Published Content - Research Journal

Published Articles

Article 0: Exploring the change in scientific readability following the release of ChatGPT. The proliferation of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT has exacerbated existing challenges in scientific communication, particularly with regards to readability, clarity, practical utility, concision, and aesthetic simplicity. These issues predated the advent of AI and have only intensified. Our journal seeks to address these long-standing problems by providing actionable insights and practical solutions to improve scientific communication focusing on clear and concise language, efficient use of visual elements, and a strict adherence to aesthetic simplicity. (Download PDF)
Article 0.1: Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science. Despite the unprecedented growth in the number of published articles in recent years, the scientific community is facing a paradoxical challenge: the speed of canonical progress in large fields of science is slowing down. This phenomenon is highlighted in the study, "Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science", which reveals that the rate of groundbreaking discoveries and paradigm-shifting findings has not kept pace with the increasing volume of research output. This slowdown is particularly concerning, as it suggests that the scientific enterprise is becoming less efficient and less effective in driving meaningful progress. Our journal aims to contribute to addressing this challenge by promoting high-quality research, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and encouraging innovative thinking. By publishing impactful research, we hope to help revitalize the scientific enterprise and accelerate progress in large fields of science. We invite researchers, scholars, and experts to join us in this endeavor and contribute to our ongoing conversation about the future of scientific progress. (Download PDF)
Article 0.2: The drain of scientific publishing. This article critiques the current scientific publishing model and argues for a shift towards a more communal and science-focused approach. The authors contend that the domination of scientific publishing by major commercial publishers in the Global North is detrimental to science and call for funders, governments, and universities to lead the drive to re-communalize publishing. (Download PDF)
Article 0.3: Evaluating Large Language Models on Multimodal Chemistry Olympiad Exams. Multimodal scientific reasoning remains a significant challenge for large language models (LLMs), particularly in chemistry, where problem-solving relies on symbolic diagrams, molecular structures, and structured visual data. Here, we systematically evaluate 40 proprietary and open-source multimodal LLMs, including GPT-5, o3, Gemini-2.5-Pro, and Qwen2.5-VL, on a curated benchmark of Olympiad-style chemistry questions drawn from over two decades of U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad (USNCO) exams. These questions require integrated visual and textual reasoning across diverse modalities. We find that many models struggle with modality fusion, where in some cases, removing the image even improves accuracy, indicating misalignment in vision-language integration. Chain-of-Thought prompting consistently enhances both accuracy and visual grounding, as demonstrated through ablation studies and occlusion-based interpretability. Our results reveal critical limitations in the scientific reasoning abilities of current MLLMs, providing actionable strategies for developing more robust and interpretable multimodal systems in chemistry. This work provides a timely benchmark for measuring progress in domain-specific multimodal AI and underscores the need for further advances at the intersection of artificial intelligence and scientific reasoning. (Download PDF)
Article 0.4: Efficient Kernel Mapping and Comprehensive System Evaluation of LLM Acceleration on a CGLA. Large Language Models (LLMs) demand substantial computational resources, resulting in high energy consumption on GPUs. To address this challenge, we focus on Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Arrays (CGRAs) as an effective alternative that provides a trade-off between energy efficiency and programmability. This paper presents the first comprehensive, end-to-end evaluation of a non-AI-specialized Coarse-Grained Linear Array (CGLA) accelerator for the state-of-the-art Qwen LLM family. The architecture has a general-purpose, task-agnostic design, yet its flexible instruction set allows for domain-specific adaptations. This flexibility enables the architecture to achieve high efficiency for sustainable LLM inference. We assess the performance of our architecture on an FPGA prototype using the widely adopted llama.cpp framework. We then project its potential as a 28nm ASIC and compare it against a high-performance GPU (NVIDIA RTX 4090) and an edge AI device (NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin). While GPUs exhibit lower latency, our non-AI-specific accelerator achieves higher energy efficiency, improving the Power-Delay Product (PDP) by up to 44.4x and 13.6x compared with the RTX 4090 and Jetson, respectively. Similarly, it reduces the Energy-Delay Product (EDP) by up to 11.5x compared to the high-performance GPU, demonstrating a favorable performance-energy trade-off. Critically, our system-level analysis identifies host-accelerator data transfer as the primary performance bottleneck, a factor often overlooked in kernel-level studies. These findings provide design guidance for next-generation LLM accelerators. This work validates CGRAs as a suitable platform for LLM inference in power-constrained environments, without being confined to specific algorithms. (Download PDF)
