  We present genetIC, a new code for generating initial conditions for
cosmological N-body simulations. The code allows precise, user-specified
alterations to be made to arbitrary regions of the simulation (while
maintaining consistency with the statistical ensemble). These "genetic
modifications" allow, for example, the history, mass, or environment of a
target halo to be altered in order to study the effect on their evolution. The
code natively supports initial conditions with nested zoom regions at
progressively increasing resolution. Modifications in the high-resolution
region must propagate self-consistently onto the lower resolution grids; to
enable this while maintaining a small memory footprint, we introduce a
Fourier-space filtering approach to generating fields at variable resolution.
Due to a close correspondence with modifications, constrained initial
conditions can also be produced by genetIC (for example with the aim of
matching structures in the local Universe). We test the accuracy of
modifications performed within zoom initial conditions. The code achieves
sub-percent precision, which is easily sufficient for current applications in
galaxy formation.


  We present a brief review of exact solutions of cylindrical symmetric fields
in General Relativity produced by different perfect fluid sources. These
sources are assumed static, stationary, translating and collapsing. Properties
of these fields are discussed and some important open questions are called the
attention for future research.


  Vast amounts of astronomical photometric data are generated from various
projects, requiring significant efforts to identify variable stars and other
object classes. In light of this, a general, widely applicable classification
framework would simplify the task of designing custom classifiers. We present a
novel deep learning framework for classifying light curves using a weakly
supervised object detection model. Our framework identifies the optimal windows
for both light curves and power spectra automatically, and zooms in on their
corresponding data. This allows for automatic feature extraction from both time
and frequency domains, enabling our model to handle data across different
scales and sampling intervals. We train our model on datasets obtained from
both space-based and ground-based multi-band observations of variable stars and
transients. We achieve an accuracy of 87% for combined variables and transient
events, which is comparable to the performance of previous feature-based
models. Our trained model can be utilized directly to other missions, such as
ASAS-SN, without requiring any retraining or fine-tuning. To address known
issues with miscalibrated predictive probabilities, we apply conformal
prediction to generate robust predictive sets that guarantee true label
coverage with a given probability. Additionally, we incorporate various anomaly
detection algorithms to empower our model with the ability to identify
out-of-distribution objects. Our framework is implemented in the Deep-LC
toolkit, which is an open-source Python package hosted on Github and PyPI.


  We study the radiative decay of $X(3872)$ based on the assumption that
$X(3872)$ is regarded as a $c\overline{c}$ charmonium with quantum number
$J^{PC}=1^{++}$ ($J,\,P,\,C$ represent the spin, parity and charge conjugation,
respectively). The form factors of $X(3872)$ transitions to $J/\psi\gamma$ and
$\psi'\gamma$ ($\psi'$ denotes $\psi(2S)$ throughout the paper) are calculated
in the framework of the covariant light-front quark model. The phenomenological
wave function of a meson depends on the parameter $\beta$, whose inverse
essentially describes the confinement scale. In the present work, the
parameters $\beta$ for the vector $J/\psi$ and $\psi'$ mesons will be
determined through their decay constants, which are obtained from the
experimental values of their partial decay widths to the electron-positron
pair. For $X(3872)$, we determined the value of $\beta$ by the decay width of
$X(3872)\rightarrow \psi'\gamma$. Then, we examined the width of $X(3872)\to
J/\psi\gamma$ in a manner of parameter-free prediction and compared it with the
experimental value. As a result, an inconsistency or contradiction occurs
between the widths of $X(3872)\to J/\psi\gamma$ and $X(3872)\to \psi'\gamma$.
We thus conclude that $X(3872)$ cannot be a pure $c\overline c$ resonance and
that other components are necessary in its wave function.


  Charge transport in solids at low temperature reveals a material's mesoscopic
properties and structure. Under a magnetic field, Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH)
oscillations inform complex quantum transport phenomena that are not limited by
the ground state characteristics. Here, in elemental metal Cr with two
incommensurately superposed lattices of ions and a spin-density-wave ground
state, we reveal that the phases of several low-frequency SdH oscillations in
sigma_xx (rho_xx) and sigma_yy (rho_yy) are opposite, contrast with
oscillations from normal cyclotron orbits that maintain identical phases. We
trace the origin of the low frequency SdH oscillations to quantum interference
effects arising from the incommensurate orbits of Cr's superposed reciprocal
lattices, and explain the observed pi-phase shift by the reconnection of
anisotropic joint open and closed orbits.


