  The strong topological insulator in 3D is expected to realize a quantized
magneto-electric response, the so-called axion response. However, many of the
materials predicted to be topological insulators have turned out to be
metallic, with bulk Fermi surfaces. Following the result of Bergman et al.
(Phys. Rev. B 82, 195417 (2010)) that the helical surface states of the
topological insulator persist even when the band structure gap is closed, we
explore the fate of the magneto-electric response in such systems. We find a
non-quantized magneto-electric coupling remains once a bulk Fermi surface opens
- a non-universal axion response. More generally we find that higher
dimensional analogs of the intrinsic anomalous Hall effect appear for
\emph{every} Chern form - non-quantized response coefficients for gapless
systems, as opposed to quantized transport coefficients in gapped systems, both
with a topological origin. In particular, the non-quantized magneto-electric
response in 3D descends from the intrinsic anomalous Hall effect analog in 4D.


  Work in the paradigm of the quantum fluctuation theorems of Crooks and
Jarzynski is determined by projective measurements of energy at the beginning
and end of the force protocol. In analogy to classical systems, we consider an
alternative definition of work given by the integral of the supplied power
determined by integrating up the results of repeated measurements of the
instantaneous power during the force protocol. We observe that such a
definition of work, in spite of taking account of the process dependence, has
different possible values and statistics from the work determined by the
conventional two energy measurement approach (TEMA). In the limit of many
projective measurements of power, the system's dynamics is frozen in the power
measurement basis due to the quantum Zeno effect leading to statistics only
trivially dependent on the force protocol. In general the Jarzynski relation is
not satisfied except for the case when the instantaneous power operator
commutes with the total Hamiltonian at all times. We also consider properties
of the joint statistics of power-based definition of work and TEMA work in
protocols where both values are determined. This allows us to quantify their
correlations. Relaxing the projective measurement condition, weak continuous
measurements of power are considered within the stochastic master equation
formalism. Even in this scenario the power-based work statistics is in general
not able to reproduce qualitative features of the TEMA work statistics.


  We present an analysis of Galactic halo structure and substructure traced by
~500 RR Lyrae stars in the SDSS stripe 82 region. The main result of this study
is a 2D map of the Galactic halo that reaches distances of 100 kpc and traces
previously known and new halo substructures, such as the Sagittarius and Pisces
tidal streams. We also present strong direct evidence, based on both RR Lyrae
and main sequence stars, that the halo stellar number density profile
significantly steepens beyond 30 kpc from the Galactic center. Using a novel
photometric metallicity method that simultaneously combines data for RR Lyrae
and main sequence stars, we show that the median metallicity of the Sagittarius
trailing stream in the SDSS stripe 82 region is [Fe/H]}=-1.2 +- 0.1 dex. In
addition to these results, we will present ongoing work on a 3D map of the
Galactic halo constructed using a sample of ~4000 RR Lyrae stars that covers
8500 deg^2 of northern sky and probes up to 30 kpc from the Sun.


  We derive a straightening-free algorithm that computes the canonical bases of
any higher-level q-deformed Fock space.


  In the fermion content and gauge symmetry of the standard model (SM), we
study the four-fermion operators in the torsion-free Einstein-Cartan theory.
The collider signatures of irrelevant operators are suppressed by the
high-energy cutoff (torsion-field mass) $\Lambda$, and cannot be experimentally
accessible at TeV scales. Whereas the dynamics of relevant operators accounts
for (i) the SM symmetry-breaking in the domain of infrared-stable fixed point
with the energy scale $v\approx 239.5$ GeV and (ii) composite Dirac particles
restoring the SM symmetry in the domain of ultraviolet-stable fixed point with
the energy scale ${\mathcal E}\gtrsim 5$ TeV. To search for the resonant
phenomena of composite Dirac particles with peculiar kinematic distributions in
final states, we discuss possible high-energy processes: multi-jets and
dilepton Drell-Yan process in LHC $p\,p$ collisions, the resonant cross-section
in $e^-e^+$ collisions annihilating to hadrons and deep inelastic lepton-hadron
$e^-\,p$ scatterings. To search for the nonresonant phenomena due to the
form-factor of Higgs boson, we calculate the variation of Higgs-boson
production and decay rate with the CM energy in LHC. We also present the
discussions on four-fermion operators in the lepton sector and the mass-squared
differences for neutrino oscillations in short baseline experiments.


  We show that the Harnack inequality for a class of degenerate parabolic
quasilinear PDE $$\p_t u=-X_i^* A_i(x,t,u,Xu)+ B(x,t,u,Xu),$$ associated to a
system of Lipschitz continuous vector fields $X=(X_1,...,X_m)$ in in $\Om\times
(0,T)$ with $\Om \subset M$ an open subset of a manifold $M$ with control
metric $d$ corresponding to $X$ and a measure $d\sigma$ follows from the basic
hypothesis of doubling condition and a weak Poincar\'e inequality. We also show
that such hypothesis hold for a class of Riemannian metrics $g_\e$ collapsing
to a sub-Riemannian metric $\lim_{\e\to 0} g_\e=g_0$ uniformly in the parameter
$\e\ge 0$.


  We investigate the possibility that ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs)
originate from the annihilation of relic superheavy (SH) dark matter in the
Galactic halo. In order to fit the data on UHECRs, a cross section of
$<\sigma_Av>\sim 10^{-26}\textrm{cm}^2 (M_X/10^{12} \textrm{GeV})^{3/2}$ is
required if the SH dark matter follows a Navarro--Frenk--White (NFW) density
profile. This would require extremely large-$l$ contributions to the
annihilation cross section. An interesting finding of our calculation is that
the annihilation in sub-galactic clumps of dark matter dominates over the
annihilations in the smooth dark matter halo, thus implying much smaller values
of the cross section needed to explain the observed fluxes of UHECRs.


  Let $F/F_{\mathsf{o}}$ be a quadratic extension of non-archimedean locally
compact fields of odd residual characteristic and $\sigma$ be its non-trivial
automorphism. We show that any $\sigma$-self-dual cuspidal representation of
${\rm GL}_n(F)$ contains a $\sigma$-self-dual Bushnell--Kutzko type. Using such
a type, we construct an explicit test vector for Flicker's local Asai
$L$-function of a ${\rm GL}_n(F_{\mathsf{o}})$-distinguished cuspidal
representation and compute the associated Asai root number. Finally, by using
global methods, we compare this root number to Langlands--Shahidi's local Asai
root number, and more generally we compare the corresponding epsilon factors
for any cuspidal representation.


  We propose a new class of linear Transformers called
FourierLearner-Transformers (FLTs), which incorporate a wide range of relative
positional encoding mechanisms (RPEs). These include regular RPE techniques
applied for sequential data, as well as novel RPEs operating on geometric data
embedded in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces. FLTs construct the optimal RPE
mechanism implicitly by learning its spectral representation. As opposed to
other architectures combining efficient low-rank linear attention with RPEs,
FLTs remain practical in terms of their memory usage and do not require
additional assumptions about the structure of the RPE mask. Besides, FLTs allow
for applying certain structural inductive bias techniques to specify masking
strategies, e.g. they provide a way to learn the so-called local RPEs
introduced in this paper and give accuracy gains as compared with several other
linear Transformers for language modeling. We also thoroughly test FLTs on
other data modalities and tasks, such as image classification, 3D molecular
modeling, and learnable optimizers. To the best of our knowledge, for 3D
molecular data, FLTs are the first Transformer architectures providing linear
attention and incorporating RPE masking.


  We report the results of time-resolved photometric and spectroscopic
near-infrared observations of the Ofpe/WN9 star and LBV candidate GCIRS34W in
the Galactic Centre star cluster. Diffraction limited resolution photometric
observations obtained in H and K bands show a strong, non-periodic variability
on time scales from months to years in both bands accompanied by variations of
the stellar colour. Three K band spectra obtained in 1996, 2003 and 2004 with
integral field spectrometers are identical within their accuracies and exclude
significant spectroscopic variability. The most probable explanation of the
stellar photometric variability is obscuration by circumstellar material
ejected by the star. The approximated position of GCIRS34W in a HR diagram is
located between O supergiants and LBVs, suggesting that this star is a
transitional object between these two phases of stellar evolution.


  In this paper, we propose using the nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) with the
Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term as a general description of deconfined quantum
critical points that separate two spontaneously symmetry-breaking (SSB) phases
in arbitrary dimensions. In particular, we discuss the suitable choice of the
target space of the NLSM, which is in general the homogeneous space $G/K$,
where $G$ is the UV symmetry and $K$ is generated by
$\mathfrak{k}=\mathfrak{h}_1\cap \mathfrak{h}_2$, and $\mathfrak{h}_i$ is the
Lie algebra of the unbroken symmetry in each SSB phase. With this specific
target space, the symmetry defects in both SSB phases are on equal footing, and
their intertwinement is captured by the WZW term. The DQCP transition is then
tuned by proliferating the symmetry defects. By coupling the $G/K$ NLSM with
the WZW term to the background gauge field, the 't Hooft anomaly of this theory
can be determined. The bulk symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase that
cancels the anomaly is described by the relative Chern-Simons term. We
construct and discuss a series of models with Grassmannian symmetry defects in
3+1d. We also provide the fermionic model that reproduces the $G/K$ NLSM with
the WZW term.


  This paper studies and bounds the effects of approximating loss functions and
credal sets on choice functions, under very weak assumptions. In particular,
the credal set is assumed to be neither convex nor closed. The main result is
that the effects of approximation can be bounded, although in general,
approximation of the credal set may not always be practically possible. In case
of pairwise choice, I demonstrate how the situation can be improved by showing
that only approximations of the extreme points of the closure of the convex
hull of the credal set need to be taken into account, as expected.


  In this paper, we present a complete and efficient implementation of a
knowledge-sharing augmented kinesthetic teaching approach for efficient task
execution in robotics. Our augmented kinesthetic teaching method integrates
intuitive human feedback, including verbal, gesture, gaze, and physical
guidance, to facilitate the extraction of multiple layers of task information
including control type, attention direction, input and output type, action
state change trigger, etc., enhancing the adaptability and autonomy of robots
during task execution. We propose an efficient Programming by Demonstration
(PbD) framework for users with limited technical experience to teach the robot
in an intuitive manner. The proposed framework provides an interface for such
users to teach customized tasks using high-level commands, with the goal of
achieving a smoother teaching experience and task execution. This is
demonstrated with the sample task of pouring water.


