École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Does 2026 AI Exhibit Intelligence, or Can Claude Outsmart Pierre or Catherine?

Using a sequence of high-school level mathematics questions that were not available on the Internet, we compare the performance of the popular AI software Claude with that of my friends and fellow human beings Pierre and Catherine. Pierre had solid scientific training as a young...

ZAPS: Zone-Averaged Accelerated Pebble Bed Simulator

Conference paper presented at PHYSOR 2026 - The International Conference on Physics of Reactors. Published in Proceedings of PHYSOR 2026 International Conference. ISBN: 979-12-81583-46-7. Conference website: https://www.physor2026.org/. Session: R01. Core Analysis Methods. Paper...

AX-35 Targets the Cytochrome bc1 Complex in Mycobacterium abscessus and Reveals a Novel Resistance Mechanism

Abstract In patients with cystic fibrosis, nontuberculous mycobacteria are opportunistic, intracellular and extracellular pulmonary pathogens that contribute to deterioration of lung function and, ultimately, morbidity from respiratory failure. Among nontuberculous mycobacterial...

Fiber‐Format Flexible Linear Electrostatic Motors

Linear motion is fundamental to robotics, yet existing solutions are either rigid electromagnetic motors or contractile artificial muscles with limited stroke and trade-offs in force versus displacement. We report a sliding motor in a thin fiber format: a flexible, electrostatic...

A Randomized Algorithm for Simultaneously Diagonalizing Symmetric Matrices by Congruence

ABSTRACT A family of symmetric matrices is simultaneously diagonalizable by congruence (SDC), also called nonorthogonal joint diagonalization, if there is an invertible matrix such that every is diagonal. In this work, a novel randomized SDC (RSDC) algorithm is proposed that redu...

Best Practices in Nanocrystal Synthesis and Characterization

Conspectus Colloidal nanocrystals exhibit quantum-mechanical phenomena inaccessible in bulk matter, and their properties can be tuned via chemically manipulating their composition, size, shape, and surface chemistry. Decades of development have produced a remarkable synthetic lib...

Probing the Energy Landscape of α‐Synuclein Amyloid Fibril Formation by Systematic K‐to‐Q Mutagenesis

ABSTRACT Aggregation of α‐synuclein (αSyn) is a hallmark of Parkinson's disease, yet its pathological roles remain poorly understood. Elucidating these roles requires detailed knowledge of the free energy landscape of αSyn self‐assembly, i.e. the states that can be populated and...

Counterexamples to Generalizations of the Erdős $B+B+t$ Problem

Following their resolution of the Erdős $B+B+t$ problem, Kra, Moreira, Richter, and Robertson posed a number of questions and conjectures related to infinite configurations in positive density subsets of the integers and other amenable groups. We give a negative answer to several...

Monotonicity and decompositions of random regular graphs

In this work we establish several monotonicity and decomposition results in the framework of random regular graphs. Among other results, we show that, for a wide range of parameters d1≤d2, there exists a coupling of G(n,d1) and G(n,d2) satisfying that G(n,d1)⊆G(n,d2) with high pr...

Building digital societies as ecosystems: how recognition and repeat relationships sustain cross-community work in open source

Abstract We measure cross-boundary collaboration in an open-source software (OSS) ecosystem by reconstructing the bipartite contributor–repository graph of 464 cybersecurity-focused projects and $11{,}372$ 11 , 372 contributor identities active over October 2001–May 2022, seeded...

Targeted lysosomal activation in bladder epithelium enhances clearance of intracellular uropathogenic Escherichia coli

Recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a major clinical burden, driven in part by the ability of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) to establish intracellular niches within the bladder epithelium, where bacteria withstand antibiotics and host defenses. The oral bacteria...

Comprehensive full-f drift-kinetic and delta-f gyrokinetic simulations of a linear plasma device based on the gyro-moment approach

First of a kind comprehensive full-f drift-kinetic (DK) and delta δ $\delta$ -f gyrokinetic (GK) turbulent simulations are carried out in a linear plasma device. We self-consistently derive an electrostatic model including large-scale slowly varying DK-ordered fields coupled to s...

One Prompt Does Not Fit All: Comparing Uniform and Adaptive Code‐Specific Prompting for Deductive Qualitative Coding With Large Language Models

ABSTRACT Background Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated potential for (semi‐)automating the qualitative analysis of unstructured data, particularly in deductive qualitative coding using codebooks. While prior research has shown the feasibility of this technology, model...

Beyond the Virial Expansion: Microscopic Origins of Partial Molar Volumes in LiCl Solutions

Abstract Although electrolyte density measurements have been reported for over a century, employing them to determine accurate partial molar volume (PMV) profiles as a function of salt concentration has remained elusive. Obtaining such curves requires precise density measurements...

TrackStudio: An integrated toolkit for markerless tracking

Markerless motion tracking has advanced rapidly in the past 10 years and currently offers powerful opportunities for behavioural, clinical, and biomechanical research. While several specialised toolkits provide high performance for specific tasks, using existing tools still requi...

The lipidomic architecture of the mouse brain

Abstract Lipids are fundamental components of the brain, crucial for synaptic transmission and signal propagation. Altered brain lipid composition is associated with common and rare neuropathologies, yet the spatial organization of the mammalian brain lipidome remains insufficien...

An interpretable deep learning framework for classifying neuronal morphologies using topology and graph neural networks

Abstract Neuronal shape determines how neurons process and integrate information, yet a consistent and objective classification of neuronal morphologies remains elusive. Current approaches rely heavily on subjective expert views or on predefined features, limiting reproducibility...

The spinorial ball (II): A manipulable qubit at human scale

The spinorial ball is an interactive electronic device that we recently introduced to discuss the origin of spin-1/2 from the representation of the rotation group, without the framework quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, it can also be viewed as a macroscopic visualization of a qua...

The Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment model-observation intercomparison project (COMBLE-MIP) – Part 1: Model specification, observational constraints, and preliminary findings

Models struggle to represent the coupled microphysical, turbulent and radiative processes within widespread, long-lived marine cold-air outbreak (CAO) cloud fields, contributing to forecast and climate biases. Here we combine ground-based and satellite measurements to initialize...

When, how long and how much? Interpretable neural networks for time series regression by learning to mask and aggregate

Abstract Time series extrinsic regression (TSER) aims to predict a continuous target variable from an input time series. It arises in domains such as healthcare, finance, environmental monitoring, and engineering, where both accuracy and interpretability are essential. Despite st...