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Ignoring their own well-publicized calls to regulate AI development and to pause implementation of its applications, major technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta are racing to fend off regulation and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their platforms. The weight of the available evidence suggests that the current wholesale adoption of unregulated AI applications in schools poses a grave danger to democratic civil society and to individual freedom and liberty. Years of warnings and precedents have highlighted the risks posed by the widespread use of pre-AI digital technologies in education, which have obscured decision-making and enabled student data exploitation. Without effective public oversight, the introduction of opaque and unproven AI systems and applications will likely exacerbate these problems. This policy brief explores the harms likely if lawmakers and others do not step in with carefully considered measures to prevent these extensive risks. The authors urge school leaders to pause the adoption of AI applications until policymakers have had sufficient time to thoroughly educate themselves and develop legislation and policies ensuring effective public oversight and control of school applications.

The constancy of nuclear decay rates can be investigated via long-duration precision measurements. It is still an open question whether any (annual) modulation can be observed. Long-lasting nuclear decay rate measurements have been the subject of considerable research effort. A decay rate measurement with a 137Cs source is currently being conducted 30 meters below the ground at the J\'anossy Underground Research Laboratory (JURLab, Csilleb\'erc, Hungary) utilizing a High-purity Germanium (HPGe) detector. The laboratory is the low-radiation-background part of the Vesztergombi High Energy Laboratory (VLAB) on the KFKI campus, Csilleb\'erc, Hungary. From October 2022 to April 2024, data of 18 months' worth have been collected, providing a new opportunity to look for variations in decay rates. The experimental setup, data processing method, and the first results of this measurement are presented here., Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures

Blue large-amplitude pulsators (BLAPs) are a recently discovered group of hot pulsating stars whose evolutionary status remains uncertain. We study the pulsation characteristics of BLAPs for the two main mass scenarios, $ 0.3 - 0.4 \: \rm M_{\odot} $ and $ 0.7 - 1.1 \: \rm M_{\odot} $, and compare them with observations to find evidence for either scenario. We compute about a half million linear BLAP models using MESA-RSP and compare the linear pulsation periods with the observed ranges of BLAP stars. For the low-mass scenario, BLAPs are in a region of the HR diagram where the growth rates are positive for the fundamental mode, and the model periods correspond well to the observed ones, assuming the reported luminosities of $ \sim 200 \: \rm L_{\odot} $. For the high-mass scenario, pulsations in the first overtone dominate. Assuming a larger range of luminosities, high-mass models could also explain all BLAPs, including the high-gravity BLAPs. Furthermore, we provide the first seismically constrained mass estimate for the first double-mode BLAP star, OGLE-BLAP-030. We find that a linear model with a mass of $ 0.62 \: \rm M_{\odot} $ matches the reported parameters of this star exactly, placing it in between the two mass scenarios. We also derive new period relations based on our models and all available observed BLAPs, and we find that the derived relations also support the low-mass scenario., Comment: submitted to ApJ, comments welcome, 13 pages, 8 figures

Accurately assessing the balance between acoustic wave energy fluxes and radiative losses is critical for understanding how the solar chromosphere is thermally regulated. We investigate the energy balance in the chromosphere by comparing deposited acoustic flux and radiative losses under quiet and active solar conditions using non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) inversions with the Stockholm Inversion Code (STiC). To achieve this, we utilize spectroscopic observations from the Interferometric BIdimensional Spectrometer (IBIS) in the Na I 5896 \r{A} and Ca II 8542 \r{A} lines and from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) in the Mg II h and k lines to self-consistently derive spatially resolved velocity power spectra and cooling rates across different heights in the atmosphere. Additionally, we use snapshots of a three-dimensional radiative-magnetohydrodynamics simulation to investigate the systematic effects of the inversion approach, particularly the attenuation effect on the velocity power spectra and the determination of the cooling rates. The results indicate that inversions potentially underestimate acoustic fluxes at all chromospheric heights while slightly overestimating the radiative losses when fitting these spectral lines. However, even after accounting for these biases, the ratio of acoustic flux to radiative losses remains below unity in most observed regions, particularly in the higher layers of the chromosphere. We also observe a correlation between the magnetic field inclination in the photosphere and radiative losses in the low chromosphere in plage, which is evidence that the field topology plays a role in the chromospheric losses., Comment: submitted to ApJ

