  We present new full-sky temperature maps in five frequency bands from 23 to
94 GHz, based on the first three years of the WMAP sky survey. The new maps,
which are consistent with the first-year maps and more sensitive, incorporate
improvements in data processing made possible by the additional years of data
and by a more complete analysis of the polarization signal. These include
refinements in the gain calibration and beam response models. We employ two
forms of multi-frequency analysis to separate astrophysical foreground signals
from the CMB, each of which improves on our first-year analyses. First, we form
an improved 'Internal Linear Combination' map, based solely on WMAP data, by
adding a bias correction step and by quantifying residual uncertainties in the
resulting map. Second, we fit and subtract new spatial templates that trace
Galactic emission; in particular, we now use low-frequency WMAP data to trace
synchrotron emission. The WMAP point source catalog is updated to include 115
new sources. We derive the angular power spectrum of the temperature anisotropy
using a hybrid approach that combines a maximum likelihood estimate at low l
(large angular scales) with a quadratic cross-power estimate for l>30. Our best
estimate of the CMB power spectrum is derived by averaging cross-power spectra
from 153 statistically independent channel pairs. The combined spectrum is
cosmic variance limited to l=400, and the signal-to-noise ratio per l-mode
exceeds unity up to l=850. The first two acoustic peaks are seen at l=220.8 +-
0.7 and l=530.9 +- 3.8, respectively, while the first two troughs are seen at
l=412.4 +- 1.9 and l=675.1 +- 11.1, respectively. The rise to the third peak is
unambiguous; when the WMAP data are combined with higher resolution CMB
measurements, the existence of a third acoustic peak is well established.


  A comparative study between Choline and Tetra-methyl ammonium bromide is
presented here. Choline which is a crucial component for our dietary
requirements causes many diseases if there is deficiency. We used combined
approach of all-atom molecular dynamics simulation coupled with neutron
scattering technique to study mainly the solvent behavior in this study. There
is follow up work where we discussed about the solute dynamical behavior.


  We demonstrate the strong coupling of both magnons and phonons to terahertz
(THz) frequency electromagnetic (EM) waves confined to a photonic crystal (PhC)
cavity. Our cavity consists of a two-dimensional array of air-holes cut into a
hybrid slab of ferroelectric lithium niobate (LiNbO$_3$) and erbium
orthoferrite (ErFeO$_3$), a canted antiferromagnetic crystal. The phonons in
LiNbO$_3$ and the magnons in ErFeO$_3$ are strongly coupled to the electric and
magnetic field components of the confined EM wave, respectively. This leads to
the formation of new cavity magnon-phonon-polariton modes, which we
experimentally observe as a normal-mode splitting in the frequency spectrum and
an avoided crossing in the temperature-frequency plot. The cavity also has a
mode volume of $V=3.4\times10^{-3}\lambda^3\simeq0.5(\lambda/n)^3$ $\mu$m$^3$
and can achieve a Q-factor as high as 1000. These factors facilitate the
pursuit of the fields of THz cavity spintronics and quantum electrodynamics.


  Pairwise compatibility graphs (PCGs) with non-negative integer edge weights
recently have been used to describe rare evolutionary events and scenarios with
horizontal gene transfer. Here we consider the case that vertices are separated
by exactly two discrete events: Given a tree $T$ with leaf set $L$ and
edge-weights $\lambda: E(T)\to\mathbb{N}_0$, the non-negative integer pairwise
compatibility graph $\textrm{nniPCG}(T,\lambda,2,2)$ has vertex set $L$ and
$xy$ is an edge whenever the sum of the non-negative integer weights along the
unique path from $x$ to $y$ in $T$ equals $2$. A graph $G$ has a representation
as $\textrm{nniPCG}(T,\lambda,2,2)$ if and only if its point-determining
quotient $G/\!\rthin$ is a block graph, where two vertices are in relation
$\rthin$ if they have the same neighborhood in $G$. If $G$ is of this type, a
labeled tree $(T,\lambda)$ explaining $G$ can be constructed efficiently. In
addition, we consider an oriented version of this class of graphs.


  We investigate the effect on the U, B, V, Rc and Rj magnitudes of the removal
of emission lines from a spectrum. We determined "Dm" corrections from the
ratio of fluxes with and without emission lines, transmitted from the object
through the photometric filter. An exact and a simplified approach for
operative use were applied. The effect was demonstrated for classical symbiotic
stars, symbiotic novae and the classical nova V1974 Cyg. It was found that
about 20-30, 30-40, 10 and 26/20 percents of the observed flux in the U, B, V
and Rc/Rj filter, respectively, is radiated in the emission lines of the
investigated classical symbiotic stars. The largest effect was found for
symbiotic novae (RR Tel and V1016 Cyg) and the classical nova V1974 Cyg at 210
days (in average of 74, 79, 56 and 66/60 percents). Examples for practical
application are suggested.


  Integration of data from multiple omics techniques is becoming increasingly
important in biomedical research. Due to non-uniformity and technical
limitations in omics platforms, such integrative analyses on multiple omics,
which we refer to as views, involve learning from incomplete observations with
various view-missing patterns. This is challenging because i) complex
interactions within and across observed views need to be properly addressed for
optimal predictive power and ii) observations with various view-missing
patterns need to be flexibly integrated. To address such challenges, we propose
a deep variational information bottleneck (IB) approach for incomplete
multi-view observations. Our method applies the IB framework on marginal and
joint representations of the observed views to focus on intra-view and
inter-view interactions that are relevant for the target. Most importantly, by
modeling the joint representations as a product of marginal representations, we
can efficiently learn from observed views with various view-missing patterns.
Experiments on real-world datasets show that our method consistently achieves
gain from data integration and outperforms state-of-the-art benchmarks.


  The detailed study of the Higgs boson is one of the main tasks of
contemporary particle physics. Gluon fusion, the main production channel of
Higgs bosons at the LHC, has been successfully modelled in QCD up to
$\text{N}^3\text{LO}$. To fully exploit this unprecedented theoretical effort,
sub-leading contributions, such as electroweak corrections, must be
investigated. I will present the analytic calculations of the gluon- and
quark-induced Higgs plus jet amplitudes in mixed QCD-electroweak corrections
mediated by light quarks up to order $v \alpha^2 \alpha_S^{3/2}$.


  We use the isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background to place stringent
constraints on a possible electrical charge asymmetry of the universe. We find
the excess charge per baryon to be $q_{e-p}<10^{-26}e$ in the case of a uniform
distribution of charge, where $e$ is the charge of the electron. If the charge
asymmetry is inhomogeneous, the constraints will depend on the spectral index,
$n$, of the induced magnetic field and range from $q_{e-p}<5\times 10^{-20}e$
($n=-2$) to $q_{e-p}<2\times 10^{-26}e$ ($n\geq 2$). If one could further
assume that the charge asymmetries of individual particle species are not
anti-correlated so as to cancel, this would imply, for photons, $q_\gamma<
10^{-35}e$; for neutrinos, $q_\nu<4\times10^{-35}e$; and for heavy (light) dark
matter particles $q_{\rm dm}<4\times10^{-24}e$ ($q_{\rm dm}<4\times10^{-30}e$).


  A droplet that impacts onto a solid substrate deforms in a complex dynamics.
To extract the principal mechanisms that dominate this dynamics we deploy
numerical simulations based on the phase field method. Direct comparison with
experiments suggests that a dissipation local to the contact line limits the
droplet spreading dynamics and its scaled maximum spreading radius
$\beta_\mathrm{max}$. By assuming linear response through a drag force at the
contact line, our simulations rationalize experimental observations for droplet
impact on both smooth and rough substrates, measured through a single contact
line friction parameter $\mu_f$. Moreover, our analysis shows that at low and
intermediate impact speeds dissipation at the contact line limits the dynamics
and we describe $\beta_\mathrm{max}$ by the scaling law $\beta_\mathrm{max}
\sim (Re \mu_\mathrm{l}/\mu_f)^{1/2}$ that is a function of the droplet
viscosity ($\mu_\mathrm{l}$) and its Reynolds number ($Re$).


  Molecular line CN, CS and mm continuum observations of two intermediate- to
high-mass star-forming regions - IRAS20293+3952 and IRAS19410+2336 - obtained
with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer at high spatial resolution reveal
interesting characteristics of the gas and dust emission. In spite of the
expectation that the CN and CS morphology might closely follow the dense gas
traced by the dust continuum, both molecules avoid the most central cores.
Comparing the relative line strengths of various CN hyperfine components, this
appears not to be an opacity effect but to be due to chemical and physical
effects. The CN data also indicate enhanced emission toward the different
molecular outflows in the region. Regarding CS, avoiding the central cores can
be due to high optical depth, but the data also show that the CS emission is
nearly always associated with the outflows of the region. Therefore, neither CS
nor CN appear well suited for dense gas and disk studies in these two sources,
and we recommend the use of different molecules for future massive disk
studies. An analysis of the 1 and 3mm continuum fluxes toward IRAS20293+3952
reveals that the dust opacity index beta is lower than the canonical value of
2. Tentatively, we identify a decreasing gradient of beta from the edge of the
core to the core center. This could be due to increasing optical depth toward
the core center and/or grain growth within the densest cores and potential
central disks. We detect 3mm continuum emission toward the collimated outflow
emanating from IRAS20293+3952. The spectral index of alpha ~ 0.8 in this region
is consistent with standard models for collimated ionized winds.


  This paper describes the process of developing a standstill performance work
using the Myo gesture control armband and the Bela embedded computing platform.
The combination of Myo and Bela allows a portable and extensible version of the
standstill performance concept while introducing muscle tension as an
additional control parameter. We describe the technical details of our setup
and introduce Myo-to-Bela and Myo-to-OSC software bridges that assist with
prototyping compositions using the Myo controller.


  Carotid vessel wall segmentation is a crucial yet challenging task in the
computer-aided diagnosis of atherosclerosis. Although numerous deep learning
models have achieved remarkable success in many medical image segmentation
tasks, accurate segmentation of carotid vessel wall on magnetic resonance (MR)
images remains challenging, due to limited annotations and heterogeneous
arteries. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised label propagation
framework to segment lumen, normal vessel walls, and atherosclerotic vessel
wall on 3D MR images. By interpolating the provided annotations, we get 3D
continuous labels for training 3D segmentation model. With the trained model,
we generate pseudo labels for unlabeled slices to incorporate them for model
training. Then we use the whole MR scans and the propagated labels to re-train
the segmentation model and improve its robustness. We evaluated the label
propagation framework on the CarOtid vessel wall SegMentation and
atherosclerOsis diagnosiS (COSMOS) Challenge dataset and achieved a QuanM score
of 83.41\% on the testing dataset, which got the 1-st place on the online
evaluation leaderboard. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the
proposed framework.


