  We report the analysis of a uniform sample of 31 light curves of the
nova-like variable UU Aqr with eclipse mapping techniques. The data were
combined to derive eclipse maps of the average steady-light component, the
long-term brightness changes, and low- and high-frequency flickering
components. The long-term variability responsible for the 'low' and 'high'
brightness states is explained in terms of the response of a viscous disk to
changes of 20-50 per cent in the mass transfer rate from the donor star. Low-
and high-frequency flickering maps are dominated by emission from two
asymmetric arcs reminiscent of those seen in the outbursting dwarf nova IP Peg,
and are similarly interpreted as manifestation of a tidally-induced spiral
shock wave in the outer regions of a large accretion disk. The asymmetric arcs
are also seen in the map of the steady-light aside of the broad brightness
distribution of a roughly steady-state disk. The arcs account for 25 per cent
of the steady-light flux and are a long-lasting feature in the accretion disk
of UU Aqr. We infer an opening angle of 10+/-3 degrees for the spiral arcs. The
results suggest that the flickering in UU Aqr is caused by turbulence generated
after the collision of disk gas with the density-enhanced spiral wave in the
accretion disk.


  Understanding the ability to measure and discriminate particle events at the
lowest possible energy is an essential requirement in developing new
experiments to search for weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark
matter. In this paper we detail an assessment of the potential sensitivity
below 10 keV in the 1 m^3 DRIFT-II directionally sensitive, low pressure,
negative ion time projection chamber (NITPC), based on event-by-event track
reconstruction and calorimetry in the multiwire proportional chamber (MWPC)
readout. By application of a digital smoothing polynomial it is shown that the
detector is sensitive to sulfur and carbon recoils down to 2.9 and 1.9 keV
respectively, and 1.2 keV for electron induced events. The energy sensitivity
is demonstrated through the 5.9 keV gamma spectrum of 55Fe, where the energy
resolution is sufficient to identify the escape peak. The effect a lower energy
sensitivity on the WIMP exclusion limit is demonstrated. In addition to recoil
direction reconstruction for WIMP searches this sensitivity suggests new
prospects for applications also in KK axion searches.


  Replacing non-polynomial functions (e.g., non-linear activation functions
such as ReLU) in a neural network with their polynomial approximations is a
standard practice in privacy-preserving machine learning. The resulting neural
network, called polynomial approximation of neural network (PANN) in this
paper, is compatible with advanced cryptosystems to enable privacy-preserving
model inference. Using ``highly precise'' approximation, state-of-the-art PANN
offers similar inference accuracy as the underlying backbone model. However,
little is known about the effect of approximation, and existing literature
often determined the required approximation precision empirically. In this
paper, we initiate the investigation of PANN as a standalone object.
Specifically, our contribution is two-fold. Firstly, we provide an explanation
on the effect of approximate error in PANN. In particular, we discovered that
(1) PANN is susceptible to some type of perturbations; and (2) weight
regularisation significantly reduces PANN's accuracy. We support our
explanation with experiments. Secondly, based on the insights from our
investigations, we propose solutions to increase inference accuracy for PANN.
Experiments showed that combination of our solutions is very effective: at the
same precision, our PANN is 10% to 50% more accurate than state-of-the-arts;
and at the same accuracy, our PANN only requires a precision of 2^{-9} while
state-of-the-art solution requires a precision of 2^{-12} using the ResNet-20
model on CIFAR-10 dataset.


  The strength of gravity-sensitive absorption lines in the integrated light of
old stellar populations is one of the few direct probes of the stellar initial
mass function (IMF) outside of the Milky Way. Owing to the advent of fully
depleted CCDs with little or no fringing it has recently become possible to
obtain accurate measurements of these features. Here we present spectra
covering the wavelength ranges 0.35 - 0.55 micron and 0.72 - 1.03 micron for
the bulge of M31 and 34 early-type galaxies from the SAURON sample, obtained
with the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Keck. The signal-to-noise ratio
is >200 per Angstrom out to 1 micron, which is sufficient to measure
gravity-sensitive features for individual galaxies and to determine how they
depend on other properties of the galaxies. Combining the new data with
previously obtained spectra for globular clusters in M31 and the most massive
elliptical galaxies in the Virgo cluster we find that the dwarf-sensitive Na I
doublet and the FeH Wing-Ford band increase systematically with velocity
dispersion, while the giant-sensitive Ca II triplet decreases with dispersion.
These trends are consistent with a varying IMF, such that galaxies with deeper
potential wells have more dwarf-enriched mass functions. In a companion paper
(Conroy & van Dokkum 2012) we use a comprehensive stellar population synthesis
model to demonstrate that IMF effects can be separated from age and abundance
variations and quantify the IMF variation among early-type galaxies.


  Experimental searches for lepton-flavor-violating coherent muon-to-electron
conversion in the field of a nucleus, have been proposed to reach the
unprecedented sensitivity of 10^(-16) - 10^(-18) per stopped muon. At that
level, they probe new interactions at effective-mass scales well beyond 1000
TeV. However, they must contend with background from ordinary bound muon decay.
To better understand the background-spectrum shape and rate, we have carried
out a detailed analysis of Coulombic-bound-state muon decay, including nuclear
recoil. Implications for future experiments are briefly discussed.


  The emergence of large language models (LLMs) presents an unprecedented
opportunity to automate construction contract management, reducing human errors
and saving significant time and costs. However, LLMs may produce convincing yet
inaccurate and misleading content due to a lack of domain expertise. To address
this issue, expert-driven contract knowledge can be represented in a structured
manner to constrain the automatic contract management process. This paper
introduces the Nested Contract Knowledge Graph (NCKG), a knowledge
representation approach that captures the complexity of contract knowledge
using a nested structure. It includes a nested knowledge representation
framework, a NCKG ontology built on the framework, and an implementation
method. Furthermore, we present the LLM-assisted contract review pipeline
enhanced with external knowledge in NCKG. Our pipeline achieves a promising
performance in contract risk reviewing, shedding light on the combination of
LLM and KG towards more reliable and interpretable contract management.


  The mechanism underlying the substantial amplification of the high-order
harmonics q \pm 2K (K integer) upon the addition of a weak seed XUV field of
harmonic frequency q\omega to a strong IR field of frequency \omega is analyzed
in the framework of the quantum-mechanical Floquet formalism and the
semiclassical re-collision model. According to the Floquet analysis, the
high-frequency field induces transitions between several Floquet states and
leads to the appearance of new dipole cross terms. The semiclassical
re-collision model suggests that the origin of the enhancement lies in the
time-dependent modulation of the ground electronic state induced by the XUV
field.


  We discuss double Poisson structures in sense of M. Van den Bergh on free
associative algebras focusing on the case of quadratic Poisson brackets. We
establish their relations with an associative version of Young-Baxter
equations, we study a bi-hamiltonian property of the linear-quadratic pencil of
the double Poisson structure and propose a classification of the quadratic
double Poisson brackets in the case of the algebra with two free generators.
Many new examples of quadratic double Poisson brackets are proposed.


  Sgr A* exhibits flaring in the infrared several times each day, occasionally
accompanied by flaring in X-rays. The infrared flares are believed to arise
through synchrotron emission from a transient population of accelerated
electrons. The X-ray flaring has been interpreted as self-synchrotron-compton,
inverse compton, or synchrotron emission associated with the transient
electrons. Here I consider the upscattering of infrared flare photons by
relativistic thermal electrons in the accretion flow around Sgr A*. Typical
profiles of electron density and temperature in the accretion flow are adopted
and the X-ray light curves produced by upscattering of infrared flare photons
by the accretion flow are computed. Peak X-ray luminosities between 1e33 and
1e34 erg/s are attained for a 10 mJy near-infrared flare, compatible with
observed coincident infrared/X-ray flares from Sgr A*. Even if this process is
not responsible for the observed flares it still presents a serious constraint
on accretion flow models, which must avoid over-producing X-rays and also
predicting observable time lags between flaring in infrared and in X-rays.
Future high-resolution infrared instrumentation will be able to place the
location of the infrared flare and in coordination with the X-ray would
severely constrain the disc geometry and the radial profiles of electron
density and temperature in the accretion flow.


  A simple dynamical system that models the competitive thermokinetics and
chemistry of cellulose decomposition is examined, with reference to evidence
from experimental studies indicating that char formation is a low activation
energy exothermal process and volatilization is a high activation energy
endothermal process. The thermohydrolysis chemistry at the core of the primary
competition is described. Essentially, the competition is between two
nucleophiles, a molecule of water and an -OH group on C_6 of an end glucosyl
cation, to form either a reducing chain fragment with the propensity to undergo
the bond-forming reactions that ultimately form char or a
levoglucosan-end-fragment that depolymerizes to volatile products. The results
of this analysis suggest that promotion of char formation under thermal stress
can actually increase the production of flammable volatiles. Thus we would like
to convey an important safety message in this paper: in some situations where
heat and mass transfer is restricted in cellulosic materials, such as
furnishings, insulation, and stockpiles, the use of char-promoting treatments
for fire retardation may have the effect of increasing the risk of flaming
combustion.


  A fermionic random matrix model, which is a 0-dimensional version of the SYK
model with replicas, is considered. The replica-off-diagonal correlation
functions vanish at finite N, but we show that they do not vanish in the large
N limit due to spontaneous symmetry breaking. We use the Bogoliubov
quasi-averages approach to studying phase transitions. The consideration may be
relevant to the study of the problem of existence of the spin glass phase in
fermionic models.


  Boson Sampling is the problem of sampling from the same distribution as
indistinguishable single photons at the output of a linear optical
interferometer. It is an example of a non-universal quantum computation which
is believed to be feasible in the near term and cannot be simulated on a
classical machine. Like all purported demonstrations of "quantum supremacy",
this motivates optimizing classical simulation schemes for a realistic model of
the problem, in this case Boson Sampling when the implementations experience
lost or distinguishable photons. Although current simulation schemes for
sufficiently imperfect boson sampling are classically efficient, in principle
the polynomial runtime can be infeasibly large. In this work, we develop a
scheme for classical simulation of Boson Sampling under uniform
distinguishability and loss, based on the idea of sampling from distributions
where at most k photons are indistinguishable. We show that asymptotically this
scheme can provide a polynomial improvement in the runtime compared to
classically simulating idealised Boson Sampling. More significantly, we show
that in the regime considered experimentally relevant, our approach gives an
substantial improvement in runtime over other classical simulation approaches.


