@article{17322,
  abstract     = {Machine learning interatomic potentials are revolutionizing large-scale, accurate atomistic modeling in material science and chemistry. Many potentials use atomic cluster expansion or equivariant message-passing frameworks. Such frameworks typically use spherical harmonics as angular basis functions, followed by Clebsch-Gordan contraction to maintain rotational symmetry. We propose a mathematically equivalent and simple alternative that performs all operations in the Cartesian coordinates. This approach provides a complete set of polynormially independent features of atomic environments while maintaining interaction body orders. Additionally, we integrate low-dimensional embeddings of various chemical elements, trainable radial channel coupling, and inter-atomic message passing. The resulting potential, named Cartesian Atomic Cluster Expansion (CACE), exhibits good accuracy, stability, and generalizability. We validate its performance in diverse systems, including bulk water, small molecules, and 25-element high-entropy alloys.},
  author       = {Cheng, Bingqing},
  issn         = {2057-3960},
  journal      = {npj Computational Materials},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{Cartesian atomic cluster expansion for machine learning interatomic potentials}},
  doi          = {10.1038/s41524-024-01332-4},
  volume       = {10},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{17278,
  abstract     = {An azeotrope is a constant boiling point mixture, and its behavior is important for fluid separation processes. Predicting azeotropes from atomistic simulations is difficult due to the complexities and convergence problems of Monte Carlo and free-energy perturbation techniques. Here, we present a methodology for predicting the azeotropes of binary mixtures, which computes the compositional dependence of chemical potentials from molecular dynamics simulations using the S0 method and employs experimental boiling point and vaporization enthalpy data. Using this methodology, we reproduce the azeotropes, or lack thereof, in five case studies, including ethanol/water, ethanol/isooctane, methanol/water, hydrazine/water, and acetone/chloroform mixtures. We find that it is crucial to use the experimental boiling point and vaporization enthalpy for reliable azeotrope predictions, as empirical force fields are not accurate enough for these quantities. Finally, we use regular solution models to rationalize the azeotropes and reveal that they tend to form when the mixture components have similar boiling points and strong interactions.},
  author       = {Wang, Xiaoyu and Cheng, Bingqing},
  issn         = {1089-7690},
  journal      = {Journal of Chemical Physics},
  number       = {3},
  publisher    = {AIP Publishing},
  title        = {{Integrating molecular dynamics simulations and experimental data for azeotrope predictions in binary mixtures}},
  doi          = {10.1063/5.0217232},
  volume       = {161},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{22513,
  abstract     = {High elevation headwater catchments are complex hydrological systems that seasonally buffer water and release it in the form of snow and ice melt, modulating downstream runoff regimes and water availability. In High Mountain Asia (HMA), where a wide range of climates from semi-arid to monsoonal exist, the importance of the cryospheric contributions to the water budget varies with the amount and seasonal distribution of precipitation. Losses due to evapotranspiration and sublimation are to date largely unquantified components of the water budget in such catchments, although they can be comparable in magnitude to glacier melt contributions to streamflow. Here, we simulate the hydrology of three high elevation headwater catchments in distinct climates in HMA over 10 years using an ecohydrological model geared towards high-mountain areas including snow and glaciers, forced with reanalysis data. Our results show that evapotranspiration and sublimation together are most important at the semi-arid site, Kyzylsu, on the northernmost slopes of the Pamir mountain range. Here, the evaporative loss amounts to 28% of the water throughput, which we define as the total water added to, or removed from the water balance within a year. In comparison, evaporative losses are 19% at the Central Himalayan site Langtang and 13% at the wettest site, 24 K, on the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau. At the three sites, respectively, sublimation removes 15%, 13% and 6% of snowfall, while evapotranspiration removes the equivalent of 76%, 28% and 19% of rainfall. In absolute terms, and across a comparable elevation range, the highest ET flux is 413 mm yr−1 at 24 K, while the highest sublimation flux is 91 mm yr−1 at Kyzylsu. During warm and dry years, glacier melt was found to only partially compensate for the annual supply deficit.},
  author       = {Fugger, S and Shaw, T E and Jouberton, A and Miles, E S and Buri, P and McCarthy, M and Fyffe, C and Fatichi, Simone and Kneib, M and Molnar, Peter and Pellicciotti, F},
  issn         = {1748-9326},
  journal      = {Environmental Research Letters},
  keywords     = {Glacio-hydrology, High mountain Asia, High mountain hydrology, Ecohydrology, Landsurface modelling, Remote sensing hydrology},
