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We analyzed the 7.92$\times 10^{11}$ cosmic-ray-induced muon events collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory from May 13, 2011, when the fully constructed experiment started to take data, to May 12, 2023. This dataset provides an up-to-date cosmic-ray arrival direction distribution in the Southern Hemisphere with unprecedented statistical accuracy covering more than a full period length of a solar cycle. Improvements in Monte Carlo event simulation and better handling of year-to-year differences in data processing significantly reduce systematic uncertainties below the level of statistical fluctuations compared to the previously published results. We confirm the observation of a change in the angular structure of the cosmic-ray anisotropy between 10 TeV and 1 PeV, more specifically in the 100-300 TeV energy range.

Edge computing is emerging as a key enabler of low-latency, high-efficiency processing for the Internet of Things (IoT) and other real-time applications. To support these demands, containerization has gained traction in edge computing due to its lightweight virtualization and efficient resource management. However, there is currently no established framework to leverage both containers and unikernels on edge devices for optimized IoT deployments. This paper proposes a hybrid edge system design that leverages container and unikernel technologies to optimize resource utilization based on application complexity. Containers are employed for resource-intensive applications, e.g., computer vision, providing faster processing, flexibility, and ease of deployment. In contrast, unikernels are used for lightweight applications, offering enhanced resource performance with minimal overhead. Our system design also incorporates container orchestration to efficiently manage multiple instances across the edge efficiently, ensuring scalability and reliability. We demonstrate our hybrid approach's performance and efficiency advantages through real-world computer vision and data science applications on ARM-powered edge device. Our results demonstrate that this hybrid approach improves resource utilization and reduces latency compared to traditional virtualized solutions. This work provides insights into optimizing edge infrastructures, enabling more efficient and specialized deployment strategies for diverse application workloads.

The increasing demand for scalable, efficient resource management in hybrid cloud environments has led to the exploration of AI-driven approaches for dynamic resource allocation. This paper presents an AI-driven framework for resource allocation among microservices in hybrid cloud platforms. The framework employs reinforcement learning (RL)-based resource utilization optimization to reduce costs and improve performance. The framework integrates AI models with cloud management tools to respond to challenges of dynamic scaling and cost-efficient low-latency service delivery. The reinforcement learning model continuously adjusts provisioned resources as required by the microservices and predicts the future consumption trends to minimize both under- and over-provisioning of resources. Preliminary simulation results indicate that using AI in the provision of resources related to costs can reduce expenditure by up to 30-40% compared to manual provisioning and threshold-based auto-scaling approaches. It is also estimated that the efficiency in resource utilization is expected to improve by 20%-30% with a corresponding latency cut of 15%-20% during the peak demand periods. This study compares the AI-driven approach with existing static and rule-based resource allocation methods, demonstrating the capability of this new model to outperform them in terms of flexibility and real-time interests. The results indicate that reinforcement learning can make optimization of hybrid cloud platforms even better, offering a 25-35% improvement in cost efficiency and the power of scaling for microservice-based applications. The proposed framework is a strong and scalable solution to managing cloud resources in dynamic and performance-critical environments., Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures

As numerical simulations grow in complexity, their demands on computing time and energy increase. Hardware accelerators offer significant efficiency gains in many computationally intensive scientific fields, but their use in computational neuroscience remains limited. Neuromorphic substrates, such as the BrainScaleS architectures, offer significant advantages, especially for studying complex plasticity rules that require extended simulation runtimes. This work presents the implementation of a calcium-based plasticity rule that integrates calcium dynamics based on the synaptic tagging-and-capture hypothesis on the BrainScaleS-2 system. The implementation of the plasticity rule for a single synapse involves incorporating the calcium dynamics and the plasticity rule equations. The calcium dynamics are mapped to the analog circuits of BrainScaleS-2, while the plasticity rule equations are numerically solved on its embedded digital processors. The main hardware constraints include the speed of the processors and the use of integer arithmetic. By adjusting the timestep of the numerical solver and introducing stochastic rounding, we demonstrate that BrainScaleS-2 accurately emulates a single synapse following a calcium-based plasticity rule across four stimulation protocols and validate our implementation against a software reference model.

The development of mechanistic models of physical systems is essential for understanding their behavior and formulating predictions that can be validated experimentally. Calibration of these models, especially for complex systems, requires automated optimization methods due to the impracticality of manual parameter tuning. In this study, we use an autoencoder to automatically extract relevant features from the membrane trace of a complex neuron model emulated on the BrainScaleS-2 neuromorphic system, and subsequently leverage sequential neural posterior estimation (SNPE), a simulation-based inference algorithm, to approximate the posterior distribution of neuron parameters. Our results demonstrate that the autoencoder is able to extract essential features from the observed membrane traces, with which the SNPE algorithm is able to find an approximation of the posterior distribution. This suggests that the combination of an autoencoder with the SNPE algorithm is a promising optimization method for complex systems.

The rapid expansion of IoT devices and their real-time applications have driven a growing need for edge computing. To meet this need, efficient and secure solutions are required for running such applications on resource-constrained devices with limited power, CPU, and memory. Unikernel, with its minimalistic design and application-specific approach, offers a promising alternative to traditional virtualization and container technologies in these environments. The existing research does not thoroughly examine the feasibility of using unikernel for edge computing. This paper investigates the potential of unikernel for ARM-powered edge computing by evaluating the performance and efficiency of three prominent unikernel systems such as OSv, Nanos, and Unikraft against Docker container. We experiment with real-world edge computing applications and utilize key metrics such as boot time, execution time, memory usage, CPU overhead, and network performance to determine how unikernel performs under the constraints of edge devices. Our findings reveal the potential advantages of unikernel in terms of reduced resource consumption and faster startup times while highlighting areas where they may need further optimization for edge deployment. This study provides valuable insights for researchers and practitioners considering unikernel as a lightweight, efficient solution for edge computing on ARM architectures.

