The interfaces of quantum Hall insulators with superconductors have emerged as a promising platform to realise interesting physics that may be relevant for topologically protected quantum computing. However, these interfaces can host other effects which obscure the detection of the desired excitations. Here we present measurements of the thermoelectric effect at the quantum Hall-superconductor interface. We explain the heat transport by considering the formation of a hotspot at the interface, which results in a non-equilibrium distribution of electrons that can propagate across the superconductor through vortex cores. The observed thermoelectric effect results in a voltage which changes sign on quantum Hall plateaus and responds to the rearrangement of vortices in the wire. These observations highlight the complex interplay of thermal and charge phenomena at the quantum Hall -- superconductor interfaces and should be considered when interpreting transport measurements in similar systems.

HD~5501, a hitherto little studied eclipsing binary with an early A-type primary, has been caught in a short-lived, astrophysically interesting phase of its binary evolution. Recent photometric and spectroscopic observations, including photometric data from {\it TESS}, show it has a highly variable light curve as well as complex spectral variability, particularly in both the absorption and emission components at H~$\alpha$. Our current campaign, including both professional and amateur observers, has determined that the primary is evolving rapidly across the Hertzsprung gap and that, unusually in the case of mass transfer, the orbital period is declining with a characteristic time-scale $P/\dot{P} \approx$ 170,000 years. Significantly, the orbit is eccentric and it appears that mass transfer from the primary to the secondary occurs only near periastron. Modeling indicates the presumed B7 V secondary to be surrounded by an accretion torus, which likely has dynamically chaotic variations in size and shape. Our analysis further implies the presence of a circumbinary disc or shell supplied by mass loss through the Lagrange $L_3$ point. That mass loss appears to account for most of the emission at H$\alpha$. We describe how this astrophysically interesting system may yield valuable information about binary star evolution at the onset of Roche-lobe overflow, as well as insights into eccentricity-modifying mechanisms such as the Soker mechanism.

The existence of quasi-long range order is demonstrated in nonequilibrium steady states in isotropic $XY$ spin chains including of two types of additional terms that each generate a gap in the energy spectrum. The system is driven out of equilibrium by initializing a domain-wall magnetization profile through application of an external magnetic field and switching off the magnetic field at the same time the energy gap is activated. An energy gap is produced by either applying a staggered magnetic field in the $z$ direction or introducing a modulation to the $XY$ coupling. The magnetization, spin current, and spin-spin correlation functions are computed analytically in the thermodynamic limit at long times after the quench. For both types of systems, we find the persistence of power-law correlations despite the ground-state correlation functions exhibiting exponential decay.

Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules become the more complex biomolecules of life, because it must also include the key environmental factors that permitted, modulated, and most critically facilitated the prebiotic pathways to life's emergence. Moreover, we ask how habitability, defined in part by the presence of liquid water, was sustained so that life could persist and evolve to the point of shaping its own environment. Researchers have successfully explored many chapters of Earth's coevolving environments and biosphere spanning the last few billion years through lenses of sophisticated analytical and computational techniques, and the findings have profoundly impacted the search for life beyond Earth. Yet life's very beginnings during the first hundreds of millions of years of our planet's history remain largely unknown--despite decades of research. This report centers on one key point: that the earliest steps on the path to life's emergence on Earth were tied intimately to the evolving chemical and physical conditions of our earliest environments. Yet, a rigorous, interdisciplinary understanding of that relationship has not been explored adequately and once better understood will inform our search for life beyond Earth. In this way, studies of the emergence of life must become a truly interdisciplinary effort, requiring a mix that expands the traditional platform of prebiotic chemistry to include geochemists, atmospheric chemists, geologists and geophysicists, astronomers, mission scientists and engineers, and astrobiologists.