  number       = {4},
  publisher    = {IOP Publishing},
  title        = {{Hydrological regimes and evaporative flux partitioning at the climatic ends of high mountain Asia}},
  doi          = {10.1088/1748-9326/ad25a0},
  volume       = {19},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{18525,
  abstract     = {As their statistical power grows, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified an increasing number of loci underlying quantitative traits of interest. These loci are scattered throughout the genome and are individually responsible only for small fractions of the total heritable trait variance. The recently proposed omnigenic model provides a conceptual framework to explain these observations by postulating that numerous distant loci contribute to each complex trait via effect propagation through intracellular regulatory networks. We formalize this conceptual framework by proposing the “quantitative omnigenic model” (QOM), a statistical model that combines prior knowledge of the regulatory network topology with genomic data. By applying our model to gene expression traits in yeast, we demonstrate that QOM achieves similar gene expression prediction performance to traditional GWAS with hundreds of times less parameters, while simultaneously extracting candidate causal and quantitative chains of effect propagation through the regulatory network for every individual gene. We estimate the fraction of heritable trait variance in cis- and in trans-, break the latter down by effect propagation order, assess the trans- variance not attributable to transcriptional regulation, and show that QOM correctly accounts for the low-dimensional structure of gene expression covariance. We furthermore demonstrate the relevance of QOM for systems biology, by employing it as a statistical test for the quality of regulatory network reconstructions, and linking it to the propagation of nontranscriptional (including environmental) effects.},
  author       = {Ruzickova, Natalia and Hledik, Michal and Tkačik, Gašper},
  issn         = {1091-6490},
  journal      = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  number       = {44},
  publisher    = {National Academy of Sciences},
  title        = {{Quantitative omnigenic model discovers interpretable genome-wide associations}},
  doi          = {10.1073/pnas.2402340121},
  volume       = {121},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{22553,
  abstract     = {Tidal freshwater marshes are threatened by seawater intrusion globally due to freshwater discharge reduction and sea-level rise. However, terrestrial nitrate (NO3−) transport responding to seawater intrusion remains poorly understood in tidal marshes. After validation against laboratory experiments, numerical simulations were conducted to analyze seawater intrusion effects on terrestrial NO3− transport and transformation in tidal marsh aquifers. Results reveal that seawater intrusion noticeably affects NO3− transport from the marsh aquifer to the tidal creek. Seawater intrusion results in an upper saline plume and a saltwater wedge within the aquifer, which markedly narrows the discharge outlet width of the NO3− plume and intensifies the peak NO3− flux across the creek bank. Consequently, both the NO3− removal efficiency and total nitrogen gas load to the creek decrease substantially after seawater intrusion. This is because the reduction of the transit time and the mixing zone width of the NO3− plume after seawater intrusion weakens denitrification. Sensitivity analyses indicate that the difference of the NO3− removal efficiency before and after seawater intrusion depends on soil properties. A larger unsaturated flow effect, saturated hydraulic conductivity or effective porosity leads to a greater difference of the NO3− removal efficiency before and after seawater intrusion. The predicted decrease of the NO3− removal efficiency after seawater intrusion is consistent with existing field data.},
  author       = {Luo, Zhaoyang and Kong, Jun and Yu, Xiayang and Gao, Chao and Barry, D. A. and Fatichi, Simone},
  issn         = {1944-7973},
  journal      = {Water Resources Research},
  number       = {9},
  publisher    = {American Geophysical Union},
  title        = {{Seawater intrusion inhibits nitrate removal in tidal marsh aquifers}},
  doi          = {10.1029/2024wr038107},
  volume       = {60},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{22511,
  abstract     = {Wildfires are increasing in frequency, intensity, and extent globally due to climate change and they can alter forest composition, structure, and function. The destruction and subsequent regrowth of young vegetation can modify the ecosystem evapotranspiration and downstream water availability. However, the response of forest recovery on hydrology is not well known with even the sign of evapotranspiration and water yield changes following forest fires being uncertain across the globe. Here, we quantify the effects of forest regrowth after catastrophic wildfires on evapotranspiration and runoff in the world's tallest angiosperm forest (Eucalyptus regnans) in Australia. We combine eddy covariance measurements including pre- and post-fire periods, mechanistic ecohydrological