  We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for a
number of centimetre wavelength methanol transitions which are predicted to
show weak maser emission towards star formation regions. Sensitive, high
spatial and spectral resolution observations towards four high-mass star
formation regions which show emission in a large number of class II methanol
maser transitions did not result in any detections. From these observations we
are able to place an upper limit of <~1300K on the brightness temperature of
any emission from the $3_1$A$^+$-$3_1$A$^-$, $17_{-2}$-$18_{-3}$E ($v_t=1$),
$12_4$-$13_3$A$^-$, $12_4$-$13_3$A$^+$ and $4_1$A$^+$-$4_1$A$^-$ transitions of
methanol in these sources on angular scales of 2 arcseconds. This upper limit
is consistent with current models for class II methanol masers in high-mass
star formation regions and better constraints than those provided here will
likely require observations with next-generation radio telescopes.


  A class of scattered linearized polynomials covering infinitely many field
extensions is exhibited. More precisely, the $q$-polynomial over $\mathbb
F_{q^6}$, $q \equiv 1\pmod 4$ described in arXiv:1906.05611, arXiv:1910.02278
is generalized for any even $n\ge6$ to an $\mathbb F_q$-linear automorphism
$\psi(x)$ of $\mathbb F_q^n$ of order $n$. Such $\psi(x)$ and some functional
powers of it are proved to be scattered. In particular this provides new
maximum scattered linear sets of the projective line $\mathrm{PG}(1,q^n)$ for
$n=8,10$. The polynomials described in this paper lead to a new infinite family
of MRD-codes in $\mathbb F_q^{n\times n}$ with minimum distance $n-1$ for any
odd $q$ if $n\equiv0\pmod4$ and any $q\equiv1\pmod4$ if $n\equiv2\pmod4$.


  A relativistic version of the effective charge model for computation of
observable characteristics of multi-electron atoms and ions is developed. A
complete and orthogonal Dirac hydrogen basis set, depending on one parameter --
effective nuclear charge $Z^{*}$ -- identical for all single-electron wave
functions of a given atom or ion, is employed for the construction of the
secondary-quantized representation. The effective charge is uniquely determined
by the charge of the nucleus and a set of electron occupation numbers for a
given state. We thoroughly study the accuracy of the leading-order
approximation for the total binding energy and demonstrate that it is
independent of the number of electrons of a multi-electron atom. In addition,
it is shown that the fully analytical leading-order approximation is especially
suited for the description of highly charged ions since our wave functions are
almost coincident with the Dirac-Hartree-Fock ones for the complete spectrum.
Finally, we evaluate various atomic characteristics, such as scattering factors
and photoionization cross-sections, and thus envisage that the effective charge
model can replace other models of comparable complexity, such as the
Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model for all applications where it is still utilized.


  The interaction of an electron with a polar molecule is shown to be the
simplest realization of a quantum anomaly in a physical system. The existence
of a critical dipole moment for electron capture and formation of anions, which
has been confirmed experimentally and numerically, is derived. This phenomenon
is a manifestation of the anomaly associated with quantum symmetry breaking of
the classical scale invariance exhibited by the point-dipole interaction.
Finally, analysis of symmetry breaking for this system is implemented within
two different models: point dipole subject to an anomaly and finite dipole
subject to explicit symmetry breaking.


  An enforcement mechanism monitors a reactive system for undesired behavior at
runtime and corrects the system's output in case it violates the given
specification. In this paper, we study the enforcement problem for
hyperproperties, i.e., properties that relate multiple computation traces to
each other. We elaborate the notion of sound and transparent enforcement
mechanisms for hyperproperties in two trace input models: 1) the parallel trace
input model, where the number of traces is known a-priori and all traces are
produced and processed in parallel and 2) the sequential trace input model,
where traces are processed sequentially and no a-priori bound on the number of
traces is known. For both models, we study enforcement algorithms for
specifications given as formulas in universally quantified HyperLTL, a temporal
logic for hyperproperties. For the parallel model, we describe an enforcement
mechanism based on parity games. For the sequential model, we show that
enforcement is in general undecidable and present algorithms for reasonable
simplifications of the problem (partial guarantees or the restriction to safety
properties). Furthermore, we report on experimental results of our prototype
implementation for the parallel model.


  We find 95% confidence level limits on the anomalous coupling parameters
$a_0$, $a_c$ and $a_n$ with an integrated luminosity of $500fb^{-1}$ and $\sqrt
s =0.5, 1$ and 1.5 TeV energies. We take into account incoming beam
polarizations and also the final state polarizations of the gauge bosons in the
cross-section calculations to improve the bounds. We show that polarization
leads to a significant amount of improvement in the sensitivity limits.


  Motivated by the concept of ``location uncertainty", initially introduced in
\cite{Memin2013FluidFD}, a scheme is sought to perturb the ``location" of a
state variable at every forecast time step. Further considering Brenier's
theorem \cite{Brenier1991}, asserting that the difference of two positive
density fields on the same domain can be represented by a transportation map,
perturbations are demonstrated to consistently define a SPDE from the original
PDE. It ensues that certain quantities, up to the user, are conserved at every
time step. Remarkably, derivations following both the SALT
\cite{Holm2015VariationalPF} and LU \cite{Memin2013FluidFD,
Resseguier2016GeophysicalFU} settings, can be recovered from this perturbation
scheme. Still, it opens broader applicability since it does not explicitly rely
on Lagrangian mechanics or Newton's laws of force. For illustration, a
stochastic version of the thermal shallow water equation is presented.


  Non-resonant inelastic x ray scattering (NIXS) experiments have been
performed to probe the 5d-5f electronic transitions at the uranium O(4,5)
absorption edges in uranium dioxide. For small values of the scattering vector
q, the spectra are dominated by dipole-allowed transitions encapsulated within
the giant resonance, whereas for higher values of q the multipolar transitions
of rank 3 and 5 give rise to strong and well-defined multiplet structure in the
pre-edge region. The origin of the observed non-dipole multiplet structures is
explained on the basis of many-electron atomic spectral calculations. The
results obtained demonstrate the high potential of NIXS as a bulk-sensitive
technique for the characterization of the electronic properties of actinide
materials.


  Often, we assume that an action is permitted simply because it is not
explicitly forbidden; or, similarly, that an action is forbidden simply because
it is not explicitly permitted. This kind of assumptions appear, e.g., in
autonomous computing systems where decisions must be taken in the presence of
an incomplete set of norms regulating a particular scenario. Combining default
and deontic reasoning over actions allows us to formally reason about such
assumptions. With this in mind, we propose a logical formalism for default
reasoning over a deontic action logic. The novelty of our approach is twofold.
First, our formalism for default reasoning deals with actions and action
operators, and it is based on the deontic action logic originally proposed by
Segerberg. Second, inspired by Segerberg's approach, we use tools coming from
the theory of Boolean Algebra. These tools allow us to extend Segerberg's
algebraic completeness result to the setting of Default Logics.


  Benchmarking the performance of information retrieval (IR) methods are mostly
conducted with a fixed set of documents (static corpora); in realistic
scenarios, this is rarely the case and the document to be retrieved are
constantly updated and added. In this paper, we focus on conducting a
comprehensive comparison between two categories of contemporary retrieval
systems, Dual Encoders (DE) and Generative Retrievals (GR), in a dynamic
scenario where the corpora to be retrieved is updated. We also conduct an
extensive evaluation of computational and memory efficiency, crucial factors
for IR systems for real-world deployment. Our results demonstrate that GR is
more adaptable to evolving knowledge (+13-18% on the StreamingQA Benchmark),
robust in handling data with temporal information (x 10 times), and efficient
in terms of memory (x 4 times), indexing time (x 6 times), and inference flops
(x 10 times). Our paper highlights GR's potential for future use in practical
IR systems.


  We demonstrate separability of the Maxwell's equations in the
Myers-Perry-(A)dS geometry and derive explicit solutions for various
polarizations. Application of our construction to the four-dimensional Kerr
black hole leads to a new ansatz for the Maxwell field which has significant
advantages over the previously known parameterization.


  The transmission through contacts among MSM (men who have sex with men) is
one of the dominating contributors to HIV prevalence in industrialized
countries. In Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, the MSM risk group has
been traced for decades. This has motivated studies which provide detailed
information about MSM's risk behavior statistically, psychologically and
sociologically. Despite the era of potent antiretroviral therapy, the incidence
of HIV among MSM increases. In the long term the contradictory effects of risk
behavior and effective therapy are still poorly understood. Using a previously
presented Complex Agent Network model, we describe steady and casual
partnerships to predict the HIV spreading among MSM. Behavior-related
parameters and values, inferred from studies on Amsterdam MSM, are fed into the
model; we validate the model using historical yearly incidence data.
Subsequently, we study scenarios to assess the contradictory effects of risk
behavior and effective therapy, by varying corresponding values of parameters.
Finally, we conduct quantitative analysis based on the resulting incidence
data. The simulated incidence reproduces the ACS historical incidence well and
helps to predict the HIV epidemic among MSM in Amsterdam. Our results show that
in the long run the positive influence of effective therapy can be outweighed
by an increase in risk behavior of at least 30% for MSM. Conclusion: We
recommend, based on the model predictions, that lowering risk behavior is the
prominent control mechanism of HIV incidence even in the presence of effective
therapy.


  Panoptic segmentation presents a new challenge in exploiting the merits of
both detection and segmentation, with the aim of unifying instance segmentation
and semantic segmentation in a single framework. However, an efficient solution
for panoptic segmentation in the emerging domain of LiDAR point cloud is still
an open research problem and is very much under-explored. In this paper, we
present a fast and robust LiDAR point cloud panoptic segmentation framework,
referred to as Panoptic-PolarNet. We learn both semantic segmentation and
class-agnostic instance clustering in a single inference network using a polar
Bird's Eye View (BEV) representation, enabling us to circumvent the issue of
occlusion among instances in urban street scenes. To improve our network's
learnability, we also propose an adapted instance augmentation technique and a
novel adversarial point cloud pruning method. Our experiments show that
Panoptic-PolarNet outperforms the baseline methods on SemanticKITTI and
nuScenes datasets with an almost real-time inference speed. Panoptic-PolarNet
achieved 54.1% PQ in the public SemanticKITTI panoptic segmentation leaderboard
and leading performance for the validation set of nuScenes.


