Resource
2026 EN
Glencross Brett · Bureau Dominique · Carr Ian
+4 more
Modern aquaculture feeds are increasingly being driven toward a precision nutrition (PN) approach . This PN approach considers a range of critical criteria to enable effective formulation. These criteria include demands for energy, nutrients, and factors controlling feed intake. While those criteria underpin PN, applying the strategy necessitates further assessment of how ingredients are used to formulate such feeds, and increasingly new digital tools are being developed to enable further scrutiny of feed design and animal performance. In a PN approach diets are formulated according to digestible or even net energy and nutrient supply. For essential nutrients like amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids increasing precision is being applied based on species, animal size, environmental challenges, and health status, supported by new and more concentrated sources of essential nutrients. The increasing reliance on plant protein and oil sources is necessitating better control of feed palatability, driving a growth in the strategic use of various feed ingredients and additives in PN formulations. The capacity to use an increasing array of ingredients to support PN is underpinned by a more objective ingredient assessment framework and the increasing use of various digital tools to design feeds and assess their impacts.
Journals
2026 EN
Hidaka Hiroshi · Kagami Saya · Saito Takaharu
+6 more
Isotopic studies of the Oklo natural fission reactors have provided very important information to characterize the operating conditions of the individual reactor zones (RZs). Most of the isotopic data of the Oklo RZ materials were given more than a quarter of a century ago. Significant progress has recently been made in the instrumental developments of mass spectrometry for isotopic analyses. If more precise isotopic data from the RZ materials were obtained, we may gain new insights into understanding the Oklo phenomenon. There is still much to learn from the Oklo RZs. In this paper, we introduce our new approaches to elucidate the Oklo phenomenon from isotopic studies using state-of-the-art analytical techniques.
Resource
2026 EN
Joey Spronck · Leander van Eekelen · Dominique van Midden
+16 more
The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) histopathology contains morphological and molecular characteristics predictive of immunotherapy response. Computational quantification of TIME characteristics, such as cell detection and tissue segmentation, can support biomarker development. However, currently available digital pathology datasets of NSCLC for the development of cell detection or tissue segmentation algorithms are limited in scope, lack annotations of clinically prevalent metastatic sites, and forgo molecular information such as PD-L1 immunohistochemistry (IHC). To fill this gap, we introduce the ‘ IGNITE data toolkit ’, a multi-stain, multi-centric, and multi-scanner dataset of annotated NSCLC digital pathology images. We publicly release 887 fully annotated regions of interest from 155 patients across three complementary tasks: (i) multi-class semantic segmentation of tissue compartments in H&E-stained slides, with 16 classes spanning primary and metastatic NSCLC, (ii) IHC nuclei detection, and (iii) PD-L1 positive tumor cell detection in PD-L1 IHC slides. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first public NSCLC dataset with manual annotations of H&E in metastatic sites and PD-L1 IHC.
Resource
2026 EN
Victor Vince · Dominique Heurguier · Alexandre Vervisch Picois
+1 more
This study evaluates the performance of a collaborative, multi-criteria integrity control method in the presence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) jamming and spoofing. By simultaneously leveraging several sources of information, it enables the determination of whether the position of the receiver has been compromised by anattack. In particular, it combines PVT (Position, Velocity, Time) residuals with the carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0) to ensure a robust assessment of integrity across all available data. Its main strength lies in collaboration between receivers through comparison and information sharing. This approach is purely software-based, requiring no additional hardware, and is scalable to receiver populations of varying sizes, from small to large. This study uses real jamming data and simulated spoofing data. In both cases, the data used for PVT calculation, originating from different satellites, are real. The presented results based on data combining simulation and real data demonstrate that the method is promising.