  In this paper, given a linear time-invariant strongly connected network, we
study the problem of determining the minimum number of state variables that
need to be simultaneously actuated and measured to ensure structural
controllability and observability, respectively. This problem is fundamental in
the design of multi-agent systems, where there are economic constraints in the
decision of which agents to equip with a more costly on-board system that will
allow the agent to have both actuation and sensing capabilities. Despite the
combinatorial nature of this problem, we present a solution that couples the
design of both structural controllability and structural observability
counterparts to address it with polynomial-time complexity.


  A scattering model is developed for ultracold molecular collisions, which
allows inelastic processes, chemical reactions, and complex formation to be
treated in a unified way. All these scattering processes and various
combinations of them are possible in ultracold molecular gases, and as such
this model will allow the rigorous parametrization of experimental results. In
addition we show how, once extracted, these parameters can be related to the
physical properties of the system, shedding light on fundamental aspects of
molecular collision dynamics.


  We study the exact construction of D-branes in Lorentzian AdS(3). We start by
defining a family of conformal field theories that gives a natural Euclidean
version of the SL(2,R) CFT and does not correspond to H(3)+, the analytic
continuation of AdS(3). We argue that one can recuperate the exact CFT results
of Lorentzian AdS(3), upon an analytic continuation in the moduli space of
these conformal field theories. Then we construct exact boundary states for
various symmetric and symmetry-breaking D-branes in AdS(3).


  We observe the parallel between the null Killing vector on the horizon and
degenerate Killing vectors at both north and south poles in Kerr-Taub-NUT and
general Plebanski solutions. This suggests a correspondence between the pairs
of the angular momentum/velocity and the NUT charge/potential. We treat the
time as a real line such that the Misner strings are physical. We find that the
NUT charge spreads along the Misner strings, analogous to that the mass in the
Schwarzschild black hole sits at its spacetime singularity. We develop
procedures to calculate all the thermodynamic quantities and we find that the
results are consistent with the first law (Wald formalism), the Euclidean
action and the Smarr relation. We also apply the Wald formalism, the Euclidean
action approach, and the (generalized) Komar integration to the electric and
magnetic black holes in a class of EMD theories, and also to boosted black
strings and Kaluza-Klein monopoles in five dimensions, to gain better
understandings of how to deal with the subtleties associated with Dirac and
Misner strings.


  The Geminga pulsar has long been one of the most intriguing MeV-GeV gamma-ray
point sources. We examine the implications of the recent Milagro detection of
extended, multi-TeV gamma-ray emission from Geminga, finding that this reveals
the existence of an ancient, powerful cosmic-ray accelerator that can plausibly
account for the multi-GeV positron excess that has evaded explanation. We
explore a number of testable predictions for gamma-ray and electron/positron
experiments (up to ~100 TeV) that can confirm the first "direct" detection of a
cosmic-ray source.


  We introduce proper display calculi for intuitionistic, bi-intuitionistic and
classical linear logics with exponentials, which are sound, complete,
conservative, and enjoy cut-elimination and subformula property. Based on the
same design, we introduce a variant of Lambek calculus with exponentials, aimed
at capturing the controlled application of exchange and associativity.
Properness (i.e. closure under uniform substitution of all parametric parts in
rules) is the main interest and added value of the present proposal, and allows
for the smoothest proof of cut-elimination. Our proposal builds on an algebraic
and order-theoretic analysis of linear logic, and applies the guidelines of the
multi-type methodology in the design of display calculi.