Article 0.5: Search for an exotic decay of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to a pair of light pseudoscalars in the final state of two muons and two c-quarks in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13\;\text{TeV}$ with CMS Open Data. A search is performed for pairs of light pseudoscalar bosons (a) produced from decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson ($\text{h}_{125}$). The analysis is based on publicly available data collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The amount of data analyzed corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 16.4 $\text{fb}^{-1}$. The analysis explores for the first time at the LHC the final state exhibiting two muons and two c-quarks, which originate from flavor-asymmetric decays of the pseudoscalar pair. The search probes the pseudoscalar boson mass interval comprised between 4 and 11 GeV, which represents a region where the light bosons exhibit a considerable Lorentz boost, and thus their decay products overlap. No significant deviation from the standard model expectation is observed. Model-independent upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the product of the cross section and branching fraction for the ${\text{h}_{125} \rightarrow \text{a}\text{a} \rightarrow m^{-}m^{+} c\bar{c}}$ process relative to the standard model Higgs boson production cross section, reaching a minimum value close to $3.3 \times 10^{-4}$. The results are interpreted in the context of two Higgs doublets plus singlet models and compared to existing experimental results covering other decay channels. The exclusion limits obtained by this search improve the current constraints set by various LHC searches in scenarios where the coupling of the light boson to up-type quarks is enhanced. (Download PDF)
Article 0.6: Fresnel Magnetic Imaging of Ultrasmall Skyrmion Lattices. Magnetic skyrmions with ultrasmall nanometric dimensions hold significant promise for next-generation high-density spintronic devices. Direct real-space imaging of these topological spin textures is critical for elucidating their emergent properties at the nanoscale. Here, we present Lorentz transmission electron microscopy studies of nanometric skyrmion lattices in B20-structured Mn0.5Fe0.5Ge crystals using Fresnel mode. According to conventional chiral discrimination methods relying on static bright-dark contrast, we demonstrate an abnormal periodic chiral-reversal phenomenon retrieved through the transport of intensity equation analysis of defocus-dependent Fresnel images. Through systematic off-axis electron holography experiments and numerical simulations, we attribute these chiral misinterpretations to the sinusoidal modulation mechanism of the contrast transfer functionthat correlates with both defocus values and skyrmion dimensions. Our findings establish quantitative limitations of conventional Fresnel contrast analysis for ultrasmall skyrmions while revealing fundamental insights into defocus-mediated phase-to-intensity conversion processes in nanoscale magnetic imaging. (Download PDF)
Article 0.7: The past, present and future of observations of externally irradiated disks. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the community studying the effect of ultraviolet radiation environment, predominantly set by OB stars, on protoplanetary disc evolution and planet formation. This is important because a significant fraction of planetary systems, potentially including our own, formed in close proximity to OB stars. This is a rapidly developing field, with a broad range of observations across many regions recently obtained or recently scheduled. In this paper, stimulated by a series of workshops on the topic, we take stock of the current and upcoming observations. We discuss how the community can build on this recent success with future observations to make progress in answering the big questions of the field, with the broad goal of disentangling how external photoevaporation contributes to shaping the observed (exo)planet population. Both existing and future instruments offer numerous opportunities to make progress towards this goal. (Download PDF)
