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A later school start time policy has been recommended as a solution to adolescents' sleep deprivation. We estimated the impacts of later school start times on adolescents' sleep and substance use by leveraging a quasi-experiment in which school start time was delayed in some regions in South Korea. A later school start time policy was implemented in 2014 and 2015, which delayed school start times approximately 30-90 minutes. We applied difference-in-differences and event-study designs to longitudinal data on a nationally-representative cohort of adolescents from 2010 to 2015, which annually tracked sleep and substance use of 1,133 adolescents from grade 7 through grade 12. The adoption of a later school start time policy was initially associated with a 19-minute increase in sleep duration (95% CI, 5.52 to 32.04), driven by a delayed wake time and consistent bedtime. The policy was also associated with statistically significant reductions in monthly smoking and drinking frequencies. However, approximately a year after implementation, the observed increase in sleep duration shrank to 7-minute (95% CI, -12.60 to 25.86) and became statistically nonsignificant. Similarly, the observed reduction in smoking and drinking was attenuated a year after. Our findings suggest that policies that increase sleep in adolescents may have positive effects on health behaviors, but additional efforts may be required to sustain positive impacts over time. Physicians and education and health policymakers should consider the long-term effects of later school start times on adolescent health and well-being.

The performance of vision-language models (VLMs), such as CLIP, in visual classification tasks, has been enhanced by leveraging semantic knowledge from large language models (LLMs), including GPT. Recent studies have shown that in zero-shot classification tasks, descriptors incorporating additional cues, high-level concepts, or even random characters often outperform those using only the category name. In many classification tasks, while the top-1 accuracy may be relatively low, the top-5 accuracy is often significantly higher. This gap implies that most misclassifications occur among a few similar classes, highlighting the model's difficulty in distinguishing between classes with subtle differences. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel concept of comparative descriptors. These descriptors emphasize the unique features of a target class against its most similar classes, enhancing differentiation. By generating and integrating these comparative descriptors into the classification framework, we refine the semantic focus and improve classification accuracy. An additional filtering process ensures that these descriptors are closer to the image embeddings in the CLIP space, further enhancing performance. Our approach demonstrates improved accuracy and robustness in visual classification tasks by addressing the specific challenge of subtle inter-class differences., Comment: Accepted to WACV 2025. Main paper with 8 pages

This paper introduces a novel approach to enhancing closed-domain Question Answering (QA) systems, focusing on the specific needs of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) Science Information Technology (ScienceIT) domain. Utilizing a rich dataset derived from the ScienceIT documentation, our study embarks on a detailed comparison of two fine-tuned large language models and five retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models. Through data processing techniques, we transform the documentation into structured context-question-answer triples, leveraging the latest Large Language Models (AWS Bedrock, GCP PaLM2, Meta LLaMA2, OpenAI GPT-4, Google Gemini-Pro) for data-driven insights. Additionally, we introduce the Aggregated Knowledge Model (AKM), which synthesizes responses from the seven models mentioned above using K-means clustering to select the most representative answers. The evaluation of these models across multiple metrics offers a comprehensive look into their effectiveness and suitability for the LBL ScienceIT environment. The results demonstrate the potential benefits of integrating fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented strategies, highlighting significant performance improvements achieved with the AKM. The insights gained from this study can be applied to develop specialized QA systems tailored to specific domains.

Large language models (LLMs) offer personalized responses based on user interactions, but this use case raises serious privacy concerns. Homomorphic encryption (HE) is a cryptographic protocol supporting arithmetic computations in encrypted states and provides a potential solution for privacy-preserving machine learning (PPML). However, the computational intensity of transformers poses challenges for applying HE to LLMs. In this work, we propose a modified HE-friendly transformer architecture with an emphasis on inference following personalized (private) fine-tuning. Utilizing LoRA fine-tuning and Gaussian kernels, we achieve significant computational speedups -- 6.94x for fine-tuning and 2.3x for inference -- while maintaining performance comparable to plaintext models. Our findings provide a viable proof of concept for offering privacy-preserving LLM services in areas where data protection is crucial., Comment: 27 pages

A search for proton decay into $e^+/\mu^+$ and a $\eta$ meson has been performed using data from a 0.373 Mton$\cdot$year exposure (6050.3 live days) of Super-Kamiokande. Compared to previous searches this work introduces an improved model of the intranuclear $\eta$ interaction cross section, resulting in a factor of two reduction in uncertainties from this source and $\sim$10\% increase in signal efficiency. No significant data excess was found above the expected number of atmospheric neutrino background events resulting in no indication of proton decay into either mode. Lower limits on the proton partial lifetime of $1.4\times\mathrm{10^{34}~years}$ for $p\rightarrow e^+\eta$ and $7.3\times\mathrm{10^{33}~years}$ for $p\rightarrow \mu^+\eta$ at the 90$\%$ C.L. were set. These limits are around 1.5 times longer than our previous study and are the most stringent to date.

