  Accurate diagnosis is required before performing proper treatments for
coronary heart disease. Machine learning based approaches have been proposed by
many researchers to improve the accuracy of coronary heart disease diagnosis.
Ensemble learning and cascade generalization are among the methods which can be
used to improve the generalization ability of learning algorithm. The objective
of this study is to develop heart disease diagnosis method based on ensemble
learning and cascade generalization. Cascade generalization method with loose
coupling strategy is proposed in this study. C4. 5 and RIPPER algorithm were
used as meta-level algorithm and Naive Bayes was used as baselevel algorithm.
Bagging and Random Subspace were evaluated for constructing the ensemble. The
hybrid cascade ensemble methods are compared with the learning algorithms in
non-ensemble mode and non-cascade mode. The methods are also compared with
Rotation Forest. Based on the evaluation result, the hybrid cascade ensemble
method demonstrated the best result for the given heart disease diagnosis case.
Accuracy and diversity evaluation was performed to analyze the impact of the
cascade strategy. Based on the result, the accuracy of the classifiers in the
ensemble is increased but the diversity is decreased.


  We study the local commutation relation between the Lefschetz operator and
the exterior differential on an almost complex manifold with a compatible
metric. The identity that we obtain generalizes the backbone of the local
K\"ahler identities to the setting of almost Hermitian manifolds, allowing for
new global results for such manifolds.


  The uncertainty principle is a cornerstone of modern physics, and its
implications have a fundamental impact on theoretical and applied quantum
mechanics. The aim of this thesis is to study and apply the uncertainty
relations between time and energy, which are interpreted operationally as the
speed limit of quantum evolution. A geometric approach is used to derive
improved bounds for the evolution of isolated and open systems and obtain a
constructive approach for efficient and fast quantum driving. These results are
applied to set the limits for the rate of information transfer and processing,
and the power of nanomachines.


  Edge states of the quantum Hall fluid provide an almost unparalled
opportunity to study mesoscopic effects in a highly correlated electron system.
In this paper we develop a bosonization formalism for the finite-size edge
state, as described by chiral Luttinger liquid theory, and use it to study the
Aharonov-Bohm effect. The problem we address may be realized experimentally by
measuring the tunneling current between two edge states through a third edge
state formed around an antidot in the fractional quantum Hall effect regime. A
renormalization group analysis reveals the existence of a two-parameter
universal scaling function G(X,Y) that describes the Aharonov-Bohm resonances.
We also show that the strong renormalization of the tunneling amplitudes that
couple the antidot to the incident edge states, together with the nature of the
Aharonov-Bohm interference process in a chiral system, prevent the occurrence
of perfect resonances as the magnetic field is varied, even at zero
temperature.


  We present data that show a cycling transition can be used to detect and
image metastable He$_2$ triplet molecules in superfluid helium. We demonstrate
that limitations on the cycling efficiency due to the vibrational structure of
the molecule can be mitigated by the use of repumping lasers. Images of the
molecules obtained using the method are also shown. This technique gives rise
to a new kind of ionizing radiation detector. The use of He$_2$ triplet
molecules as tracer particles in the superfluid promises to be a powerful tool
for visualization of both quantum and classical turbulence in liquid helium.


  The pre-melting of high vortex density planes observed recently in layered
superconductors in tilted magnetic field is explained theoretically. Based on
the structural information of the crossing lattices of pancake and Josephson
vortices the effective vortex cage potential at different lattice sites is
determined numerically. Melting takes place when the thermal energy allows
proliferation of vacancy-interstitial pairs. It is found that the increased
density of pancake vortex stacks in the planes containing Josephson vortices,
rather than their incommensurate structure, is the main cause for pre-melting.


  We place further restriction on the possible topology of stationary
asymptotically flat vacuum black holes in 5 spacetime dimensions. We prove that
the horizon manifold can be either a connected sum of Lens spaces and "handles"
$S^1 \times S^2$, or the quotient of $S^3$ by certain finite groups of
isometries (with no "handles"). The resulting horizon topologies include Prism
manifolds and quotients of the Poincare homology sphere. We also show that the
topology of the domain of outer communication is a cartesian product of the
time direction with a finite connected sum of $\mathbb R^4,S^2 \times S^2$'s
and $CP^2$'s, minus the black hole itself. We do not assume the existence of
any Killing vector beside the asymptotically timelike one required by
definition for stationarity.


  We investigate the mass distributions within eight classical Milky Way dwarf
spheroidal galaxies (MW dSphs) using an equilibrium Jeans analysis and we
compare our results to the mass distributions predicted for subhalos in
dissipationless \Lambda CDM simulations. In order to match the dark matter
density concentrations predicted, the stars in these galaxies must have a
fairly significant tangential velocity dispersion anisotropy (\beta ~-1.5). For
the limiting case of an isotropic velocity dispersion (\beta =0), the classical
MW dSphs predominantly prefer to live in halos that are less concentrated than
\Lambda CDM predictions. We also investigate whether the dSphs prefer to live
in halos with constant density cores in the limit of isotropic velocity
dispersion. Interestingly, even in this limit, not all of the dSphs prefer
large constant-density cores: the Sculptor dSph prefers a cusp while Carina,
Draco and Leo I prefer cores. The other four dSphs do not show a statistically
significant preference for either cuspy or cored profiles. Finally, we
re-examine the hypothesis that the density profiles of these eight MW dSphs can
be quantified by a common dark matter halo.


  In the present paper we review recent experimental results from the BaBar
experiment concerning the measurement of the CKM angles. A particular highlight
is given to the novel independent determination of the angle alpha from B0 ->
a_1(1260)+/- pi -/+ and to the recent full-luminosity updates of several angle
gamma measurements.


  Software piracy, the illegal using, copying, and resale of applications is a
major concern for anyone develops software. Software developers also worry
about their applications being reverse engineered by extracting data structures
and algorithms from an application and incorporated into competitor's code. A
defense against software piracy is watermarking, a process that embeds a secret
message in a cover software. Watermarking is a method that does not aim to stop
piracy copying, but to prove ownership of the software and possibly even the
data structures and algorithms used in the software. The language Java was
designed to be compiled into a platform independent bytecode format. Much of
the information contained in the source code remains in the bytecode, which
means that decompilation is easier than with traditional native codes. In this
thesis, we present a technique for watermarking Java programs by using a
never-executed dummy method (Monden et.al., 2000) combined with opaque
predicates (Collberg et.al., 1998; Arboit, 2002) and improved with dynamically
opaque predicates (Palsberg et.al., 2000). This work presents a method to
construct a dynamic opaque predicates by grouping two or more opaque predicates
according to predefined rules. Any software watermarking technique will exhibit
a trade-off between resilience, data rate, cost, and stealth. To evaluate the
quality of a watermarking scheme we must also know how well it stands up to
different types of attacks. Ideally, we would like our watermarks to survive
translation (compilation, decompilation, and binary translation), optimization,
and obfuscation. Add a single watermark will increasing source code approximate
3.854 bytes with dummy method that cover up to 15 characters, two dynamic data
structures, two threads and two opaque predicates. Application loading-time
increase approximate 6108 milliseconds.


  We report on a study of the surface density of Extremely Red Objects (EROs)
in the fields of 13 radio-loud quasars at 1.8 < z < 3.0 covering a total area
of 61.7 sqr arcmin. There is a large variation in the ERO surface density from
field to field, and as many as 30--40 % of the fields have roughly 4--5 times
more EROs than what is expected from a random distribution. The average surface
density exceeds the value found in large random-field surveys by a factor of
2--3, a result which is significant at the >3 sigma level. Hence, it appears
that the quasar lines of sight are biassed towards regions of high ERO density.
This might be caused by clusters or groups of galaxies physically associated
with the quasars. However, an equally likely possibility is that the observed
ERO excess is part of overdensities in the ERO population along the line of
sight to the quasars. In this case, the non-randomness of quasar fields with
respect to EROs may be explained in terms of gravitational lensing.


  It is shown that the new data on the excitation energy Eex spectrum of the
residual nuclear system in the Sigma-hypernuclear region in the reactions
(K-,pi+-) on Be-9 and in the reaction (K-,pi+) on He-4 and C-12 can be
described without the supposition on the existence of excited
Sigma-hypernuclear states. The basis is formed by a simultaneous consideration
of the quasi-free Sigma production and Sigma-nuclear rescattering (elastic and
with Sigma -> Lambda conversion) with account of interference of the respective
amplitudes. For final decision of the question about the nature of the
irregularities in Eex spectrum, it is proposed to study the picture
corresponding to the so-called moving complex singularity of the triangle graph
with Sigma rescattering: the position and the width of the peak in Eex
distribution must appreciably change with momentum transferred from the initial
kaon to the final pion.


  Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common complication in
hospitalized patients and a common cause for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and
increased hospital cost and mortality. By timely detection of AKI and AKI
progression, effective preventive or therapeutic measures could be offered.
This study aims to develop and validate an electronic phenotype to identify
patients with CKD and AKI. Methods: A database with electronic health records
data from a retrospective study cohort of 84,352 hospitalized adults was
created. This repository includes demographics, comorbidities, vital signs,
laboratory values, medications, diagnoses and procedure codes for all index
admission, 12 months prior and 12 months follow-up encounters. We developed
algorithms to identify CKD and AKI based on the Kidney Disease: Improving
Global Outcomes (KDIGO) criteria. To measure diagnostic performance of the
algorithms, clinician experts performed clinical adjudication of AKI and CKD on
300 selected cases. Results: Among 149,136 encounters, identified CKD by
medical history was 12% which increased to 16% using creatinine criteria. Among
130,081 encounters with sufficient data for AKI phenotyping 21% had AKI. The
comparison of CKD phenotyping algorithm to manual chart review yielded PPV of
0.87, NPV of 0.99, sensitivity of 0.99, and specificity of 0.89. The comparison
of AKI phenotyping algorithm to manual chart review yielded PPV of 0.99, NPV of
0.95 , sensitivity 0.98, and specificity 0.98. Conclusions: We developed
phenotyping algorithms that yielded very good performance in identification of
patients with CKD and AKI in validation cohort. This tool may be useful in
identifying patients with kidney disease in a large population, in assessing
the quality and value of care in such patients.


