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In the human brain, distinct regions preferentially respond to the actions and interactions of animate agents, and the motions and interactions of inanimate objects. Yet, evidence across the cognitive sciences suggests that we process animate agents fundamentally as physical bodies (Liu et al., 2025). This suggestion predicts that processing of agents and objects depend in part on shared neural representations of physically-relevant features. Here, we used functional brain imaging to test this prediction. Our case study concerned a fundamental, developmentally early-emerging intuition that because agents and objects are solid bodies, their motions are constrained by physical barriers (Gergely & Csibra, 2003; Saxe et al., 2006; Spelke et al., 1992). Participants (N = 28) were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they watched videos of agents navigating or objects moving in environments containing physical barriers, and videos containing similar physical features that did not block agents’ or objects’ paths. We report a domain-invariant code for barriers to agents’ actions and objects’ motions in regions associated with physical reasoning and domain- general processing (superior parietal lobule), object processing (lateral occipital complex), and scene processing (occipital place area, parahippocampal place area, and retrosplenial cortex). Our results generalized across two distinct tasks, and are not explained by differences in luminance, motion energy, or the number of objects in the stimuli. These results suggest that brain regions specialized for reasoning about physical dynamics and spatial layouts support our capacity to make sense of agents’ actions, raising questions about interactions more broadly between social, physical and spatial cognition. 

With respect to digital games, older adults are a demographic that is often underserved due to an industry-wide focus on younger audiences' preferences and skill sets. Meanwhile, as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to expand into everyday technologies, its assistive capabilities have been recognized, suggesting its potential in improving the gaming experience for older gamers. To study this potential, we iteratively developed a pilot survey aimed at understanding older adult gamers' current gameplay preferences, challenges they are facing, and their perspectives of AI usage in gaming. During each iteration, we analyzed the survey's efficacy and adjusted the content, language, and format to better capture meaningful data. In this study, our contributions are an iteratively refined and shared survey for studying older adults' gaming habits and attitudes toward AI, plus pilot evidence (N=39) of its usability and initial validity. Our findings suggest that for older adult gamers, usability issues in gaming remain key obstacles, while this demographic's perceptions of AI are shaped by both its practical benefits and concerns about autonomy and complexity 

Cavitation bubbles often appear as populations in a wide range of naval and biomedical applications. While the oscillations of an isolated spherical bubble are relatively well understood, the dynamics of multiple bubbles remain less characterized due to the large number of parameters associated with bubble size and spatial configuration. In the present study, we develop an energy budget framework for quantifying energy transfer and pressure work during the oscillations of spherical bubbles while conserving the total energy of the system. We focus on a two-bubble system in the dilute limit, in which bubbles interact weakly and largely maintain spherical symmetry. The energy budget framework uses the outputs of the coupled Keller–Miksis equations to evaluate individual energy components and their temporal evolution. Three key parameters—bubble size ratio, bubble–bubble distance, and driving pressure ratio—are observed to nonlinearly alter collapse time, energy concentration, and radiated acoustic energy. We show that stronger interactions, caused by larger size ratios or smaller separation distances, lead to reduced compression and less violent and delayed collapse, thereby lowering the energy concentrated in the bubble. We further determine scaling relationships for bubble dynamics and energy components at the instant of collapse based on the initial problem parameters. We identify the initial driving pressure conditions where the dominant energy reduction mechanism shifts from bubble–bubble interactions at low driving pressures to liquid compressibility at high pressures. The proposed framework and scaling relations provide a robust basis for incorporating bubble–bubble interactions and energy redistribution mechanisms into bubble cloud models, in the dilute limit. 

Abstract We propose a coefficient that measures extremal dependence in paired samples of functions. It has properties similar to the Pearson correlation, but differs in two significant ways: (i) it is designed to measure dependence between curves; and (ii) it focuses only on extreme curves. The new coefficient is derived within the framework of regular variation in Banach spaces. A consistent estimator is proposed and justified by an asymptotic analysis and a simulation study. The usefulness of the new coefficient is illustrated using financial and climate functional data. 

Effective visual scanning and perception are essential to perform teleoperation construction tasks. In long-distance teleoperation systems, such as between Earth and the Moon, communication delays of at least 3 seconds impact operator performance and situational awareness, influencing eye movement patterns that vary with time-delay conditions and task types. This study examines features of eye movement patterns during time-delayed teleoperation tasks in lunar construction environment. We analyzed and quantified eye movement trajectories using recurrence quantification analysis to identify spatiotemporal patterns and gain insights into how operators interact with visual scenes under time-delayed and task-specific conditions. By visualizing these patterns, we interpreted their temporal and spatial characteristics and compared them in different situations. Our findings, which address a gap in understanding operator eye movement patterns during teleoperation tasks, have potential practical implications for improving visual perception by identifying quantitative patterns along with qualitative interpretations. This study will contribute to visual interface design in teleoperation systems for lunar construction, providing actionable insights for the design and operation of such systems.