The bulk abundances of exoplanetesimals can be measured when they are accreted by white dwarfs. Recently, lithium from the accretion of exoplanetesimals was detected in relatively high levels in multiple white dwarfs. There are presently three proposed hypotheses to explain the detection of excess lithium in white dwarf photospheres: Big Bang and Galactic nucleosynthesis, continental crust, and an exomoon formed from spalled ring material. We present new observations of three previously known lithium-polluted white dwarfs (WD J1824+1213, WD J2317+1830, and LHS 2534), and one with metal pollution without lithium (SDSS J1636+1619). We also present atmospheric model fits to these white dwarfs. We then evaluate the abundances of these white dwarfs and two additional lithium-polluted white dwarfs that were previously fit using the same atmospheric models (WD J1644$-$0449 and SDSS J1330+6435) in the context of the three extant hypotheses for explaining lithium excesses in polluted white dwarfs. We find Big Bang and Galactic nucleosynthesis to be the most plausible explanation of the abundances in WD J1644$-$0449, WD J1824+1213, and WD J2317+1830. SDSS J1330+6435 will require stricter abundances to determine its planetesimal's origins, and LHS 2534, as presently modeled, defies all three hypotheses. We find the accretion of an exomoon formed from spalled ring material to be highly unlikely to be the explanation of the lithium excess in any of these cases., Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 31 pages, 13 figures

We present updated results on the wave function normalization constants and the first moments of the light cone distribution amplitudes for the lowest-lying baryon octet. The analysis is carried out on a large number of $n_f=2+1$ lattice gauge ensembles, including ensembles at physical pion (and kaon) masses. These are spread across five different lattice spacings, enabling a controlled continuum limit. The main differences with respect to our earlier work are the use of two-loop conversion factors to an $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$-like scheme and of an updated set of low-energy constants in the parametrization of the quark mass dependence. As a byproduct, for the first time, the anomalous dimensions for local three-quark operators with one derivative are obtained., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

Task-oriented Dialog (ToD) systems have to solve multiple subgoals to accomplish user goals, whereas feedback is often obtained only at the end of the dialog. In this work, we propose SUIT (SUbgoal-aware ITerative Training), an iterative training approach for improving ToD systems. We sample dialogs from the model we aim to improve and determine subgoals that contribute to dialog success using distant supervision to obtain high quality training samples. We show how this data improves supervised fine-tuning or, alternatively, preference learning results. SUIT is able to iteratively generate more data instead of relying on fixed static sets. SUIT reaches new state-of-the-art performance on a popular ToD benchmark.

Evidence has emerged for a stochastic signal correlated among 67 pulsars within the 15-year pulsar-timing data set compiled by the NANOGrav collaboration. Similar signals have been found in data from the European, Indian, Parkes, and Chinese PTAs. This signal has been interpreted as indicative of the presence of a nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background. To explore the internal consistency of this result we investigate how the recovered signal strength changes as we remove the pulsars one by one from the data set. We calculate the signal strength using the (noise-marginalized) optimal statistic, a frequentist metric designed to measure correlated excess power in the residuals of the arrival times of the radio pulses. We identify several features emerging from this analysis that were initially unexpected. The significance of these features, however, can only be assessed by comparing the real data to synthetic data sets. After conducting identical analyses on simulated data sets, we do not find anything inconsistent with the presence of a stochastic gravitational wave background in the NANOGrav 15-year data. The methodologies developed here can offer additional tools for application to future, more sensitive data sets. While this analysis provides an internal consistency check of the NANOGrav results, it does not eliminate the necessity for additional investigations that could identify potential systematics or uncover unmodeled physical phenomena in the data., Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables

This work explores the intersection of time-delay embeddings, periodic orbit theory, and symbolic dynamics. Time-delay embeddings have been effectively applied to chaotic time series data, offering a principled method to reconstruct relevant information of the full attractor from partial time series observations. In this study, we investigate the structure of the unstable periodic orbits of an attractor using time-delay embeddings. First, we embed time-series data from a periodic orbit into a higher-dimensional space through the construction of a Hankel matrix, formed by arranging time-shifted copies of the data. We then examine the influence of the width and height of the Hankel matrix on the geometry of unstable periodic orbits in the delay-embedded space. The right singular vectors of the Hankel matrix provide a basis for embedding the periodic orbits. We observe that increasing the length of the delay (e.g., the height of the Hankel matrix) leads to a clear separation of the periodic orbits into distinct clusters within the embedded space. Our analysis characterizes these separated clusters and provides a mathematical framework to determine the relative position of individual unstable periodic orbits in the embedded space. Additionally, we present a modified formula to derive the symbolic representation of distinct periodic orbits for a specified sequence length, extending the Poly\'a-Redfield enumeration theorem.