  Probabilistic storage and retrieval (PSR) of unitary quantum dynamics is
possible with exponentially small failure probability with respect to the
number of systems used as a quantum memory [PRL 122, 170502 (2019)]. Here we
study improvements due to a priori knowledge about the unitary transformation
to be stored. In particular, we study $N \rightarrow 1$ PSR of qubit phase
gates, i.e. qubit rotations a round $Z$ axis with an unknown angle, and show
that if we access the gate only $N$-times, the optimal probability of perfect
retrieving of its single use is $N/(N+1)$. We propose a quantum circuit
realization for the optimal protocol and show that programmable phase gate [PRL
88, 047905 (2002)] can be turned into $(2^k-1)\rightarrow 1$ optimal PSR of
phase gates and requires only $k$ CNOT gates, while having exponentially small
failure probability in $k$.


  We formulate within a generalized distributional approach the treatment of
the stability against radial perturbations for both neutral and charged
stratified stars in Newtonian and Einstein's gravity. We obtain from this
approach the boundary conditions connecting two any phases within a star and
underline its relevance for realistic models of compact stars with phase
transitions, owing to the modification of the star's set of eigenmodes with
respect to the continuous case.


  In this work an iterative algorithm based on unsupervised learning is
presented, specifically on a Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) to solve a
perfect matching problem on a bipartite weighted graph. Iteratively is
calculated the weights $w_{ij}$ and the bias parameters $\theta = ( a_i, b_j) $
that maximize the energy function and assignment element $i$ to element $j$. An
application of real problem is presented to show the potentiality of this
algorithm.


  Recently, Mackenzie et al. reported incidence and prevalence of multiple
sclerosis (MS) in the UK from 1990-2010. Authors of this report indicated that
they could not explain the cause of decreasing MS incidence trend in the UK
during this time period. Such inability mainly resulted from the fact that
often-cited hypotheses of MS, such as vitamin D deficiency hypothesis, cannot
provide any answer for MS incidence trends. However, the newly proposed
hypothesis of MS that is based on the biological effects of geomagnetic
disturbances (GMD) has the ability to provide explanations for this observed
trend. In this commentary, we showed that there is a significant correlation
among alterations in GMD with changes in MS incidence and explained how
researchers can use GMD hypothesis to evaluate such relations. Moreover, we
clarified why we need a revision in the method of reporting MS incidence data
to find actual environmental factor of MS.


  The statistical rank tests play important roles in univariate non-parametric
data analysis. If one attempts to generalize the rank tests to a multivariate
case, the problem of defining a multivariate order will occur. It is not clear
how to define a multivariate order or statistical rank in a meaningful way. One
approach to overcome this problem is to use the notion of data depth which
measures the centrality of a point with respect to a given data set. In other
words, a data depth can be applied to indicate how deep a point is located with
respect to a given data set. Using data depth, a multivariate order can be
defined by ordering the data points according to their depth values. Various
notions of data depth have been introduced over the last decades. In this
thesis, we discuss three depth functions: two well-known depth functions
halfspace depth and simplicial depth, and one recently defined depth function
named as $\beta$-skeleton depth, $\beta\geq 1$. The $\beta$-skeleton depth is
equivalent to the previously defined spherical depth and lens depth when
$\beta=1$ and $\beta=2$, respectively. Our main focus in this thesis is to
explore the geometric and algorithmic aspects of $\beta$-skeleton depth.


  The paper examines in the context of financial reporting, the controls that
organisations have in place to manage spreadsheet risk and errors. There has
been widespread research conducted in this area, both in Ireland and
internationally. This paper describes a study involving 19 participants (2 case
studies and 17 by survey) from Ireland. Three areas are examined; firstly, the
extent of spreadsheet usage, secondly, the level of complexity employed in
spreadsheets, and finally, the controls in place regarding spreadsheets. The
findings support previous findings of Panko (1998), that errors occur
frequently in spreadsheets and that there is little or unenforced controls
employed, however this research finds that attitudes are changing with regard
to spreadsheet risk and that one organisation is implementing a comprehensive
project regarding policies on the development and control of spreadsheets.
Further research could be undertaken in the future to examine the development
of a "best practice model" both for the reduction in errors and to minimise the
risk in spreadsheet usage.


  Based on our tool for the early diagnostics of solar eruption
geoeffectiveness (EDSEG tool; Chertok et al., 2013, 2015, 2017), we have
analyzed space weather disturbances that occurred in early September 2017. Two
flares, SOL2017-09-04T20:33 (M5.5) and SOL2017-09-06T12:02 (X9.3), accompanied
by Earth-directed halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were found to be
geoeffective. We extracted the associated EUV dimmings and arcades and
calculated their total unsigned magnetic flux. This calculation allowed us to
estimate the possible scales of the Forbush decreases (FDs) and geomagnetic
storms (GMSs) in the range from moderate to strong, and they are close to the
observed scales. More precisely, after the first eruption, an FD approximately
equal to 2% and almost no GMS occurred because the Bz magnetic field component
in front of the corresponding interplanetary CME (ICME) was northern. The
stronger second eruption produced somewhat larger composite disturbances (FD ~
9.3% and GMS with indexes Dst ~ -144 nT, Ap ~ 235) than expected (FD ~ 4.4%,
Dst ~ -135 nT, Ap ~ 125) because the second ICME overtook the trailing part of
the first ICME near Earth, and the resulting Bz component was more intense and
southern. Both ICMEs arrived at Earth earlier than expected because they
propagated in the high-speed solar wind emanated from an extended coronal hole
adjacent to AR12673 along their entire path. Overall, the presented results
provide further evidence that the EDSEG tool can be used for the earliest
diagnostics of actual solar eruptions to forecast the scale of the
corresponding geospace disturbances.


  Random tensors can be used to produce random matrices. This idea is, for
instance, very natural when one studies random quantum states with the aim of
exploring properties that are generically true, or true with some probability.
We hereby study the moments generating function, in the sense of the Stieltjes
transform - i.e. the resolvent -, of a random matrix defined as a product of
two different marginals of the same random tensor. We study the resolvent in
two different asymptotical regimes.
  In the first regime, the resolvent is easily computed thanks to freeness
results for the two different marginals and straightforward application of free
harmonic analysis. In the second regime, we show that the resolvent satisfies
an algebraic equation of degree six. This algebraic equation possesses roots
whose expressions can be given explicitly in terms of radicals. We obtain this
result by using an enumerative combinatorics approach. One of the interesting
aspects of the second regime is that the corresponding probability density
function interpolates between the square of a Marchenko-Pastur and the free
multiplicative square of a Marchenko-Pastur law.


  The field of chemistry and Artificial Intelligence (AI) intersection is an
area of active research that aims to accelerate scientific discovery. The
integration of large language models (LLMs) with scientific modalities has
shown significant promise in this endeavour. However, challenges persist in
effectively addressing training efficacy and the out-of-distribution problem,
particularly as existing approaches rely on larger models and datasets. In this
context, we focus on machine language-molecule translation and deploy a novel
training approach called contrastive preference optimisation, which avoids
generating translations that are merely adequate but not perfect. To ensure
generalisability and mitigate memorisation effects, we conduct experiments
using only 10% of the data. Our results demonstrate that our models achieve up
to a 32% improvement compared to counterpart models. Finally, we introduce a
fine-grained, domain-agnostic evaluation method to assess hallucination in LLMs
and promote responsible use.


  Let $\pi$ be a discrete group, and let $G$ be a compact connected Lie group.
Then there is a map
$\Theta\colon\mathrm{Hom}(\pi,G)_0\to\mathrm{map}_*(B\pi,BG)_0$ between the
null-components of the spaces of homomorphism and based maps, which sends a
homomorphism to the induced map between classifying spaces. Atiyah and Bott
studied this map for $\pi$ a surface group, and showed that it is surjective in
rational cohomology. In this paper, we prove that the map $\Theta$ is
surjective in rational cohomology for $\pi=\mathbb{Z}^m$ and the classical
group $G$ except for $SO(2n)$, and that it is not surjective for
$\pi=\mathbb{Z}^m$ with $m\ge 3$ and $G=SO(2n)$ with $n\ge 4$. As an
application, we consider the surjectivity of the map $\Theta$ in rational
cohomology for $\pi$ a finitely generated nilpotent group. We also consider the
dimension of the cokernel of the map $\Theta$ in rational homotopy groups for
$\pi=\mathbb{Z}^m$ and the classical groups $G$ except for $SO(2n)$.


  A few years ago the so-called oriented subgroup $\vec F$ of the Thompson
group $F$ was introduced by V. Jones while investigating the connections
between subfactors and conformal field theories. In the coding of links and
knots by elements of $F$ it corresponds exactly to the oriented ones. Thanks to
the work of Golan and Sapir, $\vec F$ provided the first example of a maximal
subgroup of infinite index in $F$ different from the parabolic subgroups that
fix a point in $(0,1)$. In this paper we investigate possible analogues of
$\vec F$ in higher Thompson groups $F_k, k\geq 2$, with $F=F_2$, introduced by
Brown. Most notably, we study algebraic properties of the oriented subgroup
$\vec{F}_3$ of $F_3$, as described recently by Jones, and prove in particular
that it gives rise to a non-parabolic maximal subgroup of infinite index in
$F_3$ and that the corresponding quasi-regular representation is irreducible.


  The purpose of this work is to show that within a three-body description, the
complete fusion process and the target excitation by the projectile can be
taken into account by introducing a three-body optical potential in the
formalism. We give a schematic description of such a potential and points to
ways of testing the validity of the CDCC.


  We present results on a stochastic forest fire model, where the influence of
the neighbour trees is treated in a more realistic way than usual and the
definition of neighbourhood can be tuned by an additional parameter.
  This model exhibits a surprisingly sharp phase transition which can be
shifted by redefinition of neighbourhood. The results can also be interpreted
in terms of disease-spreading and are quite unsettling from the epidemologist's
point of view, since variation of one crucial parameter only by a few percent
can result in the change from endemic to epidemic behaviour.


  The effect of hole doping on the exchange coupling of the nearest neighbor
(NN) Mn pairs in Zn$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$Te is probed by inelastic neutron scattering.
The difference in the NN exchange energy $\Delta J_1$ in the presence and in
the absence of the holes is determined. The obtained value of $\Delta J_1$ is
in good agreement with the predictions of the Zener/RKKY model, even on the
insulator side of the metal-insulator transition.