  For a finite dimensional algebra $A$, we prove that the bounded homotopy
category of projective $A$-modules and the bounded derived category of
$A$-modules are dual to each other via certain categories of locally-finite
cohomological functors. The duality gives rise to a $2$-categorical duality
between certain strict $2$-categories involving the bounded homotopy categories
and bounded derived categories, respectively. We apply the $2$-categorical
duality to the study of triangle autoequivalence groups. These results are
analogous to the ones in [M.R. Ballard, {\em Derived categories of sheaves on
singular schemes with an application to reconstruction}, Adv. Math. {\bf 227}
(2011), 895--919].


  In recent years, some degenerate versions of quite a few special numbers and
polynomials are introduced and investigated by means of various methods. The
aim of this paper is to study some results on degenerate harmonic numbers,
degenerate hyperharmonic numbers, degenerate Fubi polynomials and degenerate
r-Fubini polynomials from a general identity which is valid for any two formal
power series and involves the degenerate r-Stirling numbers of the second kind.


  In this paper, we study the adversarial robustness of subspace learning
problems. Different from the assumptions made in existing work on robust
subspace learning where data samples are contaminated by gross sparse outliers
or small dense noises, we consider a more powerful adversary who can first
observe the data matrix and then intentionally modify the whole data matrix. We
first characterize the optimal rank-one attack strategy that maximizes the
subspace distance between the subspace learned from the original data matrix
and that learned from the modified data matrix. We then generalize the study to
the scenario without the rank constraint and characterize the corresponding
optimal attack strategy. Our analysis shows that the optimal strategies depend
on the singular values of the original data matrix and the adversary's energy
budget. Finally, we provide numerical experiments and practical applications to
demonstrate the efficiency of the attack strategies.


  In this research, we conduct a user study that compares different
computer/system authentication methods. More specifically, we look into
comparing regular password authentication with picture authentication. Picture
authentication means selecting a sequence of pictures from a set of pictures
(30). We present users with both interfaces; various metrics are tracked while
the participants conduct a variety of user authentication-related tasks. Other
metrics include user perception of security with such technologies.


  We calculate the exact width for a dark photon decaying to three photons at
one loop order for dark photon masses m' below the e+e- production threshold of
2m_e. We find substantial deviations from previous results derived from the
lowest order Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian in the range m_e < m' <
2m_e, where higher order terms in the derivative expansion are nonnegligible.
This mass range is precisely where the three photon decay takes place on
cosmologically relevant timescales. Our improved analysis opens a window for
dark photons in the range 850 keV < m' < 2m_e, 10^-5 < epsilon < 10^-4.


  For a Dynkin quiver $Q$ (of type ADE), we consider a central completion of
the convolution algebra of the equivariant K-group of a certain Steinberg type
graded quiver variety. We observe that it is affine quasi-hereditary and prove
that its category of finite-dimensional modules is identified with a block of
Hernandez-Leclerc's monoidal category $\mathcal{C}_Q$ of modules over the
quantum loop algebra $U_q(L\mathfrak{g})$ via Nakajima's homomorphism. As an
application, we show that Kang-Kashiwara-Kim's generalized quantum affine
Schur-Weyl duality functor gives an equivalence between the category of
finite-dimensional modules over the quiver Hecke algebra associated with $Q$
and Hernandez-Leclerc's category $\mathcal{C}_Q$, assuming the simpleness of
some poles of normalized R-matrices for type E.


  We consider communication over the binary erasure channel (BEC) using
low-density parity-check (LDPC) code and belief propagation (BP) decoding. The
bit error probability for infinite block length is known by density evolution
and it is well known that a difference between the bit error probability at
finite iteration number for finite block length $n$ and for infinite block
length is asymptotically $\alpha/n$, where $\alpha$ is a specific constant
depending on the degree distribution, the iteration number and the erasure
probability. Our main result is to derive an efficient algorithm for
calculating $\alpha$ for regular ensembles. The approximation using $\alpha$ is
accurate for $(2,r)$-regular ensembles even in small block length.


  The survey for DUST In Nearby Galaxies with Spitzer (DUSTiNGS) has identified
hundreds of candidate dust-producing Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars in
several nearby metal-poor galaxies. We have obtained multi-epoch follow-up
observations for these candidates with the Spitzer Space Telescope and measured
their infrared (IR) lightcurves. This has allowed us to confirm their AGB
nature and investigate pulsation behavior at very low metallicity. We have
obtained high-confidence pulsation periods for 88 sources in seven galaxies. We
have confirmed DUSTiNGS variable star candidates with a 20% success rate, and
determined the pulsation properties of 19 sources already identified as
Thermally-Pulsing AGB (TP-AGB) stars. We find that the AGB pulsation properties
are similar in all galaxies surveyed here, with no discernible difference
between the DUSTiNGS galaxies (down to 1.4% solar metallicity; [Fe/H]=-1.85)
and the far more metal-rich Magellanic Clouds (up to 50% solar metallicity;
[Fe/H]=-0.38). These results strengthen the link between dust production and
pulsation in AGB stars and establish the IR Period-Luminosity (P - L) relation
as a reliable tool (+/- 4%) for determining distances to galaxies, regardless
of metallicity.


  We present sensitivity limits on the coefficients of a dimension-6 effective
Lagrangian that parametrizes the possible effects of new physics beyond the
Standard Model. Our results are based on the study of the process $e^+ e^- \to
W^+ W^- \gamma$ at LEP2 and NLC energies. In our calculations, we include all
the new anomalous interactions, involving vector and Higgs bosons, and take
into account the Standard Model irreducible background. We analyse the impact
of these new interactions on the total cross section, including the effects of
the initial electron and final W polarizations. We then focus on the operators
that will not be constrained by the $e^+ e^- \to W^+ W^-$ process, obtaining
limits based on the photon energy distribution.


  Lossy image and video compression algorithms yield visually annoying
artifacts including blocking, blurring, and ringing, especially at low
bit-rates. To reduce these artifacts, post-processing techniques have been
extensively studied. Recently, inspired by the great success of convolutional
neural network (CNN) in computer vision, some researches were performed on
adopting CNN in post-processing, mostly for JPEG compressed images. In this
paper, we present a CNN-based post-processing algorithm for High Efficiency
Video Coding (HEVC), the state-of-the-art video coding standard. We redesign a
Variable-filter-size Residue-learning CNN (VRCNN) to improve the performance
and to accelerate network training. Experimental results show that using our
VRCNN as post-processing leads to on average 4.6% bit-rate reduction compared
to HEVC baseline. The VRCNN outperforms previously studied networks in
achieving higher bit-rate reduction, lower memory cost, and multiplied
computational speedup.


  We discuss the method of folding for discrete planar systems and use it to
establish the existence or non-existence of cycles or chaos in planar systems
of rational difference equations with variable coefficients. These include some
systems that converge to autonomous systems and some that do not; e.g., systems
with periodic coefficients.


  Edge ideals of finite simple graphs are well-studied over polynomial rings.
In this paper, we initiate the study of edge ideals over exterior algebras,
specifically focusing on the depth and singular varieties of such ideals. We
prove an upper bound on the depth of the edge ideal associated to a general
graph and a more refined bound for bipartite graphs, and we show that both are
tight. We also compute the depth of several large families of graphs including
cycles, complete multipartite graphs, spider graphs, and Ferrers graphs.
Finally, we focus on the effect whiskering a graph has on the depth of the
associated edge ideal.


  We consider here scalar and electromagnetic perturbations for the Vaidya
metric in double-null coordinates. Such an approach allows one to go a step
further in the analysis of quasinormal modes for time-dependent spacetimes.
Some recent results are refined, and a new non-stationary behavior
corresponding to some sort of inertia for quasinormal modes is identified. Our
conclusions can enlighten some aspects of the wave scattering by black holes
undergoing some mass accretion processes.


  We briefly review the properties and physical consequences of quasiperiodic
oscillations (QPOs) seen on many occasions in the X-ray emission from
black-hole binary systems. We also report on the discovery of QPOs at 164 and
328 Hz in GRS1915+105. These appear to be analogous to the harmonic systems of
high-frequency QPOs seen in XTEJ1550-564 and GROJ1655-40.


  Single-component fractional quantum Hall states (FQHSs) at even-denominator
filling factors may host non-Abelian quasiparticles that are considered to be
building blocks of topological quantum computers. Such states, however, are
rarely observed in the lowest-energy Landau level, namely at filling factors
$\nu<1$. Here we report evidence for an even-denominator FQHS at $\nu=1/4$ in
ultra-high-quality two-dimensional hole systems confined to modulation-doped
GaAs quantum wells. We observe a deep minimum in the longitudinal resistance at
$\nu=1/4$, superimposed on a highly insulating background, suggesting a close
competition between the $\nu=1/4$ FQHS and the magnetic-field-induced, pinned
Wigner solid states. Our experimental observations are consistent with the very
recent theoretical calculations which predict that substantial Landau level
mixing, caused by the large hole effective mass, can induce composite fermion
pairing and lead to a non-Abelian FQHS at $\nu=1/4$. Our results demonstrate
that Landau level mixing can provide a very potent means for tuning the
interaction between composite fermions and creating new non-Abelian FQHSs.


  We propose a general white noise test for functional time series based on
estimating a distance between the spectral density operator of a weakly
stationary time series and the constant spectral density operator of an
uncorrelated time series. The estimator that we propose is based on a kernel
lag-window type estimator of the spectral density operator. When the observed
time series is a strong white noise in a real separable Hilbert space, we show
that the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic is standard normal, and
we further show that the test statistic diverges for general serially
correlated time series. These results recover as special cases those of Hong
(1996) and Horv\'ath et al. (2013). In order to implement the test, we propose
and study a number of kernel and bandwidth choices, including a new data
adaptive bandwidth, as well as data adaptive power transformations of the test
statistic that improve the normal approximation in finite samples. A simulation
study demonstrated that the proposed method has good size and improved power
when compared to other methods available in the literature, while also offering
a light computational burden.