Resource
2026 EN
Admela Jukan · Nikos Karafolas · Guray Acar
+4 more
As the demand for ever more capacity, coverage and reach rapidly increases in next generation mobile networks, terrestrial fiber networks are envisioned to be increasingly deployed in tandem with the non-terrestrial networks, where the link transmission is based on free space optics (FSO), and their radio frequency link (RF) counterparts. On High Altitude Platform Systems (HAPSs), such as airships or balloons, it is expected that FSO and RF transmission technology are to be deployed in parallel based on weather. For inter-satellite communications, on the other hand, FSO links are likely to be a dominant communication link technology. All networking functions on-board a satellite, or HAPS, are however still implemented in electronics, including switching and routing. The next innovation frontier for non-terrestrial networking is to expanding its capabilities toward ultra-high-speed all-optical switching and routing, thus creating the optical NTN continuum. This article elaborates on state of the art in non-terrestrial optical networking, including HAPS and satellite, and discusses challenges and opportunities in control and data planes for spaceborne all-optical switching and routing. We provide an overview of related open-source efforts and share the vision of innovation through collaboration.
Resource
2026 EN
Simon Hager · Joao Ferreira · Stefan Bocker
+2 more
6G millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems aim to provide high-capacity networks that span larger areas than before. Particularly, obstacle-induced blockages leading to underconnected non-line-of-sight (NLOS) regions shall be mitigated with cost- and energy-efficient intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) mounted at strategic positions. Static IRSs are particularly promising because they may be realized entirely passively, scaled more easily, incur less implementation loss, and integrated without control signaling. However, they must be deployed with scenario-tailored reflection characteristics. Against this background, this article first presents a holistic beam shaping approach for HELIOS IRS geometries, allowing for directed reflection patterns with pre-determined beamwidths and in-beam gains. The analytic model-driven investigation reveals that the changes of module tilt parameters, surface dimensions, and module arrangement successfully deliver quality of service (QoS)-compliant IRSs with little loss against the theoretical performance bound. We then conduct a cross-validation through laboratory measurements and electromagnetic (EM) simulations, which confirm the targeted far-field (FF) performance. The findings also attest good signal integrity and specular suppression characteristics that are better than that of external IRSs. An urban outdoor trial with commercial mmWave devices shows that NLOS user equipment (UE) connectivity stabilizes, with more than 10 dB improvements in both received and transmit power levels as beam management adopts the introduced reflection path. Consequently, throughput enhances by up to 275 Mbit/s.
Resource
2026 EN
Syed Mostaquim Ali · Taufiq Rahman · Ghazal Farhani
+3 more
For developing safe Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS), rigorous testing is required before they are deemed safe for road deployments. Since comprehensive conventional physical testing is impractical due to cost and safety concerns, Virtual Testing Environments (VTE) can be adopted as an alternative. Comparing VTE-generated sensor outputs against their real-world analogues can be a strong indication that the VTE accurately represents reality. Correspondingly, this work explores a comprehensive experimental approach to finding evaluation metrics suitable for comparing real-world and simulated LiDAR scans. The metrics were tested in terms of sensitivity and accuracy with different noise, density, distortion, sensor orientation, and channel settings. From comparing the metrics, we found that Density Aware Chamfer Distance (DCD) works best across all cases. In the second step of the research, a Virtual Testing Environment was generated using real LiDAR scan data. The data was collected in a controlled environment with only static objects using an instrumented vehicle equipped with LiDAR, IMU and cameras. Simulated LiDAR scans were generated from the VTEs using the same pose as real LiDAR scans. The simulated and LiDAR scans were compared in terms of model perception and geometric similarity. Actual and simulated LiDAR scans have a similar semantic segmentation output with a mIoU of 21% with corrected intensity and an average density aware chamfer distance (DCD) of 0.63. This indicates a slight difference in the geometric properties of simulated and real LiDAR scans and a significant difference between model outputs. During the comparison, density-aware chamfer distance was found to be the most correlated among the metrics with perception methods.
