  We extend Quantum Dimer Model (QDM) introduced by Rokhsar and Kivelson in
such a way that the model includes resonance processes on larger loops. The
strategy is to first construct a pseudo spin Hamiltonian which is defined not
by the S =1/2 but by the S=1 representation and then establish the
correspondence between the pseudo-spin-1 configurations and those of dimers.
The standard QDM keeps only the lowest resonance processes for pairs of
parallel dimers and its validity in describing the realistic spin systems is
not obvious. Our extended QDM (EQDM) improves this point and contains a novel
resonance term, which is equivalent to two successive actions of the familiar
parallel dimer resonance. For a certain choice of the coupling constants, our
model exhibits three exotic valence-bond phases (herringbone, checkerboard and
'dimer smectic') in the ground state, which meet at a triple point. The
checkerboard phase has four-fold rotational symmetry, while the dimer smectic
is characterized by partial ordering only in one of the two directions. In the
dimer smectic phase, we investigate the dimer-dimer correlation by using an
analogy to random walks.


  Inserting nonreciprocal devices at the doorways of Alice and Bob is a widely
recognized countermeasure against quantum hacking attacks in quantum key
distribution (QKD) systems. However, traditional integrated nonreciprocal
devices, which are typically based on magneto-optical effects, face challenges
in compatibility with current semiconductor integration technology. As a
result, earlier chip-based QKD systems were unable to integrate nonreciprocal
components and were vulnerable to injecting-type attacks. Based on the actual
parameters of SOI integration, we employed the inverse design with the direct
binary search algorithm to construct several magnetic-free nonreciprocal
devices, facilitating their integration into chip-based QKD systems while
meeting various chip configuration design requirements. The designed devices
have sizes of only a few square micrometers, yet the quasi-isolator can achieve
an isolation level exceeding 27 dB. To demonstrate their practical utility in
QKD, we employed the designed devices to safeguard the QKD system against
Trojan-horse attacks. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed
devices effectively secure the BB84 and measure-device-independent QKD systems
against Trojan-horse attacks.


  Let $\Lambda$ be a finite abelian group. A dynamical system with
transformation group $\Lambda$ is a triple $(A,\Lambda,\alpha)$, consisting of
a unital locally convex algebra $A$, the finite abelian group $\Lambda$ and a
group homomorphism $\alpha:\Lambda\rightarrow\Aut(A)$, which induces an action
of $\Lambda$ on $A$. In this paper we present a new, geometrically oriented
approach to the noncommutative geometry of principal bundles with finite
abelian structure group based on such dynamical systems.


  We consider the following one-player game called Dundee. We are given a deck
consisting of s_i cards of Value i, where i=1,...,v, and an integer m\le
s_1+...+s_v. There are m rounds. In each round, the player names a number
between 1 and v and draws a random card from the deck. The player loses if the
named number coincides with the drawn value in at least one round.
  The famous Problem of Thirteen, proposed by Monmort in 1708, asks for the
probability of winning in the case when v=13, s_1=...=s_{13}=4, m=13, and the
player names the sequence 1,...,13. This problem and its various
generalizations were studied by numerous mathematicians, including J. and N.
Bernoulli, De Moivre, Euler, Catalan, and others.
  However, it seems that nobody has considered which strategies of the player
maximize the probability of winning. We study two variants of this problem. In
the first variant, the player's bid in Round i may depend on the values of the
random cards drawn in the previous rounds. We completely solve this version. In
the second variant, the player has to specify the whole sequence of m bids in
advance, before turning any cards. We are able to solve this problem when
s_1=...=s_v and m is arbitrary.


  A new superferric magnetic storage ring with highly homogeneous field at 1.45
T and weak electrostatic focussing is described which has been set up at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA, for a precision measurement of the
magnetic anomaly of the muon. The toroidal storage volume has a radius of 7 m
and a diameter of 9 cm. Precision magnetic field determination based on pulsed
NMR on protons in H$_2$O yields the field to better than 0.1 ppm everywhere
within the storage region. Follow on experiments using the setup have been
already suggested to search for a finite mass of the muon neutrino and to
search for an electric dipole moment of the muon with significantly increased
accuracy. The high homogeneity of the field suggests the usage of such devices
as a mass spectrometer for heavier particles as well.


  An iterative method of learning has become a paradigm for training deep
convolutional neural networks (DCNN). However, utilizing a non-iterative
learning strategy can accelerate the training process of the DCNN and
surprisingly such approach has been rarely explored by the deep learning (DL)
community. It motivates this paper to introduce a non-iterative learning
strategy that eliminates the backpropagation (BP) at the top dense or fully
connected (FC) layers of DCNN, resulting in, lower training time and higher
performance. The proposed method exploits the Moore-Penrose Inverse to pull
back the current residual error to each FC layer, generating well-generalized
features. Then using the recomputed features, i.e., the new generalized
features the weights of each FC layer is computed according to the
Moore-Penrose Inverse. We evaluate the proposed approach on six widely accepted
object recognition benchmark datasets: Scene-15, CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, SUN-397,
Places365, and ImageNet. The experimental results show that the proposed method
obtains significant improvements over 30 state-of-the-art methods.
Interestingly, it also indicates that any DCNN with the proposed method can
provide better performance than the same network with its original training
based on BP.


  In bilateral teleoperation, the human who operates the master and the
environment which interacts with the slave are part of the force feedback loop.
Yet, both have time-varying and unpredictable dynamics and are challenging to
model. A conventional strategy for sidestepping the demand for their models in
the stability analysis is to assume passive user and environment, and to
control the master-communications-slave system to be passive as well. This
paper circumvents the need to model the user and environment in a novel way: it
regards their forces as external excitations for a semi-autonomous force
feedback loop, which it outfits with a dynamic interconnection and damping
injection controller that renders bilateral teleoperation with time-varying
delays exponentially input-to-state stable. The controller uses the position
and velocity measurements of the local robot and the delayed position
transmitted from the other robot to robustly synchronize the master and slave
under the user and environment perturbations. Lyapunov-Krasovskii stability
analysis shows that the proposed strategy (i) can confine the position error
between the master and slave to an invariant set, and (ii) can drive it
exponentially to a globally attractive set. Thus, the dynamic interconnection
and damping injection approach has practical relevance for telemanipulation
tasks with given precision requirements.


  Machine Learning (ML) workloads have rapidly grown in importance, but raised
concerns about their carbon footprint. Four best practices can reduce ML
training energy by up to 100x and CO2 emissions up to 1000x. By following best
practices, overall ML energy use (across research, development, and production)
held steady at <15% of Google's total energy use for the past three years. If
the whole ML field were to adopt best practices, total carbon emissions from
training would reduce. Hence, we recommend that ML papers include emissions
explicitly to foster competition on more than just model quality. Estimates of
emissions in papers that omitted them have been off 100x-100,000x, so
publishing emissions has the added benefit of ensuring accurate accounting.
Given the importance of climate change, we must get the numbers right to make
certain that we work on its biggest challenges.


  Recently, we introduced the twist polynomials of delta-matroids and gave a
characterization of even normal binary delta-matroids whose twist polynomials
have only one term and posed a problem: what would happen for odd binary
delta-matroids? In this paper, we show that a normal binary delta-matroid whose
twist polynomials have only one term if and only if each connected component of
the intersection graph of the delta-matroid is either a complete graph of odd
order or a single vertex with a loop.


  This is a computational study of bottlenecks on algebraic varieties. The
bottlenecks of a smooth variety $X \subseteq \mathbb{C}^n$ are the lines in
$\mathbb{C}^n$ which are normal to $X$ at two distinct points. The main result
is a numerical homotopy that can be used to approximate all isolated
bottlenecks. This homotopy has the optimal number of paths under certain
genericity assumptions. In the process we prove bounds on the number of
bottlenecks in terms of the Euclidean distance degree. Applications include the
optimization problem of computing the distance between two real varieties.
Also, computing bottlenecks may be seen as part of the problem of computing the
reach of a smooth real variety and efficient methods to compute the reach are
still to be developed. Relations to triangulation of real varieties and meshing
algorithms used in computer graphics are discussed in the paper. The resulting
algorithms have been implemented with Bertini and Macaulay2.


  Storing quantum information for long times without disruptions is a major
requirement for most quantum information technologies. A very appealing
approach is to use self-correcting Hamiltonians, i.e. tailoring local
interactions among the qubits such that when the system is weakly coupled to a
cold bath the thermalization process takes a long time. Here we propose an
alternative but more powerful approach in which the coupling to a bath is
engineered, so that dissipation protects the encoded qubit against more general
kinds of errors. We show that the method can be implemented locally in four
dimensional lattice geometries by means of a toric code, and propose a simple
2D set-up for proof of principle experiments.


  Automatic musical accompaniment is where a human musician is accompanied by a
computer musician. The computer musician is able to produce musical
accompaniment that relates musically to the human performance. The
accompaniment should follow the performance using observations of the notes
they are playing. This paper describes a complete and detailed construction of
a score following and accompanying system using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). It
details how to train a score HMM, how to deal with polyphonic input, how this
HMM work when following score, how to build up a musical accompanist. It
proposes a new parallel hidden Markov model for score following and a fast
decoding algorithm to deal with performance errors.


  It remains to be ascertained whether sub-Neptune exoplanets primarily possess
hydrogen-rich atmospheres or whether a population of H$_2$O-rich "water worlds"
lurks in their midst. Addressing this question requires improved modeling of
water-rich exoplanetary atmospheres, both to predict and interpret
spectroscopic observations and to serve as upper boundary conditions on
interior structure calculations. Here we present new models of
hydrogen-helium-water atmospheres with water abundances ranging from solar to
100% water vapor. We improve upon previous models of high water content
atmospheres by incorporating updated prescriptions for water self-broadening
and a non-ideal gas equation of state. Our model grid
(https://umd.box.com/v/water-worlds) includes temperature-pressure profiles in
radiative-convective equilibrium, along with their associated transmission and
thermal emission spectra. We find that our model updates primarily act at high
pressures, significantly impacting bottom-of-atmosphere temperatures, with
implications for the accuracy of interior structure calculations. Upper
atmosphere conditions and spectroscopic observables are less impacted by our
model updates, and we find that under most conditions, retrieval codes built
for hot Jupiters should also perform well on water-rich planets. We
additionally quantify the observational degeneracies among both thermal
emission and transmission spectra. We recover standard degeneracies with clouds
and mean molecular weight for transmission spectra, and we find thermal
emission spectra to be more readily distinguishable from one another in the
water-poor (i.e. near-solar) regime.


