Search

For decades, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms were processed electronically by the legacy Central Processing System. In 2021 the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) initiated a system development effort and in December 2023 deployed a new system to process forms for the 2024-2025 school year. However, student aid applicants reported that the new system had availability issues, recurring errors, and long wait times. This Government Accountability Office (GAO) testimony (1) describes the delays in delivering on the FAFSA Processing System (FPS) requirements; (2) describes the defects that were identified before and after FPS deployment; (3) assesses the extent to which disciplined systems acquisition practices were used to manage FPS requirements, conduct systems testing, and carry out independent acquisition reviews; and (4) assesses the extent to which Education and FSA IT leadership provided oversight of FPS development. This statement is a companion to GAO's related statement on the simplified FAFSA rollout (GAO-24-107407). In addressing the first two objectives, GAO summarized the preliminary results of its continuing ongoing work describing delays and defects. For the latter two objectives on requirements, testing, and independent reviews, GAO completed its audit work and is making recommendations to address weaknesses.

This report presents selected findings from the 2020/22 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:20/22), a study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the U.S. Department of Education. The findings in this report are based on data about a nationally representative sample of all first-time beginning students (FTBs) who entered postsecondary education for the first time during the 2019-20 academic year. BPS:20/22 is the first follow-up of a cohort of FTBs originally identified during the 2019-20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20) and covers 3 years of students' experiences, from their first year of postsecondary education in the 2019-20 academic year through the 2021-22 academic year. The BPS:20/22 sample consisted of approximately 37,330 total students, representing the approximately 3.3 million undergraduates who were first-time postsecondary students enrolled in the 2019-20 academic year. Data from BPS can address questions about students' postsecondary enrollment patterns, continued enrollment in college, highest postsecondary credential earned, social and academic experiences and activities, and employment history. To facilitate analyses of student choices and postsecondary enrollment and credential attainment, the BPS:20/22 survey collected information on teacher effectiveness, as well as frequency and types of communication and interactions with family and friends, faculty members, and other students, which were also included in the NPSAS:20 survey. Additionally, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several survey questions asked respondents to report on employment and education disruptions and personal experiences "as a result of the coronavirus pandemic" in spring 2020 and in the 2020-21 academic year. Respondents indicated their perception of whether an experience was the result of the coronavirus pandemic. The report provides information on first-time postsecondary students' attainment and persistence rates at any institution 3 years after they began postsecondary education, along with their education and personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this report, attainment represents the students' highest postsecondary credential earned, whereas persistence describes enrollment during the 2021-22 academic year for students who had not earned a postsecondary credential. As a result, students who earned a postsecondary credential and enrolled for additional postsecondary education are accounted for in attainment rates. It is important to note that BPS:20/22 data reflect first-time postsecondary students' experiences over 3 academic years, when many students are still working toward a postsecondary credential. The 2022/25 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, which is designed to follow up with students 6 years after they began postsecondary education, will provide more comprehensive data about postsecondary attainment. This First Look shows some of the ways that BPS:20/22 data can be used. Selected findings are not intended to emphasize any particular issue, and the report does not discuss all the information presented in the tables. Readers should not infer causality from the data in this report. Although many of the factors discussed are related to each other, this report does not explore these relationships. The student- and institution-level factors in this report are just a few of the several hundred that will be available in the BPS:20/22 data.

An ongoing debate in K-12 education policy has been between the "reform" agenda, including charter schools and school vouchers, and advocates of traditional public schools, led by educator unions. A similar split has emerged in higher education, particularly community colleges. Using California as an example, this paper: 1) summarizes the evolution of the current political divide between advocates of the "completion and success" agenda and faculty-led opponents, including the major reforms involved, 2) discusses the claims that leading organizations on each side have made, including their policy priorities, and 3) argues that the two sides share do share some areas of mutual agreement. The paper concludes by noting future policy considerations that could complicate reform efforts.

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of high-quality school leadership, we know remarkably little about principal skill development. Using administrative data from Tennessee, Oregon, and New York City, we estimate the returns to principal experience as measured by student outcomes, teacher hiring and retention patterns, and teacher and supervisor ratings of principals. The typical principal leads a school for only 3-5 years and leaves the principalship after 6-7 years. We find little evidence that school performance improves as principals gain experience, despite substantial improvement in supervisor ratings. Our results suggest that strategies intended to increase principal retention are unlikely to improve school outcomes absent more comprehensive efforts to strengthen the link between principal skill development and student and school outcomes.

This manuscript explores the argument for lower student-to-school counselor ratios in U.S. public education. Drawing upon a comprehensive historical review and existing research, we establish the integral role of school counselors and the notable benefits of reduced student-to-counselor ratios. Our analysis of national data exposes marked disparities across states and districts, with the most underfunded often serving higher percentages of low-income students and students of color. This situation raises significant ethical concerns, prompting a call for conscientious policy reform and targeted investment. Informed by emerging best practices, we propose recommendations for enhancing counselor staffing and ultimately student outcomes. This ethical argument underscores the need for proactive actions and provides a basis for future research to further delineate the impact of school counselor ratios on educational equity and student success.