  Positive and negative relations play an essential role in human behavior and
shape the communities we live in. Despite their importance, data about signed
relations is rare and commonly gathered through surveys. Interaction data is
more abundant, for instance, in the form of proximity or communication data. So
far, though, it could not be utilized to detect signed relations. In this
paper, we show how the underlying signed relations can be extracted with such
data. Employing a statistical network approach, we construct networks of signed
relations in four communities. We then show that these relations correspond to
the ones reported in surveys. Additionally, the inferred relations allow us to
study the homophily of individuals with respect to gender, religious beliefs,
and financial backgrounds. We evaluate the importance of triads in the signed
network to study group cohesion.


  In this paper, we propose standard statistical tools as a solution to
commonly highlighted problems in the explainability literature. Indeed,
leveraging statistical estimators allows for a proper definition of
explanations, enabling theoretical guarantees and the formulation of evaluation
metrics to quantitatively assess the quality of explanations. This approach
circumvents, among other things, the subjective human assessment currently
prevalent in the literature. Moreover, we argue that uncertainty quantification
is essential for providing robust and trustworthy explanations, and it can be
achieved in this framework through classical statistical procedures such as the
bootstrap. However, it is crucial to note that while Statistics offers valuable
contributions, it is not a panacea for resolving all the challenges. Future
research avenues could focus on open problems, such as defining a purpose for
the explanations or establishing a statistical framework for counterfactual or
adversarial scenarios.


  We prove a regularity result for unit volume conformal metrics with integral
scalar curvature bounds for $p>n/2$ and first eigenvalue of $\Delta$ bounded
from below by a constant $B > \Lambda_1(S^n,[g_{st.}]).$


  We aim to perform sound event localization and detection (SELD) using
wearable equipment for a moving human, such as a pedestrian. Conventional SELD
tasks have dealt only with microphone arrays located in static positions.
However, self-motion with three rotational and three translational degrees of
freedom (6DoF) shall be considered for wearable microphone arrays. A system
trained only with a dataset using microphone arrays in a fixed position would
be unable to adapt to the fast relative motion of sound events associated with
self-motion, resulting in the degradation of SELD performance. To address this,
we designed 6DoF SELD Dataset for wearable systems, the first SELD dataset
considering the self-motion of microphones. Furthermore, we proposed a
multi-modal SELD system that jointly utilizes audio and motion tracking sensor
signals. These sensor signals are expected to help the system find useful
acoustic cues for SELD on the basis of the current self-motion state.
Experimental results on our dataset show that the proposed method effectively
improves SELD performance with a mechanism to extract acoustic features
conditioned by sensor signals.


  In the line of previous work by Naor, we establish new forms of metric
$\mathrm{X}_p$ inequalities in group algebras under very general assumptions.
Our results' applicability goes beyond the previously known setting in two
directions. In first place, we find continuous forms of the $\mathrm{X}_p$
inequality in the $n$-dimensional torus. Second, we consider transferred forms
of the sharp scalar valued metric $\mathrm{X}_p$ inequality in the von Neumann
algebra $\mathcal{L}(\mathrm{G})$ of a discrete group $\mathrm{G}$. As a
byproduct of our results, some metric consequences and their relation with
bi-Lipschitz nonembeddability of Banach spaces are explored in the context of
noncommutative $L_p$ spaces.


  The query model offers a concrete setting where quantum algorithms are
provably superior to randomized algorithms. Beautiful results by
Bernstein-Vazirani, Simon, Aaronson, and others presented partial Boolean
functions that can be computed by quantum algorithms making much fewer queries
compared to their randomized analogs. To date, separations of $O(1)$ vs.
$\sqrt{N}$ between quantum and randomized query complexities remain the
state-of-the-art (where $N$ is the input length), leaving open the question of
whether $O(1)$ vs. $N^{1/2+\Omega(1)}$ separations are possible? We answer this
question in the affirmative. Our separating problem is a variant of the
Aaronson-Ambainis $k$-fold Forrelation problem. We show that our variant:
  (1) Can be solved by a quantum algorithm making $2^{O(k)}$ queries to the
inputs.
  (2) Requires at least $\tilde{\Omega}(N^{2(k-1)/(3k-1)})$ queries for any
randomized algorithm.
  For any constant $\varepsilon>0$, this gives a $O(1)$ vs.
$N^{2/3-\varepsilon}$ separation between the quantum and randomized query
complexities of partial Boolean functions. Our proof is Fourier analytical and
uses new bounds on the Fourier spectrum of classical decision trees, which
could be of independent interest. Looking forward, we conjecture that the
Fourier bounds could be further improved in a precise manner, and show that
such conjectured bounds imply optimal $O(1)$ vs. $N^{1-\varepsilon}$
separations between the quantum and randomized query complexities of partial
Boolean functions.


  In this paper, a viscous shock wave under space-periodic perturbation of
generalized Korteweg-de Vries-Burgers equation is investigated. It is shown
that if the initial periodic perturbation around the viscous shock wave is
small, then the solution time asymptotically tends to a viscous shock wave with
a shift partially determined by the periodic oscillations. Moreover the
exponential time decay rate toward the viscous shock wave is also obtained for
some certain perturbations.


  We present theoretical predictions for photometric and spectroscopic
signatures of rings around transiting extrasolar planets. On the basis of a
general formulation for the transiting signature in the stellar light curve and
the velocity anomaly due to the Rossiter effect, we compute the expected
signals analytically for a face-on ring system, and numerically for more
general configurations. We study the detectability of a ring around a
transiting planet located at a=3AU for a variety of obliquity and azimuthal
angles, and find that it is possible to detect the ring signature both
photometrically and spectroscopically unless the ring is almost edge-on (i.e.,
the obliquity angle of the ring \theta is much less than unity). We also
consider the detectability of planetary rings around a close-in planet, HD
209458b ($\theta\approx 90^\circ-i_{\rm orbit} \approx 3^\circ.32$), and Saturn
($\theta \approx 26^\circ.7$) as illustrative examples. While the former is
difficult to detect with the current precision (photometric precision of 10^-4
and radial velocity precision of 1 m/s), a marginal detection of the latter is
possible photometrically. If the future precision of the radial velocity
measurement reaches even below 0.1 m/s, they will be even detectable from the
ground-based spectroscopic observations.


  An algorithm for representing irregular satellite data obtained from advanced
synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) uniformly in space and time is introduced and
comparison with WAVEWATCH III model (WW3) data is carried out. Swell global
data for 2007 are analysed using statistical parameters such as bias and
scattering index. Satellite data showed a great spatial uniformity compared
with WW3 model. Results show underestimation of swell height by the model in
the tropics and at specific higher latitude regions.


  The vorticity random field of turbulent flow is singled out as the main
dynamical variable for the description of turbulence, and the evolution
equation of the probability density function (PDF) of the vorticity field has
been obtained. This PDF evolution equation is a mixed type partial differential
equation (PDE) of second order which depends only on the conditional mean
(first order) of the underlying turbulent flow, which is in contrast with
Reynolds' mean flow equation which relies on a quadratic statistics. Therefore
the new PDF PDE may provide new closure scheme based on the conditional linear
statistics, and some of them will be described in the present paper too.


  Electric coupling between subcells of a monolithically grown multijunction
solar cell in short circuit allows their simultaneous and independent
characterization by means of photo- and electroreflectance. The photovoltage
generated by selective absorption of the pump beam in a given subcell during
photoreflectance measurements results in reverse biasing the complementary
subunits at the modulation frequency set on the pump illumination. Such voltage
bias modulation acts then as external perturbation on the complementary
subcells. The spectral separation of the different subcell absorption ranges
permits the probe beam to record in a single spectrum the response of the
complete device as a combination of photo- and electroreflectance, thereby
providing access for diagnosis of subcells on an individual basis. This form of
modulation spectroscopy is demonstrated on a GaInP/GaAs tandem solar cell.


  We study the direct-sum problem for $k$-party ``Number On the Forehead''
(NOF) deterministic communication complexity. We prove several positive
results, showing that the complexity of computing a function $f$ in this model,
on $\ell$ instances, may be significantly cheaper than $\ell$ times the
complexity of computing $f$ on a single instance. Quite surprisingly, we show
that this is the case for ``most'' (boolean, $k$-argument) functions. We then
formalize two-types of sufficient conditions on a NOF protocol $Q$, for a
single instance, each of which guarantees some communication complexity savings
when appropriately extending $Q$ to work on $\ell$ instances. One such
condition refers to what each party needs to know about inputs of the other
parties, and the other condition, additionally, refers to the communication
pattern that the single-instance protocol $Q$ uses. In both cases, the tool
that we use is ``multiplexing'': we combine messages sent in parallel
executions of protocols for a single instance, into a single message for the
multi-instance (direct-sum) case, by xoring them with each other.


  Moduli spaces of bounded local $G$-shtukas are a group-theoretic
generalization of the function field analog of Rapoport and Zink's moduli
spaces of $p$-divisible groups. In this article we generalize some very
prominent concepts in the theory of Rapoport-Zink spaces to our setting. More
precisely, we define period spaces, as well as the period map from a moduli
space of bounded local $G$-shtukas to the corresponding period space, and we
determine the image of the period map. Furthermore, we define a tower of
coverings of the generic fiber of the moduli space which is equipped with a
Hecke action and an action of a suitable automorphism group. Finally we
consider the $\ell$-adic cohomology of these towers.


  The purpose of the paper is to derive formulas that describe the structure of
the induced supermodule H^0_G(\la) for the general linear supergroup G=GL(m|n)
over an algebraically closed field K of characteristic p\neq 2. Using these
formulas we determine primitive G_{ev}=GL(m)\times GL(n)-vectors in
H^0_G(\lambda). We conclude with remarks related to the linkage principle in
positive characteristic.