  The CMS collaboration has reported a possible lepton flavour violating (LFV)
signal $h\to\mu\tau$. Whereas this does not happen in the standard model (SM),
we point out that new physics responsible for this type of decay would, in
general, also produce charge-parity (CP) violation in $h\to \tau\tau$. We
estimate the size of this effect in a model independent manner and find that a
large asymmetry, of order 25\%, is allowed by current constraints.


  The 5th wireless communication (5G) techniques not only fulfil the
requirement of $1,000$ times increase of internet traffic in the next decade,
but also offer the underlying technologies to the entire industry and ecology
for internet of everything. Compared to the existing mobile communication
techniques, 5G techniques are more-widely applicable and the corresponding
system design is more complicated. The resurgence of artificial intelligence
(AI) techniques offers as an alternative option, which is possibly superior
over traditional ideas and performance. Typical and potential research
directions to which AI can make promising contributions need to be identified,
evaluated, and investigated. To this end, this overview paper first combs
through several promising research directions of AI for 5G, based on the
understanding of the 5G key techniques. Also, the paper devotes itself in
providing design paradigms including 5G network optimization, optimal resource
allocation, 5G physical layer unified acceleration, end-to-end physical layer
joint optimization, and so on.


  Considering a certain construction of algebraic varieties $X$ endowed with an
algebraic action of the group ${\rm Aut}(F_n)$, $n<\infty$, we obtain a
criterion for the faithfulness of this action. It gives an infinite family
$\mathscr F$ of $X$'s such that ${\rm Aut}(F_n)$ embeds into ${\rm Aut}(X)$.
For $n\geqslant 3$, this implies nonlinearity, and for $n\geqslant 2$, the
existence of $F_2$ in ${\rm Aut}(X)$ (hence nonamenability of the latter) for
$X\in \mathscr F$. We find in ${\mathscr F}$ two infinite subfamilies
${\mathscr N}$ and $\mathscr R$ consisting of irreducible affine varieties such
that every $X\in {\mathscr N}$ is nonrational (and even not stably rational),
while every $X\in \mathscr R$ is rational and $3n$-dimensional. As an
application, we show that the minimal dimension of affine algebraic varieties
$Z$, for which ${\rm Aut}(Z)$ contains the braid group $B_n$ on $n\geqslant 3$
strands, does not exceed $3n$. This upper bound strengthens the one following
from the paper by D. Krammer [Kr02], where the linearity of $B_n$ was proved
(this latter bound is quadratic in $n$). The same upper bound also holds for
${\rm Aut}(F_n)$. In particular, it shows that the minimal rank of the Cremona
groups containing ${\rm Aut}(F_n)$, does not exceed $3n$, and the same is true
for $B_n$ if $n\geqslant 3$.
  This paper is a major revision of [Po21].


  Understanding the complement of the coamoeba of a (reduced) A-discriminant is
one approach to studying the monodromy of solutions to the corresponding system
of A-hypergeometric differential equations. Nilsson and Passare described the
structure of the coamoeba and its complement (a zonotope) when the reduced
A-discriminant is a function of two variables. Their main result was that the
coamoeba and zonotope form a cycle which is equal to the fundamental cycle of
the torus, multiplied by the normalized volume of the set A of integer vectors.
That proof only worked in dimension two. Here, we use simple ideas from
topology to give a new proof of this result in dimension two, one which can be
generalized to all dimensions.


  Interpolation-based techniques have been widely and successfully applied in
the verification of hardware and software, e.g., in bounded-model check- ing,
CEGAR, SMT, etc., whose hardest part is how to synthesize interpolants. Various
work for discovering interpolants for propositional logic, quantifier-free
fragments of first-order theories and their combinations have been proposed.
However, little work focuses on discovering polynomial interpolants in the
literature. In this paper, we provide an approach for constructing non-linear
interpolants based on semidefinite programming, and show how to apply such
results to the verification of programs by examples.


  We present a lattice determination of the disconnected contributions to the
leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization (HVP) to the muon anomalous magnetic
moment in the so-called short and intermediate time-distance windows. We employ
gauge ensembles produced by the Extended Twisted Mass Collaboration (ETMC) with
$N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ flavours of Wilson twisted-mass clover-improved quarks with
masses approximately tuned to their physical value. We take the continuum limit
employing three lattice spacings at about 0.08, 0.07 and 0.06 fm.


  We review the current status of searches for new physics beyond the Standard
Model in the diphoton channel at the LHC and estimate the reach with future
collected data. We perform a model independent analysis based on an effective
field theory approach and different production mechanisms. As an illustrative
example, we apply our results to a scenario of minimal composite dynamics.


  Bundle recommender systems recommend sets of items (e.g., pants, shirt, and
shoes) to users, but they often suffer from two issues: significant interaction
sparsity and a large output space. In this work, we extend multi-round
conversational recommendation (MCR) to alleviate these issues. MCR, which uses
a conversational paradigm to elicit user interests by asking user preferences
on tags (e.g., categories or attributes) and handling user feedback across
multiple rounds, is an emerging recommendation setting to acquire user feedback
and narrow down the output space, but has not been explored in the context of
bundle recommendation. In this work, we propose a novel recommendation task
named Bundle MCR. We first propose a new framework to formulate Bundle MCR as
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with multiple agents, for user modeling,
consultation and feedback handling in bundle contexts. Under this framework, we
propose a model architecture, called Bundle Bert (Bunt) to (1) recommend items,
(2) post questions and (3) manage conversations based on bundle-aware
conversation states. Moreover, to train Bunt effectively, we propose a
two-stage training strategy. In an offline pre-training stage, Bunt is trained
using multiple cloze tasks to mimic bundle interactions in conversations. Then
in an online fine-tuning stage, Bunt agents are enhanced by user interactions.
Our experiments on multiple offline datasets as well as the human evaluation
show the value of extending MCR frameworks to bundle settings and the
effectiveness of our Bunt design.


  Collaborative activities among knowledge workers such as software developers
underlie the development of modern society, but the in-depth understanding of
their behavioral patterns in open online communities is very challenging. The
availability of large volumes of data in open-source software (OSS)
repositories (e.g. bug tracking data, emails, and comments) enables us to
investigate this issue in a quantitative way. In this paper, we conduct an
empirical analysis of online collaborative activities closely related to assure
software quality in two well-known OSS communities, namely Eclipse and Mozilla.
Our main findings include two aspects: (1) developers exhibit two diametrically
opposite behavioral patterns in spatial and temporal scale when they work under
two different states (i.e. normal and overload), and (2) the processing times
(including bug fixing times and bug tossing times) follow a stretched
exponential distribution instead of the common power law distribution. Our work
reveals regular patterns in human dynamics beyond online collaborative
activities among skilled developers who work under different task-driven load
conditions, and it could be an important supplementary to the current work on
human dynamics.


  Understanding the decision process underlying gaze control is an important
question in cognitive neuroscience with applications in diverse fields ranging
from psychology to computer vision. The decision for choosing an upcoming
saccade target can be framed as a selection process between two states: Should
the observer further inspect the information near the current gaze position
(local attention) or continue with exploration of other patches of the given
scene (global attention)? Here we propose and investigate a mathematical model
motivated by switching between these two attentional states during scene
viewing. The model is derived from a minimal set of assumptions that generates
realistic eye movement behavior. We implemented a Bayesian approach for model
parameter inference based on the model's likelihood function. In order to
simplify the inference, we applied data augmentation methods that allowed the
use of conjugate priors and the construction of an efficient Gibbs sampler.
This approach turned out to be numerically efficient and permitted fitting
interindividual differences in saccade statistics. Thus, the main contribution
of our modeling approach is two--fold; first, we propose a new model for
saccade generation in scene viewing. Second, we demonstrate the use of novel
methods from Bayesian inference in the field of scan path modeling.


  We introduce and study properties of certain new harmonic function spaces on
products of upper half-spaces.Norm estimates for the so-called expanded Bergman
projections are obtained.Sharp theorems on multipliers acting on certain
Sobolev type spaces of harmonic functions on the unit ball are also obtained


  Loewner Theory, based on dynamical viewpoint, proved itself to be a powerful
tool in Complex Analysis and its applications. Recently Bracci et al [Bracci et
al, to appear in J. Reine Angew. Math. Available on ArXiv 0807.1594; Bracci et
al, Math. Ann. 344(2009), 947--962; Contreras et al, Revista Matematica
Iberoamericana 26(2010), 975--1012] have proposed a new approach bringing
together all the variants of the (deterministic) Loewner Evolution in a simply
connected reference domain. This paper is devoted to the construction of a
general version of Loewner Theory for the annulus launched in [ArXiv
1011.4253]. We introduce the general notion of a Loewner chain over a system of
annuli and obtain a 1-to-1 correspondence between Loewner chains and evolution
families in the doubly connected setting similar to that in the Loewner Theory
for the unit disk. Futhermore, we establish a conformal classification of
Loewner chains via the corresponding evolution families and via semicomplete
weak holomorphic vector fields. Finally, we extend the explicit
characterization of the semicomplete weak holomorphic vector fields obtained in
[ArXiv 1011.4253] to the general case.


  Regular monitoring of the primary particles and purity profiles of a drug
product during development and manufacturing processes is essential for
manufacturers to avoid product variability and contamination. Transmission
electron microscopy (TEM) imaging helps manufacturers predict how changes
affect particle characteristics and purity for virus-based gene therapy vector
products and intermediates. Since intact particles can characterize efficacious
products, it is beneficial to automate the detection of intact adenovirus
against a non-intact-viral background mixed with debris, broken, and artefact
particles. In the presence of such particles, detecting intact adenoviruses
becomes more challenging. To overcome the challenge, due to such a presence, we
developed a software tool for semi-automatic annotation and segmentation of
adenoviruses and a software tool for automatic segmentation and detection of
intact adenoviruses in TEM imaging systems. The developed semi-automatic tool
exploited conventional image analysis techniques while the automatic tool was
built based on convolutional neural networks and image analysis techniques. Our
quantitative and qualitative evaluations showed outstanding true positive
detection rates compared to false positive and negative rates where
adenoviruses were nicely detected without mistaking them for real debris,
broken adenoviruses, and/or staining artefacts.