The growing complexity of the operations of airline reservations requires a smart solution for the adoption of novel approaches to the development of quick, efficient, and adaptive reservation systems. This paper outlines in detail a conceptual framework for the implementation of edge computing microservices in order to address the shortcomings of traditional centralized architectures. Specifically, as edge computing allows for certain activities such as seat inventory checks, booking processes and even confirmation to be done nearer to the user, thus lessening the overall response time and improving the performance of the system. In addition, the framework value should include achieving the high performance of the system such as low latency, high throughput and higher user experience. The major design components include deployed distributed computing microservices orchestrated by Kubernetes, real-time message processing system with Kafka and its elastic scaling. Other operational components include Prometheus and Grafana, which are used to monitor and manage resources, ensuring that all operational processes are optimized. Although this research focuses on a design and theoretical scheming of the framework, its use is foreseen to be more advantageous in facilitating a transform in the provision of services in the airline industry by improving customers' satisfaction, providing infrastructure which is cheap to install and efficiently supporting technology changes such as artificial intelligence and internet of things embedded systems. This research addresses the increasing demand for new technologies with modern well-distributed and real-time-centric systems and also provides a basis for future case implementation and testing. As such, the proposed architecture offers a market-ready, extensible solution to the problems posed by existing airline reservation systems ., Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures

Guidance is an error-correcting technique used to improve the perceptual quality of images generated by diffusion models. Typically, the correction is achieved by linear extrapolation, using an auxiliary diffusion model that has lower performance than the primary model. Using a 2D toy example, we show that it is highly beneficial when the auxiliary model exhibits similar errors as the primary one but stronger. We verify this finding in higher dimensions, where we show that competitive generative performance to state-of-the-art guidance methods can be achieved when the auxiliary model differs from the primary one only by having stronger weight regularization. As an independent contribution, we investigate whether upweighting long-range spatial dependencies improves visual fidelity. The result is a novel guidance method, which we call sliding window guidance (SWG), that guides the primary model with itself by constraining its receptive field. Intriguingly, SWG aligns better with human preferences than state-of-the-art guidance methods while requiring neither training, architectural modifications, nor class conditioning. The code will be released., Comment: Preprint. 19 pages, 14 figures in total, including references and appendix

We report a fully differential study of ionization of the Ne L-shell by Compton scattering of 20 keV photons. We find two physical mechanisms which modify the Compton-electron emission. Firstly, we observe scattering of the Compton electrons at their parent nucleus. Secondly, we find a distinct maximum in the electron momentum distribution close-to-zero momentum which we attribute to a focusing of the electrons by the Coulomb potential., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Food consumption and production contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions, making them crucial entry points for mitigating climate change and maintaining a liveable planet. Over the past two decades, food policy initiatives have explored interventions to reshape production and consumption patterns, focusing on reducing food waste and curbing ruminant meat consumption. While the evidence of "what works" improves, evaluating which policies are appropriate and effective in specific contexts remains difficult due to external validity challenges. This paper demonstrates that a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) can accurately predict the direction of outcomes in approximately 80\% of empirical studies measuring dietary-based impacts (e.g. food choices, sales, waste) resulting from behavioral interventions and policies. Approximately 75 prompts were required to achieve optimal results, with performance showing signs of catastrophic loss beyond this point. Our findings indicate that greater input detail enhances predictive accuracy, although the model still faces challenges with unseen studies, underscoring the importance of a representative training sample. As LLMs continue to improve and diversify, they hold promise for advancing data-driven, evidence-based policymaking.

We present a preliminary laboratory test of a setup designed to measure Hanbury Brown and Twiss-type intensity correlations from a chaotic light source using five spectral channels simultaneously. After averaging the zero-delay correlation peaks from all channels, we obtain an improvement of the signalto-noise ratio fairly consistent with theory. The goal is to demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of this technique to improve the sensitivity of stellar intensity interferometry using optical telescopes.

This research proposes the development of a next generation airline reservation system that incorporates the Cloud microservices, distributed artificial intelligence modules and the blockchain technology to improve on the efficiency, safety and customer satisfaction. The traditional reservation systems encounter issues related to the expansion of the systems, the integrity of the data provided and the level of service offered to the customers, which is the main focus of this architecture through the modular and data centric design approaches. This will allow different operations such as reservations, payments, and customer data management among others to be performed separately thereby facilitating high availability of the system by 30% and enhancing performance of the system by 40% on its scalability. Such systems contain AI driven modules that utilize the past booking patterns along with the profile of the customer to estimate the demand and make recommendations, which increases to 25 % of customer engagement. Moreover, blockchain is effective in engaging an incorruptible ledger system for the all transactions therefore mitigating fraud incidences and increasing the clarity by 20%. The system was subjected to analysis using a simulator and using machine learning evaluations that rated it against other conventional systems. The results show that there were clear enhancements in the speed of transactions where the rates of secure data processing rose by 35%, and the system response time by 15 %. The system can also be used for other high transaction industries like logistics and hospitality. This structural design is indicative of how the use of advanced technologies will revolutionize the airline reservation sector. The implications are growing effectiveness, improvement in security and greater customer contentment., Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures

It is typically assumed that for the successful use of machine learning algorithms, these algorithms should have a higher accuracy than a human expert. Moreover, if the average accuracy of ML algorithms is lower than that of a human expert, such algorithms should not be considered and are counter-productive. However, this is not always true. We provide strong statistical evidence that shows that even if a human expert is more accurate than a machine, an interaction with such a machine is beneficial when communication with the machine is non-public. The existence of a conflict between the user and ML model, and the private nature of user-AI communication will have the effect of making the user think about their decision and hence increase overall accuracy.