This paper introduces the hypothetical track-length fitting algorithm, a novel method for measuring the kinetic energies of ionizing particles in liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs). The algorithm finds the most probable offset in track length for a track-like object by comparing the measured ionization density as a function of position with a theoretical prediction of the energy loss as a function of the energy, including models of electron recombination and detector response. The algorithm can be used to measure the energies of particles that interact before they stop, such as charged pions that are absorbed by argon nuclei. The algorithm's energy measurement resolutions and fractional biases are presented as functions of particle kinetic energy and number of track hits using samples of stopping secondary charged pions in data collected by the ProtoDUNE-SP detector, and also in a detailed simulation. Additional studies describe impact of the dE/dx model on energy measurement performance. The method described in this paper to characterize the energy measurement performance can be repeated in any LArTPC experiment using stopping secondary charged pions.

We study the phenomenology of the charged Higgs boson, $H^\pm$,appearing in the fermionic dark matter model mediated by the dark $Z$ boson. This model is in favor of the light dark $Z$ boson, $Z'$, and the light additional neutral Higgs boson, $h$. We find that $H^\pm \to W^\pm h$ and the $H^\pm \to W^\pm Z'$ are dominant decay channels. Thus the promising final states are trilepton signals, $e \mu \mu$ or $\mu \mu \mu$ following $Z' \to \mu^+ \mu^-$ decays and leptonic decays of the $W^\pm$ boson. The charged Higgs boson will be produced from the top quark decays $t \to b H^\pm$ following $t \bar{t}$ production, if $H^\pm$ is light. Whereas $H^\pm$ is heavier than the top quark, the dominant production processes are associated productions with either $Z'$ or $h$, $pp \to W^\star \to H^\pm h$ and $pp \to W^\star \to H^\pm Z'$. We explore the discovery potential of the charged Higgs boson at the LHC. We also discuss the implications of dark matter in relation with the charged Higgs phenomenology., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures

The "Report on the Condition of Education" is an annual report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that is mandated by the United States Congress. Using data from NCES and other sources, NCES compiles a set of "indicators" of the condition of education in the United States at all levels, from prekindergarten through postsecondary, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons. The full contents of the Condition of Education Indicator System can be accessed online or by downloading PDFs for the individual indicators. The "Report on the Condition of Education 2024" comprises key findings from the Indicator System. This summary report provides a brief overview of information available on various topics as well as direct links to the online versions of indicators discussed. This year's report also includes select content from sources outside the Indicator System, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS).

Photonic integrated circuits find ubiquitous use in various technologies, from communication, to computing and sensing, and therefore play a crucial role in the quantum technology counterparts. Several systems are currently under investigation, each showing distinct advantages and drawbacks. For this reason, efforts are made to effectively combine different platforms in order to benefit from their respective strengths. In this work, 3D laser written photonic wire bonds are employed to interface triggered sources of quantum light, based on semiconductor quantum dots embedded into etched microlenses, with low-loss silicon-nitride photonics. Single photons at telecom wavelengths are generated by the In(Ga)As quantum dots which are then funneled into a silicon-nitride chip containing single-mode waveguides and beamsplitters. The second-order correlation function of g(2)(0) = 0.11+/-0.02, measured via the on-chip beamsplitter, clearly demonstrates the transfer of single photons into the silicon-nitride platform. The photonic wire bonds funnel on average 28.6+/-8.8% of the bare microlens emission (NA = 0.6) into the silicon-nitride-based photonic integrated circuit even at cryogenic temperatures. This opens the route for the effective future up-scaling of circuitry complexity based on the use of multiple different platforms.

In order to detect performance changes, measurements are performed with the same execution environment. In cloud environments, the noise from different processes running on the same cluster nodes might change measurement results and thereby make performance changes hard to measure. The benchmark MooBench determines the overhead of different observability tools and is executed continuously. In this study, we compare the suitability of different execution environments to benchmark the observability overhead using MooBench. To do so, we compare the execution times and standard deviation of MooBench in a cloud execution environment to three bare-metal execution environments. We find that bare metal servers have lower runtime and standard deviation for multi-threaded MooBench execution. Nevertheless, we see that performance changes up to 4.41% are detectable by GitHub actions, as long as only sequential workloads are examined.

