Kavli Affiliate: Michael McDonald | Summary:Cancer diagnosis and characterization require integrating complementary evidence from radiology, pathology, genomics, and clinical metadata. However, most medical large language model (LLM) and vision-language model (VLM) benchmarks focus on isolated modalities or narrow image-text tasks, leaving patient-level oncology assessment across multiple evidence streams largely untested. We introduce OncoTriad-QA, a patient-level […]

Kavli Affiliate: Andrew Vanderburg | Summary:Theoretical models predict that subgiants within a narrow mass regime can retain detectable lithium enrichment signatures from planetary engulfment. We test this prediction using TOI-5882, selected because it occupies this favorable subgiant parameter space and hosts a massive brown dwarf ($22 , M_ rm J$, $P=7.1 ,rm d$) companion capable […]

Kavli Affiliate: Michael Fausnaugh | Summary:The observational determination of the lower limit of neutron star masses is crucial for the physics of core-collapse supernovae. In this light, SMC X-1 is an important object because of its estimated pulsar mass lying near or potentially below the theoretical lower limit. SMC X-1 exhibits a double peaked optical […]

Kavli Affiliate: Anna Frebel | Summary:We present a detailed chemical-abundance and kinematic analysis of four extremely metal-poor (EMP; [Fe/H] $leq -3.0$) stars identified from textitGaia BP/RP data in our ongoing search for the most primitive stars. This includes a primary target, textitGaia~DR3~2563539603865382656 (hereafter G256353), a strongly $r$-process-enhanced star with [Eu/Fe]~$= +1.20$ and [Ba/Eu]~$= -0.64$. Our […]

Kavli Affiliate: Saul Rappaport | Summary:We present the discovery and characterization of TIC 295741342, a triply-eclipsing triple star system with a giant tertiary. The eclipsing binary consists of two similar main-sequence stars in a 4.75-day orbit. The binary is in a 412.8-day orbit with the giant tertiary. We found two degenerate solutions for the system: […]

Kavli Affiliate: Gabor Furesz | Summary:Random telegraph noise (RTN) is a major contributor to read noise in many CMOS image sensors considered for astronomical use. While scientific CMOS image sensors deliver lower read noise than traditional charge-coupled devices, mitigating RTN would widen this gap and enable more precise photometry when using the fast readout rates […]

Kavli Affiliate: Mark Vogelsberger | Summary:Patchy reionization couples the ionized-bubble morphology to the underlying density field, making the CMB Thomson optical depth sensitive to both the global ionization history and anisotropic fluctuations on the sky. Using the large-volume radiation-hydrodynamical Lumina simulation, we compute $τ_rm CMB$ in two ways: (i) from global volume- and mass-weighted ionization […]

Kavli Affiliate: Nergis Mavalvala | Summary:Heterogeneous integration of gain and strongly nonlinear materials with ultra-low-loss silicon nitride (SiN) photonics offers a route to scalable quantum circuits, but concurrent wafer-scale manufacturability, low interlayer loss, and high performance have been challenging to realize. Here we demonstrate a wafer-scale III-V-on-SiN quantum photonic platform that directly integrates III-V layers […]

Kavli Affiliate: Lee McCuller | Summary:New experiments are being developed without the background of quantum shot noise to look for weak, high-frequency signals using Michelson interferometers. Since shot noise is no longer the dominant noise source with these readout schemes, it is important to accurately model thermal noise to characterize signals and design more sensitive […]

Kavli Affiliate: Lee McCuller | Summary:Thermal noise in optics constrains the precision of optical experiments, including Michelson interferometers, optical clocks, and optomechanical sensors. While high-power optical experiments such as gravitational-wave detectors are currently limited mainly by quantum noise, new experiments incorporating recent insights from quantum metrology are being developed that evade the quantum shot noise […]