Article 0.8: Multivariate time series prediction using clustered echo state network. Many natural and physical processes can be understood by analyzing multiple system variables evolving, forming a multivariate time series. Predicting such time series is challenging due to the inherent noise and interdependencies among variables. Echo state networks (ESNs), a class of Reservoir Computing (RC) models, offer an efficient alternative to conventional recurrent neural networks by training only the output weights while keeping the reservoir dynamics fixed, reducing computational complexity. We propose a clustered ESNs (CESNs) that enhances the ability to model and predict multivariate time series by organizing the reservoir nodes into clusters, each corresponding to a distinct input variable. Input signals are directly mapped to their associated clusters, and intra-cluster connections remain dense while inter-cluster connections are sparse, mimicking the modular architecture of biological neural networks. This architecture improves information processing by limiting cross-variable interference and enhances computational efficiency through independent cluster-wise training via ridge regression. We further explore different reservoir topologies, including ring, Erdos-Renyi (ER), and scale-free (SF) networks, to evaluate their impact predictive performance. Our algorithm works well across diverse real-world datasets such as the stock market, solar wind, and chaotic Rossler system, demonstrating that CESNs consistently outperform conventional ESNs in terms of predictive accuracy and robustness to noise, particularly when using ER and SF topologies. These findings highlight the adaptability of CESNs for complex, multivariate time series forecasting. (Download PDF)
Article 0.9: Galactic Centre Pulsars with the SKAO. The detection of a pulsar closely orbiting our Galaxy's supermassive black hole - Sagittarius A* - is one of the ultimate prizes in pulsar astrophysics. The relativistic effects expected in such a system could far exceed those currently observable in compact binaries such as double neutron stars and pulsar white dwarfs. In addition, pulsars offer the opportunity to study the magneto-ionic properties of Earth's nearest galactic nucleus in unprecedented detail. For these reasons, and more, a multitude of pulsar searches of the Galactic Centre have been undertaken, with the outcome of just seven pulsar detections within a projected distance of 100 pc from Sagittarius A*. It is currently understood that a larger underlying population likely exists, but it is not until observations with the SKA have started that this population can be revealed. In this paper, we look at important updates since the publication of the last SKAO science book and offer a focused view of observing strategies and likely outcomes with the updated SKAO design. (Download PDF)
Article 0.10: Skyrmion Sliding Switch in a 90-nm-Wide Nanostructured Chiral Magnet. Magnetic skyrmions, renowned for their fascinating electromagnetic properties, hold potential for next-generation topological spintronic devices. Recent advancements have unveiled a rich tapestry of 3D topological magnetism. Nevertheless, the practical application of 3D topological magnetism in the development of topological spintronic devices remains a challenge. Here, we showcase the experimental utilization of 3D topological magnetism through the exploitation of skyrmion-edge attractive interactions in 90-nm-wide confined chiral FeGe and CoZnMn magnetic nanostructures. These attractive interactions result in two degenerate equilibrium positions, which can be naturally interpreted as binary bits for a skyrmion sliding switch. Our theory and simulation reveal current-driven spiral motions of skyrmions, governed by the anisotropic gradient of the potential landscape. Our experiments validate the theory that predicts a tunable threshold current density via magnetic field and temperature modulation of the energy barrier. Our results offer an approach for implementing universal on-off switch functions in 3D topological spintronic devices. (Download PDF)
Article 0.11: Heterogeneous noise-induced extreme events and synchronization in a globally coupled network of FitzHugh-Nagumo oscillators. This study investigates the dynamics of a globally coupled network of heterogeneous FitzHugh Nagumo (FHN) oscillators under stochastic influences, with particular emphasis on the emergence of extreme events (EE). While previous studies explored FHN networks subjected to homogeneous noise, revealing behaviors such as noise-induced synchronization, stochastic resonance, and coherence resonance, the impact of noise heterogeneity remains poorly understood. Moreover, the emergence of EE under heterogeneous stochastic excitation has largely been overlooked. To address these gaps, we capture the natural variability in neuronal responses to external stimuli by introducing nonidentical noise sources, thereby reflecting diversity across the network. Our results reveal that EE can arise both globally, where large excursions occur collectively across the entire network, and partially, where only a subset of oscillators exhibits extreme activity depending on the interplay between noise intensity and coupling strength. We further identify three distinct classes of EE that enrich the system's dynamical repertoire and propose a quantitative metric capable of distinguishing between global and local occurrences. Remarkably, we demonstrate that even under heterogeneous noise inputs, noise can synchronize EE across the network, underscoring the robustness of collective dynamics in stochastic regimes. Furthermore, causal interaction analysis between oscillator pairs provides mechanistic insights into the initiation and propagation of EE. To the best of our knowledge, this constitutes the first demonstration of both partially and globally synchronized EE triggered solely by noise in a network of coupled oscillators. These findings enhance our understanding of noise-driven collective behavior in complex systems and provide new insights into neuronal dynamics under random influences. (Download PDF)