We analysed microlensing data to uncover the nature of the anomaly that appeared near the peak of the short-timescale microlensing event KMT-2024-BLG-1044. Despite the anomaly's brief duration of less than a day, it was densely observed through high-cadence monitoring conducted by the KMTNet survey. Detailed modelling of the light curve confirmed the planetary origin of the anomaly and revealed two possible solutions, due to an inner--outer degeneracy. The two solutions provide different measured planet parameters: $(s, q)_{\rm inner} = [1.0883 \pm 0.0027, (3.125 \pm 0.248)\times 10^{-4}]$ for the inner solutions and $(s, q)_{\rm outer} = [1.0327 \pm 0.0054, (3.350 \pm 0.316)\times 10^{-4}]$ for the outer solutions. Using Bayesian analysis with constraints provided by the short event timescale ($t_{\rm E} \sim 9.1$~day) and the small angular Einstein radius ($\theta_{\rm E}\sim 0.16$~mas for the inner solution and $\sim 0.10$~mas for the outer solutio), we determined that the lens is a planetary system consisting of a host near the boundary between a star and a brown dwarf and a planet with a mass lower than that of Uranus. The discovery of the planetary system highlights the crucial role of the microlensing technique in detecting planets that orbit substellar brown dwarfs or very low-mass stars., Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures

The research aims to expand tactile feedback beyond vibrations to various modes of stimuli, such as indentation, vibration, among others. By incorporating soft material into the design of a novel tactile actuator, we can achieve multi-modality and enhance the device's wearability, which encompasses compliance, safety, and portability. The proposed tactile device can elevate the presence and immersion in VR by enabling diverse haptic feedback such as, force indentation, vibration and other arbitrary force outputs. This approach enables the rendering of haptic interactions with virtual objects, such as grasping of aa 3D virtual object to feel its stiffness - action that was difficult to achieve using widely adopted vibrotactile motors., Comment: Part of proceedings of 6th International Conference AsiaHaptics 2024

We prove that a CPD unilateral weighted shift $W_{\lambda}$ of type III is a quasi-affine transform of the operator $M_z$ of multiplication by the independent variable on the $L^2(\rho)$-closure of analytic complex polynomials on the complex plane, where $\rho$ is a measure precisely determined by $W_{\lambda}$. By using this model, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for similarity of $W_{\lambda}$ to $M_z$. Necessary conditions for a CPD operator to be similar to a subnormal one are given. A variety of concrete classes of non-subnormal CPD unilateral weighted shifts similar to subnormal operators are established., Comment: 29 pages

Skyrmions, topologically stable magnetic solitons characterized by whirling magnetization in nanoscale magnetic elements, show promise information carriers in spintronics and spin-based quantum computing due to their unique properties: small size, stability, and controllability. In this study, we introduce a novel method of skyrmion generation through domain wall deformation dynamics. Our analytical and micromagnetic simulations demonstrate that domain wall motion exceeding the Walker threshold induces topological deformation of magnetic domain walls exhibiting Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. This deformation process catalyzes the emergence of skyrmions from magnetic domain wall structure distortion, specifically through the Anchoring of domain walls due to the vertical Bloch line. We elucidate the underlying mechanism of skyrmion generation, correlating it with topological transitions accompanied by burst energy dissipation through spin-wave radiation. Notably, we present robust skyrmion generation conditions through a comprehensive classification of domain wall distortion, including vertical Bloch line generation and annihilation in magnetic domain wall dynamics within a DMI system. These findings provide noble insights into topological behaviors of spin structures and offer a potential pathway for efficient, controlled skyrmion creation in the next-generation spintronic devices., Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures

We construct maximal $\Lambda(p)$-subsets on a large class of curved manifolds, in an optimal range of Lebesgue exponents $p$. Our arguments combine restriction estimates and decoupling with old and new probabilistic estimates.