  We present an effective action for the electroweak sector of the Standard
Model valid for the calculation of scattering amplitudes in the high energy
(Regge) limit. Gauge invariant Wilson lines are introduced to describe
reggeized degrees of freedom whose interactions are generated by effective
emission vertices. From this approach previous results at leading logarithmic
accuracy for electroweak boson Regge trajectories are reproduced together with
the corresponding interaction kernels. The proposed framework lays the path for
calculations at higher orders in perturbation theory.


  This paper presents a physical mapping tool for quantum circuits, which
generates the optimal Universal Logic Block (ULB) that can perform any logical
fault-tolerant (FT) quantum operations with the minimum latency. The operation
scheduling, placement, and qubit routing problems tackled by the quantum
physical mapper are highly dependent on one another. More precisely, the
scheduling solution affects the quality of the achievable placement solution
due to resource pressures that may be created as a result of operation
scheduling whereas the operation placement and qubit routing solutions
influence the scheduling solution due to resulting distances between
predecessor and current operations, which in turn determines routing latencies.
The proposed flow for the quantum physical mapper captures these dependencies
by applying (i) a loose scheduling step, which transforms an initial quantum
data flow graph into one that explicitly captures the no-cloning theorem of the
quantum computing and then performs instruction scheduling based on a modified
force-directed scheduling approach to minimize the resource contention and
quantum circuit latency, (ii) a placement step, which uses timing-driven
instruction placement to minimize the approximate routing latencies while
making iterative calls to the aforesaid force-directed scheduler to correct
scheduling levels of quantum operations as needed, and (iii) a routing step
that finds dynamic values of routing latencies for the qubits. In addition to
the quantum physical mapper, an approach is presented to determine the single
best ULB size for a target quantum circuit by examining the latency of
different FT quantum operations mapped onto different ULB sizes and using
information about the occurrence frequency of operations on critical paths of
the target quantum algorithm to weigh these latencies.


  The quantum version of a non-linear oscillator, previouly analyzed at the
classical level, is studied. This is a problem of quantization of a system with
position-dependent mass of the form $m={(1+\lambda x^2)}^{-1}$ and with a
$\la$-dependent nonpolynomial rational potential. This $\la$-dependent system
can be considered as a deformation of the harmonic oscillator in the sense that
for $\la\to 0$ all the characteristics of the linear oscillator are recovered.
Firstly, the $\la$-dependent Schr\"odinger equation is exactly solved as a
Sturm-Liouville problem and the $\la$-dependent eigenenergies and
eigenfunctions are obtained for both $\la>0$ and $\la<0$. The $\la$-dependent
wave functions appear as related with a family of orthogonal polynomials that
can be considered as $\la$-deformations of the standard Hermite polynomials. In
the second part, the $\la$-dependent Schr\"odinger equation is solved by using
the Schr\"odinger factorization method, the theory of intertwined Hamiltonians
and the property of shape invariance as an approach. Finally, the new family of
orthogonal polynomials is studied. We prove the existence of a $\la$-dependent
Rodrigues formula, a generating function and $\la$-dependent recursion
relations between polynomials of different orders.


  Controllability, generalizability and efficiency are the major objectives of
constructing face avatars represented by neural implicit field. However,
existing methods have not managed to accommodate the three requirements
simultaneously. They either focus on static portraits, restricting the
representation ability to a specific subject, or suffer from substantial
computational cost, limiting their flexibility. In this paper, we propose
One-shot Talking face Avatar (OTAvatar), which constructs face avatars by a
generalized controllable tri-plane rendering solution so that each personalized
avatar can be constructed from only one portrait as the reference.
Specifically, OTAvatar first inverts a portrait image to a motion-free identity
code. Second, the identity code and a motion code are utilized to modulate an
efficient CNN to generate a tri-plane formulated volume, which encodes the
subject in the desired motion. Finally, volume rendering is employed to
generate an image in any view. The core of our solution is a novel
decoupling-by-inverting strategy that disentangles identity and motion in the
latent code via optimization-based inversion. Benefiting from the efficient
tri-plane representation, we achieve controllable rendering of generalized face
avatar at $35$ FPS on A100. Experiments show promising performance of
cross-identity reenactment on subjects out of the training set and better 3D
consistency.


  We used a combination of optical and near-UV Hubble Space Telescope
photometry and FLAMES/ESO-VLT high-resolution spectroscopy to characterize the
stellar content of the old and massive globular cluster (GC) NGC121 in the
Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We report on the detection of multiple stellar
populations, the first case in the SMC stellar cluster system. This result
enforces the emerging scenario in which the presence of multiple stellar
populations is a distinctive-feature of old and massive GCs regardless of the
environment, as far as the light element distribution is concerned. We find
that second population (SG) stars are more centrally concentrated than first
(FG) ones. More interestingly, at odds with what typically observed in Galactic
GCs, we find that NGC121 is the only cluster so far to be dominated by FG stars
that account for more than 65% of the total cluster mass. In the framework
where GCs were born with a 90-95% of FG stars, this observational finding would
suggest that either NGC121 experienced a milder stellar mass-loss with respect
to Galactic GCs or it formed a smaller fraction of SG stars.


  The branching ratios of the $K^0 \to \pi^- l^+ \nu_l \gamma (l = e, \mu)$
decays, and the T-odd triple momenta correlations $\xi=\vec{q}\cdot[\vec{p}_l
\times \vec{p}_\pi]/M^3_K$, due to the electromagnetic final state interaction,
in these processes are calculated. The contributions on the order of
$\omega^{-1}$ and $\omega^0$ to the corresponding amplitudes are treated
exactly. For the branching ratios and T-odd correlation in $K^0 \to \pi^- e^+
\nu_e \gamma$ decay, the corrections on the order of $\omega$ are estimated and
demonstrated to be small. The results for the branching ratios are in good
agreement with the previous ones. The T-odd triple momenta correlations in
$K^0_{l3\gamma}$ decays are calculated for the first time. The values of the
\xi-odd asymmetry constitute $-1\times10^{-4}$ and $-4.5\times10^{-4}$ in the
$K^0 \to \pi^- \mu^+ \nu_\mu \gamma$ and $K^0 \to \pi^- e^+ \nu_e\gamma$
decays, respectively.


  The properties of Pt-based materials can be intriguing due to the importance
of spin-orbit coupling for Pt. Herein, we report four new phases with formulas
M3Pt23Ge11 (M = Ca, Sr, Ba and Eu), which adopt the same structure type as
Ce3Pt23Si11. Magnetic susceptibility measurements indicate that none of the
phases is superconducting above 1.8 K, while for Eu3Pt23Ge11 ferromagnetic
ordering is observed at ~ 3 K. The low Curie temperature for that material
compared to that of Eu3Pt23Si11 may be due to its larger Eu-Eu distance. One
potential factor that destabilizes the structure of other rare-earth based
M3Pt23Ge11 is demonstrated through COHP calculations.


  During the upcoming High Luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider
(HL-LHC), the integrated luminosity of the accelerator will increase to 3000
fb$^{-1}$. The expected experimental conditions in that period in terms of
background rates, event pileup, and the probable aging of the current detectors
present a challenge for all the existing experiments at the LHC, including the
Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. To ensure a highly performing muon
system for this period, several upgrades of the Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC)
system of the CMS are currently being implemented. These include the
replacement of the readout system for the present system, and the installation
of two new RPC stations with improved chamber and front-end electronics
designs. The current overall status of this CMS RPC upgrade project is
presented.


  Single-reference coupled-cluster theory is an accurate and affordable
computational method for the nuclear many-body problem. For open-shell nuclei,
the reference state typically breaks rotational invariance and angular momentum
must be restored as a good quantum number. We perform angular-momentum
projection after variation and employ the disentangled coupled-cluster
formalism and a Hermitian approach. We compare our results with benchmarks for
$^8$Be and $^{20}$Ne using a two-nucleon interaction from chiral effective
field theory and for $pf$-shell nuclei within the traditional shell model. We
compute the rotational band in the exotic nucleus $^{34}$Mg and find agreement
with data.


  Let $\Free_n$ denote the free group with $n$ generators $g_1, g_2, ..., g_n$.
Let $\lambda$ stand for the left regular representation of $\Free_n$ and let
$\tau$ be the standard trace associated to $\lambda$. Given any positive
integer $d$, we study the operator space structure of the subspace
$\Word_p(n,d)$ of $L_p(\tau)$ generated by the family of operators
$\lambda(g_{i_1}g_{i_2} ... g_{i_d})$ with $1 \le i_k \le n$. Moreover, our
description of this operator space holds up to a constant which does not depend
on $n$ or $p$, so that our result remains valid for infinitely many generators.
We also consider the subspace of $L_p(\tau)$ generated by the image under
$\lambda$ of the set of reduced words of length $d$. Our result extends to any
exponent $1 \le p \le \infty$ a previous result of Buchholz for the space
$\Word_{\infty}(n,d)$. The main application is a certain interpolation theorem,
valid for any degree $d$ (extending a result of the second author restricted to
$d=1$). In the simplest case $d=2$, our theorem can be stated as follows:
consider the space $\mathcal{K}_p$ formed of all block matrices $a=(a_{ij})$
with entries in the Schatten class $S_p$, such that $a$ is in $S_p$ relative to
$\ell_2 \otimes \ell_2$ and moreover such that $(\sum_{ij} a_{ij}^* a_{ij}
)^{1/2}$ and $(\sum_{ij} a_{ij} a_{ij}^*)^{1/2}$ both belong to $S_p$. We equip
$\mathcal{K}_p$ with the maximum of the three corresponding norms. Then, for $2
\le p \le \infty$ we have $\mathcal{K}_p \simeq (\mathcal{K}_2,
\mathcal{K}_\infty)_\theta$ with $1/p = (1-\theta)/2$.