We investigate the critical current, $I_C$, of ballistic Josephson junctions made of encapsulated graphene/boron-nitride heterostructures. We observe a crossover from the short to the long junction regimes as the length of the device increases. In long ballistic junctions, $I_S$ is found to scale as $\propto \exp(-k_bT/\delta E)$. The extracted energies $\delta E$ are independent of the carrier density and proportional to the level spacing of the ballistic cavity, as determined from Fabry-Perot oscillations of the junction normal resistance. As $T\rightarrow 0$ the critical current of a long (or short) junction saturates at a level determined by the product of $\delta E$ (or $\Delta$) and the number of the junction's transversal modes.

We investigate supercurrent interference patterns measured as a function of magnetic field in ballistic graphene Josephson junctions. At high doping, the expected $\Phi_{0}$-periodic "Fraunhofer" pattern is observed, indicating a uniform current distribution. Close to the Dirac point, we find anomalous interference patterns with an apparent 2$\Phi_{0}$ periodicity, similar to that predicted for topological Andreev bound states carrying a charge of $e$ instead of $2e$. This feature persists with increasing temperature, ruling out a non-sinusoidal current-phase relationship. It also persists in junctions in which sharp vacuum edges are eliminated. Our results indicate that the observed behavior may originate from an intrinsic property of ballistic graphene Josephson junctions, though the exact mechanism remains unclear.

Direct observation of proton emission for very small Q-values is often unfeasible due to the long partial half-lives of the proton emission channel associated with tunneling through the Coulomb barrier. Therefore, proton emitters with very small decay energies may require the masses of both parent and daughter nuclei in order to establish them as proton unbound. Nuclear mass models have been used to predict the proton drip-line of the thulium (Tm) isotopic chain ($Z=69$), but until now the proton separation energy has not been experimentally tested. Mass measurements were performed using a Multiple Reflection Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (MR-TOF-MS) at TRIUMF's TITAN facility to conclusively map the limit of proton-bound Tm. The masses of neutron-deficient, $^{149}$Tm and $^{150}$Tm, combined with measurements of $^{149m,g}$Er (which were found to deviate from literature by $\sim$150 keV), provide the first experimental confirmation that $^{149}$Tm is the first proton-unbound nuclide in the Tm chain. Our measurements also enable the strength of the $N=82$ neutron shell gap to be determined at the Tm proton drip-line, providing evidence supporting its continued existence.

Results from regular monitoring of relativistic compact binaries like PSR 1913+16 are consistent with the dominant (quadrupole) order emission of gravitational waves (GWs). We show that observations associated with the binary black hole central engine of blazar OJ 287 demand the inclusion of gravitational radiation reaction effects beyond the quadrupolar order. It turns out that even the effects of certain hereditary contributions to GW emission are required to predict impact flare timings of OJ 287. We develop an approach that incorporates this effect into the binary black hole model for OJ~287. This allows us to demonstrate an excellent agreement between the observed impact flare timings and those predicted from ten orbital cycles of the binary black hole central engine model. The deduced rate of orbital period decay is nine orders of magnitude higher than the observed rate in PSR 1913+16, demonstrating again the relativistic nature of OJ 287's central engine. Finally, we argue that precise timing of the predicted 2019 impact flare should allow a test of the celebrated black hole "no-hair theorem" at the 10% level.

The extraordinary 2021 September-October outburst of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 afforded an opportunity to test the composition of primitive Kuiper disk material at high sensitivity. We conducted nearly simultaneous multi-wavelength spectroscopic observations of 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 using iSHELL at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and nFLASH at the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) on 2021 October 6, with follow-up APEX/nFLASH observations on 2021 October 7 and 2022 April 3. This coordinated campaign between near-infrared and radio wavelengths enabled us to sample molecular emission from a wealth of coma molecules and to perform measurements that cannot be accomplished with either wavelength alone. We securely detected CO emission on all dates with both facilities, including velocity-resolved spectra of the CO (J=2-1) transition with APEX/nFLASH and multiple CO (v=1-0) rovibrational transitions with IRTF/iSHELL. We report rotational temperatures, coma kinematics, and production rates for CO and stringent (3-sigma) upper limits on abundance ratios relative to CO for CH4, C2H6, CH3OH, H2CO, CS, and OCS. Our upper limits for CS/CO and OCS/CO represent their first values in the literature for this Centaur. Upper limits for CH4, C2H6, CH3OH, and H2CO are the most stringent reported to date, and are most similar to values found in ultra CO-rich Oort cloud comet C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), which may have implications for how ices are preserved in cometary nuclei. We demonstrate the superb synergy of coordinated radio and near-infrared measurements, and advocate for future small body studies that jointly leverage the capabilities of each wavelength.