  Bound entangled (BE) states are strange in nature: non-zero amount of free
entanglement is required to create them but no free entanglement can be
distilled from them under local operations and classical communication (LOCC).
Even though usefulness of such states has been shown in several information
processing tasks, there exists no simple method to characterize them for an
arbitrary composite quantum system. Here we present a $(d-3)/2$-parameter
family of BE states each with positive partial transpose (PPT). This family of
PPT-BE states is introduced by constructing an unextendible product basis (UPB)
in $\mathbb{C}^d\otimes\mathbb{C}^d$ with $d$ odd and $d\ge 5$. The range of
each such PPT-BE state is contained in a $2(d-1)$ dimensional entangled
subspace whereas the associated UPB-subspace is of dimension $(d-1)^2+1$. We
further show that each of these PPT-BE states can be written as a convex
combination of $(d-1)/2$ number of rank-4 PPT-BE states. Moreover, we prove
that these rank-4 PPT-BE states are extreme points of the convex compact set
$\mathcal{P}$ of all PPT states in $\mathbb{C}^d\otimes\mathbb{C}^d$, namely
the {\it Peres} set. An interesting geometric implication of our result is that
the convex hull of these rank-4 PPT-BE extreme points -- the $(d-3)/2$-simplex
-- is sitting on the boundary between the set $\mathcal{P}$ and the set of
non-PPT states. We also discuss consequences of our construction in the context
of quantum state discrimination by LOCC.


  Workbench-size particle accelerators, enabled by Nb3Sn-based superconducting
radio-frequency (SRF) cavities, hold the potential of driving scientific
discovery by offering a widely accessible and affordable source of high-energy
electrons and X-rays. Thin-film Nb3Sn RF superconductors with high quality
factors, high operation temperatures, and high-field potentials are critical
for these devices. However, surface roughness, non-stoichiometry, and
impurities in Nb3Sn deposited by conventional Sn-vapor diffusion prevent them
from reaching their theoretical capabilities. Here we demonstrate a seed-free
electrochemical synthesis that pushes the limit of chemical and physical
properties in Nb3Sn. Utilization of electrochemical Sn pre-deposits reduces the
roughness of converted Nb3Sn by five times compared to typical vapor-diffused
Nb3Sn. Quantitative mappings using chemical and atomic probes confirm improved
stoichiometry and minimized impurity concentrations in electrochemically
synthesized Nb3Sn. We have successfully applied this Nb3Sn to the large-scale
1.3 GHz SRF cavity and demonstrated ultra-low BCS surface resistances at
multiple operation temperatures, notably lower than vapor-diffused cavities.
Our smooth, homogeneous, high-purity Nb3Sn provides the route toward high
efficiency and high fields for SRF applications under helium-free cryogenic
operations.


  The naive perturbation expansion for many-fermion systems is infrared
divergent. One can remove these divergences by introducing counterterms. To do
this without changing the model, one has to solve an inversion equation. We
call this procedure Fermi surface renormalization (FSR). Whether or not FSR is
possible depends on the regularity properties of the fermion self--energy. When
the Fermi surface is nonspherical, this regularity problem is rather
nontrivial. Using improved power counting at all orders in perturbation theory,
we have shown sufficient differentiability to solve the FSR equation for a
class of models with a non-nested, non-spherical Fermi surface. I will first
motivate the problem and give a definition of FSR, and then describe the
combination of geometric and graphical facts that lead to the improved power
counting bounds. These bounds also apply to the four--point function. They
imply that only ladder diagrams can give singular contributions to the
four--point function.


  The kinetic Brownian motion on the cosphere bundle of a Riemannian manifold
$\mathbb{M}$ is a stochastic process that models the geodesic equation
perturbed by a random white force of size $\varepsilon$. When $\mathbb{M}$ is
compact with negative curvature we show that the $L^2$-spectrum of the
infinitesimal generator of this process converges to the Pollicott--Ruelle
resonances of $\mathbb{M}$ as $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$.


  Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) has long been central to the
scientific project, guiding theory development and supporting evidence-based
intervention and decision-making. Recent years, however, have seen growing
awareness of serious problems with NHST as it is typically used, and hence to
proposals to limit the use of NHST techniques, to abandon these techniques and
move to alternative statistical approaches, or even to ban the use of NHST
entirely. These proposals are premature, because the observed problems with
NHST all arise as a consequence of a contingent and in many cases incorrect
choice: that of NHST testing against point-form nulls. We show that testing
against distributional, rather than point-form, nulls is better motivated
mathematically and experimentally, and that the use of distributional nulls
addresses many problems with the standard point-form NHST approach. We also
show that use of distributional nulls allows a form of null hypothesis testing
that takes into account both the statistical significance of a given result and
the probability of replication of that result in a new experiment. Rather than
abandoning NHST, we should use the NHST approach in its more general form, with
distributional rather than point-form nulls.


  We study a multiple measurement vector (MMV) approach to synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) imaging of scenes with direction dependent reflectivity and with
polarization diverse measurements. The data are gathered by a moving transmit-
receive platform which probes the imaging scene with signals and records the
backscattered waves. The unknown reflectivity is represented by a matrix with
row support corresponding to the location of the scatterers in the scene, and
columns corresponding to measurements gathered from different sub-apertures, or
different polarization of the waves. The MMV methodology is used to estimate
the reflectivity matrix by inverting in an appropriate sense the linear system
of equations that models the SAR data. We obtain a resolution analysis of SAR
imaging with MMV, which takes into account the sparsity of the imaging scene,
the separation of the scatterers and the diversity of the measurements. The
results of the analysis are illustrated with some numerical simulations.


  The effective temperature (Teff) of the radiation field of the ionizing
star(s) of a large sample of extragalactic HII regions was estimated using the
R= log([OII](3727)/[OIII]5007) index. We used a grid of photoionization models
to calibrate the Teff-R relation finding that it has a strong dependence with
the ionizing parameter while it shows a weak direct dependence with the
metallicity (variations in Z imply variations in U) of both the stellar
atmosphere of the ionizing star and the gas phase of the HII region. Since the
R index varies slightly with the Teff for values larger than 40 kK, the R index
can be used to derive the Teff in 30-40 kK range. A large fraction of the
ionization parameter variation is due to differences in the temperature of the
ionizing stars and then the use of the (relatively) low Teff dependent S2=[S
II](6717+31)/Ha emission-line ratio to derive the ionization parameter is
preferable over others in the literature. We propose linear metallicity
dependent relationships between S2 and U. Teff and metallicity estimations for
a sample of 865 HII regions, whose emission-line intensities were compiled from
the literature, do not show any Teff-Z correlation. On the other hand it seems
to be hints of the presence of an anti-correlation between Teff-U. We found
that the majority of the studied HII regions (87%) present Teff values in the
range between 37 and 40 kK, with an average value of 38.5 kK. We also studied
the variation of Teff as a function of the galactocentric distance for 14
spiral galaxies. Our results are in agreement with the idea of the existence of
positive Teff gradients along the disk of spiral galaxies.


  The ring $\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h}}(n)$ of $\mathbf{h}$-deformed differential
operators appears in the theory of reduction algebras. In this thesis, we
construct the rings of generalized differential operators on the
$\mathbf{h}$-deformed vector spaces of $\mathfrak{gl}$-type. In contrast to the
$q$-deformed vector spaces for which the ring of differential operators is
unique up to an isomorphism, the general ring of $\mathbf{h}$-deformed
differential operators $\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h},\sigma}(n)$ is labeled by a
rational function $\sigma$ in $n$ variables, satisfying an over-determined
system of finite-difference equations. We obtain the general solution of the
system. We show that the center of $\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h},\sigma}(n)$ is a
ring of polynomials in $n$ variables. We construct an isomorphism between
certain localizations of $\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h},\sigma}(n)$ and the Weyl
algebra $\text{W}_n$ extended by $n$ indeterminates. We present some conditions
for the irreducibility of the finite dimensional
$\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h},\sigma}(n)$-modules. Finally, we discuss difficulties
for finding analogous constructions for the ring
$\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h}}(n,N)$ formed by several copies of
$\text{Diff}_{\mathbf{h}}(n)$.


  The Crab Nebula is one of the most efficient accelerators in the Galaxy and
the only galactic source showing direct evidence of PeV particles. In spite of
this, the physical process behind such effective acceleration is still a deep
mystery. While particle acceleration, at least at the highest energies, is
commonly thought to occur at the pulsar wind termination shock, the properties
of the upstream flow are thought to be non-uniform along the shock surface, and
important constraints on the mechanism at work come from exact knowledge of
where along this surface particles are being accelerated. Here we use
axisymmetric relativistic MHD simulations to obtain constraints on the
acceleration site(s) of particles of different energies in the Crab Nebula.
Various scenarios are considered for the injection of particles responsible for
synchrotron radiation in the different frequency bands, radio, optical and
X-rays. The resulting emission properties are compared with available data on
the multi wavelength time variability of the inner nebula. Our main result is
that the X-ray emitting particles are accelerated in the equatorial region of
the pulsar wind. Possible implications on the nature of the acceleration
mechanism are discussed.


  This review article provides an overview of research on the topic of gender
equity in educational physics labs. As many institutions and instructors seek
to evolve or transform physics lab learning, it is important that changes are
made that improve equity for all students along multiple axes of identity,
including gender. The studies highlighted in this review article describe the
existence of complex gender-based differences, e.g., in opportunities to tinker
with lab equipment, as well as differences in grades, conceptual understanding,
and motivational outcomes across a broad range of lab curricula and contexts.
The studies also illustrate and explore social interactions and structures that
can impact students' experiences based on their gender identities. Although
there has been less scholarship focused on proposals to reduce gender-based
inequities in labs, this review article also provides an overview of some
relevant proposals as well as associated research results. This overview of
research on gender equity in physics labs helps to make clear that future
scholarship on equity in physics labs should adopt gender frameworks that allow
researchers to transcend binary gender identities and student deficit framing
of research results. Likewise, a case is made that future research is needed on
equity along other axes of identity, as well as research that accounts for
intersectionality of different identities, in the physics lab context.


  We derive an explicit expression for the Lellouch-L\"uscher (LL) factor in
the $K\to 3\pi$ decays at leading order (without derivative couplings). Several
important technical details are addressed, like a proper decomposition into the
isospin amplitudes, the choice of a minimal set of effective couplings and the
renormalization, as well as the algorithm for the solution of the pertinent
Faddeev equations in the infinite volume which is based on the contour
deformation method. Most importantly, our numerical results demonstrate that
the three-body force contributes very little to the LL factor. This result
paves the way for the study of the $K\to 3\pi$ decays on the lattice.