Despite substantial interest in Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses in U.S. high schools--and associated scholarship on this topic--very little is known about characteristics of CTE teachers who are a critical resource for program implementation and expansion. Using eight years of statewide data from Maryland, we document key facts about the CTE teacher workforce and pathways into the profession. First, a sizable share (17%) of CTE teachers enter the profession with a high school diploma or associate's degree, aligned to state policy that allows Professional and Technical Education-certified teachers to substitute years of professional experience for higher degrees. Relatedly, CTE teachers are substantially more likely than non-CTE teachers to enter the profession through an "alternative" path that bypasses traditional undergraduate teacher education (54% versus 30%). Finally, there is a larger share of Black teachers in CTE versus out of CTE (25% versus 16%), leading to greater opportunities for teacher-student race matching. We hypothesize that these patterns are related: decreased barriers to entry into the CTE teaching profession may support more Black individuals to become CTE teachers.

In California and other states, neo-Marxist ideologues are using "ethnic studies" as a Trojan horse to indoctrinate students in a divisive ideology. The author asserts that state and district policymakers must not permit this enterprise to take root and that merely saying no is not enough; the best defense is a good offense. New initiatives such as the Coalition for Empowered Education are developing an alternative to far-left ethnic studies with a curriculum and teacher training that emphasize respect and pluralism, which ought to be embraced and facilitated by scholars and policymakers alike.

Promise programs are discussed as a policy movement that began with the 2005 launch of the Kalamazoo Promise. Since then, programs bearing the Promise label or sharing similar features have spread across the higher educational landscape, appearing in most states and across postsecondary sectors. Simultaneously, scholarly literature discussing these programs has burgeoned. And yet, scholars and others are unable to formulate a clear conception of what a Promise program is and what if anything sets such a program apart from other scholarship programs (e.g., state need-based grants). In this paper, we examine how scholars have discussed these programs over time. We begin with the initial theorization of the Kalamazoo Promise as a case and observe its use as a prototype in the formulation of a general model once "Promise program" was established as a category. We follow how the spread and transformation of "Promise programs" was reflected in repeated partial reconceptualization. We find three competing conceptual models emerging in sequence: 1) a thick, place-based causal model derived as a generalization of the Kalamazoo Promise, 2) a thin empirical model crafted in the aftermath of the launch of the Tennessee Promise, and 3) a partially acknowledged minimal or symbolic model advanced haltingly in response to critiques of last-dollar community college state programs. Scholarly conceptualization is largely reactive to empirical program diffusion and transformation, though scholarly idealization may have played a role in this diffusion itself.

National context: Schools across the United States have long grappled with the role and impact of school-based police officers, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs). Proponents for school-based policing believe that SROs contribute to school safety by preventing or addressing crime and violence in schools. Opponents of SROs in schools argue that the presence of SROs criminalizes students and increases the likelihood of school-based arrest, particularly for students of color. Policies around SROs vary in districts across the country. Chicago context: In the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, the Chicago Board of Education (CBOE) asked the district to develop a plan to phase-out the SRO program, which assigned two SROs to most Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools. In February 2024, the CBOE voted to remove all remaining SROs from schools starting in 2024-25. In May 2024, CPS proposed a Whole School Safety Policy that did not include SROs and focused on supports for physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust in schools. The research: This brief examines what happened when Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began the process of removing School Resource Officers (SROs) from its high schools during the 2020-21 school year. These findings can inform conversations in Chicago, and across the country, about SROs and whole school safety practices and policies--while recognizing that questions about the presence of police and the experience of safety in schools are complex and reflect differences in lived experiences and perspectives across policymakers, practitioners, young people, families, and communities. The findings are part of a larger, ongoing study by researchers from the UChicago Consortium; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Lurie Children's Hospital's Center for Childhood Resilience. [This research brief received additional support from the Pritzker-Pucker Family Foundation and the Consortium Investor Council.]

"Free college" (sometimes called Promise) programs are common in U.S. higher education. Reviewing 88 studies of 25 state and local programs, I provide a nuanced picture of the mechanisms through which these programs may work and their likely effects on students, communities, and colleges. Some commonly-claimed mechanisms for these effects--e.g., improving secondary school environments or impacting residential decisions--lack empirical support or are implausible for most existing programs. Programs are consistently found to shift college-bound students to colleges where they can use more scholarship dollars, increase enrollment at eligible colleges, and (for generous local programs only) increase community school district enrollment. Less consistently, programs boost college participation and thereby degree attainment, but evidence for direct effects on college performance, persistence or completion net of enrollment is weak. There is insufficient or inconsistent evidence for program effects on secondary school performance and graduation, post-college income and debt, community population or property values, and inequality reduction according to gender, race, or socioeconomic status.