The Pan-STARRS 3$\pi$ survey has detected hundreds of thousands of variable stars thanks to its coverage and 4-year time span, even though the sampling of the light curves is relatively sparse. These light curves contain only 10-15 detections in each of the five filters (g,r,i,z,y). During the K2 mission, the Kepler space telescope observed with a high sampling frequency, although only for about 80 days in each of its campaigns. Crossmatching and investigating the RR Lyrae stars observed by both K2 and Pan-STARRS can serve as a valuable tool to validate the classification and period determination of the survey. We used the Sesar catalogue of RR Lyrae stars detected by Pan-STARRS. After determining the overlap, we also considered the Gaia DR3 RR Lyrae catalogue data for these stars wherever it was available. The frequencies of the light variations were calculated by applying the Lomb-Scargle periodogram method on the K2 light curves that were prepared with autoEAP photometry. The calculated frequencies of the stars then were compared with those given in the Sesar catalogue and the Gaia DR3 RR Lyrae catalogue. We found that for the majority of the stars, the classification (95.6%) and the frequency determination (90.1%) of the PanSTARRS RR Lyrae stars were consistent within 0.03 d-1 with those that we derived from the K2 autoEAP light curves. For a significant subset of the sample, 7.4%, however, an offset of 1 or 2 d-1 was found in the frequencies. These are the result of the sampling of the detections, because Pan-STARRS observations are affected by diurnal cycles, whereas Kepler carried out measurements quasicontinuously. We found that RRc subtypes are significantly more affected (25.3%) than RRab subtypes (3.7%), which is most likely caused by RRc stars having less sharp light curve features. Validation via space-based data will be important for future ground-based surveys, as well., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, 1 appendix table, accepted for publication in A&A

We predict the existence of $\alpha$ Ori B, a low-mass companion orbiting Betelgeuse. This is motivated by the presence of a 2170-day Long Secondary Period (LSP) in Betelgeuse's lightcurve, a periodicity $\approx5$ times longer than the star's 416 day fundamental radial pulsation mode. While binarity is currently the leading hypothesis for LSPs in general, the LSP and the radial velocity variation observed in Betelgeuse, taken together, necessitate a revision of the prevailing physical picture. The lightcurve-RV phase difference requires a companion to be behind Betelgeuse at the LSP luminosity minimum, 180 degrees out of phase with the system orientation associated with occultation. We demonstrate the consistency of this model with available observational constraints and identify tensions in all other proposed LSP hypotheses. Within this framework, we calculate a mass for $\alpha$ Ori B of $1.17\pm0.7\,M_\odot$ and an orbital separation of $1850\pm70\,R_\odot$, or $2.43^{+0.21}_{-0.32}$ times the radius of Betelgeuse. We then describe the features of the companion as constrained by the fundamental parameters of Betelgeuse and its orbital system, and discuss what would be required to confirm the companion's existence observationally., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted to AAS Journals. Comments welcome

We are releasing a new suite of security benchmarks for LLMs, CYBERSECEVAL 3, to continue the conversation on empirically measuring LLM cybersecurity risks and capabilities. CYBERSECEVAL 3 assesses 8 different risks across two broad categories: risk to third parties, and risk to application developers and end users. Compared to previous work, we add new areas focused on offensive security capabilities: automated social engineering, scaling manual offensive cyber operations, and autonomous offensive cyber operations. In this paper we discuss applying these benchmarks to the Llama 3 models and a suite of contemporaneous state-of-the-art LLMs, enabling us to contextualize risks both with and without mitigations in place.

In the past, analogies to Brooks' theorem have been found for various parameters of graph coloring for infinite locally finite connected graphs in ZFC. We prove these theorems are not provable in ZF (i.e. the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory without the Axiom of Choice (AC)). Moreover, such theorems follow from Konig's Lemma (every infinite locally finite connected graph has a ray-a weak form of AC) in ZF. In ZF, we formulate new conditions for the existence of the distinguishing chromatic number, the distinguishing chromatic index, the total chromatic number, the total distinguishing chromatic number, the odd chromatic number, and the neighbor-distinguishing index in infinite locally finite connected graphs, which are equivalent to Konig's Lemma. In this direction, we strengthen a recent result of Stawiski from 2023., Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures. Some new results were added