  In unsaturated soil mechanics, the quest for an effective stress playing the
same role as Terzaghi's effective stress does for saturated soils has
introduced a long standing debate, dating back to the 1960s. Several
contributions have been proposed since the early work of Bishop. It is well
recognized to date that a single constitutive stress is not sufficient by
itself to catch the main features of the behaviour of unsaturated soils and it
is often combined with matric suction. In this paper, focus is given to a
largely used formulation for such a constitutive stress, based on the use of an
averaged pore pressure. In particular, this paper discusses on thermodynamics
bases the validity of the choice of the factor X weighting the fluid pressures
contribution to the constitutive stress. This factor is usually assumed to be
equal to the degree of saturation of water. In this work it is shown that the
choice of this natural candidate implies restrictive assumptions on the plastic
flow rule. As shown from experimental data obtained from a literature review,
this choice may not be pertinent for certain classes of materials, particularly
high plasticity clays.


  We formulate the Bergman-type interpolation problem on finite open Riemann
surfaces covered by the unit disk. Our version of the interpolation problem
generalizes Bergman-type interpolation problems previously studied by Seip,
Berntsson, Ortega Cerd\`a, and a number of other authors. We then prove
necessary and sufficient conditions for interpolation, and also some sufficient
conditions under even weaker hypotheses. The results extend work of Ortega
Cerd\`a, who resolved the case in which the boundary of the surface is pure
$1$-dimensional. Our version of the interpolation problem effectively changes
the geometry of the underlying space near the punctures, thereby linking in a
crucial way with the previous article in this two-part series.


  Let K be an imaginary quadratic field, and x the Dirichlet character
corresponding to the extension K/Q. Let m=2n or 2n+1 with n a positive integer.
Let f be a primitive form of weight 2k+1 and and nebentype x, or a primitive
form of weight 2k for SL(2,Z) according as m=2n, or m=2n+1. For such an f let
I_m(f) be the lift of f to the space of modular forms of weight 2k+2n for the
Hermitian modular group of degree m constructed by Ikeda.
  We then express the period <I_m(f), I_m(f) > of I_m(f) in terms of special
values of the adjoint L-functions of f. This poves the conjecture concerning
the period of the Ikeda lift proposed by Ikeda.


  Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization (WDRO) attempts to learn a
model that minimizes the local worst-case risk in the vicinity of the empirical
data distribution defined by Wasserstein ball. While WDRO has received
attention as a promising tool for inference since its introduction, its
theoretical understanding has not been fully matured. Gao et al. (2017)
proposed a minimizer based on a tractable approximation of the local worst-case
risk, but without showing risk consistency. In this paper, we propose a
minimizer based on a novel approximation theorem and provide the corresponding
risk consistency results. Furthermore, we develop WDRO inference for locally
perturbed data that include the Mixup (Zhang et al., 2017) as a special case.
We show that our approximation and risk consistency results naturally extend to
the cases when data are locally perturbed. Numerical experiments demonstrate
robustness of the proposed method using image classification datasets. Our
results show that the proposed method achieves significantly higher accuracy
than baseline models on noisy datasets.


  Many skeletal action recognition models use GCNs to represent the human body
by 3D body joints connected body parts. GCNs aggregate one- or few-hop graph
neighbourhoods, and ignore the dependency between not linked body joints. We
propose to form hypergraph to model hyper-edges between graph nodes (e.g.,
third- and fourth-order hyper-edges capture three and four nodes) which help
capture higher-order motion patterns of groups of body joints. We split action
sequences into temporal blocks, Higher-order Transformer (HoT) produces
embeddings of each temporal block based on (i) the body joints, (ii) pairwise
links of body joints and (iii) higher-order hyper-edges of skeleton body
joints. We combine such HoT embeddings of hyper-edges of orders 1, ..., r by a
novel Multi-order Multi-mode Transformer (3Mformer) with two modules whose
order can be exchanged to achieve coupled-mode attention on coupled-mode tokens
based on 'channel-temporal block', 'order-channel-body joint',
'channel-hyper-edge (any order)' and 'channel-only' pairs. The first module,
called Multi-order Pooling (MP), additionally learns weighted aggregation along
the hyper-edge mode, whereas the second module, Temporal block Pooling (TP),
aggregates along the temporal block mode. Our end-to-end trainable network
yields state-of-the-art results compared to GCN-, transformer- and
hypergraph-based counterparts.


  We construct cubic Hamiltonians for quantum Gaudin models of affine types
$\hat{\mathfrak{sl}}_M$. They are given by hypergeometric integrals of a form
we recently conjectured in arXiv:1804.01480. We prove that they commute amongst
themselves and with the quadratic Hamiltonians. We prove that their vacuum
eigenvalues, and their eigenvalues for one Bethe root, are given by certain
hypergeometric functions on a space of affine opers.


  Based on phasor measurement units (PMUs), a synchronphasor system is widely
recognized as a promising smart grid measurement system. It is able to provide
high-frequency, high-accuracy phasor measurements sampling for Wide Area
Monitoring and Control (WAMC) applications. However, the high sampling
frequency of measurement data under strict latency constraints introduces new
challenges for real time communication. It would be very helpful if the
collected data can be prioritized according to its importance such that the
existing quality of service (QoS) mechanisms in the communication networks can
be leveraged. To achieve this goal, certain anomaly detection functions should
be conducted by the PMUs. Inspired by the recent emerging edge-fog-cloud
computing hierarchical architecture, which allows computing tasks to be
conducted at the network edge, a novel PMU fog is proposed in this paper. Two
anomaly detection approaches, Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) and K-Nearest
Neighbors (KNN), are evaluated in the PMU fog using the IEEE 16-machine 68-bus
system. The simulation experiments based on Riverbed Modeler demonstrate that
the proposed PMU fog can effectively reduce the data flow end-to-end (ETE)
delay without sacrificing data completeness.


  We investigate the pair creation of noncommutative black holes in a
background with positive cosmological constant. As a first step we derive the
noncommutative geometry inspired Schwarzschild deSitter solution. By varying
the mass and the cosmological constant parameters, we find several spacetimes
compatible with the new solution: positive mass spacetimes admit one
cosmological horizon and two, one or no black hole horizons, while negative
mass spacetimes have just a cosmological horizon. These new black holes share
the properties of the corresponding asymptotically flat solutions, including
the non-singular core and thermodynamic stability in the final phase of the
evaporation. As a second step we determine the action which generates the
matter sector of gravitational field equations and we construct instantons
describing the pair production of black holes and the other admissible
topologies. As a result we find that for current values of the cosmological
constant the deSitter background is quantum mechanically stable according to
experience. However positive mass noncommutative black holes and solitons would
have plentifully been produced during inflationary times for Planckian values
of the cosmological constant. As a special result we find that, in these early
epochs of the universe, Planck size black holes production would have been
largely disfavoured. We also find a potential instability for production of
negative-mass solitons.


  We study aspects of d-dimensional black holes with two electric charges,
corresponding to fundamental strings with generic momentum and winding on an
internal circle. The perturbative alpha' corrections to such black holes and
their gravitational thermodynamics are obtained. The latter are derived using
the Euclidean approach and the Wald formula for the entropy. We find that the
entropy and the charge/mass ratio of black holes increase in alpha' for any
mass and charges, and in all dimensions.


  The "Mahler volume" is, intuitively speaking, a measure of how "round" a
centrally symmetric convex body is. In one direction this intuition is given
weight by a result of Santalo, who in the 1940s showed that the Mahler volume
is maximized, in a given dimension, by the unit sphere and its linear images,
and only these. A counterpart to this result in the opposite direction is
proposed by a conjecture, formulated by Kurt Mahler in the 1930s and still open
in dimensions 4 and greater, asserting that the Mahler volume should be
minimized by a cuboid. In this article we present a seemingly new proof of the
2-dimensional case of this conjecture via the probabilistic method. The central
idea is to show that either deleting a random pair of edges from a centrally
symmetric convex polygon, or deleting a random pair of vertices, reduces the
Mahler volume with positive probability.


  Given an embedding of a projective variety into projective space, we study
the structure of the space of all linear projections that, when composed with
the embedding, give a Galois morphism from the variety to a projective space of
the same dimension.


  We study the rhythmogenesis of oscillatory patterns emerging in network
motifs composed of inhibitory coupled tonic spiking neurons represented by the
Plant model of R15 nerve cells. Such motifs are argued to be used as building
blocks for a larger central pattern generator network controlling swim
locomotion of sea slug Melibe leonina.


  We investigate small covers and quasitoric over the duals of neighborly
simplicial polytopes with small number of vertices in dimensions $4$, $5$, $6$
and $7$. In the most of the considered cases we obtain the complete
classification of small covers. The lifting conjecture in all cases is verified
to be true. The problem of cohomological rigidity for small covers is also
studied and we have found a whole new series of weakly cohomologically rigid
simple polytopes. New examples of manifolds provide the first known examples of
quasitoric manifolds in higher dimensions whose orbit polytopes have chromatic
numbers $\chi (P^n)\geq 3n-5$.


  Our spacetime is filled with gravitational wave backgrounds that constitute a
fluctuating environment created by astrophysical and cosmological sources.
Bounds on these backgrounds are obtained from cosmological and astrophysical
data but also by analysis of ranging and Doppler signals from distant
spacecraft. We propose here a new way to set bounds on those backgrounds by
performing clock comparisons between a ground clock and a remote spacecraft
equipped with an ultra-stable clock, rather than only ranging to an onboard
transponder. This technique can then be optimized as a function of the signal
to be measured and the dominant noise sources, leading to significant
improvements on present bounds in a promising frequency range where different
theoretical models are competing. We illustrate our approach using the SAGAS
project which aims to fly an ultra stable optical clock in the outer solar
system.


  The first aim of this paper is to study the $p$-local higher homotopy
commutativity of Lie groups in the sense of Sugawara. The second aim is to
apply this result to the $p$-local higher homotopy commutativity of gauge
groups. Although the higher homotopy commutativity of Lie groups in the sense
of Williams is already known, the higher homotopy commutativity in the sense of
Sugawara is necessary for this application. The third aim is to resolve the
$5$-local higher homotopy non-commutativity problem of the exceptional Lie
group $\mathrm{G}_2$, which has been open for a long time.