modeling and then extend the analysis spatially to multiple fires in eucalypt-dominated forests in south-eastern Australia by utilizing remote sensing. We find a fast recovery of evapotranspiration which reaches and exceeds pre-fire values within 2 years after the bushfire, a result confirmed by eddy covariance data, remote sensing, and modeling. Such a fast evapotranspiration recovery is likely generalizable to tall eucalypt forests in south-eastern Australia as shown by remote sensing. Once climate variability is discounted, ecohydrological modeling shows evapotranspiration rates from the recovering forest which reach peak values of +20% evapotranspiration 3 years post-fire. As a result, modeled runoff decreases substantially. Contrary to previous research, we find that the increase in modeled evapotranspiration is largely caused by the aerodynamic effects of a much shorter forest height leading to higher surface temperature, higher humidity gradients and therefore increased transpiration. However, increases in evapotranspiration as well as decreases in runoff caused by the young forest are constrained by energy and water limitations. Our result of an increase in evapotranspiration due to aerodynamic warming in a shorter forest after wildfires could occur in many parts of the world experiencing forest disturbances.},
  author       = {Meili, Naika and Beringer, Jason and Zhao, Jiacheng and Fatichi, Simone},
  issn         = {1365-2486},
  journal      = {Global Change Biology},
  keywords     = {Aerodynamic effects, Bushfires Australia, Ecohydrological modeling, Eddy covariancemeasurements, Eucalyptus regnans, Forest evapotranspiration, Forest recovery, Mountain Ash, TERN OzFlux, Wildfires},
  number       = {1},
  publisher    = {Wiley},
  title        = {{Aerodynamic effects cause higher forest evapotranspiration and water yield reductions after wildfires in tall forests}},
  doi          = {10.1111/gcb.16995},
  volume       = {30},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{17052,
  abstract     = {Production of thermoelectric materials from solution-processed particles involves the synthesis of particles, their purification and densification into pelletized material. Chemical changes that occur during each one of these steps render them performance determining. Particularly the purification steps, bypassed in conventional solid-state synthesis, are the cause for large discrepancies among similar solution-processed materials. In present work, the investigation focuses on a water-based surfactant free solution synthesis of SnSe, a highly relevant thermoelectric material. We show and rationalize that the number of leaching steps, purification solvent, annealing, and annealing atmosphere have significant influence on the Sn : Se ratio and impurity content in the powder. Such compositional changes that are undetectable by conventional characterization techniques lead to distinct consolidated materials with different types and concentration of defects. Additionally, the profound effect on their transport properties is demonstrated. We emphasize that understanding the chemistry and identifying key chemical species and their role throughout the process is paramount for optimizing material performance. Furthermore, we aim to demonstrate the necessity of comprehensive reporting of these steps as a standard practice to ensure material reproducibility.},
  author       = {Fiedler, Christine and Calcabrini, Mariano and Liu, Yu and Ibáñez, Maria},
  issn         = {1521-3773},
  journal      = {Angewandte Chemie International Edition},
  number       = {25},
  publisher    = {Wiley},
  title        = {{Unveiling crucial chemical processing parameters influencing the performance of solution-processed inorganic thermoelectric materials}},
  doi          = {10.1002/anie.202402628},
  volume       = {63},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{17124,
  abstract     = {In recent years, solution processes have gained considerable traction as a cost-effective and scalable method to produce high-performance thermoelectric materials. The process entails a series of critical steps: synthesis, purification, thermal treatments, and consolidation, each playing a pivotal role in determining performance, stability, and reproducibility. We have noticed a need for more comprehensive details for each of the described steps in most published works. Recognizing the significance of detailed synthetic protocols, we describe here the approach used to synthesize and characterize one of the highest-performing polycrystalline p-type SnSe. In particular, we report the synthesis of SnSe particles in water and the subsequent surface treatment with CdSe molecular complexes that yields CdSe-SnSe nanocomposites upon consolidation. Moreover, the surface treatment inhibits grain growth through Zenner pinning of secondary phase CdSe nanoparticles and enhances defect formation at different length scales. The enhanced complexity in the CdSe-SnSe nanocomposite microstructure with respect to SnSe promotes phonon scattering and thereby significantly reduces the thermal conductivity. Such surface engineering provides opportunities in solution processing for introducing and controlling defects, making it possible to optimize the transport properties and attain a high thermoelectric figure of merit.},