This research investigates the implementation of a real-time, microservices-oriented dynamic pricing system for the travel sector. The system is designed to address factors such as demand, competitor pricing, and other external circumstances in real-time. Both controlled simulation and real-life application showed a respectable gain of 22% in revenue generation and a 17% improvement in pricing response time which concern the issues of scaling and flexibility of classical pricing mechanisms. Demand forecasting, competitor pricing strategies, and event-based pricing were implemented as separate microservices to enhance their scalability and reduce resource consumption by 30% during peak loads. Customers were also more content as depicted by a 15% increase in satisfaction score post-implementation given the appreciation of more appropriate pricing. This research enhances the existing literature with practical illustrations of the possible application of microservices technology in developing dynamic pricing solutions in a complex and data-driven context. There exist however areas for improvement for instance inter-service latency and the need for extensive real-time data pipelines. The present research goes on to suggest combining these with direct data capture from customer behavior at the same time as machine learning capacity developments in pricing algorithms to assist in more accurate real time pricing. It is determined that the use of microservices is a reasonable and efficient model for dynamic pricing, allowing the tourism sector to employ evidence-based and customer centric pricing techniques, which ensures that their profits are not jeopardized because of the need for customers., Comment: 19 pages, 18 figures

This paper introduces a microservices architecture for the purpose of enhancing the flexibility and performance of an airline reservation system. The architectural design incorporates Redis cache technologies, two different messaging systems (Kafka and RabbitMQ), two types of storages (MongoDB, and PostgreSQL). It also introduces authorization techniques, including secure communication through OAuth2 and JWT which is essential with the management of high-demand travel services. According to selected indicators, the architecture provides an impressive level of data consistency at 99.5% and a latency of data propagation of less than 75 ms allowing rapid and reliable intercommunication between microservices. A system throughput of 1050 events per second was achieved so that the acceptability level was maintained even during peak time. Redis caching reduced a 92% cache hit ratio on the database thereby lowering the burden on the database and increasing the speed of response. Further improvement of the systems scalability was done through the use of Docker and Kubernetes which enabled services to be expanded horizontally to cope with the changes in demand. The error rates were very low, at 0.2% further enhancing the efficiency of the system in handling real-time data integration. This approach is suggested to meet the specific needs of the airline reservation system. It is secure, fast, scalable, all serving to improve the user experience as well as the efficiency of operations. The low latency and high data integration levels and prevaiing efficient usage of the resources demonstrates the architecture ability to offer continued support in the ever growing high demand situations., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures

Hybrid quantum systems are highly promising platforms for addressing important challenges of quantum information science and quantum sensing. Their implementation, however, is technologically non-trivial, since each component typically has unique experimental requirements. Here, we work towards a hybrid system consisting of a superconducting on-chip microwave circuit in a dilution refrigerator and optically trapped ultra-cold atoms. Specifically, we focus on the design optimization of a suitable superconducting chip and on the corresponding challenges and limitations. We unfold detailed microwave-cavity engineering strategies for maximized and tunable coupling rates to atomic Rydberg-Rydberg transitions in $\mathrm{^{87}Rb}$ atoms while respecting the boundary conditions due to the presence of a laser beam near the surface of the chip. Finally, we present an experimental implementation of the superconducting microwave chip and discuss the cavity characteristics as a function of temperature and applied dc voltage. Our results illuminate the required consideration aspects for a flexible, tunable superconductor-atom hybrid system, and lay the groundwork for realizing this exciting platform in a dilution refrigerator with vacuum Rabi frequencies approaching the strong-coupling regime.

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.

This paper investigates the inclusion of microservices architecture in the development of scalable and reliable airline reservation systems. Most of the traditional reservation systems are very rigid and centralized which makes them prone to bottlenecks and a single point of failure. As such, systems do not meet the requirements of modern airlines which are dynamic. Microservices offer better resiliency and scalability because the services do not depend on one another and can be deployed independently. The approach is grounded on the Circuit Breaker Pattern to maintain fault tolerance while consuming foreign resources such as flight APIs and payment systems. This avoided the failure propagation to the systems by 60% enabling the systems to function under external failures. Traffic rerouting also bolstered this with a guarantee of above 99.95% uptime in systems where high availability was demanded. To address this, load balancing was used, particularly the Round-Robin method which managed to enhance performance by 35% through the equal distribution of user requests among the service instances. Health checks, as well as monitoring in real-time, helped as well with failure management as they helped to contain failures before the users of the system were affected. The results suggest that the use of microservices led to a 40% increase in system scalability, a 50% decrease in downtime and a support for 30% more concurrent users than the use of monolithic architectures. These findings affirm the capability of microservices in the development of robust and flexible airline ticket booking systems that are responsive to change and recover from external system unavailability., Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures

The objective of this research is how an implementation of AI algorithms in the microservices architecture enhances travel itineraries by cost, time, user preferences, and environmental sustainability. It uses machine learning models for both cost forecasting and personalization, genetic algorithm for optimization of the itinerary, and heuristics for sustainability checking. Primary evaluated parameters consist of latency, ability to satisfy user preferences, cost and environmental concern. The experimental results demonstrate an average of 4.5 seconds of response time on 1000 concurrent users and 92% of user preferences accuracy. The cost efficiency is proved, with 95% of provided trips being within the limits of the budget declared by the user. The system also implements some measures to alleviate negative externalities related to travel and 60% of offered travel plans had green options incorporated, resulting in the average 15% lower carbon emissions than the traditional travel plans offered. The genetic algorithm with time complexity O(g.p.f) provides the optimal solution in 100 generations. Every iteration improves the quality of the solution by 5%, thus enabling its effective use in optimization problems where time is measured in seconds. Finally, the system is designed to be fault-tolerant with functional 99.9% availability which allows the provision of services even when requirements are exceeded. Travel optimization platform is turned dynamic and efficient by this microservices based architecture which provides enhanced scaling, allows asynchronous communication and real time changes. Because of the incorporation of Ai, cost control and eco-friendliness approaches, the system addresses the different user needs in the present days travel business., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures

This research gives a detailed analysis of the application of blockchain technology to the airline reservation systems in order to bolster trust, transparency, and operational efficiency by overcoming several challenges including customer control and data integrity issues. The study investigates the major components of blockchain technology such as decentralised databases, permanent records of transactions and transactional clauses executed via codes of programs and their impacts on automated systems and real-time tracking of audits. The results show a 30% decrease in booking variations together with greater data synchronization as a result of consensus processes and resistant data formations. The approach to the implementation of a blockchain technology for the purpose of this paper includes many APIs for the automatic multi-faceted record-keeping system including the smart contract execution and controllable end-users approach. Smart contracts organized the processes improving the cycle times by 40% on the average while guaranteeing no breach of agreements. In addition to this, the architecture of the system has no single point failure with over 98% reliability while measures taken to improve security have led to 85% of the customers expressing trust in the services provided. In summation, the results suggest that reservations in the airline sector stand a chance of being redefined with blockchain through savoring the benefits of a single source of truth while attempting to resolve this intrinsic problem of overcomplexity. Although the system improves the experience of customers and the level of operational transparency, issues concerning scalability and regulatory adherence. This research is also a stepping stone for further studies that are intended to address these challenges and more applicable to the airline industry., Comment: 17 pages, 7 Figures

The vast amount of data generated by camera sensors has prompted the exploration of energy-efficient processing solutions for deploying computer vision tasks on edge devices. Among the various approaches studied, processing-in-pixel integrates massively parallel analog computational capabilities at the extreme-edge, i.e., within the pixel array and exhibits enhanced energy and bandwidth efficiency by generating the output activations of the first neural network layer rather than the raw sensory data. In this article, we propose an energy and bandwidth efficient ADC-less processing-in-pixel architecture. This architecture implements an optimized binary activation neural network trained using Hoyer regularizer for high accuracy on complex vision tasks. In addition, we also introduce a global shutter burst memory read scheme utilizing fast and disturb-free read operation leveraging innovative use of nanoscale voltage-controlled magnetic tunnel junctions (VC-MTJs). Moreover, we develop an algorithmic framework incorporating device and circuit constraints (characteristic device switching behavior and circuit non-linearity) based on state-of-the-art fabricated VC-MTJ characteristics and extensive circuit simulations using commercial GlobalFoundries 22nm FDX technology. Finally, we evaluate the proposed system's performance on two complex datasets - CIFAR10 and ImageNet, showing improvements in front-end and communication energy efficiency by 8.2x and 8.5x respectively and reduction in bandwidth by 6x compared to traditional computer vision systems, without any significant drop in the test accuracy., Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, 1 table

Far-from-equilibrium phenomena unveil the intricate principles of complex systems, including snowflake growth and fluid turbulence, with broad applications ranging from foreign exchange trading to climate modeling. A recurring feature across these systems is the emergence of a spectral cascade, where energy is transferred across the system's length scales, following a simple power law. The statistical theory of weak wave turbulence, in which only leading order interactions are considered, successfully predicts scaling laws for stationary states in idealised scenarios. Realistic conditions, such as finite size and amplitude effects, and strong dissipation, remain beyond our current understanding. Lacking comprehensive theoretical insight, we experimentally trace the formation of a spectral cascade under these conditions. Using an externally driven fluid-fluid interface, we successfully resolve individual wave modes and track their real-time evolution from one to few to many. This process culminates in a steady state whose power spectral density is fully characterised by a power-law scaling. We further quantify specific interactions through statistical correlations to reveal a hierarchy in the wave-mixing order, thus confirming a key assumption of weak-wave turbulence. We present a comprehensive time-evolution analysis that is crucial in identifying critical points where the interface undergoes significant changes. Our findings validate that the interfacial dynamics can be effectively modelled using a weakly nonlinear Lagrangian theory, enabling us to explore its applicability to other out-of-equilibrium systems. Notably, we uncover intriguing connections to reheating scenarios following cosmic inflation in the early universe.

The Beam Dump Facility (BDF) is a planned fixed-target installation in CERN's North Area, set to start operating in 2031. A proton beam of 400 GeV/c will be delivered in 1 s pulses of 4e13 protons every 7.2 s, amounting to 4e19 protons on target (PoT) per year, with an average thermal power deposition of 305 kW. The experiment requires high-Z and high-density materials and involves challenging thermomechanical conditions; hence, a water-cooled refractory metal core is proposed. To prevent corrosion and erosion, the target materials - tungsten and a molybdenum-based alloy, TZM-, are clad with a tantalum alloy using hot isostatic pressing. To verify the reliability of the target design and manufacturing process, a reduced-scale prototype target was manufactured and irradiated with 2.4e16 PoT in 2018. This paper presents the findings of the post-irradiation examination (PIE) conducted 2.5 years later. The PIE consisted of non-destructive and destructive activities, including film imaging, microscopy, metrology, ultrasonic testing, microstructural analysis, and mechanical and thermal characterization. No irradiation effects resulting from thermal stresses, such as geometrical changes or cracks in the cladding, were observed, and it was determined that the bonding between the core and cladding materials was robust. Moreover, no changes were detected in the microstructures or mechanical properties of the bulk materials. In conclusion, the robustness of the target baseline design and manufacturing process was confirmed, validating its suitability for operating under the desired conditions. Nonetheless, the observed brittleness of sintered tungsten indicates a potential area for improvement to enhance the lifetime of the BDF target. Overall, the examinations provided valuable insights into the performance of the prototype and indicated potential refinements for the future BDF target complex.

