Recent root items

Remapping California's wildland urban interface: A property-level time-space framework, 2000–2020

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wildland fire poses a significant risk to property and people, and these risks tend to be highest in places where flammable, wildland vegetation abuts urban development. Traditionally, efforts to map these areas of intersection, known as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), have relied on satellite-derived land cover and census data. While these types of data are valuable for broadly delineating WUI areas, they are constrained in their ability to specifically identify at-risk residential properties and their characteristics over time. This article addresses these challenges through a multi-time-step, property-level framework that enhances current approaches based on moving window mapping, the Time Step Moving Window (TSMW) framework. We implement this framework on approximately 10 million geo-located property records from Zillow's Transaction and Assessment Database for California. Using this framework, we generate estimates of California's WUI from 2000 to 2020 and find that our...

Does demolition improve biodiversity? Linking urban green space and socioeconomic characteristics to avian richness in a shrinking city

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropogenic change, specifically urbanization, has lasting impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Past work has linked green space variables and socioeconomic characteristics with biodiversity in urban areas. Shrinking cities present an interesting case for studying biodiversity because many of these places have implemented demolition policies to remove vacant buildings from the landscape, which returns previously urbanized land back into a “natural” state. The objective of this study is to investigate the multifaceted relationship among urban green space, socioeconomic characteristics, demolition activities, and avian species richness in the shrinking city of Buffalo, NY. We first establish a baseline understanding of how social and ecological factors are related to avian species richness through generalized linear models (GLM) and then incorporate a variable characterizing demolition to understand how the process of demolition may be impacting species richness relative...

Scope and its role in advancing a science of scaling in landscape ecology

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ContextThe scope of a measurement is the ratio of the range (or extent) to the resolution. Scope can also be defined as the number of steps in a measurement instrument given the step size or the distance between two points on a space-time diagram. Scope differs from scale in that it is dimensionless and thus provides a means for comparability across studies.ObjectivesThis perspective argues that advancing a science of scaling in landscape ecology can benefit from acknowledging and embracing the concept of scope to facilitate replications and provide linkages to scaling laws.MethodsScope is defined and linked to existing focii on scale in landscape ecology. A simple case study demonstrates how landscape metrics computed for several extent-to-grain ratios are more similar according to scope than either grain or extent.ResultsMetric distributions naturally group according to scope, with same/similar scopes displaying more similar means and distributions. Distribution shapes also...

Muscle as Method

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Muscle as Method

The Network of Dysfunctional Beliefs About Sleep: A Structural Re-Analysis of the DBAS-16

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVES: Insomnia is a common problem that affects a significant portion of the population. Dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep contribute to developing and maintaining insomnia. We developed a Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep Scale (DBAS-16) and conducted a comprehensive psychometric evaluation using latent variable and psychometric network frameworks. METHOD: Participants (N = 1,3851,386) were between 18 and 59 years old, with and without insomnia complaints. We used Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with dynamic fit indices to evaluate the original DBAS-16 structure and tested longitudinal invariance (14 days) and invariance across good and bad sleepers. We applied Unique Variable Analysis (UVA) and Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) to a derivation subsample (n = 693), with the remaining half reserved for cross-validation. RESULTS: The original structure was replicated with moderate fit. We found...

UCSB Restoration Register - September 2026

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Cheadle Center at UCSB manages more than 340 acres of open space between Ellwood Mesa and Goleta Slough, carrying out ecological restoration, research, and education projects across these sites. Characterized by a rich mosaic of oak woodland, coastal sage scrub, grassland, and wetland ecosystems, the area is known for its relatively high level of biodiversity. The Cheadle Center’s project sites and management areas help protect and strengthen the region’s ecology through habitat conservation, upland restoration, wetland creation and enhancement, and the implementation of sustainable stormwater management solutions. Through careful integration with local watersheds and surrounding natural areas, the Cheadle Center’s management areas provide important corridors and refuge for wildlife, support the long-term preservation of the region’s natural resources, and serve as outdoor classrooms, research sites, and recreational areas for the campus community and the public.

The...

Systematic review and best practices for drone remote sensing of invasive plants

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract Drones have emerged as a cost‐effective solution to detect and map plant invasions, offering researchers and land managers flexibility in flight design, sensors and data collection schedules. A systematic review of trends in drone‐based image collection, data processing and analytical approaches is needed to advance the science of invasive species monitoring and management and improve scalability and replicability. We systematically reviewed studies using drones for plant invasion research to identify knowledge gaps, best practices and a path toward advancing the science of invasive plant monitoring and management. We devised a database of 33 standardized reporting parameters, coded each study to those parameters, calculated descriptive statistics and synthesized how these technologies are being implemented and used. Trends show a general increase in studies since 2009 with a bias toward temperate regions in North America and Europe. Most studies have focused on...

Historical and recent fire ecology on national wildlife refuges: a case study on Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

BackgroundThe southeastern United States consists of diverse ecosystems, many of which are fire-dependent. Fires were common during pre-European times, and many were anthropogenic in origin. Understanding how prescribed burning practices in use today compare to historic fire regimes can provide perspective and context on the role of fire in critical ecosystems. On the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), prescribed burning is conducted to prevent live oak (Quercus fusiformis) encroachment and preserve the openness of the herbaceous wetlands and grasslands for endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana) and Aplomado falcons (Falco femoralis). This field note builds a digital fire atlas of recent prescribed burning on the refuge and compares it to the historical fire ecology of ANWR.ResultsFindings indicate that the refuge is maintaining fire-dependent ecosystems with an extensive burn program that includes a fire return interval between 2 and 10 years on a majority of the refuge,...

Harnessing the full potential of drones for fieldwork

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract Field-based research in the biological sciences encounters several challenges, including cost, accessibility, safety, and spatial coverage. Drones have emerged as a transformative technology to address these challenges while providing a less intrusive alternative to field surveys. Although drones have mainly been used for high-resolution image collection, their capabilities extend beyond mapping and image production. They can be tailored to track wildlife, measure environmental parameters, and collect physical samples, and their versatility enables researchers to tackle a variety of biodiversity and conservation challenges. In this article, we advocate for drones to be integrated more comprehensively into field-based research, from site reconnaissance to sampling, interventions, and monitoring. We discuss the future innovations needed to harness their full potential, including customized instrumentation, fit-for-purpose software and apps, and better integration with existing...

Unlocking Value: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Hip PJI Diagnostic Pathways Employing the European Bone and Joint Infection Society/Musculoskeletal Infection Society Definition

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background: The European Bone and Joint Infection Society (EBJIS)/Musculoskeletal Infection Society (MSIS) criteria provide a framework for diagnosing hip periprosthetic joint infection, yet daily clinical application lacks a standardized algorithm. Since these criteria rely heavily on synovial fluid markers, surgeons encounter 2 primary dilemmas: the reliability of aspiration techniques (ultrasound vs fluoroscopy) and the economic trade-off between higher-cost proprietary assays and standard institutional laboratories. This cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted to identify the diagnostic pathway that maximizes clinical benefit while minimizing expenditure within the EBJIS/MSIS framework. Methods: A decision tree model simulated the diagnostic workup of a 67-year-old patient with suspected hip periprosthetic joint infection. Ten strategies were evaluated, comparing aspiration modality and laboratory method (institutional, point-of-care, and third-party analysis). The model...

Early Clinico-Radiographic Outcomes of Cementless Collared Triple Taper Stems in Osteoporotic Patients Undergoing Elective Total Hip Arthroplasty: A Descriptive Analysis

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background Osteoporosis is a well-established risk factor for early femoral failure following cementless total hip arthroplasty (THA). The performance of cementless collared triple-taper stems (CTTSs) in patients with a confirmed diagnosis of osteoporosis remains poorly defined. This study aimed to evaluate early clinico-radiographic outcomes of CTTS in osteoporotic patients undergoing elective THA. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 96 patients (87.5% women; mean age 69.5 ± 7.4 years) who underwent elective THA with a CTTS between 2018 and 2025. Osteoporosis was confirmed by either dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry T-score ≤ −2.5 or history of fragility fracture. Preoperative morphology and postoperative canal fill ratios, alignment, and subsidence (>3 mm) were assessed. Femoral failure was defined as periprosthetic fracture or aseptic loosening. Results Preoperative morphology demonstrated a predominance of wide canals (Dorr B: 67.5%, Dorr C: 26%) and a mean morphological...

A research agenda for GIScience in a time of disruptions

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Social issues, AI, and climate change are just a few of the disruptive focuses impacting science. The field of GIScience is well positioned to respond to accelerating disruptions due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field and the ability of GIScience approaches to be used in support of decision-making. This manuscript aims to start a conversation that will establish a research agenda for GIScience in an age of disruptions. We outline three guiding principles: (1) focusing on the relevance and real-world impact of research, (2) adopting systems-based thinking and contextual approaches and (3) emphasizing inclusive practices. We then outline prioritized research areas organized by what topics are important focal areas (Data and Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, and Causality and Generalizability), and what approaches to science we should be attentive to (Impactful Open Science, Collaborative and Convergent Science, and through Diverse Participation and Partnerships)....

Improved prediction of tree species richness and interpretability of environmental drivers using a machine learning approach

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Biodiversity is in decline globally and predicting species diversity is critically important if current trends are to be reversed. Tree species richness (TSR) has long been a key measure of biodiversity, but considerable uncertainties exist in current models, particularly given the classic statistical assumptions and poor ecological interpretability of machine learning outcomes. Here, we test several ecologically interpretable machine learning approaches to predict TSR and interpret the driving environmental factors in the continental United States. We develop two artificial neural networks (ANN) and one random forest (RF) model to predict TSR using Forest Inventory and Analysis data and 20 environmental covariates and compare them to a classic generalized linear model (GLM). Models were evaluated on an independent, unseen testing dataset using R2 and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and residual spatial autocorrelation analysis. An Interpretable Machine Learning approach, SHapley Additive...