  We study theoretically the equilibrium phase behaviour of a mixture of
polydisperse hard-sphere colloids and monodisperse polymers, modelled using the
Asakura-Oosawa model within the free volume approximation of Lekkerkerker et
al. We compute full phase diagrams in the plane of colloid and polymer volume
fractions, using the moment free energy method. The intricate features of phase
separation in pure polydisperse colloids combine with the appearance of
polymer-induced gas-liquid coexistence to give a rich variety of phase diagram
topologies as the polymer-colloid size ratio and the colloid polydispersity are
varied. Quantitatively, we find that polydispersity disfavours fluid-solid
against gas-liquid separation, causing a substantial lowering of the threshold
value above which stable two-phase gas-liquid coexistence appears. Phase splits
involving two or more solids can occur already at low colloid concentration,
where they may be kinetically accessible. We also analyse the strength of
colloidal size fractionation. When a solid phase separates from a fluid, its
polydispersity is reduced most strongly if the phase separation takes place at
low colloid concentration and high polymer concentration, in agreement with
experimental observations. For fractionation in gas-liquid coexistence we
likewise find good agreement with experiment, as well as with perturbative
theories for near-monodisperse systems.


  A practical number is a positive integer $n$ such that all positive integers
less than $n$ can be written as a sum of distinct divisors of $n$. Leonetti and
Sanna proved that, as $x \to +\infty$, the central binomial coefficient
$\binom{2n}{n}$ is a practical number for all positive integers $n \leq x$ but
at most $O(x^{0.88097})$ exceptions. We improve this result by reducing the
number of exceptions to $\exp\!\big(C (\log x)^{4/5} \log \log x\big)$, where
$C > 0$ is a constant.


  We present the first detailed analysis of the mass and dynamical structure of
a sample of six early-type lens galaxies, selected from the Sloan Lens ACS
Survey, in the redshift range 0.08 < z < 0.33. Both Hubble Space Telescope
(HST)/ACS high-resolution imaging and VLT VIMOS integral field spectroscopy are
available for these systems. The galaxies are modelled - under the assumptions
of axial symmetry and two-integral stellar distribution function - by making
use of the CAULDRON code, which self-consistently combines gravitational
lensing and stellar dynamics, and is fully embedded within the framework of
Bayesian statistics. The principal results of this study are: (i) all galaxies
in the sample are well described by a simple axisymmetric power-law profile for
the total density, with a logarithmic slope gamma very close to isothermal
(<gamma> = 1.98 +/- 0.05 and an intrinsic spread close to 5 per cent) showing
no evidence of evolution over the probed range of redshift; (ii) the axial
ratio of the total density distribution is rounder than 0.65 and in all cases,
except for a fast rotator, does not deviate significantly from the flattening
of the intrinsic stellar distribution; (iii) the dark matter fraction within
the effective radius has a lower limit of about 15 to 30 per cent; (iv) the
sample galaxies are only mildly anisotropic, with delta <= 0.16; (v) the
physical distinction among slow and fast rotators, quantified by the v/sigma
ratio and the intrinsic angular momentum, is already present at z > 0.1.
Altogether, early-type galaxies at z = 0.08 - 0.33 are found to be markedly
smooth and almost isothermal systems, structurally and dynamically very similar
to their nearby counterparts. (Abridged)


  A new version of nonsymmetric gravitational theory is presented. The field
equations are expanded about the Minkowski metric, giving in lowest order the
linear Einstein field equations and massive Proca field equations for the
antisymmetric field $g_{[\mu\nu]}$. An expansion about an arbitrary Einstein
background metric yields massive Proca field equations with couplings to only
physical modes. It follows that the new version of NGT is free of ghost poles,
tachyons and higher-order poles and there are no problems with asymptotic
boundary conditions. A static spherically symmetric solution of the field
equations in the short-range approximation is everywhere regular and does not
contain a black hole event horizon.


  Recent progress in our understanding of the black hole information paradox
has lead to a new prescription for calculating entanglement entropies, which
involves special subsystems in regions where gravity is dynamical, called
\textit{quantum extremal islands}. We present a simple holographic framework
where the emergence of quantum extremal islands can be understood in terms of
the standard Ryu-Takayanagi prescription, used for calculating entanglement
entropies in the boundary theory. Our setup describes a $d$-dimensional
boundary CFT coupled to a ($d$-1)-dimensional defect, which are dual to global
AdS${}_{d+1}$ containing a codimension-one brane. Through the Randall-Sundrum
mechanism, graviton modes become localized at the brane, and in a certain
parameter regime, an effective description of the brane is given by Einstein
gravity on an AdS${}_d$ background coupled to two copies of the boundary CFT.
Within this effective description, the standard RT formula implies the
existence of quantum extremal islands in the gravitating region, whenever the
RT surface crosses the brane. This indicates that islands are a universal
feature of effective theories of gravity and need not be tied to the presence
of black holes.