Active learning (AL) is a widely used technique for optimizing data labeling in machine learning by iteratively selecting, labeling, and training on the most informative data. However, its integration with formal privacy-preserving methods, particularly differential privacy (DP), remains largely underexplored. While some works have explored differentially private AL for specialized scenarios like online learning, the fundamental challenge of combining AL with DP in standard learning settings has remained unaddressed, severely limiting AL's applicability in privacy-sensitive domains. This work addresses this gap by introducing differentially private active learning (DP-AL) for standard learning settings. We demonstrate that naively integrating DP-SGD training into AL presents substantial challenges in privacy budget allocation and data utilization. To overcome these challenges, we propose step amplification, which leverages individual sampling probabilities in batch creation to maximize data point participation in training steps, thus optimizing data utilization. Additionally, we investigate the effectiveness of various acquisition functions for data selection under privacy constraints, revealing that many commonly used functions become impractical. Our experiments on vision and natural language processing tasks show that DP-AL can improve performance for specific datasets and model architectures. However, our findings also highlight the limitations of AL in privacy-constrained environments, emphasizing the trade-offs between privacy, model accuracy, and data selection accuracy.

We report the discovery in TMC-1 of two cyano derivatives of the PAH acenaphthylene (C$_{12}$H$_8$). We have found two series of lines with the QUIJOTE line survey that we assign to 1-C$_{12}$H$_7$CN and 5-C$_{12}$H$_7$CN. For the 1-isomer, we have detected and assigned 173 rotational transitions with $J$ up to 46 and $K_a$ up to 9, corresponding to 107 independent frequencies. For the 5-isomer, the identification is based on 56 individual lines, corresponding to 117 rotational transitions with $J$ up to 40 and $K_a$ up to 8. Identification of the carriers was achieved through a careful analysis of the derived rotational constants, which permit us to focus on molecules larger than naphthalene but smaller than anthracene and phenanthrene. Moreover, the derived rotational constants indicate that the species are planar; this allows us to discard derivatives of fluorene and acenaphthene, which are non-planar species. Quantum chemical calculations and subsequent chemical synthesis of these molecules, as well as the observation of their rotational transitions in the laboratory, unequivocally support our identifications. We also confirm, via a robust line-by-line detection, the previous claimed detection of 1- and 2- cyanonaphthalene, which were obtained through statistical stacking techniques. The column densities of 1- and 5-cyanoacenaphthylene are (9.5\,$\pm$\,0.9)$\,\times$\,10$^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$, while those of 1- and 2-cyanonapthalene are (5.5\,$\pm$\,0.5)$\,\times$\,10$^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$. Hence, it seems that acenaphthylene could be a factor of 1.7 more abundant than naphthalene. These results support a scenario in which PAHs grow in cold dark clouds based on fused five- and six-membered carbon rings., Comment: Accepted as a Letter to the Editor in Astronomy and Astrophysics on 18th September 2024

We demonstrate the interference of photons scattered from independent ensembles of warm atoms in atomic vapor. It employs finite temporal coherence of light scattered elastically in the forward and backward directions from Doppler-broadened atomic ensembles, such that photons with chaotic photon statistics from two opposite atomic velocity groups contribute to the same detection mode. While the random phase fluctuations of the scattered light caused by a large thermal motion prevent direct observability of the interference in the detected photon rate, the stable frequency difference between photons collected from scattering off counter-propagating laser beams provides strong periodic modulation of the photon coincidence rate with the period given by the detuning of the excitation laser from the atomic resonance. Presented interferometry promises direct applications in Doppler-free atomic and molecular spectroscopy., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

Current video-based computer vision (CV) applications typically suffer from high energy consumption due to reading and processing all pixels in a frame, regardless of their significance. While previous works have attempted to reduce this energy by skipping input patches or pixels and using feedback from the end task to guide the skipping algorithm, the skipping is not performed during the sensor read phase. As a result, these methods can not optimize the front-end sensor energy. Moreover, they may not be suitable for real-time applications due to the long latency of modern CV networks that are deployed in the back-end. To address this challenge, this paper presents a custom-designed reconfigurable CMOS image sensor (CIS) system that improves energy efficiency by selectively skipping uneventful regions or rows within a frame during the sensor's readout phase, and the subsequent analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) phase. A novel masking algorithm intelligently directs the skipping process in real-time, optimizing both the front-end sensor and back-end neural networks for applications including autonomous driving and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR). Our system can also operate in standard mode without skipping, depending on application needs. We evaluate our hardware-algorithm co-design framework on object detection based on BDD100K and ImageNetVID, and gaze estimation based on OpenEDS, achieving up to 53% reduction in front-end sensor energy while maintaining state-of-the-art (SOTA) accuracy., Comment: Under review

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are commonly used in search and rescue scenarios to gather information in the search area. The automatic identification of the person searched for in aerial footage could increase the autonomy of such systems, reduce the search time, and thus increase the missed person's chances of survival. In this paper, we present a novel approach to perform semantically conditioned open vocabulary object tracking that is specifically designed to cope with the limitations of UAV hardware. Our approach has several advantages. It can run with verbal descriptions of the missing person, e.g., the color of the shirt, it does not require dedicated training to execute the mission and can efficiently track a potentially moving person. Our experimental results demonstrate the versatility and efficacy of our approach., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

This study introduces a novel method to investigate in-situ light transport within optically thick ensembles of cold atoms, exploiting the internal structure of alkaline-earth metals. A method for creating an optical excitation at the center of a large atomic cloud is demonstrated, and we observe its propagation through multiple scattering events. In conditions where the cloud size is significantly larger than the transport mean free path, a diffusive regime is identified. We measure key parameters including the diffusion coefficient, transport velocity, and transport time, finding a good agreement with diffusion models. We also demonstrate that the frequency of the photons launched inside the system can be controlled. This approach enables direct time- and space-resolved observation of light diffusion in atomic ensembles, offering a promising avenue for exploring new diffusion regimes.