We present MeerKAT Fornax Survey HI observations of NGC 1427A, a blue irregular galaxy with a stellar mass of 2e+9 Msun located near the centre of the Fornax galaxy cluster. Thanks to the excellent resolution (1 to 6 kpc spatially, 1.4 km/s in velocity) and HI column density sensitivity (4e+19/cm^2 to 1e+18/cm^2 depending on resolution), our data deliver new insights on the long-debated interaction of this galaxy with the cluster environment. We confirm the presence of a broad, one-sided, starless HI tail stretching from the outer regions of the stellar body and pointing away from the cluster centre. We find the tail to have 50% more HI (4e+8 Msun) and to be 3 times longer (70 kpc) than in previous observations. In fact, we detect scattered HI clouds out to 300 kpc from the galaxy in the direction of the tail -- possibly the most ancient remnant of the passage of NGC 1427A through the intracluster medium of Fornax. Both the velocity gradient along the HI tail and the peculiar kinematics of HI in the outer region of the stellar body are consistent with the effect of ram pressure given the line-of-sight motion of the galaxy within the cluster. However, several properties cannot be explained solely by ram pressure and suggest an ongoing tidal interaction. This includes: the close match between dense HI and stars within the disturbed stellar body; the abundant kinematically-anomalous HI; and the inversion of the HI velocity gradient near the base of the HI tail. We rule out an interaction with the cluster tidal field, and conclude that NGC 1427A is the result of a high-speed galaxy encounter or of a merger started at least 300 Myr ago, where ram pressure shapes the distribution and kinematics of the HI in the perturbed outer stellar body and in the tidal tails., Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted. Data available at the MeerKAT Fornax Survey website, https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/meerkatfornaxsurvey

The introduction of connected and automated vehicles (CAV) is believed to reduce congestion, enhance safety, and improve traffic efficiency. Numerous research studies have focused on controlling pure CAV platoons in fully connected automated traffic, as well as single or multiple CAVs in mixed traffic with human-driven vehicles (HVs). CAV cruising control designs have been proposed to stabilize the car-following traffic dynamics, but few studies has considered their safety impact, particularly the trade-offs between stability and safety. In this paper, we study how cooperative control strategies for CAVs can be designed to enhance the safety and smoothness of mixed traffic under varying penetrations of connectivity and automation. Considering mixed traffic where a pair of CAVs travels amongst HVs, we design cooperative feedback controllers for the pair CAVs to stabilize traffic via cooperation and, possibly, by also leveraging connectivity with HVs. The real-time safety impact of the CAV controllers is investigated using control barrier functions (CBF). We construct CBF safety constraints, based on which we propose safety-critical control designs to guarantee CAV safety, HV safety and platoon safety. Both theoretical and numerical analyses have been conducted to explore the effect of CAV cooperation and HV connectivity on stability and safety. Our results show that the cooperation of CAVs helps to stabilize the mixed traffic while safety can be guaranteed with the safety filters. Moreover, connectivity between CAVs and HVs offers additional benefits: if an HV connects to an upstream CAV (i.e., the CAV looks ahead), it helps the CAV to stabilize the upstream traffic, while if an HV connects to a downstream CAV (i.e., the CAV looks behind), the safety of this connected HV can be enhanced.

PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is ESA's M3 mission designed to detect and characterise extrasolar planets and perform asteroseismic monitoring of a large number of stars. PLATO will detect small planets (down to <2 R_(Earth)) around bright stars (<11 mag), including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. With the complement of radial velocity observations from the ground, planets will be characterised for their radius, mass, and age with high accuracy (5 %, 10 %, 10 % for an Earth-Sun combination respectively). PLATO will provide us with a large-scale catalogue of well-characterised small planets up to intermediate orbital periods, relevant for a meaningful comparison to planet formation theories and to better understand planet evolution. It will make possible comparative exoplanetology to place our Solar System planets in a broader context. In parallel, PLATO will study (host) stars using asteroseismology, allowing us to determine the stellar properties with high accuracy, substantially enhancing our knowledge of stellar structure and evolution. The payload instrument consists of 26 cameras with 12cm aperture each. For at least four years, the mission will perform high-precision photometric measurements. Here we review the science objectives, present PLATO's target samples and fields, provide an overview of expected core science performance as well as a description of the instrument and the mission profile at the beginning of the serial production of the flight cameras. PLATO is scheduled for a launch date end 2026. This overview therefore provides a summary of the mission to the community in preparation of the upcoming operational phases.

The main motivation of this paper is the study of first-order model theoretic properties of structures having their roots in modal logic. We will focus on the connections between ultrafilter extensions and ultrapowers. We show that certain structures (called bounded graphs) are elementary substructures of their ultrafilter extensions, moreover their modal logics coincide.