We investigate the dependence of the displacements of a molecular motor embedded inside a glassy material on its folding characteristic time. We observe two different time regimes. For slow foldings (regime I) the diffusion evolves very slowly with the folding time, while for rapid foldings (regime II) the diffusion increases strongly with the folding time suggesting two different physical mechanisms. We find that in regime I the motor displacement during the folding process is counteracted by a reverse displacement during the unfolding, while in regime II this counteraction is much weaker. We notice that regime I behavior is reminiscent of the scallop theorem that holds for larger motors in a continuous medium. We find that the difference in the efficiency of the motor motion explains most of the observed difference between the two regimes. For fast foldings the motor trajectories differ significantly from the opposite trajectories induced by the following unfolding process, resulting in a more efficient global motion than for slow foldings. This result agrees with the fluctuation theorems expectation for time reversal mechanisms. In agreement with the fluctuation theorems we find that the motors are unexpectedly more efficient when they are generating more entropy, a result that can be used to increase dramatically the motor motion.

We show that RT(2,4) cannot be proved with one typical application of RT(2,2) in an intuitionistic extension of RCA0 to higher types, but that this does not remain true when the law of the excluded middle is added. The argument uses Kohlenbach's axiomatization of higher order reverse mathematics, results related to modified reducibility, and a formalization of Weihrauch reducibility.

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) at the Xinglong observatory in China is a new 4-m telescope equipped with 4,000 optical fibers. In 2010, we initiated the LAMOST-Kepler project. We requested to observe the full field-of-view of the nominal Kepler mission with the LAMOST to collect low-resolution spectra for as many objects from the KIC10 catalogue as possible. So far, 12 of the 14 requested LAMOST fields have been observed resulting in more than 68,000 low-resolution spectra. Our preliminary results show that the stellar parameters derived from the LAMOST spectra are in good agreement with those found in the literature based on high-resolution spectroscopy. The LAMOST data allows to distinguish dwarfs from giants and can provide the projected rotational velocity for very fast rotators.

In April and May 2019, as a part of the National Geographic and Roxel Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, the most interdisciplinary scientific ever was launched. This research identified changing dynamics, including emergent risks resulting from natural and anthropogenic change to the natural system. We have identified compounded risks to ecosystem and human health, geologic hazards, and changing climate conditions that impact the local community, climbers, and trekkeers in the future. This review brings together perspectives from across the biological, geological, and health sciences to better understand emergent risks on Mt. Everest and in the Khumbu region. Understanding and mitigating these risks is critical for the ~10,000 people living in the Khumbu region, as well as the thousands of visiting trekkers and the hundreds of climbers who attempt to summit each year.

We perform transport measurements on proximitized, ballistic, bilayer graphene Josephson junctions (BGJJs) in the intermediate-to-long junction regime ($L>\xi$). We measure the device's differential resistance as a function of bias current and gate voltage for a range of different temperatures. The extracted critical current $I_{C}$ follows an exponential trend with temperature: $\exp(-k_{B} T/ \delta E)$. Here $\delta E = \hbar \nu_F /2\pi L $: an expected trend for intermediate-to-long junctions. From$\delta E$, we determine the Fermi velocity of the bilayer graphene, which is found to increase with gate voltage. Simultaneously, we show the carrier density dependence of $\delta E$, which is attributed to the quadratic dispersion of bilayer graphene. This is in contrast to single layer graphene Josephson junctions, where $\delta E$ and the Fermi velocity are independent of the carrier density. The carrier density dependence in BGJJs allows for additional tuning parameters in graphene-based Josephson Junction devices.