  Evidence of fast variations in the Earth's core field are seen both in
magnetic observatory and satellite records. We present here how they have been
identified at the Earth's surface from ground-based observatory records and how
their spatio-temporal structure is now characterised by satellite data. It is
shown how their properties at the core mantle boundary are extracted through
localised and global modelling processes, paying particular attention to their
time scales. Finally are listed possible types of waves in the liquid outer
core, together with their main properties, that may give rise to these observed
fast variations.


  The icy moon Europa is a primary target for the study of ocean worlds. Its
subsurface ocean is expected to be subject to asymmetries on global scales
(tidal deformation) and local scales (chaos regions, fractures). Here, we
investigate the possibility to magnetic sound local asymmetries by calculating
the induced magnetic fields generated by a radially symmetric ocean and a
small, spherical water reservoir between the ocean and Europa's surface. The
consideration of two conductive bodies introduces non-linear magnetic field
coupling between them. We construct an analytical model to describe the
coupling between two conductive bodies and calculate the induced fields within
the parameter space of possible conductivity values and icy crust thicknesses.
Given the plasma magnetic field perturbations, we find that a reservoir cannot
be detected during a flyby at 25 km altitude using electromagnetic induction.
Potential detection of liquid water reservoirs can be achieved by deploying
magnetometers on Europa's surface, where one magnetometer is placed directly on
the target region of interest and a second one in the nearby vicinity as
reference to distinguish from global asymmetries. With this method, the
smallest reservoir that can be detected has a radius of 8 km and a conductivity
of 30 S/m. Larger reservoirs are resolvable at lower conductivities, with a 20
km reservoir requiring a conductivity of approximately 5 S/m.


  Recently, Bafekry et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 119, 142102 (2021)] reported
their density functional theory (DFT) results on the elastic constants of a
novel C6N7 monolayer. They predicted a very soft elastic modulus of 36.29 GPa
for the C6N7 monolayer, which is remarkably low for carbon-nitride 2D lattices.
Using DFT calculations, we predict a remarkably higher elastic modulus of 267
GPa for this monolayer. The maximum tensile strength is also predicted to be
20.5 GPa, revealing the outstanding mechanical properties of the C6N7
monolayer.


  Whether radio intermediate quasars possess relativistic jets as radio-loud
quasars is an important issue in the understanding of the origin of radio
emission in quasars. In this letter, using the two-epoch radio data obtained
during Faint Image of Radio Sky at Twenty centimeter sky (FIRST) and NOAO VLA
Sky Survey (NVSS), we identify 89 radio variable sources in the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey. Among them, more than half are radio intermediate quasars
(RL=f2cm/f2500A<250). For all objects with available multiple band radio
observations, the radio spectra are either flat or inverted. The brightness
temperature inferred from the variability is larger than the synchrotron-self
Compton limit for a stationary source in 87 objects, indicating of relativistic
beaming. Considering the sample selection and viewing angle effect, we conclude
that relativistic jets probably exist in a substantianl fraction of radio
intermediate quasars.


  In order to study the properties of Lovelock gravity theories in low
dimensions, we define the kth-order Riemann-Lovelock tensor as a certain
quantity having a total 4k-indices, which is kth-order in the Riemann curvature
tensor and shares its basic algebraic and differential properties. We show that
the kth-order Riemann-Lovelock tensor is determined by its traces in dimensions
2k \le D <4k. In D=2k+1 this identity implies that all solutions of pure
kth-order Lovelock gravity are `Riemann-Lovelock' flat. It is verified that the
static, spherically symmetric solutions of these theories, which are missing
solid angle space times, indeed satisfy this flatness property. This
generalizes results from Einstein gravity in D=3, which corresponds to the k=1
case. We speculate about some possible further consequences of Riemann-Lovelock
curvature.


  Our paper presents two main results. First, we study the renormalized free
energies of Euclidean Einstein gravity in asymptotically AdS$_8$ and various
field theories on a squashed seven sphere. In the gravity theory, we
demonstrate the absence of the Hawking-Page transition, while in the field
theory, we focus on the O($N$) vector model and the massless free fermion
model. The conformal symmetry governs the universal behaviors of the free
energies for small and large squashings, which we confirm numerically and
analytically. Second, we evaluate the second-order derivative of CFT free
energy with respect to the squashing parameter, finding universal results that
hold for generic conformal field theories. We examine two different squashings,
one with an SU(2) bundle, which is the primary focus of our paper, and another
with a U(1) bundle, where our results align with the conjectured formula from
the gravity side in the literature.


  We show how a precise knowledge of parton distribution functions, in
particular those of the u and d quarks, can be used to constrain a certain
class of New Physics models in which new heavy charged resonances couple to
quarks and leptons. We illustrate the method by considering a left-right
symmetric model with a W' from a SU(2)_R gauge sector produced in
quark-antiquark annihilation and decaying into a charged lepton and a heavy
Majorana neutrino. We discuss a number of quark and lepton mixing scenarios,
and simulate both signals and backgrounds in order to determine the size of the
expected charge asymmetry. We show that various quark-W' mixing scenarios can
indeed be constrained by charge asymmetry measurements at the LHC, particularly
at 14 TeV centre of mass energy.


  We construct spectral triples in a sense of noncommutative differential
geometry, associated with a Riemannian foliation on a compact manifold, and
describe its dimension spectrum.


  The Bomber Problem concerns optimal sequential allocation of partially
effective ammunition $x$ while under attack from enemies arriving according to
a Poisson process over a time interval of length $t$. In the doubly-continuous
setting, in certain regions of $(x,t)$-space we are able to solve the integral
equation defining the optimal survival probability and find the optimal
allocation function $K(x,t)$ exactly in these regions. As a consequence, we
complete the proof of the "spend-it-all" conjecture of Bartroff et al. (2010b)
which gives the boundary of the region where $K(x,t)=x$.


  We search for the hadronic decay $\eta_c(2S)\to 2(\pi^+\pi^-)$ in the
$\psi(3686)\to\gamma\eta_c(2S)$ radiative decay using $(27.12\pm 0.14)\times
10^8$ $\psi(3686)$ events collected by the BESIII detector at the BEPCII
collider. No significant signal is found, and the upper limit of
$\mathcal{B}[\psi(3686)\to\gamma\eta_c(2S)]\mathcal{B}[\eta_c(2S)\to
2(\pi^+\pi^-)]$ is determined to be $0.78\times 10^{-6}$ at the 90\% confidence
level. Using $\psi(3686)\to\gamma\chi_{cJ}$ transitions, we also measure the
branching fractions of $\mathcal{B}[\chi_{cJ(J=0,1,2)}\to 2(\pi^+\pi^-)]$,
which are $\mathcal{B}[\chi_{c0}\to 2(\pi^+\pi^-)]=(2.127\pm
0.002~(\mathrm{stat.})\pm 0.101~(\mathrm{syst.}))$\%, $\mathcal{B}[\chi_{c1}\to
2(\pi^+\pi^-)]=(0.685\pm 0.001~(\mathrm{stat.})\pm 0.031~\mathrm{syst.}))$\%,
and $\mathcal{B}[\chi_{c2}\to 2(\pi^+\pi^-)]=(1.153\pm
0.001~(\mathrm{stat.})\pm 0.063~(\mathrm{syst.}))$\%.


  In this article we review the world-sheet scattering theory of strings on AdS
5 x S5. The asymptotic spectrum of this world-sheet theory contains both
fundamental particles and bound states of the latter. We explicitly derive the
S-matrix that describes scattering of arbitrary bound states. The key feature
that enables this derivation is the so-called Yangian symmetry which is related
to the centrally extended su(2|2) superalgebra. Subsequently, we study the
universal algebraic properties of the found S-matrix. As in many integrable
models, the S-matrix plays a key role in the determination of the energy
spectrum. In this context, we employ the Bethe ansatz approach to compute the
large volume energy spectrum of string bound states.


  We propose a method to extract high-energy hadronic interaction properties
from the distributions of two of the main observables of proton extensive air
showers: the depth of maximum shower development, $X_\mathrm{max}$, and the
number of muons at the ground, $N_\mu$. We determine relevant parameters of the
first and subsequent interactions of the cascade and analyse how they impact on
these observables. By training a universal neural network, we demonstrate that
we can recover the most relevant parameters (fraction of energy going to the
hadronic channel in the first interaction, first interaction multiplicity and
effective inelasticity) for different hadronic interaction models using only
the observables $X_\mathrm{max}$ and $N_\mu$.


  The aim of this paper is to study the existence of an Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman
monotonicity type formula in the Heisenberg group.


  The optimization of resistive anode for two dimensional imaging detectors
which consists of a series of high resistive square pads surrounding by low
resistive strips has been studied by both numerical simulations and
experimental tests. It has been found that to obtain good detector performance,
the resistance ratio of the pad to the strip should be larger than 5, the
nonuniformity of the pad surface resistivity had better be less than $20\%$, a
smaller pad width leads to a smaller spatial resolution and when the pad width
is $6mm$, the spatial resolution ($\sigma$) can reach about $105{\mu}m$. Based
on the study results, a 2-D GEM detector prototype with the optimized resistive
anode is constructed and a good imaging performance is achieved.


  We obtain nontrivial solutions to the Brezis-Nirenberg problem for the
fractional $p$-Laplacian operator, extending some results in the literature for
the fractional Laplacian. The quasilinear case presents two serious new
difficulties. First an explicit formula for a minimizer in the fractional
Sobolev inequality is not available when $p \ne 2$. We get around this
difficulty by working with certain asymptotic estimates for minimizers recently
obtained by Brasco, Mosconi and Squassina. The second difficulty is the lack of
a direct sum decomposition suitable for applying the classical linking theorem.
We use an abstract linking theorem based on the cohomological index proved by
Perera and Yang to overcome this difficulty.