  author       = {Fiedler, Christine and Liu, Yu and Ibáñez, Maria},
  issn         = {1940-087X},
  journal      = {Journal of Visualized Experiments},
  number       = {207},
  publisher    = {MyJove Corporation},
  title        = {{Solution-processed, surface-engineered, polycrystalline CdSe-SnSe exhibiting low thermal conductivity}},
  doi          = {10.3791/66278},
  volume       = {2024},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15298,
  abstract     = {Mountains are important suppliers of freshwater to downstream areas, affecting large populations in particular in High Mountain Asia (HMA). Yet, the propagation of water from HMA headwaters to downstream areas is not fully understood, as interactions in the mountain water cycle between the cryo-, hydro- and biosphere remain elusive. We review the definition of blue and green water fluxes as liquid water that contributes to runoff at the outlet of the selected domain (blue) and water lost to the atmosphere through vapor fluxes, that is evaporation from water, ground, and interception plus transpiration (green) and propose to add the term white water to account for the (often neglected) evaporation and sublimation from snow and ice. We provide an assessment of models that can simulate the cryo-hydro-biosphere continuum and the interactions between spheres in high mountain catchments, going beyond disciplinary separations. Land surface models are uniquely able to account for such complexity, since they solve the coupled fluxes of water, energy, and carbon between the land surface and atmosphere. Due to the mechanistic nature of such models, specific variables can be compared systematically to independent remote sensing observations – providing vital insights into model accuracy and enabling the understanding of the complex watersheds of HMA. We discuss recent developments in spaceborne earth observation products that have the potential to support catchment modeling in high mountain regions. We then present a pilot study application of the mechanistic land surface model Tethys & Chloris to a glacierized watershed in the Nepalese Himalayas and discuss the use of high-resolution earth observation data to constrain the meteorological forcing uncertainty and validate model results. We use these insights to highlight the remaining challenges and future opportunities that remote sensing data presents for land surface modeling in HMA.},
  author       = {Buri, Pascal and Fatichi, Simone and Shaw, Thomas and Fyffe, Catriona Louise and Miles, Evan S. and Mccarthy, Michael and Kneib, Marin and Ren, Shaoting and Jouberton, Achille and Fugger, Stefan and Jia, Li and Zhang, Jing and Shen, Cong and Zheng, Chaolei and Menenti, Massimo and Pellicciotti, Francesca},
  issn         = {1009-5020},
  journal      = {Geo-Spatial Information Science},
  number       = {3},
  pages        = {703--727},
  publisher    = {Taylor & Francis},
  title        = {{Land surface modeling informed by earth observation data: Toward understanding blue–green–white water fluxes in High Mountain Asia}},
  doi          = {10.1080/10095020.2024.2330546},
  volume       = {27},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{17231,
  abstract     = {In the class of projective billiards, which contains the usual billiards, we exhibit counter-examples to Ivrii's conjecture, which states that in any planar billiard with smooth boundary the set of periodic orbits has zero measure. The counter-examples are polygons admitting a 2-parameters family of n-periodic orbits, with n being either 3 or any even integer greater than 4.},
  author       = {Fiorebe, Corentin},
  issn         = {1553-5231},
  journal      = {Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems- Series A},
  number       = {11},
  pages        = {3287--3301},
  publisher    = {AIMS},
  title        = {{Examples of projective billiards with open sets of periodic orbits}},
  doi          = {10.3934/dcds.2024059},
  volume       = {44},
  year         = {2024},
}

@unpublished{15091,
  abstract     = {Motivated by applications in the medical sciences, we study finite chromatic
sets in Euclidean space from a topological perspective. Based on the persistent
homology for images, kernels and cokernels, we design provably stable
homological quantifiers that describe the geometric micro- and macro-structure
of how the color classes mingle. These can be efficiently computed using
chromatic variants of Delaunay and alpha complexes, and code that does these
computations is provided.},
  author       = {Cultrera di Montesano, Sebastiano and Draganov, Ondrej and Edelsbrunner, Herbert and Saghafian, Morteza},
  booktitle    = {arXiv},
  title        = {{Chromatic alpha complexes}},
  doi          = {10.48550/arXiv.2212.03128},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{17898,