  This work systematically investigates the phase diagram of a parallel
double-quantum-dot Andreev molecule, where the two quantum dots are coupled to
a common superconducting lead. Using the numerical renormalization group
method, we map out the evolution of the ground state across a wide parameter
space of level detunings, size of the superconducting gap, lead couplings, and
inter-dot coupling strength. The intricate phase diagrams feature singlet,
doublet, and a relatively uncommon triplet ground states, with the latter being
a distinct signature of strong lead-mediated interactions between the quantum
dots. We benchmark the applicability of simplified effective models, including
the atomic limit and zero-bandwidth approximations, in capturing the complex
behavior of this parallel configuration. Our analysis reveals severe
limitations of these models, underscoring the necessity for maximal caution
when extrapolating beyond their tested validity. In particular, all effective
models except for the extended version of the zero-bandwidth approximation
failed in reproducing the triplet ground state and made several false
predictions. These findings provide crucial insights for interpreting
experimental observations and designing superconducting devices based on
quantum-dot architectures.


  System-prompting is a standard tool for customizing language-model chatbots,
enabling them to follow a specific instruction. An implicit assumption in the
use of system prompts is that they will be stable, so the chatbot will continue
to generate text according to the stipulated instructions for the duration of a
conversation. We propose a quantitative benchmark to test this assumption,
evaluating instruction stability via self-chats between two instructed
chatbots. Testing popular models like LLaMA2-chat-70B and GPT-3.5, we reveal a
significant instruction drift within eight rounds of conversations. An
empirical and theoretical analysis of this phenomenon suggests the transformer
attention mechanism plays a role, due to attention decay over long exchanges.
To combat attention decay and instruction drift, we propose a lightweight
method called split-softmax, which compares favorably against two strong
baselines.


  A massless up quark is an intriguing solution to the strong CP problem. We
discuss how lattice computations can be used in conjunction with chiral
perturbation theory to address the consistency of $m_u=0$ with the observed
hadron spectrum and interactions. It is not necessary to simulate very light
quarks-three flavor partially quenched computations with comparable sea and
valence quark masses on the order of the strange quark mass could suffice.


  This contribution begins the study of the complete superfield Lagrangian
description of the interacting system of D=4 N=1 supergravity (SUGRA) and
supermembrane. Firstly, we review a 'three form supergravity' by Ovrut and
Waldram, which we prefer to call 'special minimal supergravity'. This off-shell
formulation of simple SUGRA is appropriate for our purposes as the
supermembrane action contains the so-called Wess-Zumino term given by the
integral over a three form potential in superspace, C3. We describe this
formulation in the frame of Wess--Zumino superfield approach, showing how the
basic variations of minimal SUGRA are restricted by the conditions of the
existence of a three-form potential C3 in its superspace. In this language the
effect of dynamical generation of cosmological constant, known to be
characteristic for this formulation of SUGRA, appears in its superfield form,
first described by Ogievetsky and Sokatchev in their formulation of SUGRA as a
theory of axial vector superfield. Secondly, we vary the supermembrane action
with respect to the special minimal SUGRA superfields (basic variations) and
obtain the supercurrent superfields as well as the supergravity superfield
equations with the supermembrane contributions.


  NGC 4330 is one of the Virgo galaxies whose UV distribution shows a tail
structure. An associated tail structure is also observed in the HI and
H$\alpha$ emission distributions. Previous dynamical modeling showed that the
galaxy is approaching the cluster center and is therefore undergoing increasing
ram pressure stripping. Recent stellar population fitting of deep optical
spectra together with multiband photometry lead to the determination of the
time when star formation was quenched in the galactic disk. We introduce a new
version of the dynamical model that includes the diffuse ionized gas and aim to
reproduce the HI, H$\alpha$, UV distributions together with the star formation
histories of the outer gas-free parts of the galactic disk. The results of 50
simulations with five different Lorentzian temporal ram-pressure profiles and
five different delays between the simulation onset and peak ram pressure are
presented. The inclusion of diffuse gas stripping changes significantly the HI,
UV, and H$\alpha$ emission distributions. The simulations with diffuse gas
stripping naturally lead to vertical low surface density filaments in the
downwind region of the galactic disk. These filaments occur less frequently in
the simulations without diffuse gas stripping. The simulations with diffuse gas
stripping lead to better joint fits to the SEDs and optical spectra. The HI,
NUV, and H$\alpha$ morphologies of the model snapshots which best reproduce the
SEDs and optical spectra are sufficiently different to permit a selection of
best-fit models. We conclude that the inclusion of diffuse gas stripping
significantly improves the resemblance between the model and observations. Our
preferred model yields a time to peak ram pressure of 140 Myr in the future.
The spatial coincidence of the radio continuum and diffuse H$\alpha$ tails
suggests that both gas phases are stripped together.


  Air Traffic Management data systems today are inefficient and not scalable to
enable future unmanned systems. Current data is fragmented, siloed, and not
easily accessible. There is data conflict, misuse, and eroding levels of trust
in provenance and accuracy. With increased autonomy in aviation, Artificially
Intelligent (AI) enabled unmanned traffic management (UTM) will be more reliant
on secure data from diverse stakeholders. There is an urgent need to develop a
secure network that has trustworthy data chains and works with the requirements
generated by UTM. Here, we review existing research in 3 key interconnected
areas: (1) blockchain development for secure data transfer between competing
aviation stakeholders, (2) self-learning networking architectures that
distribute consensus to achieve secure air traffic control, (3) explainable AI
to build trust with human stakeholders and backpropagate requirements for
blockchain and network optimisation. When connected together, this new digital
ecosystem blueprint is tailored for safety critical UTM sectors. We motivate
the readers with a case study, where a federated learning UTM uses real air
traffic and weather data is secured and explained to human operators. This
emerging area still requires significant research and development by the
community to ensure it can enable future autonomous air mobility.


  In this work, the {\it ab initio} calculations have been carried out to study
the oscillator strengths corresponding to `forbidden transitions' of
astrophysically important electromagnetic transitions of singly ionized zinc,
Zn II. Many important electron correlations are considered to all-orders using
the relativistic coupled-cluster theory. Calculated ionization potentials are
compared with the experimental values, wherever available. To our knowledge,
oscillator strengths of magnetic dipole and electric quardupole transitions are
estimated for the first time. The transitions span in the range of ultraviolet,
visible, and near infrared regions and are important for astrophysical
observations.


  Trajectory prediction in autonomous driving relies on accurate representation
of all relevant contexts of the driving scene, including traffic participants,
road topology, traffic signs, as well as their semantic relations to each
other. Despite increased attention to this issue, most approaches in trajectory
prediction do not consider all of these factors sufficiently. We present
SemanticFormer, an approach for predicting multimodal trajectories by reasoning
over a semantic traffic scene graph using a hybrid approach. It utilizes
high-level information in the form of meta-paths, i.e. trajectories on which an
agent is allowed to drive from a knowledge graph which is then processed by a
novel pipeline based on multiple attention mechanisms to predict accurate
trajectories. SemanticFormer comprises a hierarchical heterogeneous graph
encoder to capture spatio-temporal and relational information across agents as
well as between agents and road elements. Further, it includes a predictor to
fuse different encodings and decode trajectories with probabilities. Finally, a
refinement module assesses permitted meta-paths of trajectories and speed
profiles to obtain final predicted trajectories. Evaluation of the nuScenes
benchmark demonstrates improved performance compared to several SOTA methods.
In addition, we demonstrate that our knowledge graph can be easily added to two
graph-based existing SOTA methods, namely VectorNet and Laformer, replacing
their original homogeneous graphs. The evaluation results suggest that by
adding our knowledge graph the performance of the original methods is enhanced
by 5% and 4%, respectively.


  We consider the effects of single impurities on polarons in three-dimensions
(3D) using a continuous time quantum Monte-Carlo algorithm. An exact treatment
of the phonon degrees of freedom leads to a very efficient algorithm and we are
able to compute the polaron dynamics on an infinite lattice using an auxiliary
weighting scheme. The magnitude of the impurity potential, the electron-phonon
coupling and the phonon frequency are varied. We determine the magnitude of the
impurity potential required for polaron trapping. For small electron-phonon
coupling the number of phonons increases dramatically on trapping. The polaron
binding diagram is computed, showing that intermediate-coupling
low-phonon-frequency polarons are localized by exceptionally small impurities.


  A calibration of H-alpha as both a chromospheric diagnostic and an age
indicator is presented, complementing the works previously done on this subject
(Herbig 1985, Pasquini & Pallavicini 1991. The chromospheric diagnostic was
built with a statistically significant sample, covering nine years of
observations, and including 175 solar neighborhood stars. Regarding the age
indicator, the presence of stars for which very accurate ages are determined,
such as those belonging to clusters and kinematic groups, lends confidence to
our analysis. We also investigate the possibility that stars of the same age
might have gone through different tracks of chromospheric decay, identifying -
within the same age range - effects of metallicity and mass. These parameters,
however, as well as age, seem to be significant only for dwarf stars, losing
their meaning when we analyze stars in the subgiant branch. This result
suggests that, in these evolved stars, the emission mechanism cannot be
magnetohydrodynamical in nature, in agreement with recent models (Fawzy et al.
2002c, and references therein). The Sun is found to be a typical star in its
H-alpha chromospheric flux, for its age, mass and metallicity. As a byproduct
of this work, we developed an automatic method to determine temperatures from
the wings of H-alpha, which means the suppression of the error inherent to the
visual procedure used in the literature.


  We prove two theorems on the derived categories of toric varieties, the
existence of an exceptional collection consisting of sheaves for a divisorial
extraction and the finiteness of Fourier-Mukai partners.


  Beyond reionization epoch cosmic hydrogen is neutral and can be directly
observed through its 21 cm line signal. If dark matter (DM) decays or
annihilates the corresponding energy input affects the hydrogen kinetic
temperature and ionized fraction, and contributes to the Ly_alpha background.
The changes induced by these processes on the 21 cm signal can then be used to
constrain the proposed DM candidates, among which we select the three most
popular ones: (i) 25-keV decaying sterile neutrinos, (ii) 10-MeV decaying light
dark matter (LDM) and (iii) 10-MeV annihilating LDM. Although we find that the
DM effects are considerably smaller than found by previous studies (due to a
more physical description of the energy transfer from DM to the gas), we
conclude that combined observations of the 21 cm background and of its gradient
should be able to put constrains at least on LDM candidates. In fact, LDM
decays (annihilations) induce differential brightness temperature variations
with respect to the non decaying/annihilating DM case up to Delta_delta T_b=8
(22) mK at about 50 (15) MHz. In principle this signal could be detected both
by current single dish radio telescopes and future facilities as LOFAR;
however, this assumes that ionospheric, interference and foreground issues can
be properly taken care of.