  Photogrammetry is a science dealing with obtaining reliable information about
physical objects using their imagery description. Recent advancements in the
development of Virtual Reality (VR) can help to unlock the full potential
offered by the digital 3D-reality models generated using the state-of-art
photogrammetric technologies. These models are becoming a viable alternative
for providing high-quality content for such immersive environment.
Simultaneously, their analyses in VR could bring added-value to professionals
working in various engineering and non-engineering settings and help in
extracting useful information about physical objects. However, there is little
research published to date on feasible interaction methods in the VR-based
systems augmented with the 3D photogrammetric models, especially concerning
gestural input interfaces. Consequently, this paper presents the PhotoTwinVR --
an immersive, gesture-controlled system for manipulation and inspection of 3D
photogrammetric models of physical objects in VR. Our system allows the user to
perform basic engineering operations on the model subjected to the off-line
inspection process. An observational study with a group of three domain-expert
participants was completed to verify its feasibility. The system was populated
with a 3D photogrammetric model of an existing pipe-rack generated using a
commercial software package. The participants were asked to carry out a survey
measurement of the object using the measurement toolbox offered by PhotoTwinVR.
The study revealed a potential of such immersive tool to be applied in
practical real-words cases of off-line inspections of pipelines.


  In a recent paper we showed that the collapse to a black hole in
one-parameter families of initial data for massless, minimally coupled scalar
fields in spherically symmetric semi-classical loop quantum gravity exhibited a
universal mass scaling similar to the one in classical general relativity. In
particular, no evidence of a mass gap appeared as had been suggested by
previous studies. The lack of a mass gap indicated the possible existence of a
self-similar critical solution as in general relativity. Here we provide
further evidence for its existence. Using an adaptive mesh refinement code, we
show that "echoes" arise as a result of the discrete self-similarity in
space-time. We also show the existence of "wiggles" in the mass scaling
relation, as in the classical theory. The results from the semi-classical
theory agree well with those of classical general relativity unless one takes
unrealistically large values for the polymerization parameter.


  Frustration, that is, the impossibility to satisfy the energetic preferences
between all spin pairs simultaneously, underlies the complexity of many
fundamental properties in spin systems, including the computational hardness to
determine their ground states. Coherent Ising machines (CIM) have been proposed
as a promising analog computational approach to efficiently find different
degenerate ground states of large and complex Ising models. However, CIMs also
face challenges in solving frustrated Ising models: Frustration not only
reduces the probability to find good solutions, but it also prohibits to
leverage quantum effects in doing so. To circumvent these detrimental effects
of frustration, we show how frustrated Ising models can be mapped to
frustration-free CIM configurations by including ancillary modes and modifying
the coupling protocol used in current CIM designs. In our proposal, degenerate
optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) modes encode the ground state candidates
of the studied Ising model, while the ancillary modes enable the autonomous
transformation to a frustration-free Ising model that preserves the ground
states encoded in the DOPO modes. Such frustration elimination may empower
current CIMs to improve precision and to benefit from quantum effects in
dealing with frustrated Ising models.


  As AI becomes more prevalent throughout society, effective methods of
integrating humans and AI systems that leverage their respective strengths and
mitigate risk have become an important priority. In this paper, we introduce
the paradigm of super reinforcement learning that takes advantage of Human-AI
interaction for data driven sequential decision making. This approach utilizes
the observed action, either from AI or humans, as input for achieving a
stronger oracle in policy learning for the decision maker (humans or AI). In
the decision process with unmeasured confounding, the actions taken by past
agents can offer valuable insights into undisclosed information. By including
this information for the policy search in a novel and legitimate manner, the
proposed super reinforcement learning will yield a super-policy that is
guaranteed to outperform both the standard optimal policy and the behavior one
(e.g., past agents' actions). We call this stronger oracle a blessing from
human-AI interaction. Furthermore, to address the issue of unmeasured
confounding in finding super-policies using the batch data, a number of
nonparametric and causal identifications are established. Building upon on
these novel identification results, we develop several super-policy learning
algorithms and systematically study their theoretical properties such as
finite-sample regret guarantee. Finally, we illustrate the effectiveness of our
proposal through extensive simulations and real-world applications.


  Mechanical metamaterials, whose unique mechanical properties stem from their
structural design rather than material constituents, are gaining popularity in
engineering applications. In particular, recent advances in self-assembly
techniques offer the potential to fabricate load-bearing mechanical
metamaterials with unparalleled feature size control and scalability compared
to those produced by additive manufacturing (AM). Yet, the field is still in
its early stages. In this perspective, we first provide an overview of the
state-of-the-art self-assembly techniques, with a focus on the copolymer and
colloid crystal self-assembly processes. We then discuss current challenges and
future opportunities in this research area, focusing on novel fabrication
approaches, the need for high-throughput characterization methods, and the
integration of Machine Learning (ML) and lab automation for inverse design.
Given recent progress in all these areas, we foresee mechanical metamaterials
fabricated from self-assembly techniques impacting a variety of applications
relying on lightweight, strong, and tough materials.


  Citizens and Emergency Managers need to be able to distinguish ''fake''
(untrue) news posts from real news posts on social media during disasters. This
paper is based on an online survey conducted in 2018 that produced 341
responses from invitations distributed via email and through Facebook. It
explores to what extent and how citizens generally assess whether postings are
''true'' or ''fake,'' and describes indicators of the trustworthiness of
content that users would like. The mean response on a semantic differential
scale measuring how frequently users attempt to verify the news trustworthiness
(a scale from 1-never to 5-always) was 3.37. The most frequent message
characteristics citizens' use are grammar and the trustworthiness of the
sender. Most respondents would find an indicator of trustworthiness helpful,
with the most popular choice being a colored graphic. Limitations and
implications for assessments of trustworthiness during disasters are discussed.


  We present a numerical implementation of the time-dependent surface flux
(tSURFF) method [New J. Phys. 14, 013021 (2012)], an efficient computational
scheme to extract photoelectron energy spectra, to the time-dependent
multiconfiguration self-consistent-field (TD-MCSCF) method. Extending the
original tSURFF method developed for single particle systems, we formulate the
equations of motion for the spectral amplitude of orbital functions
constutiting the TD-MCSCF wave function, from which the angle-resolved
photoelectron energy spectrum, and more generally, photoelectron reduced
density matrices (RDMs) are readiliy obtained. The tSURFF method applied to the
TD-MCSCF wave function, in combination with an efficient absorbing boundary
offered by the infinite-range exterior complex scaling, enables accurate {\it
ab initio} computations of photoelectron energy spectra from multielectron
systems subject to an intense and ultrashort laser pulse with a computational
cost significantly reduced compared to that required in projecting the total
wave function onto scattering states. We apply the present implementation to
the photoionization of Ne exposed to an attosecond extreme-ultraviolet (XUV)
pulse and above-threshold ionization of Ar irradiated by an intense
mid-infrared laser field, demonstrating both accuracy and efficiency of the
present method.


  We report on the development of a sapphire cryogenic microwave resonator
oscillator long-term fractional frequency stability of 2x10^-17Sqrt[\tau] for
integration times \tau>10^3 s and negative drift of about 2.2x10^-15/day. The
short-term frequency instability of the oscillator is highly reproducible and
also state-of-the-art: 5.6x10^-16 for an integration time of \tau ~ 20 s.


  In ferromagnetic materials, the rich dynamics of magnetic domain walls (DWs)
under magnetic field or current have been successfully described using the
well-known q-{\phi} analytical model. We demonstrate here that this simple
unidimensional model holds for multiple-sublattice materials such as
ferrimagnetic alloys or synthetic antiferromagnets (SAF) by using effective
parameters, and is in excellent agreement with double-lattice micromagnetic
simulations. We obtain analytical laws for the DW velocity and internal
precession angle as a function of net magnetisation for different driving
forces (magnetic field, spin transfer and spin-orbit torques) and different
propagation regimes in ferrimagnetic alloys and SAFs. The model predicts that
several distinctive dynamical features occur near or at the magnetic and the
angular compensation points when the net magnetization or the net angular
momentum of the system vanishes, and we discuss the experimental observations
that have been reported for some of them. Using a higher degree-of-freedom
analytical model that accounts for inter-sublattice distortions, we give
analytical expressions for these distortions that agree with the micromagnetic
simulations. This model shows that the DW velocity and precession rate are
independent of the strength of the inter-sublattice exchange coupling, and
justifies the use of the simpler effective parameters model.


  Understanding the coupling between spin and phonons is critical for
controlling the lattice thermal conductivity ($\kappa_l$) in magnetic
materials, as we demonstrate here for CrX$_3$ (X = Br and I) monolayers. We
show that these compounds exhibit large spin-phonon coupling (SPC), dominated
by out-of-plane vibrations of Cr atoms, resulting in significantly different
phonon dispersions in ferromagnetic (FM) and paramagnetic (PM) phases. Lattice
thermal conductivity calculations provide additional evidence for strong SPC,
where particularly large $\kappa_l$ is found for the FM phase. Most strikingly,
PM and FM phases exhibit radically different behavior with tensile strain,
where $\kappa_l$ increases with strain for the PM phase, and strongly decreases
for the FM phase -- as we explain through analysis of phonon lifetimes and
scattering rates. Taken all together, we uncover the very high significance of
SPC on the phonon transport in CrX$_3$ monolayers, a result extendable to other
2D magnetic materials, that will be useful in further design of thermal spin
devices.


  A new ac calorimeter, utilizing the Peltier effect of a thermocouple junction
as an ac power source, is described. This Peltier ac calorimeter allows to
measure the absolute value of heat capacity of small solid samples with
sub-milligrams of mass. The calorimeter can also be used as a dynamic one with
a dynamic range of several decades at low frequencies.


  Effective visual communication is a core competency for pharmacometricians,
statisticians, and more generally any quantitative scientist. It is essential
in every step of a quantitative workflow, from scoping to execution and
communicating results and conclusions. With this competency, we can better
understand data and influence decisions towards appropriate actions. Without
it, we can fool ourselves and others and pave the way to wrong conclusions and
actions. The goal of this tutorial is to convey this competency. We posit three
laws of effective visual communication for the quantitative scientist: have a
clear purpose, show the data clearly, and make the message obvious. A concise
"Cheat Sheet", available on https://graphicsprinciples.github.io, distills more
granular recommendations for everyday practical use. Finally, these laws and
recommendations are illustrated in four case studies.


  The purpose of this paper is to both survey and offer some new results on the
non-triviality of the characteristic classes of Riemannian foliations. We give
examples where the primary Pontrjagin classes are all linearly independent. The
independence of the secondary classes is also discussed, along with their total
variation. Finally, we give a negative solution of a conjecture that the map of
classifying spaces $\FRGq \to \FGq$ is trivial for codimension $q > 1$.