Terahertz high harmonic generation (THz HHG) is a common property of nonlinear systems. Recently it has been used to investigate fundamental principles that govern transport and nonlinear dynamics in novel quantum materials like graphene, Dirac semimetals or high-temperature superconductors. Here, we report on the observation of exceptionally large THz second harmonic and third harmonic generation in thin films of the highly conducting delafossite PdCoO$_2$ down to low temperatures. The growth of this material on offcut substrate allows for a significant enhancement of the third harmonic intensity compared to ordinary $c$-axis grown thin films. Furthermore, it appears to be a necessity for the observation of THz second harmonic generation. We model the temperature dependence of the third harmonic generation by means of Boltzmann transport theory and provide an explanation for the second harmonic generation by comparing the system to the electric field induced second harmonic generation. The present investigation thus provides an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of low temperature origins of THz HHG and might serve as a new platform for THz high harmonic applications.

Many powerful tests of the Standard Model of particle physics and searches for new physics with precision atomic spectroscopy are plagued by our lack of knowledge of nuclear properties. Ideally, such properties may be derived from precise measurements of the most sensitive and theoretically best-understood observables, often found in hydrogen-like systems. While these measurements are abundant for the electric properties of nuclei, they are scarce for the magnetic properties, and precise experimental results are limited to the lightest of nuclei. Here, we focus on $^9$Be which offers the unique possibility to utilize comparisons between different charge states available for high-precision spectroscopy in Penning traps to test theoretical calculations typically obscured by nuclear structure. In particular, we perform the first high-precision spectroscopy of the $1s$ hyperfine and Zeeman structure in hydrogen-like $^9$Be$^{3+}$. We determine its effective Zemach radius with an uncertainty of $500$ ppm, and its bare nuclear magnetic moment with an uncertainty of $0.6$ parts-per-billion (ppb) - uncertainties unmatched beyond hydrogen. Moreover, we compare to measurements conducted on the three-electron charge state $^9$Be$^{+}$, which, for the first time, enables testing the calculation of multi-electron diamagnetic shielding effects of the nuclear magnetic moment at the ppb level. In addition, we test quantum electrodynamics (QED) methods used for the calculation of the hyperfine splitting. Our results serve as a crucial benchmark essential for transferring high-precision results of nuclear magnetic properties across different electronic configurations.

Machine learning is becoming a widely used technique with a impressive growth due to the diversity of problem of societal interest where it can offer practical solutions. This increase of applications and required resources start to become limited by present day hardware technologies. Indeed, novel machine learning subjects such as large language models or high resolution image recognition raise the question of large computing time and energy cost of the required computation. In this context, optical platforms have been designed for several years with the goal of developing more efficient hardware for machine learning. Among different explored platforms, optical free-space propagation offers various advantages: parallelism, low energy cost and computational speed. Here, we present a new design combining the strong and tunable nonlinear properties of a light beam propagating through a hot atomic vapor with an Extreme Learning Machine model. We numerically and experimentally demonstrate the enhancement of the training using such free-space nonlinear propagation on a MNIST image classification task. We point out different experimental hyperparameters that can be further optimized to improve the accuracy of the platform., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

Teachers in challenging conflict situations often experience shame and self-blame, which relate to the feeling of incompetence but may externalise as anger. Sensing mixed signals fails the contingency rule for developing affect regulation and may result in confusion for students about their own emotions and hinder their emotion regulation. Therefore, being able to constructively regulate emotions not only benefits individual experience of emotions but also fosters effective interpersonal emotion regulation and influences how a situation is managed. MITHOS is a system aimed at training teachers' conflict resolution skills through realistic situative learning opportunities during classroom conflicts. In four stages, MITHOS supports teachers' socio-emotional self-awareness, perspective-taking and positive regard. It provides: a) a safe virtual environment to train free social interaction and receive natural social feedback from reciprocal student-agent reactions, b) spatial situational perspective taking through an avatar, c) individual virtual reflection guidance on emotional experiences through co-regulation processes, and d) expert feedback on professional behavioural strategies. This chapter presents the four stages and their implementation in a semi-automatic Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) System. The WoZ system affords collecting data that are used for developing the fully automated hybrid (machine learning and model-based) system, and to validate the underlying psychological and conflict resolution models. We present results validating the approach in terms of scenario realism, as well as a systematic testing of the effects of external avatar similarity on antecedents of self-awareness with behavior similarity. The chapter contributes to a common methodology of conducting interdisciplinary research for human-centered and generalisable XR and presents a system designed to support it.

The evaluation of cell tracking results steers the development of tracking methods, significantly impacting biomedical research. This is quantitatively achieved by means of evaluation metrics. Unfortunately, current metrics favor local correctness and weakly reward global coherence, impeding high-level biological analysis. To also foster global coherence, we propose the CHOTA metric (Cell-specific Higher Order Tracking Accuracy) which unifies the evaluation of all relevant aspects of cell tracking: cell detections and local associations, global coherence, and lineage tracking. We achieve this by introducing a new definition of the term 'trajectory' that includes the entire cell lineage and by including this into the well-established HOTA metric from general multiple object tracking. Furthermore, we provide a detailed survey of contemporary cell tracking metrics to compare our novel CHOTA metric and to show its advantages. All metrics are extensively evaluated on state-of-the-art real-data cell tracking results and synthetic results that simulate specific tracking errors. We show that CHOTA is sensitive to all tracking errors and gives a good indication of the biologically relevant capability of a method to reconstruct the full lineage of cells. It introduces a robust and comprehensive alternative to the currently used metrics in cell tracking. Python code is available at https://github.com/CellTrackingChallenge/py-ctcmetrics ., Comment: Accepted at BIC Workshop at European Conference on Computer Vision 2024, 14 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables

Existing techniques for monocular 3D detection have a serious restriction. They tend to perform well only on a limited set of benchmarks, faring well either on ego-centric car views or on traffic camera views, but rarely on both. To encourage progress, this work advocates for an extended evaluation of 3D detection frameworks across different camera perspectives. We make two key contributions. First, we introduce the CARLA Drone dataset, CDrone. Simulating drone views, it substantially expands the diversity of camera perspectives in existing benchmarks. Despite its synthetic nature, CDrone represents a real-world challenge. To show this, we confirm that previous techniques struggle to perform well both on CDrone and a real-world 3D drone dataset. Second, we develop an effective data augmentation pipeline called GroundMix. Its distinguishing element is the use of the ground for creating 3D-consistent augmentation of a training image. GroundMix significantly boosts the detection accuracy of a lightweight one-stage detector. In our expanded evaluation, we achieve the average precision on par with or substantially higher than the previous state of the art across all tested datasets.