  Battery storage is expected to play a crucial role in the low-carbon
transformation of energy systems. The deployment of battery storage in the
power gird, however, is currently severely limited by its low economic
viability, which results from not only high capital costs but also the lack of
flexible and efficient utilization schemes and business models. Making
utility-scale battery storage portable through trucking unlocks its capability
to provide various on-demand services. We introduce the potential applications
of utility-scale portable energy storage and investigate its economics in
California using a spatiotemporal decision model that determines the optimal
operation and transportation schedules of portable storage. We show that
mobilizing energy storage can increase its life-cycle revenues by 70% in some
areas and improve renewable energy integration by relieving local transmission
congestion. The life-cycle revenue of spatiotemporal arbitrage can fully
compensate for the costs of portable energy storage system in several regions
in California, including San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area.


  In conformal field theory, key properties of spin-1/2 chains, such as the
ground state energy per site and the excitation gap scale with dimerization
delta as delta^alpha with known exponents alpha and logarithmic corrections.
The logarithmic corrections vanish in a spin chain with nearest (J=1) and next
nearest neighbor interactions (J_2), for J_2c=0.2411. DMRG analysis of a
frustrated spin chain with no logarithmic corrections yields the field
theoretic values of alpha, and the scaling relation is valid up to the
physically realized range, delta ~ 0.1. However, chains with logarithmic
corrections (J_2<0.2411 J) are more accurately fit by simple power laws with
different exponents for physically realized dimerizations. We show the
exponents decreasing from approximately 3/4 to 2/3 for the spin gap and from
approximately 3/2 to 4/3 for the energy per site and error bars in the exponent
also decrease as J_2 approaches to J_2c.


  Wikipedia articles representing an entity or a topic in different language
editions evolve independently within the scope of the language-specific user
communities. This can lead to different points of views reflected in the
articles, as well as complementary and inconsistent information. An analysis of
how the information is propagated across the Wikipedia language editions can
provide important insights in the article evolution along the temporal and
cultural dimensions and support quality control. To facilitate such analysis,
we present MultiWiki - a novel web-based user interface that provides an
overview of the similarities and differences across the article pairs
originating from different language editions on a timeline. MultiWiki enables
users to observe the changes in the interlingual article similarity over time
and to perform a detailed visual comparison of the article snapshots at a
particular time point.


  Mixed-integer quadratic programs (MIQPs) are a versatile way of formulating
vehicle decision making and motion planning problems, where the prediction
model is a hybrid dynamical system that involves both discrete and continuous
decision variables. However, even the most advanced MIQP solvers can hardly
account for the challenging requirements of automotive embedded platforms.
Thus, we use machine learning to simplify and hence speed up optimization. Our
work builds on recent ideas for solving MIQPs in real-time by training a neural
network to predict the optimal values of integer variables and solving the
remaining problem by online quadratic programming. Specifically, we propose a
recurrent permutation equivariant deep set that is particularly suited for
imitating MIQPs that involve many obstacles, which is often the major source of
computational burden in motion planning problems. Our framework comprises also
a feasibility projector that corrects infeasible predictions of integer
variables and considerably increases the likelihood of computing a
collision-free trajectory. We evaluate the performance, safety and real-time
feasibility of decision-making for autonomous driving using the proposed
approach on realistic multi-lane traffic scenarios with interactive agents in
SUMO simulations.


  In this paper, first the full dynamics of aerial transportation of a rigid
body with arbitrary number of quadrotors is derived. Then a control strategy is
proposed to convey the nonuniform rigid body appropriately to the desired
trajectory. In the dynamical model of this transportation system, not only the
load is considered as a nonuniform and non-homogeneous rigid body but also
mass, flexibility, and tension of the cables are considered. Each cable is
modeled as successive masses, springs, and dampers where each mass, spring, and
damper has 4 degrees of freedom (DOF). The Euler-Lagrange equations are used to
derive the motion equation. The control strategy includes three loops of
attitude control, formation control, and navigation control. The sliding mode
control is designed based on multi-agent systems for the formation control
where the controller is proven to be asymptotically stable. The navigation
control loop, based on the load states, guarantees that the load reaches the
desired location. Finally, numerical examples and simulations are presented to
verify the appropriate operation of the proposed system for transporting both
homogeneous and non-homogeneous bodies by spreading quadrotors according to
mass distribution of the body.


  In this paper we continue our study of bifurcations of solutions of
boundary-value problems for symplectic maps arising as Hamiltonian
diffeomorphisms. These have been shown to be connected to catastrophe theory
via generating functions and ordinary and reversal phase space symmetries have
been considered. Here we present a convenient, coordinate free framework to
analyse separated Lagrangian boundary value problems which include classical
Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin boundary value problems. The framework is then
used to {prove the existence of obstructions arising from} conformal symplectic
symmetries on the bifurcation behaviour of solutions to Hamiltonian boundary
value problems. Under non-degeneracy conditions, a group action by conformal
symplectic symmetries has the effect that the flow map cannot degenerate in a
direction which is tangential to the action. This imposes restrictions on which
singularities can occur in boundary value problems. Our results generalise
classical results about conjugate loci on Riemannian manifolds to a large class
of Hamiltonian boundary value problems with, for example, scaling symmetries.


  We consider an energy harvesting information update system where a sensor is
allowed to choose a transmission mode for each transmission, where each mode
consists of a transmission power-error pair. We also incorporate the battery
phenomenon called battery recovery effect where a battery replenishes the
deliverable energy if kept idle after discharge. For an energy-limited age of
information (AoI) system, this phenomenon gives rise to the interesting
trade-off of recovering energy after transmissions, at the cost of increased
AoI. Considering two metrics, namely peak-age hitting probability and average
age as the worst-case and average performance indicators, respectively, we
propose a framework that formulates the optimal transmission scheme selection
problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). We show that the gains obtained by
considering both battery dynamics and adjustable transmission power together
are much higher than the sum gain achieved if they are considered separately.
We also propose a simple methodology to optimize the system performance taking
into account worst-case and average performances jointly.


  The simplest Weyl semimetal with broken time-reversal symmetry consists of a
pair of Weyl nodes located at wave vectors $\mathbf{K}_{\tau }=\tau \mathbf{b}$
in momentum space with $\tau =\pm 1$ the node index and chirality. The
electronic dispersion near each node is linear. In a magnetic field
$\mathbf{B}$ along $\mathbf{b}$, this dispersion is modified into a series of
positive and negative energy Landau levels $n=\pm 1,\pm 2,\ldots ,$which
disperse along the direction of the magnetic field, and a chiral Landau level,
$n=0$, with a linear dispersion given by $e_{\tau ,n=0}\left( k_{z}\right)
=-\tau \hslash v_{F}k_{z},$ where $k_{z}$ is the component of the wave vector
$\mathbf{k}$ along the magnetic field and $v_{F}$ is the Fermi velocity. In the
extreme quantum limit, the Fermi level is in the chiral levels near the Dirac
point. When Coulomb interaction is considered, a Weyl semimetal may be unstable
towards the formation of a condensate of internodal electron-hole pairs. In
this article we use the full long-range Coulomb interaction and the
self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation to generate the condensed state. We
study its stability with respect to a change in the Fermi velocity, doping and
strength of the Coulomb interaction and also consider Weyl nodes with higher
Chern number $C=2,3$. We derive the response functions of the excitonic state
in the generalized random-phase approximation (GRPA). We show that, in the
mean-field gap induced by the internodal coherence, there is, in the GRPA
excitonic response, a series of bound electron-hole states with a binding
energy that decreases until the Hartree-Fock energy gap is reached. In
addition, there is a collective mode gapped at exactly the plasmon frequency:
the gapless mode present in the proper excitonic response function is pushed to
the plasmon frequency by the long-range Coulomb interaction.


  I present recent results on the theory of QCD matter production in high
energy heavy ion collisions and on the interactions of heavy quarks in such
environment. The centrality and rapidity dependence of hadron production is
evaluated in semi--classical approach. The energy loss of heavy quarks in
matter is computed. The heavy--to--light meson ratio (e.g., D/pion) at moderate
transverse momenta is demonstrated to be both sensitive to the density of color
charges in the medium and infrared stable.


  Contrastive self-supervised learning has gained attention for its ability to
create high-quality representations from large unlabelled data sets. A key
reason that these powerful features enable data-efficient learning of
downstream tasks is that they provide augmentation invariance, which is often a
useful inductive bias. However, the amount and type of invariances preferred is
not known apriori, and varies across different downstream tasks. We therefore
propose a multi-task self-supervised framework (MT-SLVR) that learns both
variant and invariant features in a parameter-efficient manner. Our multi-task
representation provides a strong and flexible feature that benefits diverse
downstream tasks. We evaluate our approach on few-shot classification tasks
drawn from a variety of audio domains and demonstrate improved classification
performance on all of them


  Significant baryon over meson enhancement was measured at RHIC in the
intermediate transverse momentum range of $p_T=2-4$ GeV/$c$ ("baryon-meson
puzzle"). With STAR detector we were able to extend particle identification
towards higher transverse momentum offering further insights into the particle
production mechanisms at intermediate to high $p_T$. In this paper we present
results on charged pion, proton and anti-proton spectra and ratios at
intermediate to high $p_T$ exploiting the relativistic rise of the specific
ionization energy loss measured in the STAR Time Projection Chamber. These
measurements provide valuable information about the production mechanisms of
particles at intermediate $p_T$ in relativistic heavy ion collisions, e.g.
coalescence/recombination versus jet fragmentation.


  We construct supersymmetric completions of various curvature squared terms in
five dimensional supergravity with eight supercharges. Adopting the dilaton
Weyl multiplet, we obtain the minimal off-shell supersymmetric Ricci scalar
squared as well as all vector multiplets coupled curvature squared invariants.
Since the minimal off-shell supersymmetric Riemann tensor squared and
Gauss-Bonnet combination in the dilaton Weyl multiplet have been obtained
before, both the minimal off-shell and the vector multiplets coupled curvature
squared invariants in the dilation Weyl multiplet are complete. We also
constructed an off-shell Ricci scalar squared invariant utilizing the standard
Weyl multiplet. The supersymmetric Ricci scalar squared in the standard Weyl
multiplet is coupled to n number of vector multiplets by construction, and it
deforms the very special geometry. We found that in the supersymmetric AdS_5
vacuum, the very special geometry defined on the moduli space is modified in a
simple way. Finally, we study the magnetic string and electric black hole
solutions in the presence of supersymmetric Ricci scalar squared.


