@article{21041,
abstract = {It is common for programmers to assemble their programs from a combination of trusted and untrusted components. In this context, a trusted program component is said to be robustly safe if it behaves safely when linked against arbitrary untrusted code. Prior work has shown how various encapsulation mechanisms (in both high- and low-level languages) can be used to protect code so that it is robustly safe, but none of the existing work has explored how robust safety can be achieved in a patently unsafe language like C.
In this paper, we show how to bring robust safety to a simple yet representative C-like language we call Rec. Although Rec (like C) is inherently ”dangerous” and thus not robustly safe, we can ”save” Rec programs via compilation to Cap, a CHERI-like capability machine. To formalize the benefits of such a hardening compiler, we develop Reckon, a separation logic for verifying robust safety of Rec programs. Reckon is not sound under Rec’s unsafe, C-like semantics, but it is sound when Rec programs are hardened via compilation and linked against untrusted code running on Cap. As a crucial step in proving soundness of Reckon, we introduce a novel technique of semantic back-translation, which we formalize by building on the DimSum framework for multi-language semantics. All our results are mechanized in the Rocq prover.},
author = {Mück, Niklas and Georges, Aïna Linn and Dreyer, Derek and Garg, Deepak and Sammler, Michael Joachim},
issn = {2475-1421},
journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
pages = {1153--1182},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
title = {{Endangered by the language but saved by the compiler: Robust safety via semantic back-translation}},
doi = {10.1145/3776682},
volume = {10},
year = {2026},
}
@inproceedings{21042,
abstract = {Many blockchains such as Ethereum execute all incoming transactions sequentially significantly limiting the potential throughput. A common approach to scale execution is parallel execution engines that fully utilize modern multi-core architectures. Parallel execution is then either done optimistically, by executing transactions in parallel and detecting conflicts on the fly, or guided, by requiring exhaustive client transaction hints and scheduling transactions accordingly.
However, recent studies have shown that the performance of parallel execution engines depends on the nature of the underlying workload. In fact, in some cases, only a 60% speed-up compared to sequential execution could be obtained. This is the case, as transactions that access the same resources must be executed sequentially. For example, if 10% of the transactions in a block access the same resource, the execution cannot meaningfully scale beyond 10 cores. Therefore, a single popular application can bottleneck the execution and limit the potential throughput.
In this paper, we introduce Anthemius, a block construction algorithm that optimizes parallel transaction execution throughput. We evaluate Anthemius exhaustively under a range of workloads, and show that Anthemius enables the underlying parallel execution engine to process over twice as many transactions.},
author = {Neiheiser, Ray and Kokoris Kogias, Eleftherios},
booktitle = {29th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security},
isbn = {9783032070234},
issn = {1611-3349},
location = {Miyakojima, Japan},
pages = {307--323},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{Anthemius: Efficient and modular block assembly for concurrent execution}},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-07024-1_18},
volume = {15751},
year = {2026},
}
@unpublished{21051,
abstract = {In this work, we introduce and study what we believe is an intriguing and, to the best of our knowledge, previously unknown connection between two areas in computational topology, topological data analysis (TDA) and knot theory. Given a function from a topological space to $\mathbb{R}$, TDA provides tools to simplify and study the importance of topological features: in particular, the $l^{th}$-dimensional persistence diagram encodes the $l$-homology in the sublevel set as the function value increases as a set of points in the plane. Given a continuous one-parameter family of such functions, we can combine the persistence diagrams into an object known as a vineyard, which track the evolution of points in the persistence diagram. If we further restrict that family of functions to be periodic, we identify the two ends of the vineyard, yielding a closed vineyard. This allows the study of monodromy, which in this context means that following the family of functions for a period permutes the set of points in a non-trivial way. In this work, given a link and value $l$, we construct a topological space and periodic family of functions such that the closed $l$-vineyard contains this link. This shows that vineyards are topologically as rich as one could possibly hope. Importantly, it has at least two immediate consequences: First, monodromy of any periodicity can occur in a $l$-vineyard, answering a variant of a question by [Arya et al 2024]. To exhibit this, we also reformulate monodromy in a more geometric way, which may be of interest in itself. Second, distinguishing vineyards is likely to be difficult given the known difficulty of knot and link recognition, which have strong connections to many NP-hard problems.},