  Theorem A and Theorem B of [1] state that for $1<p<\infty$ the lattice of
closed ideals of $\mathcal{L}(\ell_p,c_0)$, $\mathcal{L}(\ell_p,\ell_\infty)$
and of $\mathcal{L}(\ell_1,\ell_p)$ are at least of cardinality $2^{\omega}$.
Here we show that the cardinality of the lattice of closed ideals of
$\mathcal{L}(\ell_p,c_0)$, $\mathcal{L}(\ell_p,\ell_\infty)$ and of
$\mathcal{L}(\ell_1,\ell_p)$, is at least $2^{2^\omega}$, and thus equal to it.


  The energy efficiency of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) is
significantly influenced by surrounding road users. This paper presents the
evaluation of energy efficiency of CAVs in a mixed traffic interacted with
human controlled vehicles. To simulate the interaction between the CAVs and the
cut-in vehicles controlled by human drivers near the intersection, a lane
changing model is proposed to emulate the politeness and patience
characteristics of the human driver. The proposed lane changing model is then
calibrated based on over 100,000 naturalistic lane changing events collected by
the University of Michigan Safety Pilot Model Deployment Program. A case study
on simulation of the cut-in scenario is carried out to demonstrate the human
driver's lane changing sensitivity under different driving trajectories of a
frontal CAV and the influence on the energy consumption of the CAV due to the
cut-in vehicle is evaluated. The simulation results indicate that the fuel
economy of the CAV can be substantially improved if its surrounding cut-in
vehicles can be well handled.


  The purified SASE (pSASE) undulator configuration recently proposed at SLAC
promises an increase in the output spectral density of XFELs. In this article
we study a straightforward implementation of this configuration for the soft
x-ray beamline at the European XFEL. A few undulator cells, resonant at a
subharmonic of the FEL radiation, are used in the middle of the exponential
regime to amplify the radiation, while simultaneously reducing the FEL
bandwidth. Based on start-to-end simulations, we show that with the proposed
configuration the spectral density in the photon energy range between 1.3 keV
and 3 keV can be enhanced of an order of magnitude compared to the baseline
mode of operation. This option can be implemented into the tunable-gap SASE3
baseline undulator without additional hardware, and it is complementary to the
self-seeding option with grating monochromator proposed for the same undulator
line, which can cover the photon energy range between about 0.26 keV and 1 keV.


  The X-ray observation of black hole candidates provides a valuable tool to
probe regions very close to the central black hole, where strong-field
relativistic effects become important. Recent studies have shown that these
effects seem to manifest themselves in the observed X-ray spectrum, in terms of
the shape of X-ray continuum and the profile of emission lines, and in the
X-ray light curves, in terms of certain quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs). The
latter will be the focus of this paper. We will review the proposed
observational evidence for gravitomagnetic precession in black hole candidates,
in light of new observational data and alternative models. Quantitative
comparison will be made between the data and the models. We will comment on
recent theoretical and observational efforts to address whether the
gravitomagnetic precession of accreted, orbiting matter around a rotating black
hole is a viable process for producing the observed QPOs. The results are
inconclusive. We will mention a few areas where further progress can be made to
possibly shed more light on the issue.


  Quantum annealing in a real device is necessarily susceptible to errors due
to diabatic transitions and thermal noise. Nested quantum annealing correction
is a method to suppress errors by using an all-to-all penalty coupling among a
set of physical qubits representing a logical qubit. We show analytically that
nested quantum annealing correction can suppress errors effectively in
ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Ising models with infinite-range
interactions. Our analysis reveals that the nesting structure can significantly
weaken or even remove first-order phase transitions, in which the energy gap
closes exponentially. The nesting structure also suppresses thermal
fluctuations by reducing the effective temperature.


  3D object detection is an essential part of automated driving, and deep
neural networks (DNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art performance for this
task. However, deep models are notorious for assigning high confidence scores
to out-of-distribution (OOD) inputs, that is, inputs that are not drawn from
the training distribution. Detecting OOD inputs is challenging and essential
for the safe deployment of models. OOD detection has been studied extensively
for the classification task, but it has not received enough attention for the
object detection task, specifically LiDAR-based 3D object detection. In this
paper, we focus on the detection of OOD inputs for LiDAR-based 3D object
detection. We formulate what OOD inputs mean for object detection and propose
to adapt several OOD detection methods for object detection. We accomplish this
by our proposed feature extraction method. To evaluate OOD detection methods,
we develop a simple but effective technique of generating OOD objects for a
given object detection model. Our evaluation based on the KITTI dataset shows
that different OOD detection methods have biases toward detecting specific OOD
objects. It emphasizes the importance of combined OOD detection methods and
more research in this direction.


  We have gone back to old methods found in the historical part of Hardy's
Divergent Series well before the invention of the modern analytic continuation
to use formal manipulation of harmonic sums which produce some interesting
formulae. These are linear recurrence relations for $\displaystyle{
\sum_{n=1}^\infty H_n n^k}$ which in turn yield linear recurrence relations for
$\zeta '(-k)$ and hence using the functional equation to a linear recurrence
relation for $\zeta '(2k)$ and $\zeta (2k+1)$. Questions of rigor have been
postponed to a subsequent preprint.


  It is natural to expect that nonbacktracking random walk will mix faster than
simple random walks, but so far this has only been proved in regular graphs. To
analyze typical irregular graphs, let $G$ be a random graph on $n$ vertices
with minimum degree 3 and a degree distribution that has exponential tails. We
determine the precise worst-case mixing time for simple random walk on $G$, and
show that, with high probability, it exhibits cutoff at time $\mathbf{h}^{-1}
\log n$, where $\mathbf{h}$ is the asymptotic entropy for simple random walk on
a Galton--Watson tree that approximates $G$ locally. (Previously this was only
known for typical starting points.) Furthermore, we show that this asymptotic
mixing time is strictly larger than the mixing time of nonbacktracking walk,
via a delicate comparison of entropies on the Galton-Watson tree.


  The configuration balancing problem with stochastic requests generalizes many
well-studied resource allocation problems such as load balancing and virtual
circuit routing. In it, we have $m$ resources and $n$ requests. Each request
has multiple possible configurations, each of which increases the load of each
resource by some amount. The goal is to select one configuration for each
request to minimize the makespan: the load of the most-loaded resource. In our
work, we focus on a stochastic setting, where we only know the distribution for
how each configuration increases the resource loads, learning the realized
value only after a configuration is chosen.
  We develop both offline and online algorithms for configuration balancing
with stochastic requests. When the requests are known offline, we give a
non-adaptive policy for configuration balancing with stochastic requests that
$O(\frac{\log m}{\log \log m})$-approximates the optimal adaptive policy. In
particular, this closes the adaptivity gap for this problem as there is an
asymptotically matching lower bound even for the very special case of load
balancing on identical machines. When requests arrive online in a list, we give
a non-adaptive policy that is $O(\log m)$ competitive. Again, this result is
asymptotically tight due to information-theoretic lower bounds for very special
cases (e.g., for load balancing on unrelated machines). Finally, we show how to
leverage adaptivity in the special case of load balancing on related machines
to obtain a constant-factor approximation offline and an $O(\log \log
m)$-approximation online. A crucial technical ingredient in all of our results
is a new structural characterization of the optimal adaptive policy that allows
us to limit the correlations between its decisions.


  We use cosmological hydrodynamic simulations to investigate formation of
galactic bulges within the framework of hierarchical clustering in a
representative CDM cosmological model. We show that largest objects forming at
cosmological redshifts z~4 resemble observed bulges of spiral galaxies or
moderate size ellipticals in their general properties like sizes, shapes, and
density profiles. This is consistent with observational data indicating the
existence of ``old'' bulges and ellipticals at more moderate redshifts. These
bulges are gas dominated at redshift z=3, with high rates of star formation and
would appear to be good candidates for small blue galaxies seen in the Hubble
Deep Field.


  Recent developments in blockchain technology have inspired innovative new
designs in resilient distributed and database systems. At their core, these
blockchain applications typically use Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus
protocols to maintain a common state across all replicas, even if some replicas
are faulty or malicious. Unfortunately, existing consensus protocols are not
designed to deal with geo-scale deployments in which many replicas spread
across a geographically large area participate in consensus. To address this,
we present the Geo-Scale Byzantine FaultTolerant consensus protocol (GeoBFT).
GeoBFT is designed for excellent scalability by using a topological-aware
grouping of replicas in local clusters, by introducing parallelization of
consensus at the local level, and by minimizing communication between clusters.
To validate our vision of high-performance geo-scale resilient distributed
systems, we implement GeoBFT in our efficient ResilientDB permissioned
blockchain fabric. We show that GeoBFT is not only sound and provides great
scalability, but also outperforms state-of-the-art consensus protocols by a
factor of six in geo-scale deployments.


  We extend the live-cell motility Filament Based Lamellipodium Model to
incorporate the forces exerted on the lamellipodium of the cells due to
cell-cell collision and cadherin induced cell-cell adhesion. We take into
account the nature of these forces via physical and biological constraints and
modelling assumptions. We investigate the effect these new components have in
the migration and morphology of the cells through particular experiments. We
exhibit moreover the similarities between our simulated cells and HeLa cancer
cells.


  The single-phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) provides a
large amount of detailed information in the form of fine-grained drifted
ionization charge from particle traces. To fully utilize this information, the
deposited charge must be accurately extracted from the raw digitized waveforms
via a robust signal processing chain. Enabled by the ultra-low noise levels
associated with cryogenic electronics in the MicroBooNE detector, the precise
extraction of ionization charge from the induction wire planes in a
single-phase LArTPC is qualitatively demonstrated on MicroBooNE data with event
display images, and quantitatively demonstrated via waveform-level and
track-level metrics. Improved performance of induction plane calorimetry is
demonstrated through the agreement of extracted ionization charge measurements
across different wire planes for various event topologies. In addition to the
comprehensive waveform-level comparison of data and simulation, a calibration
of the cryogenic electronics response is presented and solutions to various
MicroBooNE-specific TPC issues are discussed. This work presents an important
improvement in LArTPC signal processing, the foundation of reconstruction and
therefore physics analyses in MicroBooNE.


  The partial spontaneous breaking of rigid N=2 supersymmetry implies the
existence of a massless N=1 Goldstone multiplet. In this paper we show that the
spin-(1/2,1) Maxwell multiplet can play this role. We construct its full
nonlinear transformation law and find the invariant Goldstone action. The
spin-1 piece of the action turns out to be of Born-Infeld type, and the full
superfield action is duality invariant. This leads us to conclude that the
Goldstone multiplet can be associated with a D-brane solution of superstring
theory for p=3. In addition, we find that N=1 chirality is preserved in the
presence of the Goldstone-Maxwell multiplet. This allows us to couple it to N=1
chiral and gauge field multiplets. We find that arbitrary Kahler and
superpotentials are consistent with partially broken N=2 supersymmetry.