We prove analogs of Brooks' Theorem for the list-distinguishing chromatic number of finite connected graphs. Moreover, we give new examples to determine two sharp upper bounds for the list-distinguishing chromatic number of a graph G in terms of the coloring number of G and the list-chromatic number of G. We also determine the list-distinguishing chromatic number for various families of graphs (example: the book graphs)., Comment: Some new results are added. 13 pages, 6 figures

Low-Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGADs) are a type of thin silicon detector with a highly doped gain layer that provides moderate internal signal amplification. One recent challenge in the use of LGADs, studied by several research groups, is the gain suppression mechanism for large localized charge deposits. Using the CENPA Tandem accelerator at the University of Washington, the response of the LGADs to MeV-range energy deposits from a proton beam was studied. Two LGAD prototypes and a PIN diode were characterized, and the gain of the devices was determined as a function of bias voltage, incidence beam angle and proton energy. This study was conducted in the scope of the PIONEER experiment, an experiment proposed at the Paul Scherrer Institute to perform high-precision measurements of rare pion decays. %At the center of the experiment, a high-granularity active target (ATAR) will stop the pion and characterize its decay. A range of deposited charge from Minimum Ionizing Particle (MIP, few 10s of KeV) from positrons to several MeV from the stopping pions/muons is expected in PIONEER; the detection and separation of close-by hits in such a wide dynamic range will be a main challenge of the experiment. To achieve this goal, the gain suppression mechanism has to be understood fully.

Natural climate solutions (NCS) are critical for mitigating climate change through ecosystem-based carbon removal and emissions reductions. NCS implementation can also generate biodiversity and human well-being co-benefits and trade-offs ("NCS co-impacts"), but the volume of evidence on NCS co-impacts has grown rapidly across disciplines, is poorly understood, and remains to be systematically collated and synthesized. A global evidence map of NCS co-impacts would overcome key barriers to NCS implementation by providing relevant information on co-benefits and trade-offs where carbon mitigation potential alone does not justify NCS projects. We employ large language models to assess over two million articles, finding 257,266 relevant articles on NCS co-impacts. We analyze this large and dispersed body of literature using innovative machine learning methods to extract relevant data (e.g., study location, species, and other key variables), and create a global evidence map on NCS co-impacts. Evidence on NCS co-impacts has grown approximately ten-fold in three decades, although some of the most abundant evidence is associated with pathways that have less mitigation potential. We find that studies often examine multiple NCS pathways, indicating natural NCS pathway complements, and each NCS is often associated with two or more coimpacts. Finally, NCS co-impacts evidence and priority areas for NCS are often mismatched--some countries with high mitigation potential from NCS have few published studies on the broader co-impacts of NCS implementation. Our work advances and makes available novel methods and systematic and representative data of NCS co-impacts studies, thus providing timely insights to inform NCS research and action globally., Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures

Large language models (LLMs) introduce new security risks, but there are few comprehensive evaluation suites to measure and reduce these risks. We present BenchmarkName, a novel benchmark to quantify LLM security risks and capabilities. We introduce two new areas for testing: prompt injection and code interpreter abuse. We evaluated multiple state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLMs, including GPT-4, Mistral, Meta Llama 3 70B-Instruct, and Code Llama. Our results show that conditioning away risk of attack remains an unsolved problem; for example, all tested models showed between 26% and 41% successful prompt injection tests. We further introduce the safety-utility tradeoff: conditioning an LLM to reject unsafe prompts can cause the LLM to falsely reject answering benign prompts, which lowers utility. We propose quantifying this tradeoff using False Refusal Rate (FRR). As an illustration, we introduce a novel test set to quantify FRR for cyberattack helpfulness risk. We find many LLMs able to successfully comply with "borderline" benign requests while still rejecting most unsafe requests. Finally, we quantify the utility of LLMs for automating a core cybersecurity task, that of exploiting software vulnerabilities. This is important because the offensive capabilities of LLMs are of intense interest; we quantify this by creating novel test sets for four representative problems. We find that models with coding capabilities perform better than those without, but that further work is needed for LLMs to become proficient at exploit generation. Our code is open source and can be used to evaluate other LLMs.