UCSB Restoration Register - September 2026

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The...

“Have the writers actually read abortion law?”: using YouTube comments to explore audience responses to entertainment TV abortion plotlines

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Comment sections on social media websites such as YouTube provide a unique venue to observe contemporaneous audience interpretation and discussion of entertainment television content. While entertainment-education research has largely examined whether and how exposure to television content influences viewer knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, analyzing comment sections provides an opportunity to observe how audiences interpret and discuss these plotlines in an organic setting. We examined comments posted to YouTube clips of entertainment television abortion plotlines to document how these comments explicitly discussed the plotlines depicted and what themes emerged in these discussions. We identified 15 YouTube clips of abortion plotlines posted between 2018 and 2023 on official network accounts. We used thematic analysis techniques to qualitatively assess the top 20 comments and replies for each video (n = 162). Twenty-six percent of all comments referenced the content of the clip....

Building bioorthogonal click-release capable artificial receptors on cancer cell surface for imaging, drug targeting and delivery.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The current targeting drug delivery mainly relies on cancer cell surface receptors. However, in many cases, binding affinities between protein receptors and homing ligands is relatively low and the expression level between cancer and normal cells is not significant. Distinct from conventional targeting strategies, we have developed a general cancer targeting platform by building artificial receptor on cancer cell surface via a chemical remodeling of cell surface glycans. A new tetrazine (Tz) functionalized chemical receptor has been designed and efficiently installed on cancer cell surface as overexpressed biomarker through a metabolic glycan engineering. Different from the reported bioconjugation for drug targeting, the tetrazine labeled cancer cells not only locally activate TCO-caged prodrugs but also release active drugs via the unique bioorthogonal Tz-TCO click-release reaction. The studies have demonstrated that the new drug targeting strategy enables local...

Generating adversarial inputs for a graph neural network model of AC power flow

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This work formulates and solves optimization prob- lems to generate input points that yield high errors between a neural network’s predicted AC power flow solution and solutions to the AC power flow equations. We demonstrate this capability on an instance of the CANOS-PF graph neural network model, as implemented by the PF∆ benchmark library, operating on a 14-bus test grid. Generated adversarial points yield errors as large as 3.7 per-unit in reactive power and 0.08 per-unit in voltage magnitude. When minimizing the perturbation from a training point necessary to satisfy adversarial constraints, we find that the constraints can be met with as little as an 0.04 per-unit perturbation in voltage magnitude on a single bus. This work motivates the development of rigorous verification and robust training methods for neural network surrogate models of AC power flow.

Parental responses to human infants (and puppy dogs): Evidence that the perception of eyes is especially influential, but eye contact is not.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The present investigation tests: (i) whether the perception of an human infants eyes, relative to other facial features, especially strongly elicits parental responses (e.g., appraisals of cuteness and vulnerability); (ii) if, so, whether effects of the visual perception of eyes may be partially attributable to eye contact; (iii) whether the perception of non-human animals (puppy dogs) eyes also especially strongly influence appraisals of their cuteness and vulnerability; and (iv) whether individual differences in caregiving motives moderate effects. Results from 5 experiments (total N = 1458 parents and non-parents) provided empirical evidence to evaluate these hypotheses: Appraisals of human infants were influenced especially strongly by the visual perception of human infants eyes (compared to other facial features); these effects do not appear to be attributable to eye contact; the visual perception of eyes influenced appraisals of puppy dogs, but not exactly in the same way...

GPU-to-Grid: Voltage Regulation via GPU Utilization Control

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

While the rapid expansion of data centers poses challenges for power grids, it also offers new opportunities as flexible loads. Existing power system research often abstracts data centers as aggregate resources, while computer system research focuses on GPU energy efficiency and largely ignores grid impacts. To bridge this gap, we develop a GPU-to-Grid framework that couples device-level GPU control with power system objectives. We study distribution-level voltage regulation enabled by LLM inference flexibility, using batch size as a data- center-side control knob that trades off GPU power consumption, inference latency, and token throughput. We first formulate the problem as an optimization problem and then realize it as an online feedback optimization controller, implemented by the data center operator using its own empirical GPU power-performance model and real-time measurements from both the GPU and grid systems. Our key insight is that reducing GPU power alleviates lower-voltage...

The effects of transcranial random noise stimulation on excitation/inhibition balance in ADHD.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often show aberrant neural activity, including excitation/inhibition (E/I) imbalances, atypical event-related potentials (ERPs), and neural network dysfunction. Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS) has shown promise in modulating neural activity in ADHD.

Methods

The current study examined differences in behavioral and EEG signals recorded during an inhibitory control task in children with (N = 23) and without (N = 33) ADHD. Changes in these signals were further assessed following a combined tRNS and cognitive training intervention targeting the right inferior frontal gyrus and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a sham-controlled randomized trial within the ADHD group only (n = 11 and 12 for intervention and sham groups, respectively).

Results

At baseline, children with ADHD showed slower reaction times, and higher commission error rates compared...

Hybrid GFL-GFM Control for Converter-Dominated Power Systems: A Systematic Survey and Open-Source Implementation

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

With the large-scale grid integration of inverter- based resources (IBRs), power systems are rapidly transitioning toward a converter-dominated paradigm. This trend motivates hybrid grid-following (GFL) and grid-forming (GFM) control to combine fast power regulation with improved voltage and frequency support. This paper reviews classical GFL-GFM foun- dations and provides a structured taxonomy of hybrid GFL-GFM strategies for both converters and systems, including switching- type, dual-source, loop-augmented, and system-level categories. A parallel-branch hybrid architecture, which was recently ap- proved by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, is then introduced. In this model, the GFL and GFM branches operate concurrently under a coordinating plant controller. Both the REGFM C1 converter control model and the REPCGFM C1 plant control model have been implemented and made available in the open-source ANDES simulator. Case studies on Single- Machine Infinite-Bus system...

Cosmological Applications of Strong Gravitational Lensing

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Strong gravitational lensing is poised to become one of the strongest probes of cosmology. Though rare, strong lensing is highly sensitive to the geometry of the universe and the distribution of mass in foreground galaxies or clusters. While strong lensing has long been used to study distant magnified objects, the past decade has seen rapid progress in applying SL to novel studies of dark matter and dark energy. I provide a survey of these possibilities, with a focus on studies of dark matter in lensing galaxy clusters. I present the most rigorous constraint to date on Self-Interacting Dark Matter (SIDM) at cluster scales, combining strong lensing with resolved stellar kinematics in lens system MACS J0138-2155. Additionally, I discuss a powerful possibility for constraining the dark energy equation of state with strong lensing, a technique known as compound lens cosmography, and encouraging results with a remarkable lens system known as the Carousel Lens.

Vestiges of the Past, Visions of the Future: Archival Transformations in the Works of Beatriz Cortez

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this thesis, I examine how diasporic Salvadoran artist Beatriz Cortez engages with archival records and pre-Columbian history to situate the trauma of war and migration in conversation with centuries of Indigenous neglect and erasure in Central America. Through the use of archival materials, contemporary artists can access buried histories, propose alternative interpretations, and recover what has been suppressed. Throughout her artistic career and her collaborations with the Kaqchikel art collective Kaqjay Moloj, Beatriz Cortez has developed a different relationship with archives and objects that moves away from notions of the past as dead and inaccessible towards the active transmission of knowledge, according to Indigenous epistemologies. I examine the works Armor for Rufina Amaya (2014) and El Altar de Kaqjay (2021) and identify how they function to disrupt and counter official histories that perpetuate singular, disconnected narratives and communicate the shared experiences...

Is Your VPN Getting You Blocked?

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are many valid reasons for someone to browse the internet privately, and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are one method of achieving this. Although primarily used to provide confidentiality and anonymity by encrypting internet traffic and masking IP addresses, users may choose to use a VPN for multiple purposes. However, this raises questions about whether, and how differently, content across the internet is portrayed to VPN users. VPN providers do not all route their traffic the same way, and this study analyzes these differences by investigating two major VPN providers, NordVPN and Surfshark. We measure and quantify the accessibility of popular websites to users of these two VPNs, comparing outcomes against a non-VPN control connection to determine whether, and to what extent, VPN use affects a user's ability to reach and use ordinary websites. This raises a central question: is VPN-related blocking better explained by the network a VPN happens to use, or by...

What Dose of Methamphetamine Do Regular Consumers Use Daily? Estimating Oral Amphetamine Milligram Equivalents

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVES: The purity, accessibility, and affordability of illicit methamphetamine have increased in recent decades, which has been linked to rising rates of methamphetamine-involved overdoses, psychosis, cardiovascular events, and other health consequences. Nevertheless, information about the quantity of methamphetamine used by regular consumers has been limited, despite the potential clinical utility of exposure quantification. METHODS: From August 2024 to April 2026, self-reported daily methamphetamine consumption was assessed among n = 94 individuals in Los Angeles County. Methamphetamine samples (n = 256) were analyzed for purity using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Bioavailability by route of administration and stimulant equivalency were obtained from the literature. A simulation model leveraging bootstrapping with 1,000,000 draws was used to estimate oral amphetamine milligram equivalents (AME). RESULTS: The average reported methamphetamine consumption was 1.09...

