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Aug 19

The Low Mass Ratio Overcontact Binary GV Leonis and Its Circumbinary Companion

Photometric and spectroscopic observations of GV Leo were performed from 2017 to 2024. The light curves show a flat bottom at the primary eclipse and the conventional O'Connell effect. The echelle spectra reveal that the effective temperature and rotation velocity of the more massive secondary are T_{rm eff,2} = 5220pm120 K and v_2 sin i = 223pm40 km s^{-1}, respectively. Our binary modeling indicates that the program target is a W-subclass contact binary with a mass ratio of q = 5.48, an inclination angle of i = 81^circ.68, a temperature difference of (T_{rm eff,1}-T_{rm eff,2}) = 154 K, and a filling factor of f = 36 \%. The light asymmetries were reasonably modeled by a dark starspot on the secondary's photosphere. Including our 26 minimum epochs, 84 times of minimum light were used to investigate the orbital period of the system. We found that the eclipse times of GV Leo have varied by a sinusoid with a period of 14.9 years and a semi-amplitude of 0.0076 days superimposed on a downward parabola. The periodic modulation is interpreted as a light time effect produced by an unseen outer tertiary with a minimum mass of 0.26 M_odot, while the parabolic component is thought to be a combination of mass transfer (secondary to primary) and angular momentum loss driven by magnetic braking. The circumbinary tertiary would have caused the eclipsing pair of GV Leo to evolve into its current short-period contact state by removing angular momentum from the primordial widish binary.

  • 5 authors
·
Apr 13, 2025

LLM-Powered Code Vulnerability Repair with Reinforcement Learning and Semantic Reward

In software development, the predominant emphasis on functionality often supersedes security concerns, a trend gaining momentum with AI-driven automation tools like GitHub Copilot. These tools significantly improve developers' efficiency in functional code development. Nevertheless, it remains a notable concern that such tools are also responsible for creating insecure code, predominantly because of pre-training on publicly available repositories with vulnerable code. Moreover, developers are called the "weakest link in the chain" since they have very minimal knowledge of code security. Although existing solutions provide a reasonable solution to vulnerable code, they must adequately describe and educate the developers on code security to ensure that the security issues are not repeated. Therefore we introduce a multipurpose code vulnerability analysis system SecRepair, powered by a large language model, CodeGen2 assisting the developer in identifying and generating fixed code along with a complete description of the vulnerability with a code comment. Our innovative methodology uses a reinforcement learning paradigm to generate code comments augmented by a semantic reward mechanism. Inspired by how humans fix code issues, we propose an instruction-based dataset suitable for vulnerability analysis with LLMs. We further identify zero-day and N-day vulnerabilities in 6 Open Source IoT Operating Systems on GitHub. Our findings underscore that incorporating reinforcement learning coupled with semantic reward augments our model's performance, thereby fortifying its capacity to address code vulnerabilities with improved efficacy.

  • 7 authors
·
Jan 6, 2024

DanceCrafter: Fine-Grained Text-Driven Controllable Dance Generation via Choreographic Syntax

Text-driven controllable dance generation remains under-explored, primarily due to the severe scarcity of high-quality datasets and the inherent difficulty of articulating complex choreographies. Characterizing dance is particularly challenging owing to its intricate spatial dynamics, strong directionality, and the highly decoupled movements of distinct body parts. To overcome these bottlenecks, we bridge principles from dance studies, human anatomy, and biomechanics to propose Choreographic Syntax, a novel theoretical framework with a tailored annotation system. Grounded in this syntax, we combine professional dance archives with high-fidelity motion capture data to construct DanceFlow, the most fine-grained dance dataset to date. It encompasses 41 hours of high-quality motions paired with 6.34 million words of detailed descriptions. At the model level, we introduce DanceCrafter, a tailored motion transformer built upon the Momentum Human Rig. To circumvent optimization instabilities, we construct a continuous manifold motion representation paired with a hybrid normalization strategy. Furthermore, we design an anatomy-aware loss to explicitly regulate the decoupled nature of body parts. Together, these adaptations empower DanceCrafter to achieve the high-fidelity and stable generation of complex dance sequences. Extensive evaluations and user studies demonstrate our state-of-the-art performance in motion quality, fine-grained controllability, and generation naturalness.