Much has been written about the representation of noisy linear 2-ports. Here we present a theory of noisy $N$-ports. We show how in the general case there are $(2N)!/(N!)^2$ equivalent representations and give the transformations relating them. We also discuss singular cases in which some of the transformations are not possible as well as how to measure the noise properties of an $N$-port. This work is motivated by the REACH experiment to observe the global 21 cm signal for which modelling noise with exquisite precision is essential for a reliable calibration., Comment: 5 pages Latex with IEEE macro package + 6 figures

We analyse a lossy transmission line and the Johnson-Nyquist noise generated therein. A representation as a noisy two-port with a voltage and a current noise sources on one end of a noiseless two-port is given. An expression for the noise properties is given for an arbitrary temperature profile along the transmission line. Agreement is demonstrated between the general expression found here and special cases calculable using thermodynamics. This work is motivated by the REACH experiment to observe the global 21 cm signal for which modelling noise with exquisite precision is essential for a reliable calibration., Comment: 6 pages Latex with IEEE macro package + 4 figures

Despite decision-making being a vital goal of data visualization, little work has been done to differentiate the decision-making tasks within our field. While visualization task taxonomies and typologies exist, they are often too granular for describing complex decision goals and decision-making processes, thus limiting their potential use in designing decision-support tools. In this paper, we contribute a typology of decision-making tasks that were iteratively refined from a list of design goals distilled from a literature review. Our typology is concise and consists of only three tasks: choose, activate, and create. Originally proposed by the scientific community, we extend and provide definitions for these tasks that are suitable for the visualization community. Our proposed typology offers two benefits. First, it facilitates the composition of decisions using these three tasks, allowing for flexible and clear descriptions across varying complexities and domains. Second, diagrams created using this typology encourage productive discourse between visualization designers and domain experts by abstracting the intricacies of data, thereby promoting clarity and rigorous analysis of decision-making processes. We motivate the use of our typology through four case studies and demonstrate the benefits of our approach through semi-structured interviews conducted with experienced members of the visualization community, comprising academic and industry experts, who have contributed to developing or publishing decision support systems for domain experts. Our interviewees composed diagrams using our typology to delineate the decision-making processes that drive their decision-support tools, demonstrating its descriptive capacity and effectiveness.

Summit Public Schools (SPS), a California-based charter school network established in 2003, is widely promoted nationally as a success story to be emulated. A policy environment friendly to charter schools and digital technologies, together with hundreds of millions of dollars in technology industry contributions, enabled its growth and its national visibility. Because of SPS's boasts of success and its national prominence, understanding its story is a useful way to gain insight into how Silicon Valley funds and markets education initiatives. It also reveals inadequacies in policy related to school performance, digital educational programs, protection of student data, and school funding. This research brief analyzes the documents SPS provided in response to a request for public records bearing on its reports of students' academic success, its curriculum and instruction program, its proprietary digital platform, its protection of student data, its funding, and the validity and reliability of its assessments. In its discussion of documents both provided and not provided, the authors illustrate how SPS serves as an example of how nominally nonprofit charter school organizations evade public oversight and provide technology companies and their investors with both a market for their products and a continually renewing source of valuable data from young people.

We consider the classification problem of quantum spin chains invariant under local decomposable group actions, covering matrix product unitaries (MPUs), using an operator algebraic approach. We focus on finite group symmetries hosting both symmetric and symmetry broken phases. The local-decomposable group actions we consider have a 3-cocycle class of the symmetry group associated to them. We derive invariants for our classification that naturally cover one-dimensional symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases. We prove that these invariants coincide with the ones of [J. Garre Rubio et al, Quantum 7, 927 (2023)] using matrix product states (MPSs) techniques, by explicitly working out the GNS representation of MPSs and MPUs, resulting in a useful dictionary between both approaches that could be of independent interest.

Beyond-Moore computing technologies are expected to provide a sustainable alternative to the von Neumann approach not only due to their down-scaling potential but also via exploiting device-level functional complexity at the lowest possible energy consumption. The dynamics of the Mott transition in correlated electron oxides, such as vanadium dioxide, has been identified as a rich and reliable source of such functional complexity. However, its full potential in high-speed and low-power operation has been largely unexplored. We fabricated nanoscale VO$_{2}$ devices embedded in a broad-band test circuit to study the speed and energy limitations of their resistive switching operation. Our picosecond time-resolution, real-time resistive switching experiments and numerical simulations demonstrate that tunable low-resistance states can be set by the application of 20~ps long, $<$1.7~V amplitude voltage pulses at 15~ps incubation times and switching energies starting from a few femtojoule. Moreover, we demonstrate that at nanometer-scale device sizes not only the electric field induced insulator-to-metal transition, but also the thermal conduction limited metal-to-insulator transition can take place at timescales of 100's of picoseconds. These orders of magnitude breakthroughs open the route to the design of high-speed and low-power dynamical circuits for a plethora of neuromorphic computing applications from pattern recognition to numerical optimization.