  We study the QCD evolution of the Sivers effect in both semi-inclusive deep
inelastic scattering (SIDIS) and Drell-Yan production (DY). We pay close
attention to the non-perturbative spin-independent Sudakov factor in the
evolution formalism and find a universal form which can describe reasonably
well the experimental data on the transverse momentum distributions in SIDIS,
DY lepton pair and $W/Z$ production. With this Sudakov factor at hand, we
perform a global fitting of all the experimental data on the Sivers asymmetry
in SIDIS from HERMES, COMPASS and Jefferson Lab. We then make predictions for
the Sivers asymmetry in DY lepton pair and $W$ production that can be compared
to the future experimental measurements to test the sign change of the Sivers
functions between SIDIS and DY processes and constrain the sea quark Sivers
functions.


  In this paper, we propose a Directed threshold multisignature scheme without
SDC. This signature scheme is applicable when the message is sensitive to the
signature receiver; and the signatures are generated by the cooperation of a
number of people from a given group of senders. In this scheme, any malicious
set of signers cannot impersonate any other set of signers to forge the
signatures. In case of forgery, it is possible to trace the signing set.


  In this paper we first study a smooth optimization approach for solving a
class of nonsmooth strictly concave maximization problems whose objective
functions admit smooth convex minimization reformulations. In particular, we
apply Nesterov's smooth optimization technique [Y.E. Nesterov, Dokl. Akad. Nauk
SSSR, 269 (1983), pp. 543--547; Y. E. Nesterov, Math. Programming, 103 (2005),
pp. 127--152] to their dual counterparts that are smooth convex problems. It is
shown that the resulting approach has ${\cal O}(1/{\sqrt{\epsilon}})$ iteration
complexity for finding an $\epsilon$-optimal solution to both primal and dual
problems. We then discuss the application of this approach to sparse covariance
selection that is approximately solved as an $l_1$-norm penalized maximum
likelihood estimation problem, and also propose a variant of this approach
which has substantially outperformed the latter one in our computational
experiments. We finally compare the performance of these approaches with other
first-order methods, namely, Nesterov's ${\cal O}(1/\epsilon)$ smooth
approximation scheme and block-coordinate descent method studied in [A.
d'Aspremont, O. Banerjee, and L. El Ghaoui, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl., 30
(2008), pp. 56--66; J. Friedman, T. Hastie, and R. Tibshirani, Biostatistics, 9
(2008), pp. 432--441] for sparse covariance selection on a set of randomly
generated instances. It shows that our smooth optimization approach
substantially outperforms the first method above, and moreover, its variant
substantially outperforms both methods above.


  We introduce a S.O.S hierarchy of lower bounds for a polynomial optimization
problem whose constraint is expressed as a matrix polynomial semidefinite
condition. Our approach involves utilizing a penalty function framework to
directly address the matrix-based constraint, making it applicable to both
discrete and continuous polynomial optimization problems. We investigate the
convergence rates of these bounds in both problem types. The proposed method
yields a variation of Putinar's theorem tailored for positive polynomials
within a compact semidefinite set, defined by a matrix polynomial semidefinite
constraint. More specifically, we derive novel insights into the convergence
rates and degree of additional terms in the representation within this modified
version of Putinar's theorem, based on the Jackson's theorem and a version of
{\L}ojasiewicz inequality.


  We study two mathematical descriptions of a charged particle interacting with
it's self-generated electromagnetic field. The first model is the one-body
Maxwell-Schr\"odinger system where the interaction of the spin with the
magnetic field is neglected and the second model is the related one-body
Maxwell-Pauli system where the spin-field interaction is included. We prove
that there exist travelling wave solutions to both of these systems provided
that the speed $|v|$ of the wave is not too large. Moreover, we observe that
the energies of these solutions behave like $\frac{mv^2}{2}$ for small
velocities of the particle, which may be interpreted as saying that the
effective mass of the particle is the same as it's bare mass.


  Vertebrate retinas are highly-efficient in processing trivial visual tasks
such as detecting moving objects, yet a complex challenges for modern
computers. In vertebrates, the detection of object motion is performed by
specialised retinal cells named Object Motion Sensitive Ganglion Cells
(OMS-GC). OMS-GC process continuous visual signals and generate spike patterns
that are post-processed by the Visual Cortex. Our previous Hybrid Sensitive
Motion Detector (HSMD) algorithm was the first hybrid algorithm to enhance
Background subtraction (BS) algorithms with a customised 3-layer Spiking Neural
Network (SNN) that generates OMS-GC spiking-like responses. In this work, we
present a Neuromorphic Hybrid Sensitive Motion Detector (NeuroHSMD) algorithm
that accelerates our HSMD algorithm using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays
(FPGAs). The NeuroHSMD was compared against the HSMD algorithm, using the same
2012 Change Detection (CDnet2012) and 2014 Change Detection (CDnet2014)
benchmark datasets. When tested against the CDnet2012 and CDnet2014 datasets,
NeuroHSMD performs object motion detection at 720x480 at 28.06 Frames Per
Second (fps) and 720x480 at 28.71 fps, respectively, with no degradation of
quality. Moreover, the NeuroHSMD proposed in this paper was completely
implemented in Open Computer Language (OpenCL) and therefore is easily
replicated in other devices such as Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) and
clusters of Central Processing Units (CPUs).


  The paper discusses the master equation approach to derivation of the
Esaki-Tsu equation for drift current. It is shown that the relaxation term in
the master equation can be identified by measuring the velocity distribution of
the carriers. We also show that the standard form of the relaxation term, used
earlier to derive Esaki-Tsu equation, predicts unphysical velocity distribution
and suggest a more elaborated relaxation term, which is argued to correctly
capture the effect of bosonic bath in experiments on atomic current in optical
lattices.


  In January 2012, the 10m South Pole Telescope (SPT) was equipped with a
polarization-sensitive camera, SPTpol, in order to measure the polarization
anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measurements of the
polarization of the CMB at small angular scales (~several arcminutes) can
detect the gravitational lensing of the CMB by large scale structure and
constrain the sum of the neutrino masses. At large angular scales (~few
degrees) CMB measurements can constrain the energy scale of Inflation. SPTpol
is a two-color mm-wave camera that consists of 180 polarimeters at 90 GHz and
588 polarimeters at 150 GHz, with each polarimeter consisting of a dual
transition edge sensor (TES) bolometers. The full complement of 150 GHz
detectors consists of 7 arrays of 84 ortho-mode transducers (OMTs) that are
stripline coupled to two TES detectors per OMT, developed by the TRUCE
collaboration and fabricated at NIST. Each 90 GHz pixel consists of two
antenna-coupled absorbers coupled to two TES detectors, developed with Argonne
National Labs. The 1536 total detectors are read out with digital
frequency-domain multiplexing (DfMUX). The SPTpol deployment represents the
first on-sky tests of both of these detector technologies, and is one of the
first deployed instruments using DfMUX readout technology. We present the
details of the design, commissioning, deployment, on-sky optical
characterization and detector performance of the complete SPTpol focal plane.


  The ear, as an important part of the human head, has received much less
attention compared to the human face in the area of computer vision. Inspired
by previous work on monocular 3D face reconstruction using an autoencoder
structure to achieve self-supervised learning, we aim to utilise such a
framework to tackle the 3D ear reconstruction task, where more subtle and
difficult curves and features are present on the 2D ear input images. Our Human
Ear Reconstruction Autoencoder (HERA) system predicts 3D ear poses and shape
parameters for 3D ear meshes, without any supervision to these parameters. To
make our approach cover the variance for in-the-wild images, even grayscale
images, we propose an in-the-wild ear colour model. The constructed end-to-end
self-supervised model is then evaluated both with 2D landmark localisation
performance and the appearance of the reconstructed 3D ears.


  While deep learning strategies achieve outstanding results in computer vision
tasks, one issue remains: The current strategies rely heavily on a huge amount
of labeled data. In many real-world problems, it is not feasible to create such
an amount of labeled training data. Therefore, it is common to incorporate
unlabeled data into the training process to reach equal results with fewer
labels. Due to a lot of concurrent research, it is difficult to keep track of
recent developments. In this survey, we provide an overview of often used ideas
and methods in image classification with fewer labels. We compare 34 methods in
detail based on their performance and their commonly used ideas rather than a
fine-grained taxonomy. In our analysis, we identify three major trends that
lead to future research opportunities. 1. State-of-the-art methods are
scaleable to real-world applications in theory but issues like class imbalance,
robustness, or fuzzy labels are not considered. 2. The degree of supervision
which is needed to achieve comparable results to the usage of all labels is
decreasing and therefore methods need to be extended to settings with a
variable number of classes. 3. All methods share some common ideas but we
identify clusters of methods that do not share many ideas. We show that
combining ideas from different clusters can lead to better performance.


  Lecture notes for the minicourse "Holonomy Groups in Riemannian geometry", a
part of the XVII Brazilian School of Geometry, to be held at UFAM (Amazonas,
Brazil), in July of 2012.


  In Gapeev and K\"uhn (2005), the stochastic game corresponding to perpetual
convertible bonds was considered when driven by a Brownian motion and a
compound Poisson process with exponential jumps. We consider the same
stochastic game but driven by a spectrally positive L\'evy process. We
establish a complete solution to the game indicating four principle parameter
regimes as well as characterizing the occurence of continuous and smooth fit.
In Gapeev and K\"uhn (2005), the method of proof was mainly based on solving a
free boundary value problem. In this paper, we instead use fluctuation theory
and an auxiliary optimal stopping problem to find a solution to the game.


  We examine several issues related to the processes of Dirac
monopole-antimonopole production in high-energy collisions such as $e^+e^-$
annihilation. Perturbative calculations for such processes are known to be
inherently ambiguous due to the arbitrariness of direction of the monopole
string; this requires use of some prescription to obtain physical results. We
argue that different prescriptions lead to drastically different physical
results which suggests that at present we do not have an entirely satisfactory
procedure for the elimination of string arbitrariness (this problem is quite
separate from the problems caused by the large coupling constant). We then
analyze the consequencies of discrete symmetries (P and C) for the monopole
production processes and for the monopole-antimonopole states. The P and C
selection rules for the monopole-antimonopole states turn out to be different
from those for the ordinary fermion-antifermion or boson-antiboson system. In
particular, the spin 1/2 monopole and antimonopole should have the same
helicities if they are produced through the one-photon annihilation of an
electron and positron. A stronger selection rule holds for spinless monopoles:
CP symmetry absolutely forbids the monopole-antimonopole production through the
one-photon annihilation of an electron and positron. Single-photon $e^+e^- \to
g^+g^-$ amplitude has been a key input in calculating the contribution of
virtual $g^+g^-$ pairs to various physical processes such as the decay $Z\to
3\gamma$ and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. Applying our
conclusions to these cases can lead to significant modifications of the results
obtained in previous works.