Article 0.12: Lineshape response of plastic scintillator to pair production of 4.44 MeV gamma's. We measure the distribution of energy deposited in a 40x88 mm plastic scintillator by e+ e- pair production of 4.44 MeV gamma-rays. We observe the double-escape peak of 3.42 MeV from pair production by tagging 511 keV annihilation radiation in two high-Z scintillators. The source is a standard commercial neutron source using alpha-emitting 241Am encapsulated with 9Be, which has a reaction branch feeding the first Ipi=2+ state of 12C making the 4.44 MeV gamma-rays. We demonstrate the extraction of the double-escape peak from the large neutron-produced backgound, and explore some of the features and difficulties of this technique with our apparatus. (Download PDF)
Article 0.13: The automation of optical transient discovery and classification in Rubin-era time-domain astronomy. Robotic wide-field time-domain surveys, such as the Zwicky Transient Facility and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, capture dozens of transients each night. The workflows for discovering and classifying transients in survey data streams have become increasingly automated over decades of development. The recent integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools has produced major milestones, including the fully automated end-to-end discovery and classification of an optical transient, and has enabled automated rapid-response space-based follow-up. The now-operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its Legacy Survey of Space and Time are accelerating the rate of transient discovery and producing large volumes of data at incredible rates. Given the expected order-of-magnitude increase in transient discoveries, one promising path forwards for optical time-domain astronomy is heavily investing in accelerating the automation of our workflows. Here we review the current paradigm of real-time transient workflows, project their evolution during the Rubin era and present recommendations for accelerating transient astronomy with automation. (Download PDF)
Article 0.14: Deterministic Electrical Control of Single Magnetic Bubbles in Nanostructured Cells. Localized particle-like spin textures have been found to exhibit emergent electromagnetic properties, which hold promise for the development of intriguing spintronic devices. Among these textures, magnetic bubbles represent localized spin configurations that could serve as data bits. However, the precise methods for their electrical manipulation remain uncertain. Here, we demonstrate the deterministic electrical manipulations and detections of single magnetic bubbles in kagome-latticed Fe3Sn2 magnetic nanostructured cells. The current-induced dynamics of magnetic bubbles were explored using nanosecond pulsed currents. We show single pulsed currents with low and high densities can be applied for the creation and deletion of a single bubble, respectively. The mutual writing-deleting operations on single bubbles are attributed to the thermal heating and non-thermal spin-transfer torque effects in combination with micromagnetic simulations. We also realized the in-situ detection of a single bubble using the anisotropic magnetoresistance effect through a standard four-probe method. Our results could propel the development of bubble-based spintronic devices. (Download PDF)
Article 0.15: Script: Graph-Structured and Query-Conditioned Semantic Token Pruning for Multimodal Large Language Models. The rapid growth of visual tokens in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) leads to excessive memory consumption and inference latency, especially when handling high-resolution images and videos. Token pruning is a technique used to mitigate this issue by removing redundancy, but existing methods often ignore relevance to the user query or suffer from the limitations of attention mechanisms, reducing their adaptability and effectiveness. To address these challenges, we propose Script, a plug-and-play pruning method that requires no retraining and generalizes across diverse MLLMs. Script comprises two modules: a graph-structured pruning module that removes visually redundant tokens, and a query-conditioned semantic pruning module that preserves query-relevant visual information. Together, they enhance performance on multimodal tasks. Experiments on fourteen benchmarks across image and video understanding tasks show that Script consistently achieves higher model efficiency and predictive accuracy compared to existing pruning methods. On LLaVA-NeXT-7B, it achieves up to 6.8x prefill speedup and 10x FLOP reduction, while retaining 96.88% of the original performance. (Download PDF)