author = { Chambers, Erin and Fillmore, Christopher D and Stephenson, Elizabeth R and Wintraecken, Mathijs},
booktitle = {arXiv},
title = {{Braiding vineyards}},
doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2504.11203},
year = {2026},
}
@inbook{21056,
abstract = {In this work, we introduce and study what we believe is an intriguing, and, to the best of our knowledge, previously unknown connection between two fundamental areas in computational topology, namely topological data analysis (TDA) and knot theory. Given a function from a topological space to ℝ, TDA provides tools to simplify and study the importance of topological features: in particular, the 𝑙^𝑡ℎ-dimensional persistence diagram encodes the topological changes (or 𝑙-homology) in the sublevel set as the function value increases into a set of points in the plane. Given a continuous one parameter family of such functions, we can combine the persistence diagrams into an object known as a vineyard, which tracks the evolution of points in the persistence diagram as the function changes. If we further restrict that family of functions to be periodic, we identify the two ends of the vineyard, yielding a closed vineyard. This allows the study of monodromy, which in this context means that following the family of functions for a period permutes the set of points in a non-trivial way. Recent work has studied monodromy in the directional persistent homology transform, demonstrating some interesting connections between an input shape and monodromy in the persistent homology transform for 0-dimensional homology embedded in ℝ^2.
In this work, given a link and a value 𝑙, we construct a topological space (based on the given link) and periodic family of functions on this space (based on the Euclidean distance function), such that the closed 𝑙-vineyard contains this link. This shows that vineyards are topologically as rich as one could possibly hope, suggesting many future directions of work. Importantly, it has at least two immediate consequences we explicitly point out:
1. Monodromy of any periodicity can occur in a 𝑙-vineyard for any 𝑙. This answers a variant of a question by Arya and collaborators. To exhibit this as a consequence of our first main result we also reformulate monodromy in a more geometric way, which may be of interest in itself.
2. Topologically distinguishing closed vineyards is likely to be difficult (from a complexity theory as well as from a practical perspective) because of the difficulty of knot and link recognition, which have strong connections to many NP-hard problems.},
author = {Chambers, Erin W. and Fillmore, Christopher D and Stephenson, Elizabeth R and Wintraecken, Mathijs},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms},
editor = {Green Larsen, Kasper and Saha, Barna},
pages = {6240--6263},
publisher = {Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics},
title = {{Braiding Vineyards}},
doi = {10.1137/1.9781611978971.225},
year = {2026},
}
@inproceedings{21113,
abstract = {Causal discovery from i.i.d. observational data is known to be generally ill-posed. We demonstrate that if we have access to the distribution induced by a structural causal model, and additional data from (in the best case) only two environments that sufficiently differ in the noise statistics, the unique causal graph is identifiable. Notably, this is the first result in the literature that guarantees the entire causal graph recovery with a constant number of environments and arbitrary nonlinear mechanisms. Our only constraint is the Gaussianity of the noise terms; however, we propose potential ways to relax this requirement. Of interest on its own, we expand on the well-known duality between independent component analysis (ICA) and causal discovery; recent advancements have shown that nonlinear ICA can be solved from multiple environments, at least as many as the number of sources: we show that the same can be achieved for causal discovery while having access to much less auxiliary information.},
author = {Montagna, Francesco},
booktitle = {The 14th International Conference on Learning Representations},
location = {Rio de Janeiro, Brazil},
publisher = {OpenReview},
title = {{On the identifiability of causal graphs with multiple environments}},
year = {2026},
}
@article{21115,