Equivariant neural networks have shown great success in reinforcement learning, improving sample efficiency and generalization when there is symmetry in the task. However, in many problems, only approximate symmetry is present, which makes imposing exact symmetry inappropriate. Recently, approximately equivariant networks have been proposed for supervised classification and modeling physical systems. In this work, we develop approximately equivariant algorithms in reinforcement learning (RL). We define approximately equivariant MDPs and theoretically characterize the effect of approximate equivariance on the optimal Q function. We propose novel RL architectures using relaxed group convolutions and experiment on several continuous control domains and stock trading with real financial data. Our results demonstrate that approximate equivariance matches prior work when exact symmetries are present, and outperforms them when domains exhibit approximate symmetry. As an added byproduct of these techniques, we observe increased robustness to noise at test time., Comment: Preprint

The Privacy Preserving Federated Learning Document VQA (PFL-DocVQA) competition challenged the community to develop provably private and communication-efficient solutions in a federated setting for a real-life use case: invoice processing. The competition introduced a dataset of real invoice documents, along with associated questions and answers requiring information extraction and reasoning over the document images. Thereby, it brings together researchers and expertise from the document analysis, privacy, and federated learning communities. Participants fine-tuned a pre-trained, state-of-the-art Document Visual Question Answering model provided by the organizers for this new domain, mimicking a typical federated invoice processing setup. The base model is a multi-modal generative language model, and sensitive information could be exposed through either the visual or textual input modality. Participants proposed elegant solutions to reduce communication costs while maintaining a minimum utility threshold in track 1 and to protect all information from each document provider using differential privacy in track 2. The competition served as a new testbed for developing and testing private federated learning methods, simultaneously raising awareness about privacy within the document image analysis and recognition community. Ultimately, the competition analysis provides best practices and recommendations for successfully running privacy-focused federated learning challenges in the future., Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures

In this paper we define absorptive Compton amplitudes, which captures the absorption factor for waves of spin-weight-$s$ scattering in black hole perturbation theory. At the leading order, in the $G M \omega$ expansion, such amplitudes are purely imaginary and expressible as contact terms. Equipped with these amplitudes we compute the mass change in black hole scattering events via Kosower-Maybee-O'Connell formalism, where the rest mass of Schwarzschild/Kerr black hole is modified due to absorption of gravitational, electromagnetic, or scalar fields sourced by other compact object. We reproduced the power loss previously computed in the post-Newtonian expansion. The results presented here hold for similar mass ratios and generic spin orientation, while keeping the Kerr spin parameter to lie in the physical region $\chi \le 1$., Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures

This document is comprised of a collection of updated preliminary parameters for the key parts of the muon collider. The updated preliminary parameters follow on from the October 2023 Tentative Parameters Report. Particular attention has been given to regions of the facility that are believed to hold greater technical uncertainty in their design and that have a strong impact on the cost and power consumption of the facility. The data is collected from a collaborative spreadsheet and transferred to overleaf.

A significant generalization of the Erd\"os-R\'enyi random graph model is an `inhomogeneous' random graph where the edge probabilities vary according to vertex types. We identify the threshold value for this random graph with a finite number of vertex types to be connected and examine the model's behavior near this threshold value. In particular, we show that the threshold value is $c \frac{\log n }{n}$ for some $c>0$ which is explicitly determined, where $n$ denotes the number of vertices. Furthermore, we prove that near the threshold, the graph consists of a giant component and isolated vertices. We also investigate the phase transition and provide an alternative proof of the results by Bollob\'as et al. [Random Struct. Algorithms, 31, 3-122 (2007)]. Our proofs are based on an exploration process that corresponds to the graph, and instead of relying heavily on branching processes, we employ a random walk constructed from the exploration process. We then apply a large deviations theory to show that a reasonably large component is always significantly larger, a strategy used in both connectivity and phase transition analysis., Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures

Spectroastrometry, which measures wavelength-dependent shifts in the center of light, is well-suited for studying objects whose morphology changes with wavelength at very high angular resolutions. Photonic lantern (PL)-fed spectrometers have potential to enable measurement of spectroastrometric signals because the relative intensities between the PL output SMFs contain spatial information on the input scene. In order to use PL output spectra for spectroastrometric measurements, it is important to understand the wavelength-dependent behaviors of PL outputs and develop methods to calibrate the effects of time-varying wavefront errors in ground-based observations. We present experimental characterizations of the 3-port PL on the SCExAO testbed at the Subaru Telescope. We develop spectral response models of the PL and verify the behaviors with lab experiments. We find sinusoidal behavior of astrometric sensitivity of the 3-port PL as a function of wavelength, as expected from numerical simulations. Furthermore, we compare experimental and numerically simulated coupling maps and discuss their potential use for offsetting pointing errors. We then present a method of building PL spectral response models (solving for the transfer matrices as a function of wavelength) using coupling maps, which can be used for further calibration strategies., Comment: Accepted for publication in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS)