Article 0.16: Constraints on Spatial Curvature and Dark Energy Dynamics in the $w$CDM Model from DESI DR1 and DR2. In this study, we investigate the $w$CDM dynamical dark energy model with spatial curvature utilizing the recently released DESI Collaboration data (DR1 and DR2) in conjunction with other observational probes such as BBN, Observational Hubble Data (OHD), and Pantheon Plus (PP). Our investigation attempts to discover which DESI dataset gives a better match to the $w$CDM framework and assess the impact of spatial curvature on cosmological constraints. We find that the cosmic curvature parameter, $omega_k$, disfavors the cosmological constant for the DR2+BBN and DR2+BBN+OHD data combinations. However, the deviation from the cosmological constant remains below the $1sigma$ level, indicating a mild preference for a open universe. In contrast, when using the DR1 based combinations namely DR1+BBN and DR1+BBN+OHD-the deviation from the cosmological constant increases to approximately $1.2sigma$, suggesting a slightly stronger indication of a open geometry. Also, the best-fit values of the Hubble constant ($H_0$) obtained from the DR1+BBN+OHD+PP and DR2+BBN+OHD+PP combinations within the dynamical dark energy model are consistent with the results reported by the Planck Collaboration. Our findings provide constraints on the dark energy EoS parameter $ w_{\mathrm{}0}$, reveal a mild but notable deviation from the vacuum energy ($w = -1$) scenario at a significance level $1.8sigma$ from DR2+BBN+OHD+PP and $0.5sigma from DR1+BBN+OHD+PP, both favoring the quintessence region of dark energy. Furthermore, the key physical distance measures $D_H$, $D_V$, and $D_M$ show better consistency with our model when analyzed with the DR2 data. (Download PDF)
Article 0.17: Inner Planetary System Gap Complexity is a Predictor of Outer Giant Planets. The connection between inner small planets and outer giant planets is crucial to our understanding of planet formation across a wide range of orbital separations. While Kepler provided a plethora of compact multi-planet systems at short separations ($\lesssim 1$ AU), relatively little is known about the occurrence of giant companions at larger separations and how they impact the architectures of the inner systems. Here, we use the catalog of systems from the Kepler Giant Planet Search (KGPS) to study how the architectures of the inner transiting planets correlate with the presence of outer giant planets. We find that for systems with at least three small transiting planets, the distribution of inner-system gap complexity ($\mathcal{C}$), a measure of the deviation from uniform spacings, appears to differ ($p \lesssim 0.02$) between those with an outer giant planet ($50 M_\oplus \leq M_p\sin{i} \leq 13 M_{\rm Jup}$) and those without any outer giants. All four inner systems (with 3+ transiting planets) with outer giant(s) have a higher gap complexity ($\mathcal{C} > 0.32$) than 79% (19/24) of the inner systems without any outer giants (median $\mathcal{C} \simeq 0.06$). This suggests that one can predict the occurrence of outer giant companions by selecting multi-transiting systems with highly irregular spacings. We do not find any correlation between outer giant occurrence and the size (similarity or ordering) patterns of the inner planets. The larger gap complexities of inner systems with an outer giant hints that massive external planets play an important role in the formation and/or disruption of the inner systems. (Download PDF)
Article 0.18: Probing neutron star interiors and the properties of cold ultra-dense matter with the SKAO. Matter inside neutron stars is compressed to densities several times greater than nuclear saturation density, while maintaining low temperatures and large asymmetries between neutrons and protons. Neutron stars, therefore, provide a unique laboratory for testing physics in environments that cannot be recreated on Earth. To uncover the highly uncertain nature of cold, ultra-dense matter, discovering and monitoring pulsars is essential, and the SKA will play a crucial role in this endeavour. In this paper, we will present the current state-of-the-art in dense matter physics and dense matter superfluidity, and discuss recent advances in measuring global neutron star properties (masses, moments of inertia, and maximum rotation frequencies) as well as non-global observables (pulsar glitches and free precession). We will specifically highlight how radio observations of isolated neutron stars and those in binaries -- such as those performed with the SKA in the near future -- inform our understanding of ultra-dense physics and address in detail how SKAO's telescopes unprecedented sensitivity, large-scale survey and sub-arraying capabilities will enable novel dense matter constraints. We will also address the potential impact of dark matter and modified gravity models on these constraints and emphasise the role of synergies between the SKA and other facilities, specifically X-ray telescopes and next-generation gravitational wave observatories. (Download PDF)