  abstract     = {There is an ever-growing zoo of modern neural network models that can efficiently learn end-to-end control from visual observations. These advanced deep models, ranging from convolutional to Vision Transformers, from small to gigantic networks, have been extensively tested on offline image classification tasks. In this paper, we study these vision models with respect to the open-loop training to closed-loop generalization abilities, i.e., deployment realizes a causal feedback loop that is not present during training. This causality gap typically emerges in robotics applications such as autonomous driving, where a network is trained to imitate the control commands of a human. In this setting, two situations arise: 1) Closed-loop testing in-distribution, where the test environment shares properties with those of offline training data. 2) Closed-loop testing under distribution shifts and out-of-distribution. Contrary to recently reported results, we show that under proper training guidelines, all vision architectures perform indistinguishably well on in-distribution deployment, resolving the causality gap. In situation 2, We observe that scale is the strongest factor in improving closed-loop generalization regardless of the choice of the model architecture. Our results predict the trend that in the future we will see larger and larger models being used in offline-training-online-deployment imitation learning tasks in robotic applications.},
  author       = {Lechner, Mathias and Hasani, Ramin and Amini, Alexander and Wang, Tsun Hsuan and Henzinger, Thomas A and Rus, Daniela},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation},
  isbn         = {9798350384574},
  issn         = {1050-4729},
  location     = {Yokohama, Japan},
  pages        = {2774--2782},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Overparametrization helps offline-to-online generalization of closed-loop control from pixels}},
  doi          = {10.1109/ICRA57147.2024.10610284},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{17893,
  abstract     = {Strong data processing inequalities (SDPI) are an important object of study in Information Theory and have been well studied for f -divergences. Universal upper and lower bounds have been provided along with several applications, connecting them to impossibility (converse) results, concentration of measure, hypercontractivity, and so on. In this paper, we study Renyi divergence and the corresponding SDPI constant whose behavior seems to deviate from that of ordinary <1>-divergences. In particular, one can find examples showing that the universal upper bound relating its SDPI constant to the one of Total Variation does not hold in general. In this work, we prove, however, that the universal lower bound involving the SDPI constant of the Chi-square divergence does indeed hold. Furthermore, we also provide a characterization of the distribution that achieves the supremum when is equal to 2 and consequently compute the SDPI constant for Renyi divergence of the general binary channel.},
  author       = {Jin, Lifu and Esposito, Amedeo Roberto and Gastpar, Michael},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory},
  isbn         = {9798350382846},
  issn         = {2157-8095},
  location     = {Athens, Greece},
  pages        = {3178--3183},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Properties of the strong data processing constant for Rényi divergence}},
  doi          = {10.1109/ISIT57864.2024.10619367},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{17895,
  abstract     = {We propose a concatenated code construction for a class of discrete-alphabet oblivious arbitrarily varying channels (AVCs) with cost constraints. The code has time and space complexity polynomial in the blocklength n . It uses a Reed-Solomon outer code, logarithmic blocklength random inner codes, and stochastic encoding by permuting the codeword before transmission. When the channel satisfies a condition called strong DS-nonsymmetrizability (a modified version of nonsymmetrizability originally due to Dobrushin and Stambler), we show that the code achieves a rate that for a variety of oblivious AVCs (such as classically studied error/erasure channels) match the known capacities.},
  author       = {Dey, B. K. and Jaggi, S. and Langberg, M. and Sarwate, A. D. and Zhang, Yihan},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory },
  isbn         = {9798350382846},
  issn         = {2157-8095},
  location     = {Athens, Greece},
  pages        = {1586--1591},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Computationally efficient codes for strongly Dobrushin-Stambler nonsymmetrizable oblivious AVCs}},
  doi          = {10.1109/ISIT57864.2024.10619362},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{17894,
  abstract     = {Sibson's α -mutual information has received renewed attention recently in several contexts: concentration of measure under dependence, statistical learning, hypothesis testing, and estimation theory. In this work, we introduce several variational representations of Sibson's α -mutual information: 1) as a supremum over joint distributions of (a combination of) KL divergences; and 2) as a supremum over functions of opportune expected values. Leveraging them, we produce a variety of novel and known results, including a generalization of transportation-cost inequalities and Fano's inequality.},
  author       = {Esposito, Amedeo Roberto and Gastpar, Michael and Issa, Ibrahim},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory },
  isbn         = {9798350382846},
  issn         = {2157-8095},
  location     = {Athens, Greece},