  This paper introduces Fermihedral, a compiler framework focusing on
discovering the optimal Fermion-to-qubit encoding for targeted Fermionic
Hamiltonians. Fermion-to-qubit encoding is a crucial step in harnessing quantum
computing for efficient simulation of Fermionic quantum systems. Utilizing
Pauli algebra, Fermihedral redefines complex constraints and objectives of
Fermion-to-qubit encoding into a Boolean Satisfiability problem which can then
be solved with high-performance solvers. To accommodate larger-scale scenarios,
this paper proposed two new strategies that yield approximate optimal solutions
mitigating the overhead from the exponentially large number of clauses.
Evaluation across diverse Fermionic systems highlights the superiority of
Fermihedral, showcasing substantial reductions in implementation costs, gate
counts, and circuit depth in the compiled circuits. Real-system experiments on
IonQ's device affirm its effectiveness, notably enhancing simulation accuracy.


  The local bounded commuting projection operators of nonstandard finite
element de Rham complexes in two and three dimensions are constructed
systematically. The assumptions of the main result are mild and can be
verified. For three dimensions, the result can be applied to the standard
finite element de Rham complex, Hermite complex, Argyris complex and Neilan's
Stokes complex. For two dimensions, the result can be applied to the
Hermite--Stenberg complex and the Falk--Neilan Stokes complex.


  We study compact straight-line embeddings of trees. We show that perfect
binary trees can be embedded optimally: a tree with $n$ nodes can be drawn on a
$\sqrt n$ by $\sqrt n$ grid. We also show that testing whether a given binary
tree has an upward embedding with a given combinatorial embedding in a given
grid is NP-hard.


  Measuring a quantum system can randomly perturb its state. The strength and
nature of this back-action depends on the quantity which is measured. In a
partial measurement performed by an ideal apparatus, quantum physics predicts
that the system remains in a pure state whose evolution can be tracked
perfectly from the measurement record. We demonstrate this property using a
superconducting qubit dispersively coupled to a cavity traversed by a microwave
signal. The back-action on the qubit state of a single measurement of both
signal quadratures is observed and shown to produce a stochastic operation
whose action is determined by the measurement result. This accurate monitoring
of a qubit state is an essential prerequisite for measurement-based feedback
control of quantum systems.


  Since the discovery of the fullerene C60, many very interesting structures
have been proposed, such as Ti8C12, Au20, Au32, Au42, TM@Sin, Eu@Si20, B80, and
B_{40}^{-/0}. Here, an exceptionally stable hollow cage containing 20 scandiums
and 60 carbons was identified. This Sc20C60 molecular cluster has a Th point
group symmetry and a volleyball-like shape, that we refer to below as
Volleyballene. Electronic structure analysis shows that the formation of
delocalized {\pi} bonds between Sc atoms and neighboring five-membered carbon
rings is crucial for stabilizing the cage structure. A relatively large
HOMO-LUMO gap was found. The results of vibrational frequency analysis and
molecular dynamics simulations also demonstrate that this Volleyballene
molecule is exceptionally stable.


  The star formation and the subsequent metallic enrichment of spiral galaxies,
occurring at the early phases of their evolution, produce emission lines whose
contribution may change the colors of these objects. We have computed this
contribution with consistent chemo-spectro-photometrical theoretical models in
order to calculate the variations in the colors evolution.


  We describe a set of tools, services and strategies of the Latin American
Giant Observatory (LAGO) data repository network, to implement Data
Accessibility, Reproducibility and Trustworthiness.


  We show that classical Heisenberg antiferromagnets on the breathing kagome
lattice can be a platform to realize a zero-field topological order of the
scalar spin chirality which can be viewed as a miniature skyrmion crystal (SkX)
of discrete form with a small number of spins in its magnetic unit cell. In the
model, a third nearest-neighbor (NN) antiferromagnetic interaction along the
bond direction $J_3$ and the breathing bond-alternation characterized by the
ratio of the NN interaction for large triangles to that for small ones,
$J_1'/J_1$, are essential. It is found by means of Monte Carlo simulations that
a commensurate triple-${\bf Q}$ state appearing for relatively strong $J_3$ at
zero field is the noncoplanar state with the SkX structure in the breathing
case of $J_1'/J_1 \neq 1$, while in the uniform case of $J_1'/J_1 =1$, it is a
collinear state favored by thermal fluctuations. The origin of this chiral
order and experimental implications of our result are also discussed.


  Peer-to-peer systems are the most resilient form of distributed computing,
but the design of robust protocols for their coordination is difficult. This
makes it hard to specify and reason about global behaviour of such systems.
This paper presents swarm protocols to specify such systems from a global
viewpoint. Swarm protocols are projected to machines, that is local
specifications of peers.
  We take inspiration from behavioural types with a key difference: peers
communicate through an event notification mechanism rather than through
point-to-point message passing. Our goal is to adhere to the principles of
local-first software where network devices collaborate on a common task while
retaining full autonomy: every participating device can locally make progress
at all times, not encumbered by unavailability of other devices or network
connections. This coordination-free approach leads to inconsistencies that may
emerge during computations. Our main result shows that under suitable
well-formedness conditions for swarm protocols consistency is eventually
recovered and the locally observable behaviour of conforming machines will
eventually match the global specification.
  The model we propose elaborates on an existing industrial platform and
provides the basis for tool support (sketched here and fully described in a
companion artifact paper), wherefore we consider this work to be a viable step
towards reasoning about local-first and peer-to-peer software systems.


  A novel scheme for generating powerful terahertz (THz) radiation based on
laser-solid interactions is proposed. When a $p$-polarized femtosecond laser
impinges obliquely on a plane solid target and the target partially blocks the
laser energy, surface electrons are extracted out and accelerated by the laser
fields, forming a low-divergence electron beam. A half-cycle THz radiation
pulse is emitted simultaneously as the beam passes by the edge of the target,
due to coherent diffraction radiation. Our particle-in-cell simulations show
that the relativistic THz pulse can have an energy of a few tens of millijoule
and the conversion efficiency can be over 1$\%$ with existing $\sim$J level
femtosecond laser sources.


  The Planck Catalogue of Galactic Cold Clumps (PGCC) contains over 13000
sources detected based on their cold dust signature. They are believed to
consist of a mixture of quiescent, pre-stellar, and already star-forming
objects. We extracted PGCC-type objects from cloud simulations and examined
their physical and polarisation properties. The comparison with the PGCC
catalogue helps to characterise the PGCC sample and provides valuable tests for
numerical simulations of interstellar medium.
  We used several MHD snapshots to define the density field of our models.
Sub-millimetre images of the surface brightness and polarisation were obtained
with radiative transfer calculations. We examined the statistics of synthetic
cold clump catalogues and examined the variations of the clump polarisation
fraction p. The clump sizes, aspect ratios, and temperatures in the synthetic
catalogue are similar to the PGCC. The fluxes and column densities are smaller
by a factor of a few. Rather than with an increased dust opacity, this could be
explained by increasing the average column density of the models by a factor of
two to three, close to N(H2)= 10^22 cm-2. When the line of sight is parallel to
the mean magnetic field, the polarisation fraction tends to increase towards
the clump centres, contrary to observations. When the field is perpendicular,
the polarisation fraction tends to decrease towards the clumps, but the drop in
$p$ is small (e.g. from p~8% to p~7%).
  Magnetic field geometry reduces the polarisation fraction in the simulated
clumps by only \Delta p~1% on average. The larger drop seen towards the actual
PGCC clumps suggests some loss of grain alignment in the dense medium, such as
predicted by the radiative torque mechanism. The statistical study is not able
to quantify dust opacity changes at the scale of the PGCC clumps.


  This work is focused on the application of functional-type a posteriori error
estimates and corresponding indicators to a class of time-dependent problems.
We consider the algorithmic part of their derivation and implementation and
also discuss the numerical properties of these bounds that comply with obtained
numerical results. This paper examines two different methods of approximate
solution reconstruction for evolutionary models, i.e., a time-marching
technique and a space-time approach. The first part of the study presents an
algorithm for global minimization of the majorant on each of discretization
time-cylinders (time-slabs), the effectiveness of this algorithm is confirmed
by extensive numerical tests. In the second part of the publication, the
application of functional error estimates is discussed with respect to a
space-time approach. It is followed by a set of extensive numerical tests that
demonstrate the efficiency of proposed error control method.


  Dynamical quantum groups were recently introduced by Etingof and Varchenko as
an algebraic framework for studying the dynamical Yang-Baxter equation, which
is precisely the Yang-Baxter equation satisfied by 6j-symbols. We investigate
one of the simplest examples, generalizing the standard SU(2) quantum group.
The matrix elements for its corepresentations are identified with Askey-Wilson
polynomials, and the Haar measure with the Askey-Wilson measure. The discrete
orthogonality of the matrix elements yield the orthogonality of q-Racah
polynomials (or quantum 6j-symbols). The Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for
representations and corepresentations are also identified with q-Racah
polynomials. This results in new algebraic proofs of the Biedenharn-Elliott
identity satisfied by quantum 6j-symbols.


  Containment measures implemented by some countries to suppress the spread of
COVID-19 have resulted in a slowdown of the epidemic characterized by time
series of daily infections plateauing over extended periods of time. We prove
that such a dynamical pattern is compatible with critical
Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) dynamics. In traditional analyses of the
critical SIR model, the critical dynamical regime is started from a single
infected node. The application of containment measures to an ongoing epidemic,
however, has the effect to make the system enter in its critical regime with a
number of infected individuals potentially large. We describe how such
non-trivial starting conditions affect the critical behavior of the SIR model.
We perform a theoretical and large-scale numerical investigation of the model.
We show that the expected outbreak size is an increasing function of the
initial number of infected individuals, while the expected duration of the
outbreak is a non-monotonic function of the initial number of infected
individuals. Also, we precisely characterize the magnitude of the fluctuations
associated with the size and duration of the outbreak in critical SIR dynamics
with non-trivial initial conditions. Far from heard immunity, fluctuations are
much larger than average values, thus indicating that predictions of plateauing
time series may be particularly challenging.