  • 11 authors
·
Apr 26

Radiation-magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Accretion Flow Formation After a Tidal Disruption Event

We perform 3D radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the evolution of the fallback debris after a tidal disruption event. We focus on studying the effects of magnetic fields on the formation and early evolution of the accretion flow. We find that large magnetic fields can increase the debris stream thickness, moderately reducing the efficiency of the radiative acceleration of outflows during the first self-intersecting collisions. As gas accumulates and the collisions happen instead between the infalling stream and the accretion flow, magnetized and nonmagnetized systems evolve similarly at these early times: radiation-driven outflows dominate early after the initial stream-stream collision and a few days later, the accretion rate exceeds the mass outflow rate. We find that the MRI does not play a significant role in angular momentum transport and dissipation. Nor do we find evidence of a magnetocentrifugal driven outflow. Instead, collisions continue to dissipate kinetic energy into radiation that launches outflows and powers TDE luminosities reaching Lsim4-6times10^{44} erg s^{-1}. Shock-driven outflows and inflows redistribute angular momentum throughout the extent (sim50 r_s) of the forming eccentric disk. Even in the presence of magnetic stresses, the accretion flow remains mostly eccentric with esim0.2-0.3 for rlesssim8r_s and esim0.4-0.5 for 10lesssim r,(r_s)lesssim50. Lastly, we find a polar angle-dependent density structure compatible with the viewing-angle effect, along with an additional azimuthal angle dependence established by the collisions.

  • 4 authors
·
Oct 25, 2025

Subgraph Reconstruction Attacks on Graph RAG Deployments with Practical Defenses

Graph-based retrieval-augmented generation (Graph RAG) is increasingly deployed to support LLM applications by augmenting user queries with structured knowledge retrieved from a knowledge graph. While Graph RAG improves relational reasoning, it introduces a largely understudied threat: adversaries can reconstruct subgraphs from a target RAG system's knowledge graph, enabling privacy inference and replication of curated knowledge assets. We show that existing attacks are largely ineffective against Graph RAG even with simple prompt-based safeguards, because these attacks expose explicit exfiltration intent and are therefore easily suppressed by lightweight safe prompts. We identify three technical challenges for practical Graph RAG extraction under realistic safeguards and introduce GRASP, a closed-box, multi-turn subgraph reconstruction attack. GRASP (i) reframes extraction as a context-processing task, (ii) enforces format-compliant, instance-grounded outputs via per-record identifiers to reduce hallucinations and preserve relational details, and (iii) diversifies goal-driven attack queries using a momentum-aware scheduler to operate within strict query budgets. Across two real-world knowledge graphs, four safety-aligned LLMs, and multiple Graph RAG frameworks, GRASP attains the strongest type-faithful reconstruction where prior methods fail, reaching up to 82.9 F1. We further evaluate defenses and propose two lightweight mitigations that substantially reduce reconstruction fidelity without utility loss.

  • 6 authors
·
Feb 5

Electroencephalographic field influence on calcium momentum waves

Macroscopic EEG fields can be an explicit top-down neocortical mechanism that directly drives bottom-up processes that describe memory, attention, and other neuronal processes. The top-down mechanism considered are macrocolumnar EEG firings in neocortex, as described by a statistical mechanics of neocortical interactions (SMNI), developed as a magnetic vector potential A. The bottom-up process considered are Ca^{2+} waves prominent in synaptic and extracellular processes that are considered to greatly influence neuronal firings. Here, the complimentary effects are considered, i.e., the influence of A on Ca^{2+} momentum, p. The canonical momentum of a charged particle in an electromagnetic field, mathbfΠ = p + q A (SI units), is calculated, where the charge of Ca^{2+} is q = - 2 e, e is the magnitude of the charge of an electron. Calculations demonstrate that macroscopic EEG A can be quite influential on the momentum p of Ca^{2+} ions, in both classical and quantum mechanics. Molecular scales of Ca^{2+} wave dynamics are coupled with A fields developed at macroscopic regional scales measured by coherent neuronal firing activity measured by scalp EEG. The project has three main aspects: fitting A models to EEG data as reported here, building tripartite models to develop A models, and studying long coherence times of Ca^{2+} waves in the presence of A due to coherent neuronal firings measured by scalp EEG. The SMNI model supports a mechanism wherein the p + q A interaction at tripartite synapses, via a dynamic centering mechanism (DCM) to control background synaptic activity, acts to maintain short-term memory (STM) during states of selective attention.