  We develop a mixture-based approach to robust density modeling and outlier
detection for experimental multivariate data that includes measurement error
information. Our model is designed to infer atypical measurements that are not
due to errors, aiming to retrieve potentially interesting peculiar objects.
Since exact inference is not possible in this model, we develop a
tree-structured variational EM solution. This compares favorably against a
fully factorial approximation scheme, approaching the accuracy of a
Markov-Chain-EM, while maintaining computational simplicity. We demonstrate the
benefits of including measurement errors in the model, in terms of improved
outlier detection rates in varying measurement uncertainty conditions. We then
use this approach in detecting peculiar quasars from an astrophysical survey,
given photometric measurements with errors.


  The creation and maintenance of a Register of Processing Activities (ROPA) is
an essential process for the demonstration of GDPR compliance. We analyse ROPA
templates from six EU Data Protection Regulators and show that template scope
and granularity vary widely between jurisdictions. We then propose a flexible,
consolidated data model for consistent processing of ROPAs (CSM-ROPA). We
analyse the extent that the Data Privacy Vocabulary (DPV) can be used to
express CSM-ROPA. We find that it does not directly address modelling ROPAs,
and so needs additional concept definitions. We provide a mapping of our
CSM-ROPA to an extension of the Data Privacy Vocabulary.


  Geospatial object segmentation, as a particular semantic segmentation task,
always faces with larger-scale variation, larger intra-class variance of
background, and foreground-background imbalance in the high spatial resolution
(HSR) remote sensing imagery. However, general semantic segmentation methods
mainly focus on scale variation in the natural scene, with inadequate
consideration of the other two problems that usually happen in the large area
earth observation scene. In this paper, we argue that the problems lie on the
lack of foreground modeling and propose a foreground-aware relation network
(FarSeg) from the perspectives of relation-based and optimization-based
foreground modeling, to alleviate the above two problems. From perspective of
relation, FarSeg enhances the discrimination of foreground features via
foreground-correlated contexts associated by learning foreground-scene
relation. Meanwhile, from perspective of optimization, a foreground-aware
optimization is proposed to focus on foreground examples and hard examples of
background during training for a balanced optimization. The experimental
results obtained using a large scale dataset suggest that the proposed method
is superior to the state-of-the-art general semantic segmentation methods and
achieves a better trade-off between speed and accuracy. Code has been made
available at: \url{https://github.com/Z-Zheng/FarSeg}.


  We calculate the collective excitations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate
in the regime where it self-binds into droplets stabilized by quantum
fluctuations. We show that the filament-shaped droplets act as a
quasi-one-dimensional waveguide along which low angular momentum phonons
propagate. The evaporation (unbinding) threshold occurring as the atom number
$N$ is reduced to the critical value $N_c$ is associated with a monopole-like
excitation going soft as $\epsilon_0\sim(N-N_c)^{1/4}$. Considering the system
in the presence of a trapping potential, we quantify the crossover from a
trap-bound condensate to a self-bound droplet.


  Analysis of the WKB exactness in some homogeneous spaces is attempted. $CP^N$
as well as its noncompact counterpart $D_{N,1}$ is studied. $U(N+1)$ or U(N,1)
based on the Schwinger bosons leads us to $CP^N$ or $D_{N,1}$ path integral
expression for the quantity, ${\rm tr} e^{-iHT}$, with the aid of coherent
states. The WKB approximation terminates in the leading order and yields the
exact result provided that the Hamiltonian is given by a bilinear form of the
creation and the annihilation operators. An argument on the WKB exactness to
more general cases is also made.


  There has been a recent interest in considering Quantum Field Theories in
which Lorentz Invariance is broken in the UV sector. However attention has been
mostly limited to dispersive theories. In this work we provide the generalized
settings for studying dissipation. Unitarity is preserved by coupling the
original fields to additional (heavy) fields which induce the dissipation.
Starting with Lagrangians breaking LI in the UV, we learn that dissipative
effects unavoidably develop in the effective theory. We then covariantize these
Lagrangians in order to address the trans-Planckian question of inflation and
black hole physics. The peculiar properties of the additional fields inducing
dissipation is revealed by the covariantization. The links with the
phenomenological approach to Quantum Gravity and with some Brane World
scenarios are also discussed.