  I elaborate the construction of the recent two-orbital model for iron-based
superconductors\cite{hu-hao} and discuss the properties of superconducting(SC)
phases based on the $S_4$ symmetry. I demonstrate further that the underlining
electronic structure is an almost decoupled two-orbital model obeying the $S_4$
symmetry. I discuss the classification of the SC states according to the $S_4$
symmetry, which leads to a natural prediction that there are two different
phases even in the proposed $A_{1g}$ s-wave SC state of iron-based
superconductors and the sign change in the SC state should be hidden between
the upper and lower As(Se) layer in a single Fe-(As)Se layer, an analogy of the
sign change under the $90^\circ$ degree rotation in the d-wave SC state of
cuprates. The $S_4$ symmetry makes iron-based superconductors a unique class of
superconductors with promising device applications.


  We prove a general criterion for an irrational power series
$f(z)=\displaystyle\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}a_nz^n$ with coefficients in a number
field $K$ to admit the unit circle as a natural boundary. As an application,
let $F$ be a finite field, let $d$ be a positive integer, let $A\in M_d(F[t])$
be a $d\times d$-matrix with entries in $F[t]$, and let $\zeta_A(z)$ be the
Artin-Mazur zeta function associated to the multiplication-by-$A$ map on the
compact abelian group $F((1/t))^d/F[t]^d$. We provide a complete
characterization of when $\zeta_A(z)$ is algebraic and prove that it admits the
circle of convergence as a natural boundary in the transcendence case. This is
in stark contrast to the case of linear endomorphisms on
$\mathbb{R}^d/\mathbb{Z}^d$ in which Baake, Lau, and Paskunas prove that the
zeta function is always rational. Some connections to earlier work of Bell,
Byszewski, Cornelissen, Miles, Royals, and Ward are discussed. Our method uses
a similar technique in recent work of Bell, Nguyen, and Zannier together with
certain patching arguments involving linear recurrence sequences.


  The emergence of the exit events from a bounded domain containing a stable
fixed point induced by non-Gaussian L\'evy fluctuations plays a pivotal role in
practical physical systems. In the limit of weak noise, we develop a
Hamiltonian formalism under the L\'evy fluctuations with exponentially light
jumps for one- and two-dimensional stochastic dynamical systems. This formalism
is based on a recently proved large deviation principle for dynamical systems
under non-Gaussian L\'evy perturbations. We demonstrate how to compute the most
probable exit path and the quasi-potential by several examples. Meanwhile, we
explore the impacts of the jump measure on the quasi-potential quantitatively
and on the most probable exit path qualitatively. Results show that the
quasi-potential can be well estimated by an approximate analytical expression.
Moreover, we discover that although the most probable exit paths are analogous
to the Gaussian case for the isotropic noise, the anisotropic noise leads to
significant changes of the structure of the exit paths. These findings shed
light on the underlying qualitative mechanism and quantitative feature of the
exit phenomenon induced by non-Gaussian noise.


  We present deep 63-orbit HST/PC images at ~0.06" FWHM resolution in the
filters B_450, V_606 & I_814 - as well as in redshifted Lya - of the radio
source LBDS 53W002, a compact narrow-line galaxy at z=2.390. These images allow
us to distinguish several morphological components: (1) an unresolved nuclear
point source (<=500 pc at z=2.390 for Ho=75, qo=0), likely the central AGN
which contains <=20-25% of the total light in BVI; (2) a compact continuum core
(re~0.05"); (3) a more extended envelope with an r^1/4-like light-profile and
re~0.25" (~2 kpc); (4) two blue ''clouds'' roughly colinear across the nucleus
aligned with the radio source axis and contained well within the size of the
radio source. (B-I) color maps may suggest a narrow dust lane crossing between
the nucleus and the smaller blue cloud. The radio source is not smaller than
the distance between the blue continuum clouds, and coincides with a bright Lya
''arc'' in the western cloud, suggesting that jet-induced star-formation could
cause both blue clouds, except the outer parts of the western cloud. The shape
of this larger blue cloud suggests reflected AGN continuum-light shining
through a cone (plus re-radiated Lya in emission). The OVRO interferometric
CO-detection (Scoville et al. 1997) on both sides of 53W002 - and in the same
direction as the continuum clouds and the radio jet - also suggest a
star-bursting region induced by its radio jet, at least in the inner parts.
Even at radio powers ~1.5 dex fainter than the 3CR sources, we thus find many
of the same aligned features and complex morphology, although at much smaller
angular scales and lower optical-UV luminosities. We discuss the consequences
for 53W002's formation in the context of the 16 sub-galactic objects at z~2.40
around 53W002 (Pascarelle et al. 1996).


  For the static list update problem, given an ordered list $\rho_0$ (an
ordering of the list $L$ = \{ $a_a, a_2, ..., a_l$ \}), and a sequence $\sigma
= (\sigma_1, \sigma_2, ..., \sigma_m)$ of requests for items in $L$, we
characterize the list reorganizations in an optimal offline solution in terms
of an initial permutation of the list followed by a sequence of $m$ {\em
element transfers}, where an element transfer is a type of list reorganization
where only the requested item can be moved. Then we make use of this
characterization to design an $O(l^{2} (l-1)!m)$ time optimal offline
algorithm.


  Many distributed applications implement complex data flows and need a
flexible mechanism for routing data between producers and consumers. Recent
advances in programmable network interface cards, or SmartNICs, represent an
opportunity to offload data-flow tasks into the network fabric, thereby freeing
the hosts to perform other work. System architects in this space face multiple
questions about the best way to leverage SmartNICs as processing elements in
data flows. In this paper, we advocate the use of Apache Arrow as a foundation
for implementing data-flow tasks on SmartNICs. We report on our experiences
adapting a partitioning algorithm for particle data to Apache Arrow and measure
the on-card processing performance for the BlueField-2 SmartNIC. Our
experiments confirm that the BlueField-2's (de)compression hardware can have a
significant impact on in-transit workflows where data must be unpacked,
processed, and repacked.


  In this paper, we introduce an anchor-box free and single shot instance
segmentation method, which is conceptually simple, fully convolutional and can
be used as a mask prediction module for instance segmentation, by easily
embedding it into most off-the-shelf detection methods. Our method, termed
PolarMask, formulates the instance segmentation problem as instance center
classification and dense distance regression in a polar coordinate. Moreover,
we propose two effective approaches to deal with sampling high-quality center
examples and optimization for dense distance regression, respectively, which
can significantly improve the performance and simplify the training process.
Without any bells and whistles, PolarMask achieves 32.9% in mask mAP with
single-model and single-scale training/testing on challenging COCO dataset. For
the first time, we demonstrate a much simpler and flexible instance
segmentation framework achieving competitive accuracy. We hope that the
proposed PolarMask framework can serve as a fundamental and strong baseline for
single shot instance segmentation tasks. Code is available at:
github.com/xieenze/PolarMask.


  The possibility of dissipationless chiral edge states without the need of an
external magnetic field in the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) offers a
great potential in electronic/spintronic applications. The biggest hurdle for
the realization of a room-temperature magnetic Chern insulator is to find a
structurally stable material with a sufficiently large energy gap and Curie
temperature that can be easily implemented in electronic devices. This work
based on first-principle methods shows that a single atomic layer of V2O3 with
honeycomb-kagome (HK) lattice is structurally stable with a spin-polarized
Dirac cone which gives rise to a room-temperature QAHE by the existence of an
atomic on-site spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Moreover, by a strain and substrate
study, it was found that the quantum anomalous Hall system is robust against
small deformations and can be supported by a graphene substrate.


  We develop a more general view of Stembridge's enriched $P$-partitions and
use this theory to outline the structure of peak algebras for the symmetric
group and the hyperoctahedral group. Initially we focus on commutative peak
algebras, spanned by sums of permutations with the same number of peaks, where
we consider several variations on the definition of "peak." Whereas
Stembridge's enriched $P$-partitions are related to quasisymmetric functions
(the dual coalgebra of Solomon's type A descent algebra), our generalized
enriched $P$-partitions are related to type B quasisymmetric functions (the
dual coalgebra of Solomon's type B descent algebra). Using these functions, we
move on to explore (non-commutative) peak algebras spanned by sums of
permutations with the same set of peaks. While some of these algebras have been
studied before, our approach gives explicit structure constants with a
combinatorial description.


  We prove that for divergent series solutions of nonlinear (or linear)
differential systems near a generic irregular singularity, the common
prescription of summation to the least term is, if properly interpreted,
meaningful and correct, and we extend this method to transseries solutions. In
every direction in the complex plane at the singularity (Stokes directions {\em
not} excepted) there exists a nonempty set of solutions whose difference from
the ``optimally'' (i.e., near the least term) truncated asymptotic series is of
the same (exponentially small) order of magnitude as the least term of the
series. There is a family of generalized Borel summation formulas $\mathcal{B}$
which commute with the usual algebraic and analytic operations (addition,
multiplication, differentiation, etc). We show that there is exactly one of
them, $\mathcal{B}_0$, such that for any formal series solution $\tilde{f}$,
$\mathcal{B}_0(\tilde{f})$ differs from the optimal truncation of $\tilde{f}$
by at most the order of the least term of $\tilde{f}$. We show in addition that
the Berry (1989) smoothing phenomenon is universal within this class of
differential systems. Whenever the terms ``beyond all orders'' {\em change} in
crossing a Stokes line, these terms vary smoothly on the Berry scale
$\arg(x)\sim |x|^{-1/2}$ and the transition is always given by the error
function; under the same conditions we show that Dingle's rule of signs for
Stokes transitions holds.


  In this paper we present a scalable approach for robustly computing a 3D
surface mesh from multi-scale multi-view stereo point clouds that can handle
extreme jumps of point density (in our experiments three orders of magnitude).
The backbone of our approach is a combination of octree data partitioning,
local Delaunay tetrahedralization and graph cut optimization. Graph cut
optimization is used twice, once to extract surface hypotheses from local
Delaunay tetrahedralizations and once to merge overlapping surface hypotheses
even when the local tetrahedralizations do not share the same topology.This
formulation allows us to obtain a constant memory consumption per sub-problem
while at the same time retaining the density independent interpolation
properties of the Delaunay-based optimization. On multiple public datasets, we
demonstrate that our approach is highly competitive with the state-of-the-art
in terms of accuracy, completeness and outlier resilience. Further, we
demonstrate the multi-scale potential of our approach by processing a newly
recorded dataset with 2 billion points and a point density variation of more
than four orders of magnitude - requiring less than 9GB of RAM per process.