Modern autonomous systems, such as flying, legged, and wheeled robots, are generally characterized by high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics, which presents challenges for model-based safety-critical control design. Motivated by the success of reduced-order models in robotics, this paper presents a tutorial on constructive safety-critical control via reduced-order models and control barrier functions (CBFs). To this end, we provide a unified formulation of techniques in the literature that share a common foundation of constructing CBFs for complex systems from CBFs for much simpler systems. Such ideas are illustrated through formal results, simple numerical examples, and case studies of real-world systems to which these techniques have been experimentally applied., Comment: To appear in Annual Reviews in Control

Safety-critical failures often have fatal consequences in aerospace control. Control systems on aircraft, therefore, must ensure the strict satisfaction of safety constraints, preferably with formal guarantees of safe behavior. This paper establishes the safety-critical control of fixed-wing aircraft in collision avoidance and geofencing tasks. A control framework is developed wherein a run-time assurance (RTA) system modulates the nominal flight controller of the aircraft whenever necessary to prevent it from colliding with other aircraft or crossing a boundary (geofence) in space. The RTA is formulated as a safety filter using control barrier functions (CBFs) with formal guarantees of safe behavior. CBFs are constructed and compared for a nonlinear kinematic fixed-wing aircraft model. The proposed CBF-based controllers showcase the capability of safely executing simultaneous collision avoidance and geofencing, as demonstrated by simulations on the kinematic model and a high-fidelity dynamical model., Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Control System Technology. 13 pages, 7 figures

We investigate the signal propagation in AC-LGAD (aka RSD), which are LGAD with a common N+ layer and segmented AC-coupled readout contacts, by measuring response to IR laser TCT on a large selection of AC-LGAD with strip readout. The interest for this topic derives from the realization that while large charge sharing between neighboring strips is essential for good position resolution, large sharing beyond the next neighbor generates background signals which in general are detrimental to the sensor goal of low occupancy. Using AC-LGAD with strip readout produced by Hamamatsu Photonics (HPK), we evaluate the effects of a variety of sensor properties, including geometrical parameters (strip length, width), process parameters like the N+ layer resistivity, the coupling capacitance, and the thickness of the bulk on the signal sharing and the position resolution., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 13th Hiroshima Symposium HSTD13

We report a novel "cone-ray" model of background-oriented schlieren (BOS) imaging that accounts for depth-of-field effects. Reconstructions of the density field performed with this model are far more robust to the blur associated with a finite aperture than conventional reconstructions, which presume a "thin-ray" pinhole camera. Our model is characterized and validated using forward evaluations based on simulated and experimental BOS measurements of buoyancy-driven flow and hypersonic flow over a sphere. Moreover, we embed the model in a neural reconstruction algorithm, which is demonstrated with a total variation penalty as well as the compressible Euler equations. Our cone-ray technique dramatically improves the accuracy of BOS reconstructions: the shock interface is well-resolved in all our tests, irrespective of the camera's aperture setting, which spans f-numbers from 22 down to 4.

Ferrofluids containing magnetic nanoparticles represent a special class of magnetic materials due to the added freedom of particle tumbling in the fluids. We studied this process, known as Brownian relaxation, and its effect on the magnetic properties of ferrofluids with controlled magnetite nanoparticle sizes. For small nanoparticles (below 10 nm diameter) the N\'eel process is expected to dominate the magnetic response, whereas for larger particles, Brownian relaxation becomes important. Temperature- and magnetic field-dependent magnetization studies, differential scanning calorimetry, and AC susceptibility measurements were carried out for 6, 8, 10.6, and 13.5 nm diameter magnetite nanoparticles suspended in water. We identify clear fingerprints of the Brownian relaxation for the sample of the large diameter nanoparticles as both magnetic and thermal hysteresis develop at the water freezing temperature, whereas the samples of small diameter nanoparticles remain hysteresis-free down to the magnetic blocking temperature. This is supported by the temperature-dependent AC susceptibility measurements: above 273 K, the data show a low-frequency Debye peak, which is characteristic of the Brownian relaxation. This peak vanishes below 273 K., Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures

The question whether an annual modulation is observable during nuclear decay rate measurements has long been the subject of research. One of the possible explanations for the annual variations would be the effect of solar neutrinos, the flux of which changes in correlation with the Earth-Sun distance. A decay rate measurement with a $^{137}$Cs source and a HPGe detector is currently being conducted 30 meters below the ground at J\'anossy Underground Research Laboratory (Csilleb\'erc, Hungary). The laboratory is part of the Vesztergombi High Energy Laboratory (VLAB), one of the TOP 50 research infrastructures in Hungary. From October 2022 to March 2023, data of six months' worth has been collected, and hence this is a new opportunity to check whether the annual variation in decay rate can be observed. The laboratory, the experiment, the data processing method, and the first results are presented in this study., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

In a recent paper, Krawczyk proved that there are continuum many axiomatic extensions of global consequence associated with the modal system $E$ that do not admit the local deduction detachment theorem. In algebraic parlance, he showed that there are continuum many varieties of modal algebras lacking the congruence extension property. In this paper, we extend Krawczyk's results and construct a continuum of varieties of modal algebras that do not have the congruence extension property, but that do admit other, logically relevant properties, such as monotonicity, extensiveness, idempotency, normality, etc. This gives a continuum of axiomatic extensions of the corresponding modal systems not having the local deduction detachment theorem.

The results of a Fourier analysis of high-precision Kepler photometry of 75 double-mode RR~Lyrae (RRd) stars observed during NASA's K2 Mission (2014-18) are presented. Seventy-two of the stars are `classical' RRd (cRRd) stars lying along a well-defined curve in the Petersen diagram and showing no evidence of Blazhko modulations. The remaining three stars are `anomalous' RRd (aRRd) stars that lie well below the cRRd curve in the Petersen diagram. These stars have larger fundamental-mode amplitudes than first-overtone amplitudes and exhibit Blazhko variations. Period-amplitude relations for the individual pulsation components of the cRRd stars are examined, as well as correlations involving Fourier phase-difference and amplitude-ratio parameters that characterize the light curves for the two radial modes. A simple statistical model relating the fundamental (P0) and first-overtone (P1) periods to [Fe/H] provides insight into the functional form of the Petersen diagram. A calibration equation for estimating [Fe/H]phot abundances of `classical' RRd stars is derived by inverting the model and using 211 field and 57 globular cluster cRRd stars with spectroscopic metallicities to estimate the model coefficients. The equation is used to obtain [Fe/H]phot for the full sample of 72 K2 cRRd stars and for 2130 cRRd stars observed by the ESA Gaia Mission. Of the 49 K2 cRRd stars that are in the Gaia DR3 catalogue only five were found to be correctly classified, the remainder having been misclassified `RRc' or `RRab'., Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, 10 tables plus Supplementary Information (two Appendices, two tables, 1 animated gif); accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present a comprehensive characterization of the evolved thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) star R Hydrae, building on the techniques applied in Stellar Evolution in Real Time I (Moln\'ar et al. 2019) to T Ursae Minoris. We compute over 3000 theoretical TP-AGB pulse spectra using MESA and GYRE and combine these with classical observational constraints and nearly 400 years of measurements of R Hya's period evolution to fit R Hya's evolutionary and asteroseismic features. Two hypotheses for the mode driving R Hya's period are considered. Solutions that identify this as the fundamental mode (FM) as well as the first overtone (O1) are consistent with observations. Using a variety of statistical tests, we find that R Hya is most likely driven by the FM and currently occupies the ``power down'' phase of an intermediate pulse (TP ~ 9-16). We predict that its pulsation period will continue to shorten for millennia. Using supplementary calculations from the Monash stellar evolution code, we also find that R Hya is likely to have undergone third dredge-up in its most recent pulse. The MESA+GYRE model grid used in this analysis includes exact solutions to the adiabatic equations of stellar oscillation for the first 10 radial-order pressure modes for every time step in every evolutionary track. The grid is fully open-source and packaged with a data visualization application. This is the first publicly available grid of TP-AGB models with seismology produced with MESA., Comment: accepted to ApJ March 2024. Final revisions complete. Github repository associated to this project: https://github.com/mjoyceGR/AGB_grid_visualizer All grids available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/11280179 There are FOUR Zenodo DOIs associated to this project, the first of which is above

