22 October 2026 — Idlewave

Computing. A student model trained only on number sequences from a teacher model inherited the teacher's traits, even after filtering. The effect vanished when teacher and student had different base models, which makes distillation within one model family the case to worry about. Preprint.

Subliminal Learning: Language models transmit behavioral traits via hidden signals in data

Software. In open-source Java repositories adopting agentic coding tools, architectural smell counts stayed flat while lines of code grew 12.8 percent. The reported 6.7 percent drop in smell density was therefore the denominator moving, which is a caution for every density metric in these studies. Preprint.

Mining Architectural Quality Under Agentic AI Adoption: A Causal Study of Java Repositories

Computing. Five AI agents lost up to 46.7 percent of benchmark performance when users steered them towards a plausible but misleading solution. The XY problem, asking about an attempted fix instead of the actual problem, is older than the agents; a system instruction about it only partly helped. Preprint.

XYEval: Agents say yes to bad advice

Software. Language-based agent control makes agents emit programs that must type-check against the scaffolding code, so unsafe programs are rejected before execution. Static typing has enforced access control and information flow for decades; the case studies cover filesystem sandboxing, data provenance and information-flow control. Preprint.

Language-Based Agent Control

Physics. Two families of analytic three-dimensional MHD equilibria have been extended with a parameter that breaks stellarator symmetry. The parent families, recent counterexamples to Grad's conjecture, give stellarator equilibrium codes exact answers to be checked against. Preprint.

Analytic non-axisymmetric 3D MHD equilibria without stellarator symmetry

Mathematics. A preprint simplifies the recent OpenAI proof that there are no Landau–Siegel zeros. Siegel zeros are why some class number bounds have been ineffective since 1935; a shorter proof is also a quicker one to check. Preprint, not yet checked.

A simpler proof that there are no Landau--Siegel zeros

Materials. A pulsed additive manufacturing method printed metre-tall, centimetre-wide single crystals of Ti-6Al-4V and refractory metals including tungsten. Single crystals are usually grown slowly from a melt in fixed shapes; printing them free-form allows architected geometries in metals that resist ordinary processing. Peer-reviewed.

Additive manufacturing of ultralong and architected single crystals

Climate. An AI tool refined physics-based and AI weather models, improving forecasts of precipitation, temperature and pressure three to five weeks ahead. The subseasonal range sits between weather and climate prediction, where skill has historically been thin; early warning of heat, cold and flooding is the use case. Peer-reviewed.

An AI tool improves weather forecasts up to a month ahead

Climate. A 450,000-year Amazon stalagmite record shows monsoons in both hemispheres failed for millennia during warm intervals. Ordinarily the two hemispheres trade strength, one monsoon weakening as the other strengthens; the record suggests warming can break that seesaw. Peer-reviewed.

Cave stalagmites document global patterns in monsoon rainfall over the past 450,000 years

Neuroscience. In human neurons and mice, loss of UBE3A caused an overabundance of asparagine synthetase linked with many Angelman syndrome phenotypes. UBE3A has been the known Angelman gene for decades; a single downstream enzyme gives therapy a narrower target than restoring the ligase itself. Peer-reviewed.

Persistent neuronal stress signalling underlies Angelman syndrome phenotypes

Materials. Compostable polyesters with embedded ester-cleaving enzymes biodegraded completely at marine sites from coastal water to the deep sea. Compostable plastics are designed for industrial composters and tend to persist in the sea, where the microbes that would digest them are scarce. Peer-reviewed.

Plastics embedded with enzymes degrade readily in the sea

Physics. COHERENT measured coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on germanium with its Ge-Mini array, the most precise cross section to date. The process was predicted in 1974 and first seen in 2017; precision on the cross section is what turns it into a test of the Standard Model. Peer-reviewed.

Measurement of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering on Germanium by COHERENT

Physics. A device stores a single positron and controls its quantum states, set up to measure the positron's magnetic moment. Comparing it with the electron's tests CPT symmetry; the electron value from the same group is among the most precisely measured quantities in physics. Peer-reviewed.

One-Positron Quantum Cyclotron

Physics. A certified spectral-computation framework resolves Cantor-like spectra of quasicrystalline Hamiltonians without the spurious eigenvalues finite-patch diagonalization introduces. Spectral pollution reports states the infinite system does not have, which is awkward when the gaps are the object of study. Peer-reviewed.

Contamination-Free Resolution of Cantor Spectra and Magic-Angle Localization in Moiré Quasicrystals and Aperiodic Media