Article 0.19: Model Recovery at the Edge under Resource Constraints for Physical AI. Model Recovery (MR) enables safe, explainable decision making in mission-critical autonomous systems (MCAS) by learning governing dynamical equations, but its deployment on edge devices is hindered by the iterative nature of neural ordinary differential equations (NODEs), which are inefficient on FPGAs. Memory and energy consumption are the main concerns when applying MR on edge devices for real-time operation. We propose MERINDA, a novel FPGA-accelerated MR framework that replaces iterative solvers with a parallelizable neural architecture equivalent to NODEs. MERINDA achieves nearly 11x lower DRAM usage and 2.2x faster runtime compared to mobile GPUs. Experiments reveal an inverse relationship between memory and energy at fixed accuracy, highlighting MERINDA's suitability for resource-constrained, real-time MCAS. (Download PDF)
Article 0.20: Possible Evidence for the Presence of Volatiles on the Warm Super-Earth TOI-270 b. The search for atmospheres on rocky exoplanets is a crucial step in understanding the processes driving atmosphere formation, retention, and loss. Past studies have revealed the existence of planets interior to the radius valley with densities lower than would be expected for pure-rock compositions, indicative of the presence of large volatile inventories which could facilitate atmosphere retention. Here we present an analysis of the JWST NIRSpec/G395H transmission spectrum of the warm ($T_\mathrm{eq,{A_B}=0}$ = 569 K) super-Earth TOI-270 b ($R_\mathrm{p}$ = 1.306 $R_\oplus$), captured alongside the transit of TOI-270 d. The JWST white light-curve transit depth updates TOI-270 b's density to $rho_\mathrm{p}$ = 3.7 $\pm$ 0.5 g/cm$^3$, inconsistent at 4.4$sigma$ with an Earth-like composition. Instead, the planet is best explained by a non-zero, percent-level water mass fraction, possibly residing on the surface or stored within the interior. The JWST transmission spectrum shows possible spectroscopic evidence for the presence of this water as part of an atmosphere on TOI-270 b, favoring a H$_2$O-rich steam atmosphere model over a flat spectrum ($\ln\mathcal{B}$ = $0.3-3.2$, inconclusive to moderate), with the exact significance depending on whether an offset parameter between the NIRSpec detectors is included. We leverage the transit of the twice-larger TOI-270 d crossing the stellar disk almost simultaneously to rule out the alternative hypothesis that the transit-light-source effect could have caused the water feature in TOI-270 b's observed transmission spectrum. Planetary evolution modeling furthermore shows that TOI-270 b could sustain a significant atmosphere on Gyr timescales, despite its high stellar irradiation, if it formed with a large initial volatile inventory. (Download PDF)
Article 0.21: Electric-Field-Controlled Altermagnetic Transition for Neuromorphic Computing. Altermagnets represent a novel magnetic phase with transformative potential for ultrafast spintronics, yet efficient control of their magnetic states remains challenging. We demonstrate an ultra-low-power electric-field control of altermagnetism in MnTe through strain-mediated coupling in MnTe/PMN-PT heterostructures with negligible Joule heating. Application of +6 kV/cm electric fields induces piezoelectric strain in PMN-PT, modulating the Neel temperature from 310 to 328 K. As a result, around the magnetic phase transition, the altermagnetic spin splitting of MnTe is reversibly switched "on" and "off" by the electric fields. Meanwhile, the piezoelectric strain generates lattice distortions and magnetic structure changes in MnTe, enabling up to 9.7% resistance modulation around the magnetic phase transition temperature. Leveraging this effect, we implement programmable resistance states in a Hopfield neuromorphic network, achieving 100% pattern recognition accuracy at <=40% noise levels. This approach establishes the electric-field control as a low-power strategy for altermagnetic manipulation while demonstrating the viability of altermagnetic materials for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing beyond conventional charge-based architectures. (Download PDF)
