Ward: Education

432

AI Helped Scientists Stop a Virus With One Tiny Change

Using AI, researchers identified one tiny molecular interaction that viruses need to infect cells. Disrupting it stopped the virus before infection could begin. Washington State University scientists have uncovered a method to interfere with a key viral protein, stopping viruses from getting inside …

321

Stochastic Optimization with Random Search

arXiv:2510.15610v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: We revisit random search for stochastic optimization, where only noisy function evaluations are available. We show that the method works under weaker smoothness assumptions than previously considered, and that stronger assumptions enable imp…

311

A Context-Free Smart Grid Model Using Complex System Approach

arXiv:2512.15733v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Energy and pollution are urging problems of the 21th century. By gradually changing the actual power grid system, smart grid may evolve into different systems by means of size, elements and strategies, but its fundamental requirements and objectives…

313

OPENTOUCH: Bringing Full-Hand Touch to Real-World Interaction

arXiv:2512.16842v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The human hand is our primary interface to the physical world, yet egocentric perception rarely knows when, where, or how forcefully it makes contact. Robust wearable tactile sensors are scarce, and no existing in-the-wild datasets align first-person …

221

Quantum computers turned out to be more useful than expected in 2025

Rapid advances in the kind of problems that quantum computers can tackle suggest that they are closer than ever to becoming useful tools of scientific discovery

229

Medical students explore ChatGPT's ability to support qualitative research

Newly published research from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine highlights student-led work in medical education and examines how artificial intelligence (AI) can assist with qualitative research.

229

Learning Collective Variables for Enhanced Sampling from BioEmu with Time-Lagged Generation

arXiv:2507.07390v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Molecular dynamics is crucial for understanding molecular systems but its applicability is often limited by the vast timescales of rare events like protein folding. Enhanced sampling techniques overcome this by accelerating the simulation along ke…

220

Learning Confidence Ellipsoids and Applications to Robust Subspace Recovery

arXiv:2512.16875v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the problem of finding confidence ellipsoids for an arbitrary distribution in high dimensions. Given samples from a distribution $D$ and a confidence parameter $\alpha$, the goal is to find the smallest volume ellipsoid $E$ which has probabil…

212

On the Universal Representation Property of Spiking Neural Networks

arXiv:2512.16872v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Inspired by biology, spiking neural networks (SNNs) process information via discrete spikes over time, offering an energy-efficient alternative to the classical computing paradigm and classical artificial neural networks (ANNs). In this work, we analy…

231

From Minutes to Days: Scaling Intracranial Speech Decoding with Supervised Pretraining

arXiv:2512.15830v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Decoding speech from brain activity has typically relied on limited neural recordings collected during short and highly controlled experiments. Here, we introduce a framework to leverage week-long intracranial and audio recordings from patients underg…

218

Cutting Back One Amino Acid Increased The Lifespan of Mice Up to 33%

Intriguing...

222

OLAF: Towards Robust LLM-Based Annotation Framework in Empirical Software Engineering

arXiv:2512.15979v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in empirical software engineering (ESE) to automate or assist annotation tasks such as labeling commits, issues, and qualitative artifacts. Yet the reliability and reproducibility of such annotations …

212

Hierarchical Neural Surfaces for 3D Mesh Compression

arXiv:2512.15985v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Implicit Neural Representations (INRs) have been demonstrated to achieve state-of-the-art compression of a broad range of modalities such as images, videos, 3D surfaces, and audio. Most studies have focused on building neural counterparts of tradition…

211

December has the longest days (wherever you live)

The longest days accompany the winter solstice. In December, a day - a whole cycle of day and night - is about half a minute longer than the average 24 hours.
The post December has the longest days (wherever you live) first appeared on EarthSky.

220

Toward 6G Downlink NOMA: CRC-Aided GRAND for Noise-Resilient NOMA Decoding in Beyond-5G Networks

arXiv:2512.16860v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) technology has emerged as a promising technology to enable massive connectivity and enhanced spectral efficiency in next-generation wireless networks. In this study, we propose a novel two-user downlink power-doma…

210

CRISPR Turns a Little-Known Fruit Into a Big Farming Opportunity

Scientists are using CRISPR to fast-track the domestication of a wild fruit. For roughly 10,000 years, farming communities have improved crops by saving seeds from plants that produced better harvests. By repeatedly choosing varieties with desirable traits such as larger size, better flavor, and gre…

220

Pixel Super-Resolved Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Using Deep Learning

arXiv:2512.16266v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) is a powerful quantitative technique that provides metabolic and molecular contrast, offering strong translational potential for label-free, real-time diagnostics. However, its clinical adoption remains …

130

Efficient Zero-Order Federated Finetuning of Language Models for Resource-Constrained Devices

arXiv:2502.10239v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Federated fine-tuning offers a promising approach for tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) on edge devices while preserving data privacy. However, fine-tuning these models on edge devices remains challenging due to high memory, communication, and c…

120

Eyes on the Grass: Biodiversity-Increasing Robotic Mowing Using Deep Visual Embeddings

arXiv:2512.15993v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This paper presents a robotic mowing framework that actively enhances garden biodiversity through visual perception and adaptive decision-making. Unlike passive rewilding approaches, the proposed system uses deep feature-space analysis to identify and…

108

Learning-based Approximate Model Predictive Control for an Impact Wrench Tool

arXiv:2512.16624v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Learning-based model predictive control has emerged as a powerful approach for handling complex dynamics in mechatronic systems, enabling data-driven performance improvements while respecting safety constraints. However, when computational resources a…