abstract = {Quantifying cell morphology is central to understanding cellular regulation, fate, and heterogeneity, yet conventional image-based analyses often struggle with diverse or irregular shapes. We present a computational framework that uses topological data analysis to characterise and compare single-cell morphologies from fluorescence microscopy. Each cell is represented by its contour together with the position of its nucleus, from which we construct a filtration based on a radial distance function and derive a persistence diagram encoding the shape’s topological evolution. The similarity between two cells is quantified using the 2-Wasserstein distance between their diagrams, yielding a shape distance we call the PH distance. We apply this method to two representative experimental systems—primary human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and HeLa cells—and show that PH distances enable the detection of outliers in those systems, the identification of sub-populations, and the quantification of shape heterogeneity. We benchmark PH against three established contour-based distances (aspect ratio, Fourier descriptors, and elastic shape analysis) and show that PH offers better separation between cell types and greater robustness when clustering heterogeneous populations. Together, these results demonstrate that persistent-homology-based signatures provide a principled and sensitive approach for analysing cell morphology in settings where traditional geometric or image-based descriptors are insufficient.},
author = {Bleile, Yossi and Yadav, Pooja and Koehl, Patrice and Rehfeldt, Florian},
issn = {1553-7358},
journal = {PLoS Computational Biology},
publisher = {Public Library of Science},
title = {{Persistence diagrams as morphological signatures of cells: A method to measure and compare cells within a population}},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013890},
volume = {22},
year = {2026},
}
@misc{21116,
abstract = {Sex-chromosome systems are highly variable across animals, but how they transition from one to another is not well understood. Diptera have undergone multiple sex-chromosome turnovers and expansions while maintaining their general chromosomal content, which makes them an ideal clade to study such transitions. We analyzed more than 100 dipteran whole-genome assemblies and identified 4 new lineages that underwent sex-chromosome turnover (in addition to the 5 previously reported). We find that the majority of turnovers happened in the group Schizophora, which tend to have fewer genes on Muller element F (the chromosome homologous to the ancestral insect X chromosome) than lower dipterans, a factor previously hypothesized to facilitate turnover. Most derived X chromosomes have higher GC content than autosomes, consistent with a high prevalence of male achiasmy in Diptera. In addition, an excess of gene movement out of the X is detected for most of these new X chromosomes, and many of these moved genes have high testis expression in Drosophila, suggesting that out-of-X gene movement contributes to the long-term demasculinization of X chromosomes.},
author = {Layana Franco, Lorena Alexandra and Toups, Melissa A and Vicoso, Beatriz},
keywords = {Schizophora, sex chromosomes, sex-chromosome turnover, Diptera, genomic features, out-of-X movement.},
publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
title = {{Research Data for "Causes and consequences of sex-chromosome turnovers in Diptera"}},
doi = {10.15479/AT-ISTA-21116},
year = {2026},
}
@inproceedings{21133,
abstract = {Data structures based on trees and tree traversals are ubiquitous in computer systems. Many low-level programs, including some implementations of critical systems like page tables and the web browser DOM, rely on generic tree-traversal functions that traverse tree nodes in a pre-determined order, applying a client-provided operation to each visited node. Developing a general approach to specifying and verifying such traversals is tricky since the client-provided per-node operation can be stateful and may potentially depend on or modify the structure of the tree being traversed.
In this paper, we present a recipe for (semi-)automated verification of such generic, stateful tree traversals. Our recipe is (a) general: it applies to a range of tree traversals, in particular, pre-, post- and in-order depth-first traversals; (b) modular: parts of a traversal’s proof can be reused in verifying other similar traversals; (c) expressive: using the specification of a tree traversal, we can verify clients that use the traversal in a variety of different ways; and (d) automatable: many proof obligations can be discharged automatically.
At the heart of our recipe is a novel use of tree zippers to represent a logical abstraction of the tree traversal state, and zipper transitions as an abstraction of traversal steps. We realize our recipe in the RefinedC framework in Rocq, which allows us to verify a number of different tree traversals and their clients written in C.},
author = {Elbeheiry, Laila and Sammler, Michael Joachim and Krebbers, Robbert and Dreyer, Derek and Garg, Deepak},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs},
isbn = {9798400723414},
location = {Rennes, France},
pages = {339--352},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
title = {{A recipe for modular verification of generic tree traversals}},
doi = {10.1145/3779031.3779110},
year = {2026},
}
@inproceedings{21134,
abstract = {The Nakamoto consensus protocol underlying the Bitcoin blockchain uses proof of work as a voting mechanism. Honest miners who contribute hashing power towards securing the chain try to extend the longest chain they are aware of. Despite its simplicity, Nakamoto consensus achieves meaningful security guarantees assuming that at any point in time, a majority of the hashing power is controlled by honest parties. This also holds under “resource variability”, i.e., if the total hashing power varies greatly over time.