Article 0.22: An optimization framework for task allocation in the edge/hub/cloud paradigm. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), novel critical applications have emerged that leverage the edge/hub/cloud paradigm, which diverges from the conventional edge computing perspective. A growing number of such applications require a streamlined architecture for their effective execution, often comprising a single edge device with sensing capabilities, a single hub device (e.g., a laptop or smartphone) for managing and assisting the edge device, and a more computationally capable cloud server. Typical examples include the utilization of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for critical infrastructure inspection or a wearable biomedical device (e.g., a smartwatch) for remote patient monitoring. Task allocation in this streamlined architecture is particularly challenging, due to the computational, communication, and energy limitations of the devices at the network edge. Consequently, there is a need for a comprehensive framework that can address the specific task allocation problem optimally and efficiently. To this end, we propose a complete, binary integer linear programming (BILP) based formulation for an application-driven design-time approach, capable of providing an optimal task allocation in the targeted edge/hub/cloud environment. The proposed method minimizes the desired objective, either the overall latency or overall energy consumption, while considering several crucial parameters and constraints often overlooked in related literature. We evaluate our framework using a real-world use-case scenario, as well as appropriate synthetic benchmarks. Our extensive experimentation reveals that the proposed approach yields optimal and scalable results, enabling efficient design space exploration for different applications and computational devices. (Download PDF)
Article 0.23: Building a Radio AGN Sample from Cosmic Morning -- The Radio High-Redshift Quasar Catalog (RHzQCat): I. Catalog from SDSS Quasars and Radio Surveys at $z > 3$. Radio-loud high-redshift quasars (RHRQs) provide crucial insights into the evolution of relativistic jets and their connection to the growth of supermassive black holes. Beyond the extensively studied population at $z \ge 5$, the cosmic morning epoch ($3 \lesssim z \lesssim 5$) marks the peak of active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity and black hole accretion, yet remains relatively unexplored. In this work, we compiled the radio high-redshift quasar catalog (RHzQCat) by cross-matching the SDSS DR16Q catalog with four major radio surveys -- FIRST,NVSS, RACS, and GLEAM. Our tier-based cross-matching framework and visual validation ensured reliable source identification across surveys with diverse beam sizes. The catalog included 1629 reliable and 315 candidate RHRQs, with radio luminosities uniformly spanning $10^{25.5}$ -- $10^{29.3}$ W Hz$^{-1}$. About 95\% of the confirmed sources exhibited compact morphologies, consistent with Doppler-boosted or young AGN populations at high redshifts. Our catalog increases the number of known RHRQs at $z\ge3$ by an order of magnitude, representing the largest and most homogeneous catalog of radio quasars at cosmic morning, filling the observational gap between the early ($z>6$) and local Universe. It provides a robust reference for future statistical studies of jet evolution, AGN feedback, and cosmic magnetism with next-generation facilities such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). (Download PDF)
Article 0.24: The program Simourg for simulating the response functions of gamma detectors with simple geometries. The program Simourg (Simulator of Usually Requested Geometries) is based on the Geant4 toolkit and created for Monte Carlo simulation of gamma-ray spectrometric nuclear detectors with a simple axial symmetric geometry, which is typical for many tasks of studying the decay of long-lived nuclei and measuring the radioactivity of natural objects. The program is designed for quick estimation of the effectiveness and the response function of the detector to monoenergetic gamma quanta in the energy range from keV to several MeV. (Download PDF)
Article 0.25: Kepler-1624b Has No Significant Transit Timing Variations. It is relatively rare for gas giant planets to have resonant or near-resonant companions, but these systems are particularly useful for constraining planet formation and migration models. In this study, we examine Kepler-1624b, a sub-Saturn orbiting an M dwarf that was previously found to exhibit transit timing variations with an amplitude of approximately 2 minutes, suggesting the presence of a nearby non-transiting companion. We reanalyze the transits from archival Kepler data and extend the TTV baseline by 11 years by combining TESS data with three new ground-based transit observations from Palomar and Las Cumbres Observatories. We jointly fit these datasets and find that the TTV amplitude is significantly weaker in our updated analysis. We calculate the Bayes factor for a one-planet versus two-planet model and find that the one-planet model is preferred. Our results highlight the need for careful analysis of systems with relatively low amplitude TTV signals that are identified in large automated catalogs. (Download PDF)
