Multimodal Affective Analysis (MAA) has made significant progress, but current methods still lack an explicit mechanism to decide when modality-specific (private) features should be combined with modality-invariant (shared) representations and when they should be ignored. Addressing this limitation is necessary because such private cues can be redundant, conflicting, or noisy. We propose SPriG, a shared–private architecture that adds improvement-guided control over private information. Each modality is mapped to a common feature space and split into shared and private (modality-specific) components. A shared-only fusion path first produces a robust baseline prediction, and a gated private residual then allows each modality to contribute additional information only when it helps relative to this baseline. A set of auxiliary objectives guides the disentanglement and model training behaviour. We evaluate SPriG across five public benchmarks covering key areas of affective computing, including sentiment prediction, conversational emotion classification, and humor detection. Across these datasets, SPriG consistently outperforms recent state-of-the-art methods on both regression and classification metrics, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.
Precision measurements of observables in neutron beta decay are used to test the standard model description of the weak interaction and search for evidence of new physics. The Nab experiment at the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline at the Spallation Neutron Source was constructed to measure correlations in neutron decay by utilizing an asymmetric spectrometer and novel detection system to accurately reconstruct the proton momentum and electron energy for each beta decay. This work describes the detection of neutron beta-decay products in the Nab spectrometer and presents the first full Dalitz plot representation of the phase space of neutron beta decay for all electrons >100 keV. In addition, new constraints are placed on a possible excited neutron state, hypothesized to explain the disagreement between the appearance and disappearance neutron lifetime techniques.
In archaeology, far more research has been performed on paleofeces of ancient humans than their companion animals, for which little is known. This study presents a multiproxy analysis of a paleofeces of dog origin, recovered from the medieval fortification of Gradina-Radaljevo (Serbia). The specimen was first recorded non-invasively through stereomicroscopy and micro-computed tomography, which documented a compact, flat-conical morphology containing highly digested bone fragments, charcoal, and sediment inclusions, features typical of carnivore digestion. Subsequent petrographic thin-sectioning and µFTIR confirmed a hydroxylapatite-rich matrix with cancellous and compact bone fragments, plant remains, and vegetal voids corresponding to cereal husk imprints, suggesting dietary ingestion of both animal and plant material. Paleoparasitological screening identified 26 helminth eggs belonging to Ascaris sp., Trichuris sp., and Dicrocoelium sp. Their morphology and low abundance indicate passive passage via ingestion of contaminated food, herbivore dung, or human waste rather than true infection of the host. Palynological analysis revealed low pollen diversity dominated by Poaceae, Cyperaceae, and fern spores, alongside wetland NPPs and Glomus fungi, reflecting environmental ingestion and scavenging behaviors. ZooMS of ingested bone fragments identified Suidae and Gallus, while aDNA analysis recovered Suidae, Bovidae, Phasianidae, and Canidae, including Canis lupus familiaris, further supporting a dog origin for the specimen. Together, these results indicate an omnivorous scavenging dog living near the settlement, consuming household refuse and fecal material, thereby mirroring human–animal interaction, sanitation practices, and parasite circulation in medieval Europe. This study sheds light on the complexity of human, dog and herbivore coexistence, contributing to the understanding of hygienic and sanitary conditions in medieval Europe.
The scalar spectral index ns is a powerful test of inflationary models. The tightest constraint on ns to date derives from the combination of cosmic microwave background (CMB) data with baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data. The resulting ns constraint is shifted significantly upward relative to the constraint from CMB alone, with the consequence that previously preferred inflationary models are seemingly disfavored by >= 26. Here we show that this shift in ns is the combined effect of a degeneracy between ns and BAO parameters exhibited by CMB data and the tension between CMB datasets and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument BAO data under the assumption of the standard cosmological model. Given the crucial role of ns in discriminating between inflationary models, we urge caution in interpreting CMB + BAO constraints on ns until the BAO-CMB tension is resolved.
The purpose of this study was to investigate high school physics students’, high school physics teachers’, and university physics professors’ conceptions of what it means to understand physics. Phenomenography was the methodology employed. Phenomenography is an interpretive, second-order approach to research used to study individuals’ qualitative conceptions of a specified phenomenon; in this case participants’ conceptions of what it means to understand physics. The result of the investigation is a description of students’, teachers’, and professors’ conceptions and the qualitatively different ways the phenomenon of understanding physics is experienced. Five categories of description emerged from the analysis: feelings, communication, making meaning, application, and achievement. Twenty-two distinct subcategories of description emerged and represent the variation in the data where this variation may reflect the varying physics expertise and experiences of the participants. Proposals for future practices and research are outlined. For example, by examining the categories and subcategories of description, teachers might be informed about what students consider understanding physics to be and might consider modifying their pedagogies accordingly.