  New time-dependent treatment of tunneling from localized state to continuum
is proposed. It does not use the Laplace transform (Green's function's method)
and can be applied for time-dependent potentials, as well. This approach
results in simple expressions describing dynamics of tunneling to Markovian and
non-Markovian reservoirs in the time-interval $-\infty<t<\infty$. It can
provide a new outlook for tunneling in the negative time region, illuminating
the origin of the time's arrow problem in quantum mechanics. We also
concentrate on singularity at $t=0$, which affects the perturbative expansion
of the evolution operator. In addition, the decay to continuum in periodically
modulated tunneling Hamiltonian is investigated. Using our results, we extend
the Tien-Gordon approach for periodically driven transport, to oscillating
tunneling barriers.


  Networked Music Performance (NMP) systems involve musicians located in
different places who perform music while staying synchronized via the Internet.
The maximum end-to-end delay in NMP applications is called Ensemble Performance
Threshold (EPT) and should be less than 25 milliseconds. Due to this
constraint, NMPs require ultra-low delay solutions for audio coding, network
transmission, relaying and decoding, each one a challenging task on its own.
There are two directions for study in the related work referring to the NMP
systems. From the audio perspective, researchers experiment on low-delay
encoders and transmission patterns, aiming to reduce the processing delay of
the audio transmission, but they ignore the network performance. On the other
hand, network-oriented researchers try to reduce the network delay, which
contributes to reduced end-to-end delay. In our proposed approach, we introduce
an integration of dynamic audio and network configuration to satisfy the EPT
constraint. The basic idea is that the major components participating in an NMP
system the application and the network interact during the live music
performance. As the network delay increases, the network tries to equalize it
by modifying the routing behavior using Software Defined Networking principles.
If the network delay exceeds a maximum affordable threshold, the network reacts
by informing the application to change the audio processing pattern to overcome
the delay increase, resulting in below EPT end-to-end delay. A full prototype
of the proposed system was implemented and extensively evaluated in an emulated
environment.


  This is the second paper of a series of three. We construct effective
open-closed superstring couplings by classically integrating out massive fields
from open superstring field theories coupled to an elementary gauge invariant
tadpole proportional to an on-shell closed string state in both large and small
Hilbert spaces, in the NS sector. This source term is well known in the WZW
formulation and by explicitly performing a novel large Hilbert space
perturbation theory we are able to characterize the first orders of the vacuum
shift solution, its obstructions and the non-trivial open-closed effective
couplings in closed form. With the aim of getting all order results, we also
construct a new observable in the $A_\infty$ theory in the small Hilbert space
which correctly provides a gauge invariant coupling to physical closed strings
and which descends from the WZW open-closed coupling upon partial gauge fixing
and field redefinition. Armed with this new $A_\infty$ observable we use tensor
co-algebra techniques to efficiently package the whole perturbation theory
necessary for computing the effective action and we give all order results for
the open-closed effective couplings in the small Hilbert space.


  The classical GM(1,1) model is an efficient tool to {make accurate forecasts}
with limited samples. But the accuracy of the GM(1,1) model still needs to be
improved. This paper proposes a novel discrete GM(1,1) model, named ${\rm
GM_{SD}}$(1,1) model, of which the background value is reconstructed using
Simpson formula. The expression of the specific time response function is
deduced, and the relationship between our model} and the continuous GM(1,1)
model with Simpson formula called ${\rm GM_{SC} }$(1,1) model is systematically
discussed. The proposed model is proved to be unbiased to simulate the
homogeneous exponent sequence. Further, some numerical examples are given to
validate the accuracy of the new ${\rm GM_{SD}}$(1,1) model. Finally, this
model is used to predict the Gross Domestic Product and the freightage of
Lanzhou, and the results illustrate the ${\rm GM_{SD}}$(1,1) model provides
accurate prediction.


  We examine the effects of the R parity odd renormalizable interactions on
flavor changing rates and CP violation asymmetries in the production of
fermion-antifermion pairs at $e^-- e^+$ leptonic colliders. The produced
fermions may be leptons, down-quarks or up-quarks, and the center of mass
energies may range from the Z-boson pole up to $ 1000$ GeV. Off the Z-boson
pole, the flavor changing rates are controlled by tree level amplitudes and the
CP asymmetries by interference terms between tree and loop level amplitudes. At
the Z-boson pole, both observables involve loop amplitudes. The lepton number
violating interactions, associated with the coupling constants, $\l_{ijk},
\l'_{ijk}$, are only taken into account. The consideration of loop amplitudes
is restricted to the photon and Z-boson vertex corrections. We briefly review
flavor violation physics at colliders. We present numerical results using a
single, species and family independent, mass parameter, $\tilde m$, for all the
scalar superpartners and considering simple assumptions for the family
dependence of the R parity odd coupling constants.


  We investigate the cosmology of a recently proposed deformation of Einstein
gravity, emerging from quantum gravity heuristics. The theory is constructed to
have de Sitter space as a vacuum solution, and thus to be relevant to the
accelerating universe. However, this solution turns out to be unstable, and the
true phase space of cosmological solutions is significantly more complex,
displaying two late-time power-law attractors -- one accelerating and the other
dramatically decelerating. It is also shown that non-accelerating cosmologies
sit on a separatrix between the two basins of attraction of these attractors.
Hence it is impossible to pass from a decelerating cosmology to an accelerating
one, as required in standard cosmology for consistency with nucleosynthesis and
structure formation and compatibility with the data inferred from supernovae
Ia. We point out that alternative models of the early universe, such as the one
investigated here might provide possible ways to circumvent these requirements.


  We describe the Lelek fan, a smooth fan whose set of end-points is dense, and
the Poulsen simplex, a Choquet simplex whose set of extreme points is dense, as
Fra\"{i}ss\'e limits in certain natural categories of embeddings and
projections. As an application we give a short proof of their uniqueness,
universality, and almost homogeneity. We further show that for every two
countable dense subsets of end-points of the Lelek fan there exists an
auto-homeomorphism of the fan mapping one set onto the other. This improves a
result of Kawamura, Oversteegen, and Tymchatyn from 1996.


  We study equivariant Seiberg-Witten Floer theory of rational homology
$3$-spheres in the special case where the group action is given by an
involution. The case of involutions deserves special attention because we can
couple the involution to the charge conjugation symmetry of Seiberg-Witten
theory. This leads to new Floer-theoretic invariants which we study and apply
in a variety of applications. In particular, we construct a series of
delta-invariants $\delta^E_*, \delta^R_*, \delta^S_*$ which are the equivariant
equivalents of the Ozsv\'ath-Szab\'o $d$-invariant. The delta-invariants come
in three types: equivariant, Real and spin depending on the type of the
spin$^c$-structure involved. The delta-invariants satisfy many useful
properties, including a Froyshov-type inequality for equivariant cobordisms. We
compute the delta-invariants in a wide range of examples including: equivariant
plumbings, branched double covers of knots and equivariant Dehn surgery. We
also consider various applications including obstructions to extending
involutions over bounding $4$-manifolds, non-smoothable involutions on
$4$-manifolds with boundary, equivariant embeddings of $3$-manifolds in
$4$-manifolds and non-orientable surfaces bounding knots.


  The power-law reaction rate coefficient for the barrierless reactions is
studied if the reactions take place in systems with power-law distributions,
and a generalized rate formula for the barrierless reactions in Gorin model is
derived. We show that due to barrierless, different from those for bimolecular
and unimolcular reactions, the power-law rate coefficient for the barrierless
reactions does not have the factor of power-law distribution function and thus
it is not very strongly dependent on the nu-parameter. Four barrierless
reactions are taken as the application examples to calculate the new rate
coefficients, which with larger fitting nu-parameters can be exactly in
agreement with the measurement values in experimental studies.


  We construct an extension of diffusion geometry to multiple modalities
through joint approximate diagonalization of Laplacian matrices. This naturally
extends classical data analysis tools based on spectral geometry, such as
diffusion maps and spectral clustering. We provide several synthetic and real
examples of manifold learning, retrieval, and clustering demonstrating that the
joint diffusion geometry frequently better captures the inherent structure of
multi-modal data. We also show that many previous attempts to construct
multimodal spectral clustering can be seen as particular cases of joint
approximate diagonalization of the Laplacians.


  Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) codes with a sparse and balanced generator
matrix are appealing in distributed storage systems for balancing and
minimizing the computational load. Such codes have been constructed via
Reed-Solomon codes over large fields. In this paper, we focus on small fields.
We prove that there exists an $[n,k]_q$ MDS code that has a sparse and balanced
generator matrix for any $q\geq n$ provided that $n\leq 2k$, by designing
several algorithms with complexity running in polynomial time in $k$ and $n$.


  Higher-order topological insulator, as a newly found non-trivial material and
structure, possesses a topological phase beyond the bulk-boundary
correspondence. Here, we present an experimental observation of photonic
higher-order topological crystalline insulator and its topological protection
to quantum superposition and entanglement in a two-dimensional lattice. By
freely writing the insulator structure with femtosecond laser and directly
measuring evolution dynamics with single-photon imaging techniques, we are able
to observe the distinct features of the topological corner states in C_4 and
C_2 photonic lattice symmetry. Especially, we propose and experimentally
identify the topological corner states by exciting the photonic lattice with
single-photon superposition state, and we examine the protection impact of
topology on quantum entanglement for entangled photon states. The single-photon
dynamics and the protected entanglement reveal an intrinsic topological
protection mechanism isolating multi-partite quantum states from
diffusion-induced decoherence. The higher-order topological crystalline
insulator, built-in superposition state generation, heralded single-photon
imaging and quantum entanglement demonstrated here link topology, material, and
quantum physics, opening the door to wide investigations of higher-order
topology and applications of topological enhancement in genuine quantum regime.


  We present analytical results at four-loop level for the renormalization
constants and anomalous dimensions of an extended QCD model with one coupling
constant and an arbitrary number of fermion representations. One example of
such a model is the QCD plus gluinos sector of a supersymmetric theory where
the gluinos are Majorana fermions in the adjoint representation of the gauge
group.
  The renormalization constants of the gauge boson, ghost and fermion fields
are analytically computed as well as those for the ghost-gluon vertex, the
fermion-gluon vertex and the fermion mass. All other renormalization constants
can be derived from these. Some of these results were already produced in
Feynman gauge for the computation of the beta-function of this model, which was
recently published. Here we present results for an arbitrary gauge parameter.