We present three separate void catalogs created using a volume-limited sample of the DESI Year 1 Bright Galaxy Survey. We use the algorithms VoidFinder and V2 to construct void catalogs out to a redshift of z=0.24. We obtain 1,461 interior voids with VoidFinder, 420 with V2 using REVOLVER pruning, and 295 with V2 using VIDE pruning. Comparing our catalog with an overlapping SDSS void catalog, we find generally consistent void properties but significant differences in the void volume overlap, which we attribute to differences in the galaxy selection and survey masks. These catalogs are suitable for studying the variation in galaxy properties with cosmic environment and for cosmological studies., Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures

Astrophysical observations suggest that most of the matter in the cosmos consists of a new form that has not been observed on Earth. The nature and origin of this mysterious dark matter are among the most pressing questions in fundamental science. In this review we summarize the current state of dark matter research from two perspectives. First, we provide an overview of the leading theoretical proposals for dark matter. And second, we describe how these proposals have driven a broad and diverse global search program for dark matter involving direct laboratory searches and astrophysical observations. This review is based on a Green Paper on dark matter prepared as part of the 2020 Astroparticle Community Planning initiative undertaken by the Canadian Subatomic Physics community but has been significantly updated to reflect recent advances., Comment: 40 pages, 15 figures, invited review article accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Physics for a special issue on "Particle Astrophysics in Canada," figures from other works reproduced with permission

Tambara functors are the analogue of commutative rings in equivariant algebra. Nakaoka defined ideals in Tambara functors, leading to the definition of the Nakaoka spectrum of prime ideals in a Tambara functor. In this work, we continue the study of the Nakoaka spectra of Tambara functors. We describe, in terms of the Zariski spectra of ordinary commutative rings, the Nakaoka spectra of many Tambara functors. In particular: we identify the Nakaoka spectrum of the fixed point Tambara functor of any $G$-ring with the GIT quotient of its classical Zariski spectrum; we describe the Nakaoka spectrum of the complex representation ring Tambara functor over a cyclic group of prime order $p$; we describe the affine line (the Nakaoka spectra of free Tambara functors on one generator) over a cyclic group of prime order $p$ in terms of the Zariski spectra of $\mathbb{Z}[x]$, $\mathbb{Z}[x,y]$, and the ring of cyclic polynomials $\mathbb{Z}[x_0,\ldots,x_{p-1}]^{C_p}$. To obtain these results, we introduce a "ghost construction" which produces an integral extension of any $C_p$-Tambara functor, the Nakaoka spectrum of which is describable. To relate the Nakaoka spectrum of a Tambara functor to that of its ghost, we prove several new results in equivariant commutative algebra, including a weak form of the Hilbert basis theorem, going up, lying over, and levelwise radicality of prime ideals in Tambara functors. These results also allow us to compute the Krull dimensions of many Tambara functors., Comment: 52 pages. Comments welcome!

We determine the poles of the Eisenstein series on a general linear group, induced from two Speh representations, $\Delta(\tau,m_1)|\cdot|^s\times\Delta(\tau,m_2)|\cdot|^{-s}$, $Re(s)\geq 0$, where $\tau$ is an irreducible, unitary, cuspidal, automorphic representation of $GL_n({\bf A})$. The poles are simple and occur at $s=\frac{m_1+m_2}{4}-\frac{i}{2}$, $0\leq i\leq min(m_1,m_2)-1$. Our methods also show that when $m_1=m_2$, the above Eisenstein series vanish at s=0.

We analyze data from multiple flybys by the Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, and Parker Solar Probe (PSP) missions to study the interaction between Venus' plasma environment and the solar wind forming the induced magnetosphere. Through examination of magnetic field and plasma density signatures we characterize the spatial extent and dynamics of Venus' magnetotail, focusing mainly on boundary crossings. Notably, we observe significant differences in boundary crossing location and appearance between flybys, highlighting the dynamic nature of Venus' magnetotail. In particular, during Solar Orbiter's third flyby, extreme solar wind conditions led to significant variations in the magnetosheath plasma density and magnetic field properties, but the increased dynamic pressure did not compress the magnetotail. Instead, it is possible that the increased EUV flux at this time rather caused it to expand in size. Key findings also include the identification of several far downstream bow shock (BS), or bow wave, crossings to at least 60 Rv (1 Rv = 6,052 km is the radius of Venus), and the induced magnetospheric boundary to at least 20 Rv. These crossings provide insight into the extent of the induced magnetosphere. Pre-existing models from Venus Express were only constrained to within ~5 Rv of the planet, and we provide modifications to better fit the far-downstream crossings. The new model BS is now significantly closer to the central tail than previously suggested, by about 10 Rv at 60 Rv downstream.

Many nucleosynthetic channels create the elements, but two-parameter models characterized by $\alpha$ and Fe nonetheless predict stellar abundances in the Galactic disk to accuracies of 0.02 to 0.05 dex for most measured elements, near the level of current abundance uncertainties. It is difficult to make individual measurements more precise than this to investigate lower-amplitude nucleosynthetic effects, but population studies of mean abundance patterns can reveal more subtle abundance differences. Here we look at the detailed abundances for 67315 stars from APOGEE DR17, but in the form of abundance residuals away from a best-fit two-parameter, data-driven nucleosynthetic model. We find that these residuals show complex structures with respect to age, guiding radius, and vertical action that are not random and are also not strongly correlated with sources of systematic error such as surface gravity, effective temperature, and radial velocity. The residual patterns, especially in Na, C+N, Ni, Mn, and Ce, trace kinematic structures in the Milky Way, such as the inner disk, thick disk, and flared outer disk. A principal component analysis suggests that most of the observed structure is low-dimensional and can be explained by a few eigenvectors. We find that some, but not all, of the effects in the low-$\alpha$ disk can be explained by dilution with fresh gas, so that abundance ratios resemble those of stars with higher metallicity. The patterns and maps we provide could be combined with accurate forward models of nucleosynthesis, star formation, and gas infall to provide a more detailed picture of star and element formation in different Milky Way components.