  Two particle correlations are used to extract information about the
characteristic size of the system in proton-proton and heavy ion collisions.
The size of the system can be extracted from the Bose-Einstein quantum
mechanical effect for identical particles. However there are also long range
correlations that shift the baseline of the correlation function from the
expected flat behavior. A possible source of these correlations is the
conservation of energy and momentum, especially for small systems, where the
energy available for particle production is limited. A new technique, first
used by the STAR collaboration, of quantifying these long range correlations
using energy-momentum conservation considerations is presented in this talk.
Using Monte Carlo simulations of proton-proton collisions at 900 GeV, it is
shown that the baseline of the two particle correlation function can be
described using this technique.


  Magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) microscopy measurements of magnetic bubble
domains demonstrate that Ar+ irradiation around 100 eV can tune the
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in Pt/Co/Pt trilayers. Varying the
irradiation energy and dose changes the DMI sign and magnitude separately from
the magnetic anisotropy, allowing tuning of the DMI while holding the coercive
field constant. This simultaneous control emphasizes the different physical
origins of these effects. To accurately measure the DMI, we propose and apply a
physical model for a poorly understood peak in domain wall velocity at zero
in-plane field. The ability to tune the DMI with the spatial resolution of the
Ar+ irradiation enables new fundamental investigations and technological
applications of chiral nanomagnetics.


  We have studied the behavior of a VLF, ELF and combined ELF/VLF antenna
immersed in a cold, magnetized plasma using a fully kinetic, three dimensional
Particle-in-Cell simulation code called Large Scale Plasma (LSP). All the
antennas are modeled as magnetic dipoles ($\rho_{ant}=0$) and are assigned a
time varying current density within a finite sized current loop. The VLF
antenna is driven at 10 Amps with a frequency ($\omega_{VLF}$) greater than the
lower hybrid frequency ($\omega_{LH}$), while the ELF antenna is driven at 3
Amps with a frequency ($\omega_{ELF}$) less than $\omega_{LH}$. The combined
ELF/VLF antenna (which we call a parametric antenna) includes both antennas
driven simultaneously in the same simulation domain. We show that the
parametric antenna non-linearly excites electromagnetic (EM) Whistler waves to
a greater extent than the VLF antenna alone. We also show that the parametric
excitation of EM Whistler waves leads to greater emitted EM power (measured in
Watts) compared with a VLF antenna alone.


  In this paper, we provide another angle to analyze the reasons why Alzheimer
Disease exists. We analyze the dynamic mechanism of Alzheimer Disease based on
the cognitive model that established from artificial neural network. We can
provide some theoretic explanations to Alzheimer Disease through the analyzing
of this model.


  The $\phi$-Assouad dimensions are a family of dimensions which interpolate
between the upper box and Assouad dimensions. They are a generalization of the
well-studied Assouad spectrum with a more general form of scale sensitivity
that is often closely related to "phase-transition" phenomena in sets.
  In this article we establish a number of key properties of the $\phi$-Assouad
dimensions which help to clarify their behaviour. We prove for any bounded
doubling metric space $F$ and $\alpha\in\mathbb{R}$ satisfying
$\overline{\operatorname{dim}}_{\mathrm{B}}F<\alpha\leq\operatorname{dim}_{\mathrm{A}}
F$ that there is a function $\phi$ so that the $\phi$-Assouad dimension of $F$
is equal to $\alpha$. We further show that the "upper" variant of the dimension
is fully determined by the $\phi$-Assouad dimension, and that homogeneous Moran
sets are in a certain sense generic for these dimensions.
  Further, we study explicit examples of sets where the Assouad spectrum does
not reach the Assouad dimension. We prove a precise formula for the
$\phi$-Assouad dimensions for Galton--Watson trees that correspond to a general
class of stochastically self-similar sets, including Mandelbrot percolation.
This result follows from two results which may be of general interest: a sharp
large deviations theorem for Galton--Watson processes with bounded offspring
distribution, and a Borel--Cantelli-type lemma for infinite structures in
random trees. Finally, we obtain results on the $\phi$-Assouad dimensions of
overlapping self-similar sets and decreasing sequences with decreasing gaps.


  We examine the surface brightnesses of Saturn's smaller satellites using a
photometric model that explicitly accounts for their elongated shapes and thus
facilitates comparisons among different moons. Analyses of Cassini imaging data
with this model reveals that the moons Aegaeon, Methone and Pallene are darker
than one would expect given trends previously observed among the nearby
mid-sized satellites. On the other hand, the trojan moons Calypso and Helene
have substantially brighter surfaces than their co-orbital companions Tethys
and Dione. These observations are inconsistent with the moons' surface
brightnesses being entirely controlled by the local flux of E-ring particles,
and therefore strongly imply that other phenomena are affecting their surface
properties. The darkness of Aegaeon, Methone and Pallene is correlated with the
fluxes of high-energy protons, implying that high-energy radiation is
responsible for darkening these small moons. Meanwhile, Prometheus and Pandora
appear to be brightened by their interactions with nearby dusty F ring,
implying that enhanced dust fluxes are most likely responsible for Calypso's
and Helene's excess brightness. However, there are no obvious structures in the
E ring that would preferentially brighten these two moons, so there must either
be something subtle in the E-ring particles' orbital properties that leads to
asymmetries in the relevant fluxes, or something happened recently to
temporarily increase these moons' brightnesses.


  Connected teleoperated robotic systems play a key role in ensuring
operational workflows are carried out with high levels of accuracy and low
margins of error. In recent years, a variety of attacks have been proposed that
actively target the robot itself from the cyber domain. However, little
attention has been paid to the capabilities of a passive attacker. In this
work, we investigate whether an insider adversary can accurately fingerprint
robot movements and operational warehousing workflows via the radio frequency
side channel in a stealthy manner. Using an SVM for classification, we found
that an adversary can fingerprint individual robot movements with at least 96%
accuracy, increasing to near perfect accuracy when reconstructing entire
warehousing workflows.


  We present a closed formula, analogous to the Weyl dimension formula, for the
signature of an invariant Hermitian form on any finite-dimensional irreducible
representation of a real reductive Lie group, assuming that such a form exists.
The formula shows in a precise sense that the form must be very indefinite. For
example, if an irreducible representation of $GL(n,R)$ admits an invariant form
of signature $(p,q)$, then we show that $(p-q)^2 \le p+q$. The proof is an
application of Kostant's computation of the kernel of the Dirac operator.


  Strong magnetic fields in the range $ eB\gg m^2_\pi $ effectively probe
internal quark structure of chiral mesons and test basic parameters of chiral
theory, such as $\lan\bar q q\ran, f_\pi$. We argue on general grounds that
$\lan\bar q q\ran$ should grow linearly with $eB$ when charged quark degrees of
freedom come into play. To make explicit estimates we extend previously
formulated chiral theory, including quark degrees of freedom, to the case of
strong magnetic fields and show that the quark condensate $|\lan \bar q
q\ran|_{u,d}$ grows quadratically with $eB$ for $eB\la 0.2$ GeV$^2$ and
linearly for higher field values. These results agree quantitatively with
recent lattice data and differ from $\chi PT$ predictions.


  We demonstrate that the concept of quantum typicality allows for significant
progress in the study of real-time spin dynamics and transport in quantum
magnets. To this end, we present a numerical analysis of the spin-current
autocorrelation function of the antiferromagnetic and anisotropic spin-1/2
Heisenberg chain as inferred from propagating only a single pure state,
randomly chosen as a "typical" representative of the statistical ensemble.
Comparing with existing time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group
(tDMRG) data, we show that typicality is fulfilled extremely well, consistent
with an error of our approach, which is perfectly under control and vanishes in
the thermodynamic limit. In the long-time limit, our results provide for a new
benchmark for the enigmatic spin Drude weight, which we obtain from chains as
long as L=33 sites, i.e., from Hilbert spaces of dimensions almost O(10^4)
larger than in existing exact-diagonalization studies.


  The multifractal theory of turbulence is used to investigate the energy
cascade in the Northwestern Atlantic ocean. The statistics of singularity
exponents of velocity gradients computed from in situ measurements are used to
show that the anomalous scaling of the velocity structure functions at depths
between 50 ad 500 m has a linear dependence on the exponent characterizing the
strongest velocity gradient, with a slope that decreases with depth. Since the
distribution of exponents is asymmetric about the mode at all depths, we use an
infinitely divisible asymmetric model of the energy cascade, the log-Poisson
model, to derive the functional dependence of the anomalous scaling with
dissipation. Using this model we can interpret the vertical change of the
linear slope as a change in the energy cascade.


  The ratios of branching fractions
$\mathcal{R}(D^{*})\equiv\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to
D^{*}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to
D^{*}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})\equiv\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to
D^{0}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to
D^{0}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a
sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb${ }^{-1}$ of
integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The
tau lepton is identified in the decay mode
$\tau^{-}\to\mu^{-}\nu_{\tau}\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$. The measured values are
$\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.281\pm0.018\pm0.024$ and
$\mathcal{R}(D^{0})=0.441\pm0.060\pm0.066$, where the first uncertainty is
statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these
measurements is $\rho=-0.43$. Results are consistent with the current average
of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the
predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.