Article 0.26: Updated Catalog of Kepler Planet Candidates: Focus on Accuracy and Orbital Periods. We present a new catalog of Kepler planet candidates that prioritizes accuracy of planetary dispositions and properties over uniformity. This catalog contains 4376 transiting planet candidates, including 1791 residing within 709 multi-planet systems, and provides the best parameters available for a large sample of Kepler planet candidates. We also provide a second set of stellar and planetary properties for transiting candidates that are uniformly-derived for use in occurrence rates studies. Estimates of orbital periods have been improved, but as in previous catalogs, our tabulated values for period uncertainties do not fully account for transit timing variations (TTVs). We show that many planets are likely to have TTVs with long periodicities caused by various processes, including orbital precession, and that such TTVs imply that ephemerides of Kepler planets are not as accurate on multi-decadal timescales as predicted by the small formal errors (typically 1 part in $10^6$ and rarely $ > 10^{-5}$) in the planets' measured mean orbital periods during the Kepler epoch. Analysis of normalized transit durations implies that eccentricities of planets are anti-correlated with the number of companion transiting planets. Our primary catalog lists all known Kepler planet candidates that orbit and transit only one star; for completeness, we also provide an abbreviated listing of the properties of the two dozen non-transiting planets that have been identified around stars that host transiting planets discovered by Kepler. (Download PDF)
Article 0.27: Quasi-confined modes produced by the Lugiato-Lefever model with a localized pump and the pseudo-Raman term. We introduce an extended nonlinear Lugiato-Lefever equation (LLE) with the pseudo-stimulated-Raman-scattering (pseudo-SRS) cubic term, linear damping/gain, and spatial inhomogeneous (weakly or strongly localized) pump. The LLE is derived, in the extended adiabatic approximation, from the underlying Zakharov system (ZS), which includes a viscosity term, acting on its low-frequency (LF) component, and the pump supporting the high-frequency (HF) one. Dynamics of quasi-solitons in the model is addressed by means of analytical and numerical methods. The sech-based approximation for the quasi-soliton predicts it as a stable fixed point (FP) of the system of evolution equations for the moments of the system moments (the HF norm, wave momentum, and center-of-mass coordinate). The attraction basin of the FP is identified too. The prediction is corroborated by direct simulations of the full LLE. A quasi-singular mode, supported by the delta-functional pump, is briefly considered too. (Download PDF)
Article 0.28: Colors of Life in the Clouds: Biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms as a new signature to detect life on planets like Earth. When Carl Sagan and Ed Salpeter envisioned potential Sinkers, Floaters, and Hunters living in Jupiter's clouds in 1976 (C. Sagan & E. E. Salpeter 1976), the nature of life in Earth's atmosphere remained widely unknown. Decades later, research has revealed a remarkable variety of microorganisms in our atmosphere. However, the spectral features of airborne microbes as biomarkers for detecting atmospheric life remained a mystery. Here, we present the first reflectance spectra of biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms based on laboratory cultivars of seven microbial strains isolated from Earth's atmosphere. We show their distinct UV-resistant biosignatures and their impacts on models of diverse planetary scenarios, using Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) parameters. The reflectance of these biopigments from aerial bacteria creates the means to detect them on other Earth-like planets. It provides a paradigm shift that moves the search for life beyond the surface of a planet to ecosystems in atmospheres and clouds. (Download PDF)
Article 0.29: Bowshocks driven by the pole-on molecular jet of outbursting protostar SVS 13. Outflows play a key role in the star and planet formation processes. Some outflows show discrete clumps of cold molecular gas moving at extremely high velocities (EHVs) of $\sim$100 km s$^{-1}$, known as ''molecular bullets'', that are likely closely associated with their primary driving agent. Here we present ALMA CO(J=3-2) observations of a bright EHV molecular bullet that reveal its morphology in detail down to scales of 30 au and its kinematic structure across the entire intermediate velocity range ($\sim$30-100 km s$^{-1}$). These provide important new insights into how outflows transfer mass and momentum to the surrounding medium. The observed channel maps display several sequences of ring-like features whose velocity increases and size decreases with projected distance from the driving source, each sequence tracing a thin, bow-shaped shell culminating on-axis in a bright EHV head. The shape, kinematics, and mass of each shell all agree remarkably well with the simplest textbook models of momentum-conserving bowshocks produced by a time-variable EHV jet. The dynamical timescale between consecutive shells is of a few decades, with the latest ejection event coinciding with the protostar optical/IR outburst observed in $\sim$1990. The very strong evidence for bowshock-driven entrainment induced by jet variability revealed by this work suggests that accretion bursts, and therefore variations in the disk snowlines, should occur on decade timescales, which could substantially impact grain growth and planet formation. (Download PDF)