Contact binaries are found throughout the solar system. The recent discovery of Selam, the satellite of MBA (152830) Dinkinesh, by the NASA LUCY mission has made it clear that the term `contact binary' covers a variety of different types of bi-modal mass distributions and formation mechanisms. Only by modelling more contact binaries can this population be properly understood. We determined a spin state and shape model for the Apollo group contact binary asteroid (388188) 2006 DP14 using ground-based optical and radar observations collected between 2014 and 2023. Radar delay-Doppler images and continuous wave spectra were collected over two days in February 2014, while 16 lightcurves in the Cousins R and SDSS-r filters were collected in 2014, 2022 and 2023. We modelled the spin state using convex inversion before using the SHAPE modelling software to include the radar observations in modelling concavities and the distinctive neck structure connecting the two lobes. We find a spin state with a period of $(5.7860\pm0.0001)$ hours and pole solution of $\lambda = (180\pm121)^\circ$and$\beta = (-80\pm7)^\circ$ with morphology indicating a 520 m long bi-lobed shape. The model's asymmetrical bi-modal mass distribution resembles other small NEA contact binaries such as (85990) 1999 JV6 or (8567) 1996 HW1, which also feature a smaller `head' attached to a larger `body'. The final model features a crater on the larger lobe, similar to several other modelled contact binaries. The model's resolution is 25 m, comparable to that of the radar images used.

Federated Learning (FL) has been introduced as a way to keep data local to clients while training a shared machine learning model, as clients train on their local data and send trained models to a central aggregator. It is expected that FL will have a huge implication on Mobile Edge Computing, the Internet of Things, and Cross-Silo FL. In this paper, we focus on the widely used FedAvg algorithm to explore the effect of the number of clients in FL. We find a significant deterioration of learning accuracy for FedAvg as the number of clients increases. To address this issue for a general application, we propose a method called Knowledgeable Client Insertion (KCI) that introduces a very small number of knowledgeable clients to the MEC setting. These knowledgeable clients are expected to have accumulated a large set of data samples to help with training. With the help of KCI, the learning accuracy of FL increases much faster even with a normal FedAvg aggregation technique. We expect this approach to be able to provide great privacy protection for clients against security attacks such as model inversion attacks. Our code is available at this https URL

Stellar bowshock nebulae are arcuate shock fronts formed by the interaction of radiation-driven stellar winds and the relative motion of the ambient interstellar material. Stellar bowshock nebulae provide a promising means to measure wind-driven mass loss, independent of other established methods. In this work, we characterize the stellar sources at the center of bowshock nebulae drawn from all-sky catalogs of 24 $\mu$m-selected nebulae. We obtain new, low-resolution blue optical spectra for \numstars~stars and measure stellar parameters temperature \teff, surface gravity \logg, and projected rotational broadening \vsini. We perform additional photometric analysis to measure stellar radius \rstar, luminosity \lstar, and visual-band extinction $A_V$. All but one of our targets are O and early B stars, with temperatures ranging from $T$=16.5--46.8~k\kelvin, gravities $\log g=$2.57--4.60, and \vsini~from <100--400~\kms. With the exception of rapid rotator $\zeta$ Oph, bowshock stars do not rotate at or near critical velocities. At least 60 of 103 (60\%) OB bowshock stars are binaries, consistent with the multiplicity fraction of other OB samples. The sample shows a runaway fraction of 23\%, with \numrunaway~stars having $v_{\text{2D}}\geq25$~\kms. Of the 19 runaways, at least 15 ($\geq$79\%) are binaries, favoring dynamical ejection over the binary supernova channel for producing runaways. We provide a comprehensive census of stellar parameters for bowshock stars, useful as a foundation for determining the mass-loss rates for OB-type stars -- one of the single most critical factors in stellar evolution governing the production of neutron stars and black holes.