  • 3 authors
·
Nov 22, 2013

Rethinking Muon Beyond Pretraining: Spectral Failures and High-Pass Remedies for VLA and RLVR

Muon is a matrix-aware optimizer that leverages Newton-Schulz (NS) iterations to enforce spectral gradient orthogonalization by driving all singular values of the momentum matrix toward 1. While this uniform spectral whitening enhances exploration and outperforms AdamW in LLM pretraining, we show it could lead to fundamental limitations beyond pretraining in two regimes: (i) cross-modality vision-language-action (VLA) training, where inherently low-rank action-module gradients cause amplification of noisy tail directions, and (ii) reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), where low-SNR gradients and the need to preserve per-head specialization from prior training make whitening unstable. To address these challenges, we propose Pion, a drop-in replacement for Muon that preserves its computational efficiency while replacing uniform spectral whitening with a two-stage Promotion+Suppression mechanism, which we call the high-pass NS iteration. This design induces a sharp spectral high-pass effect, anchoring dominant singular values at 1 while suppressing noisy tail components toward 0, with controllable filter strength. To preserve pretrained per-head heterogeneity, Pion also supports a per-head mode that applies updates independently across attention heads via a simple reshape, at no extra cost. In VLA training on LIBERO and LIBERO-Plus, Pion consistently outperforms both baselines across l_1-regression (VLA-Adapter) and flow-matching (VLANeXt) architectures, e.g., reaching 100% success rate on LIBERO Object after 1,500 training steps with VLA-Adapter, vs. 97.0% for Muon and only 32.2% for AdamW. The advantage of Pion further extends to a real Franka Research 3 robot with a pi_0.5 backbone under the DROID setup on three grasp-and-place tasks. In RLVR post-training on Qwen3-1.7B/4B with GRPO and GMPO, Pion also outperforms AdamW on MATH and GSM8K while Muon collapses to zero.

Investigating the Effects of Bars on Star Formation and Nuclear Activity of Galaxies Using DESI Survey Data

We present a statistical analysis of the connections between galactic bars, star formation, and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity using 33,201 disk galaxies (0.01 < z < 0.05) from DESI DR1 cross-matched with Galaxy Zoo DESI. Based on morphological classifications, we identify 3,508 strongly barred and 8,335 weakly barred systems. We find that barred galaxies exhibit a clear bimodal distribution in color-mass space: weak bars are preferentially found in bluer, lower-mass disks, whereas strong bars are more common in massive, redder systems. Strongly barred galaxies are on average more massive and metal-rich than unbarred systems. In addition, strong bars enhance central SFRs in low-mass galaxies but reduce sSFRs in massive systems, reflecting a dual role where bars initially trigger central star formation but eventually promote quenching by accelerating gas consumption. In terms of nuclear activity, barred galaxies display a higher incidence of AGN activity. The presence of a bar is also associated with an increased fraction of powerful AGN, with the highest proportions found in strongly barred systems. However, the correlations between AGN activity and detailed bar structural parameters are weak, suggesting that the link between bars and nuclear activity is indirect and regulated by multiple factors. Overall, our results support a scenario in which bars facilitate angular-momentum transport and gas inflow, thereby driving central star formation and fueling supermassive black hole accretion while operating alongside other processes that shape galaxy evolution.

  • 2 authors
·
May 5

Conv-FinRe: A Conversational and Longitudinal Benchmark for Utility-Grounded Financial Recommendation

Most recommendation benchmarks evaluate how well a model imitates user behavior. In financial advisory, however, observed actions can be noisy or short-sighted under market volatility and may conflict with a user's long-term goals. Treating what users chose as the sole ground truth, therefore, conflates behavioral imitation with decision quality. We introduce Conv-FinRe, a conversational and longitudinal benchmark for stock recommendation that evaluates LLMs beyond behavior matching. Given an onboarding interview, step-wise market context, and advisory dialogues, models must generate rankings over a fixed investment horizon. Crucially, Conv-FinRe provides multi-view references that distinguish descriptive behavior from normative utility grounded in investor-specific risk preferences, enabling diagnosis of whether an LLM follows rational analysis, mimics user noise, or is driven by market momentum. We build the benchmark from real market data and human decision trajectories, instantiate controlled advisory conversations, and evaluate a suite of state-of-the-art LLMs. Results reveal a persistent tension between rational decision quality and behavioral alignment: models that perform well on utility-based ranking often fail to match user choices, whereas behaviorally aligned models can overfit short-term noise. The dataset is publicly released on Hugging Face, and the codebase is available on GitHub.

TheFinAI The Fin AI
·
Feb 18 2