  We investigate a possibility that the $\mu^-\to e^+$ conversion is discovered
prior to the $\mu^-\to e^-$ conversion, and its implications to the new physics
search. We focus on the specific model including the mixing of the $SU(2)_L$
doublet- and singlet-type scalar leptoquarks, which induces not only the lepton
flavor violation but also the lepton number violation. Such a structure is
motivated by R-parity violating (RPV) supersymmetric models, where a sbottom
mediates the conversion processes. We formulate the $\mu^-\to e^+$ rate in
analogy with the muon capture in a muonic atom, and numerically evaluate it
using several target nuclei. The lepton flavor universality test of pion decay
directly limits the $\mu^-\to e^+$ rate, and the maximally allowed $\mu^-\to
e^+$ branching ratio is $\sim 10^{-18}$ under the various bounds on RPV
parameters. We show that either $\mu^-\to e^-$ or $\mu^-\to e^+$ signals can be
discovered in near future experiments. This indicates that parallel searches
for these conversions will give us significant information on the pattern of
coupling constants.


  We continue the search for rules that govern when off-shell 4D, $\cal N$ = 1
supermultiplets can be combined to form off-shell 4D, $\cal N$ = 2
supermultiplets. We study the ${\mathbb S}_8$ permutations and Height Yielding
Matrix Numbers (HYMN) embedded within the adinkras that correspond to these
putative 4D, $\cal N$ = 2 supermultiplets off-shell supermultiplets. Even
though the HYMN definition was designed to distinguish between the raising and
lowering of nodes in one dimensional valises supermultiplets, they are shown to
accurately select out which combinations of off-shell 4D, $\cal N$ = 1
supermultiplets correspond to off-shell 4D, $\cal N$ = 2 supermultiplets. Only
the combinations of the chiral + vector and chiral + tensor are found to have
valises in the same class. This is consistent with the well known structure of
4D, $\cal N$ = 2 supermultiplets.


  This article provides a new approach to address Mosco convergence of
gradient-type Dirichlet forms, $\mathcal E^N$ on $L^2(E,\mu_N)$ for
$N\in\mathbb N$, in the framework of converging Hilbert spaces by K.~Kuwae and
T.~Shioya. The basic assumption is weak measure convergence of the family
${(\mu_N)}_{N}$ on the state space $E$ - either a separable Hilbert space or a
locally convex topological vector space. Apart from that, the conditions on
${(\mu_N)}_{N}$ try to impose as little restrictions as possible. The problem
has fully been solved if the family ${(\mu_N)}_{N}$ contain only log-concave
measures, due to L.~Ambrosio, G.~Savar\'e and L.~Zambotti, 2009. However for a
large class of convergence problems the assumption of log-concavity fails. The
article suggests a way to overcome this hindrance, as it presents a new
approach. Combining the theory of Dirichlet forms with methods from numerical
analysis we find abstract criteria for Mosco convergence of standard gradient
forms with varying reference measures. These include cases in which the
measures are not log-concave. To demonstrate the accessibility of our abstract
theory we discuss a first application, generalizing an approximation result by
S.~K.~Bounebache and L.~Zambotti, 2014.


  We consider reinforcement learning (RL) in continuous time and study the
problem of achieving the best trade-off between exploration of a black box
environment and exploitation of current knowledge. We propose an
entropy-regularized reward function involving the differential entropy of the
distributions of actions, and motivate and devise an exploratory formulation
for the feature dynamics that captures repetitive learning under exploration.
The resulting optimization problem is a revitalization of the classical relaxed
stochastic control. We carry out a complete analysis of the problem in the
linear--quadratic (LQ) setting and deduce that the optimal feedback control
distribution for balancing exploitation and exploration is Gaussian. This in
turn interprets and justifies the widely adopted Gaussian exploration in RL,
beyond its simplicity for sampling. Moreover, the exploitation and exploration
are captured, respectively and mutual-exclusively, by the mean and variance of
the Gaussian distribution. We also find that a more random environment contains
more learning opportunities in the sense that less exploration is needed. We
characterize the cost of exploration, which, for the LQ case, is shown to be
proportional to the entropy regularization weight and inversely proportional to
the discount rate. Finally, as the weight of exploration decays to zero, we
prove the convergence of the solution of the entropy-regularized LQ problem to
the one of the classical LQ problem.


  There is an extensive literature on the dynamic law of large numbers for
systems of quantum particles, that is, on the derivation of an equation
describing the limiting individual behavior of particles inside a large
ensemble of identical interacting particles. The resulting equations are
generally referred to as nonlinear Scr\"odinger equations or Hartree equations,
or Gross-Pitaevski equations. In this paper we extend some of these convergence
results to a stochastic framework. Concretely we work with the Belavkin
stochastic filtering of many particle quantum systems. The resulting limiting
equation is an equation of a new type, which can be seen as a complex-valued
infinite dimensional nonlinear diffusion of McKean-Vlasov type. This result is
the key ingredient for the theory of quantum mean-field games developed by the
author in a previous paper.


  We introduce an oriented rational band move, a generalization of an ordinary
oriented band move, and show that if a knot $K$ in the three-sphere can be made
into the $(n+1)$-component unlink by $n$ oriented rational band moves, then $K$
is rationally slice.


  This paper presents a data-driven supervisory energy management strategy
(EMS) for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles which leverages Vehicle-to-Cloud
connectivity to increase energy efficiency by learning control policies from
completed trips. The proposed EMS consists of two layers, a cloud layer and an
on-board layer. The cloud layer has two main tasks: the first task is to learn
EMS policy parameters from historical trip data, and the second task is to
provide the policy parameters along a certain route requested from the vehicle.
The on-board layer receives the learned policy parameters from the cloud layer
and computes a real-time solution to the powertrain energy management problem,
using a model predictive control scheme. The proposed EMS is evaluated on more
than 3000 miles (48 independent driving cycles) of real-world trip data,
collected along three commuting routes in California. For the routes, the
proposed algorithm shows 3.3%, 7.3%, and 6.5% improvement in average MPGe when
compared to a baseline EMS.


  We prove that, if $q$ is large enough, the set of the
$\mathbb{F}_{q^6}$-rational points of the Hermitian curve is a complete
$(q+1)$-arc in $\mathrm{PG}(2,\mathbb{F}_{q^6})$, addressing an open case from
a recent paper by Korchm\'aros, Sz\H{o}nyi and Nagy. An algebraic approach
based on the investigation of some algebraic varieties attached to the arc is
used.


  We perform spin wave analysis of classical ground states of a model
Hamiltonian proposed earlier(Phys. Rev. B {\bf 90}, 104420(2014)) for
$\alpha-MnO_2$ compounds. It is known that the phase diagram of the Hollandite
lattice (lattice of $\alpha-MnO_2$ compounds) consists of four different
Helical phases(FH, A2H, C2H, CH phase) in the space of model parameters
$J_1,~J_2,~J_3$. The spin wave dispersion shows presence of gapless mode which
interpolates between quadratic to linear depending on phases and values of
$J_i$'s. In most cases, the 2nd lowest mode shows the existence of a roton
minima mainly from $X$ to $M$ and $M$ to $Z$ path. Few higher modes also show
roton minima. Each helical phase has its characteristic traits which can be
used to determine the phases itself. The analytical expressions of eigenmodes
at high symmetry points are obtained which can be utilized to extract the
values of $J_i$'s. Density of states, specific heat and susceptibilities at low
temperature has been studied within spin wave approximation. The specific heat
shows departure from $T^{1.5(3)}$ dependence found in three dimensional
unfrustrated ferromagnetic(anti-ferromagnetic) system which seems to be the
signature of incommensurate helical phase. The parallel susceptibility is
maximum for FH phase and minimum for CH phase at low temperature. The
perpendicular susceptibility is found to be independent of temperature at very
low temperature. Our study can be used to compare experimental results on
magnon spectrum, elastic neutron scattering, and finite temperature properties
mentioned above for clean $\alpha-MnO_2$ system


  The upper main sequence stars CU Virginis is the most enigmatic object among
magnetic chemically peculiar (mCP) stars. It is an unusually fast rotator
showing strictly periodic light variations in all regions of the
electromagnetic spectrum, as well as spectroscopic and spectropolarimetric
changes. At same time, it is also the first radio main-sequence pulsar.
Exploiting information hidden in phase variations, we monitored the secular
oscillation of the rotational period during the last 53 years. Applying own
phenomenological approach, we analyzed 37\,975 individual photometric and
spectroscopic measurements from 72 data sources and improved the O-C model. All
the relevant observations indicate that the secular period variations can be
well approximated by the fifth degree polynomial.


  We sketch a quick and dirty geometric approach to the Tate-Swan cohomology of
equivariant spectra, illustrating it with conjectural applications to
Atiyah-Segal $K$-theory of circle actions, and a possible geometric model for
the topological cyclic homology of the sphere spectrum.


  We calculate the extent to which collisionless dark matter impacts the
stability of supermassive stars $(M\gtrsim10^4\,M_\odot)$. We find that,
depending on the star's mass, a dark matter content in excess of ${\sim}1\%$ by
mass throughout the entire star can raise the critical central density for the
onset general relativistic instability, in some cases by orders of magnitude.
We consider implications of this effect for the onset of nuclear burning and
significant neutrino energy losses.


  Accurate numerical solution of the five-body Schrodinger equation is effected
via variational Monte Carlo in a correlated quark model. The spectrum is
assumed to exhibit a narrow resonance with strangeness S=+1. A fully
antisymmetrized and pair-correlated five-quark wave function is obtained for
the assumed non-relativistic Hamiltonian which has spin, isospin, and color
dependent pair interactions and many-body confining terms which are fixed by
the non-exotic spectra. Gauge field dynamics are modeled via flux tube exchange
factors. The energy determined for the ground states with spin-parity 1/2-
(1/2+) is 2.22 GeV (2.50 GeV). A lower energy negative parity state is
consistent with recent lattice results.


