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We discuss ASASSN-24fw, a 13th-magnitude star that optically faded by $\Delta g=4.12\pm 0.02$mag starting in September 2024 after over a decade of quiescence in ASAS-SN. The dimmimg lasted $$8 months before returning to quiescence in late May 2025. The spectral energy distribution (SED) before the event is that of a pre-main sequence or a modestly evolved F star with some warm dust emission. The shape of the optical SED during the dim phase is unchanged and the optical and near-infrared spectra are those of an F star. The SED and the dilution of some of the F star infrared absorption features near minimum suggest the presence of a $$ $0.25$M_$$ M dwarf binary companion. The 43.8 year period proposed by Nair & Denisenko (2024) appears correct and is probably half the precession period of a circumbinary disk. The optical eclipse is nearly achromatic, although slightly deeper in bluer filters, $\Delta (g-z)=0.31\pm 0.15$mag, and the $V$band emission is polarized by up to 4%. The materials most able to produce such small optical color changes and a high polarization are big ($$20 $\mu$m) carbonaceous or water ice grains. Particle distributions dominated by big grains are seen in protoplanetary disks, Saturn-like ring systems and evolved debris disks. We also carry out a survey of occultation events, finding 46 additional systems, of which only 7 (4) closely match $\epsilon$Aurigae (KH 15D), the two archetypes of stars with long and deep eclipses. The full sample is widely distributed in an optical color-magnitude diagram, but roughly half show a mid-IR excess. It is likely many of the others have cooler dust since it seems essential to produce the events. 

Ascomycota, the most speciose phylum of fungi, is a complex entity, comprising three diversesubphyla: Pezizomycotina, Saccharomycotina, and Taphrinomycotina. The largest and most diversesubphylum, Pezizomycotina, is a rich tapestry of 16 classes and 171 orders. Saccharomycotina, thesecond largest subphylum, is a diverse collection of seven classes and 12 orders, whileTaphrinomycotina, the smallest, is a unique assembly of six classes and six orders. Over the pastdecade, numerous taxonomic studies have focused on the generic, family, and class classifications ofAscomycota. These efforts, well-documented across various databases, are crucial for acomprehensive understanding of the classification. However, the study of taxonomy at the ordinallevel, a crucial tier in the taxonomic hierarchy, has been largely overlooked. In a global collaborationwith mycologists and lichenologists, this study presents the first comprehensive information on theorders within Pezizomycotina and Taphrinomycotina. The recent taxonomic classification ofSaccharomycotina has led to the exclusion of this subphylum from the present study, as an immediaterevision is not necessary. Each order is thoroughly discussed, highlighting its historical significance,current status, key identification characteristics, evolutionary relationships, ecological and economicroles, future recommendations, and updated family-level classification. Teaching diagrams for thelife cycles of several orders, viz. Asterinales, Helotiales, Hypocreales, Laboulbeniales, Meliolales,Mycosphaerellales, Ophiostomatales, Pezizales, Pleosporales, Phyllachorales, Rhytismatales,Sordariales, Venturiales, Xylariales (Pezizomycotina) and Pneumocystidales,Schizosaccharomycetales and Taphrinales (Taphrinomycotina) are provided. Each diagram is explained with a representative genus/genera of their sexual and asexual cycles of each order. WithinPezizomycotina, Dothideomycetes contains the highest number of orders, with 57, followed bySordariomycetes (52 orders), Lecanoromycetes (21 orders), Eurotiomycetes and Leotiomycetes (12orders each), Laboulbeniomycetes (3 orders), and Arthoniomycetes and Xylonomycetes (2 orderseach). Candelariomycetes, Coniocybomycetes, Geoglossomycetes, Lichinomycetes, Orbiliomycetes,Pezizomycetes, Sareomycetes, and Xylobotryomycetes each contain a single order, whileThelocarpales and Vezdaeales are treated as incertae sedis within Pezizomycotina. Notably, theclasses Candelariomycetes, Coniocybomycetes, Geoglossomycetes, Sareomycetes, andXylonomycetes, all recently grouped under Lichinomycetes, are treated as separate classes based onphylogenetic analysis and current literature. Within Lecanoromycetes, the synonymization ofSporastatiales with Rhizocarpales and Sarrameanales with Schaereriales is not supported in thephylogenetic analysis. These orders are retained separately, and the justifications are provided undereach section as well as in the discussion. Within Leotiomycetes, the order Medeolariales, which wasonce considered part of Helotiales, is treated as a distinct order based on phylogenetic evidence. Theclassification of Medeolariales may change as more data becomes available from different generegions. Lahmiales (Leotiomycetes) is not included in the phylogenetic analysis due to a lack ofmolecular data. Sareomycetes and Xylonomycetes are treated as separate classes. Spathulosporamixed with Lulworthiales and the inclusion of Spathulosporales within Lulworthiomycetidae issupported and extant molecular sampling is important to resolve the phylogenetic boundaries ofmembers of this subclass. The majority of the classes of Pezizomycotina and Taphrinomycotinaformed monophyletic clades in the phylogenetic analysis conducted based on SSU, LSU, 5.8S, TEFand RPB2 sequence data. However, Arthoniomycetes nested with the basal lineage ofDothideomycetes and formed a monophyletic clade also known as the superclass, Dothideomyceta.In Taphrinomycotina, a single order is accepted within each class. 

