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The correlation between the mean transverse momentum, [p T], and the squared anisotropic flow, vn2, on an event-by-event basis has been suggested to be influenced by the initial conditions in heavy-ion collisions. We present measurements of the variances and covariance of [p T] and vn2, along with their dimensionless ratio, for Au+Au collisions at various beam energies: sNN = 14.6, 19.6, 27, 54.4, and 200 GeV. Our measurements reveal a distinct energy-dependent behavior in the variances and covariances. In addition, the dimensionless ratio displays a similar behavior across different beam energies. We compare our measurements with hydrodynamic models and similar measurements from Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These findings provide valuable insights into the beam energy dependence of the specific shear viscosity (η / s) and initial-state effects, allowing for differentiating between different initial-state models. © 2026 The Authors.

Traditional physical biometrics - such as fingerprints, facial recognition, and iris scans - have long been utilized for user identification in areas like border control, military operations, law enforcement, and public safety. However, the rise of smartphone technology has introduced new avenues for security research. One emerging area is behavioral biometrics, particularly the use of touchscreen interaction data as a more accessible and user-friendly identification method. In this context, our study focuses on a novel form of touchscreen input: capacitive swipe gestures for user identification. We compiled a comprehensive dataset of capacitive swipe gestures collected over multiple sessions from 30 participants. To evaluate this modality, we conducted thorough experiments using established machine learning algorithms, including Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, and XGBoost. Additionally, we developed a new preprocessing algorithm tailored for capacitive swipe data. Our findings reveal that this algorithm significantly enhances identification performance compared to existing methods. Overall, our results highlight the strong potential of capacitive swipe gestures as a viable biometric modality for user identification. © 2025 IEEE.

Philosophers have long speculated that individual differences in temperament influence philosophical thinking, yet empirical research has rarely explored the role of neurodivergent traits in this domain. In this large online study (N = 1,254), we investigated whether participants with training in philosophy differ from the general population when it comes to six psychological traits–autism, ADHD, aphantasia, anendophasia, anauralia, and representational manipulation–and also whether these traits correlate with responses to two widely studied philosophical thought experiments: the “trolley problem” and the “rollback deterministic universe.” Compared to the general population, participants with training in philosophy had higher scores on measures of ADHD, internal verbalization, and representational manipulation, but lower scores on measures of visual imagery. These cognitive traits were also correlated with participants’ moral and metaphysical judgments (independent of their level of philosophical training)–e.g. participants who scored higher in visualization were less likely to judge that hitting the switch in the trolley problem is permissible but not obligatory, and also less likely to attribute free will and moral responsibility to agents in the rollback universe. Finally, we employed machine learning to develop predictive models that classify a randomly selected participant as either a philosopher or a non-philosopher. Models trained solely on responses to measures for neurodivergent traits achieved better performance than models trained solely on responses to philosophical thought experiments. This suggests that stable, trait-level neurodivergent characteristics may be more diagnostic of philosophical interest, aptitude, or training than judgments philosophers make on domain-relevant problems. © 2026 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Learn to make friends and stop scaring people away with this clever book inspired by the hit manga Komi Can’t Communicate.Do you find it hard to sp...

Abelisauridae were medium to large-bodied carnivorous dinosaurs with short, ornamented skulls, poorly recurved ziphodont teeth, and reduced forelimbs. They were the dominant terrestrial carnivores in many Gondwanan ecosystems during the Cretaceous. Their Jurassic origin, primarily based on the putative abelisaurid Eoabelisaurus from the Early Jurassic of Patagonia, remains debated, with many authors considering Abelisauridae as a strictly Cretaceous theropod radiation. Here, we describe several historically and stratigraphically important isolated theropod teeth from Gondwana, identified as belonging to abelisaurids using new cladistic and machine learning methods. Dental evolution in Abelisauridae was additionally explored using an updated version of a dentition-based data matrix focused on ceratosaurs. Results of this study show that the evolution of the dentition in abelisaurids was marked by a decrease in size of the mesialmost dentary teeth and the displacement of the tallest crowns towards the middle part of the maxilla. Two isolated abelisaurid teeth from the Late Cretaceous of India and Patagonia were also identified as the earliest published record of a non-avian theropod in Asia and an abelisaurid in Argentina, respectively. More importantly, isolated theropod teeth confidently referred to Abelisauridae from the Middle Jurassic of Madagascar provide additional support for the emergence of this clade in Gondwana before the Late Jurassic and reveal that the acquisition of abelisaurid dental traits occurred early in the evolutionary history of one of the most successful radiations of non-avian theropods from Europe and the Southern Hemisphere. © 2025 Asociación Paleontológica Argentina (APA)

