Beginning today 4/1 (no April fool's joke)! 😊
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
AI completes the formal proof of higher-dimensional sphere packing
Good news!
"When Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska received a Fields Medal—widely regarded as the Nobel Prize for mathematics—in July 2022, it was big news. Not only was she the second woman to accept the honor in the award’s 86-year history ... Today, in a collaboration between humans and AI, Viazovska’s proofs have been formally verified, signaling rapid progress in AI’s abilities to assist with mathematical research. ..."
"These results, originally proved by Maryna Viazovska and collaborators, earned Viazovska the Fields Medal at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. This is the only formalization of a Fields Medal-winning result from this century ..."
Completing the formal proof of higher-dimensional sphere packing "Using Gauss, we have helped formally verify the sphere packing problem in dimensions 8 and 24 — certifying that the E8 lattice and the Leech lattice achieve the densest possible arrangements of non-overlapping spheres in their respective dimensions."
Fields Medal–winning mathematical work about optimal sphere packing in many dimensions is now formally verified by a human-AI collaboration
AI turns electron microscopy into materials insights in minutes
Good news! This could be an important breakthrough!
"... The EMSeek platform ... streamlines materials research by identifying key features in a microscopy image, determining the crystal structure, predicting material properties, comparing results with existing scientific literature and generating a report within a single, integrated workflow. ..."
From the abstract:
"Electron microscopy (EM) reveals atomic-scale structures that underpin catalysis, energy storage, and semiconductor reliability, yet current workflows remain fragmented across segmentation, crystallographic reconstruction, property modeling, and literature review, often requiring weeks of expert effort. Although recent artificial intelligence models have assisted individual steps, the diversity of EM modalities and tasks means existing approaches remain siloed and perform poorly in complex multistage workflows.
We present EMSeek, a modular, provenance-tracked multiagent platform that connects EM to materials insight through five key units: reference-guided one-for-all segmentation, mask-aware reconstruction of crystal structures from EM data, a gated mixture of experts property predictor with uncertainty calibration, literature retrieval with citation anchoring, and physical consistency checks with audit-ready reporting. These units are orchestrated by large language models (LLMs) that automatically plan, invoke, and execute tools, minimizing human intervention.
On 20 material systems and five tasks, EMSeek delivers segmentation about twice as fast as Segment Anything with higher accuracy, achieves more than 90% structural similarity on STEM2Mat, and, with about 2% labeled calibration, matches or surpasses strong single experts on three out-of-distribution property benchmarks.
A complete query runs in 2 to 5 minutes per image, roughly 50 times faster than expert workflows. Case studies on two-dimensional lattices and nanoparticles validate EMSeek’s ability to automate complex workflows, with integrated uncertainty calibration and audit signals that provide scientists with rigorous yet actionable guidance to accelerate materials discovery."
Bridging electron microscopy and materials analysis with an autonomous agentic platform (open access)
Fig. 1. Interactive EMSeek multiagent framework for end-to-end EM analysis.
Fig. 2. One-click reference-patch framework for universal EM segmentation.
Fig. 4. End-to-end agentic workflow linking EM images to materials knowledge.
Italy turns away Middle East-bound US military aircraft from Sicily stopover
Bad news! What the heck is Italian Prime Minister Meloni doing?
"U.S. military aircraft heading from the United States to the Middle East have been refused permission to stop off at an air base in Italy, an Italian government source has told Defense News. ...
Italy has a longstanding deal with the U.S. to allow it to use Sigonella for regular military flights, while permission for use of the base by flights not covered by the agreement must be granted by the Italian parliament.
In a speech to parliament this month, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said, “The bases used by the U.S. in Italy derive from agreements signed in 1954 and which have been updated since then by various governments. According to those agreements there are technical authorizations when it comes to logistics and non-kinetic operations that do not involve, put simply, bombing.” ..."
Paper tiger NATO didn’t show up — now Trump’s asking why we stay
This is very serious stuff! It may have serious consequences!
"... Trump said, when the U.S. needed cooperation, allies denied access to bases, shut down airspace, and stayed out while Washington moved forward alone. ...
He pointed to Ukraine to make the contrast unavoidable. When Russia invaded in 2022, the United States stepped in immediately despite having no obligation under NATO to do so. It didn’t wait for consensus. It didn’t hedge. “We were there for them… and we would always have been there for them,” Trump said. “They weren’t there for us.”
That’s where his long-running criticism of NATO lands differently now. “I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too.”
Inside the administration, that thinking is no longer just Trump’s. Marco Rubio said Monday the alliance will have to be “re-examined” after several countries blocked U.S. operations during the Iran conflict. Spain, among others, reportedly refused to allow American use of its airspace and bases—decisions that didn’t just signal disagreement, but actively limited what the U.S. could do. ..."
No helium, no chips: why Australia needs to make the gas again
Recommendable!
"No helium, no chips: why Australia needs to make the gas again
Australia should restart domestic helium production. Government action will be needed for it to do so.
Iranian strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas complex have knocked out roughly a third of the world’s helium supply" (Source, I can not access aspistrategist website from China)
Scientists claim to have found evidence of a liquid-liquid critical point in supercooled water
Amazing stuff! The many wonders of water!
"Despite being the most familiar liquid, water is weird. It breaks many of the usual rules that govern the liquid state. In 1992 a team of researchers suggested why that is. Perhaps, they said, there are two types of liquid water, which become distinct only at temperatures well below freezing point, where it’s all but impossible to keep water liquid. Researchers have sought evidence for this bold conjecture ever since – and now an international team claims to have found it.