Proofs of space (PoSpace) have been suggested as a more sustainable replacement for proofs of work. Unfortunately, no construction of a “longest-chain” blockchain based on PoSpace, that is secure under dynamic availability, is known. In this work, we prove that without additional assumptions no such protocol exists. We exactly quantify this impossibility result by proving a bound on the length of the fork required for double spending as a function of the adversarial capabilities. This bound holds for any chain selection rule, and we also show a chain selection rule (albeit a very strange one) that almost matches this bound.
The Nakamoto consensus protocol underlying the Bitcoin blockchain uses proof of work as a voting mechanism. Honest miners who contribute hashing power towards securing the chain try to extend the longest chain they are aware of. Despite its simplicity, Nakamoto consensus achieves meaningful security guarantees assuming that at any point in time, a majority of the hashing power is controlled by honest parties. This also holds under “resource variability”, i.e., if the total hashing power varies greatly over time.
Proofs of space (PoSpace) have been suggested as a more sustainable replacement for proofs of work. Unfortunately, no construction of a “longest-chain” blockchain based on PoSpace, that is secure under dynamic availability, is known. In this work, we prove that without additional assumptions no such protocol exists. We exactly quantify this impossibility result by proving a bound on the length of the fork required for double spending as a function of the adversarial capabilities. This bound holds for any chain selection rule, and we also show a chain selection rule (albeit a very strange one) that almost matches this bound.
Concretely, we consider a security game in which the honest parties at any point control 0 > 1
times more space than the adversary. The adversary can change the honest space by a factor 1+- E with every block (dynamic availability), and “replotting” the space (which allows answering two challenges using the same space) takes as much time as p blocks.
We prove that no matter what chain selection rule is used, in this game the adversary can create a fork of length o^2 . p/E that will be picked as the winner by the chain selection rule.
We also provide an upper bound that matches the lower bound up to a factor o. There exists a chain selection rule (albeit a very strange one) which in the above game requires forks of length at least o . p/E
Our results show the necessity of additional assumptions to create a secure PoSpace based longest-chain blockchain. The Chia network in addition to PoSpace uses a verifiable delay function. Our bounds show that an additional primitive like that is necessary.},
author = {Baig, Mirza Ahad and Pietrzak, Krzysztof Z},
booktitle = {29th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security},
isbn = {9783032070340},
issn = {1611-3349},
location = {Miyakojima, Japan},
pages = {127--142},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{On the (in)security of Proofs-of-space based longest-chain blockchains}},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-07035-7_8},
volume = {15752},
year = {2026},
}
@inproceedings{21135,
abstract = {Three-dimensional (3D) microscopy data is often anisotropic with significantly lower resolution (up to 8x) along the z axis than along the xy axes. Computationally generating plausible isotropic resolution from anisotropic imaging data would benefit the visual analysis of large-scale volumes. This paper proposes niiv, a self-supervised method for isotropic reconstruction of 3D microscopy data that can quickly produce images at arbitrary output resolutions. The representation embeds a learned latent code within a neural field that describes the implicit higher-resolution isotropic image region. We use an attention-guided latent interpolation approach, which allows flexible information exchange over a local latent neighborhood. Under isotropic volume assumptions, we self-supervise this representation on low-/high-resolution lateral image pairs to reconstruct an isotropic volume from low-resolution axial images. We evaluate our method on simulated and real anisotropic electron (EM) and light microscopy (LM) data. Compared to diffusion-based baselines, niiv shows improved reconstruction quality (+1 dB PSNR) and is over three orders of magnitude faster (1,000x) to infer. Specifically, niiv reconstructs a 128^3 voxel volume in 2/10th of a second, renderable at varying (continuous) high resolutions for display. Our code is available at https://github.com/jakobtroidl/niiv-miccai.},