  The gas-phase CO abundance (relative to hydrogen) in protoplanetary disks
decreases by up to 2 orders of magnitude from its ISM value ${\sim}10^{-4}$,
even after accounting for freeze-out and photo-dissociation. Previous studies
have shown that while local chemical processing of CO and the sequestration of
CO ice on solids in the midplane can both contribute, neither of these
processes appears capable of consistently reaching the observed depletion
factors on the relevant timescale of $1{-}3\mathrm{~Myr}$. In this study, we
model these processes simultaneously by including a compact chemical network
(centered on carbon and oxygen) to 2D ($r+z$) simulations of the outer
($r>20\mathrm{~au}$) disk regions that include turbulent diffusion, pebble
formation, and pebble dynamics. In general, we find that the CO/H$_2$ abundance
is a complex function of time and location. Focusing on CO in the warm
molecular layer, we find that only the most complete model (with chemistry and
pebble evolution included) can reach depletion factors consistent with
observations. In the absence of pressure traps, highly-efficient planetesimal
formation, or high cosmic ray ionization rates, this model also predicts a
resurgence of CO vapor interior to the CO snowline. We show the impact of
physical and chemical processes on the elemental (C/O) and (C/H) ratios (in the
gas and ice phases), discuss the use of CO as a disk mass tracer, and, finally,
connect our predicted pebble ice compositions to those of pristine
planetesimals as found in the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt and debris disks.


  Neural machine translation (NMT) is often criticized for failures that happen
without awareness. The lack of competency awareness makes NMT untrustworthy.
This is in sharp contrast to human translators who give feedback or conduct
further investigations whenever they are in doubt about predictions. To fill
this gap, we propose a novel competency-aware NMT by extending conventional NMT
with a self-estimator, offering abilities to translate a source sentence and
estimate its competency. The self-estimator encodes the information of the
decoding procedure and then examines whether it can reconstruct the original
semantics of the source sentence. Experimental results on four translation
tasks demonstrate that the proposed method not only carries out translation
tasks intact but also delivers outstanding performance on quality estimation.
Without depending on any reference or annotated data typically required by
state-of-the-art metric and quality estimation methods, our model yields an
even higher correlation with human quality judgments than a variety of
aforementioned methods, such as BLEURT, COMET, and BERTScore. Quantitative and
qualitative analyses show better robustness of competency awareness in our
model.


  High-energy gamma rays are promising tools to constrain or reveal the nature
of dark matter, in particular Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Being well
into its pre-construction phase, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will soon
probe the sky in the 20 GeV - 300 TeV energy range. Thanks to its improved
energy and angular resolutions as well as significantly larger effective area
when compared to the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes, CTA is
expected to probe heavier dark matter, with unprecedented sensitivity, reaching
the thermal annihilation cross-section at ~1 TeV.
  This talk will summarise the planned dark matter search strategies with CTA,
focusing on the signal from the Galactic centre. As observed with the Fermi LAT
at lower energies, this region is rather complex and CTA will be the first
ground-based observatory sensitive to the large scale diffuse astrophysical
emission from that region. We report on the collaboration effort to study the
impact of such extended astrophysical backgrounds on the dark matter search,
based on Fermi-LAT data in order to guide our observational strategies, taking
into account various sources of systematic uncertainty.


  In the coming year, the Large Hadron Collider will begin colliding protons at
energies nearly an order of magnitude beyond the current frontier. The LHC
will, of course, provide unprecedented opportunities to discover new particle
physics. Less well-known, however, is that the LHC may also provide insights
about gravity and the early universe. I review some of these connections,
focusing on the topics of dark matter and dark energy, and highlight
outstanding prospects for breakthroughs at the interface of particle physics
and cosmology.


  We present a Polyhedral Scene Generator system which creates a random scene
based on a few user parameters, renders the scene from random view points and
creates a dataset containing the renderings and corresponding annotation files.
We hope that this generator will enable research on how a program could parse a
scene if it had multiple viewpoints to consider. For ambiguous scenes,
typically people move their head or change their position to see the scene from
different angles as well as seeing how it changes while they move; this
research field is called active perception. The random scene generator
presented is designed to support research in this field by generating images of
scenes with known complexity characteristics and with verifiable properties
with respect to the distribution of features across a population. Thus, it is
well-suited for research in active perception without the requirement of a live
3D environment and mobile sensing agent, including comparative performance
evaluations. The system is publicly available at
https://polyhedral.eecs.yorku.ca.


  The simplified model of first-order transition in a media with frozen
long-range transition-temperature disorder is considered. It exhibits the
smearing of the transition due to appearance of the intermediate inhomogeneous
phase with thermodynamics described by the ground state of the short-range
random-field Ising model. Thus the model correctly reproduce the persistence of
first-order transition only in dimensions d > 2, which is found in more
realistic models. It also allows to estimate the behavior of thermodynamic
parameters near the boundaries of the inhomogeneous phase.


  The purpose of this paper is to show that the third unramified cohomology
with divisible coefficients of a smooth projective geometrically rational
threefold over a finite field must vanish under $\Z_{\ell}$-exactness Hard
Lefschetz condition.


  We investigate stellar core collapse in scalar-tensor theory with a massive
self-interacting scalar field. In these theories, strong long-lived inverse
chirp signals could be induced during the stellar core collapse, which provides
us with several potential smoking-gun signatures that could be found using
current ground-based detectors. We show that the existence of self-interaction
in the potential of the scalar field can significantly suppress spontaneous
scalarization and the amplitude of the monopole gravitational-wave radiation.
Moreover, this suppression due to self-interaction is frequency dependent and
may be discernible in LIGO/Virgo's sensitive band. Therefore, self-interaction
should be considered when constraining scalar-tensor coupling parameters with
gravitational-wave detections. Alternatively, if such monopole
gravitational-wave signals are detected, then one may be able to infer the
presence of self-interaction.


  We argue that the modification proposed by Li et al. [Chin. Phys. Lett. 32,
050303 (2015)] to the experiment of Danan et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 240402
(2013)] does not test the past of the photon as characterised by local weak
traces. Instead of answering the questions: (i) Were the photons in A? (ii)
Were the photons in B? (iii) Were the photons in C? the proposed experiment
measures a degenerate operator answering the questions: (i) Were the photons in
A? (ii) Were the photons in B and C together? A negative answer to the last
question does not tell us if photons were present in B or C. A simple variation
of the modified experiment does provide good evidence for the past of the
photon in agreement with the results Danan et al. obtained.


  The density-of-states (DOS) for a magnetized (B) two-dimensional electron gas
(2DEG) containing point scatterers of arbitrary strengths, concentration
($n_s$) and distribution is analyzed. It is shown from the first principles
that for \(n_s \leq B/\Phi_o \equiv n_B\), the areal density of flux quanta
\(\Phi_o \equiv hc/e\), the DOS retains the extensive degeneracy characteristic
of the Landau levels, but reduced by a factor \((1 - {n_s}/{n_B})\). This
elementary but exact result gives a level condensation for magnetic field \(B >
n_s\Phi_o\), as first noted by Br\'{e}zin {\em et al.}. Its implications for
the Integral Quantum Hall Effect and for Random Matrix Theory are pointed out.


  Detailed models are presented for the late epoch mid infrared (MIR) emission
from collisionally heated grains in the shocked circumstellar gas around SN
1987A. Thermal dust emission from a region of moderate density interior to the
thick inner ring seen with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is found to be a
natural explanation for the MIR spectral energy distribution measured by
ISOCAM. The MIR-spectrum can be reproduced by a mixture of silicate-iron or
silicate-graphite grains or by a composition of pure graphite grains. A
composition of pure iron grains on the other hand can be excluded and a pure
silicate composition does not seem to be very likely. The dust-to-gas ratio in
the interaction zone is ~0.01%, an order of magnitude lower than estimates for
dust abundances in the winds of red supergiant (RSG) stars in the LMC. This low
dust abundance can be accounted for by a combination of evaporation through the
UV-flash from the supernova outburst and subsequent sputtering in the shocked
gas. For this explanation to hold, dust in the pre-supernova circumstellar
medium (CSM) would have to have been predominantly composed of grains other
than graphite, with a maximum size smaller than ~0.1 microns.


  The statistical properties of the return intervals $\tau_q$ between
successive 1-min volatilities of 30 liquid Chinese stocks exceeding a certain
threshold $q$ are carefully studied. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test shows
that 12 stocks exhibit scaling behaviors in the distributions of $\tau_q$ for
different thresholds $q$. Furthermore, the KS test and weighted KS test shows
that the scaled return interval distributions of 6 stocks (out of the 12
stocks) can be nicely fitted by a stretched exponential function
$f(\tau/\bar{\tau})\sim e^{- \alpha (\tau/\bar{\tau})^{\gamma}}$ with
$\gamma\approx0.31$ under the significance level of 5%, where $\bar{\tau}$ is
the mean return interval. The investigation of the conditional probability
distribution $P_q(\tau | \tau_0)$ and the mean conditional return interval
$<\tau| \tau_0>$ demonstrates the existence of short-term correlation between
successive return interval intervals. We further study the mean return interval
$<\tau| \tau_0>$ after a cluster of $n$ intervals and the fluctuation $F(l)$
using detrended fluctuation analysis and find that long-term memory also exists
in the volatility return intervals.


  Given a graded poset $P$, consider a chain decomposition $\mathcal{C}$ of
$P$. If $|C_1|\le |C_2|$ implies that the set of the ranks of elements in $C_1$
is a subset of the ranks of elements in $C_2$ for any chains $C_1,C_2\in
\mathcal{C}$, then we say $\mathcal{C}$ is a nested chain decomposition (or
nesting, for short) of $P$, and $P$ is said to be nested. In 1970s, Griggs
conjectured that every normalized matching rank-unimodal poset is nested. This
conjecture is proved to be true only for all posets of rank 2 [W:05], some
posets of rank 3 [HLS:09,ENSST:11], and the very special cases for higher
ranks. For general cases, it is still widely open. In this paper, we provide
some sufficient conditions on the rank numbers of posets of rank 3 to satisfies
the Griggs's conjecuture.