  pages        = {2110--2115},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Variational characterizations of Sibson's α-mutual information}},
  doi          = {10.1109/ISIT57864.2024.10619378},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{18630,
  abstract     = {Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical optimization criterion is the maximal expected total reward where the MDP stops after T steps, which can be computed by a simple dynamic programming algorithm. We consider a natural generalization of the problem where the stopping times can be chosen according to a probability distribution, such that the expected stopping time is T, to optimize the expected total reward. Quite surprisingly we establish inter-reducibility of the expected stopping-time problem for Markov chains with the Positivity problem (which is related to the well-known Skolem problem), for which establishing either decidability or undecidability would be a major breakthrough. Given the hardness of the exact problem, we consider the approximate version of the problem: we show that it can be solved in exponential time for Markov chains and in exponential space for MDPs.},
  author       = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Doyen, Laurent},
  issn         = {1860-5974},
  journal      = {Logical Methods in Computer Science},
  number       = {4},
  pages        = {11:1--11:34},
  publisher    = {EPI Sciences},
  title        = {{Stochastic processes with expected stopping time}},
  doi          = {10.46298/lmcs-20(4:11)2024},
  volume       = {20},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{18450,
  abstract     = {In this work we present the engineering of a portable platform for sensing SERS signals in droplets microfluidics. This system comprised not only the read-out platform but also a design for the microfluidic devices optimized to enhanced the obtained SERS signals.},
  author       = {Quintero, Sergio and Relvas, Maria and Aranda, Marta and Nodal, Fernando and Dieguez, Lorena and Abalde-Cela, Sara},
  booktitle    = {2024 International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics},
  isbn         = {9798350384925},
  issn         = {2160-5041},
  location     = {San Sebastian, Spain},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Portable Raman platform for SERS droplets microfludics}},
  doi          = {10.1109/OMN61224.2024.10685279},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{18923,
  abstract     = {Combinatorial optimization is a challenging problem applicable in a wide range of fields from logistics to finance. Recently, quantum computing has been used to attempt to solve these problems using a range of algorithms, including parameterized quantum circuits, adiabatic protocols, and quantum annealing. These solutions typically have several challenges: 1) there is little to no performance gain over classical methods; 2) not all constraints and objectives may be efficiently encoded in the quantum ansatz; and 3) the solution domain of the objective function may not be the same as the bit strings of measurement outcomes. This work presents “nonnative hybrid algorithms”: a framework to overcome these challenges by integrating quantum and classical resources with a hybrid approach. By designing nonnative quantum variational anosatzes that inherit some but not all problem structure, measurement outcomes from the quantum computer can act as a resource to be used by classical routines to indirectly compute optimal solutions, partially overcoming the challenges of contemporary quantum optimization approaches. These methods are demonstrated using a publicly available neutral-atom quantum computer on two simple problems of Max k-Cut and maximum independent set. We find improvements in solution quality when comparing the hybrid algorithm to its “no quantum” version, a demonstration of a “comparative advantage.”},
  author       = {Wurtz, Jonathan and Sack, Stefan and Wang, Sheng-Tao},
  issn         = {2689-1808},
  journal      = {IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering},
  pages        = {1--14},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Solving nonnative combinatorial optimization problems using hybrid quantum–classical algorithms}},
  doi          = {10.1109/tqe.2024.3443660},
  volume       = {5},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{22563,
  abstract     = {The ascent of water from the soil to the leaves of vascular plants, described by the study of plant hydraulics, regulates ecosystem responses to environmental forcing and recovery from stress periods. Several approaches to model plant hydraulics have been proposed. In this study, we introduce four different versions of plant hydraulics representations in the terrestrial biosphere model T&C to understand the significance of plant hydraulics to ecosystem functioning. We tested representations of plant hydraulics, investigating plant water capacitance, and long-term xylem damages following drought. The four models we tested were a combination of representations including or neglecting capacitance and including or neglecting xylem damage legacies. Using the models at six case studies spanning semiarid to tropical ecosystems, we quantify how plant xylem