author = {Troidl, Jakob and Liang, Yiqing and Beyer, Johanna and Tavakoli, Mojtaba and Danzl, Johann G and Hadwiger, Markus and Pfister, Hanspeter and Tompkin, James},
booktitle = {1st International Workshop on Efficient Medical Artificial Intelligence},
isbn = {9783032139603},
issn = {1611-3349},
location = {Daejeon, South Korea},
pages = {257--267},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{niiv: Interactive Self-supervised Neural Implicit Isotropic Volume Reconstruction}},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-13961-0_26},
volume = {16318},
year = {2026},
}
@misc{21137,
author = {Naik, Suyash},
publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
title = {{Data associated with Keratins coordinate tissue spreading }},
doi = {10.15479/AT-ISTA-21137},
year = {2026},
}
@inproceedings{21140,
abstract = {We consider several problems related to packing forests in graphs. The first one is to find k edge-disjoint forests in a directed graph G of maximal size such that the indegree of each vertex in these forests is at most k. We describe a min-max characterization for this problem and show that it can be solved in almost linear time for fixed k, extending the algorithm of [Gabow, 1995]. Specifically, the complexity is O(kδm log n), where n, m are the number of vertices and edges in G respectively, and δ = max{1, k − kG}, where kG is the edge connectivity of the graph. Using our solution to this problem, we improve complexities for two existing applications:(1) k-forest problem: find k forests in an undirected graph G maximizing the number of edges in their union. We show how to solve this problem in O(k3 min{kn, m} log2 n + k · MAXFLOW(m, m) log n) time, breaking the Ok(n3/2) complexity barrier of previously known approaches.(2) Directed edge-connectivity augmentation problem: find a smallest set of directed edges whose addition to the given directed graph makes it strongly k-connected. We improve the deterministic complexity for this problem from O(kδ(m + δn) log n) [Gabow, STOC 1994] to O(kδm log n). A similar approach with the same complexity also works for the undirected version of the problem.},
author = {Arkhipov, Pavel and Kolmogorov, Vladimir},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms},
location = {Vancouver, Canada},
pages = {4023--4042},
publisher = {Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics},
title = {{Faster algorithms for packing forests in graphs and related problems}},
doi = {10.1137/1.9781611978971.148},
year = {2026},
}
@article{21149,
abstract = {We present a general theoretical framework for helical dichroism (HD), establishing an explicit link between chiral resolution and orbital angular momentum (OAM) exchange in light–matter interaction. Tracing microscopic mechanisms of the OAM transfer, we derive rotational selection rules, which establish that HD emerges only from the spin–orbit coupling of light, even for beams without the far-field OAM. Our findings refine the conditions for observing HD, provide a tool to re-examine the outcome of prior experiments, and guide future designs for chiral sensing with structured light.},
author = {Hrast, Mateja and Koutentakis, Georgios and Maslov, Mikhail and Lemeshko, Mikhail},
issn = {1079-7114},
journal = {Physical Review Letters},
number = {5},
publisher = {American Physical Society},
title = {{Bottom-up analysis of rovibrational helical dichroism}},
doi = {10.1103/fkf1-1jml},
volume = {136},
year = {2026},
}
@article{21158,
abstract = {Vernalization-regulated flowering is vital for wheat yield and geographical distribution, and the diversity of flowering time genes is essential for the breeding of climate-resilient varieties. Sugars have long been recognized in regulating flowering; however, the intrinsic connection between carbohydrate metabolism and vernalization response remains largely unexplored. Here, we identify a fructose 1,6-bisphosphate aldolase (FBA) encoding gene, HtL1/FBA10, as a modulator of heading time variation based on a genome-wide association study utilizing wheat core germplasm collections. Evolutionary analysis shows a decrease in the proportion of haplotype-2 of HtL1, which is linked to delayed flowering, in Chinese and American wheat varieties compared to landraces. Vernalization reduces HtL1/FBA10 phosphorylation levels and increases its O-GlcNAcylation, which in turn enhances its enzymatic activity and facilitates VERNALIZATION 1 (VRN1) transcription by regulating histone acetylation at the VRN1 locus. Our findings provide mechanistic insights into the interplay between glucose metabolism and the epigenetic regulation of vernalization in winter wheat.},