  The aim of this article is to analyze data from multiple repairable systems
under the presence of dependent competing risks. In order to model this
dependence structure, we adopted the well-known shared frailty model. This
model provides a suitable theoretical basis for generating dependence between
the components failure times in the dependent competing risks model. It is
known that the dependence effect in this scenario influences the estimates of
the model parameters. Hence, under the assumption that the cause-specific
intensities follow a PLP, we propose a frailty-induced dependence approach to
incorporate the dependence among the cause-specific recurrent processes.
Moreover, the misspecification of the frailty distribution may lead to errors
when estimating the parameters of interest. Because of this, we considered a
Bayesian nonparametric approach to model the frailty density in order to offer
more flexibility and to provide consistent estimates for the PLP model, as well
as insights about heterogeneity among the systems. Both simulation studies and
real case studies are provided to illustrate the proposed approaches and
demonstrate their validity.


  We introduce and evaluate several architectures for Convolutional Neural
Networks to predict the 3D joint locations of a hand given a depth map. We
first show that a prior on the 3D pose can be easily introduced and
significantly improves the accuracy and reliability of the predictions. We also
show how to use context efficiently to deal with ambiguities between fingers.
These two contributions allow us to significantly outperform the
state-of-the-art on several challenging benchmarks, both in terms of accuracy
and computation times.


  Results of observations of the maser sources toward the W33C region
(G12.8-0.2) carried out on the 22-m radio telescope of the Pushchino Radio
Astronomy Observatory in the 1.35-cm H2O line and on the Large radio telescope
in Nancay (France) in the main (1665 and 1667 MHz) and satellite (1612 and 1720
MHz) OH lines are reported. Multiple, strongly variable short-lived H2O
emission features were detected in a broad interval of radial velocities, from
-7 to 55 km/s. OH maser emission in the 1667-MHz line was discovered in a
velocity range of 35-41 km/s. Stokes parameters of maser emission in the main
OH lines 1665 and 1667 MHz were measured. Zeeman splitting was detected in the
1665-MHz line at 33.4 and 39.4 km/s and in the 1667 MHz line only at 39.4 km/s.
The magnetic field intensity was estimated. A appreciable variability of Zeeman
splitting components was observed at 39 and 39.8 km/s in both main lines. The
extended spectrum and fast variability of the H2O maser emission together with
the variability of the Zeeman splitting components in the main OH lines can be
due to the composite clumpy structure of the molecular cloud and to the
presence in it of large-scale rotation and bipolar outflow as well as of
turbulent motions of material.


  We present the complete next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) pure pointlike
QED corrections to lepton-proton scattering, including three-photon-exchange
contributions, and investigate their impact in the case of the MUSE experiment.
These corrections are computed with no approximation regarding the energy of
the emitted photons and taking into account lepton-mass effects. We contrast
the NNLO QED corrections to known next-to-leading order corrections, where we
include the elastic two-photon exchange (TPE) through a simple hadronic model
calculation with a dipole ansatz for the proton electromagnetic form factors.
We show that, in the low-momentum-transfer region accessed by the MUSE
experiment, the improvement due to more sophisticated treatments of the TPE,
including inelastic TPE, is of similar if not smaller size than some of the
NNLO QED corrections. Hence, the latter have to be included in a precision
determination of the low-energy proton structure from scattering data, in
particular for electron-proton scattering. For muon-proton scattering, the NNLO
QED corrections are considerably smaller.


  Photon number-squeezed states are of significant value in fundamental quantum
research and have a wide range of applications in quantum metrology. Most of
their preparation mechanisms require precise control of quantum dynamics and
are less tolerant to dissipation. We propose a mechanism that is not subject to
these restraints. In contrast to common approaches, we exploit the
self-balancing between two types of dissipation induced by positive- and
negative-temperature reservoirs to generate steady states with sub-Poissonian
statistical distributions of photon numbers. We also show how to implement this
mechanism with cavity optomechanical systems. The quality of the prepared
photon number-squeezed state is estimated by our theoretical model combined
with realistic parameters for various typical optomechanical systems.


  Universal sensing the motion of mechanical resonators with high precision and
low back-action is of paramount importance in ultra-weak signal detection which
plays a fundamental role in modern physics. Here we present a universal scheme
that transfer mechanically the motion of the resonator not directly measurable
to the one can be precisely measured using mechanical frequency conversion.
Demonstration of the scheme at room temperature shows that both the motion
imprecision and the back-action force are below the intrinsic level of the
objective resonator, which agree well with our theoretical prediction. The
scheme developed here provides an effective interface between an arbitrary
mechanical resonator and a high quantum efficient displacement sensor, and is
expected to find extensive applications in high-demanding mechanical-based
force measurements.


  We investigate quantum effects in the mechanical properties of elastic beams
on the nanoscale. Transverse quantum and thermal fluctuations and the nonlinear
excitation energies are calculated for beams compressed in longitudinal
direction. Near the Euler instability, the system is described by a one
dimensional Ginzburg-Landau model where the order parameter is the amplitude of
the buckling mode. We show that in single wall carbon nanotubes with lengths of
order or smaller than 100 nm zero point fluctuations are accessible and discuss
the possibility of observing macroscopic quantum coherence in nanobeams near
the critical strain.


  We consider a recently proposed model to understand the rigidity transition
in confluent tissues and we derive the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT)
equations that describes several types of dynamics of the model in the
thermodynamic limit: gradient descent, thermal Langevin noise and active drive.
In particular we focus on gradient descent dynamics and we integrate
numerically the corresponding DMFT equations. In this case we show that
gradient descent is blind to the zero temperature replica symmetry breaking
(RSB) transition point. This means that, even if the Gibbs measure in the zero
temperature limit displays RSB, this algorithm is able to find its way to a
zero energy configuration. We include a discussion on possible extensions of
the DMFT derivation to study problems rooted in high-dimensional regression and
optimization via the square loss function.


  We report, for the first time, on a novel planar structure of
magnonic-crystal waveguides, made of a single magnetic material, in which the
allowed and forbidden bands of propagating dipole-exchange spin-waves can be
manipulated by the periodic modulation of different widths in thin-film
nanostrips. The origin of the presence of several magnonic wide band gaps and
the crucial parameters for controlling those band gaps of the order of ~10 GHz
are found by micromagnetic numerical and analytical calculations. This work can
offer a route to the potential application to broad-band spin-wave filters in
the GHz frequency range.


  We present a systematic approach to classify the three-level-like models with
two bound states coupled to a continuum. It is shown that, when one of the
discrete levels of usual three-level Lambda- ($\Lambda$), cascade ($\Xi$) or
Vee ($V$)-type systems is replaced by a continuum of states, the resulting each
model can be classified into three distinct categories with nine possible
configurations. We show that all these models are exactly solvable. We obtain
and compare the asymmetric Fano line shapes of the spectra for all the models.
Our results are important for exploring new coherent effects in a variety of
physical systems involving continuum-bound coupling such as photoassociation of
cold atoms, plasmonics, quantum dots, photonic crystals, electromagnetic
metamaterials and so on.


  Bayesian methods are used to constrain the density dependence of the QCD
Equation of State (EoS) for dense nuclear matter using the data of mean
transverse kinetic energy and elliptic flow of protons from heavy ion
collisions (HIC), in the beam energy range $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=2-10 GeV$.
The analysis yields tight constraints on the density dependent EoS up to 4
times the nuclear saturation density. The extracted EoS yields good agreement
with other observables measured in HIC experiments and constraints from
astrophysical observations both of which were not used in the inference. The
sensitivity of inference to the choice of observables is also discussed.


  In this paper we estimate the "star formation change parameter", SFR$_{79}$,
which characterizes the current SFR relative to the average during the last 800
Myr, for $\sim$ 300'000 galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS). The goals are to examine, in a much larger and independent sample, the
trends previously reported in a sample of star-forming MaNGA galaxies, and also
to search for spectroscopic signatures of ongoing quenching in the so-called
"Green Valley", which is generally believed to contain galaxies that are
migrating from the star-forming (SF) population to the quenched population of
galaxies. Measuring SFR$_{79}$ for our large sample of SDSS galaxies, we first
confirm the basic results of SF galaxies published by Wang & Lilly. We then
discuss in detail the calibration and meaning of SFR$_{79}$ for galaxies that
are well below the SFMS and establish the expected statistical signature of
systematic ongoing quenching from modelling the z$\sim$0 quenching rate of the
SF population. We conclude that it is not possible at present to establish
unambiguous observational evidence for systematic ongoing quenching processes,
due to limitations both in the noise of the observational data, in particular
in the measurements of H$\delta$ absorption, and in the calibration of
SFR$_{79}$, as well as biases introduced by the necessity of selecting objects
with significant H$\alpha$ emission. We do however see plausible indications of
ongoing quenching, which are quantitatively consistent with expectations from
"growth+quenching" models of galaxy evolution and a typical e-folding timescale
for quenching of $\sim500$ Myr.


  Irreversible effects in thermoelectric materials limit their efficiency and
economy for applications in power generation and refrigeration. While electron
transport is unavoidably irreversible in bulk materials, here we derive
conditions under which reversible diffusive electron transport can be achieved
in nanostructured thermoelectric materials via the same physical mechanism
utilized in quantum optical heat engines. Our results may provide a physical
explanation for the very high efficiencies recently reported for nanostructured
thermoelectric materials such as quantum-dot superlattices.


  Planar polynomial automorphisms are polynomial maps of the plane whose
inverse is also a polynomial map. A map is reversible if it is conjugate to its
inverse. Here we obtain a normal form for automorphisms that are reversible by
an involution that is also in the group of polynomial automorphisms. This form
is a composition of a sequence of generalized Henon maps together with two
simple involutions. We show that the coefficients in the normal form are unique
up to finitely many choices.


