Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Convective-derivative control of viscous heating in Gordon–Schowalter plane Poiseuille flow: thermal equivalence of the Maxwell limits and constitutive sensitivity

We analyse viscous heating in steady plane Poiseuille flow of a Gordon–Schowalter fluid between isothermal walls and determine how the convective-derivative parameter $$a\in [-1,1]$$ controls the thermal response. For $$\beta =O(1)$$ , a regular expansion to first order in the Br...

A conserved archaeal protein with evolutionary links to bacterial ribosome hibernation and eukaryotic energy sensing

Ribosome hibernation helps cells survive stress by reversibly silencing translation and preserving ribosomal complexes. Although well characterized in bacteria and eukaryotes, archaeal hibernation remains poorly understood. Using cryoEM of archaeal lysates, we identified AHA (AMP...

Murmurations, Mestre–Nagao sums, and convolutional neural networks for elliptic curves

Abstract We apply one-dimensional convolutional neural networks to the Frobenius traces of elliptic curves over $$\mathbb {Q}$$ Q and evaluate and interpret their predictive capacity. In keeping with similar experiments by Kazalicki–Vlah, Bujanović–Kazalicki–Novak, and Pozdnyakov...

Light-controlled van der Waals tunnel junctions: Mechanisms, architectures, functionalities, and opportunities

The phenomenon of electron tunneling has long been central to quantum transport and continues to provide a powerful framework for understanding and controlling electronic processes in solids. When combined with optical excitation, tunneling becomes a particularly rich platform fo...

Interannual Variability in the Stratosphere–Troposphere Exchange of Air Mass and Ozone in Chemistry Climate Models

Stratosphere–troposphere exchange (STE) governs the transport of air mass and chemical constituents, including ozone, across the tropopause and therefore plays an important role in coupling the stratosphere and troposphere. While the annual-mean STE has been well characterized, i...

Agentic AI—Physicist Collaboration in Experimental Particle Physics: A Proof-of-Concept Measurement with LEP Open Data

We present an agentic measurement of the thrust distribution in \(e^+e^-\) collisions at \(\sqrt{s}=91.2\) GeV using ALEPH archived data. This work was carried out through an AI agent–physicist collaboration, using interactive natural-language prompting of Anthropic Claude and Op...

Single-cell profiling and genetic regulation of alternative polyadenylation in the human brain

Abstract Alternative polyadenylation (APA) has a central role in regulation of the fate of mRNA and exhibits high variability in the brain and in neurons. However, brain APA regulation has not been mapped at cell type resolution, and the genetic control of APA in brain cell types...

Modulated deuteron spectra observed with the magnetic recoil neutron spectrometer at the National Ignition Facility

The Magnetic Recoil Spectrometer (MRS) at the National Ignition Facility is used to measure the neutron spectrum from deuterium–tritium-fuelled inertial confinement fusion implosions via neutron–deuteron elastic scattering and magnetic dispersion of recoil deuterons. From the MRS...

Takeoff of an all-polymer micro aerial flying robot

Flying insects are agile and can withstand impacts and compression because of their low inertia and resilient wings, exoskeletons, and muscles. These capabilities inspire the development of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) for surveillance, disaster response, and environmental monito...

AppetiteCheck: Feasibility of Momentary Vagus Nerve Stimulation as an Implicit Intervention for Eating Behavior

Overeating and emotional eating are common health issues that affect people even without an eating disorder. The vagus nerve plays a critical role in the gut-brain axis, and implanted vagus nerve stimulators have been associated with reduced appetite. In this paper, we propose tr...

Policy Relevance of Causal Quantities in Networks

In settings where units' outcomes are affected by others' treatments, there has been a proliferation of ways to quantify effects of treatments on outcomes, including via indirect exposure to other units' treatments. Here we consider two properties we might want estimands to have:...

Probing dark matter interactions with a RES–NOVA prototype cryogenic detector

Abstract We report on the operation of a 13 g PbWO $$_4$$ 4 crystal, grown from archaeological Pb and operated as a cryogenic calorimeter in an underground environment. Read out with a Ge thermistor, the detector achieves a low energy threshold and, for the first time, enables th...

Computing torsion for plane quartics without using height bounds

We describe an algorithm that provably computes the rational torsion subgroup of the Jacobian of a curve without relying on height bounds.Instead, the strategy is to find upper bounds for the torsion subgroup using reduction modulo primes and to search for torsion points, not jus...

2D Skeletal Muscle Thin Film Actuators Enhance Efficiency of Biohybrid Robots

ABSTRACT Biohybrid robots actuated by living skeletal muscles are capable of adaptive functional behaviors and could enable future applications ranging from precision microsurgery to unmanned exploration. Skeletal muscle‐powered robots typically rely on 3D tissues which require l...

Stress-Induced Reprogramming of tRNA Epitranscriptome in the Industrially Important Yeast Komagataella phaffii

Abstract Transfer RNA (tRNA) modifications regulate codon-biased translation and enable rapid translational adaptation to environmental stresses in diverse organisms. While these mechanisms have been extensively characterized in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, little is known about the...

Off-fault plasticity limits the speed of elongated earthquake ruptures

Summary Conventional earthquake rupture models in elastic media with scale-independent dissipation predict rupture acceleration up to a limiting speed dictated by seismic wave speeds. However, most earthquakes are inferred to be significantly slower than these theoretical limitin...

Improved formulation for long-duration storage in capacity expansion models using representative periods

With the increasing complexity and size of capacity expansion models, temporal aggregation has emerged as a common method to improve computational tractability. However, this approach inherently complicates the inclusion of long-duration storage (LDS) systems, whose operation inv...

Monotonicity, topology, and convexity of recurrence in random walks

We consider nonhomogeneous random walks on the two-dimensional positive quadrant N2. In the 1960’s the following question was asked for N2: is it true if such a random walk X is recurrent and Y is another random walk that at every point is more likely to go down and more likely t...

SN 2024iss: A Multiwavelength Exposé of a Type IIb Supernova with an Early-time Ultraviolet Spectrum and Shock-breakout Constraints

Abstract We present multiwavelength observations and analysis of SN 2024iss, a Type IIb supernova (SN IIb) located at ∼14 Mpc. The first Zwicky Transient Facility detection of SN 2024iss is ∼40 minutes after first light (one of the earliest detections of a SN IIb to date) and a H...

Positive selection screen identifies natural product β-catenin inactivators

Many genetically validated targets in cancer, including the transcription factor β-catenin (β-cat), have historically been viewed as undruggable. Cell-based phenotypic screening of chemical compounds can reveal unanticipated biological and pharmacological principles. Natural prod...