  We show that for collinear processes, i.e. processes where the incoming and
outgoing momenta are aligned along the same line, the S-matrix of the tree
level 2+1 dimensional Thirring model factorizes: any S - matrix element is a
product of $2\rightarrow 2$ elements. In particular this means nullification of
all collinear $2 \rightarrow n$ amplitudes for $n > 2$.


  Inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects into massive black holes, known as
extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), are one of the key targets for upcoming
space-based gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper we take the first steps
needed to systematically incorporate the effect of external gravitating matter
on EMRIs. We model the inspiral as taking place in the field of a Schwarzschild
black hole perturbed by the gravitational field of a far axisymmetric
distribution of mass enclosing the system. We take into account the redshift,
frame-dragging, and quadrupolar tide caused by the enclosing matter, thus
incorporating all effects to inverse third order of the characteristic distance
of the enclosing mass. Then, we use canonical perturbation theory to obtain the
action-angle coordinates and Hamiltonian for mildly eccentric precessing
test-particle orbits in this background. Finally, we use this to efficiently
compute mildly eccentric inspirals in this field and document their properties.
This work shows the advantages of canonical perturbation theory for the
modeling EMRIs, especially in the cases when the background deviates from the
standard black hole fields.


  An algebra $\mathbf A = \langle A, \to, 0 \rangle$, where $\to$ is binary and
$0$ is a constant, is called an implication zroupoid ($\mathcal I$-zroupoid,
for short) if $\mathbf A$ satisfies the identities: $(x \to y) \to z \approx
[(z' \to x) \to (y \to z)']'$ and $ 0'' \approx 0$, where $x' : = x \to 0$, and
$\mathcal I$ denotes the variety of all $\mathcal I$-zroupoids. An $\mathcal
I$-zroupoid is symmetric if it satisfies $x'' \approx x$ and $(x \to y')'
\approx (y \to x')'$. The variety of symmetric $\mathcal I$-zroupoids is
denoted by $\mathcal S$. An identity $p \approx q$, in the groupoid language
$\langle \to \rangle$, is called an identity of associative type of length $3$
if $p$ and $q$ have exactly 3 (distinct) variables, say x,y,z, and are grouped
according to one of the two ways of grouping: (1) $\star \to (\star \to \star)$
and (2) $(\star \to \star) \to \star$, where $\star$ is a place holder for a
variable. A subvariety of $\mathcal I$ is said to be of associative type of
length $3$, if it is defined, relative to $\mathcal I$, by a single identity of
associative type of length $3$. In this paper we give a complete analysis of
the mutual relationships of all subvarieties of $\mathcal I$ of associative
type of length $3$. We prove, in our main theorem, that there are exactly 8
such subvarieties of $\mathcal I$ that are distinct from each other and
describe explicitly the poset formed by them under inclusion. As an application
of the main theorem, we derive that there are three distinct subvarieties of
the variety $\mathcal S$, each defined, relative to $\mathcal S$, by a single
identity of associative type of length $3$.


  The effects of neutron irradiation on materials are often interpreted in
terms of atomic recoils, initiated by neutron impacts and producing crystal
lattice defects. In addition, there is a remarkable two-step process, strongly
pronounced in the medium-weight and heavy elements. This process involves the
generation of energetic {\gamma} photons in nonelastic collisions of neutrons
with atomic nuclei, achieved via capture and inelastic reactions. Subsequently,
high-energy electrons are excited through the scattering of {\gamma} photons by
the atomic electrons. We derive and validate equations enabling a fast and
robust evaluation of photon and electron fluxes produced by the neutrons in the
bulk of materials. The two-step n-{\gamma}-e scattering creates a
nonequilibrium dynamically fluctuating steady-state population of high-energy
electrons, with the spectra of photon and electron energies extending well into
the mega-electron-volt range. This stimulates vacancy diffusion through
electron-triggered atomic recoils, primarily involving vacancy-impurity
dissociation, even if thermal activation is ineffective. Tungsten converts the
energy of fusion or fission neutrons into a flux of {\gamma} radiation at the
conversion efficiency approaching 99%, with implications for structural
materials, superconductors, and insulators, as well as phenomena like
corrosion, and helium and hydrogen isotope retention.


  We present theory for the critical temperature of a Bose gas in a combined
harmonic lattice potential based on a mean-field description of the system. We
develop practical expressions for the ideal-gas critical temperature, and
corrections due to interactions, the finite-size effect, and the occupation of
excited bands. We compare our expressions to numerical calculations and find
excellent agreement over a wide parameter regime.


  With current and future leading systems adopting heterogeneous architectures,
adapting existing models for heterogeneous supercomputers is of urgent need for
improving model resolution and reducing modeling uncertainty. This paper
presents our three-week effort on porting a complex earth system model, CESM
2.2, to a 40-million-core Sunway supercomputer. Taking a non-intrusive approach
that tries to minimizes manual code modifications, our project tries to achieve
both improvement of performance and consistency of the model code. By using a
hierarchical grid system and an OpenMP-based offloading toolkit, our porting
and parallelization effort covers over 80% of the code, and achieves a
simulation speed of 340 SDPD (simulated days per day) for 5-km atmosphere, 265
SDPD for 3-km ocean, and 222 SDPD for a coupled model, thus making multi-year
or even multi-decadal experiments at such high resolution possible.


  Much of applied network analysis concerns with studying the existing
relationships between a set of agents; however, little focus has been given to
the considerations of how to represent observed phenomena as a network object.
In the case of physical structures such as electric grids or transportation
flows, the construction of a network model is fairly straightforward as the
nodes and edges usually correspond to some physical structure themselves. On
the other hand, construction of a social network is much less defined; while
nodes may correspond to well defined social agents, such as people or groups of
people, there much more liberty in defining the relationship that edges should
represent. This paper studies the intricacies of constructing a social network
from data, in particular, binary data, applicable to a wide range of social
science contexts. We examine several methods of constructing social networks in
prior literature and discuss the methods under a common framework. Finally,
using a data set of meetings among technologists in New York, we show that the
different constructions of social networks arising from various interpretations
of the underlying social relationships can result in vastly different network
structures. These findings highlight the significance of understanding the
precise relationships of interest when building a network model.


  We prove the equivariant holomorphic Morse inequalities for a holomorphic
torus action on a holomorphic vector bundle over a compact Kahler manifold when
the fixed-point set is not necessarily discrete. Such inequalities bound the
twisted Dolbeault cohomologies of the Kahler manifold in terms of those of the
fixed-point set. We apply the inequalities to obtain relations of Hodge numbers
of the connected components of the fixed-point set and the whole manifold. We
also investigate the consequences in geometric quantization, especially in the
context of symplectic cutting.


  Microchannel plates (MCPs) were recently proposed as novel type of cathodes
for electron guns, suitable for applications in design of electron lenses. We
report results of the first systematic study of microchannel plate based
photomultiplier time response and maximum current density tests using different
sources of light pulses. The Burle 85011-501 MCP-PMT is found to have good time
response properties being capable of producing nanosecond long pulses with
modest maximum current density and performance strongly dependent on magnetic
field strength.


  The temporal evolution of a perturbation of the equilibrium distribution of a
condensed Bose gas is investigated using the kinetic equation which describes
collision between condensate and noncondensate atoms. The dynamics is studied
in the low momentum limit where an analytical treatment is feasible. Explicit
results are given for the behavior at large times in different temperature
regimes.


  For given integers $r$ and $\ell$ such that $2\leqslant\ell\leqslant r-1$, an
$r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ is called a partial Steiner $(n,r,\ell)$-system, if
every subset of size $\ell$ lies in at most one edge of $H$. In particular,
partial Steiner $(n,r,2)$-systems are also called linear hypergraphs. The
partial Steiner $(n,r,\ell)$-system process starts with an empty hypergraph on
vertex set $[n]$ at time $0$, the $ \binom{n}{r}$ edges arrive one by one
according to a uniformly chosen permutation, and each edge is added if and only
if it does not overlap any of the previously-added edges in $\ell$ or more
vertices. In this paper, we show with high probability, independent of $\ell$,
the sharp threshold of connectivity in the algorithm is $ \frac{n}{r}\log n$
and the very edge which links the last isolated vertex with another vertex
makes the partial Steiner $(n,r,\ell)$-system connected.


  The field of bio-inspired soft grippers has emerged as a transformative area
of research with profound implications for biomedical applications. This book
chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the principles, developments,
challenges, and prospects of soft grippers that draw inspiration from
biological systems. Bio-inspired soft grippers have gained prominence due to
their unique characteristics, including compliance, adaptability, and
biocompatibility. They have revolutionized the way we approach biomedical
tasks, offering safer interactions with delicate tissues and enabling complex
operations that were once inconceivable with rigid tools. The chapter delves
into the fundamental importance of soft grippers in biomedical contexts. It
outlines their significance in surgeries, diagnostics, tissue engineering, and
various medical interventions. Soft grippers have the capacity to mimic the
intricate movements of biological organisms, facilitating minimally invasive
procedures and enhancing patient outcomes. A historical perspective traces the
evolution of soft grippers in biomedical research, highlighting key milestones
and breakthroughs. From early attempts to emulate the dexterity of octopus
tentacles to the latest advancements in soft lithography and biomaterials, the
journey has been marked by ingenuity and collaboration across multiple
disciplines. Motivations for adopting soft grippers in biomedical applications
are explored, emphasizing their ability to reduce invasiveness, increase
precision, and provide adaptability to complex anatomical structures. The
requirements and challenges in designing grippers fit for medical contexts are
outlined, encompassing biocompatibility, sterilization, control, and
integration.


  Agents operating in physical environments need to be able to handle delays in
the input and output signals since neither data transmission nor sensing or
actuating the environment are instantaneous. Shields are
correct-by-construction runtime enforcers that guarantee safe execution by
correcting any action that may cause a violation of a formal safety
specification. Besides providing safety guarantees, shields should interfere
minimally with the agent. Therefore, shields should pick the safe corrective
actions in such a way that future interferences are most likely minimized.
Current shielding approaches do not consider possible delays in the input
signals in their safety analyses. In this paper, we address this issue. We
propose synthesis algorithms to compute \emph{delay-resilient shields} that
guarantee safety under worst-case assumptions on the delays of the input
signals. We also introduce novel heuristics for deciding between multiple
corrective actions, designed to minimize future shield interferences caused by
delays. As a further contribution, we present the first integration of shields
in a realistic driving simulator. We implemented our delayed shields in the
driving simulator \textsc{Carla}. We shield potentially unsafe autonomous
driving agents in different safety-critical scenarios and show the effect of
delays on the safety analysis.


