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1. How Has Forking Changed in the Last 20 Years? A Study of Hard Forks on GitHub

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3377811.3380412  

   Zhou, Shurui; Vasilescu, Bogdan; Kaestner, Christian (July 2020, Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE))

   The notion of forking has changed with the rise of distributed ver- sion control systems and social coding environments, like GitHub. Traditionally forking refers to splitting off an independent devel- opment branch (which we call hard forks); research on hard forks, conducted mostly in pre-GitHub days showed that hard forks were often seen critical as they may fragment a community. Today, in so- cial coding environments, open-source developers are encouraged to fork a project in order to contribute to the community (which we call social forks), which may have also influenced perceptions and practices around hard forks. To revisit hard forks, we identify, study, and classify 15,306 hard forks on GitHub and interview 18 owners of hard forks or forked repositories. We find that, among others, hard forks often evolve out of social forks rather than being planned deliberately and that perception about hard forks have indeed changed dramatically, seeing them often as a positive non- competitive alternative to the original project. 

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2. Effect of carbonization methods on graphitization of soft and hard carbons

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cartre.2024.100382  

   Ike, Sandra; Wal, Randy Vander (September 2024, Carbon Trends)

   Pressurized carbonization is known to improve carbon content and create textural changes in resultant carbon compared to conventional (atmospheric) carbonization. However, further studies investigating the impact of these carbonization methods on the graphitic quality of the carbon precursors have not been explored exten- sively. This study investigates the influence of carbonization methods on the graphitization behavior of soft and hard carbons using a three-model system: phenolic resole (hard carbon), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) (soft carbon), and a 50:50 blend of resole and PVC. Carbonization was conducted under autogenic pressure (AGP) and at- mospheric pressure (APP) at 500◦C for 5 h, followed by high-temperature treatment at varying temperatures. Various techniques, including X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy showed hard carbon precursors exhibited improved properties under AGP carbonization such as larger crystallite size, sharp crystalline peaks, lower ID/IG ratio, and narrow G-full width half-maximum, an indication of improved crystallinity by lowering amorphous phase at high temperature. For soft carbon precursors, the method of carbonization did not impact the graphitization level. The most significant finding was the enhanced crystalline nature observed in hard carbon under AGP conditions, without the need for any catalyst. It shows the influence of pressure on improving the crystallinity of hard carbon precursors. 

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3. On Approximability of Steiner Tree in $$\ell_p$$-metrics

   https://doi.org/10.46298/theoretics.25.4  

   Fleischmann, Henry; Gavva, Surya Teja; S, Karthik C (January 2025, TheoretiCS)

   In the Continuous Steiner Tree problem (CST), we are given as input a set of points (called terminals) in a metric space and ask for the minimum-cost tree connecting them. Additional points (called Steiner points) from the metric space can be introduced as nodes in the solution. In the Discrete Steiner Tree problem (DST), we are given in addition to the terminals, a set of facilities, and any solution tree connecting the terminals can only contain the Steiner points from this set of facilities. Trevisan [SICOMP'00] showed that CST and DST are APX-hard when the input lies in the $$\ell_1$$-metric (and Hamming metric). Chleb\'ik and Chleb\'ikov\'a [TCS'08] showed that DST is NP-hard to approximate to factor of $$96/95\approx 1.01$$ in the graph metric (and consequently $$\ell_\infty$$-metric). Prior to this work, it was unclear if CST and DST are APX-hard in essentially every other popular metric. In this work, we prove that DST is APX-hard in every $$\ell_p$$-metric. We also prove that CST is APX-hard in the $$\ell_{\infty}$$-metric. Finally, we relate CST and DST, showing a general reduction from CST to DST in $$\ell_p$$-metrics. Comment: Abstract shortened. Journal version for TheoretiCS 

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4. Understanding dynamics in coarse-grained models. V. Extension of coarse-grained dynamics theory to non-hard sphere systems

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0254388  

   Jin, Jaehyeok; Voth, Gregory A (March 2025, The Journal of Chemical Physics)

   Coarse-grained (CG) modeling has gained significant attention in recent years due to its wide applicability in enhancing the spatiotemporal scales of molecular simulations. While CG simulations, often performed with Hamiltonian mechanics, faithfully recapitulate structural correlations at equilibrium, they lead to ambiguously accelerated dynamics. In Paper I [J. Jin, K. S. Schweizer, and G. A. Voth, J. Chem. Phys. 158(3), 034103 (2023)], we proposed the excess entropy scaling relationship to understand the CG dynamics. Then, in Paper II [J. Jin, K. S. Schweizer, and G. A. Voth, J. Chem. Phys. 158(3), 034104 (2023)], we developed a theory to map the CG system into a dynamically consistent hard sphere system to analytically derive an expression for fast CG dynamics. However, many chemical and physical systems do not exhibit hard sphere-like behavior, limiting the extensibility of the developed theory. In this paper, we aim to generalize the theory to the non-hard sphere system based on the Weeks–Chandler–Andersen perturbation theory. Since non-hard sphere-like CG interactions affect the excess entropy term as it deviates from the hard sphere description, we explicitly account for the extra entropy to correct the non-hard sphere nature of the system. This approach is demonstrated for two different types of interactions seen in liquids, and we further provide a generalized description for any CG models using the generalized Gaussian CG models using Gaussian basis sets. Altogether, this work allows for extending the range and applicability of the hard sphere CG dynamics theory to a myriad of CG liquids. 

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5. NuSTAR Hard X-Ray Monitoring of Gravitationally Lensed Quasar RX J1131–1231

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad0ced  

   DeFrancesco, Cora A.; Dai, Xinyu; Mitchell, Mark; Zoghbi, Abderahmen; Morgan, Christopher W. (December 2023, The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract The X-ray emission from active galactic nuclei is believed to come from a combination of inverse Compton scattering of photons from the accretion disk and reprocessing of the direct X-ray emission by reflection. We present hard (10–80 keV) and soft (0.5–8 keV) X-ray monitoring of a gravitationally lensed quasar RX J1131−1231 (hereafter RXJ1131) with NuSTAR, Swift, and XMM-Newton between 2016 June 10 and 2020 November 30. Comparing the amplitude of quasar microlensing variability at the hard and soft bands allows a size comparison, where larger sources lead to smaller microlensing variability. During the period between 2018 June 6 and 2020 November 30, where both the hard and soft light curves are available, the hard and soft bands varied by factors of 3.7 and 5.5, respectively, with rms variability of 0.40 ± 0.05 and 0.57 ± 0.02. Both the variability amplitude and rms are moderately smaller for the hard X-ray emission, indicating that the hard X-ray emission is moderately larger than the soft X-ray emission region. We found the reflection fraction from seven joint hard and soft X-ray monitoring epochs is effectively consistent with a constant with low significance variability. After decomposing the total X-ray flux into direct and reprocessed components, we find a smaller variability amplitude for the reprocessed flux compared to the direct emission. The power-law cutoff energy is constrained at ${96}_{-24}^{+47}$keV, which positions the system in the allowable parameter space due to the pair production limit. 

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