  Neural-network classifiers achieve high accuracy when predicting the class of
an input that they were trained to identify. Maintaining this accuracy in
dynamic environments, where inputs frequently fall outside the fixed set of
initially known classes, remains a challenge. The typical approach is to detect
inputs from novel classes and retrain the classifier on an augmented dataset.
However, not only the classifier but also the detection mechanism needs to
adapt in order to distinguish between newly learned and yet unknown input
classes. To address this challenge, we introduce an algorithmic framework for
active monitoring of a neural network. A monitor wrapped in our framework
operates in parallel with the neural network and interacts with a human user
via a series of interpretable labeling queries for incremental adaptation. In
addition, we propose an adaptive quantitative monitor to improve precision. An
experimental evaluation on a diverse set of benchmarks with varying numbers of
classes confirms the benefits of our active monitoring framework in dynamic
scenarios.


  We present an all-optical routing scheme based simultaneously on optically
induced photonic structures and the Airy beam family. The presented work
utilizes these accelerating beams for the demonstration of an all-optical
router with individually addressable output channels. In addition, we are able
to activate multiple channels at the same time providing us with an optically
induced splitter with configurable outputs. The experimental results are
corroborated by corresponding numerical simulations.


  We study homological mirror symmetry for not necessarily compactly supported
coherent sheaves on the minimal resolutions of A_n-singularities. An emphasis
is put on the relation with the Strominger-Yau-Zaslow conjecture.


  An algorithm for computing {2, 3}, {2, 4}, {1, 2, 3}, {1, 2, 4} -inverses and
the Moore-Penrose inverse of a given rational matrix A is established. Classes
A(2, 3)s and A(2, 4)s are characterized in terms of matrix products (R*A)+R*
and T*(AT*)+, where R and T are rational matrices with appropriate dimensions
and corresponding rank. The proposed algorithm is based on these general
representations and the Cholesky factorization of symmetric positive matrices.
The algorithm is implemented in programming languages MATHEMATICA and DELPHI,
and illustrated via examples. Numerical results of the algorithm, corresponding
to the Moore-Penrose inverse, are compared with corresponding results obtained
by several known methods for computing the Moore-Penrose inverse.


  We consider the question: what is the contragredient in terms of
L-homomorphisms? We conjecture that it corresponds to the Chevalley
automorphism of the L-group, and prove this in the case of real groups. The
proof uses a characterization of the local Langlands correspondence over R. We
also consider the related notion of Hermitian dual, in the case of GL(n,R).


  The nature and role of the binary companion of carbon-oxygen white dwarf
stars that explode as Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are not yet fully understood.
Past detections of circumstellar material (CSM) that contain hydrogen for a
small number of SN Ia progenitor systems suggest that at least some have a
nondegenerate companion. In order to constrain the prevalence, location, and
quantity of CSM in SN Ia systems, we performed a near-ultraviolet (NUV) survey
with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to look for the high-energy signature of
SN Ia ejecta interacting with CSM. Our survey revealed that SN 2015cp, a SN
1991T-like overluminous SN Ia, was experiencing late-onset interaction between
its ejecta and surrounding CSM at $664$ days after its light-curve peak. We
present ground- and space-based follow-up observations of SN 2015cp that reveal
optical emission lines of H and Ca, typical signatures of ejecta-CSM
interaction. We show how SN 2015cp was likely similar to the well-studied SN
Ia-CSM event PTF11kx, making it the second case in which an unambiguously
classified SN Ia was observed to interact with a distant shell of CSM that
contains hydrogen ($R_{\rm CSM} \gtrsim 10^{16}\ {\rm cm}$). The remainder of
our HST NUV images of SNe Ia were nondetections that we use to constrain the
occurrence rate of observable late-onset CSM interaction. We apply theoretical
models for the emission from ejecta-CSM interaction to our NUV nondetections,
and place upper limits on the mass and radial extent of CSM in SN Ia progenitor
systems.


  The effective use of swift ion beams in cancer treatment (known as
hadrontherapy) as well as an appropriate protection in manned space missions
rely on the accurate understanding of energy delivery to cells damaging their
genetic information. The key ingredient characterizing the response of a medium
to the perturbation induced by charged particles is its electronic excitation
spectrum. By using linear response time-dependent density functional theory, we
obtain the energy and momentum transfer excitation spectrum (the energy-loss
function, ELF) of liquid water (main constituent of biological tissues), in
excellent agreement with experimental data. The inelastic scattering cross
sections obtained from this ELF, together with the elastic scattering cross
sections derived considering the condensed phase nature of the medium, are used
to perform accurate Monte Carlo simulations of the energy deposited by swift
carbon ions in liquid water and carried away by the generated secondary
electrons producing inelastic events (ionization, excitation, and dissociation
electron attachment, DEA), strongly correlated with cellular death, which are
scored in sensitive volumes having the size of two DNA convolutions. The sizes
of clusters of damaging events for a wide range of carbon ion energies, from
those relevant to hadrontherapy up to cosmic radiation, predict with
unprecedented statistical accuracy the nature and relative magnitude of the
main inelastic processes contributing to radiation biodamage, confirming that
ionization accounts for the vast majority of complex damage. DEA, typically
regarded as a very relevant biodamage mechanism, surprisingly plays a minor
role in carbon-ion induced clusters of harmful events.


  To illustrate our recent discussions of the target space-times in general
orbifold-string theories of permutation-type, we return here to a detailed
analysis of some simple examples of this type, namely an explicit set of
orientation-orbifold string systems. These orientation-orbifold string systems
provide twisted, multisector generalizations of ordinary critical open-closed
bosonic string systems -- each such system exhibiting a unique graviton.
Furthermore, each sector $\sigma$ of these string systems shows the following
properties: a) 26 effective degrees of freedom, b) a Lorentzian space-time with
space-time dimension $D(\sigma)\leq 26$, c) an $SO(D(\sigma)-1,1)$-invariant
ordinary string subsystem with quantized intercept less than or equal one, and
d) an extra set of $(26-D(\sigma))$ twisted fields which are
$SO(D(\sigma)-1,1)$ scalars. Subexamples of non-tachyonic strings and
four-dimensional strings are noted. Additionally, we discuss certain subsets of
physical states of these theories, concluding that these investigations are so
far consistent with the no-ghost conjecture for all the Lorentzian
orbifold-string theories of permutation-type.


  We show that for product sources, rate splitting is optimal for secret key
agreement using limited one-way communication at two terminals. This yields an
alternative proof of the tensorization property of a strong data processing
inequality originally studied by Erkip and Cover and amended recently by
Anantharam et al. We derive a `water-filling' solution of the
communication-rate--key-rate tradeoff for two arbitrarily correlated vector
Gaussian sources, for the case with an eavesdropper, and for stationary
Gaussian processes.


  Long-exposure stellar images recorded with large ground-based telescopes are
blurred due to the turbulent nature of the atmosphere. The VLT employs active
and adaptive optics (AO) systems to compensate for the deleterious effects of
the atmosphere in real time. The speckle imaging technique provides an
alternative way to achieve diffraction-limited imaging by post-processing a
series of short-exposure images. The use of speckle imaging with the no-AO mode
of NACO at the VLT is demonstrated. Application of this technique is
particularly suited to the J-band and it provides versatile high angular
resolution imaging under mediocre conditions and/or in imaging extended
objects. The implementation of this mode underlines the continuing
attractiveness of NACO at the VLT.


  Point clouds are an increasingly ubiquitous input modality and the raw signal
can be efficiently processed with recent progress in deep learning. This signal
may, often inadvertently, capture sensitive information that can leak semantic
and geometric properties of the scene which the data owner does not want to
share. The goal of this work is to protect sensitive information when learning
from point clouds; by censoring the sensitive information before the point
cloud is released for downstream tasks. Specifically, we focus on preserving
utility for perception tasks while mitigating attribute leakage attacks. The
key motivating insight is to leverage the localized saliency of perception
tasks on point clouds to provide good privacy-utility trade-offs. We realize
this through a mechanism called Censoring by Noisy Sampling (CBNS), which is
composed of two modules: i) Invariant Sampler: a differentiable point-cloud
sampler which learns to remove points invariant to utility and ii) Noisy
Distorter: which learns to distort sampled points to decouple the sensitive
information from utility, and mitigate privacy leakage. We validate the
effectiveness of CBNS through extensive comparisons with state-of-the-art
baselines and sensitivity analyses of key design choices. Results show that
CBNS achieves superior privacy-utility trade-offs on multiple datasets.


  This paper explores the Kerr-Schild double copy, a duality relating gravity
and electromagnetism. We show how Einstein's vacuum solutions in four
dimensions can be converted into Maxwell's solutions via a double copy
procedure, employing tensor fields. This technique yields novel solutions to
Einstein's equations, including Kerr, Schwarzschild, and RN black holes.
Introduced by Kerr and Schild in 1965, the Kerr-Schild action decouples the
gravitational and matter fields, surpassing the Einstein-Hilbert action in
facilitating calculations. It holds significant value for studying
gravitational waves, cosmology, and black hole thermodynamics. We further delve
into the applications of the Kerr-Schild double copy in deriving black hole
solutions, analyzing gravitational waves, exploring alternative cosmological
theories, and understanding black hole thermodynamics. Moreover, we investigate
the implications of this double copy under SO(3) and SU(2) symmetries on the
Schwarzschild and Kerr-Newman black hole metrics.


  Fak, van Dijk and Wills (FDW) question our interpretation of elastic
neutron-scattering experiments in the antiferromagnetic phase of UPt_3. They
state that our analysis is incorrect because we average over magnetic
structures that are disallowed by symmetry. We disagree with FDW and reply to
their criticism. FDW also point out that we have mistaken the magnetic field
direction in the experiment reported by N. H. van Dijk et al. [Phys. Rev. B 58,
3186 (1998)]. We correct this error and note that our previous conclusion is
also valid for the correct field orientation.


  Sparse arrays can generate a larger aperture than traditional uniform linear
arrays (ULA) and offer enhanced degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) which can be
exploited in both beamforming and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. One
class of sparse arrays is the coprime array, composed of two uniform linear
subarrays which yield an effective difference co-array with higher number of
DOFs. In this work, we present a new coprime array structure termed thinned
coprime array (TCA), which exploits the redundancy in the structure of the
existing coprime array and achieves the same virtual aperture and DOFs as the
conventional coprime array with much fewer number of sensors. An analysis of
the DOFs provided by the new structure in comparison with other sparse arrays
is provided and simulation results for DOA estimation using the compressive
sensing based method are provided.