  In contrast to multi-label learning, label distribution learning
characterizes the polysemy of examples by a label distribution to represent
richer semantics. In the learning process of label distribution, the training
data is collected mainly by manual annotation or label enhancement algorithms
to generate label distribution. Unfortunately, the complexity of the manual
annotation task or the inaccuracy of the label enhancement algorithm leads to
noise and uncertainty in the label distribution training set. To alleviate this
problem, we introduce the implicit distribution in the label distribution
learning framework to characterize the uncertainty of each label value.
Specifically, we use deep implicit representation learning to construct a label
distribution matrix with Gaussian prior constraints, where each row component
corresponds to the distribution estimate of each label value, and this row
component is constrained by a prior Gaussian distribution to moderate the noise
and uncertainty interference of the label distribution dataset. Finally, each
row component of the label distribution matrix is transformed into a standard
label distribution form by using the self-attention algorithm. In addition,
some approaches with regularization characteristics are conducted in the
training phase to improve the performance of the model.


  We investigate the cosmological-scale influence of outflows driven by AGNs on
metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium. AGNs are located in dense
cosmological structures which tend to be anisotropic. We designed a
semi-analytical model for anisotropic AGN outflows which expand away along the
direction of least resistance. This model was implemented into a cosmological
numerical simulation algorithm for simulating the growth of large-scale
structure in the universe. Using this modified algorithm, we perform a series
of 9 simulations inside cosmological volumes of size $(128 h^{-1}{\rm Mpc})^3$,
in a concordance $\Lambda$CDM universe, varying the opening angle of the
outflows, the lifetimes of the AGNs, their kinetic fractions, and their level
of clustering. For each simulation, we compute the volume fraction of the IGM
enriched in metals by the outflows. The resulting enriched volume fractions are
relatively small at $z \gtrsim 2.5$, and then grow rapidly afterward up to $z =
0$. We find that AGN outflows enrich from 65% to 100% of the entire universe at
the present epoch, for different values of the model parameters. The enriched
volume fraction depends weakly on the opening angle of the outflows. However,
increasingly anisotropic outflows preferentially enrich underdense regions, a
trend found more prominent at higher redshifts and decreasing at lower
redshifts. The enriched volume fraction increases with increasing kinetic
fraction and decreasing AGN lifetime and level of clustering.


  Accretion occurs across a large range of scales and physical regimes. Despite
this diversity in the physics, the observed properties show remarkably
similarity. The theory of propagating fluctuations, in which broad-band
variability within an accretion disc travel inwards and combine, has long been
used to explain these phenomena. Recent numerical work has expanded on the
extensive analytical literature but has been restricted to using the 1D
diffusion equation for modelling the disc behaviour. In this work we present a
novel numerical approach for 2D (vertically integrated), stochastically driven
{\alpha}-disc simulations, generalising existing 1D models. We find that the
theory of propagating fluctuations translates well to 2D. However, the presence
of epicyclic motion in 2D (which cannot be captured within the diffusion
equation) is shown to have an important impact on local disc dynamics.
Additionally, there are suggestions that for sufficiently thin discs the
log-normality of the light-curves changes. As in previous work, we find that
the break frequency in the luminosity power spectrum is strongly dependent on
the driving timescale of the stochastic perturbations within the disc,
providing a possible observational signature for probing the magnetorotational
instability (MRI) dynamo. We also find that thinner discs are significantly
less variable than thicker ones, providing a compelling explanation for the
greater variability seen in the hard state vs the soft state of X-ray binaries.
Finally, we consider the wide-ranging applications of our numerical model for
use in other simulations.


  In this paper, we propose a novel framework to translate a portrait
photo-face into an anime appearance. Our aim is to synthesize anime-faces which
are style-consistent with a given reference anime-face. However, unlike typical
translation tasks, such anime-face translation is challenging due to complex
variations of appearances among anime-faces. Existing methods often fail to
transfer the styles of reference anime-faces, or introduce noticeable
artifacts/distortions in the local shapes of their generated faces. We propose
AniGAN, a novel GAN-based translator that synthesizes high-quality anime-faces.
Specifically, a new generator architecture is proposed to simultaneously
transfer color/texture styles and transform local facial shapes into anime-like
counterparts based on the style of a reference anime-face, while preserving the
global structure of the source photo-face. We propose a double-branch
discriminator to learn both domain-specific distributions and domain-shared
distributions, helping generate visually pleasing anime-faces and effectively
mitigate artifacts. Extensive experiments on selfie2anime and a new face2anime
dataset qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrate the superiority of our
method over state-of-the-art methods. The new dataset is available at
https://github.com/bing-li-ai/AniGAN .


  The recent discovery of barred spiral galaxies in the early universe ($z>2$)
poses questions of how these structures form and how they influence galaxy
evolution in the early universe. In this study, we investigate the morphology
and kinematics of the far infrared (FIR) continuum and [CII] emission in
BRI1335-0417 at $z\approx 4.4$ from ALMA observations. The variations in
position angle and ellipticity of the isophotes show the characteristic
signature of a barred galaxy. The bar, $3.3^{+0.2}_{-0.2}$ kpc long in radius
and bridging the previously identified two-armed spiral, is evident in both
[CII] and FIR images, driving the galaxy's rapid evolution by channelling gas
towards the nucleus. Fourier analysis of the [CII] velocity field reveals an
unambiguous kinematic $m=2$ mode with a line-of-sight velocity amplitude of up
to $\sim30-40$ km s$^{-1}$; a plausible explanation is the disk's vertical
bending mode triggered by external perturbation, which presumably induced the
high star formation rate and the bar/spiral structure. The bar identified in
[CII] and FIR images of the gas-rich disk galaxy ($\gtrsim 70$\% of the total
mass within radius $R\approx 2.2$ disk scale lengths) suggests a new
perspective of early bar formation in high redshift gas-rich galaxies -- a
gravitationally unstable gas-rich disk creating a star-forming gaseous bar,
rather than a stellar bar emerging from a pre-existing stellar disk. This may
explain the prevalent bar-like structures seen in FIR images of high-redshift
submillimeter galaxies.


  Variations of the azimuthal magnetic fields of the Sun in the 23-25 activity
cycles of the activity cycles are considered. To identify azimuthal magnetic
fields, the analysis of daily observations of LOS magnetic fields from the
regions near the solar limb was performed. It is shown that with a sufficiently
large averaging of the data, large-scale structures are distinguished that can
be interpreted by horizontal magnetic fields directed along the East-West line.
Azimuthal magnetic fields are visible both in the low-latitude zone and at high
latitudes. Azimuthal fields at the same latitudes have opposite directions in
the northern and southern hemispheres, and also change sign in even and odd
cycles of activity. The mechanism of formation of global azimuthal magnetic
fields and their role in the cycle of solar activity is discussed. The
near-surface azimuthal magnetic field is closely related to the activity cycle.
Apparently, the azimuthal field is formed from U-shaped flux tubes of active
regions (AR). Due to the presence of the tilt angle AR during differential
rotation, the subsurface magnetic fields are pulled in the azimuthal direction.
The role of azimuthal magnetic fields in solar activity cycles is considered. A
scheme for generating a magnetic field according to a scheme different from
Babcock-Leighton dynamo models is proposed.


  Due to the rapid increase of air cargo and postal transport volume, an
efficient automated multi-dimensional warehouse with elevating transfer
vehicles (ETVs) should be established and an effective scheduling strategy
should be designed for improving the cargo handling efficiency. In this paper,
artificial bee colony algorithm, which possesses strong global optimization
ability and fewer parameters, is firstly introduced to simultaneously optimize
the route of ETV and the assignment of entrances and exits. Moreover, for
further improve the optimization performance of ABC, novel full-dimensional
search strategy with parallelization, and random multi-dimensional search
strategy are incorporated in the framework of ABC to improve the diversity of
the population and the convergence speed respectively. Our proposed algorithms
are evaluated on several benchmark functions, and then applied to solve the
combinatorial optimization problem with multitask, multiple entrances and exits
in air cargo terminal. The simulations show that the proposed algorithms can
achieve much more desired performance than the traditional artificial bee
colony algorithm at balancing the exploitation and exploration abilities.


  We investigate fast frictionless expansion of an optical lattice with
dynamically variable spacing (accordion lattice). We design an expansion
trajectory that yields a final state identical to the initial state up to an
irrelevant phase factor. We discuss the effect of additional force and
nonlinear interaction on the fast frictionless expansion.


  We consider lossy source compression of a binary symmetric source using polar
codes and the low-complexity successive encoding algorithm. It was recently
shown by Arikan that polar codes achieve the capacity of arbitrary symmetric
binary-input discrete memoryless channels under a successive decoding strategy.
We show the equivalent result for lossy source compression, i.e., we show that
this combination achieves the rate-distortion bound for a binary symmetric
source. We further show the optimality of polar codes for various problems
including the binary Wyner-Ziv and the binary Gelfand-Pinsker problem


  The history of the transition from a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) to
one that is almost fully ionized can reveal the character of cosmological
ionizing sources and set important constraints on the stellar birthrate at high
redshifts. The hydrogen component in a highly inhomogeneous universe is
completely reionized when the number of photons emitted above 1 ryd in one
recombination time equals the mean number of hydrogen atoms. If stellar sources
are responsible for photoionizing the IGM at z=5, the rate of star formation at
this epoch must be comparable or greater than the one inferred from optical
observations of galaxies at z=3, and the mean metallicity per baryon in the
universe greater than 1/500 solar. In hierarchical clustering scenarios, high-z
dwarfs (i.e. an early generation of stars in dark matter halos with circular
velocities of order 50 km/s) are expected to be one of the main source of UV
photons and heavy elements at early epochs. They would be very numerous, >0.2
arcsec^{-2}, and faint, I_AB> 29.5 mag: their detection may have to wait for
the Next Generation Space Telescope.