We present 850 $\mu$m polarization observations of the IC 348 star-forming region in the Perseus molecular cloud as part of the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observation (BISTRO) survey. We study the magnetic properties of two cores (HH 211 MMS and IC 348 MMS) and a filamentary structure of IC 348. We find that the overall field tends to be more perpendicular than parallel to the filamentary structure of the region. The polarization fraction decreases with intensity, and we estimate the trend by power-law and the mean of the Rice distribution fittings. The power indices for the cores are much smaller than 1, indicative of possible grain growth to micron size in the cores. We also measure the magnetic field strengths of the two cores and the filamentary area separately by applying the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method and its alternative version for compressed medium. The estimated mass-to-flux ratios are 0.45-2.20 and 0.63-2.76 for HH 211 MMS and IC 348 MMS, respectively, while the ratios for the filament is 0.33-1.50. This result may suggest that the transition from subcritical to supercritical conditions occurs at the core scale ($\sim$ 0.05 pc) in the region. In addition, we study the energy balance of the cores and find that the relative strength of turbulence to the magnetic field tends to be stronger for IC 348 MMS than HH 211 MMS. The result could potentially explain the different configurations inside the two cores: a single protostellar system in HH 211 MMS and multiple protostars in IC 348 MMS., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 21 pages, 12 figures

We present a search for long-lived particles (LLPs) produced from kaon decay that decay to two muons inside the ICARUS neutrino detector. This channel would be a signal of hidden sector models that can address outstanding issues in particle physics such as the strong CP problem and the microphysical origin of dark matter. The search is performed with data collected in the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beam at Fermilab corresponding to $2.41\times 10^{20}$ protons-on-target. No new physics signal is observed, and we set world-leading limits on heavy QCD axions, as well as for the Higgs portal scalar among dedicated searches. Limits are also presented in a model-independent way applicable to any new physics model predicting the process $K\to \pi+S(\to\mu\mu)$, for a long-lived particle S. This result is the first search for new physics performed with the ICARUS detector at Fermilab. It paves the way for the future program of long-lived particle searches at ICARUS.

This paper explores the potential of aerial reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (ARIS) to enhance coordinated multi-point non-orthogonal multiple access (CoMP-NOMA) networks. We consider a system model where a UAV-mounted RIS assists in serving multiple users through NOMA while coordinating with multiple base stations. The optimization of UAV trajectory, RIS phase shifts, and NOMA power control constitutes a complex problem due to the hybrid nature of the parameters, involving both continuous and discrete values. To tackle this challenge, we propose a novel framework utilizing the multi-output proximal policy optimization (MO-PPO) algorithm. MO-PPO effectively handles the diverse nature of these optimization parameters, and through extensive simulations, we demonstrate its effectiveness in achieving near-optimal performance and adapting to dynamic environments. Our findings highlight the benefits of integrating ARIS in CoMP-NOMA networks for improved spectral efficiency and coverage in future wireless networks., Comment: IEEE Globecom 2024

Multiply connected electronic networks threaded by flux tubes have been proposed as a platform for adiabatic quantum transport and topological states. Multi-terminal Josephson junction (MTJJ) has been suggested as a pathway to realize this concept. Yet, the manifestations of topology in MTJJ remain open for experimental study. Here, we investigated the artificial topological band structure of three-terminal graphene Josephson junctions. Employing tunnelling spectroscopy and magnetic flux gates, we captured the tomography of the Andreev bound state (ABS) energy spectrum as a function of two independent phase differences. This ABS spectrum exhibits the topological transition from gapped to gapless states, akin to the band structure of nodal-line semimetals. Our results show the potential of graphene-based MTJJs for engineering band topologies in higher dimensions.

The recent segmentation foundation model, Segment Anything Model (SAM), exhibits strong zero-shot segmentation capabilities, but it falls short in generating fine-grained precise masks. To address this limitation, we propose a novel zero-shot image matting model, called ZIM, with two key contributions: First, we develop a label converter that transforms segmentation labels into detailed matte labels, constructing the new SA1B-Matte dataset without costly manual annotations. Training SAM with this dataset enables it to generate precise matte masks while maintaining its zero-shot capability. Second, we design the zero-shot matting model equipped with a hierarchical pixel decoder to enhance mask representation, along with a prompt-aware masked attention mechanism to improve performance by enabling the model to focus on regions specified by visual prompts. We evaluate ZIM using the newly introduced MicroMat-3K test set, which contains high-quality micro-level matte labels. Experimental results show that ZIM outperforms existing methods in fine-grained mask generation and zero-shot generalization. Furthermore, we demonstrate the versatility of ZIM in various downstream tasks requiring precise masks, such as image inpainting and 3D NeRF. Our contributions provide a robust foundation for advancing zero-shot matting and its downstream applications across a wide range of computer vision tasks. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/naver-ai/ZIM}., Comment: preprint (21 pages, 16 figures, and 8 tables)