  We introduce a numerical method to simulate nonlinear open quantum dynamics
of a particle in situations where its state undergoes significant expansion in
phase space while generating small quantum features at the phase-space Planck
scale. Our approach involves simulating the Wigner function in a time-dependent
frame that leverages information from the classical trajectory to efficiently
represent the quantum state in phase space. To demonstrate the capabilities of
our method, we examine the open quantum dynamics of a particle evolving in a
one-dimensional weak quartic potential after initially being ground-state
cooled in a tight harmonic potential. This numerical approach is particularly
relevant to ongoing efforts to design, optimize, and understand experiments
targeting the preparation of macroscopic quantum superposition states of
massive particles through nonlinear quantum dynamics.


  Koenig, K\"ulshammer and Ovsienko showed that Morita equivalence classes of
quasi-hereditary algebras are in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence
classes of the module categories over directed bocses. In this article, we
extend this result to $\Delta$-filtered algebras and
$\overline{\Delta}$-filtered algebras.


  C. Weibel and Thomason-Trobaugh proved (under some assumptions) that
algebraic K-theory with coefficients is A1-homotopy invariant. In this article
we generalize this result from schemes to the broad setting of dg categories.
Along the way, we extend Bass-Quillen's fundamental theorem as well as
Stienstra's foundational work on module structures over the big Witt ring to
the setting of dg categories. Among other cases, the above A1-homotopy
invariance result can now be applied to sheaves of (not necessarily
commutative) dg algebras over stacks. As an application, we compute the
algebraic K-theory with coefficients of dg cluster categories using solely the
kernel and cokernel of the Coxeter matrix. This leads to a complete computation
of the algebraic K-theory with coefficients of the Kleinian singularities
parametrized by the simply laced Dynkin diagrams. As a byproduct, we obtain
some vanishing and divisibility properties of algebraic K-theory (without
coefficients).


  We prove super-polynomial lower bounds on the size of linear programming
relaxations for approximation versions of constraint satisfaction problems. We
show that for these problems, polynomial-sized linear programs are exactly as
powerful as programs arising from a constant number of rounds of the
Sherali-Adams hierarchy.
  In particular, any polynomial-sized linear program for Max Cut has an
integrality gap of 1/2 and any such linear program for Max 3-Sat has an
integrality gap of 7/8.


  The interaction between photons and a single two-level atom constitutes a
fundamental paradigm in quantum physics. The nonlinearity provided by the atom
means that the light-matter interaction depends strongly on the number of
photons interacting with the two-level system within its emission lifetime.
This nonlinearity results in the unveiling of strongly correlated
quasi-particles known as photon bound states, giving rise to key physical
processes such as stimulated emission and soliton propagation. While signatures
consistent with the existence of photon bound states have been measured in
strongly interacting Rydberg gases, their hallmark excitation-number-dependent
dispersion and propagation velocity have not yet been observed. Here, we report
the direct observation of a photon-number-dependent time delay in the
scattering off a single semiconductor quantum dot coupled to an optical cavity.
By scattering a weak coherent pulse off the cavity-QED system and measuring the
time-dependent output power and correlation functions, we show that single
photons, and two- and three-photon bound states incur different time delays of
144.02\,ps, 66.45\,ps and 45.51\,ps respectively. The reduced time delay of the
two-photon bound state is a fingerprint of the celebrated example of stimulated
emission, where the arrival of two photons within the lifetime of an emitter
causes one photon to stimulate the emission of the other from the atom.


  We show that the quantum order parameters (QOP) associated with the
transitions between a normal conductor and a superconductor in the BCS and
eta-pairing models and between a Mott-insulator and a superfluid in the
Bose-Hubbard model are directly related to the amount of entanglement existent
in the ground state of each system. This gives a physical meaningful
interpretation to these QOP, which shows the intrinsically quantum nature of
the phase transitions considered.