Advancing quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA) for cetacean diet estimation: Methodological evaluation and ecological application

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Quantifying cetacean diet is critical for understanding ecological and physiological processes but remains inherently challenging. Quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA) is a diet determination method with the potential to generate detailed, long-term diet estimates, but its use in cetaceans has been limited. My dissertation presents the first application of QFASA in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus, hereafter “dolphins”). It addresses key impediments to QFASA’s broader application in cetaceans, evaluates its performance in professional-care and free-ranging dolphins, compares it to other diet determination methods, and explores the estimates’ ecological implications. In Chapter 1, I used dolphins under professional care with known diets to derive calibration coefficients (CCs) and explore the temporal integration period of blubber fatty acids. I found that dolphin- and blubber layer-specific CCs produced lower-error estimates and identified major prey more...

Metrics of Mayhem: Quantifying Capriciousness in Capital Cases

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Social science has figured prominently in debates over the constitutional administration of capital punishment for more than a half-century, especially with respect to capricious and bias decision-making. Yet the weight given to this empirical evidence (or lack thereof) in judicial decision-making has, itself, been irrational and inconsistent. A key obstacle for litigants and scholars raising empirically anchored claims of capriciousness has been the absence of a workable definition from both capital statutes and the courts’ analysis of them. How is this phenomenon to be measured and what threshold showing must be made before these claims of constitutional error become cognizable to the Court? The science of statistics, at its core, is concerned with drawing inferences from data in the face of various types of uncertainty, and therefore provides a useful framework for identifying and quantifying the types of errors relevant to the assessment of the constitutionality of the operation...

Efficacy and Safety of Naloxegol in Patients with Chronic Non-Cancer Pain Who Experience Opioid-Induced Constipation: A Pooled Analysis of Two Global, Randomized Controlled Studies

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Objective: This study evaluates the onset, magnitude, and consistency of improvement of opioid-induced constipation (OIC) symptoms with naloxegol treatment. Methods: This was a pooled analysis of two Phase 3, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled studies (KODIAC-04/05, NCT01309841/NCT01323790) in patients with chronic non-cancer pain and OIC treated with naloxegol 25mg or 12.5mg daily. This analysis assessed improvements in response rates, frequency of spontaneous bowel movement (SBM) and complete SBMs (CSBM), OIC constipation symptoms (straining, stool consistency), time to first post-dose SBM and CSBM, and onset of adverse events over the 12-week period. Subjects: The population of 1337 subjects had a mean age of 52 years and mean duration of opioid use of 3.6 years at baseline. Mean SBM frequency was 1.4/week. Results: Naloxegol 25mg and 12.5mg demonstrated significantly higher response rates vs placebo (PBO) [41.9% (P < 0.001), 37.8% (P = 0.008), 29.4% respectively]....

Climate Impact on Residential Load: the Tale of 100K GAMs

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We design statistical methodology to project the impact of climate change on residential load at the level of substations. To achieve high-resolution load projections, we combine the outputs of downscaled global climate models (GCMs) with a statistical additive regression model. To this end we design a bespoke Generalized Additive Model (GAM) that links cooling/heating loads at given substation and hour of day to daily meteorological covariates. Our models are trained on the ResStock outputs for a realistic building mix and illustrated on the entire 1898 substations in the CATS synthetic grid. The results visualize feature relevance and aggregate climate impacts on California residential loads.

The Murder of J. L. Starkey According to Local Palestinian Sources: Anti-Colonial Struggle and Local Intrigues

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article reexamines the 1938 assassination of British archaeologist James Leslie Starkey near Tell ed-Duweir in southern Palestine, challenging longstanding interpretations that have framed the killing as a random act of violence committed during the Arab Revolt. Building on the hypothesis proposed by Yosef Garfinkel in 2016, this study draws on overlooked local petitions, oral history interviews, British Mandatory records, and Zionist intelligence sources to argue that Starkey’s murder was a targeted response to unresolved land disputes between the excavation team and landowners from the nearby village of al-Qubayba. The article documents how Starkey’s acquisition of village lands (at times through expropriation) generated intense resentment, particularly among disenfranchised landowning families excluded from employment by the expedition. Oral testimonies, petitions, and archival evidence point to the involvement of local actors and rebel commander ʿĪsā al-Baṭṭāṭ in orchestrating...

Network Load Balancing For Geographically Distributed Datacenters

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As datacenters scale up and become more geographically distributed, wide-area network inter-datacenter traffic, which typically consists of data-heavy tasks, has become increasingly prevalent. Some of the noteworthy challenges raised by the coexistence and interaction between inter- and intra-datacenter traffic are the differences in their QoS requirements, link utilization, and round-trip times. To the best of our knowledge, these challenges have not yet been addressed by current datacenter load balancers. To highlight this gap, we conducted a comparative performance study of state-of-the-art datacenter load balancers. Through extensive simulations, we study how they perform under different network topologies and workloads, including intra-datacenter, inter-datacenter, and mixed intra- and inter-datacenter workloads that reflect how datacenters have evolved to keep up with their continuously changing driving application landscape. Our study shows that current load balancers are...

Reproductive Futures in Focus: Contraceptive Choices Among Individuals With Cystic Fibrosis-Patterns, Preferences, and Influencing Factors.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Advancements in the care of people with cystic fibrosis (PwCF) have made discussions about reproductive health increasingly important. Rising rates of both intended and unintended pregnancies highlight the need for effective contraception counseling. Understanding current contraception use patterns and identifying priorities for contraception education amongst PwCF are therefore essential.

Methods

A web-based survey was developed in partnership with Community Voice, a virtual community of PwCF and their family members supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The survey was distributed over a 5-week period (June-July 2025) to participants from Community Voice and Elevate. Females with cystic fibrosis aged 18 years and older were eligible to participate.

Results

Ninety-seven PwCF completed the survey, representing 27 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. Among individuals currently using contraception, the most common methods were intrauterine...

Classification of early tuberculosis states to guide research for improved care and prevention: an international Delphi consensus exercise.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The current active-latent paradigm of tuberculosis largely neglects the documented spectrum of disease. Inconsistency with regard to definitions, terminology, and diagnostic criteria for different tuberculosis states has limited the progress in research and product development that are needed to achieve tuberculosis elimination. We aimed to develop a new framework of classification for tuberculosis that accommodates key disease states but is sufficiently simple to support pragmatic research and implementation. Through an international Delphi exercise that involved 71 participants representing a wide range of disciplines, sectors, income settings, and geographies, consensus was reached on a set of conceptual states, related terminology, and research gaps. The International Consensus for Early TB (ICE-TB) framework distinguishes disease from infection by the presence of macroscopic pathology and defines two subclinical and two clinical tuberculosis states on the basis of reported...

Online Electricity Pricing from Frequency Measurements

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Frequency dynamics in power systems reflect active power imbalance in real time, thereby providing an instantaneous signal to inform electricity pricing. However, existing real-time markets operate on much slower timescales and fail to exploit this signal. In this letter, we develop integrated market–frequency dynamics that enable online pricing directly from frequency measurements. Representing the real-time market as a dynamic price-discovery process, and integrating this process with the grid frequency dynamics, we derive an explicit price formation mech- anism from frequency measurements. This mechanism manifests as a distributed PID-like controller for each generator, where frequency response is driven and remunerated by electricity prices derived solely from local frequency measurements.

Black Holes as Precision Probes of Dark Sectors and Fundamental Physics

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This thesis investigates the observational and phenomenological consequences of large gravitationally coupled dark sectors, using black holes and high-frequency gravitational waves as the primary probes. The work spans four interconnected studies, progressing from broad model-independent constraints on dark sector size, through the physics of primordial black holes as a dark matter candidate, to a detailed reexamination of black hole evaporation dynamics, and culminating in a quantitative assessment of high-frequency gravitational-wave signals from superradiant boson clouds. The first study derives comprehensive constraints on the number of dark degrees of freedom N from multiple astrophysical and collider observables. Hawking evaporation of stellar-mass black holes observed by LIGO/Virgo provides the dominant bound: using the merger event GW190924 021846, with chirp mass 5.7 M⊙ and inferred age (1.16±0.04)×1010 yr, we constrain N ≲ 5×1058 for massless spin-0 dark sectors...

Physics-Informed Non-Dimensionalisation for Neural Solvers

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The ability to assess and control approximation errors is key to the success of numerical methods. In contrast, learned approximations must ensure during training that error requirements are met, typically relying on statistical loss func- tions that do not account for the underlying physics. In this work, we argue that the assessment of learning errors in neural solvers should be aligned with numerical methods by evaluating errors in the residual norm of the governing equations. We show how this residual-based error measure can be integrated into the learning process through a physics-informed non-dimensionalisation of inputs and outputs, yielding a training objective that reflects physical sensitivities. The proposed construction reduces reliance on dataset-dependent statistics, improves robustness for limited training data, and provides an interpretable connection between training loss and engineering error measures. We demonstrate the approach on learning power flow solutions...

Modified Mean Curvature Flow in Fuchsian Manifolds

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The equidistant surfaces in a Fuchsian manifold form a canonical foliation by constant mean curvature surfaces. It is therefore natural to ask whether a prescribed leaf of this foliation can be reached by evolving an arbitrary graphical surface. We answer this question affirmatively using the modified mean curvature flow. Let (M³, ḡ)=(ℝ×Σ, dr²+cosh²(r)g₀) be a Fuchsian manifold, where (Σ,g₀) is a closed hyperbolic surface. For any σ∈(−2, 2), we consider the flow ??/??=−(?−?)? starting from an arbitrary smooth closed geodesic graph over the central totally geodesic surface. We prove that the flow exists smoothly for all time, remains graphical, and converges smoothly to the unique equidistant surface Σ(?_?), where ?_?=arctanh(?/2) whose mean curvature is ?. The initial graph is required only to be strictly graphical; no smallness assumption or quantitative angle–height pinching condition is imposed. The main difficulty is that strict graphicality alone does not provide...

