Sr2RuO4 has two components. Among this evidence is a jump in the shear elastic modulus $c_{66}$ at the critical temperature $T_c$, observed in ultrasound measurements. Such a jump is forbidden for homogeneous single-component order parameters, and implies that $T_c$ should develop as a cusp under the application of shear strain with $\langle 110 \rangle$ principal axes. This shear strain should split the onset temperatures of the two components, if they coexist, or select one component if they do not. Here, we report measurements of $T_c$ and the elastocaloric effect of Sr2RuO4 under uniaxial stress applied along the $[110]$ lattice direction. Within experimental resolution, we resolve neither a cusp in the stress dependence of $T_c$, nor any second transition in the elastocaloric effect data. We show that reconciling these null results with the observed jumps in $c_{66}$ requires extraordinarily fine tuning to a triple point of the Ginzburg-Landau parameter space. In addition, our results are inconsistent with homogeneous time reversal symmetry breaking at a temperature $T_2 \leq T_c$ as identified in muon spin relaxation experiments.

We show that the Veneziano amplitude of string theory is the unique solution to an analytically solvable bootstrap problem. Uniqueness follows from two assumptions: faster than power-law falloff in high-energy scattering and the existence of some infinite sequence in momentum transfer at which higher-spin exchanges cancel. The string amplitude$\unicode{x2013}$including the mass spectrum$\unicode{x2013}$is an output of this bootstrap. If the amplitude merely vanishes at high energies, the solution is a three-parameter family containing the Veneziano, Coon, and hypergeometric amplitudes, and more., Comment: 5 pages (+ 2 pages supplementary), 1 figure

We introduce the matrix-valued time-varying Main Effects Factor Model (MEFM). MEFM is a generalization to the traditional matrix-valued factor model (FM). We give rigorous definitions of MEFM and its identifications, and propose estimators for the time-varying grand mean, row and column main effects, and the row and column factor loading matrices for the common component. Rates of convergence for different estimators are spelt out, with asymptotic normality shown. The core rank estimator for the common component is also proposed, with consistency of the estimators presented. We propose a test for testing if FM is sufficient against the alternative that MEFM is necessary, and demonstrate the power of such a test in various simulation settings. We also demonstrate numerically the accuracy of our estimators in extended simulation experiments. A set of NYC Taxi traffic data is analysed and our test suggests that MEFM is indeed necessary for analysing the data against a traditional FM., Comment: 64 pages, 12 figures

Modern Machine Learning models are expensive IP and business competitiveness often depends on keeping this IP confidential. This in turn restricts how these models are deployed -- for example it is unclear how to deploy a model on-device without inevitably leaking the underlying model. At the same time, confidential computing technologies such as Multi-Party Computation or Homomorphic encryption remain impractical for wide adoption. In this paper we take a different approach and investigate feasibility of ML-specific mechanisms that deter unauthorized model use by restricting the model to only be usable on specific hardware, making adoption on unauthorized hardware inconvenient. That way, even if IP is compromised, it cannot be trivially used without specialised hardware or major model adjustment. In a sense, we seek to enable cheap locking of machine learning models into specific hardware. We demonstrate that locking mechanisms are feasible by either targeting efficiency of model representations, such making models incompatible with quantisation, or tie the model's operation on specific characteristics of hardware, such as number of cycles for arithmetic operations. We demonstrate that locking comes with negligible work and latency overheads, while significantly restricting usability of the resultant model on unauthorized hardware., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures of main text; 14 pages, 16 figures of appendices