Diffusion models have demonstrated remarkable success in various domains, including molecular generation. However, conditional molecular generation remains a fundamental challenge due to an intrinsic trade-off between targeting specific chemical properties and generating meaningful samples from the data distribution. In this work, we present Time-Aware Conditional Synthesis (TACS), a novel approach to conditional generation on diffusion models. It integrates adaptively controlled plug-and-play "online" guidance into a diffusion model, driving samples toward the desired properties while maintaining validity and stability. A key component of our algorithm is our new type of diffusion sampler, Time Correction Sampler (TCS), which is used to control guidance and ensure that the generated molecules remain on the correct manifold at each reverse step of the diffusion process at the same time. Our proposed method demonstrates significant performance in conditional 3D molecular generation and offers a promising approach towards inverse molecular design, potentially facilitating advancements in drug discovery, materials science, and other related fields., Comment: NeurIPS 2024

Learning generalized models from biased data is an important undertaking toward fairness in deep learning. To address this issue, recent studies attempt to identify and leverage bias-conflicting samples free from spurious correlations without prior knowledge of bias or an unbiased set. However, spurious correlation remains an ongoing challenge, primarily due to the difficulty in precisely detecting these samples. In this paper, inspired by the similarities between mislabeled samples and bias-conflicting samples, we approach this challenge from a novel perspective of mislabeled sample detection. Specifically, we delve into Influence Function, one of the standard methods for mislabeled sample detection, for identifying bias-conflicting samples and propose a simple yet effective remedy for biased models by leveraging them. Through comprehensive analysis and experiments on diverse datasets, we demonstrate that our new perspective can boost the precision of detection and rectify biased models effectively. Furthermore, our approach is complementary to existing methods, showing performance improvement even when applied to models that have already undergone recent debiasing techniques.

We prove that every planar graph is contained in $H_1\boxtimes H_2\boxtimes K_2$ for some graphs $H_1$ and $H_2$ both with treewidth 2. This resolves a question of Liu, Norin and Wood [arXiv:2410.20333]. We also show this result is best possible: for any $c \in \mathbb{N}$, there is a planar graph $G$ such that for any tree $T$ and graph $H$ with $\text{tw}(H) \leq 2$, $G$ is not contained in $H \boxtimes T \boxtimes K_c$., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2410.20333

The KM3NeT Collaboration has tackled a common challenge faced by the astroparticle physics community, namely adapting the experiment-specific simulation software to work with the CORSIKA air shower simulation output. The proposed solution is an extension of the open-source code gSeaGen, allowing for the transport of muons generated by CORSIKA to a detector of any size at an arbitrary depth. The gSeaGen code was not only extended in terms of functionalities but also underwent a thorough redesign of the muon propagation routine, resulting in a more accurate and efficient simulation. This paper presents the capabilities of the new gSeaGen code as well as prospects for further developments., Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures

The magnetised near detector (ND280) of the T2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment has been recently upgraded aiming to satisfy the requirement of reducing the systematic uncertainty from measuring the neutrinonucleus interaction cross section, which is the largest systematic uncertainty in the search for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation. A key component of the upgrade is SuperFGD, a 3D segmented plastic scintillator detector made of approximately 2,000,000 optically-isolated 1 cm3 cubes. It will provide a 3D image of GeV neutrino interactions by combining tracking and stopping power measurements of final state particles with sub-nanosecond time resolution. The performance of SuperFGD is characterized by the precision of its response to charged particles as well as the systematic effects that might affect the physics measurements. Hence, a detailed Geant4 based optical simulation of the SuperFGD building block, i.e. a plastic scintillating cube read out by three wavelength shifting fibers, has been developed and validated with the different datasets collected in various beam tests. In this manuscript the description of the optical model as well as the comparison with data are reported., Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures

We use JWST/NIRISS slitless spectroscopy from the Next Generation Deep Extragalactic Exploratory Public (NGDEEP) Survey to investigate the physical condition of star-forming galaxies at $1.7 < z < 3.4$. At these redshifts, the deep NGDEEP NIRISS slitless spectroscopy covers the [O II]$\lambda\lambda$3726,3729, [O III]$\lambda\lambda$4959,5007, H$\beta$ and H$\alpha$ emission features for galaxies with stellar masses $\log(\mathrm{M_\ast/M_\odot}) \gtrsim 7$, nearly a factor of a hundred lower than previous studies. We focus on the [O III]/[O II] (O$_{32}$) ratio which is primarily sensitive to the ionization state and with a secondary dependence on the gas-phase metallicity of the interstellar medium. We find significant ($\gtrsim5\sigma$) correlations between the O$_{32}$ ratio and galaxy properties as O$_{32}$ increases with decreasing stellar mass, decreasing star formation rate (SFR), increasing specific SFR (sSFR$\equiv \mathrm{SFR}/M_*$), and increasing equivalent width (EW) of H$\beta$ and H$\alpha$. These trends suggest a tight connection between the ionization parameter and these galaxy properties. Galaxies at $z\sim2-3$ exhibit a higher O$_{32}$ than local normal galaxies with the same stellar masses and SFRs, indicating that they have a higher ionization parameter and lower metallicity than local normal galaxies. In addition, we observe an evolutionary trend in the O$_{32}$ -- EW(H$\beta$) relation from $z\sim0$ and $z\gtrsim5$, such that higher redshift galaxies have higher EW(H$\beta$) and higher O$_{32}$ at fixed EW. We argue that both the enhanced recent star formation activity and the higher star formation surface density may contribute to the increase in O$_{32}$ and the ionization parameter., Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures

Deep neural networks are susceptible to adversarial attacks and common corruptions, which undermine their robustness. In order to enhance model resilience against such challenges, Adversarial Training (AT) has emerged as a prominent solution. Nevertheless, adversarial robustness is often attained at the expense of model fairness during AT, i.e., disparity in class-wise robustness of the model. While distinctive classes become more robust towards such adversaries, hard to detect classes suffer. Recently, research has focused on improving model fairness specifically for perturbed images, overlooking the accuracy of the most likely non-perturbed data. Additionally, despite their robustness against the adversaries encountered during model training, state-of-the-art adversarial trained models have difficulty maintaining robustness and fairness when confronted with diverse adversarial threats or common corruptions. In this work, we address the above concerns by introducing a novel approach called Fair Targeted Adversarial Training (FAIR-TAT). We show that using targeted adversarial attacks for adversarial training (instead of untargeted attacks) can allow for more favorable trade-offs with respect to adversarial fairness. Empirical results validate the efficacy of our approach.

In a classical scattering problem, the classical eikonal is defined as the generator of the canonical transformation that maps in-states to out-states. It can be regarded as the classical limit of the log of the quantum S-matrix. In a classical analog of the Born approximation in quantum mechanics, the classical eikonal admits an expansion in oriented tree graphs, where oriented edges denote retarded/advanced worldline propagators. The Magnus expansion, which takes the log of a time-ordered exponential integral, offers an efficient method to compute the coefficients of the tree graphs to all orders. We exploit a Hopf algebra structure behind the Magnus expansion to develop a fast algorithm which can compute the tree coefficients up to the 12th order (over half a million trees) in less than an hour. In a relativistic setting, our methods can be applied to the post-Minkowskian (PM) expansion for gravitational binaries. We demonstrate the methods by computing the 3PM eikonal and find agreement with previous results based on amplitude methods., Comment: 49 pages, 21 figures

Traditionally, 3d indoor datasets have generally prioritized scale over ground-truth accuracy in order to obtain improved generalization. However, using these datasets to evaluate dense geometry tasks, such as depth rendering, can be problematic as the meshes of the dataset are often incomplete and may produce wrong ground truth to evaluate the details. In this paper, we propose SCRREAM, a dataset annotation framework that allows annotation of fully dense meshes of objects in the scene and registers camera poses on the real image sequence, which can produce accurate ground truth for both sparse 3D as well as dense 3D tasks. We show the details of the dataset annotation pipeline and showcase four possible variants of datasets that can be obtained from our framework with example scenes, such as indoor reconstruction and SLAM, scene editing & object removal, human reconstruction and 6d pose estimation. Recent pipelines for indoor reconstruction and SLAM serve as new benchmarks. In contrast to previous indoor dataset, our design allows to evaluate dense geometry tasks on eleven sample scenes against accurately rendered ground truth depth maps.