  In film growth on quasicrystalline surfaces, the epitaxy-imposed ordering
cannot compete with the stable bulk phases of thick films due to absence of
translational order in the structure of the substrate. Energetically, this
renders the formation of crystalline domains in the native structure of the
film material more favorable while their global orientation is prescribed by
the quasicrystalline order. We present experimental results on the dissociative
chemisorption of oxygen on the decagonal surface of Al$_{70}$Co$_{15}$Ni$_{15}$
as well as molecular-dynamics simulations of the diffusion of adatoms on the
surface of the partially covered substrate.


  We make use of the method of modulus of continuity \cite{K-N-S} and Fourier
localization technique \cite{A-H} to prove the global well-posedness of the
critical Burgers equation $\partial_{t}u+u\partial_{x}u+\Lambda u=0$ in
critical Besov spaces $\dot{B}^{\frac{1}{p}}_{p,1}(\mathbb{R})$ with
$p\in[1,\infty)$, where $\Lambda=\sqrt{-\triangle}$.


  This paper considers the performance of Reed-Muller (RM) codes transmitted
over binary memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels under bitwise
maximum-a-posteriori (bit-MAP) decoding. Its main result is that, for a fixed
BMS channel, the family of binary RM codes can achieve a vanishing bit-error
probability at rates approaching the channel capacity. This partially resolves
a long-standing open problem that connects information theory and
error-correcting codes. In contrast with the earlier result for the binary
erasure channel, the new proof does not rely on hypercontractivity. Instead, it
combines a nesting property of RM codes with new information inequalities
relating the generalized extrinsic information transfer function and the
extrinsic minimum mean-squared error.


  (Abridged) Many active galactic nuclei exhibit X-ray features typical of the
highly ionized gas called "Warm Absorber" (WA). Such a material appears to be
stratified, displaying zones of different density, temperature, and ionization.
In this paper, we investigate the possibility of modelling the WA gas in NGC
3783 as a single medium in total pressure equilibrium, in contrast to the
current descriptions that are based on the presence of multiple regions, each
in constant density. The assumption of total pressure equilibrium yields a more
physical description of the WA, resulting in the natural stratification of the
ionized gas, and providing an explanation for the presence of lines from
different ionization states, as observed in WA spectra. We have used the
photoionization code TITAN to compute a grid of constant total pressure models
with the purpose of fitting the WA in NGC 3783. We have compared our models to
the 900 ks Chandra spectrum of NGC 3783 and to previous studies where the WA
was described by multiple zones of constant density. Our results show that the
WA features in NGC 3783 can be well reproduced by a clumpy, ionized gas with
cosmic abondances, ionization parameter = 2500 erg cm s^-1, column density = 4
10^22 cm^-2, and constant total pressure. We have shown that the WA in NGC3783
can be modelled by a single medium in total pressure equilibrium; this is
probably the case for other WAs currently described by multi-zone, constant
density models.


  We propose a new methodology to detect zero-inflation and overdispersion
based on the comparison of the expected sample extremes among convexly ordered
distributions. The method is very flexible and includes tests for the
proportion of structural zeros in zero-inflated models, tests to distinguish
between two ordered parametric families and a new general test to detect
overdispersion. The performance of the proposed tests is evaluated via some
simulation studies. For the well-known fetal lamb data, we conclude that the
zero-inflated Poisson model should be rejected against other more disperse
models, but we cannot reject the negative binomial model.


  X-ray transience is the most extreme form of variability observed in AGN or
normal in-active galaxies. While factors of 2-3 on timescales of days to years
are quite commen among AGN, X-ray transients appear only once and vanish from
the X-ray sky years later. The ROSAT All-Sky Survey was the tool to discover
these sources. X-ray transience in AGN or galaxies can be caused by dramatic
changes in the accretion rate of the central black hole or by changes of the
properties of the accretion disk.


  We suggest and demonstrate in experiment that two normal metal /insulator/
superconductor (NIS) tunnel junctions combined in series to form a symmetric
SINIS structure can operate as an efficient Peltier refrigerator. Specifically,
it is shown that the SINIS structure with normal-state junction resistances 1.0
and 1.1 k$\Omega$ is capable of reaching a temperature of about 100 mK starting
from 300 mK. We estimate the corresponding cooling power to be 1.5 pW per total
junction area of 0.8 $\mu$m$^2$ at $T= 300$ mK.


  We present new results concerning the masses and the decay widths of the most
interesting hybrid meson states taking as inputs the gluon mass mg and the
non-perturbative QCD running coupling constant ?alpha_s(0) comming from both
LQCD and SDE recent estimations.


  Search-based texture synthesis algorithms are sensitive to the order in which
texture samples are generated; different synthesis orders yield different
textures. Unfortunately, most polygon rasterizers and ray tracers do not
guarantee the order with which surfaces are sampled. To circumvent this
problem, textures are synthesized beforehand at some maximum resolution and
rendered using texture mapping.
  We describe a search-based texture synthesis algorithm in which samples can
be generated in arbitrary order, yet the resulting texture remains identical.
The key to our algorithm is a pyramidal representation in which each texture
sample depends only on a fixed number of neighboring samples at each level of
the pyramid. The bottom (coarsest) level of the pyramid consists of a noise
image, which is small and predetermined. When a sample is requested by the
renderer, all samples on which it depends are generated at once. Using this
approach, samples can be generated in any order. To make the algorithm
efficient, we propose storing texture samples and their dependents in a
pyramidal cache. Although the first few samples are expensive to generate,
there is substantial reuse, so subsequent samples cost less. Fortunately, most
rendering algorithms exhibit good coherence, so cache reuse is high.


  The transverse momentum distributions of J/{\psi}mesons produced in pp
collisions at the center-of-mass energy 5 TeV, 7TeV, and 13 TeV are described
by the modified Hagedorn function. The fitting results by the modified Hagedorn
function are in accord with experimental data measured by the LHCb
Collaboration at LHC. The related parameters are obtained and analyzed.


  Previous long-term monitorings of the gamma-ray-loud X-ray binary LS I
+61{\deg}303 have revealed the presence of a long-term modulation of ~4.5
years. After nine years of simultaneous monitoring of LS I +61{\deg}303 by the
Owens Valley Radio Observatory and the Fermi-LAT, two cycles of the long-term
period are now available. Here we perform timing-analysis on the radio and the
gamma-ray light curves. We confirm the presence of previously detected
periodicities at both radio and GeV gamma-ray wavelengths. Moreover, we
discover an offset of the long-term modulation between radio and gamma-ray data
which could imply different locations of the radio (15 GHz) and GeV emission
along the precessing jet.


  In this paper, we obtain lower bounds for the first eigenvalue to some kinds
of the eigenvalue problems for Bi-drifted Laplacian operator on compact
manifolds (also called a smooth metric measure space) with boundary and
$m$-Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature or Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature bounded below.
We also address the eigenvalue problem with Wentzell-type boundary condition
for drifted Laplacian on smooth metric measure space.


  While vision-language pre-training model (VLP) has shown revolutionary
improvements on various vision-language (V+L) tasks, the studies regarding its
adversarial robustness remain largely unexplored. This paper studied the
adversarial attack on popular VLP models and V+L tasks. First, we analyzed the
performance of adversarial attacks under different settings. By examining the
influence of different perturbed objects and attack targets, we concluded some
key observations as guidance on both designing strong multimodal adversarial
attack and constructing robust VLP models. Second, we proposed a novel
multimodal attack method on the VLP models called Collaborative Multimodal
Adversarial Attack (Co-Attack), which collectively carries out the attacks on
the image modality and the text modality. Experimental results demonstrated
that the proposed method achieves improved attack performances on different V+L
downstream tasks and VLP models. The analysis observations and novel attack
method hopefully provide new understanding into the adversarial robustness of
VLP models, so as to contribute their safe and reliable deployment in more
real-world scenarios. Code is available at
https://github.com/adversarial-for-goodness/Co-Attack.


  We present a motion planning algorithm with probabilistic guarantees for
limbed robots with stochastic gripping forces. Planners based on deterministic
models with a worst-case uncertainty can be conservative and inflexible to
consider the stochastic behavior of the contact, especially when a gripper is
installed. Our proposed planner enables the robot to simultaneously plan its
pose and contact force trajectories while considering the risk associated with
the gripping forces. Our planner is formulated as a nonlinear programming
problem with chance constraints, which allows the robot to generate a variety
of motions based on different risk bounds. To model the gripping forces as
random variables, we employ Gaussian Process regression. We validate our
proposed motion planning algorithm on an 11.5 kg six-limbed robot for two-wall
climbing. Our results show that our proposed planner generates various
trajectories (e.g., avoiding low friction terrain under the low risk bound,
choosing an unstable but faster gait under the high risk bound) by changing the
probability of risk based on various specifications.


  We introduce \emph{Astronomy and Computing}, a new journal for the growing
population of people working in the domain where astronomy overlaps with
computer science and information technology. The journal aims to provide a new
communication channel within that community, which is not well served by
current journals, and to help secure recognition of its true importance within
modern astronomy. In this inaugural editorial, we describe the rationale for
creating the journal, outline its scope and ambitions, and seek input from the
community in defining in detail how the journal should work towards its
high-level goals.


  Many recent developments on generative models for natural images have relied
on heuristically-motivated metrics that can be easily gamed by memorizing a
small sample from the true distribution or training a model directly to improve
the metric. In this work, we critically evaluate the gameability of these
metrics by designing and deploying a generative modeling competition. Our
competition received over 11000 submitted models. The competitiveness between
participants allowed us to investigate both intentional and unintentional
memorization in generative modeling. To detect intentional memorization, we
propose the ``Memorization-Informed Fr\'echet Inception Distance'' (MiFID) as a
new memorization-aware metric and design benchmark procedures to ensure that
winning submissions made genuine improvements in perceptual quality.
Furthermore, we manually inspect the code for the 1000 top-performing models to
understand and label different forms of memorization. Our analysis reveals that
unintentional memorization is a serious and common issue in popular generative
models. The generated images and our memorization labels of those models as
well as code to compute MiFID are released to facilitate future studies on
benchmarking generative models.