The sequential execution of actions and their hierarchical structure consisting of different levels of abstraction, provide features that remain unexplored in the task of action recognition. In this study, we present a novel approach to improve action recognition by exploiting the hierarchical organization of actions and by incorporating contextualized textual information, including location and prior actions to reflect the sequential context. To achieve this goal, we introduce a novel transformer architecture tailored for action recognition that utilizes both visual and textual features. Visual features are obtained from RGB and optical flow data, while text embeddings represent contextual information. Furthermore, we define a joint loss function to simultaneously train the model for both coarse and fine-grained action recognition, thereby exploiting the hierarchical nature of actions. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, we extend the Toyota Smarthome Untrimmed (TSU) dataset to introduce action hierarchies, introducing the Hierarchical TSU dataset. We also conduct an ablation study to assess the impact of different methods for integrating contextual and hierarchical data on action recognition performance. Results show that the proposed approach outperforms pre-trained SOTA methods when trained with the same hyperparameters. Moreover, they also show a 17.12% improvement in top-1 accuracy over the equivalent fine-grained RGB version when using ground-truth contextual information, and a 5.33% improvement when contextual information is obtained from actual predictions.

GPT-4o is an autoregressive omni model that accepts as input any combination of text, audio, image, and video, and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs. It's trained end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network. GPT-4o can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time in conversation. It matches GPT-4 Turbo performance on text in English and code, with significant improvement on text in non-English languages, while also being much faster and 50\% cheaper in the API. GPT-4o is especially better at vision and audio understanding compared to existing models. In line with our commitment to building AI safely and consistent with our voluntary commitments to the White House, we are sharing the GPT-4o System Card, which includes our Preparedness Framework evaluations. In this System Card, we provide a detailed look at GPT-4o's capabilities, limitations, and safety evaluations across multiple categories, focusing on speech-to-speech while also evaluating text and image capabilities, and measures we've implemented to ensure the model is safe and aligned. We also include third-party assessments on dangerous capabilities, as well as discussion of potential societal impacts of GPT-4o's text and vision capabilities.

The Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture enables a significant increase in the total number of model parameters with minimal computational overhead. However, it is not clear what performance tradeoffs, if any, exist between MoEs and standard dense transformers. In this paper, we show that as we increase the number of experts (while fixing the number of active parameters), the memorization performance consistently increases while the reasoning capabilities saturate. We begin by analyzing the theoretical limitations of MoEs at reasoning. We prove that there exist graph problems that cannot be solved by any number of experts of a certain width; however, the same task can be easily solved by a dense model with a slightly larger width. On the other hand, we find that on memory-intensive tasks, MoEs can effectively leverage a small number of active parameters with a large number of experts to memorize the data. We empirically validate these findings on synthetic graph problems and memory-intensive closed book retrieval tasks. Lastly, we pre-train a series of MoEs and dense transformers and evaluate them on commonly used benchmarks in math and natural language. We find that increasing the number of experts helps solve knowledge-intensive tasks, but fails to yield the same benefits for reasoning tasks.

Cognitive decline is a natural part of aging, often resulting in reduced cognitive abilities. In some cases, however, this decline is more pronounced, typically due to disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Early detection of anomalous cognitive decline is crucial, as it can facilitate timely professional intervention. While medical data can help in this detection, it often involves invasive procedures. An alternative approach is to employ non-intrusive techniques such as speech or handwriting analysis, which do not necessarily affect daily activities. This survey reviews the most relevant methodologies that use deep learning techniques to automate the cognitive decline estimation task, including audio, text, and visual processing. We discuss the key features and advantages of each modality and methodology, including state-of-the-art approaches like Transformer architecture and foundation models. In addition, we present works that integrate different modalities to develop multimodal models. We also highlight the most significant datasets and the quantitative results from studies using these resources. From this review, several conclusions emerge. In most cases, the textual modality achieves the best results and is the most relevant for detecting cognitive decline. Moreover, combining various approaches from individual modalities into a multimodal model consistently enhances performance across nearly all scenarios.