Incomplete or inconsistent temporal neuroimaging records of patients over time pose a major challenge to accurately predict clinical scores for diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). In this paper, we present an unsupervised method to learn enriched imaging biomarker representations that can simultaneously capture the information conveyed by all the baseline neuroimaging measures and the progressive variations of the available follow-up measurements of every participant. Our experiments on the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset show improved performance in predicting cognitive outcomes thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of our proposed method. 

Abstract The recent IceCube detection of TeV neutrino emission from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068 suggests that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) could make a sizable contribution to the diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos. The absence of TeVγ-rays from NGC 1068 indicates neutrino production in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole, where the high radiation density leads toγ-ray attenuation. Therefore, any potential neutrino emission from similar sources is not expected to correlate with high-energyγ-rays. Disk-corona models predict neutrino emission from Seyfert galaxies to correlate with keV X-rays because they are tracers of coronal activity. Using through-going track events from the Northern Sky recorded by IceCube between 2011 and 2021, we report results from a search for individual and aggregated neutrino signals from 27 additional Seyfert galaxies that are contained in the Swift's Burst Alert Telescope AGN Spectroscopic Survey. Besides the generic single power law, we evaluate the spectra predicted by the disk-corona model assuming stochastic acceleration parameters that match the measured flux from NGC 1068. Assuming all sources to be intrinsically similar to NGC 1068, our findings constrain the collective neutrino emission from X-ray bright Seyfert galaxies in the northern sky, but, at the same time, show excesses of neutrinos that could be associated with the objects NGC 4151 and CGCG 420-015. These excesses result in a 2.7σsignificance with respect to background expectations. 

Traditional accelerated life test plans are typically based on optimizing the C-optimality for minimizing the variance of an interested quantile of the lifetime distribution. These methods often rely on some specified planning values for the model parameters, which are usually unknown prior to the actual tests. The ambiguity of the specified parameters can lead to suboptimal designs for optimizing the reliability performance of interest. In this paper, we propose a sequential design strategy for life test plans based on considering dual objectives. In the early stage of the sequential experiment, we suggest allocating more design locations based on optimizing the D-optimality to quickly gain precision in the estimated model parameters. In the later stage of the experiment, we can allocate more observations based on optimizing the C-optimality to maximize the precision of the estimated quantile of the lifetime distribution. We compare the proposed sequential design strategy with existing test plans considering only a single criterion and illustrate the new method with an example on the fatigue testing of polymer composites. 

Abstract Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are known to be mainly of extragalactic origin, and their propagation is limited by energy losses, so their arrival directions are expected to correlate with the large-scale structure of the local Universe. In this work, we investigate the possible presence of intermediate-scale excesses in the flux of the most energetic cosmic rays from the direction of the supergalactic plane region using events with energies above 20 EeV recorded with the surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory up to 2022 December 31, with a total exposure of 135,000 km²sr yr. The strongest indication for an excess that we find, with a posttrial significance of 3.1σ, is in the Centaurus region, as in our previous reports, and it extends down to lower energies than previously studied. We do not find any strong hints of excesses from any other region of the supergalactic plane at the same angular scale. In particular, our results do not confirm the reports by the Telescope Array Collaboration of excesses from two regions in the Northern Hemisphere at the edge of the field of view of the Pierre Auger Observatory. With a comparable integrated exposure over these regions, our results there are in good agreement with the expectations from an isotropic distribution.