  This paper overviews the principles, theoretical analysis and numerical
simulation of STM media and their applications in communication systems. We
first present a global perspective on the principles of ST modulation,
naturally and artificially created STM media and their applications in
communication systems. Next, the interaction of artificial STM media with
electromagnetic waves is analyzed, and numerical simulation of electromagnetic
wave propagation and scattering from these media is provided. Then, the
dispersion diagram of the STM medium is studied for the characterization of
subluminal, luminal and superluminal ST modulations. In addition, we
investigate the effect of length, modulation velocity, modulation frequency,
and equilibrium on wave scattering from the STM medium. The extraordinary
interaction of the STM medium with electromagnetic waves leads to
unidirectional frequency generation and amplification, which are leveraged for
the realization of various enhanced-efficiency broadband microwave components
that are integrable with circuit technology, lightweight, tunable, and low
cost. These applications include, but are not limited to, magnet-free
isolators, magnet-free circulators, transceiver front-ends, and pure frequency
mixers.


  During the last few years, the increasing demand of energy for refrigeration
applications has relived the interest of the scientific community in the study
of alternative methods to the traditional gas-based refrigeration. Within this
framework, the use of solid state refrigeration based on the electrocaloric
effect reveals itself as one of the most promising technologies. In this work,
we analyze how the temperature change associated with the electrocaloric effect
shows a correlation with the electrical properties of a commercial multilayer
capacitor. In that sense we established a clear relation between the adsorption
currents and the temperature change produced by the electrocaloric effect.
Additionally, intrinsic leakage currents are responsible for the sample heating
due to the Joule effect. These well distinguished contributions can be useful
during the design of solid state refrigeration devices based on the
electrocaloric effect.


  Making use of $\phi$-mapping topological current method, we discuss the
self-dual vortices in the Abelian Chern-Simons model with two complex scalar
fields. For each scalar field, an exact nontrivial equation with a topological
term which is missing in many references is derived analytically. The general
angular momentum is obtained. The magnetic flux which relates the two scalar
fields is calculated. Furthermore, we investigate the vortex evolution
processes, and find that because of the present of the vortex molecule, these
evolution processes is more complicated than the vortex evolution processes in
the corresponding single scalar field model.


  We present a novel interpretation of the Hawking temperature of acoustic
holes, the hydrodynamic analogue of standard black holes, by connecting the
geometrical properties of the horizon with the distribution function of the
spontaneously generated phonons. Using covariant kinetic theory to describe the
phonon gas emitted by the acoustic hole, we obtain the correct expression of
the Hawking temperature by equating the entropy loss of the acoustic horizon
with the entropy gain of the phonon gas. In doing this, we assume that the
entropy of the acoustic hole is proportional to the area of the horizon, as in
standard black holes. Since our method only depends on the geometrical
properties of the acoustic horizon and on the statistical properties of the
phonon gas, it is well suited to be extended to standard black holes and to
out-of-equilibrium systems.


  We classify all the $6$-dimensional unimodular Lie algebras $\mathfrak{g}$
admitting a complex structure with non-zero closed $(3,0)$-form. This gives
rise to $6$-dimensional compact homogeneous spaces $M=\Gamma\backslash G$,
where $\Gamma$ is a lattice, admitting an invariant complex structure with
holomorphically trivial canonical bundle. As an application, in the balanced
Hermitian case, we study the instanton condition for any metric connection
$\nabla^{\varepsilon,\rho}$ in the plane generated by the Levi-Civita
connection and the Gauduchon line of Hermitian connections. In the setting of
the Hull-Strominger system with connection on the tangent bundle being
Hermitian-Yang-Mills, we prove that if a compact non-K\"ahler homogeneous space
$M=\Gamma\backslash G$ admits an invariant solution with respect to some
non-flat connection $\nabla$ in the family $\nabla^{\varepsilon,\rho}$, then
$M$ is a nilmanifold with underlying Lie algebra $\mathfrak{h}_3$, a
solvmanifold with underlying algebra $\mathfrak{g}_7$, or a quotient of the
semisimple group SL(2,$\mathbb{C}$). Since it is known that the system can be
solved on these spaces, our result implies that they are the unique compact
non-K\"ahler balanced homogeneous spaces admitting such invariant solutions. As
another application, on the compact solvmanifold underlying the Nakamura
manifold, we construct solutions, on any given balanced Bott-Chern class, to
the heterotic equations of motion taking the Chern connection as (flat)
instanton.