As the signatories of this manifesto, we denounce the attention economy as inhumane and a threat to our sociopolitical and ecological well-being. We endorse policymakers' efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy's technology, but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ecology of attending, that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With 'embedded' we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an 'ecology' of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With 'focused on the alleviation of suffering' we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires., Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure

Luminous interacting supernovae are a class of stellar explosions whose progenitors underwent vigorous mass loss in the years prior to core-collapse. While the mechanism by which this material is ejected is still debated, obtaining the full density profile of the circumstellar medium (CSM) could reveal more about this process. Here, we present an extensive multi-wavelength study of PS1-11aop, a luminous and slowly declining Type IIn SN discovered by the PanSTARRS Medium Deep Survey. PS1-11aop had a peak r-band magnitude of $-$20.5\,mag, a total radiated energy $>$ 8$\times$10$^{50}$\,erg, and it exploded near the center of a star-forming galaxy with super-solar metallicity. We obtained multiple detections at the location of PS1-11aop in the radio and X-ray bands between 4 and 10\,years post-explosion, and if due to the SN, it is one of the most luminous radio supernovae identified to date. Taken together, the multiwavelength properties of PS1-11aop are consistent with a CSM density profile with multiple zones. The early optical emission is consistent with the supernova blastwave interacting with a dense and confined CSM shell which contains multiple solar masses of material that was likely ejected in the final $<$10-100 years prior to the explosion,($\sim$0.05$-$1.0 M$_{\odot}$yr$^{-1}$ at radii of $\lesssim$10$^{16}$\,cm). The radio observations, on the other hand, are consistent with a sparser environment ($\lesssim$2$\times 10^{-3}$ M$_{\odot}$yr$^{-1}$ at radii of $\sim$0.5-1$\times$10$^{17}$\,cm) -- thus probing the history of the progenitor star prior to its final mass loss episode., Comment: 37 pages, 17 figures

The RESISTO project represents a pioneering initiative in Europe aimed at enhancing the resilience of the power grid through the integration of advanced technologies. This includes artificial intelligence and thermal surveillance systems to mitigate the impact of extreme meteorological phenomena. RESISTO endeavors to predict, prevent, detect, and recover from weather-related incidents, ultimately enhancing the quality of service provided and ensuring grid stability and efficiency in the face of evolving climate challenges. In this study, we introduce one of the fundamental pillars of the project: a monitoring system for the operating temperature of different regions within power transformers, aiming to detect and alert early on potential thermal anomalies. To achieve this, a distributed system of thermal cameras for real-time temperature monitoring has been deployed in The Do\~nana National Park, alongside servers responsible for the storing, analyzing, and alerting of any potential thermal anomalies. An adaptive prediction model was developed for temperature forecasting, which learns online from the newly available data. In order to test the long-term performance of the proposed solution, we generated a synthetic temperature database for the whole of the year 2022. Overall, the proposed system exhibits promising capabilities in predicting and detecting thermal anomalies in power electric transformers, showcasing potential applications in enhancing grid reliability and preventing equipment failures.

The RESISTO project, a pioneer innovation initiative in Europe, endeavors to enhance the resilience of electrical networks against extreme weather events and associated risks. Emphasizing intelligence and flexibility within distribution networks, RESISTO aims to address climatic and physical incidents comprehensively, fostering resilience across planning, response, recovery, and adaptation phases. Leveraging advanced technologies including AI, IoT sensors, and aerial robots, RESISTO integrates prediction, detection, and mitigation strategies to optimize network operation. This article summarizes the main technical aspects of the proposed solutions to meet the aforementioned objectives, including the development of a climate risk detection platform, an IoT-based monitoring and anomaly detection network, and a fleet of intelligent aerial robots. Each contributing to the project's overarching objectives of enhancing network resilience and operational efficiency.

Vision Language Models (VLMs) often struggle with culture-specific knowledge, particularly in languages other than English and in underrepresented cultural contexts. To evaluate their understanding of such knowledge, we introduce WorldCuisines, a massive-scale benchmark for multilingual and multicultural, visually grounded language understanding. This benchmark includes a visual question answering (VQA) dataset with text-image pairs across 30 languages and dialects, spanning 9 language families and featuring over 1 million data points, making it the largest multicultural VQA benchmark to date. It includes tasks for identifying dish names and their origins. We provide evaluation datasets in two sizes (12k and 60k instances) alongside a training dataset (1 million instances). Our findings show that while VLMs perform better with correct location context, they struggle with adversarial contexts and predicting specific regional cuisines and languages. To support future research, we release a knowledge base with annotated food entries and images along with the VQA data., Comment: Preprint

Thermoelectric materials, enabling direct waste-heat to electricity conversion, need to be highly electrically conducting while simultaneously thermally insulating. This is fundamentally challenging since electrical and thermal conduction are usually coupled. Here, we discover that quasi-2D conjugated coordination polymer films exhibit this ideal mix of antithetical properties due to coexistence of defect-tolerant charge transport and defect-sensitive heat propagation. The former is highlighted by the highest conductivities > 2000 S cm-1 with metallic temperature dependence observed in disordered films with paracrystallinity > 10%, while the latter manifests in low, temperature-activated lattice thermal conductivities (< 0.38 W m-1 K-1) originating from small-amplitude, quasi-harmonic lattice dynamics with disorder-limited lifetimes and vibrational scattering length on the order of interatomic spacing. Based on temperature-dependent thermoelectric and magnetotransport experiments we identify a two-carrier (hole-electron), ambipolar metallic transport regime as the origin of relatively small Seebeck coefficients in these materials. Our findings identify conjugated coordination polymers as attractive materials for applications in thermoelectric energy harvesting, (bio)electronics and energy storage., Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures

We present the discovery of TOI-7041 b (TIC 201175570 b), a hot Saturn transiting a red giant star with measurable stellar oscillations. We observe solar-like oscillations in TOI-7041 with a frequency of maximum power of $\nu_{\rm max} = 218.50\pm2.23$ $\mu$Hz and a large frequency separation of $\Delta\nu = 16.5282\pm0.0186$ $\mu$Hz. Our asteroseismic analysis indicates that TOI-7041 has a radius of $4.10 \pm 0.06$(stat) $\pm$ 0.05(sys) $R_\odot$, making it one of the largest stars around which a transiting planet has been discovered with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and the mission's first oscillating red giant with a transiting planet. TOI-7041 b has an orbital period of $9.691 \pm 0.006$ days and a low eccentricity of $e = 0.04 \pm 0.04$. We measure a planet radius of $1.02 \pm 0.03$ $R_J$ with photometry from TESS, and a planet mass of $0.36 \pm 0.16$ $M_J$ ($114 \pm 51$ $M_\oplus$) with ground-based radial velocity measurements. TOI-7041 b appears less inflated than similar systems receiving equivalent incident flux, and its circular orbit indicates that it is not undergoing tidal heating due to circularization. The asteroseismic analysis of the host star provides some of the tightest constraints on stellar properties for a TESS planet host and enables precise characterization of the hot Saturn. This system joins a small number of TESS-discovered exoplanets orbiting stars that exhibit clear stellar oscillations and indicates that extended TESS observations of evolved stars will similarly provide a path to improved exoplanet characterization., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables

We measure the growth of cosmic density fluctuations on large scales and across the redshift range $0.3

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a Milky Way (MW) satellite that is massive enough to gravitationally attract the MW disc and inner halo, causing significant motion of the inner MW with respect to the outer halo. In this work, we probe this interaction by constructing a sample of 9,866 blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars with radial velocities from the DESI spectroscopic survey out to 120 kpc from the Galactic centre. This is the largest spectroscopic set of BHB stars in the literature to date, and it contains four times more stars with Galactocentric distances beyond 50 kpc than previous BHB catalogues. Using the DESI BHB sample combined with SDSS BHBs, we measure the bulk radial velocity of stars in the outer halo and observe that the velocity in the Southern Galactic hemisphere is different by 3.7$\sigma$ from the North. Modelling the projected velocity field shows that its dipole component is directed at a point 22 degrees away from the LMC along its orbit, which we interpret as the travel direction of the inner MW. The velocity field includes a monopole term that is -24 km/s, which we refer to as compression velocity. This velocity is significantly larger than predicted by the current models of the MW and LMC interaction. This work uses DESI data from its first two years of observations, but we expect that with upcoming DESI data releases, the sample of BHB stars will increase and our ability to measure the MW-LMC interaction will improve significantly., Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

Arrays of coupled superconducting qubits are analog quantum simulators able to emulate a wide range of tight-binding models in parameter regimes that are difficult to access or adjust in natural materials. In this work, we use a superconducting qubit array to emulate a tight-binding model on the rhombic lattice, which features flat bands. Enabled by broad adjustability of the dispersion of the energy bands and of on-site disorder, we examine regimes where flat-band localization and Anderson localization compete. We observe disorder-induced localization for dispersive bands and disorder-induced delocalization for flat bands. Remarkably, we find a sudden transition between the two regimes and, in its vicinity, the semblance of quantum critical scaling., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, and Supplementary Information

One of the most challenging problems in the computational study of localization in quantum manybody systems is to capture the effects of rare events, which requires sampling over exponentially many disorder realizations. We implement an efficient procedure on a quantum processor, leveraging quantum parallelism, to efficiently sample over all disorder realizations. We observe localization without disorder in quantum many-body dynamics in one and two dimensions: perturbations do not diffuse even though both the generator of evolution and the initial states are fully translationally invariant. The disorder strength as well as its density can be readily tuned using the initial state. Furthermore, we demonstrate the versatility of our platform by measuring Renyi entropies. Our method could also be extended to higher moments of the physical observables and disorder learning.

The first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) detections at 870$\mu$m wavelength (345$\,$GHz frequency) are reported, achieving the highest diffraction-limited angular resolution yet obtained from the surface of the Earth, and the highest-frequency example of the VLBI technique to date. These include strong detections for multiple sources observed on inter-continental baselines between telescopes in Chile, Hawaii, and Spain, obtained during observations in October 2018. The longest-baseline detections approach 11$\,$G$\lambda$ corresponding to an angular resolution, or fringe spacing, of 19$\mu$as. The Allan deviation of the visibility phase at 870$\mu$m is comparable to that at 1.3$\,$mm on the relevant integration time scales between 2 and 100$\,$s. The detections confirm that the sensitivity and signal chain stability of stations in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) array are suitable for VLBI observations at 870$\mu$m. Operation at this short wavelength, combined with anticipated enhancements of the EHT, will lead to a unique high angular resolution instrument for black hole studies, capable of resolving the event horizons of supermassive black holes in both space and time., Comment: Corresponding author: S. Doeleman