  We show that the application of a novel gauge invariant truncation scheme to
the Schwinger-Dyson equations of QCD leads, in the Landau gauge, to an infrared
finite gluon propagator and a divergent ghost propagator, in qualitative
agreement with recent lattice data.


  This paper proposes a novel pneumatic soft robotic hand that incorporates a
mechanism that can switch the airflow path using a single airflow control. The
developed hand can control the finger motion and operate the surface friction
variable mechanism. In the friction variable mechanism, a lubricant is injected
onto the high-friction finger surface to reduce surface friction. To inject the
lubrication using a positive-pressure airflow, the Venturi effect is applied.
The design and evaluation of the airflow-path switching and friction variable
mechanisms are described. Moreover, the entire design of a soft robotic hand
equipped with these mechanisms is presented. The performance was validated
through grasping, placing, and manipulation tests.


  In this paper, we present a local information theoretic approach to
explicitly learn probabilistic clustering of a discrete random variable. Our
formulation yields a convex maximization problem for which it is NP-hard to
find the global optimum. In order to algorithmically solve this optimization
problem, we propose two relaxations that are solved via gradient ascent and
alternating maximization. Experiments on the MSR Sentence Completion Challenge,
MovieLens 100K, and Reuters21578 datasets demonstrate that our approach is
competitive with existing techniques and worthy of further investigation.


  Very Small Angle Neutron Scattering (VSANS) is an upgrade of the traditional
Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) technique which can cover three orders of
magnitude of length scale from one nanometer to one micrometer. It is a
powerful tool for structure calibration in polymer science, biology, material
science and condensed matter physics. Since the first VSANS instrument, D11 in
Grenoble, was built in 1972, new collimation techniques, focusing optics
(multi-beam converging apertures, material or magnetic lenses, and focusing
mirrors) and higher resolution detectors combined with the long flight paths
and long incident neutron wavelengths have been developed. In this paper, a
detailed review is given of the development, principles and application
conditions of various VSANS techniques. Then, beam current gain factors are
calculated to evaluate those techniques. A VSANS design for the China
Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) is thereby presented.


  In both particle physics and muon applications, a high-resolution muon
momentum measurement capability plays a significant role not only in providing
valuable information on the properties of subatomic particles but also in
improving the utilizability of cosmic ray muons. Typically, muon momentum is
measured by reconstructing a curved muon path using a strong magnetic field and
muon trackers. Alternatively, a time-of-flight and Cherenkov ring imager are
less frequently applied, especially when there is a need to avoid a magnetic
field. However, measurement resolution is much less than that of magnetic
spectrometers, approximately 20% whereas it is nearly 4% or less when using
magnets and trackers. Here, we propose a different paradigm to estimate muon
momentum that utilizes multiple pressurized gas Cherenkov radiators. Using the
fact that the refractive index of gas medium varies depending on its pressure
and temperature, we can optimize the muon Cherenkov threshold momentum levels
for which a muon signal will be detected. In this work, we demonstrate that
muon momentum can be estimated with mean resolution of {sigma_p}/p < 20% and
mean classification rate of 90.08% in the momentum range of 0.1 to 10.0 GeV/c
by analyzing optical photon signals from each Cherenkov radiator. We anticipate
our new spectrometer will significantly improve quality of imaging and reduce
scanning time in cosmic ray muon applications by being incorporated with
existing instruments.


  We discuss the QCD phase diagram from two different point of view. We first
investigate the phase diagram structure in the strong coupling lattice QCD with
Polyakov loop effects, and show that the the chiral and Z_{N_c} deconfinement
transition boundaries deviate at finite mu as suggested from large N_c
arguments. Next we discuss the possibility to probe the QCD critical point
during prompt black hole formation processes. The thermodynamical evolution
during the black hole formation would result in quark matter formation, and the
critical point in isospin asymmetric matter may be swept. (T,mu_B) region
probed in heavy-ion collisions and the black hole formation processes covers
most of the critical point locations predicted in recent lattice Monte-Carlo
simulations and chiral effective models.


  The problem of detecting scientific fraud using machine learning was recently
introduced, with initial, positive results from a model taking into account
various general indicators. The results seem to suggest that writing style is
predictive of scientific fraud. We revisit these initial experiments, and show
that the leave-one-out testing procedure they used likely leads to a slight
over-estimate of the predictability, but also that simple models can outperform
their proposed model by some margin. We go on to explore more abstract
linguistic features, such as linguistic complexity and discourse structure,
only to obtain negative results. Upon analyzing our models, we do see some
interesting patterns, though: Scientific fraud, for examples, contains less
comparison, as well as different types of hedging and ways of presenting
logical reasoning.


  Acoustic emission or scattering problems naturally involve uncertainties
about the sound sources or boundary conditions. This article initiates the
study of time domain boundary elements for such stochastic boundary problems
for the acoustic wave equation. We present a space-time stochastic Galerkin
boundary element method which is applied to sound-hard, sound-soft and
absorbing scatterers. Uncertainties in both the sources and the boundary
conditions are considered using a polynomial chaos expansion. The numerical
experiments illustrate the performance and convergence of the proposed method
in model problems and present an application to a problem from traffic noise.


  Cowan et al. (2021) review how roughly half the elements heavier than iron
found in the Sun are produced by rapid neutron capture and half by slow neutron
capture, the r- and s-processes. In the Sun, their relative contribution to
individual elemental abundances is well understood, except for the lightest and
heaviest elements beyond iron. Their contributions are especially uncertain for
the heaviest non-radioactive element, lead (Pb, Z=82). This is constrained by
deriving lead abundances in metal-poor stars. For in the most metal-poor halo
stars, strontium and heavier elements are found in the solar r-process
proportion; s-process elements appear only at metallicities above one-thirtieth
solar.
  In unevolved metal-poor stars of roughly solar heavy-element content, only
two UV Pb lines are detectable. Four such stars have high-resolution spectra of
the strongest line, Pb II at 2203.53A. Roederer et al. (2020) analyzed this
line in one star, deriving a lead-to-iron abundance ratio ten times solar. This
and its blue-shifted profile suggested strong s-process production.
  This work analyzes the UV spectra of all four stars. Calculations including a
predicted Fe I line blueward of the Pb II line, and assuming the lead abundance
scales with r-process abundances, match all four profiles extremely well. A
scaled s-process contribution might improve the match to the much lower lead
abundance found in the unevolved star analyzed previously, but its s-process
excess is modest. An Fe II line blends the other lead line, Pb I at 2833.05A,
which constrains the lead abundance only in the coolest star.


  Despite the success of deep neural networks in chest X-ray (CXR) diagnosis,
supervised learning only allows the prediction of disease classes that were
seen during training. At inference, these networks cannot predict an unseen
disease class. Incorporating a new class requires the collection of labeled
data, which is not a trivial task, especially for less frequently-occurring
diseases. As a result, it becomes inconceivable to build a model that can
diagnose all possible disease classes. Here, we propose a multi-label
generalized zero shot learning (CXR-ML-GZSL) network that can simultaneously
predict multiple seen and unseen diseases in CXR images. Given an input image,
CXR-ML-GZSL learns a visual representation guided by the input's corresponding
semantics extracted from a rich medical text corpus. Towards this ambitious
goal, we propose to map both visual and semantic modalities to a latent feature
space using a novel learning objective. The objective ensures that (i) the most
relevant labels for the query image are ranked higher than irrelevant labels,
(ii) the network learns a visual representation that is aligned with its
semantics in the latent feature space, and (iii) the mapped semantics preserve
their original inter-class representation. The network is end-to-end trainable
and requires no independent pre-training for the offline feature extractor.
Experiments on the NIH Chest X-ray dataset show that our network outperforms
two strong baselines in terms of recall, precision, f1 score, and area under
the receiver operating characteristic curve. Our code is publicly available at:
https://github.com/nyuad-cai/CXR-ML-GZSL.git


  We study the supersymmetric embeddings of different D-brane probes in the
AdS_5 x T^{1,1} geometry. The main tool employed is kappa symmetry and the
cases studied include D3-, D5- and D7-branes. We find a family of three-cycles
of the T^{1,1} space over which a D3-brane can be wrapped supersymmetrically
and we determine the field content of the corresponding gauge theory duals.
Supersymmetric configurations of D5-branes wrapping a two-cycle and of
spacetime filling D7-branes are also found. The configurations in which the
entire T^{1,1} space is wrapped by a D5-brane (baryon vertex) and a D7-brane
are also studied. Some other embeddings which break supersymmetry but are
nevertheless stable are also determined.


  The charge radii of octet-baryons obtained in quenched lattice-QCD
calculations are extrapolated within heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory.
Finite-range regularization (FRR) is applied to improve the convergence of the
chiral expansion and to provide estimates of quenching artifacts. Lattice
values of quark distribution radii and baryon charge radii for $\mpi^2$ in the
range (0.1, 0.7)$\gev^2$ are described very well with FRR. Upon estimating
corrections for both finite-volume and quenching effects, the obtained charge
radii of the proton, neutron and $\Sigma^-$ are in good agreement with
experimental measurements. The predicted charge radii of the remaining
octet-baryons have not yet been measured and present a challenge to future
experiments.


  Electrically powered micro- and nanomotors are promising tools for in-vitro
single-cell analysis. In particular, single cells can be trapped, transported
and electroporated by a Janus particle (JP) using an externally applied
electric field. However, while dielectrophoretic (DEP)-based cargo manipulation
can be achieved at high-solution conductivity, electrical propulsion of these
micromotors becomes ineffective at solution conductivities exceeding 0.3mS/cm.
Here, we successfully extended JP cargo manipulation and transport capabilities
to conductive near-physiological (<6mS/cm) solutions by combining magnetic
field-based micromotor propulsion and navigation with DEP-based manipulation of
various synthetic and biological cargos. Combination of a rotating magnetic
field and electric field resulted in enhanced micromotor mobility and steering
control through tuning of the electric field frequency. conditions are
necessary. In addition, we demonstrated the micromotors ability of identifying
apoptotic cell among viable and necrotic cells based their dielectrophoretic
difference, thus, enabling to analyze the apoptotic status in the single cell
samples for drug discovery, cell therapeutics and immunotherapy. We also
demonstrated the ability to trap and transport live cells towards regions
containing doxorubicin-loaded liposomes. This hybrid micromotor approach for
label-free trapping, transporting and sensing of selected cells within
conductive solutions, opens new opportunities in drug delivery and single cell
analysis, where close-to-physiological media