  Tidal interactions are important in driving spin and orbital evolution in
planetary and stellar binary systems, but the fluid dynamical mechanisms
responsible remain incompletely understood. One key mechanism is the
interaction between tidal flows and convection. Turbulent convection is thought
to act as an effective viscosity in damping large-scale tidal flows, but there
is a long-standing controversy over the efficiency of this mechanism when the
tidal frequency exceeds the turnover frequency of the dominant convective
eddies. This high frequency regime is relevant for many applications, such as
for tides in stars hosting hot Jupiters. We explore the interaction between
tidal flows and convection using hydrodynamical simulations within a local
Cartesian model of a small patch of a convection zone of a star or planet. We
adopt the Boussinesq approximation and simulate Rayleigh-B\'enard convection,
modelling the tidal flow as a background oscillatory shear flow. We demonstrate
that the effective viscosity of both laminar and turbulent convection is
approximately frequency-independent for low frequencies. When the forcing
frequency exceeds the dominant convective frequency, the effective viscosity
scales inversely with the square of the tidal frequency. We also show that
negative effective viscosities are possible, particularly for high frequency
tidal forcing, suggesting the surprising possibility of tidal anti-dissipation.
These results are supported by a complementary high frequency asymptotic
analysis that extends prior work by Ogilvie & Lesur. We discuss the
implications of these results for interpreting the orbital decay of hot
Jupiters, and for several other astrophysical problems.


  We investigate the fate of hardcore bosons in a Harper-Hofstadter model which
was experimentally realized by Aidelsburger et al. [Nature Physics 11 , 162
(2015)] at half filling of the lowest band. We discuss the stability of an
emergent fractional Chern insulator (FCI) state in a finite region of the phase
diagram that is separated from a superfluid state by a first-order transition
when tuning the band topology following the protocol used in the experiment.
Since crossing a first-order transition is unfavorable for adiabatically
preparing the FCI state, we extend the model to stabilize a featureless
insulating state. The transition between this phase and the topological state
proves to be continuous, providing a path in parameter space along which an FCI
state could be adiabatically prepared. To further corroborate this statement,
we perform time-dependent DMRG calculations which demonstrate that the FCI
state may indeed be reached by adiabatically tuning a simple product state.


  In recent years, extensive research has emerged in affective computing on
topics like automatic emotion recognition and determining the signals that
characterize individual emotions. Much less studied, however, is
expressiveness, or the extent to which someone shows any feeling or emotion.
Expressiveness is related to personality and mental health and plays a crucial
role in social interaction. As such, the ability to automatically detect or
predict expressiveness can facilitate significant advancements in areas ranging
from psychiatric care to artificial social intelligence. Motivated by these
potential applications, we present an extension of the BP4D+ dataset with human
ratings of expressiveness and develop methods for (1) automatically predicting
expressiveness from visual data and (2) defining relationships between
interpretable visual signals and expressiveness. In addition, we study the
emotional context in which expressiveness occurs and hypothesize that different
sets of signals are indicative of expressiveness in different contexts (e.g.,
in response to surprise or in response to pain). Analysis of our statistical
models confirms our hypothesis. Consequently, by looking at expressiveness
separately in distinct emotional contexts, our predictive models show
significant improvements over baselines and achieve comparable results to human
performance in terms of correlation with the ground truth.


  It is already known that the automorphism group of a chiral polyhedron is
never isomorphic to $PSL(2,q)$ or $PGL(2,q)$ for any prime power $q$. In this
paper, we show that $PSL(2,q)$ and $PGL(2,q)$ are never automorphism groups of
chiral polytopes of rank at least $5$. Moreover, we show that $PGL(2,q)$ is the
automorphism group of at least one chiral polytope of rank $4$ for every
$q\geq5$. Finally, we determine for which values of $q$ the group $PSL(2,q)$ is
the automorphism group of a chiral polytope of rank $4$, except when
$q=p^d\equiv3\pmod{4}$ where $d>1$ is not a prime power, in which case the
problem remains unsolved.


  Explicit energy-transport equations for the spinorial carrier transport in
ferromagnetic semiconductors are calculated from a general spin
energy-transport system that was derived by Ben Abdallah and El Hajj from a
spinorial Boltzmann equation. The novelty of our approach are the simplifying
assumptions leading to explicit models which extend both spin drift-diffusion
and semiclassical energy-transport equations. The explicit models allow us to
examine the interplay between the spin and charge degrees of freedom. In
particular, the monotonicity of the entropy (or free energy) and gradient
estimates are shown for these models and the existence of weak solutions to a
time-discrete version of one of the models is proved, using novel truncation
arguments. Numerical experiments in one-dimensional multilayer structures using
a finite-volume discretization illustrate the effect of the temperature and the
polarization parameter.


  In this paper we obtain an effective metric describing a regular and rotating
magnetic black hole (BH) solution with a Yang-Mills electromagnetic source in
Einstein-Yang-Mills (EYM) theory using the Newman--Janis algorithm via the
non-complexification radial coordinate procedure. We then study the BH shadow
and the quasinormal modes (QNMs) for massless scalar and electromagnetic fields
and the quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs). To this end, we also study the
embedding diagram for the rotating EYM BH. The energy conditions, shadow
curvature radius, topology and the dynamical evolution of scalar and
electromagnetic perturbations using the time domain integration method are
investigated. We show that the shadow radius decreases by increasing the
magnetic charge, while the real part of QNMs of scalar and electromagnetic
fields increases by increasing the magnetic charge. This result is consistent
with the inverse relation between the shadow radius and the real part of QNMs.
In addition, we have studied observational constraints on the EYM parameter
$\lambda$ via frequency analysis of QPOs and the EHT data of shadow cast by the
M87 central black hole. We also find that the decaying rate of the EYM BH is
slower than that of the neutral and ends up with a tail. We argue that the
rotating EYM black hole can be distinguished from the Kerr-Newman black hole
with a magnetic charge based on the difference between the angular diameters of
their shadows.


  Nonlinear kinetic inductance in a high Q superconducting coplanar waveguide
microresonator can cause a bifurcation of the resonance curve. Near the
critical pumping power and frequency for bifurcation, large parametric gain is
observed for signals in the frequency band near resonance. We show experimental
results on signal and intermodulation gain which are well described by a theory
of the parametric amplification based on a Kerr nonlinearity. Phase dependent
gain, or signal squeezing, is verified with a homodyne detection scheme.


  Wormholes may arise as solutions of extensions of General Relativity without
violation of the energy conditions. Working in a Palatini approach we consider
classical geometries supporting such wormholes. It is shown that the resulting
space-times represent explicit realizations of the concept of geon introduced
by Wheeler, interpreted as self-consistent bodies generated by an
electromagnetic field without sources.


  We analyze high quality, complete stellar catalogs for four young (roughly 1
Myr) and nearby (within ~300 pc) star-forming regions: Taurus, Lupus3, ChaI,
and IC348, which have been previously shown to have stellar groups whose
properties are similar to those of larger clusters such as the ONC. We find
that stars at higher stellar surface densities within a region or belonging to
groups tend to have a relative excess of more massive stars, over a wide range
of masses. We find statistically significant evidence for this result in Taurus
and IC348 as well as the ONC. These differences correspond to having typically
a ~10 - 20% higher mean mass in the more clustered environment. Stars in ChaI
show no evidence for a trend with either surface density or grouped status, and
there are too few stars in Lupus3 to make any definitive interpretation. Models
of clustered star formation do not typically extend to sufficiently low masses
or small group sizes in order for their predictions to be tested but our
results suggest that this regime is important to consider.


  Energy cascade is ubiquitous in systems far from equilibrium. Facilitated by
particle interactions and external forces, it can lead to highly complex
phenomena like fully developed turbulence, characterized by power law velocity
correlation functions. Yet despite decades of research, how these power laws
emerge from first principle remains unclear. Recently, experiments show that
when a Bose condensate is subjected to periodic shaking, its momentum
distribution exhibits a power law behavior. The flexibility of cold atom
experiments has provided new opportunities to explore the emergence of these
power laws, and to disentangle different sources of energy cascade. Here, we
point out that recent experiments in cold atoms imply that classical turbulence
is part of a larger family of scale invariant phenomena that include ideal
gases. Moreover, the property of the entire family is contained in the
structure of its Floquet states. For ideal gases, we show analytically that its
momentum distribution acquires a $1/q^2$ tail in each dimension when it is
shaken periodically.


  Surfaces of planetary bodies can have strong electric fields, subjecting
conductive grains to repulsive electrostatic forces. This has been proposed as
mechanism to eject grains from the ground. To quantify this process, we study
mm-sized basalt aggregates consisting of micrometer constituents exposed to an
electric field in drop tower experiments. The dust aggregates acquire high
charges on sub-second timescales while sticking to the electrodes according to
the field polarity. Charging at the electrodes results in a repulsive (lifting)
force and continues until repulsion overcomes adhesion and particles are
lifted, moving towards the opposite electrode. Some aggregates remain attached,
which is consistent with a maximum charge limit being reached, providing an
electrostatic force too small to counteract adhesion. All observations are in
agreement with a model of moderately conductive grains with a small but varying
number of adhesive contacts to the electrodes. This supports the idea that on
planetary surfaces with atmospheres, electrostatic repulsion can significantly
contribute to airborne dust and sand, i.e. decrease the threshold wind speed
that is required for saltation and increase the particle flux as suggested
before.


  We study magnetic properties of itinerant quantum magnetic particles
described by a generalized Hubbard model with large spin ($S>1/2$) which may be
realized in optical lattices of laser-cooled atom systems. In fermion systems
(half-integer spins), an extended form of Nagaoka ferromagnetism may be
realized. However, as novel aspects of the large spin cases, we found that the
condition on the lattice connectivity is more stringent than in the case of
$S=1/2$ particles, and that the system shows a peculiar degenerate structure of
the ground statein which the ferromagnetic state is included. In contrast, it
turns out that the ground state of itinerant bosonic systems (integer spins)
has a degenerate structure similar to that of fermion system with $S>1/2$
regardless of the shape, connectivity or filling of the lattice, and that the
state with the maximum total spin is always one of the ground states.