Late-stage Ca-sulfate-filled fractures are common on Mars. Notably, the Shenandoah formation in the western edge of Jezero crater preserves a variety of Ca-sulfate minerals in the fine-grained siliciclastic rocks explored by the Perseverance rover. However, the depositional environment and timing of the formation of these sulfates is unknown. To address this outstanding problem, we developed a new technique to map the crystal textures of these sulfates in situ at two stratigraphically similar locations in the Shenandoah formation, allowing us to constrain the burial depth and paleoenvironment at the time of their deposition. Our results suggest that some Ca-sulfate analyzed was formed at a burial depth greater than 80m, whereas Ca-sulfates present at another outcrop likely precipitated in a shallow-subsurface environment. These results indicate that samples collected for potential return to Earth at the two studied locations capture two different times and distinct chemical conditions in the depositional history of the Shenandoah formation providing multiple opportunities to evaluate surface and subsurface habitability.

We prove an analog of the disintegration theorem for tracial von Neumann algebras in the setting of elementary equivalence rather than isomorphism, showing that elementary equivalence of two direct integrals implies fiberwise elementary equivalence under mild, and necessary, hypotheses. This verifies a conjecture of Farah and Ghasemi. Our argument uses a continuous analog of ultraproducts where an ultrafilter on a discrete index set is replaced by a character on a commutative von Neumann algebra, which is closely related to Keisler randomizations of metric structures. We extend several essential results on ultraproducts, such as {\L}o\'s's theorem and countable saturation, to this more general setting., Comment: 34 pages

We introduce CaLMFlow (Causal Language Models for Flow Matching), a novel framework that casts flow matching as a Volterra integral equation (VIE), leveraging the power of large language models (LLMs) for continuous data generation. CaLMFlow enables the direct application of LLMs to learn complex flows by formulating flow matching as a sequence modeling task, bridging discrete language modeling and continuous generative modeling. Our method implements tokenization across space and time, thereby solving a VIE over these domains. This approach enables efficient handling of high-dimensional data and outperforms ODE solver-dependent methods like conditional flow matching (CFM). We demonstrate CaLMFlow's effectiveness on synthetic and real-world data, including single-cell perturbation response prediction, showcasing its ability to incorporate textual context and generalize to unseen conditions. Our results highlight LLM-driven flow matching as a promising paradigm in generative modeling, offering improved scalability, flexibility, and context-awareness., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, 7 tables

We present our analysis of supernovae serendipitously found to be radio-bright several years after their optical discovery. We used recent observations from the Australian SKA Pathfinder taken as part of the pilot Variables and Slow Transients and Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey programs. We identified 29 objects by cross-matching sources from these ASKAP observations with known core-collapse supernovae below a declination of $+40^{\circ}$ and with a redshift of $z\leq0.15$. Our results focus on eight cases that show potential late-time radio emission. These supernovae exhibit significantly greater amounts of radio emission than expected from the standard model of a single shockwave propagating through a spherical circumstellar medium, with a constant density structure produced by regular stellar mass-loss. We also discuss how we can learn from future ASKAP surveys about the circumstellar environments and emission mechanisms of supernovae that undergo late-time radio re-brightening. This pilot work tested and confirmed the potential of the Variables and Slow Transients survey to discover and study late-time supernova emission., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Superfast rotators (SFRs) are small solar system objects that rotate faster than generally possible for a cohesionless rubble pile. Their rotational characteristics allow us to make inferences about their interior structure and composition. Here, we present the methods and results from a preliminary search for SFRs in the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) data set. We find three SFRs from a sample of 686 main-belt asteroids, implying an occurrence rate of 0.4 -0.3/+0.1 percent - a higher incidence rate than has been measured by previous studies. We suggest that this high occurrence rate is due to the small sub-kilometer size regime to which DEEP has access: the objects searched here were as small as 500 m. We compute the minimum required cohesive strength for each of these SFRs and discuss the implications of these strengths in the context of likely evolution mechanisms. We find that all three of these SFRs require strengths that are more than that of weak regolith but consistent with many cohesive asteroid strengths reported in the literature. Across the full DEEP data set, we have identified ~70,000 Main-Belt Asteroids and expect ~300 SFRs - a result that will be assessed in a future paper.

Criteria for identifying optimal adjustment sets (i.e., yielding a consistent estimator with minimal asymptotic variance) for estimating average treatment effects in parametric and nonparametric models have recently been established. In a single treatment time point setting, it has been shown that the optimal adjustment set can be identified based on a causal directed acyclic graph alone. In a longitudinal treatment setting, previous work has established graphical rules to compare the asymptotic variance of estimators based on nested time-dependent adjustment sets. However, these rules do not always permit the identification of an optimal time-dependent adjustment set based on a causal graph alone. In this paper, we extend previous results by exploiting conditional independencies that can be read from the graph. We demonstrate theoretically and empirically that our results can yield estimators with even lower asymptotic variance than those allowed by previous results. We conjecture that our new results may even allow the identification of an optimal time-dependent adjustment set based on the causal graph and provide numerical examples supporting this conjecture., Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures

We report tele-seismic waves detection from multiple earthquakes on an operational subsea cable from Iceland to Ireland. Using per-span laser interferometry with 100km spacing, we report clear detection of S-, P- and surface waves from multiple world-wide earthquakes, enabling seismic analysis for early warning applications., Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Conference submission