Water is weird. It has over 60 properties that mark it as rather different to other liquids, such as high surface tension, high boiling point and low compressibility. Is it because liquid water is better thought of as two different liquids? ...
used ultrafast laser pulses to rapidly melt ice at temperatures and pressures close to those at which the two deeply supercooled liquid phases of water are thought to exist. They then used x-ray scattering to see a signature of the two liquids and the liquid–liquid phase transition between them – an abrupt (first-order) transition that, like the transition between a normal liquid and gas phase, ends in a critical point where the two phases become indistinguishable. ..."
"Using x-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to determine the existence of a critical point in supercooled water at around -63 °C and 1000 atmosphere. Ordinary water at higher temperatures and lower pressures is strongly affected by the presence of this critical point, causing the origin of its strange properties. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Polyamorphism and the resulting liquid-liquid critical point (LLCP) in supercooled water are intriguing phenomena in condensed-matter science. Rapid spontaneous ice formation that the water can undergo when probed makes finding the LLCP extremely challenging experimentally.
Previously, evidence for polyamorphism relied on indirect signs such as extrapolating unusual physical properties, the presence of two amorphous ice forms, and liquid-liquid transitions in simulations.
Experiments presented by You et al. with isochoric heating of high- and low-density amorphous ices using infrared ultrafast laser pulses followed by x-ray scattering at time scales before ice formation have directly and convincingly demonstrated two liquid states near a critical point in supercooled water ...
Abstract
The search for the liquid-liquid critical point in supercooled water is challenging owing to rapid crystallization. We studied supercooled water at timescales before ice formation by heating high- and low-density amorphous ices using infrared ultrafast laser pulses, followed by x-ray scattering.
By varying the pump laser fluence, we accessed liquid states straddling the predicted critical point. We observed a crossover from a discontinuous to a continuous transition at which broad and slow structural variations occurred, consistent with critical fluctuations and slowing down.
We also observed a rapid increase in the heat capacity indicating a critical divergence at 210 ± 8 K coincident with enhanced density fluctuations. These results suggest that our experiments have directly probed the vicinity of a critical point in supercooled water."
Experimental Discovery of a New Critical Point in Water (original news release)
Experimental evidence of a liquid-liquid critical point in supercooled water (no public access)
AI system learns to keep warehouse multiple robots traffic running smoothly
Good news!
"Inside autonomous warehouses, even small traffic jams or minor collisions can snowball into massive slowdowns. Now, MIT researchers have developed a system that keeps a fleet of robots moving smoothly. It decides which bots should get the right of way at every moment, avoiding congestion and increasing throughput."
From the abstract:
"Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) is critical for modern warehouse automation, which requires multiple robots to continuously navigate conflict-free paths to optimize the overall system throughput. However, the complexity of warehouse environments and the long-term dynamics of lifelong MAPF often demand costly adaptations to classical search-based solvers. While machine learning methods have been explored, their superiority over search-based methods remains inconclusive.
In this paper, we introduce Reinforcement Learning (RL) guided Rolling Horizon Prioritized Planning (RL-RH-PP), the first framework integrating RL with search-based planning for lifelong MAPF.
Specifically, we leverage classical Prioritized Planning (PP) as a backbone for its simplicity and flexibility in integrating with a learning-based priority assignment policy.
By formulating dynamic priority assignment as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), RL-RH-PP exploits the sequential decision-making nature of lifelong planning while delegating complex spatial-temporal interactions among agents to reinforcement learning.
An attention-based neural network autoregressively decodes priority orders on-the-fly, enabling efficient sequential single-agent planning by the PP planner. Evaluations in realistic warehouse simulations show that RL-RH-PP achieves the highest total throughput among baselines and generalizes effectively across agent densities, planning horizons, and warehouse layouts.
Our interpretive analyses reveal that RL-RH-PP proactively prioritizes congested agents and strategically redirects agents from congestion, easing traffic flow and boosting throughput. These findings highlight the potential of learning-guided approaches to augment traditional heuristics in modern warehouse automation."
Donald Trump says US strongly considering NATO exit, Telegraph newspaper says
Food for thought! Is NATO still necessary and viable? What comes next?
Trump EPA Ends Exorbitant Pay-Outs to Litigious Environmental Nonprofits
Good news! Bravo!
"Since 2013, millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees have been awarded to entities, usually nonprofits, to resolve environmental law litigation against the federal government. New data collected via Freedom of Information Act shows that in the first year of the Trump administration, environmental attorney fee pay outs have seen record lows.
As Open the Books has reported in the past, these fees are often part of “sue-and-settle” schemes where environmental nonprofits friendly to a presidential administration (typically Democratic) will sue the federal government to initiate a back-door rule making process that can exclude Congress and the public. ...
While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin hasn’t made many public statements about sue-and-settle practices since taking office at the head of the agency, a spokesperson told Open the Books last year:
“Outside activist groups should not dictate EPA’s agenda or federal environmental policy. The Trump Administration is keenly aware of concerns with sue-and-settle practices and commits to not engage in them. The Trump EPA will respect the rule of law and the will of the American people in setting policy based on its statutory mandates and Gold Standard Science, not based on side deals with outside activist groups dead-set on driving up costs to Americans or advancing the interests of our foreign adversaries.”
New data indicates Zeldin has kept his word, as attorney fee payouts in 2025 for litigation under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Endangered Species Act (three of the most important laws under which most environmental litigation is filed) have been at their lowest level since 2013, when our records begin, at a little more than $510,000. ..."
Disclaimer
I am currently blogging from behind the Great Firewall of China.
My Internet service in China is very spotty. Thus, I am not able to blog as usual.
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