author = {Yang, Pengfang and Liu, Yangyang and Dong, Qi and Miao, Yuting and Zhang, Jianlong and Xu, Shujuan and Zhao, Hong and Niu, Yuda and Zhang, Xueyong and Xu, Yunyuan and Guo, Zifeng and Xing, Lijing and Chong, Kang},
issn = {2041-1723},
journal = {Nature Communications},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{O-GlcNAc and phosphorylation modifications on HtL1/FBA10 regulate wheat vernalization for flowering}},
doi = {10.1038/s41467-025-67734-0},
volume = {17},
year = {2026},
}
@article{21159,
abstract = {One of the foundational theorems of extremal graph theory is Dirac’s theorem, which
says that if an n-vertex graph G has minimum degree at least n/2, then G has a
Hamilton cycle, and therefore a perfect matching (if n is even). Later work by Sárközy,
Selkow and Szemerédi showed that in fact Dirac graphs have many Hamilton cycles
and perfect matchings, culminating in a result of Cuckler and Kahn that gives a precise
description of the numbers of Hamilton cycles and perfect matchings in a Dirac graph
G (in terms of an entropy-like parameter of G). In this paper we extend Cuckler
and Kahn’s result to perfect matchings in hypergraphs. For positive integers d < k,
and for n divisible by k, let md (k, n) be the minimum d-degree that ensures the
existence of a perfect matching in an n-vertex k-uniform hypergraph. In general, it is
an open question to determine (even asymptotically) the values of md (k, n), but we are
nonetheless able to prove an analogue of the Cuckler–Kahn theorem, showing that if
an n-vertex k-uniform hypergraph G has minimum d-degree at least (1+γ )md (k, n)
(for any constantγ > 0), then the number of perfect matchings in G is controlled by
an entropy-like parameter of G. This strengthens cruder estimates arising from work
of Kang–Kelly–Kühn–Osthus–Pfenninger and Pham–Sah–Sawhney–Simkin.},
author = {Kwan, Matthew Alan and Safavi Hemami, Roodabeh and Wang, Yiting},
issn = {1439-6912},
journal = {Combinatorica},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{Counting perfect matchings in Dirac hypergraphs}},
doi = {10.1007/s00493-025-00194-8},
volume = {46},
year = {2026},
}
@misc{21174,
abstract = {UTe2 exhibits the remarkable phenomenon of re-entrant superconductivity, whereby the zero-resistance state reappears above 40 tesla after being suppressed with a field of around 10 tesla. One potential pairing mechanism, invoked in the related re-entrant superconductors UCoGe and URhGe, involves transverse fluctuations of a ferromagnetic order parameter. However, the requisite ferromagnetic order - present in both UCoGe and URhGe - is absent in UTe2, and magnetization measurements show no sign of strong fluctuations. Here, we measure the magnetotropic susceptibility of UTe2 across two field-angle planes. This quantity is sensitive to the magnetic susceptibility in a direction transverse to the applied magnetic field - a quantity that is not accessed in conventional magnetization measurements. We observe a very large decrease in the magnetotropic susceptibility over a broad range of field orientations, indicating a large increase in the transverse magnetic susceptibility. The three superconducting phases of UTe2, including the high-field re-entrant phase, surround this region of enhanced susceptibility in the field-angle phase diagram. The strongest transverse susceptibility is found near the critical end point of the high-field metamagnetic transition, suggesting that quantum critical fluctuations of a field-induced magnetic order parameter may be responsible for the large transverse susceptibility, and may provide a pairing mechanism for field-induced superconductivity in UTe2.},
author = {Modic, Kimberly A},
keywords = {transverse magnetic susceptibility, magnetotropic, superconductivity, magnetic fluctuations},
publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
title = {{Research data for "Giant transverse magnetic fluctuations at the edge of re-entrant superconductivity in UTe2"}},
doi = {10.15479/AT-ISTA-21174},
year = {2026},
}
@unpublished{21212,
abstract = {Malignant glioma is incurable. Using a mouse genetic mosaic system to generate sporadic Trp53,Nf1-null OPCs, we previously identified oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) as a cell-of-origin of glioma. Here, we report that pre-malignant Trp53,Nf1-null OPCs outcompete wildtype counterparts during their expansion. Blocking competition by mutating/strengthening wildtype OPCs impeded both pre-malignant progression and malignant expansion of glioma.