  We investigated temperature (T)- and magnetic field-dependent optical
conductivity spectra (\s\w) of a La_5/8-yPr_yCa_3/8MnO_3 (y~0.35) single
crystal, showing intriguing phase coexistence at low T. At T_C < T < T_CO, a
dominant charge-ordered phase produces a large optical gap energy of ~0.4 eV.
At T < T_C, at least two absorption bands newly emerge below 0.4 eV. Analyses
of (\s\w) indicate that the new bands should be attributed to a ferromagnetic
metallic and a charge-disordered phase that coexist with the charge-ordered
phase. This optical study clearly shows that La_5/8-yPrCa_3/8MnO_3 (y~0.35) is
composed of multiphases that might have different lattice strains.


  We test the hypothesis that (3) Juno is a parent body of the H chondrites
with dynamical modeling of an asteroid-family-forming impact and comparison to
current observational data. Using a dynamical model that includes the Yarkovsky
force on a simulated Juno family and a simplified cosmic ray exposure age model
we examine the expected distribution of Juno family members in both the main
belt and near-Earth orbits over 300 Myrs and the cosmic ray exposure
distribution for fragments exiting the main belt via the 3:1J, 5:2J, and 8:3J
mean motion resonances. We find that the smallest modeled ($D<$10 m) family
members of (3) Juno cannot be directly responsible for the observed H chondrite
flux and that the breakup of larger family members creates an CRE distribution
that resembles the measured H chondrite CRE distribution but is still unable to
adequately explain the significant number of H chondrites with CRE ages of 6-8
Myrs. A similar model was performed for the asteroid (6) Hebe, another parent
body candidate, and produced a CRE age distribution that is inconsistent with
the measured H chondrite CRE ages. We also find from our dynamical models that
we can expect $<$7 km-scale Juno family members in near-Earth orbits in the
present day, consistent with the recent discovery of the shock-darkened H
chondrite-like asteroid (52768) 1998 OR$_{2}$.


  I report on a numerical program for the evolution of parton distributions.
The program uses the Mellin-transform method with an optimized contour. Due to
this optimized contour the program needs only a few evaluations of the
integrand and is therefore extremely fast. In addition, the program can also be
used to reproduce the results of the x-space method.


  Let $G$ be a profinite group. The coprime commutators $\gamma_j^*$ and
$\delta_j^*$ are defined as follows. Every element of $G$ is both a
$\gamma_1^*$-value and a $\delta_0^*$-value. For $j\geq 2$, let $X$ be the set
of all elements of $G$ that are powers of $\gamma_{j-1}^*$-values. An element
$a$ is a $\gamma_j^*$-value if there exist $x\in X$ and $g\in G$ such that
$a=[x,g]$ and $(|x|,|g|)=1$. For $j\geq 1$, let $Y$ be the set of all elements
of $G$ that are powers of $\delta_{j-1}^*$-values. The element $a$ is a
$\delta_j^*$-value if there exist $x,y\in Y$ such that $a=[x,y]$ and
$(|x|,|y|)=1$. In this paper we establish the following results. A profinite
group $G$ is finite-by-pronilpotent if and only if there is $k$ such that the
set of $\gamma_k^*$-values in $G$ has cardinality less than $2^{\aleph_0}$. A
profinite group $G$ is finite-by-(prosoluble of Fitting height at most $k$) if
and only if there is $k$ such that the set of $\delta_k^*$-values in $G$ has
cardinality less than $2^{\aleph_0}$.


  Unfitted finite element techniques are valuable tools in different
applications where the generation of body-fitted meshes is difficult. However,
these techniques are prone to severe ill conditioning problems that obstruct
the efficient use of iterative Krylov methods and, in consequence, hinders the
practical usage of unfitted methods for realistic large scale applications. In
this work, we present a technique that addresses such conditioning problems by
constructing enhanced finite element spaces based on a cell aggregation
technique. The presented method, called aggregated unfitted finite element
method, is easy to implement, and can be used, in contrast to previous works,
in Galerkin approximations of coercive problems with conforming Lagrangian
finite element spaces. The mathematical analysis of the new method states that
the condition number of the resulting linear system matrix scales as in
standard finite elements for body-fitted meshes, without being affected by
small cut cells, and that the method leads to the optimal finite element
convergence order. These theoretical results are confirmed with 2D and 3D
numerical experiments.


  We study the interior of a Reissner-Nordstr\"om Black-Hole (RNBH) using
Relativistic Quantum Geometry, which was introduced in some previous works. We
found discrete energy levels for a scalar field from a polynomial condition for
the Heun Confluent functions expanded around the effective causal radius $r_*$.
From the solutions it is obtained that the uncertainty principle is valid for
each energy level of space-time, in the form: $E_n\, r_{*,n}=\hbar/2$, and the
charged mass is discretized and distributed in a finite number of states. The
classical RNBH entropy is recovered as the limit case where the number of
states is very large, and the RNBH quantum temperature depends on the number of
states in the interior of the RNBH. This temperature, depending of the number
of states of the RNBH, is related with the Bekeinstein-Hawking (BH)
temperature: $T_{BH} \leq T_{N} < 2\,T_{BH}$.


  The problem of whether and how one can compute the twin-width of a graph --
along with an accompanying contraction sequence -- lies at the forefront of the
area of algorithmic model theory. While significant effort has been aimed at
obtaining a fixed-parameter approximation for the problem when parameterized by
twin-width, here we approach the question from a different perspective and
consider whether one can obtain (near-)optimal contraction sequences under a
larger parameterization, notably the feedback edge number $k$. As our main
contributions, under this parameterization we obtain (1) a linear bikernel for
the problem of either computing a $2$-contraction sequence or determining that
none exists and (2) an approximate fixed-parameter algorithm which computes an
$\ell$-contraction sequence (for an arbitrary specified $\ell$) or determines
that the twin-width of the input graph is at least $\ell$. These algorithmic
results rely on newly obtained insights into the structure of optimal
contraction sequences, and as a byproduct of these we also slightly tighten the
bound on the twin-width of graphs with small feedback edge number.


  We consider reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision
processes (MDPs) in the infinite-horizon, average-reward setting. In contrast
to discrete-time MDPs, a continuous-time process moves to a state and stays
there for a random holding time after an action is taken. With unknown
transition probabilities and rates of exponential holding times, we derive
instance-dependent regret lower bounds that are logarithmic in the time
horizon. Moreover, we design a learning algorithm and establish a finite-time
regret bound that achieves the logarithmic growth rate. Our analysis builds
upon upper confidence reinforcement learning, a delicate estimation of the mean
holding times, and stochastic comparison of point processes.


  Relating thermodynamic and kinetic properties is a conceptual challenge with
many practical benefits. Here, based on first principles, we derive a rigorous
inequality relating the entropy and the dynamic propagator of particle
configurations. It is universal and applicable to steady states arbitrarily far
from thermal equilibrium. Applying the general relation to diffusive dynamics
yields a relation between the entropy and the (normal or anomalous) diffusion
coefficient. The relation can be used to obtain useful bounds for the late-time
diffusion coefficient from the calculated steady-state entropy or, conversely,
to estimate the entropy based on measured diffusion coefficients. We
demonstrate the validity and usefulness of the relation through several
examples and discuss its broad range of applications, in particular, for
systems far from equilibrium.


  We calculate the binding energy, transition energies, oscillator strength,
and absorption coefficient of indirect excitons in transition metal
dichalcogenide (TMDC) double layers separated by an integer number of hexagonal
boron nitride (h-BN) monolayers. The absorption factor, a dimensionless
quantity which gives the fraction of incoming photons absorbed by the indirect
excitons in the double layer, is evaluated. The aforementioned optical
quantities are obtained for transitions from the ground state to the first two
excited states. All quantities are studied as a function of the interlayer
separation, which may be experimentally controlled by varying the number of
h-BN monolayers between the TMDC layers. Calculations are performed by using
the exciton wave function and eigenenergies obtained for the Keldysh potential.
For each material, we choose a combination of the exciton reduced mass and the
dielectric screening length from the existing literature which give the largest
and the smallest indirect exciton binding energy. These combinations of
material parameters provide upper and lower bounds on all quantities presented.
Our findings can be examined experimentally via two-photon spectroscopy.


  The main purpose of this note is to investigate some kinds of nonlinear
complementarity problems (NCP). For the structured tensors, such as, symmetric
positive definite tensors and copositive tensors, we derive the existence
theorems on a solution of these kinds of nonlinear complementarity problems. We
prove that a unique solution of the NCP exists under the condition of
diagonalizable tensors.


  The orbital stability of contact binary systems has been receiving
considerable attention recently. Theoretical studies indicate that merger is
likely to occur at very low mass ratios, but the actual mass ratio at which
merger may take place is likely to be variable and dependent on the mass of the
primary. We consider the effects of metal content on the orbital stability of
contact binary systems by modelling the gyration radius of a rotating and
tidally distorted primary component at various values of metallicity in the
range -1.25 to +0.5. We determine the instability mass ratio range for contact
binary systems with a low mass primary in the range 0.6M(sun) to 1.4M(sun) at
various metallicity levels and show that systems with low metallicity have an
instability mass ratio lower than those with higher metal content and therefore
are likely to be more stable. We illustrate the effect through light curve
analysis of two otherwise very similar contact binary systems, except for
different metallicity. While both would be considered unstable if metallicity
was not taken into consideration, only one remains in that category after
appropriate adjustments based on metallicity have been made.


  We study the stability of homogeneous magnetic phases in a generalized t-J
model including a same-sublattice hopping t' and nearest-neighbor repulsion V
by means of the slave fermion-Schwinger boson representation of spin operators.
At mean-field order we find, in agreement with other authors, that the
inclusion of further-neighbor hopping and Coulomb repulsion makes the
compressibility positive, thereby stabilizing at this level the spiral and Neel
orders against phase separation. However, the consideration of Gaussian
fluctuation of order parameters around these mean-field solutions produces
unstable modes in the dynamical matrix for all relevant parameter values,
leaving only reduced stability regions for the Neel phase. We have computed the
one-loop corrections to the energy in these regions, and have also briefly
considered the effects of the correlated hopping term that is obtained in the
reduction from the Hubbard to the t-J model.