This study reports a comprehensive environmental scan of the generative AI (GenAI) infrastructure in the national network for clinical and translational science across 36 institutions supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the United States. With the rapid advancement of GenAI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), healthcare institutions face unprecedented opportunities and challenges. This research explores the current status of GenAI integration, focusing on stakeholder roles, governance structures, and ethical considerations by administering a survey among leaders of health institutions (i.e., representing academic medical centers and health systems) to assess the institutional readiness and approach towards GenAI adoption. Key findings indicate a diverse range of institutional strategies, with most organizations in the experimental phase of GenAI deployment. The study highlights significant variations in governance models, with a strong preference for centralized decision-making but notable gaps in workforce training and ethical oversight. Moreover, the results underscore the need for a more coordinated approach to GenAI governance, emphasizing collaboration among senior leaders, clinicians, information technology staff, and researchers. Our analysis also reveals concerns regarding GenAI bias, data security, and stakeholder trust, which must be addressed to ensure the ethical and effective implementation of GenAI technologies. This study offers valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of GenAI integration in healthcare, providing a roadmap for institutions aiming to leverage GenAI for improved quality of care and operational efficiency.

The Beryllium Electron capture in Superconducting Tunnel junctions (BeEST) experiment searches for evidence of heavy neutrino mass eigenstates in the nuclear electron capture decay of $^7$Be by precisely measuring the recoil energy of the $^7$Li daughter. In Phase-III, the BeEST experiment has been scaled from a single superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) sensor to a 36-pixel array to increase sensitivity and mitigate gamma-induced backgrounds. Phase-III also uses a new continuous data acquisition system that greatly increases the flexibility for signal processing and data cleaning. We have developed procedures for signal processing and spectral fitting that are sufficiently robust to be automated for large data sets. This article presents the optimized procedures before unblinding the majority of the Phase-III data set to search for physics beyond the standard model.

We report on the discovery and spectroscopic confirmation of TOI-2458 b, a transiting mini-Neptune around an F-type star leaving the main-sequence with a mass of $M_\star=1.05 \pm 0.03$ M$_{\odot}$, a radius of $R_\star=1.31 \pm 0.03$ R$_{\odot}$, an effective temperature of $T_{\rm eff}=6005\pm50$ K, and a metallicity of $-0.10\pm0.05$ dex. By combining TESS photometry with high-resolution spectra acquired with the HARPS spectrograph, we found that the transiting planet has an orbital period of $\sim$3.74 days, a mass of $M_p=13.31\pm0.99$ M$_{\oplus}$ and a radius of $R_p=2.83\pm0.20$ R$_{\oplus}$. The host star TOI-2458 shows a short activity cycle of $\sim$54 days revealed in the HARPS S-index time series. We took the opportunity to investigate other F stars showing activity cycle periods comparable to that of TOI-2458 and found that they have shorter rotation periods than would be expected based on the gyrochronology predictions. In addition, we determined TOI-2458's stellar inclination angle to be $i_\star\,=\,10.6_{-10.6}^{+13.3}$ degrees. We discuss that both phenomena (fast stellar rotation and planet orbit inclination) could be explained by in situ formation of a hot Jupiter interior to TOI-2458 b. It is plausible that this hot Jupiter was recently engulfed by the star. Analysis of HARPS spectra has identified the presence of another planet with a period of $P\,=\,16.55\pm0.06$ days and a minimum mass of $M_p \sin i=10.22\pm1.90$ M$_{\oplus}$., Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics

Solar flares exhibit complex variations in elemental abundances compared to photospheric values. We examine the spatial and temporal evolution of coronal abundances in the X8.2 flare on 2017 September 10, aiming to interpret the often observed high first ionization potential (FIP) bias at loop tops and provide insights into differences between spatially resolved and Sun-as-a-star flare composition measurements. We analyze 12 Hinode/EIS raster scans spanning 3.5 hours, employing Ca XIV 193.87 A/Ar XIV 194.40 A and Fe XVI 262.98 A/S XIII 256.69 A composition diagnostics to derive FIP bias values. Both diagnostics consistently show that flare loop tops maintain high FIP bias values of >2-6, with peak phase values exceeding 4, over the extended duration, while footpoints exhibit photospheric FIP bias of ~1. We propose that this variation arises from a combination of two distinct processes: high FIP bias plasma downflows from the plasma sheet confined to loop tops, and chromospheric evaporation filling the loop footpoints with low FIP bias plasma. Mixing between these two sources produces the observed gradient. Our observations show that the localized high FIP bias signature at loop tops is likely diluted by the bright footpoint emission in spatially averaged measurements. The spatially resolved spectroscopic observations enabled by EIS prove critical for revealing this complex abundance variation in loops. Furthermore, our observations show clear evidence that the origin of hot flare plasma in flaring loops consists of a combination of both directly heated plasma in the corona and from ablated chromospheric material; and our results provide valuable insights into the formation and composition of loop top brightenings, also known as EUV knots, which are a common feature at the tops of flare loops., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Accepted in A&A. Comments and criticisms are welcomed!