Tomato plant diseases pose a significant threat to agricultural productivity, resulting in substantial economic losses. Early and accurate diagnosis is crucial for effective disease management. This paper describes the design and implementation of expert systems for tomato disease detection using the CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production System) platform. The tool is designed to help farmers and agronomists accurately identify diseases affecting tomato crops by simulating knowledge from professional experts. We carefully developed a set of rules to distinguish leaf blight symptoms from those of other tomato diseases and provided recommendations to minimize crop losses and maximize yields. The expert system was developed using a forward-chaining inference engine, and its performance was evaluated through a set of real-world test cases, demonstrating a high level of accuracy and consistency in decision-making. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

With the increasing interest in natural language processing, text summarization has become essential for condensing large volumes of data into concise and meaningful summaries. Extractive summarization, which involves selecting key sentences based on textual features, has gained attention due to its efficiency and effectiveness. This research explores extractive summarization using multiple machine learning classifiers, including Support Vector Machines (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Trees (DT), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Random Forest (RF). Our findings indicate that the Random Forest model achieved the highest accuracy, reaching 80% in classifying sentences for summary generation. Additionally, we evaluated text classification on the same BBC dataset using ChatGPT, which attained an accuracy of 62%. Furthermore, comparisons with results from prior research confirm the competitive performance of our approach, reinforcing the potential of machine learning models in extractive summarization. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

High-energy, heavy-ion collisions can create local domains of chirality-imbalanced quarks, reflecting the topological features of quantum chromodynamics. The chiral magnetic effect (CME) predicts an electric charge separation of quarks in such topological domains along the magnetic field (B) generated by the passing of two high-Z nuclei. We use a correlation observable Δγ112 between charged meson pairs to detect the CME-induced charge separation and a novel event shape selection (ESS) method to mitigate the background effects related to elliptic flow (v2). The ESS method classifies events based on the emission pattern of final-state particles and determines Δγ(Formula presented) from the zero-flow limit. We reconstruct the B field direction from the spectator nucleons, which minimizes backgrounds unrelated to the collective motion of the system. In this work, we report the measurements of Δγ112 and a background indicator Δγ132 in Au + Au collisions from the Brookhaven National Laboratory Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Beam Energy Scan phase II and at the top RHIC energy. After background suppression, Δγ(Formula presented) aligns with zero, and Δγ(Formula presented) is reduced to no more than 20% of Δγ112. We observe a finite residual charge separation with 2.5σ, 3σ, and 3.2σ significance in the 20-50% centrality range of Au + Au collisions at 11.5, 14.6, and 19.6 GeV. The results at 17.3 and 27 GeV also show positive values but with a lower significance of 1.3σ and 1.1σ, respectively. The corresponding ΔγΈ5ΕΕ values at 7.7, 9.2, and 200 GeV are consistent with zero within uncertainties. © (2026), (American Physical Society). All right reserved.

Rapidity-odd directed flow v 1 measurements are presented for K ± and KS0 in Au + Au collisions for sNN from 3.0 to 3.9 GeV with the STAR experiment. For comparison, v 1 of π ± , protons, and Λ from the same collisions are also discussed. The mid-rapidity v 1 slope dv1/dy|y=0 for protons and Λ is positive in these collisions. On the other hand, v 1 slope of kaons exhibits a strong pT dependence: negative at pT< 0.6 GeV/ c and positive at higher pT. A similar pT dependence is also evident for the v 1 slope of charged pions. Compared to the spectator-removed calculations in Au+Au collisions at sNN= 3.0–3.9 GeV, the JAM model demonstrates a pronounced shift of the v 1 slopes of mesons towards the negative direction. It suggests that the shadowing effect of the spectators plays an important role in the observed kaon anti-flow at low pT in the high baryon density region of non-central collisions. © 2026 The Authors.