  If the sequent (Gamma entails forall x exists y A) is provable in first order
constructive natural deduction, then the theory (Gamma, forall x (f (x)/y)A),
where f is a new function symbol, is a conservative extension of Gamma.


  The potential of large tactile arrays to improve robot perception for safe
operation in human-dominated environments and of high-resolution tactile arrays
to enable human-level dexterous manipulation is well accepted. However, the
increase in the number of tactile sensing elements introduces challenges
including wiring complexity, power consumption, and data processing. To help
address these challenges, we previously developed a tactile sensing technique
based compressed sensing that reduces hardware complexity and data
transmission, while allowing accurate reconstruction of the full-resolution
signal. In this paper, we apply tactile compressed sensing to the problem of
object classification. Specifically, we perform object classification on the
compressed tactile data. We evaluate our method using BubbleTouch, our tactile
array simulator. Our results show our approach achieves high classification
accuracy, even with compression factors up to 64.


  SARS-CoV-2, the highly contagious pathogen responsible for the COVID-19
pandemic, has persistent effects that begin four weeks after initial infection
and last for an undetermined duration. These chronic effects are more harmful
than acute ones. This review explores the long-term impact of the virus on
various human organs, including the pulmonary, cardiovascular, neurological,
reproductive, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, endocrine, and lymphoid
systems, particularly in older adults. Regarding diagnosis, RT-PCR is the gold
standard for detecting COVID-19, though it requires specialized equipment,
skilled personnel, and considerable time to produce results. To address these
limitations, artificial intelligence in imaging and microfluidics technologies
offers promising alternatives for diagnosing COVID-19 efficiently.
Pharmacological and non-pharmacological strategies are effective in mitigating
the persistent impacts of COVID-19. These strategies enhance immunity in
post-COVID-19 patients by reducing cytokine release syndrome, improving T cell
response, and increasing the circulation of activated natural killer and CD8 T
cells in blood and tissues. This, in turn, alleviates symptoms such as fever,
nausea, fatigue, muscle weakness, and pain. Vaccines, including inactivated
viral, live attenuated viral, protein subunit, viral vectored, mRNA, DNA, and
nanoparticle vaccines, significantly reduce the adverse long-term effects of
the virus. However, no vaccine has been reported to provide lifetime protection
against COVID-19. Consequently, protective measures such as physical
distancing, mask usage, and hand hygiene remain essential strategies. This
review offers a comprehensive understanding of the persistent effects of
COVID-19 on individuals of varying ages, along with insights into diagnosis,
treatment, vaccination, and future preventative measures against the spread of
SARS-CoV-2.


  Displacement of floating polymer (polyolefin) rafts by steady magnetic field
is reported. The effect is due to the interplay of gravity deforming the
water/vapor interface, contact angle hysteresis and diamagnetic properties of
the liquid support. Magnetic field (ca. 0.06 T) deformed the water/vapor
interface and impacted the interfacial apparent contact angle. This deformation
gave rise to the propulsion force, displacing the polymer raft. The velocity of
displacement of the center of mass of rafts was registered. The effect is
related to the contact angle hysteresis affected by the magnetic field,
enabling the change in the apparent interfacial contact angle. The
semi-quantitative model of the process is suggested


  Testing, tracking and tracing abilities have been identified as pivotal in
helping countries to safely reopen activities after the first wave of the
COVID-19 virus. Contact tracing apps give the unprecedented possibility to
reconstruct graphs of daily contacts, so the question is who should be tested?
As human contact networks are known to exhibit community structure, in this
paper we show that the Kemeny constant of a graph can be used to identify and
analyze bridges between communities in a graph. Our "Kemeny indicator" is the
change in Kemeny constant when a node or edge is removed from the graph. We
show that testing individuals who are associated with large values of the
Kemeny indicator can help in efficiently intercepting new virus outbreaks, when
they are still in their early stage. Extensive simulations provide promising
results in early identification and in blocking possible "super-spreaders"
links that transmit disease between different communities.


  The experimental data on GOES magnetic measurements and plasma measurements
on LANL geosynchronous satellites is used for selection of 169 case events
containing 638 geosynchronous magnetopause crossings (GMCs) in 1995 to 2001. We
study the necessary conditions for the geosynchronous magnetopause crossings
using scatter plot of the GMCs in the coordinate space of Psw versus Bz. In
such representation the upstream solar wind conditions demonstrate sharp
envelope boundary under which no GMCs are occurred. The boundary has two strait
horizontal branches where Bz does not influence on the magnetopause location.
The first branch is located in the range of Psw=21 nPa for large positive Bz
and is associated with an asymptotic regime of the pressure balance. The second
branch asymptotically approaches to the range of Psw=4.8 nPa under very strong
negative Bz and it is associated with a regime of the Bz influence saturation.
We suggest that the saturation is caused by relatively high contribution of the
magnetosphere thermal pressure into the pressure balance on the magnetopause.
The intermediate region of the boundary for the moderate negative and small
positive IMF Bz can be well approximated by a hyperbolic tangent function. We
interpret the envelope boundary as a range of necessary upstream solar wind
conditions required for GMC in the point on the magnetopause located mostly
close to the Earth ("perigee" point). We obtain that the dipole tilt angle and
dawn-dusk asymmetry influence on the "perigee" point location. We find that the
aGSM latitude of this point depends linearly on the dipole tilt angle with the
slope about -0.5. The aGSM longitude of the "perigee" point decreases with IMF
Bz with a rate of about 2 angular minutes per 1 nT. An empirical model
predicting the magnetopause crossing of the geosynchronous orbit in the
"perigee" point is proposed.


  We evaluate the electrostatic interaction energy between two surfaces, one
flat and the other slightly curved, in terms of the two-point autocorrelation
functions for patch potentials on each one of them, and of a single function
$\psi$ which defines the curved surface. The resulting interaction energy, a
functional of $\psi$, is evaluated up to the second order in a derivative
expansion approach. We derive explicit formulae for the coefficients of that
expansion as simple integrals involving the autocorrelation functions, and
evaluate them for some relevant patch-potential profiles and geometries


  $^4$He confined in nanoporous Gelsil glass is a unique, strongly correlated
Bose system exhibiting quantum phase transition (QPT) by controlling pressure.
Previous studies revealed that the QPT occurs with four - dimensional (4D) XY
criticality, which appears in the zero-temperature limit of the superfluid
density. However, the $P-T$ phase diagram also suggested that 4D XY nature
appears at finite temperatures. Here, we have determined the critical exponent
of the superfluid density of $^4$He in two Gelsil samples that have pore
diameter to be about 3 nm, using a newly developed mechanical resonator
technique. The critical exponent $\zeta$ in the powerlaw fitting $\rho_{\mathrm
s} \propto \left| 1 - T/T_{\mathrm c} \right| ^{\zeta}$, where $T_{\mathrm c}$
is the superfluid transition temperature, was found to be 1.0 $\pm$ 0.1 for all
pressures realized in this experiment, 0.1 $<$ $P$ $<$ 2.4 MPa. This value of
$\zeta$ gives a decisive evidence that the finite-temperature superfluid
transition belongs to 4D XY universality class. The emergence of the 4D XY
criticality is explained by the existence of many nanoscale superfluid
droplets, the so called localized Bose - Einstein condensates (LBECs), above
$T_{\mathrm c}$. Due to the large energy cost for $^4$He atoms to move between
the LBECs, the phase of the LBEC order parameters fluctuates not only in
spatial (3D) but imaginary time ($+1$D) dimensions, resulting in the 4D XY
criticality by a temperature near $T_{\mathrm c}$, which is determined by the
finite size of the system in the imaginary time dimension. Below $T_{\mathrm
c}$, macroscopic superfluidity grows in the nanopores of Gelsil by the
alignment of the phases of the LBEC order parameters. An excess dissipation
peak observed below $T_{\mathrm c}$ is well explained by this phase matching
process.


  In this paper a novel efficient method for representation of facial action
units by encoding an image sequence as a fourth-order tensor is presented. The
multilinear tensor-based extension of the biased discriminant analysis (BDA)
algorithm, called multilinear biased discriminant analysis (MBDA), is first
proposed. Then, we apply the MBDA and two-dimensional BDA (2DBDA) algorithms,
as the dimensionality reduction techniques, to Gabor representations and the
geometric features of the input image sequence respectively. The proposed
scheme can deal with the asymmetry between positive and negative samples as
well as curse of dimensionality dilemma. Extensive experiments on Cohn-Kanade
database show the superiority of the proposed method for representation of the
subtle changes and the temporal information involved in formation of the facial
expressions. As an accurate tool, this representation can be applied to many
areas such as recognition of spontaneous and deliberate facial expressions,
multi modal/media human computer interaction and lie detection efforts.


  The traditional paradigm of applying deep learning -- collect, annotate and
train on data -- is not applicable to image-based plant phenotyping as almost
400,000 different plant species exists. Data costs include growing physical
samples, imaging and labelling them. Model performance is impacted by the
species gap between the domain of each plant species, it is not generalisable
and may not transfer to unseen plant species. In this paper, we investigate the
use of synthetic data for leaf instance segmentation. We study multiple
synthetic data training regimes using Mask-RCNN when few or no annotated real
data is available. We also present UPGen: a Universal Plant Generator for
bridging the species gap. UPGen leverages domain randomisation to produce
widely distributed data samples and models stochastic biological variation. Our
methods outperform standard practices, such as transfer learning from publicly
available plant data, by 26.6% and 51.46% on two unseen plant species
respectively. We benchmark UPGen by competing in the CVPPP Leaf Segmentation
Challenge and set a new state-of-the-art, a mean of 88% across A1-4 test
datasets. This study is applicable to use of synthetic data for automating the
measurement of phenotypic traits. Our synthetic dataset and pretrained model
are available at https://csiro-robotics.github.io/UPGen_Webpage/.


  We introduce the quantum Gaussian process state, motivated via a statistical
inference for the wave function supported by a data set of unentangled product
states. We show that this condenses down to a compact and expressive parametric
form, with a variational flexibility shown to be competitive or surpassing
established alternatives. The connections of the state to its roots as a
Bayesian inference machine as well as matrix product states, also allow for
efficient deterministic training of global states from small training data with
enhanced generalization, including on application to frustrated spin physics.