Resource
2026 EN
Yilihamu Abudujiasuer · Etienne Lemaire · Flavien Barcella
+2 more
Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (CMUTs) feature broadband operation as well as high sensitivity, showing promise for applications such as pressure sensing, ultrasonic imaging, and wireless power transfer. Although widely used in medical and underwater settings, CMUTs are also well-suited to air-coupled operation. As an illustrative example, CMUT-based gas detection can be achieved by monitoring ultrasonic properties of the medium (acoustic velocity and attenuation). This paper focuses on a modeling approach for a complete CMUT-based airborne pitch-catch measurement, across a wide frequency range from 0.5 MHz to 5 MHz. A lumped-element equivalent circuit of the CMUT array is used for transducer modeling, with parameters extracted experimentally from electrical impedance measurements and interferometric displacement analysis. Acoustic pressure propagation in air is simulated using Field II in MATLAB, incorporating frequency-dependent air attenuation (≈100 Np/m at 2.5 MHz) obtained from dedicated experiments. The performance of three preamplifier types (voltage, charge, and transimpedance) is evaluated at a 6 mm separation distance between the transmitter and receiver. For a 2.5 MHz-centered excitation signal with an amplitude of 10 V and biased at 45 V, the measured and simulated output amplitudes reach approximately 30 dBmV with a voltage amplifier, 35 dBmV with a transimpedance amplifier, and 40 dBmV with a charge amplifier. The simulations agree well with the experimental results, confirming reliable and predictable ultrasonic sensing in air using CMUTs and paving the way for future work, such as gas-sensing modeling.
Resource
2026 EN
Marc-Antoine Roux · Joffrey Rivard · Victor Yon
+18 more
Spin qubits need to operate within a very precise voltage space around charge state transitions to achieve high-fidelity gates. However, the stability diagrams that allow the identification of the desired charge states are long to acquire. Moreover, the voltage space to search for the desired charge state increases quickly with the number of qubits. Therefore, faster stability diagram acquisitions are needed to scale up a spin qubit quantum processor. Currently, most methods focus on more efficient data sampling. Our approach shows a significant speedup by combining measurement speedup and a reduction in the number of measurements needed to tune a quantum dot device. Using an autotuning algorithm based on a neural network and faster measurements by harnessing the FPGA embedded in Keysight's Quantum Engineering Toolkit (QET), the measurement time of stability diagrams has been reduced by a factor of 9.8. This led to an acceleration factor of 2.2 for the total initialization time of a SiGe quantum dot into the single-electron regime, which is limited by the Python code execution.
Journals
2026 EN
Beardsell Andréanne · Duludede Broin Frédéric · Gauthier Gilles
+5 more
Abstract Predator–prey interactions in natural communities are complex, with predators often exploiting multiple prey types and generating indirect interactions among them. Ecological theory has traditionally modelled these interactions using functional response models which are based on foraging rates, not energy transfers. This approach overlooks how the energy acquisition rate of a predator can alter its behaviour and, in turn, the strength of species interactions. Here, we integrate predator energetics into a functional response model to represent trade‐offs predators face when foraging on prey that vary in risk and abundance across heterogeneous landscapes. We compared model predictions to 20 years of prey species density and reproductive success data. The mechanistic model was parameterized for an Arctic tundra vertebrate community, where the Arctic fox feeds on cyclic lemmings and eggs of sandpipers (non‐risky prey) and gulls (risky prey that often nest in partial refuge like islands). In this system, predator‐mediated interactions generate apparent mutualism between lemmings and birds, but their strength varies between species, and the mechanisms underlying this interaction remain unclear. We found that fox energetic balance was highly related to lemming density, with a threshold of 89 lemmings km −2 required for a positive energetic balance. Model‐predicted gull nest acquisition rates were lowest on islands when the energetic balance of foxes was positive, and highest for nests on the shore when foxes were in deficit. The model that incorporated predator risk‐taking behaviour and energetic balance produced variation in gull hatching success that most closely matched empirical observations. We documented for the first time that a shift in predator energetic balance, triggering changes in attack and capture probabilities on a risky prey, can be a key mechanism underlying the apparent mutualism between lemmings and gulls. In contrast, for non‐risky prey, the indirect effect can be essentially driven by changes in predator movement. These findings highlight how prey characteristics can lead to different mechanisms behind similar indirect interactions. Taken together, our results indicate that mechanistic models integrating species traits, landscape features and energy‐dependent behavioural adjustments can improve our ability to quantify interaction strengths in natural communities. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.