We use SrTiO3/Si as a model system to elucidate the effect of the interface on ferroelectric behavior in epitaxial oxide films on silicon. Using both first-principles computations and synchrotron x-ray diffraction measurements, we show that structurally imposed boundary conditions at the interface stabilize a fixed (pinned) polarization in the film but inhibit ferroelectric switching. We demonstrate that the interface chemistry responsible for these phenomena is general to epitaxial silicon-oxide interfaces, impacting on the design of silicon-based functional oxide devices. © 2026 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract NASA’s TESS mission has unveiled a plethora of eclipsing binaries (EBs), among them hundreds of triples and higher-order, hierarchical systems. These complex targets require follow-up observations to enable full characterization of system architectures and identify the most compact multiples expected to undergo the most dramatic dynamical evolution. We report first results from a long-term effort to perform such follow-up, focusing here on multiband speckle imaging of a majority (57) of the sample of 97 quadruple- and higher-order eclipsing binaries (Q+EBs) identified via TESS light curves by V. B. Kostov et al. Diffraction-limited imaging with the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument on the Astrophysical Research Consortium 3.5 m telescope and HRCam on the Southern Astrophysical Research 4.1 m telescope reveals nearly 60% of the 57 to resolve into two sources separated by ≥0 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mover accent="true"> <mml:mi>.</mml:mi> <mml:mi>″</mml:mi> </mml:mover> </mml:math> 03. For these partly resolved systems, we report derived characteristics (e.g., relative position angle, angular separation, and magnitude differences in multiple passbands) from the speckle imaging. We find those Q+EBs partly resolved with 4 m class telescopes to have significantly inflated Gaia parallax errors and large Gaia renormalized unit weight errors, particularly for systems with separations comparable to Gaia’s resolution limit (∼0 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mover accent="true"> <mml:mi>.</mml:mi> <mml:mi>″</mml:mi> </mml:mover> </mml:math> 6). For unresolved systems we report upper limits on angular and linear projected separations. We find two partly resolved Q+EBs with wide linear separations having eclipse timing variations that are therefore candidates of higher-than-quadruple multiplicity. Finally, we demonstrate how speckle imaging of resolved Q+EBs during an eclipse can clarify which speckle-resolved Q+EB subsystem is associated with a particular set of TESS eclipses.

BACKGROUND: The experiences of patients with COVID-19 and their families manifested the most devastating effects of family separation since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic and, with it, a call for solutions to patient isolation and its effect on family mental health. OBJECTIVE: This study examined the recent experiences of families of critical care (intensive care unit; ICU) patients related to anxiety and depression (AD), satisfaction with clinician-family communication, and counseling from mental health and social services. This study explored correlations between these factors and family interest in mobile health (mHealth) designed to improve information flow and communication from patient bedside to remote families. METHODS: Using a 36-question quantitative survey, we collected 97 responses over 6 months. We selected participants by using a convenience sampling strategy. To analyze data, we applied descriptive and inferential statistics. Participants represented a spectrum of ages, relationships to patients, and races (n=78, 80% White; n=17, 18% Black; n=2, 2% other races). Approximately 17% (n=16) of the patients were admitted for cancer, 13% (n=13) were admitted for COVID-19, and 21% (n=20) were admitted for other conditions. RESULTS: The mean score for remote families' satisfaction with patient health updates from the bedside and mental health services was 2.94 (SD 1.31), whereas that for phone communication was lower on average. The mean scores of family AD levels were elevated, and levels were higher among family members during the ICU stay than after discharge. These findings confirmed evidence of a negative correlation between transportation difficulties and satisfaction with the frequency of information provided (r=-0.284; P=.005), suggesting that, with the increase in transportation challenges, families become less satisfied with the frequency of patient health information. Family members expressed strong interest in using mHealth information and communication services (mean 8.34, SD 1.98) and having easy access to social workers to manage AD (mean 8.29, SD 2.03). Families experiencing higher levels of anxiety during patients' ICU stays had significantly greater interest in the use of an mHealth app that would provide direct access to social workers (r=0.326; P<.001), in using an mHealth videoconferencing app (r=0.319; P=.002), and in overall mHealth app use (r=0.322; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: Family members experienced high levels of AD during patient ICU admission, as well as after discharge even though their mental health challenges were reduced. Families were highly dissatisfied with the frequency of health updates, with lower satisfaction reported among those who faced difficulties arranging transportation or lived further from the hospital. Modest but statistically significant correlations were observed between family members' reported mental health status during ICU stays and an interest in an mHealth app that could provide access to real-time bedside information, facilitate communication with bedside nurses, and support connections with social workers.

When most people think of the use of animals in traditional systems of medicine, what springs to mind is one kind or another of megafauna such as rhinoceros, bears, sharks, and others. Sometimes more mundane creatures such as pangolins are included. However, invertebrates and substances produced by them have been used in Asian systems of medicine since the earliest records of materia medica from the region were created. Animals used range from shellfish and crustaceans to various insects and insect products such as cocoons, honey, and beeswax. In terms of their role in the food chain, and as pollinators, invertebrates are as crucial to the health, indeed the survival, of ecosystems in Asia and elsewhere as are megafauna. Loss and degradation of habitat is probably affecting more invertebrates than medicalization. Still, the expansion of medicalization in Asia and beyond is contributing to the danger many populations of invertebrates currently face. This article gives an overview of the place of invertebrates in Vietnamese traditional medicine and then presents a case study of two varieties of honey- and beeswax-producing bees found in northern mainland Southeast Asia and southern China: Apis dorsata F. and Apis cerana. © C. Michele Thompson, 2026. Published with license by Koninklijke Brill BV