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Non-Stationary Load Extrapolation over Long Horizons Based on a Frequency-Consistent Diffusion Model

【】 Full article: (Authored by Yu Bai and Fei Meng, from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, China.)

Engineering load signals support durability analysis because they reflect real service conditions. Long-duration load histories are essential for fatigue-life prediction and reliability assessment. However, long-term field measurements are often costly and difficult to obtain. Therefore, extending short measurements into representative long histories is practically important. This study proposes a frequency-consistent diffusion_model (FCDM) for long-horizon extrapolation of non-stationary bearing load signals under turning conditions. load_extrapolation.

Abstract

This study proposes a frequency-consistent diffusion model (FCDM) for long-horizon extrapolation of non-stationary bearing load signals. Condition tokens and spectral-consistency constraints are introduced to preserve spectral and fatigue-related characteristics during tenfold extrapolation. The generated signals are evaluated using PSD, band-energy proportion, Range-Mean distribution, and unit pseudo-damage. Compared with DDPM, FCDM better preserves dominant frequencies, harmonic structure, and band-energy allocation. The dominant frequency error is 1.02%, and the mean harmonic error is 0.52%. FCDM also shows smaller band-energy allocation errors across all frequency bands. In addition, it reproduces the bimodal clustering pattern in the Range-Mean distribution more accurately. The unit pseudo-damage is 1.0978 for FCDM and 1.1280 for DDPM. These results indicate that FCDM improves spectral fidelity and fatigue-related consistency in long-sequence load extrapolation.

Diffusion Model, Load Extrapolation, Frequency-Consistency

The Fight For Slow And Boring Research

Great article. I should note that it actually has nothing to do with slow and boring research — it’s about the importance of scientists practicing good communication and public engagement to facilitate fundraising from non-governmental sources.

As federal research funding shrinks, scientists are looking to other sources of support. Can they learn to sell their work without selling out?

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have embodied an imperfect social contract: Federal agencies would fund basic research at scale, and in return, that research would serve the public good through medical advances, technological progress, and economic growth.

For scientists, this system created a reliable pathway: Do good work, write strong grants, and federal agencies would keep your lab running. It was never a perfectly fair system, but it was predictable enough that you could build a life around it. If your work was solid and your grants were strong, the system would fund you.

Toward a policy for machine-learning tools in kernel development

The first topic of discussion at the 2025 Maintainers Summit has been in the air for a while: what role — if any — should machine-learning-based tools have in the kernel development process? While there has been a fair amount of controversy around these tools, and concerns remain, it seems that the kernel community, or at least its high-level maintainership, is comfortable with these tools becoming a significant part of the development process.

Sasha Levin began the discussion by pointing to a summary he had sent to the mailing lists a few days before. There is some consensus, he said, that human accountability for patches is critical, and that use of a large language model in the creation of a patch does not change that. Purely machine-generated patches, without human involvement, are not welcome. Maintainers must retain the authority to accept or reject machine-generated contributions as they see fit. And, he said, there is agreement that the use of tools should be disclosed in some manner.

But, he asked the group: is there agreement in general that these tools are, in the end, just more tools? Steve Rostedt said that LLM-generated code may bring legal concerns that other tools do not raise, but Greg Kroah-Hartman answered that the current developers certificate of origin (“Signed-off-by”) process should cover the legal side of things. Rostedt agreed that the submitter is ultimately on the hook for the code they contribute, but he wondered about the possibility of some court ruling that a given model violates copyright years after the kernel had accepted code it generated. That would create the need for a significant cleanup effort.

Affecting a Signaling Pathway Alleviates Alzheimer’s in Mice

A new study shows that the overexpression of somatostatin (SST), a neuropeptide produced in neurons and acting mostly on microglia, lowers inflammation and amyloid β burden, improving cognitive abilities in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s. Drugs affecting this pathway are already available [1].

The unusual suspect

In Alzheimer’s disease, many signaling pathways in the brain become dysregulated. Since going after the main hallmarks of the disease (amyloid β and tau protein accumulation) has only yielded modest results so far, scientists are exploring various secondary targets whose levels correlate with the disease.

Magnetic coil setup guides microrobots without seeing them

SMU researchers have created an electromagnetic coil system that can control microrobots without requiring continuous visual tracking of their position—a significant advancement that could enable microrobots to operate inside the body, within industrial pipes and other places that aren’t always visible with a camera.

“In real-world settings, imaging methods can be complex, slow, expensive, or unreliable,” said lead inventor Sangwon Lee, a postdoctoral researcher at the BAST Lab at SMU. “By reducing or eliminating the need for position tracking, the system can be simpler, more robust, and more practical for those hard-to-see environments, while still providing controlled motion.”

The instrument works by creating a uniform magnetic field gradient that applies consistent force to microrobots regardless of their location within the workspace, eliminating the need for constant position updates that have long been an obstacle for microrobot control systems, explained co-inventor MinJun Kim is the Robert C. Womack Chair Professor in the Lyle School of Engineering at SMU and principal investigator of the BAST Lab.

How nuclear batteries could speed the race to fusion power

Fusion reactions release tremendous amounts of energy by fusing two lighter atoms into a heavier one. But harvesting that energy has proven challenging. The most common approach is to heat water and spin a steam turbine, but that approach isn’t terribly efficient, harnessing at best around 60% of the power.

Avalanche Energy thinks it can capture more of that energy by developing new materials known as radiovoltaics. Radiovoltaics are similar to photovoltaics — traditional solar panels — in that they use semiconductors to transform radiation into electricity. They’ve been around for a while, but they’re not very effective. Existing radiovoltaics are easily damaged by the very radiation they harness and don’t produce that much electricity.

Today, Avalanche was awarded a $5.2 million contract from DARPA to develop new radiovoltaics, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

Single-cell epigenomics uncovers heterochromatin instability and transcription factor dysfunction during mouse brain aging

Amaral et al. present a single-cell atlas of brain aging, revealing coordinated chromatin and gene expression changes across multiple regions from young to old mice. Their analyses show that aging involves loss of progenitor cells, dysregulation of master transcription factors, and destabilization of heterochromatin, driving a gradual erosion of cellular identity.

Species-specific oxygen sensing governs the initiation of vertebrate limb regeneration

Why mammals cannot regenerate limbs like amphibians do presents a long-standing puzzle in biology. To uncover the underlying differences, we compared amputation responses of embryonic mouse (Mus musculus) and Xenopus laevis tadpole limbs. Lowering environmental oxygen or stabilizing the oxygen-sensitive hypoxia-inducible factor 1A (HIF1A) induced rapid wound healing in mouse limbs. This response was accompanied by altered cellular mechanics, metabolism, and a histone landscape that primed regenerative cell states. Conversely, Xenopus tadpole limbs retained these features even under high oxygen levels. Their reduced oxygen-sensing capacity was associated with decreased HIF1A-regulating gene expression. Our results thus identify species-specific oxygen-sensing capacity as a fundamental, targetable mechanism that can unlock latent regenerative programs in mammals.

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