  We present new measurements of the free-streaming of warm dark matter (WDM)
from Lyman-$\alpha$ flux-power spectra. We use data from the medium resolution,
intermediate redshift XQ-100 sample observed with the X-shooter spectrograph
($z=3 - 4.2$) and the high-resolution, high-redshift sample used in Viel et al.
(2013) obtained with the HIRES/MIKE spectrographs ($z=4.2 - 5.4$). Based on
further improved modelling of the dependence of the Lyman-$\alpha$ flux-power
spectrum on the free-streaming of dark matter, cosmological parameters, as well
as the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) with hydrodynamical
simulations, we obtain the following limits, expressed as the equivalent mass
of thermal relic WDM particles. The XQ-100 flux power spectrum alone gives a
lower limit of 1.4 keV, the re-analysis of the HIRES/MIKE sample gives 4.1 keV
while the combined analysis gives our best and significantly strengthened lower
limit of 5.3 keV (all 2$\sigma$ C.L.). The further improvement in the joint
analysis is partly due to the fact that the two data sets have different
degeneracies between astrophysical and cosmological parameters that are broken
when the data sets are combined, and more importantly on chosen priors on the
thermal evolution. These results all assume that the temperature evolution of
the IGM can be modelled as a power law in redshift. Allowing for a non-smooth
evolution of the temperature of the IGM with sudden temperature changes of up
to 5000K reduces the lower limit for the combined analysis to 3.5 keV. A WDM
with smaller thermal relic masses would require, however, a sudden temperature
jump of $5000\,K$ or more in the narrow redshift interval $z=4.6-4.8$, in
disagreement with observations of the thermal history based on high-resolution
resolution Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data and expectations for photo-heating and
cooling in the low density IGM at these redshifts.


  Spectrally unentangled biphotons with high single-spatiotemporal-mode purity
are highly desirable for many quantum information processing tasks. We generate
biphotons with an inferred heralded-state spectral purity of 99%, the highest
to date without any spectral filtering, by pulsed spontaneous parametric
downconversion in a custom-fabricated periodically-poled KTiOPO$_4$ crystal
under extended Gaussian phase-matching conditions. To efficiently characterize
the joint spectral intensity of the generated biphotons at high spectral
resolution, we employ a commercially available dispersion compensation module
(DCM) with a dispersion equivalent to 100 km of standard optical fiber and with
an insertion loss of only 2.8 dB. Compared with the typical method of using two
temperature-stabilized equal-length fibers that incurs an insertion loss of 20
dB per fiber, the DCM approach achieves high spectral resolution in a much
shorter measurement time. Because the dispersion amount and center wavelengths
of DCMs can be easily customized, spectral characterization in a wide range of
quantum photonic applications should benefit significantly from this technique.


  As generalizations of the fermion seniority model, four multi-mode
Hamiltonians are considered to investigate some of the consequences of the
pairing of parafermions of order two. 2-particle and 4-particle states are
explicitly constructed for H_A = - G A^+ A with A^+}= 1/2 Sum c_{m}^+ c_{-m}^+
and the distinct H_C = - G C^+ C with C^+}= 1/2 Sum c_{-m}^+ c_{m}^+, and for
the time-reversal invariant H_(-)= -G (A^+ - C^+)(A-C) and H_(+) = -G
(A^+dagger + C^+)(A+C), which has no analogue in the fermion case. The spectra
and degeneracies are compared with those of the usual fermion seniority model.


  We say that a graph $F$ strongly arrows a pair of graphs $(G,H)$ if any
2-colouring of its edges with red and blue leads to either a red $G$ or a blue
$H$ appearing as induced subgraphs of $F$. The induced Ramsey number, $IR(G,H)$
is defined as the minimum number of vertices of a graph $F$ which strongly
arrows a pair $(G,H)$. We will consider two aspects of induced Ramsey numbers.
Firstly there will be shown that the lower bound of the induced Ramsey number
for a connected graph $G$ with independence number $\alpha$ and a graph $H$
with clique number $\omega$ roughly $\frac{\omega^2\alpha}{2}$. This bounds is
sharp. Moreover we discuss also the case when $G$ is not connected providing
also a sharp lower bound which is linear in both parameters


  The conditional displacement (CD) gate between an oscillator and a
discrete-variable ancilla plays a key role in quantum information processing
tasks, such as enabling universal control of the oscillator and longitudinal
readout of the qubit. However, the gate is unprotected against the propagation
of ancilla decay errors and hence not fault-tolerant. Here, we propose a CD
gate scheme with fluxonium as the ancilla, which has been experimentally
demonstrated to have a large noise bias and millisecond-level lifetimes. The
proposed gate is applied cross-resonantly by modulating the external flux of
the fluxonium at the frequency of the target oscillator, which requires minimal
hardware overhead and does not increase sensitivity to decoherence mechanisms
like dephasing. We further provide a perturbative description of the gate
mechanism and identify the error budget. Additionally, we develop an
approximate procedure for choosing device and gate parameters that optimizes
gate performance. Following the procedure for multiple sets of fluxonium
parameters from the literature, we numerically demonstrate CD gates with
unitary fidelity exceeding 99.9% and gate times of hundreds of nanoseconds.


  The aim of this paper is to present the global estimate for gradient of
renormalized solutions to the following quasilinear elliptic problem:
\begin{align*} \begin{cases} -div(A(x,\nabla u)) &= \mu \quad \text{in} \ \
\Omega, \\ u &=0 \quad \text{on} \ \ \partial \Omega, \end{cases} \end{align*}
in Lorentz-Morrey spaces, where $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ ($n \ge 2$),
$\mu$ is a finite Radon measure, $A$ is a monotone Carath\'eodory vector valued
function defined on $W^{1,p}_0(\Omega)$ and the $p$-capacity uniform thickness
condition is imposed on the complement of our domain $\Omega$. It is remarkable
that the local gradient estimates has been proved firstly by G. Mingione in
\cite{Mi3} at least for the case $2 \le p \le n$, where the idea for extending
such result to global ones was also proposed in the same paper. Later, the
global Lorentz-Morrey and Morrey regularities were obtained by N.C.Phuc in
\cite{55Ph1} for regular case $p>2 - \frac{1}{n}$. Here in this study, we
particularly restrict ourselves to the singular case $\frac{3n-2}{2n-1}<p\le
2-\frac{1}{n}$. The results are central to generalize our technique of
good-$\lambda$ type bounds in previous work \cite{MP2018}, where the local
gradient estimates of solution to this type of equation was obtained in the
Lorentz spaces. Moreover, the proofs of most results in this paper are
formulated globally up to the boundary results.


  First results of a numerical investigation of primordial black hole formation
in the radiation dominated phase of the Early Universe are presented. The
simulations follow the gravitational collapse of three different families of
high-amplitude density fluctuations imposed at the time of horizon crossing.
The threshold for black hole formation, \delta_{c} \approx 0.7, is found to be
nearly identical for all perturbation families if the control parameter,
\delta, is chosen as the total excess mass within the initial horizon volume.
Furthermore, we demonstrate that the scaling of black hole mass with distance
from the formation threshold, known to occur in near-critical gravitational
collapse, applies to primordial black hole formation.


  Modal analysis is the process of estimating a system's modal parameters such
as its natural frequencies and mode shapes. One application of modal analysis
is in structural health monitoring (SHM), where a network of sensors may be
used to collect vibration data from a physical structure such as a building or
bridge. There is a growing interest in developing automated techniques for SHM
based on data collected in a wireless sensor network. In order to conserve
power and extend battery life, however, it is desirable to minimize the amount
of data that must be collected and transmitted in such a sensor network. In
this paper, we highlight the fact that modal analysis can be formulated as an
atomic norm minimization (ANM) problem, which can be solved efficiently and in
some cases recover perfectly a structure's mode shapes and frequencies. We
survey a broad class of sampling and compression strategies that one might
consider in a physical sensor network, and we provide bounds on the sample
complexity of these compressive schemes in order to recover a structure's mode
shapes and frequencies via ANM. A main contribution of our paper is to
establish a bound on the sample complexity of modal analysis with random
temporal compression, and in this scenario we prove that the samples per sensor
can actually decrease as the number of sensors increases. We also extend an
atomic norm denoising problem to the multiple measurement vector (MMV) setting
in the case of uniform sampling.


  Interfaces dominate heat conduction in nanostructured systems, and much work
has focused on methods to enhance interfacial conduction. These approaches
generally address planar interfaces, where the heat flux vector is everywhere
normal to the interface. Here, we explore a nanostructured interface geometry
that uses nonplanar features to enhance the effective interfacial conductance
beyond what is possible with planar interfaces. This interface consists of
interdigitating Al pillars embedded within SiO2 with characteristic feature
size ranging from 100 nm to 800 nm. The total sidewall surface area is
modulated to highlight the impact of this additional channel by changing the
pillar-to-pillar pitch L_P between 1.6 um and 200 nm while maintaining the same
Al:SiO2 fill fraction. Using optical pump-probe thermoreflectance measurements,
we show that the effective conductance of a ~65 nm thick fin layer
monotonically increases with decreasing L_P, and that the conductance for L_P =
200 nm is more than twice the prediction for a layered stack with the same
volume ratio and a planar interface. Through a combination of Boltzmann
transport modeling and finite element calculations, we explore the impact of
the pitch L_P and the pillar aspect ratio on effective thermal conductance.
This analysis suggests that the concept of nanostructured interfaces can be
extended to interfaces between diffusive and quasi-ballistic media in highly
scaled devices. Our work proposes that the controlled texturing of interfaces
can facilitate interfacial conduction beyond the planar interface regime,
opening new avenues for thermal management at the nanoscale.


  Any four-dimensional $\mathcal{N} \geqslant 2$ superconformal field theory
possess a protected subsector isomorphic to a two-dimensional chiral algebra
\cite{Beem:2013sza}. The goal of these lectures is to provide an introduction
to the subject, covering the construction of the chiral algebras, the
consequences for four-dimensional physics, as well as a brief summary of recent
progress. This is the writeup of the lectures given at the Winter School "YRISW
2020" to appear in a special issue of JPhysA.


  We consider realistic satellite communications systems for broadband and
broadcasting applications, based on frequency-division-multiplexed linear
modulations, where spectral efficiency is one of the main figures of merit. For
these systems, we investigate their ultimate performance limits by using a
framework to compute the spectral efficiency when suboptimal receivers are
adopted and evaluating the performance improvements that can be obtained
through the adoption of the time-frequency packing technique. Our analysis
reveals that introducing controlled interference can significantly increase the
efficiency of these systems. Moreover, if a receiver which is able to account
for the interference and the nonlinear impairments is adopted, rather than a
classical predistorter at the transmitter coupled with a simpler receiver, the
benefits in terms of spectral efficiency can be even larger. Finally, we
consider practical coded schemes and show the potential advantages of the
optimized signaling formats when combined with iterative detection/decoding.


  Different network structures are compiared with respect to degree of
robustnes of identification statistical procedures. It is shown that threshold
(market) graph, cliques and independent sets in the threshold (market) graphs
are preferable network structure from this point of view.