The exterior domain problem is essential in fluid and kinetic equations. In this paper, we establish the validity of the diffusive expansion for the Boltzmann equations to the Navier-Stokes-Fourier system up to the critical time in an exterior domain with non-zero passing flow. We apply the $L^3-L^6$ framework to the unbounded domain in this paper., Comment: 19 pages

Single photon detectors (SPDs) are essential technology in quantum science, quantum network, biology, and advanced imaging. To detect the small quantum of energy carried in a photon, conventional SPDs rely on energy excitation across either a semiconductor bandgap or superconducting gap. While the energy gap suppresses the false-positive error, it also sets an energy scale that can limit the detection efficiency of lower energy photons and spectral bandwidth of the SPD. Here, we demonstrate an orthogonal approach to detect single near-infrared photons using graphene calorimeters. By exploiting the extremely low heat capacity of the pseudo-relativistic electrons in graphene near its charge neutrality point, we observe an electron temperature rise up to ~2 K using a hybrid Josephson junction. In this proof-of-principle experiment, we achieve an intrinsic quantum efficiency of 87% (75%) with dark count < 1 per second (per hour) at operation temperatures as high as 1.2 K. Our results highlight the potential of electron calorimetric SPDs for detecting lower-energy photons from the mid-IR to microwave regimes, opening pathways to study space science in far-infrared regime, to search for dark matter axions, and to advance quantum technologies across a broader electromagnetic spectrum.

We consider the problem of novel view synthesis from unposed images in a single feed-forward. Our framework capitalizes on fast speed, scalability, and high-quality 3D reconstruction and view synthesis capabilities of 3DGS, where we further extend it to offer a practical solution that relaxes common assumptions such as dense image views, accurate camera poses, and substantial image overlaps. We achieve this through identifying and addressing unique challenges arising from the use of pixel-aligned 3DGS: misaligned 3D Gaussians across different views induce noisy or sparse gradients that destabilize training and hinder convergence, especially when above assumptions are not met. To mitigate this, we employ pre-trained monocular depth estimation and visual correspondence models to achieve coarse alignments of 3D Gaussians. We then introduce lightweight, learnable modules to refine depth and pose estimates from the coarse alignments, improving the quality of 3D reconstruction and novel view synthesis. Furthermore, the refined estimates are leveraged to estimate geometry confidence scores, which assess the reliability of 3D Gaussian centers and condition the prediction of Gaussian parameters accordingly. Extensive evaluations on large-scale real-world datasets demonstrate that PF3plat sets a new state-of-the-art across all benchmarks, supported by comprehensive ablation studies validating our design choices., Comment: project page: https://cvlab-kaist.github.io/PF3plat/

In line with the principle of honesty, there has been a growing effort to train large language models (LLMs) to generate outputs containing epistemic markers. However, evaluation in the presence of epistemic markers has been largely overlooked, raising a critical question: Could the use of epistemic markers in LLM-generated outputs lead to unintended negative consequences? To address this, we present EMBER, a benchmark designed to assess the robustness of LLM-judges to epistemic markers in both single and pairwise evaluation settings. Our findings, based on evaluations using EMBER, reveal that all tested LLM-judges, including GPT-4o, show a notable lack of robustness in the presence of epistemic markers. Specifically, we observe a negative bias toward epistemic markers, with a stronger bias against markers expressing uncertainty. This suggests that LLM-judges are influenced by the presence of these markers and do not focus solely on the correctness of the content., Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, 15 tables

As social VR applications grow in popularity, blind and low vision users encounter continued accessibility barriers. Yet social VR, which enables multiple people to engage in the same virtual space, presents a unique opportunity to allow other people to support a user's access needs. To explore this opportunity, we designed a framework based on physical sighted guidance that enables a guide to support a blind or low vision user with navigation and visual interpretation. A user can virtually hold on to their guide and move with them, while the guide can describe the environment. We studied the use of our framework with 16 blind and low vision participants and found that they had a wide range of preferences. For example, we found that participants wanted to use their guide to support social interactions and establish a human connection with a human-appearing guide. We also highlight opportunities for novel guidance abilities in VR, such as dynamically altering an inaccessible environment. Through this work, we open a novel design space for a versatile approach for making VR fully accessible.

Social VR has increased in popularity due to its affordances for rich, embodied, and nonverbal communication. However, nonverbal communication remains inaccessible for blind and low vision people in social VR. We designed accessible cues with audio and haptics to represent three nonverbal behaviors: eye contact, head shaking, and head nodding. We evaluated these cues in real-time conversation tasks where 16 blind and low vision participants conversed with two other users in VR. We found that the cues were effective in supporting conversations in VR. Participants had statistically significantly higher scores for accuracy and confidence in detecting attention during conversations with the cues than without. We also found that participants had a range of preferences and uses for the cues, such as learning social norms. We present design implications for handling additional cues in the future, such as the challenges of incorporating AI. Through this work, we take a step towards making interpersonal embodied interactions in VR fully accessible for blind and low vision people.