Un-Gregg-ulated: Capital Charging and the Missing Mandate of Gregg v. Georgia

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Arbitrariness and bias in the administration of capital punishment persist after many decades of procedural reforms designed specifically to eliminate these problems. Why have capital punishment systems failed to satisfy the conditions set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court — requiring the death penalty to be administered fairly and consistently, or not at all — despite functioning under the tremendous scrutiny of both the capital defense bar and general public? In this essay, I argue that at least part of the reason capital punishment systems continue to proceed in a constitutionally impermissible manner is the Court's significant narrowing of its holding announced in Gregg v. Georgia. In Gregg, the Court emphasized the importance of proportionality review, entailing the comparison of a defendant's case with similarly situated defendants for the assessment of the appropriateness of the death penalty in each particular case. Less than a decade later, the Court significantly narrowed...

Beyond Hashtags: Understanding the Perceptions and Impact of Online Feminism among Young Instagramand Twitter Users in the UAE

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Beyond Hashtags: Understanding the Perceptions and Impact of Online Feminism among Young Instagramand Twitter Users in the UAE

Determining ‘Reasonableness’ Without a Reason? Federal Appellate Review Post-Rita v. United States

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The U.S. Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA) in response to increasing concern over unwarranted sentencing disparities in federal courts, thus creating the first real opportunity for the federal judiciary to develop a common law of sentencing. The SRA established the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and the Commission designed the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The Guidelines consisted of a set of mandatory narrow sentencing ranges for each defendant in which judges were permitted to impose sentences based on a defendant’s prior criminal history, the severity of the crime, and specific offense characteristics. Eighteen years after the Guidelines took effect, in United States v. Booker, the Court concluded that the Guidelines must be deemed advisory and the federal courts of appeals should review criminal sentences for “reasonableness.” Unfortunately, the Court did not clearly define what reasonableness review would entail. This ambiguity quickly resulted in a split...

Corrigendum to: Topical analgesics for neuropathic pain: an evidence-informed guide for the practicing clinician

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Corrigendum to: Topical analgesics for neuropathic pain: an evidence-informed guide for the practicing clinician

Update on Treating Painful Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy: A Review of Current US Guidelines with a Focus on the Most Recently Approved Management Options

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is a highly prevalent and disabling complication of diabetes that is often misdiagnosed and undertreated. The management of painful DPN involves treating its underlying cause via lifestyle modifications and intensive glucose control, targeting its pathogenesis, and providing symptomatic pain relief, thereby improving patient function and health-related quality of life. Four pharmacologic options are currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat painful DPN. These include three oral medications (duloxetine, pregabalin, and tapentadol extended release) and one topical agent (capsaicin 8% topical system). More recently, the FDA approved several spinal cord stimulation (SCS) devices to treat refractory painful DPN. Although not FDA-approved specifically to treat painful DPN, tricyclic antidepressants, serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, gabapentinoids, and sodium channel blockers are common first-line...

Barcode Growth for Toric Domains

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this thesis, we study barcode growth functions of the symplectic homology of Liouville domains. We show that the barcode growth function of a smooth convex/concave or real analytic toric domain grows at most like a polynomial of degree half the dimension of the domain. In particular, the barcode entropy of such a domain is zero and its slow barcode entropy is bounded by half the dimension, reflecting the complete integrability of the Reeb flow on the boundary. We extend the definition of barcode growth functions to star-shaped domains with non-smooth boundary via smooth approximations in the symplectic Banach–Mazur distance, and show that the polynomial bound persists for non-smooth convex/concave toric domains. We also show that barcode entropy and slow barcode entropy are invariants of the exact symplectomorphism type of the interior. As applications, we obtain obstructions to exact symplectomorphisms between interiors of Liouville domains.

Finding Freedom in the Post-Utopian Ruins: Li Xiaojiang’s 40 Years of Women’s Thought

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This dissertation investigates works of Li Xiaojiang (1951-2025), a foundational figure in the development of women’s studies in post-socialist China who received comparatively little attention in international scholarship. Li has been criticized for essentialist understanding of sex and gender and for advocating women’s self-improvement in ways that appeared complicit with China’s state-led modernization and emerging market economy. Without dismissing these criticism, this dissertation argues that they capture only part of Li’s theoretical and political significance. Reading her work across four decades, I recover a sustained concern with a fundamental political question: how might women cultivate subjective capacity and political agency under conditions that seem to leave little for either? The dissertation traces Li thought roughly chronologically. I first examine her writings of the 1980s for which she received the most criticism for. Drawing on the body of texts that...

Ranked Enumeration over Circuits via Implicit Representations

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We study the problem of enumerating the satisfying assignments of smooth multivalued d-DNNF circuits in sum order. We measure the cost in terms of a preprocessing phase and the delay between consecutive answers, charging for both the size of the circuit and the number of variables. Producing each answer as a complete assignment takes time linear in the number of variables. We propose an algorithmic framework that avoids this cost by producing answers in an implicit representation. After preprocessing quasilinear in the size of the circuit, the delay for tree-shaped circuits is logarithmic in the number of answers already produced and independent of the number of variables. For general circuits, preprocessing incurs an additional factor of the number of variables, and one further term remains in the delay, logarithmic in the number of variables. An answer can be recovered explicitly from its implicit representation in additional linear time.

S497 Naloxegol Accelerates Time to First Spontaneous Bowel Movement (SBM) and Complete SBM (CSBM) With Predictable Efficacy in Patients With Extreme Opioid-Induced Constipation (OIC): A Pooled Analysis of Two Phase 3 Trials

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

S497 Naloxegol Accelerates Time to First Spontaneous Bowel Movement (SBM) and Complete SBM (CSBM) With Predictable Efficacy in Patients With Extreme Opioid-Induced Constipation (OIC): A Pooled Analysis of Two Phase 3 Trials

Author Correction: US oil and gas system emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Correction to: Naturehttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07117-5 Published online 13 March 2024 In the version of the article initially published, several errors were present and have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article and Supplementary Information. The main results, conclusions, and our interpretations of the data remain unchanged. See the new Supplementary Information Section S15 for a more detailed description of the errors corrected and the resulting effects on the analysis. Data processing and methods corrections Overflight count correction: We previously used pre-computed source coverage data for some Carbon Mapper campaigns that was computed differently than was required for our analysis. We have re-computed Carbon Mapper source coverage based on flightline polygons and source coordinates. Transition point computation, well sites: The updated version now correctly compares the cumulative emissions distribution of simulated well site emissions with...

Centering Healing, Countering Denial: Journeys Toward Racial Healing in Black Communities and Uncovering White People's Denial of Black Racial Trauma

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Racial trauma (i.e., trauma resulting from racist experiences) is a persistent and harmful psychological consequence of racism, yet it is denied or minimized by dominant cultural narratives and ideologies. The current work explores how Black communities can heal from racial trauma and how racial trauma is perceived in White communities. Study 1 examines Black community healing from intergenerational racial trauma, using secondary analysis of interviews with Black participants who visited key historical sites from the transatlantic slave trade in Ghana, West Africa. I employed an integrative methodological framework rooted in Black epistemologies, including the methodology of surrender, the daughtering method, and the H.U.N.C.H. method. Findings illuminate how place-based, community-centered, and ancestrally grounded experiences can facilitate healing from intergenerational racial trauma. Study 2 examined how White participants perceive racial trauma, exploring how different levels...

Lean management of crisis response and post-pandemic outcomes in US primary care practices.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Primary care forms the basis for valued outcomes in health systems, including population health, high quality care, and reduced health expenditures. However, the primary care system in the United States (US) faces many difficulties, including financial pressures and clinician burnout that accelerated following the Covid-19 pandemic. This study examines the ability of primary care practices to adapt to post-pandemic challenges using a lean management system for quality and process improvement.

Methods

We used data from the National Survey of Healthcare Organizations and Systems II, a nationally representative sample of 1,245 physician practices located across the US. We first described the status of lean implementation among these primary care practices. We then conducted bivariate analyses followed by multivariate logistic regressions to examine relationships between lean implementation and outcomes of interest, including pandemic response activities,...

DC Link Capacitor Ripple Constraints Limit the Benefits of Utility-Owned Four-Wire Power Converters

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Utilities are increasingly interested in power con- verters to increase the headroom of their assets by actively controlling power flows on their network. In this work we demonstrate that thermal limits of dc link capacitors can result in substantially diminished benefits of these converters under unbalanced operation, due to constraints on neutral current and double-line frequency power ripple. Considering nine voltage source converter topologies with varying ripple capabilities, the upper bound (in terms of additional headroom released) increases by more than 80% compared to a no-ripple case for the application of phase current unbalance mitigation.

Wide-field optical eye models for emmetropic and myopic eyes.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ocular wavefront aberrations are used to describe retinal image formation in the study and modeling of foveal and peripheral visual functions and visual development. However, classical eye models generate aberration structures that generally do not resemble those of actual eyes, and simplifications such as rotationally symmetric and coaxial surfaces limit the usefulness of many modern eye models. Drawing on wide-field ocular wavefront aberrations measured previously by five laboratories, 28 emmetropic (-0.50 to +0.50 D) and 20 myopic (-1.50 to -4.50 D) individual optical eye models were reverse-engineered by optical design ray-tracing software. This involved an error function that manipulated 27 anatomical parameters, such as curvatures, asphericities, thicknesses, tilts, and translations-constrained within anatomical limits-to drive the output aberrations of each model to agree with the input (measured) aberrations. From those resultant anatomical parameters, three representative...