  In this paper, we analyse classical variants of the Spectral Clustering (SC)
algorithm in the Dynamic Stochastic Block Model (DSBM). Existing results show
that, in the relatively sparse case where the expected degree grows
logarithmically with the number of nodes, guarantees in the static case can be
extended to the dynamic case and yield improved error bounds when the DSBM is
sufficiently smooth in time, that is, the communities do not change too much
between two time steps. We improve over these results by drawing a new link
between the sparsity and the smoothness of the DSBM: the more regular the DSBM
is, the more sparse it can be, while still guaranteeing consistent recovery. In
particular, a mild condition on the smoothness allows to treat the sparse case
with bounded degree. We also extend these guarantees to the normalized
Laplacian, and as a by-product of our analysis, we obtain to our knowledge the
best spectral concentration bound available for the normalized Laplacian of
matrices with independent Bernoulli entries.


  In this paper we present a data analysis regarding globular clusters as
possible extragalactic distance indicators. For this purpose, we collected all
velocity dispersion measurements published for galactic and M31 globular
clusters. The slope and the zero-point of the Faber-Jackson relation were
calibrated using Hipparcos distance measurements, and the relation was applied
to extragalactic globular clusters in M31. A distance modulus of 24.12 \pm 0.45
mag was found. This is coherent with what is found by fitting the red giant
branches of globular clusters (24.47 \pm 0.07, Holland 98), and is found from
the peak of globular clusters luminosity function (24.03 \pm 0.23, Ostriker an
d Gnedin 97), but shorter than the 24.7 \pm 0.2 mag (Lanoix et al. 98) and
24.77 \pm 0.11 mag (Feast and Catchpole 97), obtained by using Hipparcos data
to calibrate the Cepheid period-luminosity. This calibrated Faber-Jackson
relation can now be directly use for other Sc galaxies with resolved globular
clusters, as soon as large amounts of spectra will become available, e.g.,
through the VLT.


  The Crab nebula is so far the only celestial object with a statistically
significant detection in soft x-ray polarimetry, a window that has not been
explored in astronomy since the 1970s. However, soft x-ray polarimetry is
expected to be a sensitive probe of magnetic fields in high energy
astrophysical objects including rotation-powered pulsars and pulsar wind
nebulae. Here we report the re-detection of soft x-ray polarisation after 40
years from the Crab nebula and pulsar with PolarLight, a miniature polarimeter
utilising a novel technique onboard a CubeSat. The polarisation fraction of the
Crab in the on-pulse phases was observed to decrease after a glitch of the Crab
pulsar on July 23, 2019, while that of the pure nebular emission remained
constant within uncertainty. The phenomenon may have lasted about 100 days. If
the association between the glitch and polarisation change can be confirmed
with future observations, it will place strong constraints on the physical
mechanism of the high energy emission and glitch of pulsars.


  We review recent B+, B0d and b-baryon lifetime measurements performed by the
LEP, SLD and CDF collaborations. Lifetime ratios of tau(B+) / tau(B0d) = 1.070
+/- 0.027 and tau(b baryon) / tau(B0d) = 0.77 +/- 0.04 are obtained using all
existing measurements. The ratio between charged and neutral B meson lifetimes
is in good agreement with theory but the ratio between b-baryon and B meson
lifetimes remains somewhat lower than expected.


  OWL ontologies are a quite popular way to describe structured knowledge in
terms of classes, relations among classes and class instances. In this paper,
given a target class T of an OWL ontology, with a focus on ontologies with
real- and boolean-valued data properties, we address the problem of learning
graded fuzzy concept inclusion axioms with the aim of describing enough
conditions for being an individual classified as instance of the class T. To do
so, we present PN-OWL that is a two-stage learning algorithm made of a P-stage
and an N-stage. Roughly, in the P-stage the algorithm tries to cover as many
positive examples as possible (increase recall), without compromising too much
precision, while in the N-stage, the algorithm tries to rule out as many false
positives, covered by the P-stage, as possible. PN-OWL then aggregates the
fuzzy inclusion axioms learnt at the P-stage and the N-stage by combining them
via aggregation functions to allow for a final decision whether an individual
is instance of T or not. We also illustrate its effectiveness by means of an
experimentation. An interesting feature is that fuzzy datatypes are built
automatically, the learnt fuzzy concept inclusions can be represented directly
into Fuzzy OWL 2 and, thus, any Fuzzy OWL 2 reasoner can then be used to
automatically determine/classify (and to which degree) whether an individual
belongs to the target class T or not.


  The origin of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is a half-century old
enigma (Linsley 1963). The mystery has been deepened by an intriguing
coincidence: over ten orders of magnitude in energy, the energy generation
rates of UHECRs, PeV neutrinos, and isotropic sub-TeV gamma rays are
comparable, which hints at a grand-unified picture (Murase and Waxman 2016).
Here we report that powerful black hole jets in aggregates of galaxies can
supply the common origin of all of these phenomena. Once accelerated by a jet,
low-energy cosmic rays confined in the radio lobe are adiabatically cooled;
higher-energy cosmic rays leaving the source interact with the magnetized
cluster environment and produce neutrinos and gamma rays; the highest-energy
particles escape from the host cluster and contribute to the observed cosmic
rays above 100 PeV. The model is consistent with the spectrum, composition, and
isotropy of the observed UHECRs, and also explains the IceCube neutrinos and
the non-blazar component of the Fermi gamma-ray background, assuming a
reasonable energy output from black hole jets in clusters.


  Ultrasound (US) is the most commonly used liver imaging modality worldwide.
Due to its low cost, it is increasingly used in the follow-up of cancer
patients with metastases localized in the liver. In this contribution, we
present the results of an interactive segmentation approach for liver
metastases in US acquisitions. A (semi-) automatic segmentation is still very
challenging because of the low image quality and the low contrast between the
metastasis and the surrounding liver tissue. Thus, the state of the art in
clinical practice is still manual measurement and outlining of the metastases
in the US images. We tackle the problem by providing an interactive
segmentation approach providing real-time feedback of the segmentation results.
The approach has been evaluated with typical US acquisitions from the clinical
routine, and the datasets consisted of pancreatic cancer metastases. Even for
difficult cases, satisfying segmentations results could be achieved because of
the interactive real-time behavior of the approach. In total, 40 clinical
images have been evaluated with our method by comparing the results against
manual ground truth segmentations. This evaluation yielded to an average Dice
Score of 85% and an average Hausdorff Distance of 13 pixels.


  Nonequilibrium phase transitions are notably difficult to analyze because
their mechanisms depend on the system's dynamics in a complex way due to the
lack of time-reversal symmetry. To complicate matters, the system's
steady-state distribution is unknown in general. Here, the phase diagram of the
active Model B is computed with a deep neural network implementation of the
geometric minimum action method (gMAM). This approach unveils the
unconventional reaction paths and nucleation mechanism in dimensions 1, 2 and
3, by which the system switches between the homogeneous and inhomogeneous
phases in the binodal region. Our main findings are: (i) the mean time to
escape the phase-separated state is (exponentially) extensive in the system
size $L$, but it increases non-monotonically with $L$ in dimension 1; (ii) the
mean time to escape the homogeneous state is always finite, in line with the
recent work of Cates and Nardini~[Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 098203]; (iii) at fixed
$L$, the active term increases the stability of the homogeneous phase,
eventually destroying the phase separation in the binodal for large but finite
systems. Our results are particularly relevant for active matter systems in
which the number of constituents hardly goes beyond $10^7$ and where
finite-size effects matter.


  Dialogue relation extraction (DRE) that identifies the relations between
argument pairs in dialogue text, suffers much from the frequent occurrence of
personal pronouns, or entity and speaker coreference. This work introduces a
new benchmark dataset DialogRE^C+, introducing coreference resolution into the
DRE scenario. With the aid of high-quality coreference knowledge, the reasoning
of argument relations is expected to be enhanced. In DialogRE^C+ dataset, we
manually annotate total 5,068 coreference chains over 36,369 argument mentions
based on the existing DialogRE data, where four different coreference chain
types namely speaker chain, person chain, location chain and organization chain
are explicitly marked. We further develop 4 coreference-enhanced graph-based
DRE models, which learn effective coreference representations for improving the
DRE task. We also train a coreference resolution model based on our annotations
and evaluate the effect of automatically extracted coreference chains
demonstrating the practicality of our dataset and its potential to other
domains and tasks.


  We propose a method to directly probe bulk topological quantum numbers in
topological matter by measuring the momentum-space single-particle spectral
function (SPSF). Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) can detect
SPSF and is often used to determine the bulk band structure of quantum
materials. Here, we show that while one part of the momentum-space SPSF gives
band structure, it also contains the knowledge of winding and Chern numbers of
various topological materials. For this, we derive SPSF in three different
models of topological systems, such as the Kitaev model of topological
superconductors, the long-range Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, and the Qi-Wu-Zhang
model and explain how to extract the winding or Chern numbers in different
topological phases from the SPSF. Such information from SPSF seems
experimentally accessible due to the recent advancement of ARPES and scanning
tunneling spectroscopy techniques.


  Agekyan lambda-factor that accounts for the effect of multiple distant
encounters with large impact factors is used for the first time to compute the
diffusion coefficients in the velocity space of a stellar system. It is shown
that in this case the cumulative effect - the total contribution of distant
encounters to the change in the velocity of the test star - is finite, and the
logarithmic divergence inherent to the classical description disappears, as
also was earlier noted by Kandrup (1981). At the same time, the formulas for
the diffusion coefficients, as before, contain the logarithm of the ratio of
two independent scale factors that fully characterize the state of the stellar
system: the average interparticle distance and the impact parameter of a close
encounter. However, the physical meaning of this factor is no longer associated
with the classical logarithmic divergence.


  Morphing attacks is a threat to biometric systems where the biometric
reference in an identity document can be altered. This form of attack presents
an important issue in applications relying on identity documents such as border
security or access control. Research in face morphing attack detection is
developing rapidly, however very few datasets with several forms of attacks are
publicly available. This paper bridges this gap by providing a new dataset with
four different types of morphing attacks, based on OpenCV, FaceMorpher,
WebMorph and a generative adversarial network (StyleGAN), generated with
original face images from three public face datasets. We also conduct extensive
experiments to assess the vulnerability of the state-of-the-art face
recognition systems, notably FaceNet, VGG-Face, and ArcFace. The experiments
demonstrate that VGG-Face, while being less accurate face recognition system
compared to FaceNet, is also less vulnerable to morphing attacks. Also, we
observed that na\"ive morphs generated with a StyleGAN do not pose a
significant threat.