  The unusual slow carrier relaxation dynamics - observed in femtosecond
pump-probe experiments on high-temperature superconductors and recently also in
a charge-density-wave system - is analyzed in terms of a model for relaxation
of carriers in intra-gap states. The data on YBa_2Cu_3O_7-delta near optimum
doping and K_0.3$MoO_3 are found to be described very well with the model using
a BCS-like gap which closes at T_c. From the analysis of the data we conclude
that a significant intra-gap density of localized states exists in these
materials, which can be clearly distinguished from quasiparticle states by the
time-resolved optical experiments because of the different time- and
temperature-dependences of the photoinduced transmission or reflection.
Localized charges are suggested to be the most likely origin of the intra-gap
states, while the similarity of the response in the two materials appear to
exclude spin and vortex excitations.


  Several recent papers have shown that some forms of dispersion cancellation
have classical analogs and that some aspects of nonlocal two-photon
interferometry are consistent with local realistic models. It is noted here
that the classical analogs only apply to local dispersion cancellation
experiments [A.M. Steinberg et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 2421 (1992)] and that
nonlocal dispersion cancellation [J.D. Franson, Phys. Rev. A 45, 3126 (1992)]
is inconsistent with any classical field theory and has no classical analog.
The local models that have been suggested for two-photon interferometry are
shown to be local but not realistic if the spatial extent of the
interferometers is taken into account. It is the inability of classical models
to describe all of the relevant aspects of these experiments that distinguishes
between quantum and classical physics, which is also the case in Bell's
inequality.


  The applicability of the factorization method is extended to the case of
quantum fractional-differential Hamiltonians. In contrast with the conventional
factorization, it is shown that the `factorization energy' is now a
fractional-differential operator rather than a constant. As a first example,
the energies and wave-functions of a fractional version of the quantum
oscillator are determined. Interestingly, the energy eigenvalues are expressed
as power-laws of the momentum in terms of the non-integer differential order of
the eigenvalue equation.


  For groups of a topological origin, such as braid groups and mapping class
groups, an important source of interesting and highly non-trivial
representations is given by their actions on the twisted homology of associated
spaces; these are known as homological representations. Representations of this
kind have proved themselves especially important for the question of linearity,
a key example being the family of topologically-defined representations
introduced by Lawrence and Bigelow, and used by Bigelow and Krammer to prove
that braid groups are linear. In this paper, we give a unified foundation for
the construction of homological representations using a functorial approach.
Namely, we introduce homological representation functors encoding a large class
of homological representations, defined on categories containing all mapping
class groups and motion groups in a fixed dimension. These source categories
are defined using a topological enrichment of the Quillen bracket construction
applied to categories of decorated manifolds. This approach unifies many
previously-known constructions, including those of Lawrence-Bigelow, and yields
many new representations.


  Small-diameter muon drift tube (sMDT) chambers with 15 mm tube diameter are a
cost-effective technology for high-precision muon tracking over large areas at
high background rates as expected at future high-energy hadron colliders
including HL-LHC. The chamber design and construction procedures have been
optimized for mass production and provide sense wire positioning accuracy of
better than 10 ?m. The rate capability of the sMDT chambers has been
extensively tested at the CERN Gamma Irradiation Facility. It exceeds the one
of the ATLAS muon drift tube (MDT) chambers, which are operated at
unprecedentedly high background rates of neutrons and gamma-rays, by an order
of magnitude, which is sufficient for almost the whole muon detector acceptance
at FCC-hh at maximum luminosity. sMDT operational and construction experience
exists from ATLAS muon spectrometer upgrades which are in progress or under
preparation for LHC Phase 1 and 2.


  The simultaneous stochastic optimization of mining complexes (SSOMC) is a
large-scale stochastic combinatorial optimization problem that simultaneously
manages the extraction of materials from multiple mines and their processing
using interconnected facilities to generate a set of final products, while
taking into account material supply (geological) uncertainty to manage the
associated risk. Although simulated annealing has been shown to outperform
comparing methods for solving the SSOMC, early performance might dominate
recent performance in that a combination of the heuristics' performance is used
to determine which perturbations to apply. This work proposes a data-driven
framework for heuristic scheduling in a fully self-managed hyper-heuristic to
solve the SSOMC. The proposed learn-to-perturb (L2P) hyper-heuristic is a
multi-neighborhood simulated annealing algorithm. The L2P selects the heuristic
(perturbation) to be applied in a self-adaptive manner using reinforcement
learning to efficiently explore which local search is best suited for a
particular search point. Several state-of-the-art agents have been incorporated
into L2P to better adapt the search and guide it towards better solutions. By
learning from data describing the performance of the heuristics, a
problem-specific ordering of heuristics that collectively finds better
solutions faster is obtained. L2P is tested on several real-world mining
complexes, with an emphasis on efficiency, robustness, and generalization
capacity. Results show a reduction in the number of iterations by 30-50% and in
the computational time by 30-45%.


  Graphs have become the best way we know of representing knowledge. The
computing community has investigated and developed the support for managing
graphs by means of digital technology. Graph databases and knowledge graphs
surface as the most successful solutions to this program. The goal of this
document is to provide a conceptual map of the data management tasks underlying
these developments, paying particular attention to data models and query
languages for graphs.


  We consider supersymmetric models in 5-dimensional space-time compactified on
S**1/Z(2) orbifold where N=2 supersymmetry is explicitly broken down to N=1 by
the orbifold projection. We find that the residual N=1 supersymmetry is broken
spontaneously by a stable classical wall-like field configurations which can
appear even in the simple models discussed. We also consider some simple models
of bulk fields interacting with those localized on the 4-dimensional boundary
wall where N=1 supersymmetry can survive in a rather non-trivial way.


  Power System Resource Planning is the recurrent process of studying and
determining what facilities and procedures should be provided to satisfy and
promote appropriate future demands for electricity. The electric power system
as planned should meet or balance societal goals. These include availability of
electricity to all potential users at lowest possible cost, minimum
environmental damage, high levels of safety and reliability, etc. Plans should
be technically and financially feasible. Plans also should achieve the
objectives the entity doing the planning, including minimizing risk. The
emergence of meta-heuristics has given robustness to the non-analytical
methods, because of the rationale behind them. Besides, evolutionary algorithms
have provided a higher degree of confidence in a stochastic convergence to
optimum and have supported this confidence with a mathematical background
explaining not only how they achieve convergence but also how to improve the
convergence rate. The present work of analyses and implementation can be
divided into: i) Transmission Constrained Generation Expansion Planning (TC
GEP), ii) Composite Generation Expansion and Transmission Network Expansion
Planning (GEP TNEP), iii) Transmission Network Expansion (TNEP) Planning using
AC model, iv) Composite Transmission Network Expansion Planning (TNEP) and
Reactive Power Expansion Planning (RPP) and v) Transmission Network Planning
using Interior-Point Method (IP TNEP).


  Sufficient conditions are found on the ion velocity distribution $f_i$ and
potential amplitude for stability of steady electron holes moving at slow
speeds, coinciding with the bulk of $f_i$. Fully establishing stability
requires calculation of the ion response to shift potential perturbations
having an entire range of oscillatory frequencies, because under some
conditions real frequencies intermediate between the ion and electron responses
prove to be unstable even when the extremes are not. The mechanism of this
overstability is explained and calculated in detail. Electron holes of peak
potential $\psi$ less than approximately 0.01 times the background temperature
($\psi\lesssim 0.01T_0/e$) avoid the oscillatory instability entirely. For
them, the \emph{necessary} condition that there be a local minimum in $f_i$ in
which the hole resides is also \emph{sufficient}, unless the magnetic field $B$
is low enough to permit the transverse instability having finite wavenumber $k$
perpendicular to $B$.


  We study the simultaneous estimation of multiple phases as a discretised
model for the imaging of a phase object. We identify quantum probe states that
provide an enhancement compared to the best quantum scheme for the estimation
of each individual phase separately, as well as improvements over classical
strategies. Our strategy provides an advantage in the variance of the
estimation over individual quantum estimation schemes that scales as O(d) where
d is the number of phases. Finally, we study the attainability of this limit
using realistic probes and photon-number-resolving detectors. This is a problem
in which an intrinsic advantage is derived from the estimation of multiple
parameters simultaneously.


  With topologcial semimetal developing, semimetal with nodal-line ring comes
into people's vision as a powerful candidate for practical application of
topological devices. We propose a method using ultracold atoms in
two-dimensional amplitude-shaken bipartite hexagonal optical lattice to
simulate nodal-line semimetal, which can be achieved in experiment by attaching
one triangular optical lattice to a hexangonal optical lattice and periodically
modulating the intensity and position of the triangular lattice. By amplitude
shaking, a time-reversal-symmetry-unstable mode is introduced into the
bipartite optical lattice, and then the nodal-line semimetal is gotten by
adjusting the proportion of such mode and the trivial mode of hexagonal
lattice. Through calculating the energy spectrum of effective Hamiltonian, the
transformation from Dirac semimetal to nodal-line semimetal in pace with
changing shaking parameters is observed. We also study the change of Berry
curvature and Berry phase in the transformation, which provides guidance on
measuring the transformation in experiment. By analyzing the symmetry of the
system, the emergence of the time-reversal-symmetry-unstable mode is
researched. This proposal provides a way to research the pure nodal-line
semimetal without the influence of other bands, which may contribute to the
study of those unique features of surface states and bulk states of nodal-line
semimetal.


  We present an hybrid fiber link combining effective optical frequency
transfer and evaluation of performances with a self-synchronized two-way
comparison. It enables us to detect the round-trip fiber noise and each of the
forward and backward one-way fiber noises simultaneously. The various signals
acquired with this setup allow us to study quantitatively several properties of
optical fiber links. We check the reciprocity of the accumulated noise forth
and back over a bi-directional fiber to the level of $3.1(\pm 3.9)\times
10^{-20}$ based on a 160000s continuous data. We also analyze the noise
correlation between two adjacent fibers and show the first experimental
evidence of interferometric noise at very low Fourier frequency. We estimate
redundantly and consistently the stability and accuracy of the transferred
optical frequency over 43~km at $4\times 10^{-21}$ level after 16 days of
integration and demonstrate that frequency comparison with instability as low
as $8\times 10^{-18}$ would be achievable with uni-directional fibers in urban
area.