Incentive-Based Load Curtailment with Limited Information: A Bilevel Zeroth-Order Learning Approach

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Incentive-based load curtailment unlocks critical demand-side flexibility but is hindered by the limited knowledge of private user parameters and the inherent nonsmoothness of responses due to physical device constraints. We address this via a constrained bilevel optimization framework and propose the Bi-ZOL (Bilevel Zeroth-Order Learning) algorithm. Unlike conventional black-box methods, Bi-ZOL exploits the bilevel structure to decompose the hypergradient, integrating the exact analytical information of the SO’s objective with a zeroth-order estimate of the unknown response sensitivity. This structural decomposition-based learning method mathematically smoothes the nonsmooth response landscape and reduces hypergradient estimation error. We provide theoretical convergence guarantees to an approximate stationary point and demonstrate through simulations that Bi-ZOL achieves near-optimal performance.

Embedding Neural Surrogates into Established Dynamic Power System Simulators

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The evolving landscape of power systems is leading to larger and more complex systems. Future power systems comprise more diverse components, exhibit faster dynamics, and are, in general, less predictable. As a result, time-domain simulations are becoming increasingly necessary for both offline studies and real-time stability assessment. This evolution renders dynamic simulations computationally more demanding, calling for improved simulation speed. Although classical solvers are reliable, their computational performance is limited by the need for iterative solution schemes. We present a modular method that allows Neural Network (NN) based surrogates of any power system component to be embedded within the decoupled Newton iterations of a time-domain solver. A case study integrates Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) into a solver and demonstrates the general applicability of the proposed approach. The results reveal specific challenges regarding PINN accuracy but highlight...

Combining photoredox catalysis and hydrogen atom transfer for dearomative functionalization of electron rich heteroarenes.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Reductive dearomatization has been a broadly explored means for rapid generation of sp³ complexity from simple planar arenes. Breaking the electron rich, stable aromatic systems requires strong reduction conditions. It has been notoriously challenging to dearomatize electron even richer heteroarenes. Herein we report an umpolung strategy enabling dearomatization of such structures under mild conditions. The reversal of the reactivity of these electron rich aromatics via photoredox mediated single electron transfer (SET) oxidation generates electrophilic radical cations, which can react with nucleophiles and break the aromatic structure to form a Birch type radical species. A crucial hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) is successfully engineered into the process to efficiently trap the dearomatic radical and minimize the formation of the overwhelmingly favorable, irreversible aromatization products. Particularly, a non-canonical dearomative ring-cleavage of thiophene/furan...

Frontline Perspectives on Buprenorphine for the Management of Chronic Pain

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Due to the prevalence of chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain in the US, a significant percentage of the population is prescribed opioids for pain management. However, opioid use disorder is associated with reduced quality of life, along with fatal opioid overdoses, and is a significant burden on the US economy. Considering the clinical needs of patients with intractable chronic pain and the potential harms associated with prescribed and illicit opioids in our communities, having a deep understanding of current treatment options, supporting evidence, and clinical practice guidelines is essential for optimizing treatment selections. Buprenorphine is a Schedule III opioid with a unique mechanism of action, allowing effective and long-lasting analgesia at microgram doses with fewer negative side effects and adverse events, including respiratory depression, when compared with other immediate-release, long-acting, and extended-release prescription opioids. Due to its relatively...

Serial diasporas : how emigrating gulf noncitizens evolve into new diasporas

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Serial diasporas : how emigrating gulf noncitizens evolve into new diasporas

A standardized data specification for reproducible, verifiable structured light and multispectral image sets

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging (SFDI) is a quantitative wide-field imaging technique that uses light and diffuse optical spectroscopic principles to rapidly generate tissue optical property images. However, SFDI datasets present significant workflow challenges: they can be large (on the order of gigabytes), contain multiple image formats, and require computationally intensive processing. Additionally, SFDI images typically require calibration measurements, further complicating data organization. The proliferation of calibration data, imaging data, and processing options creates technical overhead and leads to reproducibility issues. While multiple "Open SFDI"initiatives exist, no standardized storage format has emerged, making the replication of published SFDI research difficult. Commercial solutions like Modulim's directory-based format contain trade secrets and lack open-source processing options. We are developing an open standard for SFDI images, extensible to multispectral...

Disentangling Disparity: Exploring Racially Disparate Effect and Treatment in Capital Charging

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One hundred and thirty years ago, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially discriminatory enforcement of facially-neutral laws violated defendants ' equal protection rights. Since then, a voluminous body of research has documented persistent and unjustified racial disparities in charging and sentencing. Yet not a single claimant has prevailed in a race-based discriminatory prosecution action in federal court since Yick Wo. This seeming conflict-widespread evidence of racial discrimination coupled with claimants' inability to satisfy the Courts' evidentiary thresholds to prevail on the discriminatory prosecution claim can be attributed to deep disagreements among the Supreme Court Justices over a uniform and workable evidentiary standard for social scientific evidence of discrimination. Although the Court has increasingly signaled its willingness to rely. on statistical evidence to demonstrate racial discrimination, the majority of Justices have simultaneously...

Writing Music to Fit: The Place of Music in South Korean Ch'angjak Musicals

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This dissertation examines how the secondary position of music to drama in South Korean ch'angjak musicals (창작뮤지컬, originally created musical theater) has been historically and structurally established. Integrating archival research, score analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Taehangno theater district of Seoul, it argues that the genre's production mechanisms, its development processes, the curricula that train its practitioners, and the conventions of its criticism and audience feedback are all organized with dramatic considerations taking priority.The musicians in ch'angjak musicals often experience frustration at this secondary position, and at having musical judgments that diverge from those around them. This dissertation, however, does not read this as a musical deficiency of the genre. Rather, it demonstrates that the resulting sound reflects a negotiation among differently formed musicalities—that of the music team, shaped by musical training, and that of the writers,...

Semiconductor Yield Assessment: An Integrated Modelling of Defect Limited and Parametric-Shift Limited Yield Mechanisms

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Semiconductor industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and Semiconductor Yield is a fundamental factor driving device cost. Development cost, time-to-market & yield are the most important factors of interest to the industry. Two major components are associated with Semiconductor Yield: 1. Defect Limited Yield 2. Parametric-Shift limited Yield. Parametric Yield is influenced by process variations for a given design and process node.Several models from literature which predict Defect-Limited yield based on primarily two parameters: Defect Density and Area of the Die. A “yield calculator” is developed that incorporates all Defect-limited models and allows the user to compare yield estimates among multiple models, or inversely estimate Defect Density, and calculate model parameters based on Foundry-provided Defect Density values and Wafer Sort (WS) test yield data. The methodology also includes a Bayesian formulation for aggregating yield estimates from various models in...

Multiwavelength Modeling of the Blazar 1ES 0647+250 and the Impact of Cosmic Voids on the High-Energy Detection of Active Galactic Nuclei

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Multiwavelength spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are affected by intrinsic AGN emission mechanisms fueled by the source environment and cosmic propagation along our line of sight (LoS), neither of which is fully understood. This thesis explores the former through multiwavelength data analysis and modeling of a particular blazar using a synchrotron-self-Compton model, and the latter specifically LoS effects due to photon-induced electromagnetic cascades developing in and out of cosmic voids through simulations of energetic (E> 100 MeV) photon propagation over cosmological distances.Three very high-energy (E > 100 GeV) states of the distant (20.45±0.10) blazar 1ES 0647+250 observed by the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System are identified, and the emission zone is modeled using a leptonic synchrotron-self-Compton and blob-in-jet framework. It is found that one of the simplest scenarios that can describe the multiwavelength properties of the three...

Health and Health Care Access Among Afghan Refugee Women in the United States

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Importance: Afghans are one of the world's largest refugee populations. Afghan women face compounded health risks due to sociocultural restrictions, low literacy, forced displacement, and limited health care access, yet little is known about their experiences with health care after resettlement in the US. Objective: To explore health and health care access issues of Afghan refugee women in the US. Design, Setting, and Participants: This qualitative study was part of an ongoing community-based participatory research project started in July 2020. Bilingual investigators conducted semistructured interviews with Afghan refugee women in Dari or English. Dari interviews were interpreted to English by a fluent bilingual investigator, validated by a separate bilingual investigator, and then reviewed with an Afghan immigrant community member for accuracy. Transcribed interviews were analyzed using grounded theory from July 2023 to July 2024. Participants who self-identified as Afghan,...

Multimodal Therapies for the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain: The Role of Lidocaine Patches in Combination Therapy: A Narrative Review

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Neuropathic pain (NP) has a population presence of up to 10%. Both systemic agents and topical agents are recommended as first-line therapy for the treatment of NP but monotherapy provides adequate pain relief only in < 50% of the cases. This has created the need for multimodal combination therapy, a practice that is becoming more common. Combination therapy with multiple systemic agents has a risk for drug–drug interactions and adverse events (AEs), while add-on therapy with a topical agent such as lidocaine patches minimizes such risks. The focus of this review was to find if there is evidence from trials that combination therapy of the topical lidocaine patches with systemic agents will have better efficacy and/or less risk of AEs than the combination of two systemic agents. Since gabapentinoids are one of the most common systemic agents used in first-line NP therapy, the objective of this review was to summarize the safety and efficacy data and evaluate the benefit–risk...