Recent stellar occultations have allowed accurate instantaneous size and apparent shape determinations of the large Kuiper belt object (50000)~Quaoar and the detection of two rings with spatially variable optical depths. In this paper we present new visible range light curve data of Quaoar from the Kepler/K2 mission, and thermal light curves at 100 and 160 $\mu$m obtained with Herschel/PACS. The K2 data provide a single-peaked period of 8.88 h, very close to the previously determined 8.84 h, and it favours an asymmetric double-peaked light curve with a 17.76 h period. We clearly detected a thermal light curve with relative amplitudes of $\sim$10% at 100 and at 160 $\mu$m. A detailed thermophysical modelling of the system shows that the measurements can be best fit with a triaxial ellipsoid shape, a volume-equivalent diameter of 1090 km, and axis ratios of a/b = 1.19 and b/c = 1.16. This shape matches the published occultation shape}, as well as visual and thermal light curve data. The radiometric size uncertainty remains relatively large ($\pm$40 km) as the ring and satellite contributions to the system-integrated flux densities are unknown. In the less likely case of negligible ring or satellite contributions, Quaoar would have a size above 1100 km and a thermal inertia $\leq$ 10 Jm$^{-2}$K$^{-1}$s$^{-1/2}$. A large and dark Weywot in combination with a possible ring contribution would lead to a size below 1080\,km in combination with a thermal inertia $\gtrsim$ 10 Jm$^{-2}$K$^{-1}$s$^{-1/2}$, notably higher than that of smaller Kuiper belt objects with similar albedo and colours. We find that Quaoar's density is in the range 1.67-1.77 g/cm$^3$, significantly lower than previous estimates. This density value closely matches the relationship observed between the size and density of the largest Kuiper belt objects., Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrohysics (language edited version)

We present new theoretical period-luminosity (PL) and period-Wesenheit (PW) relations for a fine grid of convective BL Her, the shortest period T2Cs, models computed using MESA-RSP and compare our results with the empirical relations from Gaia DR3. We use the state-of-the-art 1D non-linear radial stellar pulsation tool MESA-RSP to compute models of BL Her stars over a wide range of input parameters - metallicity (-2.0 dex $\leq$ [Fe/H] $\leq$ 0.0 dex), stellar mass (0.5M$_{\odot}$-0.8M$_{\odot}$), stellar luminosity (50L$_{\odot}$-300L$_{\odot}$) and effective temperature (full extent of the instability strip; in steps of 50K). The BL Her stars in the All Sky region exhibit statistically different PL slopes compared to the theoretical PL slopes computed using the four sets of convection parameters. We find the empirical PL and PW slopes from BL Her stars in the Magellanic Clouds to be statistically consistent with the theoretical relations computed using the different convection parameter sets in the Gaia passbands. There is negligible effect of metallicity on the PL relations in the individual Gaia passbands. However, there exists a small but significant negative coefficient of metallicity in the PWZ relations for the BL Her models using the four sets of convection parameters. This could be attributed to the increased sensitivity of bolometric corrections to metallicities at wavelengths shorter than the V band. Our BL Her models also suggest a dependence of the mass-luminosity relation on metallicity. We found the observed Fourier parameter space to be covered well by our models. Higher mass models (> 0.6M$_{\odot}$) may be needed to reliably model the observed light curves of BL Her stars in the All Sky region. We also found the theoretical light curve structures (especially the Fourier amplitude parameters) to be affected by the choice of convection parameters., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, accepted in Astronomy & Astrophysics

We have repeated the experiment performed recently by Krasznahorkay et al., (Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 042501 (2016)), which may indicate a new particle called X17 in the literature. In order to get a reliable, and independent result, we used a different type of electron-positron pair spectrometer which have a more simple acceptance/efficiency as a function of the correlation angle, but the other conditions of the experiment were very similar to the published ones. We could confirm the presence of the anomaly measured at the E$_x$=18.15 MeV resonance, and also confirm their absence at the E$_x$=17.6 MeV resonance, and at E$_p$= 800 keV off resonance energies., Comment: Invited talk at the 52nd ISMD, Gy\"ongy\"os, Hungary, August 2023

We performed molecular dynamics simulations of Zr$_{50}$Cu$_{50}$ metallic glass samples submitted to mechanical deformation at different strain rates. The simultaneous measurements of the stress-strain curve, and of the temperature evolution during the cyclic mechanical load, are used to determine the thermo-mechanical constitutive laws at the continuum scale. It is shown that plastic deformation acts as a heat source, but strong finite size effects affect the unfolding of shear bands and its related dissipation rate. Finally, a thermo-mechanical constitutive law is proposed to reproduce quantitavely self-heating processes at different scales.

In set theory without the Axiom of Choice, we study the set-theoretic strength of a generalized version of the Rainbow Ramsey theorem and the Canonical Ramsey Theorem for pairs introduced by Erd\H{o}s and Rado, concerning their interrelation with several weak choice forms., Comment: Some new results were added