As astronomy enters an era defined by global telescope networks, petabyte-scale surveys, and powerful computational tools, the longstanding goals of astronomy education, particularly introductory ``ASTRO101'', but equally encompassing both higher and lower level courses, warrant fresh examination. In June 2024, the AstroEdUNC meeting at UNC--Chapel Hill convened 100 astronomers, education researchers, and practitioners to synthesise community perspectives on the purpose, content, and delivery of astronomy education. Beginning with historical vignettes, the meeting's deliberations were organised into six interrelated themes: (1) Context, highlighting astronomy's evolution from classical charting to multi-messenger discovery and its role as a connective thread across STEM and the humanities; (2) Content, exploring how curricula can balance essential concepts with authentic investigations and leverage open-source and AI-augmented resources; (3) Skills, arguing that astronomy should foreground scientific literacy, computational fluency, and communication through genuine data-driven inquiry; (4) Engagement, advocating for active-learning strategies, formative assessment, and culturally inclusive narratives; (5) Beyond the Classroom, emphasising scaffolding, universal-design practices, and K--12/community partnerships; and (6) Astronomy Education Research, outlining priority areas for assessing knowledge, attitudes, and long-term outcomes. We provide concrete recommendations for future astronomy education research development, underscoring the need for approaches to education that are authentic while meeting the learning and life goal needs of the students, a vibrant community of practice and robust researcher--practitioner partnerships to ensure that introductory astronomy is pertinent, applicable and inspiring to a broad student population.

The LAMOST-Kepler/K2 Medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey (LK-MRS) conducted time-domain medium-resolution spectroscopic observations of 20 LAMOST plates in the Kepler and K2 fields from 2018 to 2023, a phase designated as LK-MRS-I. A catalog of stellar parameters for a total of 36,588 stars, derived from the spectra collected during these five years, including the effective temperature, the surface gravity, the metallicity, the {\alpha}-element abundance, the radial velocity, and v sin i of the target stars, is released, together with the weighted averages and uncertainties. At S/N = 10, the measurement uncertainties are 120 K, 0.18 dex, 0.13 dex, 0.08 dex, 1.9 km/s, and 4.0 km/s for the above parameters, respectively. Comparisons with the parameters provided by the APOGEE and GALAH surveys validate the effective temperature and surface gravity measurements, showing minor discrepancies in metallicity and {\alpha}-element abundance values. We identified some peculiar star candidates, including 764 metal-poor stars, 174 very metal-poor stars, and 30 high-velocity stars. Moreover, we found 2,333 stars whose radial velocity seems to be variable. Using Kepler/K2 or TESS photometric data, we confirmed 371 periodic variable stars among the radial velocity variable candidates and classified their variability types. LK-MRS-I provides spectroscopic data being useful for studies of the Kepler and K2 fields. The LK-MRS project will continue collecting time-domain medium-resolution spectra for target stars during the third phase of LAMOST surveys, providing data to support further scientific research.

HD~5501, a hitherto little studied eclipsing binary with an early A-type primary, has been caught in a short-lived, astrophysically interesting phase of its binary evolution. Recent photometric and spectroscopic observations, including photometric data from {\it TESS}, show it has a highly variable light curve as well as complex spectral variability, particularly in both the absorption and emission components at H~$\alpha$. Our current campaign, including both professional and amateur observers, has determined that the primary is evolving rapidly across the Hertzsprung gap and that, unusually in the case of mass transfer, the orbital period is declining with a characteristic time-scale $P/\dot{P} \approx$ 170,000 years. Significantly, the orbit is eccentric and it appears that mass transfer from the primary to the secondary occurs only near periastron. Modeling indicates the presumed B7 V secondary to be surrounded by an accretion torus, which likely has dynamically chaotic variations in size and shape. Our analysis further implies the presence of a circumbinary disc or shell supplied by mass loss through the Lagrange $L_3$ point. That mass loss appears to account for most of the emission at H$\alpha$. We describe how this astrophysically interesting system may yield valuable information about binary star evolution at the onset of Roche-lobe overflow, as well as insights into eccentricity-modifying mechanisms such as the Soker mechanism.