Modeling Joint Optimal Transmission Switching and Bus Splitting via Reduced Bus–Branch and Bus–Breaker Representations

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Transmission network reconfiguration is essential for congestion management, yet substation reconfiguration (bus splitting) is often overlooked due to its modeling complexity. This paper proposes a unified framework to jointly optimize line switching and bus splitting. To maintain computational tractabil- ity, we employ two complementary representations: a bus-branch representation that models bus splitting as a line outage and power transfer; and a more detailed bus-breaker representa- tion that captures flexibility from substation reconfigurations beyond the bus-branch representation. We demonstrate that the bus-branch optimal solutions effectively guide the modeling of branch-to-busbar assignment policies of the bus-breaker repre- sentation, further enhancing performance under high loading levels with tight switching budgets. Numerical experiments on IEEE test systems confirm that this joint approach provides significant flexibility compared to line switching alone.

Genome-wide alignment-free phylogenetic distance estimation under a no strand-bias model.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

While alignment has been the dominant approach for determining homology prior to phylogenetic inference, alignment-free methods can simplify the analysis, especially when analyzing genome-wide data. Furthermore, alignment-free methods present the only option for emerging forms of data, such as genome skims, which do not permit assembly. Despite the appeal, alignment-free methods have not been competitive with alignment-based methods in terms of accuracy. One limitation of alignment-free methods is their reliance on simplified models of sequence evolution such as Jukes-Cantor. If we can estimate frequencies of base substitutions in an alignment-free setting, we can compute pairwise distances under more complex models. However, since the strand of DNA sequences is unknown for many forms of genome-wide data, which arguably present the best use case for alignment-free methods, the most complex models that one can use are the so-called no strand-bias models. We show how to calculate...

Evaluation of LLVM Flang for Production HPC Applications and Modern Fortran Features

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In 2025, LLVM released its first Flang Fortran compiler version considered ready for widespread evaluation. We know of no published assessment of Flang compiling a workload- derived portfolio of high-performance computing (HPC) applications. We address this gap using workload data from the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), which supports more than 10,000 scientists on approximately 1,000 projects. The NERSC workload analyses identify many Fortran components in heavily used applications. We selected 10 such packages with available source code. We compiled them with Flang 22.1.3 on NERSC’s Perlmutter system. Six compiled without code modifications, though some required build-system changes. Three compiled after minor source edits, mostly to address Fortran standard violations. One built only without OpenMP enabled. We evaluated seven additional packages selected for their use of, or enablement of, standard Fortran parallel features: multi-image execution...

Circularly Symmetric Disks Whose Transport Twistor Spaces Admit Global Blow-Down Maps

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the literature on X-ray transform and Transport Twistor (TT) space, blow-down maps describe the degeneracy of the TT space of an oriented Riemannian surface, while collapsing (yet separating) geodesics of the unit tangent bundle of that surface. In the literature [3], such maps have been constructed for simple surfaces of near-constant curvature (see Definition 1.1), showing that the interior of their TT space is biholomorphic to an open set in standard C 2 . The construction there relied on a microlocal argument leveraging the absence of conjugate points.In this dissertation, we construct explicit circularly symmetric examples, including examples with conjugate points, whose transport twistor spaces admit a global blow-down map.

Admittance Matrix Concentration Inequalities for Understanding Uncertain Power Networks

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents conservative probabilistic bounds for the spectrum of the admittance matrix and classical linear power flow models under uncertain network parameters; for example, probabilistic line contingencies. Our proposed approach imports tools from probability theory, such as concentration inequalities for random matrices. This provides a theoretical framework for understanding error bounds of common ap- proximations of the AC power flow equations under parameter uncertainty, including the DC and LinDistFlow approximations. Additionally, we show that the upper bounds scale as functions of nodal criticality. This network-theoretic quantity captures how uncertainty concentrates at critical nodes for use in contingency analysis. We validate these bounds on IEEE test networks, demonstrating that they correctly capture the scaling behavior of spectral perturbations up to conservative constants.

Base-level lowering rates control a landslide process transition in California's Franciscan mélange

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

California’s Franciscan mélange is well-known for hosting persistent, slow-moving earthflows, a landslide style favored by the unit’s significant local variability in shear strength (e.g. Medley, 2001; Kim et al., 2004; Roering et al., 2015). Big Sur’s mélange, however, is unusual: landslide mapping there reveals both recent (e.g. the 2017 Mud Creek landslide) and prehistoric rotational landslides on slopes that are unusually steep for this lithology. Because rotational landslides and earthflows pose markedly different hazards, understanding what drives the shift in failure style is critical for hazard assessment. Here we test the hypothesis that the rate of base-level lowering governs the transition between earthflow and rotational failure. We synthesize landslide mapping and analysis of high-resolution topography across two Franciscan mélange settings with contrasting rates of base-level lowering: the South Fork Eel River canyon, where river incision drives base-level lowering...

Complex Event Detection in Dynamic Distributed Sensing Systems

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Actions and decisions in physical environments often depend on detecting patterns of interest, known as complex events. In distributed sensing systems, complex event detection may require combining unstructured sensor data with structured measurements and inferences produced by sensing and recognition models. Complex events may unfold from seconds to weeks and across spatial scales ranging from a single room to an entire city.Existing systems commonly assume that relevant operations, output representations, and execution plans have been selected in advance. However, observations may support competing explanations, sensor streams may expose more information than an application requires, and needed evidence and computation may change as an event progresses. This dissertation argues that distributed sensing systems should use the event and its application context to revise which events remain plausible, determine what information may be disclosed, and adapt sensing and computation...

Performance Evaluation of a Commercially Available Desiccant-Based Seed Drying System

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Highlights Desiccant-based convective drying systems can remove moisture from agricultural commodities. More than 85% of FlexiDry system’s energy consumption was used for desiccant regeneration. Desiccant regeneration provides an opportunity to switch from natural gas or propane combustion to electricity. Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced in desiccant drying systems by the increased use of renewable electricity. Abstract . FlexiDry® is a commercially available desiccant-based drying system designed to reduce seed moisture content and promote...

Civil Rights Deserts

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Although the current Administration’s threats to rule of law and accountability are jaw dropping, they are not novel. Across the country, there are—and have long been—jurisdictions and institutional settings extraordinarily inhospitable to the protection of constitutional rights. In this Essay, we call these places “civil rights deserts,” and suggest that they can take two forms. “Accountability deserts” arise when legal, political, and social conditions prevent misconduct from being exposed or litigated. For example, in Rankin County, Mississippi, a sheriff’s “Goon Squad” allegedly engaged in decades of torture and abuse that remained largely unchallenged because of fear of retaliation, a weak civil-rights bar, and institutional impunity. “Enforcement deserts” exist when rights violations are recognized and judicial relief is obtained, but local actors resist court-ordered reforms. In Hinds County, next door to Rankin, federal courts and the Department of Justice...

Genomic Conflicts Across Evolutionary Scales

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Genomic conflict arises when genetic elements increase their own proliferation despite imposing costs on their hosts. This dissertation examines how these conflicts emerge, persist, and reshape genomes across evolutionary timescales through three studies integrating gamete sequencing, comparative transcriptomics, long-read isoform sequencing, and population genomics. First, I investigated pollen-acting segregation distortion in crosses within and between Arabidopsis lyrata and A. halleri populations. Distortion was absent from crosses between closely related parents but widespread and variable in more divergent crosses, including crosses within species. Repeated, opposing distortions across chromosomes and genome-wide non-independence among loci were more consistent with negative epistatic incompatibilities than with independent single-locus drivers, demonstrating that reproductive barriers can arise early during population divergence. Second, I examined transcript processing...

Investigation of genetic & environmental factors for glycemic status: a family-based study

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Prediabetes is a chronic metabolic condition characterized by impaired glucose regulation and represents an early stage in the progression toward type 2 diabetes. Both genetic susceptibility and lifestyle factors – including diet, physical activity, and smoking – contribute to abnormal glycemia. Although type 2 diabetes has been extensively studied, less is known about the genetic and environmental determinants of prediabetes. Importantly, prediabetes presents a critical window for intervention, as maintenance or reversion to normal glycemia remains possible. This study investigates whether prediabetes has distinct genetic determinants compared to type 2 diabetes and whether smoking modifies these associations, providing opportunities to identify individuals at risk earlier in disease development. Multinomial (polytomous) regression models evaluated genetic associations for 22 candidate SNPs with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, as well as SNP-smoking interactions, using the multi-ethnic...

Founding the Pain Medicine Academy of Advanced Practice Providers

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Founding the Pain Medicine Academy of Advanced Practice Providers

Topical analgesics for neuropathic pain: an evidence-informed guide for the practicing clinician

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate available evidence for the efficacy and safety of topical analgesics for neuropathic pain and to offer treatment guidance. METHODS: An expert panel searched PubMed (Medline) and reference lists of published articles for available literature assessing 8 categories of topical analgesics used to treat various neuropathic pain conditions. The panel rated the level of analgesic efficacy evidence for each treatment and considered safety, ease of use, and cost. The degree of consensus on the recommendations among the panelists was measured. RESULTS: There was strong evidence and high consensus that capsaicin 8% is effective for diabetic peripheral neuropathy and postherpetic neuralgia and that lidocaine is effective for postherpetic neuralgia. There was strong evidence and moderate consensus that capsaicin 8% could be effective for HIV-induced neuropathy. There was moderate evidence and high consensus that lidocaine is likely effective for diabetic peripheral neuropathy,...

Climate-Change Based Analysis of the Water-Food-Energy Nexus with System-Dynamics

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Numerous countries face water crises due to population growth, shifting climatic patterns, limited water resources, rapid industrialization, societal changes, and poor resource governance, which pose challenges to the supply of water, food, and energy. This study develops a Water–Food–Energy Nexus (WFE) model using the System Dynamics (SD) approach to capture the complex interactions among domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors while incorporating environmental protection policies. The proposed model is developed and applied to assess the water crisis in the Zayandeh-Roud River basin, which plays a strategic role in ensuring water, energy, and food security in central Iran. Climate change alters hydroclimatic patterns and directly and indirectly affects the subsystems of the water–food–energy nexus. Precipitation and temperature outputs from three Atmosphere–Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs), obtained from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment...