  Fabrication of devices designed to fully harness the unique properties of
quantum mechanics through their coupling to quantum bits (qubits) is a
prominent goal in the field of quantum information processing (QIP). Among
various qubit candidates, nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have
recently emerged as an outstanding platform for room temperature QIP. However,
formidable challenges still remain in processing diamond and in the fabrication
of thin diamond membranes, which are necessary for planar photonic device
engineering. Here we demonstrate epitaxial growth of single crystal diamond
membranes using a conventional microwave chemical vapor deposition (CVD)
technique. The grown membranes, only a few hundred nanometers thick, show
bright luminescence, excellent Raman signature and good NV center electronic
spin coherence times. Microdisk cavities fabricated from these membranes
exhibit quality factors of up to 3000, overlapping with NV center emission. Our
methodology offers a scalable approach for diamond device fabrication for
photonics, spintronics, optomechanics and sensing applications.


  We consider the minimization problem corresponding to a Sobolev inequality
for vector fields and show that minimizing sequences are relatively compact up
to the symmetries of the problem. In particular, there is a minimizer. An
ingredient in our proof is a version of the Rellich--Kondrachov compactness
theorem for sequences satisfying a nonlinear constraint.


  We discuss the possibility to suppress the collapse in the nonlinear 2+1 D
Schr\"odinger equation by using the gauge theory of strong phase correlations.
It is shown that invariance relative to $q$-deformed Hopf algebra with
deformation parameter $q$ being the fourth root of unity makes the values of
the Chern-Simons term coefficient, $k=2$, and of the coupling constant,
$g=1/2$, fixed; no collapsing solutions are present at those values.


  For a regular normal element in an arbitrary ring, we study the category of
its module factorizations. The cokernel functor relates module factorizations
with Gorenstein projective components to Gorenstein projective modules over the
quotient ring. The results are vast extensions of Eisenbud's matrix
factorization theorem.


  The experimental realization of a thin layer of spin-polarized hydrogen
adsorbed on top of the surface of superfluid 4He provides one of the best
examples of a stable nearly two-dimensional quantum Bose gas. We report a
theoretical study of this system using quantum Monte Carlo methods in the limit
of zero temperature. Using the full Hamiltonian of the system, composed of a
superfluid 4He slab and the adsorbed hydrogen layer, we calculate the main
properties of its ground state using accurate models for the pair interatomic
potentials. Comparing the results for the layer with the ones obtained for a
strictly two-dimensional (2D) setup, we analyze the departure from the 2D
character when the density increases. Only when the coverage is rather small
the use of a purely 2D model is justified. The condensate fraction of the layer
is significantly larger than in 2D at the same surface density, being as large
as $60\%$ at the largest coverage studied.


  In connection with recent work on gaps in the asymptotic subranks of complex
tensors the question arose whether the number of nonnegative real numbers that
arise as the asymptotic subrank of some complex tensor is countable. In this
short note we settle this question in the affirmative, for all tensor
invariants that are algebraic in the sense that they are invariant under field
automorphisms of the complex numbers.


  In this expository note, we study the second variation of Perelman's entropy
on the space of Kahler metrics at a K\"ahler-Ricci soliton. We prove that the
entropy is stable in the sense of variations. In particular, Perelman's entropy
is stable along the K\"ahler-Ricci flow. The Chinese version of this note has
appeared in a volume in honor of professor K.C.Chang (Scientia Sinica Math., 46
(2016), 685-696).


  In this paper, we present a cosmetic-specific skin image dataset. It consists
of skin images from $45$ patches ($5$ skin patches each from $9$ participants)
of size $8mm^*8mm$ under three cosmetic products (i.e., foundation, blusher,
and highlighter). We designed a novel capturing device inspired by Light Stage.
Using the device, we captured over $600$ images of each skin patch under
diverse lighting conditions in $30$ seconds. We repeated the process for the
same skin patch under three cosmetic products. Finally, we demonstrate the
viability of the dataset with an image-to-image translation-based pipeline for
cosmetic rendering and compared our data-driven approach to an existing
cosmetic rendering method.


  The average current of an overdamped Brownian particle moving along the axis
of a three-dimensional periodic tube is investigated in the presence of a
symmetric potential and a temporally symmetric unbiased external force.
Reduction of the spatial dimensionality from two or three physical dimensions
to an effective one dimensional system entails the appearance of not only an
entropic barrier but also an effective diffusion coefficient. We find that the
phase shift between the tube shape and the potential can break the symmetry of
the effective potential and can induce net currents. Under optimal condition,
the current as a function of temperature and the phase shift possesses many
extrema of alternating signs. The current may reverse its direction several
times when temperature or the phase shift is changed. Our model is to describe
the movement of molecular motors along microtubule.


  A standard approach to solving the S$_N$ transport equations is to use source
iteration with diffusion synthetic acceleration (DSA). Although this approach
is widely used and effective on many problems, there remain some practical
issues with DSA preconditioning, particularly on highly heterogeneous domains.
For large-scale parallel simulation, it is critical that both (i)
preconditioned source iteration converges rapidly, and (ii) the action of the
DSA preconditioner can be applied using fast, scalable solvers, such as
algebraic multigrid (AMG). For heterogeneous domains, these two interests can
be at odds. In particular, there exist DSA diffusion discretizations that can
be solved rapidly using AMG, but they do not always yield robust/fast
convergence of the larger source iteration. Conversely, there exist robust DSA
discretizations where source iteration converges rapidly on difficult
heterogeneous problems, but fast parallel solvers like AMG tend to struggle
applying the action of such operators. Moreover, very few current methods for
the solution of deterministic transport are compatible with voids. This paper
develops a new heterogeneous DSA preconditioner based on only preconditioning
the optically thick subdomains. The resulting method proves robust on a variety
of heterogeneous transport problems, including a linearized hohlraum mesh
related to inertial confinement fusion. Moreover, the action of the
preconditioner is easily computed using $\mathcal{O}(1)$ AMG iterations,
{convergence of the transport iteration typically requires $2-5\times$ less
iterations than current state-of-the-art ``full DSA,'' and the proposed method
is} trivially compatible with voids. On the hohlraum problem, rapid convergence
is obtained by preconditioning less than 3\% of the mesh elements with $5-10$
AMG iterations.


  What does the informational complexity of dynamical networked systems tell us
about intrinsic mechanisms and functions of these complex systems? Recent
complexity measures such as integrated information have sought to
operationalize this problem taking a whole-versus-parts perspective, wherein
one explicitly computes the amount of information generated by a network as a
whole over and above that generated by the sum of its parts during state
transitions. While several numerical schemes for estimating network integrated
information exist, it is instructive to pursue an analytic approach that
computes integrated information as a function of network weights. Our
formulation of integrated information uses a Kullback-Leibler divergence
between the multi-variate distribution on the set of network states versus the
corresponding factorized distribution over its parts. Implementing stochastic
Gaussian dynamics, we perform computations for several prototypical network
topologies. Our findings show increased informational complexity near
criticality, which remains consistent across network topologies. Spectral
decomposition of the system's dynamics reveals how informational complexity is
governed by eigenmodes of both, the network's covariance and adjacency
matrices. We find that as the dynamics of the system approach criticality, high
integrated information is exclusively driven by the eigenmode corresponding to
the leading eigenvalue of the covariance matrix, while sub-leading modes get
suppressed. The implication of this result is that it might be favorable for
complex dynamical networked systems such as the human brain or communication
systems to operate near criticality so that efficient information integration
might be achieved.


  The chemical composition of stars with extremely low metal contents (taking
``metals'' to mean all elements other than hydrogen and helium) provides us
with information on the masses of the stars that produced the first metals.
Such a direct connection is not possible, however, if the surface of the star
has been polluted by enriched material, either dredged from the star's interior
or transferred from a companion star. Here we argue that, in the case of
HE0107-5240 (ref. 1), the most iron poor star known, the oxygen abundance could
be a discriminant: a ratio of [O/Fe] exceeding +3.5 would favour a pristine
origin of metals, whereas an [O/Fe] ratio of less than +3 would favour the
pollution hypothesis. Using this criterion, we suggest how the required
information on oxygen abundance might be obtained.


  Pathological structures in medical images are typically deviations from the
expected anatomy of a patient. While clinicians consider this interplay between
anatomy and pathology, recent deep learning algorithms specialize in
recognizing either one of the two, rarely considering the patient's body from
such a joint perspective. In this paper, we develop a generalist segmentation
model that combines anatomical and pathological information, aiming to enhance
the segmentation accuracy of pathological features. Our Anatomy-Pathology
Exchange (APEx) training utilizes a query-based segmentation transformer which
decodes a joint feature space into query-representations for human anatomy and
interleaves them via a mixing strategy into the pathology-decoder for
anatomy-informed pathology predictions. In doing so, we are able to report the
best results across the board on FDG-PET-CT and Chest X-Ray pathology
segmentation tasks with a margin of up to 3.3% as compared to strong baseline
methods. Code and models will be publicly available at
github.com/alexanderjaus/APEx.


  In this paper we propose a novel method for infrared and visible image fusion
where we develop nest connection-based network and spatial/channel attention
models. The nest connection-based network can preserve significant amounts of
information from input data in a multi-scale perspective. The approach
comprises three key elements: encoder, fusion strategy and decoder
respectively. In our proposed fusion strategy, spatial attention models and
channel attention models are developed that describe the importance of each
spatial position and of each channel with deep features. Firstly, the source
images are fed into the encoder to extract multi-scale deep features. The novel
fusion strategy is then developed to fuse these features for each scale.
Finally, the fused image is reconstructed by the nest connection-based decoder.
Experiments are performed on publicly available datasets. These exhibit that
our proposed approach has better fusion performance than other state-of-the-art
methods. This claim is justified through both subjective and objective
evaluation. The code of our fusion method is available at
https://github.com/hli1221/imagefusion-nestfuse


  Let $N_k(m,n)$ denote the number of partitions of $n$ with Garvan $k$-rank
$m$. It is well-known that Andrews-Garvan-Dyson's crank and Dyson's rank are
the $k$-rank for $k=1$ and $k=2$, respectively. In this paper, we prove that
the sequence $\{N_k(m,n)\}_{|m|\le n-k-71}$ is log-concave for all sufficiently
large $n$ and each integer $k$. In particular, we partially solve the
log-concavity conjecture for Andrews-Garvan-Dyson's crank and Dyson's rank,
which was independently proposed by Bringmann-Jennings-Shaffer-Mahlburg and
Ji-Zang.