  A new $q$-analogue of Appell polynomial sequences and their generalizations
are introduced and their main characterizations are proved. As consequences new
$q$-analogue of Bernoulli and Euler polynomials and numbers is introduced,
their main representations are given.


  We study the essential spectra of formally self-adjoint elliptic systems on
doubly periodic planar domains perturbed by a semi-infinite periodic row of
foreign inclusions. We show that the essential spectrum of the problem consists
of the essential spectrum of the purely periodic problem and another component,
which is the union of the discrete spectra of model problems in the infinite
perturbation strip; these model problems arise by an application of the partial
Floquet-Bloch-Gelfand transform.


  We study the scattering of atoms, rotons and phonons at the free surface of
$^4$He at normal incidence and calculate the evaporation, condensation and
reflection probabilities. Assuming elastic one-to-one processes and using
general properties of the scattering matrix, such as unitarity and time
reversal, we argue that all nonzero probabilities can be written in terms of a
single energy-dependent parameter. Quantitative predictions are obtained using
linearized time dependent density functional theory.


  We introduce additional coalescence factors for the production of strange
baryons in a multiphase transport (AMPT) model in order to describe the
enhanced production of multistrange hadrons observed in Pb-Pb collisions at
$\rm \sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV at the Large hadron Collider (LHC) and Au+Au
collisions at $\rm \sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV at Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider
(RHIC).This extended AMPT model is found to also give a reasonable description
of the multiplicity dependence of the strangeness enhancement observed in high
multiplicity events in $pp$ collisions at $\rm \sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV and $p$-Pb
collisions at $\rm \sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV. We find that the coalescence
factors depend on the system size but not much on whether the system is
produced from A+A or p+A collisions. The extended AMPT model thus provides a
convenient way to model the mechanism underlying the observed strangeness
enhancement in collisions of both small and large systems at RHIC and LHC
energies.


  Four types of discrete transforms of Weyl orbit functions on the finite point
sets are developed. The point sets are formed by intersections of the dual-root
lattices with the fundamental domains of the affine Weyl groups. The finite
sets of weights, labelling the orbit functions, obey symmetries of the dual
extended affine Weyl groups. Fundamental domains of the dual extended affine
Weyl groups are detailed in full generality. Identical cardinality of the point
and weight sets is proved and explicit counting formulas for these
cardinalities are derived. Discrete orthogonality of complex-valued Weyl and
real-valued Hartley orbit functions over the point sets is established and the
corresponding discrete Fourier-Weyl and Hartley-Weyl transforms are formulated.


  We consider two-dimensional Fermi systems with quadratic band touching and
$C_3$ symmetry, as realizable in Bernal-stacked honeycomb bilayers. Within a
renormalization-group analysis, we demonstrate the existence of a quantum
critical point at a finite value of the density-density interactions,
separating a semimetallic disordered phase at weak coupling from a gapped
ordered phase at strong coupling. The latter may be characterized by, for
instance, antiferromagnetic, quantum anomalous Hall, or charge density wave
order. In the semimetallic phase, each point of quadratic band touching splits
into four Dirac cones as a consequence of the nontrivial interaction-induced
self-energy correction, which we compute to the two-loop order. We show that
the quantum critical point is in the $(2+1)$-dimensional Gross-Neveu
universality class characterized by emergent Lorentz invariance and a dynamic
critical exponent $z=1$. At finite temperatures, $T > 0$, we hence conjecture a
crossover between $z=2$ at intermediate $T$ and $z=1$ at low $T$, and we
construct the resulting nontrivial phase diagram as function of coupling
strength and temperature.


  Photofission of actinides is studied in the region of nuclear excitation
energies that covers the entire giant dipole resonance (GDR) region. The mass
distributions of $^{238}$U photofission fragments have been explored
theoretically for eight different endpoint bremsstrahlung energies from 11.5
MeV to 67.7 MeV which correspond to average photon energy of 9.09 MeV to 15.90
MeV. Among these energies, the 29.1 MeV corresponds to the average photon
energy of 13.7$\pm$0.3 MeV which coincides with GDR peak for $^{238}$U
photofission. The integrated yield of $^{238}$U photofission as well as charge
distribution of photofission products are calculated and its role in producing
nuclei and their neutron-richness is investigated.


  In many applications, data come with a natural ordering. This ordering can
often induce local dependence among nearby variables. However, in complex data,
the width of this dependence may vary, making simple assumptions such as a
constant neighborhood size unrealistic. We propose a framework for learning
this local dependence based on estimating the inverse of the Cholesky factor of
the covariance matrix. Penalized maximum likelihood estimation of this matrix
yields a simple regression interpretation for local dependence in which
variables are predicted by their neighbors. Our proposed method involves
solving a convex, penalized Gaussian likelihood problem with a hierarchical
group lasso penalty. The problem decomposes into independent subproblems which
can be solved efficiently in parallel using first-order methods. Our method
yields a sparse, symmetric, positive definite estimator of the precision
matrix, encoding a Gaussian graphical model. We derive theoretical results not
found in existing methods attaining this structure. In particular, our
conditions for signed support recovery and estimation consistency rates in
multiple norms are as mild as those in a regression problem. Empirical results
show our method performing favorably compared to existing methods. We apply our
method to genomic data to flexibly model linkage disequilibrium. Our method is
also applied to improve the performance of discriminant analysis in sound
recording classification.


  Recently, in [18] the authors gave some results on the structure, capability
and the Schur multiplier of generalized Heisenberg Lie superalgebra. In this
work we try to extend these concepts to the case of generalized Heisenberg Lie
superalgebra.


  Using 22.7M BBbar events collected with the BABAR detector at SLAC, we
present preliminary measurements of the branching fractions for charmless
hadronic decays of B mesons into two-body, quasi two-body and three-body final
states with pions, kaons, and rho and a0 resonances. In the search for
exclusive $B^0 \to \pi^+\pi^-\pi^0$, we measure ${\cal B}(B^0 \to
\rho^{\pm}(770)\pi^{\mp})=(28.9\pm5.4\pm4.3) \times 10^{-6}$, together with the
relative asymmetry ${\cal A}_{\rm phys} = -0.04 \pm 0.18 \pm 0.02$. We also set
the upper limits on $B^0 \to \rho^0(770)\pi^0$, non-resonant $B^0 \to
\pi^+\pi^-\pi^0$, $B^0 \to a_0^{\pm}(\to \eta\pi^{\pm})\pi^{\mp}$ and $B^0 \to
K^0\bar K^0$.


  Copy number alterations (CNAs) are thought to account for 85% of the
variation in gene expression observed among breast tumours. The expression of
cis-associated genes is impacted by CNAs occurring at proximal loci of these
genes, whereas the expression of trans-associated genes is impacted by CNAs
occurring at distal loci. While a majority of these CNA-driven genes
responsible for breast tumourigenesis are cis-associated, trans-associated
genes are thought to further abet the development of cancer and influence
disease outcomes in patients. Here we present a network-based approach that
integrates copy-number and expression profiles to identify putative cis- and
trans-associated genes in breast cancer pathogenesis. We validate these cis-
and trans-associated genes by employing them to subtype a large cohort of
breast tumours obtained from the METABRIC consortium, and demonstrate that
these genes accurately reconstruct the ten subtypes of breast cancer. We
observe that individual breast cancer subtypes are driven by distinct sets of
cis- and trans-associated genes. Among the cis-associated genes, we recover
several known drivers of breast cancer (e.g. CCND1, ERRB2, MDM2 and ZNF703) and
some novel putative drivers (e.g. BRF2 and SF3B3). siRNA-mediated knockdown of
BRF2 across a panel of breast cancer cell lines showed significant reduction
specifically in cell proliferation in HER2+ lines, thereby indicating that BRF2
could be a context-dependent oncogene and potentially targetable in these
lines. Among the trans-associated genes, we identify modules of immune-response
(CD2, CD19, CD38 and CD79B), mitotic/cell-cycle kinases (e.g. AURKB, MELK, PLK1
and TTK), and DNA-damage response genes (e.g. RFC4 and FEN1).


  In the past century it was believed that both the main theories (quantum
mechanics and special relativity) predicted the existence of physical processes
that could not be explained in the framework of classical physics. However, it
has been shown recently that the solutions of Schroedinger equation have
described the physical situation practically in full agreement with classical
equations. The given equation represents the combination of classical equations
with the statistical distribution of corresponding parameters and the
properties of microscopic objects may be interpreted on the ontological basis
as it corresponds to our sensual knowledge.
  It will be shown now that also the main experimentally relevant relativistic
phenomenon (i.e., the mass increase with velocity) may be interpreted in the
framework of classical physics. A different prediction for this increase will
be then derived, which gives the possibility to decide on experimental basis
which alternative is more preferable (relativistic or classical).


  We study the emergence of objective properties in open quantum systems. In
our analysis, the environment is promoted from a passive role of reservoir
selectively destroying quantum coherence, to an active role of amplifier
selectively proliferating information about the system. We show that only
preferred pointer states of the system can leave a redundant and therefore
easily detectable imprint on the environment. Observers who--as it is almost
always the case--discover the state of the system indirectly (by probing a
fraction of its environment) will find out only about the corresponding pointer
observable. Many observers can act in this fashion independently and without
perturbing the system: they will agree about the state of the system. In this
operational sense, preferred pointer states exist objectively.


  The reproductive habits of helminths are important for the study of the
dynamics of their transmission. For populations of parasites distributed by
Poisson or negative binomial models, these habits have already been studied.
However, there are other statistical models that describe these populations,
such as zero-inflated models, but where reproductive characteristics were not
analyzed. Using an arbitrary model for the parasite population, we model the
distribution of females and males per host, and from these we model the
different reproductive variables such as the mean number of fertile females,
the mean egg production, the mating probability, the mean fertilized egg
production. We show that these variables change due to the effects of a
negative density-dependence fecundity, a characteristic of helminth parasites.
We present the results obtained for some particular models.