“In-tissue” phosphoproteomic profiling revealed an enrichment of phosphopeptides related to RNA splicing and protein translation at the peak of cell competition, suggesting that competitiveness may stem from unique protein species. Among candidates was mTORC1, whose pharmacological inhibition or genetic disruption resulted in a loss of competitiveness in our mouse model. Finally, analysis of patient biopsies and interrogating the role of individual gliomagenic mutations in OPC competition supported its relevance in human gliomas. Together, these findings identified the driving role of competitive interactions among OPCs in gliomagenesis, and suggest unconventional therapeutic strategies to target this process.},
author = {Jiang, Ying and Ahn, Ryuhjin and Huang, Arthur and Gonzalez, Phillippe P. and Kim, Jungeun and Zhang, Guoxin and Liu, Zihao and He, Zhenqiang and Dudley, Lindsey and Patel, Kunal S. and Dzhivhuho, Godfrey A. and Crowl, Sam and Przanowski, Piotr and Camacho, Luisa Quesada and Hao, Sijie and Zeng, Jianhao and Hippenmeyer, Simon and Fallahi-Sichani, Mohammad and Janes, Kevin A. and Naegle, Kristen M. and Hammarskjold, Marie-Louise and Goldman, Steven A. and Kornblum, Harley I. and Yao, Maojin and White, Forest and Zong, Hui},
booktitle = {bioRxiv},
title = {{Critical role of cell competition in gliomagenesis}},
doi = {10.64898/2026.01.15.699808},
year = {2026},
}
@inbook{21230,
abstract = {Asteroseismology is the study of the interior physics and structure of stars using their pulsations. It is applicable to stars across the Hertzsprung–Russell (HR) diagram and a powerful technique not only to measure masses, radii, and ages but also directly constrain interior rotation, chemical mixing, and magnetism. This is because a star's self-excited pulsation modes are sensitive to its structure. Asteroseismology generally requires long-duration and high-precision time-series data. The method of forward asteroseismic modeling, which is the statistical comparison of observed pulsation mode frequencies to theoretically predicted pulsation frequencies calculated from a grid of models, provides precise constraints for calibrating various transport phenomena. In this introduction to asteroseismology, we provide an overview of its principles, and the typical data sets and methodologies used to constrain stellar interiors. Finally, we present key highlights of asteroseismic results from across the HR diagram, and conclude with ongoing challenges and future prospects for this ever-expanding field within stellar astrophysics.},
author = {Bowman, Dominic M. and Bugnet, Lisa Annabelle},
booktitle = {Encyclopedia of Astrophysics},
editor = {Mandel, Ilya},
isbn = {9780443214400},
pages = {133--153},
publisher = {Elsevier},
title = {{Asteroseismology}},
doi = {10.1016/b978-0-443-21439-4.00036-5},
volume = {2},
year = {2026},
}
@article{21231,
abstract = {To assess cell migration in complex spatial environments, microfabricated chips, such as mazes and pillar forests, are routinely used to impose spatial and mechanical constraints, and cell trajectories are followed within these structures by advanced imaging techniques. In systems mechanobiology, computational models serve as essential tools to uncover how physical geometry influences intracellular dynamics; however, decoding such complex behaviors requires advanced inference techniques. Here, we integrated experimental observations of dendritic cell migration in a geometrically constrained microenvironment into a Cellular Potts model. We demonstrated that these spatial constraints modulate the motility dynamics, including speed and directional changes. We show that classical summary statistics, such as mean squared displacement and turning angle distributions, can resolve key mechanistic features but fail to extract richer spatiotemporal patterns, limiting accurate parameter inference. To solve this, we applied neural posterior estimation with in-the-loop learning of summary features. This learned summary representation of the data enables robust and flexible parameter inference, providing a data-driven framework for model calibration and advancing quantitative analysis of cell migration in structured microenvironments.},
author = {Arruda, Jonas and Alamoudi, Emad and Mueller, Robert and Vaisband, Marc and Molkenbur, Ronja and Merrin, Jack and Kiermaier, Eva and Hasenauer, Jan},
issn = {2056-7189},
journal = {npj Systems Biology and Applications},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{Simulation-based inference of cell migration dynamics in complex spatial environments}},
doi = {10.1038/s41540-026-00648-9},
volume = {12},
year = {2026},
}
@article{21232,
abstract = {Abstract
In this paper, we consider a simple class of stratified spaces – 2-complexes. We present an algorithm that learns the abstract structure of an embedded 2-complex from a point cloud sampled from it. We use tools and inspiration from computational geometry, algebraic topology, and topological data analysis and prove the correctness of the identified abstract structure under assumptions on the embedding.},
author = {Bleile, Yossi},
issn = {2730-9657},
journal = {La Matematica},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {{Towards stratified space learning: 2-complexes}},
doi = {10.1007/s44007-025-00183-9},
volume = {5},
year = {2026},
}