Expert-Guided Integration of Raman Spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffraction, and Machine Learning for Mineralogical Interpretation of Mars-Relevant Materials

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Planetary exploration requires extracting physically meaningful information from incomplete measurements acquired under environmental, instrumental, and operational constraints. This dissertation integrates Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), mineral physics, and computational analysis to expand the information recoverable from measurements of Mars-relevant materials. Raman spectroscopy provides the central connection among these studies because its vibrational frequencies, intensities, and spectral shapes encode not only mineral identity, but also bonding, hydration, crystallinity, temperature, structural disorder, and crystallographic orientation. Three studies progressively examine mineral phase identification, mineral physical state, and how it is crystallographically organized. A convolutional neural network trained using high-volume, wide within-class Raman datasets and demonstrated robust mineral classification under dusty, low-signal, and otherwise nonideal conditions...

Transnational Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Utilization Among Asian Immigrant Women in the United States: A Mixed-Methods Study

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

BackgroundImmigrant women in the United States experience persistent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) disparities due to barriers, including immigration-related policies, insurance exclusions, and limited access to language and cultural concordant healthcare. Women navigate these barriers through transnational healthcare, obtaining care in their countries of origin while residing in the United States. Existing research has focused on general healthcare among Latino populations. Little is known about transnational SRH care among Asian immigrant women, including healthcare decisions across borders, patterns of transnational SRH utilization, services obtained, and reasons for transnational care-seeking.AimsThis dissertation examined transnational SRH care among Asian immigrant women in the United States by exploring: (1) decision-making processes surrounding transnational SRH care, (2) patterns and correlates of transnational SRH utilization, and (3) the types of services obtained,...

A single survey instrument reliably measures safety culture across 117 US primary and specialty care veterinary clinics.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Objective

To validate an adapted version of the Nottingham Veterinary Safety Culture Survey in US private practice veterinary hospitals, encompassing primary and specialty care settings, and to characterize differences in safety culture perceptions among veterinary care worker populations.

Methods

A prospective cross-sectional safety culture survey was conducted between October 4 and November 24, 2023. Veterinary care workers of 123 VCA hospitals were invited to participate. The survey included 27 adapted statements from the original instrument. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses evaluated model performance.

Results

Responses were received from veterinary technicians or assistants (461 of 702 [65.7%]), other support staff (150 of 702 [21.4%]), and veterinarians (91 of 702 [13.0%]). Responses were received from primary care (502 [71.51%]), specialty care (137 [19.52%]), and hybrid hospitals (63 [8.97%]). Results of the confirmatory factor analysis...

Cerebellar Dysfunction in Schizophrenia- and Autism-Associated Copy Number Variants

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Clinically defined neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are behaviorally and etiologically heterogeneous, limiting the ability of diagnosis-first approaches to identify their underlying neurobiological mechanisms. Copy number variants (CNVs) at the 22q11.2 locus offer a genetics-first model for identifying convergent and divergent neurobiological pathways contributing to risk. Reciprocal deletions (22qDel) and duplications (22qDup) of the same 22q11.2 genomic segment provide a genetics-first model of gene-dosage effects, with 22qDel conferring markedly elevated schizophrenia risk, while 22qDup is associated with substantially lower risk, potentially protective relative to the general population. Both CNVs, however, converge in conferring elevated risk for ASD and intellectual disability. Although cortical and subcortical systems have been relatively well studied in 22q11.2 CNVs, the cerebellum, long regarded...

SORh: Hyperbolic Relaxation Methods For Elliptic Problems In Computational Fluid Dynamics

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This thesis investigates iterative methods for solving elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), with particular emphasis on self-gravity modeled by Poisson’s equation. Available solution strategies—including direct factorizations, FFT-based methods, multigrid, and classical relaxation schemes—offer different balances among computational cost, scalability, implementation complexity, and adaptability to changing boundaries and mesh structures. In this work, we examine how hyperbolic pseudo-time dynamics can be used to balance these considerations while providing a simple, local route to an elliptic steady state.To explore this question, we develop SORh, a relaxation framework derived from a hyperbolic pseudo-time reformulation of elliptic equations. Its linear discretization belongs to the established accelerated over-relaxation (AOR) family and reduces exactly to classical successive over-relaxation (SOR) at unit CFL. The derivation...

A Hybrid Mean Field Framework for Aggregators Participating in Wholesale Electricity Markets

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The rapid growth of distributed energy resources (DERs) is reshaping wholesale electricity markets, where aggre- gators coordinate large populations of prosumers, end users who own DERs and can both consume and produce electricity, to participate at scale. Existing models typically either optimize a single aggregator under exogenous prices or analyze a small number of strategic agents; neither captures the scale, structure, and price feedback that arise when large DER populations interact through wholesale market clearing. We address this gap with a hybrid mean field framework in which each aggregator coordinates a large prosumer population through its infinite agent limit, while a finite number of aggrega- tors participate in wholesale markets. Each aggregator maximizes the collective payoff of its prosumers, a cooperative structure rep- resented by mean field control. Across aggregators, interactions are non-cooperative; as a starting point, we model aggregators as non-strategic,...

Rhetorics of Counternationalism: The Limitations of Digital Anti‐Hindutva in Combating Right‐Wing Extremism

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ABSTRACT How are online discourses in subissues within counternationalist movements constructed? This study better understands what comprises digital counternationalist dissent against right‐wing nationalism, finding that right‐wing nationalism's success can also be explained through limitations in counternationalist discourse. In this project, three coders analysed dissent against India's right‐wing nationalism, Hindutva, parsing anti‐Hindutva into different themes for comparative study with a focus on discourse's diagnosis, rhetorical strategies (motivation) and action calls (prognosis). We qualitatively analysed 596 subsampled tweets regarding Kashmir (national security and human rights) and Hindi imposition (manifestly nonreligious and cultural) and provide exploratory insights regarding popular culture politics (91.11% intercoder reliability). The findings show that most discourse is limited to diagnosis but differs across themes based on material and affective impact, geographic...

Naloxegol (Movantik®) Provides Rapid and Sustained Improvement of Opioid-Induced Constipation Symptoms Irrespective of Opioid Dose

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Aim Naloxegol (Movantik), an oral peripherally acting mu-opioid receptor antagonist has demonstrated rapid relief of opioid-induced constipation (OIC) in patients with chronic non-cancer pain in two phase 3 trials (KODIAC 4/5; NCT01309841/NCT01323790). This analysis aims to characterize the OIC symptom burden and evaluate the efficacy of naloxegol in treating symptoms of OIC based on daily opioid dosages. This is the first naloxegol analysis based on a lower opioid dose cutoff of 100 MEU/day. Methods Data were pooled from the KODIAC 4/5 intent-to-treat populations (N=1337). Subjects treated with placebo (PBO) and naloxegol (12.5mg, 25mg) QD were evaluated based on opioid dose ranges (lower dose, ≤100mg; higher dose, >100mg MEU/day). OIC symptoms assessed include number of spontaneous bowel movements (SBM/wk), complete evacuation (CSBM), straining (scale 1=not at all, 5=extreme) and stool consistency (Bristol Stool Scale: 1=hard, 7=watery). Results Baseline OIC symptom burden...

Essays in Development and Environmental Economics

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This dissertation examines how public policy and infrastructure shape environmental quality, local economic activity, governance, and health. Across three chapters, it combines spatial data, village-level survey evidence, and quasi-experimental research designs to study the effects of environmental and infrastructure policies in Indonesia and India. The first chapter studies the environmental consequences of China’s 2018 National Sword policy, which restricted waste imports and redirected large volumes of plastic waste toward Southeast Asia. Global plastic waste generation has increased significantly over the past two decades, while recycling rates have remained low, and high-income countries continue to export low-quality waste to countries with limited processing capacity. Using spatial and temporal variation in exposure to waste pollution, this chapter estimates the causal effect of increased plastic inflows on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) across Indonesia. The analysis...

Energy Modeling for LLM Inference without Per-Workload Profiling

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Predicting energy for graphics processing units before a large language model workload is deployed requires both its active duration and the activity generated while it runs. This work develops an interpretable energy model for inference on NVIDIA A100 graphics processing units. It separates static energy, which is proportional to active time, from dynamic energy, whose compute term scales with issued floating-point operations and whose memory terms scale with bytes transferred at shared memory, the level-two cache, and high-bandwidth memory. A memory-level count denotes bytes crossing that level's interface with the level beneath it; loads and stores therefore use the same per-byte coefficient. Published microbenchmarks of graphics processors supply compute, memory, latency, bandwidth, and event-energy parameters, limiting local profiling to idle static power and one fixed timing overhead rather than fitting workload-specific energy curves. For inference distributed across...

Structural Misalignment in Financial Transmission Rights

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Financial Transmission Rights (FTRs) enable elec- tricity market participants to hedge congestion risk in Day Ahead Market (DAM) operations, but for the market to be solvent, Independent System Operators (ISOs) must ensure that FTR payouts do not exceed the collected DAM merchandising surplus that funds them. We show that FTR underfunding (or conversely, hedging efficiency) can arise structurally from misalignment between the network models used in the FTR auction and the DAM, independent of bidding behavior. We develop a geometric framework in which both DAM mer- chandising surplus and the maximum supportable FTR payout are expressed as support functions of network-feasible injection polytopes. The resulting dual representation assigns nonneg- ative weights to transmission element-contingency constraints, enabling constraint-level attribution of model misalignment. Using this framework, we derive sharp implications for canon- ical FTR network modeling choices like uniform...