Event-cameras have emerged as a revolutionary technology with a high temporal resolution that far surpasses standard active pixel cameras. This technology draws biological inspiration from photoreceptors and the initial retinal synapse. This research showcases the potential of additional retinal functionalities to extract visual features. We provide a domain-agnostic and efficient algorithm for ego-motion compensation based on Object Motion Sensitivity (OMS), one of the multiple features computed within the mammalian retina. We develop a method based on experimental neuroscience that translates OMS' biological circuitry to a low-overhead algorithm to suppress camera motion bypassing the need for deep networks and learning. Our system processes event data from dynamic scenes to perform pixel-wise object motion segmentation using a real and synthetic dataset. This paper introduces a bio-inspired computer vision method that dramatically reduces the number of parameters by $\text{10}^\text{3}$ to $\text{10}^\text{6}$ orders of magnitude compared to previous approaches. Our work paves the way for robust, high-speed, and low-bandwidth decision-making for in-sensor computations.

The development of large language models leads to the formation of a pre-train-then-align paradigm, in which the model is typically pre-trained on a large text corpus and undergoes a tuning stage to align the model with human preference or downstream tasks. In this work, we investigate the relationship between pre-training and fine-tuning by fine-tuning multiple intermediate pre-trained model checkpoints. Our results on 18 datasets suggest that i) continual pre-training improves the model in a latent way that unveils after fine-tuning; ii) with extra fine-tuning, the datasets that the model does not demonstrate capability gain much more than those that the model performs well during the pre-training stage; iii) although model benefits significantly through supervised fine-tuning, it may forget previously known domain knowledge and the tasks that are not seen during fine-tuning; iv) the model resembles high sensitivity to evaluation prompts after supervised fine-tuning, but this sensitivity can be alleviated by more pre-training.

Quantum networks and distributed quantum computers rely on entanglement generation between photons and long-lived quantum memories. For large-scale architectures, one of the most crucial parameters is the efficiency at which entanglement can be created and detected. Here, we maximize the efficiency for the detection of hybrid entanglement between a nuclear spin qubit in diamond with a photonic time-bin qubit. Our approach relies on an optimal implementation of the photonic qubit analyzer, for which we use a high-speed electro-optic deflector to direct photons deterministically along the optimal interferometer paths. This way, we completely eliminate all cases in which photons are randomly lost due to the propagation in the wrong interferometer path. In this first demonstration experiment, we use nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond, for which we immediately demonstrate the presence of the entanglement. An extension to other spin-photon entanglement systems is straightforward. Further, our scheme can be used in the framework of quantum repeater networks, including spectral and temporal multiplexing strategies. Our results thus pave the way for the future high-performance quantum networks.

Recent advances in retinal neuroscience have fueled various hardware and algorithmic efforts to develop retina-inspired solutions for computer vision tasks. In this work, we focus on a fundamental visual feature within the mammalian retina, Object Motion Sensitivity (OMS). Using DVS data from EV-IMO dataset, we analyze the performance of an algorithmic implementation of OMS circuitry for motion segmentation in presence of ego-motion. This holistic analysis considers the underlying constraints arising from the hardware circuit implementation. We present novel CMOS circuits that implement OMS functionality inside image sensors, while providing run-time re-configurability for key algorithmic parameters. In-sensor technologies for dynamical environment adaptation are crucial for ensuring high system performance. Finally, we verify the functionality and re-configurability of the proposed CMOS circuit designs through Cadence simulations in 180nm technology. In summary, the presented work lays foundation for hardware-algorithm re-engineering of known biological circuits to suit application needs.

Pulsar-timing-array experiments have reported evidence for a stochastic background of nanohertz gravitational waves consistent with the signal expected from a population of supermassive--black-hole binaries. Those analyses assume power-law spectra for intrinsic pulsar noise and for the background, as well as a Hellings--Downs cross-correlation pattern among the gravitational-wave--induced residuals across pulsars. These assumptions are idealizations that may not be realized in actuality. We test them in the NANOGrav 15 yr data set using Bayesian posterior predictive checks: after fitting our fiducial model to real data, we generate a population of simulated data-set replications, and use them to assess whether the optimal-statistic significance, inter-pulsar correlations, and spectral coefficients assume extreme values for the real data when compared to the replications. We confirm that the NANOGrav 15 yr data set is consistent with power-law and Hellings--Downs assumptions. We also evaluate the evidence for the stochastic background using posterior-predictive versions of the frequentist optimal statistic and of Bayesian model comparison, and find comparable significance (3.2\ $\sigma$ and 3\ $\sigma$ respectively) to what was previously reported for the standard statistics. We conclude with novel visualizations of the reconstructed gravitational waveforms that enter the residuals for each pulsar. Our analysis strengthens confidence in the identification and characterization of the gravitational-wave background as reported by NANOGrav., Comment: 20 pages, 14 Figures