  We consider the NLS on Schwarzschild manifold.For radial solutions with
sufficiently localized initial data,global existence,L^p estimates and
asymptotic completeness of the wave operators is proved


  A new data presentation is proposed to consider anomalous $J/\Psi$
suppression in Pb + Pb collisions at $P/A=158$ GeV/c. If the inclusive
differential cross section with respect to a centrality variable is available,
one can plot the yield of J/Psi events per Pb-Pb collision as a function of an
estimated squared impact parameter. Both quantities are raw experimental data
and have a clear physical meaning. As compared to the usual J/Psi over
Drell-Yan ratio, there is a huge gain in statistical accuracy. This
presentation could be applied advantageously to many processes in the field of
nucleus-nucleus collisions at various energies.


  We study the transportation problem on the unit sphere $S^{n-1}$ for
symmetric probability measures and the cost function $c(x,y) = \log
\frac{1}{\langle x, y \rangle}$.
  We calculate the variation of the corresponding Kantorovich functional $K$
and study a naturally associated metric-measure space on $S^{n-1}$ endowed with
a Riemannian
  metric generated by the corresponding transportational potential. We
introduce a new transportational functional which minimizers are
  solutions to the symmetric log-Minkowski problem and prove that $K$ satisfies
the following analog of the Gaussian transportation inequality for the uniform
probability measure ${\sigma}$ on $S^{n-1}$:
  $\frac{1}{n} Ent(\nu) \ge K({\sigma}, \nu)$. It is shown that there exists a
remarkable similarity between our results and the theory of the
K{\"a}hler-Einstein equation on Euclidean space.
  As a by-product we obtain a new proof of uniqueness of solution to the
log-Minkowski problem for the uniform measure.


  Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are powerful generative models, but
suffer from training instability. The recently proposed Wasserstein GAN (WGAN)
makes progress toward stable training of GANs, but sometimes can still generate
only low-quality samples or fail to converge. We find that these problems are
often due to the use of weight clipping in WGAN to enforce a Lipschitz
constraint on the critic, which can lead to undesired behavior. We propose an
alternative to clipping weights: penalize the norm of gradient of the critic
with respect to its input. Our proposed method performs better than standard
WGAN and enables stable training of a wide variety of GAN architectures with
almost no hyperparameter tuning, including 101-layer ResNets and language
models over discrete data. We also achieve high quality generations on CIFAR-10
and LSUN bedrooms.


  Charge transport through a small topological superconducting island in
contact with a normal and a superconducting electrode occurs through a cycle
that involves coherent oscillations of Cooper pairs and tunneling in/out the
normal electrode through a Majorana bound state, the Josephson-Majorana cycle.
We illustrate this mechanism by studying the current-voltage characteristics of
a superconductor-topological superconductor-normal metal single-electron
transistor. At low bias and temperature the Josephson-Majorana cycle is the
dominant mechanism for transport. We discuss a three-terminal configuration
where the non-local character of the Majorana bound states is emergent.


  The fraction of the tritium that is burned during one pass through a DT
fusion system, $f_{tb}$, is a central issue for success of fusion energy.
Reducing the tritium fraction, $f_t$, in a $DT$ burning plasma below a half
increases the burn fraction, $f_{tb}\propto1/f_t$ but also the required
confinement to achieve a burn $nT\tau_E\propto1/f_t(1-f_t)$. A doubling of the
fractional burn entails only a 4/3 enhancement of the required $nT\tau_E$. The
energy confinement time $\tau_E$ in tokamaks and stellarators is empirically
gyro-Bohm with an approximate factor of two between the best and worse results
used to construct scaling laws. Gyro-Bohm is also the approximate level of
transport needed in a power plant. What has received little study are
$\tau_t/\tau_E$, the ratio of the tritium to the energy confinement time, and
$\tau_\alpha/\tau_E$, the ratio of the alpha particle to the energy confinement
time. The tritium burn fraction is proportional to $\tau_t/\tau_E$, so the
larger the better. The contamination of the plasma by helium ash is
proportional to $\tau_\alpha/\tau_E$, so the smaller the better.


  We discuss in some detail the self-similar potentials of Shabat and
Spiridonov which are reflectionless and have an infinite number of bound
states. We demonstrate that these self-similar potentials are in fact shape
invariant potentials within the formalism of supersymmetric quantum mechanics.
In particular, using a scaling ansatz for the change of parameters, we obtain a
large class of new, reflectionless, shape invariant potentials of which the
Shabat-Spiridonov ones are a special case. These new potentials can be viewed
as q-deformations of the single soliton solution corresponding to the
Rosen-Morse potential. Explicit expressions for the energy eigenvalues,
eigenfunctions and transmission coefficients for these potentials are obtained.
We show that these potentials can also be obtained numerically. Included as an
intriguing case is a shape invariant double well potential whose supersymmetric
partner potential is only a single well. Our class of exactly solvable
Hamiltonians is further enlarged by examining two new directions: (i) changes
of parameters which are different from the previously studied cases of
translation and scaling; (ii) extending the usual concept of shape invariance
in one step to a multi-step situation. These extensions can be viewed as
q-deformations of the harmonic oscillator or multi-soliton solutions
corresponding to the Rosen-Morse potential.


  Utilizing long-range dependency, a concept extensively studied in homogeneous
graphs, remains underexplored in heterogeneous graphs, especially on large
ones, posing two significant challenges: Reducing computational costs while
maximizing effective information utilization in the presence of heterogeneity,
and overcoming the over-smoothing issue in graph neural networks. To address
this gap, we investigate the importance of different meta-paths and introduce
an automatic framework for utilizing long-range dependency on heterogeneous
graphs, denoted as Long-range Meta-path Search through Progressive Sampling
(LMSPS). Specifically, we develop a search space with all meta-paths related to
the target node type. By employing a progressive sampling algorithm, LMSPS
dynamically shrinks the search space with hop-independent time complexity.
Through a sampling evaluation strategy, LMSPS conducts a specialized and
effective meta-path selection, leading to retraining with only effective
meta-paths, thus mitigating costs and over-smoothing. Extensive experiments
across diverse heterogeneous datasets validate LMSPS's capability in
discovering effective long-range meta-paths, surpassing state-of-the-art
methods. Our code is available at https://github.com/JHL-HUST/LMSPS.


  We present a systematic analysis to determine and improve the pulsation
periods of 1637 known long-period Mira variables in M33 using $gri$-band light
curves spanning $\sim18$~years from several surveys, including M33 variability
survey, Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, Palomar Transient
Factory (PTF), intermediate PTF, and Zwicky Transient Facility. Based on these
collections of light curves, we found that optical band light curves that are
as complete as possible are crucial to determine the periods of distant Miras.
We demonstrated that the machine learning techniques can be used to classify
Miras into O-rich and C-rich based on the $(J-K_s)$ period--color plane.
Finally, We derived the distance modulus to M33 using O-rich Miras at maximum
light together with our improved periods as $24.67 \pm 0.06$~mag, which is in
good agreement with the recommended value given in the literature.


  The question about asymptotical behaviour of solutions for the system $\dot
x=A_\nu x+f$ for big values of the parameter $\nu\in\frak A$ is considered. An
approach to the reduction of a large class of problems to easily solvable
problem with diagonal coefficient matrix is described. This approach is based
on the approximation of summable matrix function $A_\nu$ by specially
constructed smooth matrix functions.


  In this paper we present a detailed critical study of several recently
proposed non-Markovianity measures. We analyse their properties for single
qubit and two-qubit systems in both pure-dephasing and dissipative scenarios.
More specifically we investigate and compare their computability, their
physical meaning, their Markovian to non-Markovian crossover, and their
additivity properties with respect to the number of qubits. The bottom-up
approach that we pursue is aimed at identifying similarities and differences in
the behavior of non-Markovianity indicators in several paradigmatic open system
models. This in turn allows us to infer the leading traits of the variegated
phenomenon known as non-Markovian dynamics and, possibly, to grasp its physical
essence.


  The latest results from the Twisted-Mass collaboration on disconnected
diagrams at the physical value of the pion mass are presented. In particular,
we focus on the sigma terms, the axial charges and the momentum fraction, all
of them for the nucleon. A detailed error analysis for each observable follows,
showing the strengths and weaknesses of the one-end trick. Alternatives are
discussed.


  Recent years have seen major advances in understanding the state of the
intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift. Some aspects of this understanding
are reviewed here. In particular, we discuss: (1) Different probes of IGM like
Gunn-Peterson test, CMBR anisotropies, and neutral hydrogen emission from
reionization, and (2) some models of reionization of the universe.


  Two-dimensional echocardiography (2DE) measurements of left ventricle (LV)
dimensions are highly significant markers of several cardiovascular diseases.
These measurements are often used in clinical care despite suffering from large
variability between observers. This variability is due to the challenging
nature of accurately finding the correct temporal and spatial location of
measurement endpoints in ultrasound images. These images often contain fuzzy
boundaries and varying reflection patterns between frames. In this work, we
present a convolutional neural network (CNN) based approach to automate 2DE LV
measurements. Treating the problem as a landmark detection problem, we propose
a modified U-Net CNN architecture to generate heatmaps of likely coordinate
locations. To improve the network performance we use anatomically meaningful
heatmaps as labels and train with a multi-component loss function. Our network
achieves 13.4%, 6%, and 10.8% mean percent error on intraventricular septum
(IVS), LV internal dimension (LVID), and LV posterior wall (LVPW) measurements
respectively. The design outperforms other networks and matches or approaches
intra-analyser expert error.


  The group of rigid motions is considered to guide the search for a natural
system of space-time coordinates in General Relativity. This search leads us to
a natural extension of the space-times that support Painlev\'{e}--Gullstrand
synchronization. As an interesting example, here we describe a system of rigid
coordinates for the cross mode of gravitational linear plane waves.


  The integration of III-V on silicon is still a hot topic as it will open up a
way to co-integrate Si CMOS logic with photonic vices. To reach this aim,
several hurdles should be solved, and more particularly the generation of
antiphase boundaries (APBs) at the III-V/Si(001) interface. Density functional
theory (DFT) has been used to demonstrate the existence of a double-layer steps
on nominal Si(001) which is formed during annealing under proper hydrogen
chemical potential. This phenomenon could be explained by the formation of
dimer vacancy lines which could be responsible for the preferential and
selective etching of one type of step leading to the double step surface
creation. To check this hypothesis, different experiments have been carried in
an industrial 300 mm MOCVD where the total pressure during the anneal step of
Si(001) surface has been varied. Under optimized conditions, an APBs-free GaAs
layer was grown on a nominal Si(001) surface paving the way for III-V
integration on silicon industrial platform.