Advanced Electrode Design for High-Rate Alkaline Water Splitting

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Electrochemical water splitting provides promising technology for green hydrogen production. Among different electrolysis technologies, alkaline water splitting is attractive because it can use earth-abundant electrode materials and relatively low-cost materials. However, efficient operation at industrially relevant current densities remains challenging due to gas bubble accumulation, ion-transport resistance, sluggish anodic kinetics. These limitations become more severe under high-rate conditions, where rapid gas generation and fast ionic consumption can reduce electrode-electrolyte contact and increase the overall cell voltage.This dissertation focuses on advanced electrode design and interfacial engineering strategies to address these challenges. First, nickel nanocone-modified surfaces were developed to improve gas bubble detachment. The nanocone structures created a superaerophobic interface, leading to shorter bubble residence times and smaller bubble detachment sizes during...

Race, Place, and Capital Charging in Georgia

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court has identified three types of constitutionally impermissible errors in the administration of capital punishment: arbitrariness, discrimination, and disproportionality. In this essay, I describe an empirically-anchored analytical framework for defining, identifying, and measuring these concepts. I then illustrate the usefulness of the framework by examining prosecutors' death penalty charging decisions in Georgia over an eight-year period. The results strongly suggest that prosecutorial decision-making in Georgia continues to be plagued by the very errors that led the Court to invalidate Georgia's capital punishment system forty years ago.

Energy storage resource adequacy contributions considering state of charge deviations

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Resource adequacy (RA) studies commonly repre- sent energy storage via economic dispatch, with the real-time state of charge (SOC) of storage units implicitly assumed to follow a predetermined schedule until scarcity conditions arise. This paper explores the implications of this assumption, by documenting how downward deviations in energy storage SOC in real-time operations affect reliability outcomes. Applying a probabilistic RA model to an ERCOT-like system with 5 GW of energy storage, we quantify the sensitivity of normalized expected unserved energy (NEUE) and marginal effective load carrying capability (ELCC) to SOC deviations across two-, four-, and eight-hour storage durations. We find that a downward SOC adjustment equal to 25% of maximum storage energy capacity increases system NEUE by a factor of 1.6–2.3 and reduces the marginal storage ELCC by 11–13 percentage points, both of which represent significant differences compared to reference cases. Metrics for shorter-duration...

Geospatial Optimization of California's Organic Waste Diversion System: Transportation, Compliance, and Infrastructure Planning

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Organic materials decomposing in landfills generate methane, making landfills a major anthropogenic methane source in the United States. Methane has a warming effect approximately 86 times greater than carbon dioxide on a per-mass basis over a 20-year horizon. California has responded with Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383), which requires a 75% reduction in organic waste disposal relative to 2014 levels. Composting is a major pathway for achieving this goal while producing a soil amendment that can improve soil properties and promote soil carbon storage. Yet California’s existing composting system processes only about 6.5 million metric tons (MMT) of organic material annually, compared with approximately 14.3 MMT that must be diverted, creating substantial spatial, regulatory, and infrastructure challenges.This dissertation develops statewide geospatial optimization frameworks integrating 447 waste-generating jurisdictions, approximately 200 existing composting facilities, more than...

Coronavirus Disease 2019 is an Occupational Disease for Teachers: How to Support the Teacher Workforce.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Analyzing a growing body of epidemiological research that considers coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as an occupational disease situates teaching (eg, pre-kindergarten, elementary, secondary) among the more vulnerable occupations. Teachers have experienced a higher risk of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, death, and Long COVID than people from many other occupations. More research attending to occupational patterns and risk mitigation is needed. Taking an occupational epidemiology approach for teachers can inform a wide array of policy solutions, including school environment improvements that can support infection control, like air cleaning and ventilation, as well as supporting teachers experiencing disproportionate burdens of COVID-19, including those living with Long COVID.

Characterization of Spirometric Response to Standard-of-care Treatment in Lung Allograft Recipients With Bronchiolitis Obliterans and the Utility of Spirometric Criteria for Rescue Therapy: Implications for the Design of Risk-stratified Clinical Trials

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

BACKGROUND: The spirometric response to standard-of-care (SOC) immunosuppressive therapy for the management of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS) has been sparsely reported in the literature. Data from a Medicare-approved Registry were analyzed to characterize the effectiveness/durability of a wide range of SOC interventions to manage the decline of lung function and to validate the study spirometric criteria for initiation of rescue therapy. METHODS: Lung transplant recipients with refractory BOS at 21 US collaborating centers were enrolled in the Registry. Data included both nonspirometric (eg, demographic, Immunosuppressive Regimens for management of BOS) and spirometric parameters (ie, forced expiratory volume in 1 s [FEV 1 ] measurements and derived indices). The utility of study FEV 1 criteria for treatment (ie, statistically significant rate of FEV 1 decline >30 mL/mo) was evaluated by comparing the spirometric course between participants who met or did not meet...

A tuberculosis school outbreak in China, 2018: reaching an often overlooked adolescent population.

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Adolescents have been largely neglected from tuberculosis control efforts. In low- to medium burden settings much of the tuberculosis burden in this age group occurs from school outbreaks. We report on a large tuberculosis outbreak in adolescents from a boarding high school in Jiangsu Province, China. From March to June 2018, a tuberculosis outbreak occurred in a boarding high school. We conducted an outbreak investigation involving clinical diagnostic tests and molecular analysis to determine the outbreak origin. Cases were detected through symptom screening, tuberculin skin testing (TST), chest radiography, sputum smear, solid sputum culture and GeneXpert MTB/RIF. Mycobacterial interspersed repetitive-unit-variable-number tandem-repeat (MIRU-VNTR) genotyping and spoligotyping methods were performed on Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) isolates to identify the outbreak origin. A total of 845 students and 131 teachers/staff attended a TST screening for tuberculosis...

Decentralized Stability Certificates in IBR-Dominated Grids: The Role of the Network State

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Small-signal instabilities, such as unforced sub- synchronous oscillations (SSOs), are increasingly observed in inverter-based resource (IBR) dominated grids. While decentral- ized stability certificates offer a scalable means to avoid instability onset, they are typically derived under restrictive network-state assumptions–such as small angle differences or negligible voltage drops–that cannot capture how departures from these conditions affect system stability. In this paper, we develop a network model and a decentralized analysis framework that explicitly characterizes how reactive power mismatches, line loading, and inverter control parameters jointly determine small-signal stability. We show that increased steady-state reactive power mismatches and line loading lead to more stringent conditions on admissible inverter droop gains. These results make decentralized stability certificates explicitly network-state dependent, showing how network stress shrinks the set of stabilizing...

Does Victimization Reduce Self-Control? A Longitudinal Analysis

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose: To examine the effect of victimization on self-control.

Method: Five waves of data from the GREAT survey are analyzed; the effect of prior victimization on subsequent self-control is estimated using the dynamic panel generalized-method of moments.

Results: Victimization reduces subsequent self-control in the near term.

Conclusions: The findings point to another source of low self-control, help to explain why prior victimization is linked to subsequent victimization, and provide support for general strain theory – which predicts that strains such as victimization will reduce self-control.

Zero-Shot Transfer Learning Across Reconfigurations for Three-Phase Unbalanced Power Distribution Systems

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Distribution utilities increasingly rely on data-driven methods for state estimation and forecasting as large-scale renewable energy integration causes rapid state changes, yet most learning-based approaches remain tied to specific feeder topologies and require retraining when networks are reconfig- ured. In practice, retraining models for every feeder and opera- tional configuration is infeasible due to limited data availability, modeling effort, and computational costs. This paper presents a physics-aware graph learning framework for three-phase un- balanced distribution networks that enables zero-shot transfer across unseen feeder reconfigurations, with potential extension to feeders sharing similar electrical and topological statistics. By combining scalar-weight graph convolutions grounded in power flow physics with adaptive graph pooling, the proposed model learns topology-invariant representations while accommodating variable network sizes. Case studies on the IEEE 123-bus...

Report on the Replication of Shinn & Blumstein (1984)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This study examines how American English listeners use two temporal parameters, amplitude rise time (ART) and transition duration (TD), to diagnose consonant manner, replicating previous work on the /b/-/w/ contrast (Shinn & Blumstein, 1984). A tripartite free response pattern is found, replicating stop and approximant responses at fast-ART, fast-TD, and slow-ART, slow-TD regions of the stimulus space, respectively, and replicating critical fricative responses in the slow-ART, fast-TD region of the stimulus space. This confirms that listeners do not require frication to report hearing fricatives. However, likely due to changes in synthesis parameters, we fail to replicate the original categorization responses, and find approximant responses in the fast-ART, slow-TD region of the stimulus space, akin to the results of Walsh & Diehl (1991), where the original experiment finds stop responses. Taken together, these results present a complex –if early– picture about the role...

Shrinking the Accountability Deficit in Capital Charging

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The price of capital trials, appeals, and clemency proceedings have skyrocketed since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its moratorium on the death penalty, but this has not translated to more reliable case outcomes—the rate of serious reversible error and wrongful convictions has steadily increased during the same time period. The overly aggressive use of the death penalty by prosecutors has not only been convincingly linked to these high reversal rates, but may also increase crime, decrease the likelihood of arrests for homicides, and lead to heightened risks of miscarriages of justice for non‐capital defendants. It follows that limiting hawkish prosecutorial decision‐making in potentially capital cases may be particularly effective in reducing the prevalence of error and reducing unnecessary expense. Curbing the virtually unfettered discretion of prosecutors is not a new idea, but extant proposals tend to suffer from shortcomings that are likely to render them impractical or ineffective....