flow, plant water storage and long-term xylem damage can modulate overall water and carbon dynamics across multiple time scales. We show that as drought develops, models with plant hydraulics predict a slower onset of plant water stress, and a diurnal variability of water and carbon fluxes closer to observations. Plant water storage was found to be particularly important for the diurnal dynamics of water and carbon fluxes, with models that include plant water capacitance yielding better results. Models including permanent damage to conducting plant tissues show an additional significant drought legacy effect, limiting plant productivity during the recovery phase following major droughts. However, when considering ecosystem responses to the observed climate variability, plant hydraulic modules alone cannot significantly improve the overall model performance, even though they reproduce more realistic water and carbon dynamics. This opens new avenues for model development, explicitly linking plant hydraulics with additional ecosystem processes, such as plant phenology and improved carbon allocation algorithms.},
  author       = {Paschalis, Athanasios and De Kauwe, Martin G. and Sabot, Manon and Fatichi, Simone},
  issn         = {1365-2486},
  journal      = {Global Change Biology},
  keywords     = {Ecosystem recovery, Ecosystem responses, Plant hydraulics, Terrestrial biosphere model, Water stress},
  number       = {1},
  publisher    = {Wiley},
  title        = {{When do plant hydraulics matter in terrestrial biosphere modelling?}},
  doi          = {10.1111/gcb.17022},
  volume       = {30},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{22583,
  abstract     = {Accurately predicting weather and climate in cities is critical for safeguarding human health and strengthening urban resilience. Multimodel evaluations can lead to model improvements; however, there have been no major intercomparisons of urban-focussed land surface models in over a decade. Here, in Phase 1 of the Urban-PLUMBER project, we evaluate the ability of 30 land surface models to simulate surface energy fluxes critical to atmospheric meteorological and air quality simulations. We establish minimum and upper performance expectations for participating models using simple information-limited models as benchmarks. Compared with the last major model intercomparison at the same site, we find broad improvement in the current cohort's predictions of short-wave radiation, sensible and latent heat fluxes, but little or no improvement in long-wave radiation and momentum fluxes. Models with a simple urban representation (e.g., ‘slab’ schemes) generally perform well, particularly when combined with sophisticated hydrological/vegetation models. Some mid-complexity models (e.g., ‘canyon’ schemes) also perform well, indicating efforts to integrate vegetation and hydrology processes have paid dividends. The most complex models that resolve three-dimensional interactions between buildings in general did not perform as well as other categories. However, these models also tended to have the simplest representations of hydrology and vegetation. Models without any urban representation (i.e., vegetation-only land surface models) performed poorly for latent heat fluxes, and reasonably for other energy fluxes at this suburban site. Our analysis identified widespread human errors in initial submissions that substantially affected model performances. Although significant efforts are applied to correct these errors, we conclude that human factors are likely to influence results in this (or any) model intercomparison, particularly where participating scientists have varying experience and first languages. These initial results are for one suburban site, and future phases of Urban-PLUMBER will evaluate models across 20 sites in different urban and regional climate zones.},
  author       = {Lipson, Mathew J. and Grimmond, Sue and Best, Martin and Abramowitz, Gab and Coutts, Andrew and Tapper, Nigel and Baik, Jong‐Jin and Beyers, Meiring and Blunn, Lewis and Boussetta, Souhail and Bou‐Zeid, Elie and De Kauwe, Martin G. and de Munck, Cécile and Demuzere, Matthias and Fatichi, Simone and Fortuniak, Krzysztof and Han, Beom‐Soon and Hendry, Margaret A. and Kikegawa, Yukihiro and Kondo, Hiroaki and Lee, Doo‐Il and Lee, Sang‐Hyun and Lemonsu, Aude and Machado, Tiago and Manoli, Gabriele and Martilli, Alberto and Masson, Valéry and McNorton, Joe and Meili, Naika and Meyer, David and Nice, Kerry A. and Oleson, Keith W. and Park, Seung‐Bu and Roth, Michael and Schoetter, Robert and Simón‐Moral, Andrés and Steeneveld, Gert‐Jan and Sun, Ting and Takane, Yuya and Thatcher, Marcus and Tsiringakis, Aristofanis and Varentsov, Mikhail and Wang, Chenghao and Wang, Zhi‐Hua and Pitman, Andy J.},
  issn         = {1477-870X},
  journal      = {Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society},
  keywords     = {Benchmark, Energy balance, Intercomparison, Model evaluation, Urban climate, Urban meteorology},
  number       = {758},
  pages        = {126--169},
  publisher    = {Wiley},
  title        = {{Evaluation of 30 urban land surface models in the Urban-PLUMBER project: Phase 1 results}},
  doi          = {10.1002/qj.4589},
  volume       = {150},
  year         = {2024},
}