  Demand-side load reduction is a key benefit of Smart Grids. However, existing
demand response optimization (DR) programs fail to effectively leverage the
near-realtime information available from smart meters and Building Area
Networks to respond dynamically to changing energy use profiles. We investigate
the use of semantic Complex Event Processing (CEP) patterns to model and detect
dynamic situations in a campus microgrid to facilitate adaptive DR. Our focus
is on demand-side management rather than supply-side constraints. Continuous
data from information sources like smart meters and building sensors are
abstracted as event streams. Event patterns for situations that assist with DR
are detected from them. Specifically, we offer a taxonomy of event patterns
that can guide operators to define situations of interest and we illustrate its
efficacy for DR by applying these patterns on realtime events in the USC Campus
microgrid using our CEP framework


  Due to developments in instruments and computers, functional observations are
increasingly popular. However, effective methodologies for flexibly estimating
the underlying trends with valid uncertainty quantification for a sequence of
functional data (e.g. functional time series) are still scarce. In this work,
we develop a locally adaptive smoothing method, called functional horseshoe
smoothing, by introducing a shrinkage prior to the general order of differences
of functional variables. This allows us to capture abrupt changes by making the
most of the shrinkage capability and also to assess uncertainty by Bayesian
inference. The fully Bayesian framework allows the selection of the number of
basis functions via the posterior predictive loss. We provide theoretical
properties of the model, which support the shrinkage ability. Also, by taking
advantage of the nature of functional data, this method is able to handle
heterogeneously observed data without data augmentation. Simulation studies and
real data analysis demonstrate that the proposed method has desirable
properties.


  For calorimeter applications requiring precise time stamping, the time
structure of hadronic showers in the detector is a crucial issue. This applies
in particular to detector concepts for CLIC, where a hadronic calorimeter with
tungsten absorbers is being considered to achieve a high level of shower
containment while satisfying strict space constraints. The high hadronic
background from gamma gamma to hadrons processes at 3 TeV in combination with
the 2 GHz bunch crossing frequency at CLIC requires good time stamping in the
detectors. To provide first measurements of the time structure in a highly
granular scintillator-tungsten calorimeter, T3B, a dedicated timing experiment,
was installed behind the last layer of the CALICE WHCAL prototype, a 30 layer
tungsten scintillator calorimeter. T3B consists of 15 small scintillator cells
with embedded silicon photomultipliers, read out with fast digitizers over a
time window of 2.4 us, and provides detailed measurements of the time structure
of the signal. The offline data reconstruction performs an automatic gain
calibration using noise events recorded between physics triggers and allows the
determination of the arrival time of each photon at the photon sensor. The T3B
setup, its calibration and data reconstruction, as well as first results of the
time structure of the calorimeter response for 10 GeV pions recorded at the
CERN PS confronted with Geant4 simulations using different physics lists are
discussed.


  Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) play a crucial role in transportation and
service tasks at hospitals, contributing to enhanced efficiency and meeting
medical demands. This paper investigates the optimization problem of scheduling
strategies for AMRs at smart hospitals, where the service and travel times of
AMRs are stochastic. A stochastic mixed-integer programming model is formulated
to minimize the total cost of the hospital by reducing the number of AMRs and
travel distance while satisfying constraints such as AMR battery state of
charge, AMR capacity, and time windows for medical requests. To address this
objective, some properties of the solutions with time window constraints are
identified. The variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm is adjusted by
incorporating the properties of the AMR scheduling problem to solve the model.
Experimental results demonstrate that VNS generates high-quality solutions.
Both enhanced efficiency and the meeting of medical demands are achieved
through intelligently arranging the driving routes of AMRs for both charging
and service requests, resulting in substantial cost reductions for hospitals
and enhanced utilization of medical resources.


  Most of the speech translation models heavily rely on parallel data, which is
hard to collect especially for low-resource languages. To tackle this issue, we
propose to build a cascaded speech translation system without leveraging any
kind of paired data. We use fully unpaired data to train our unsupervised
systems and evaluate our results on CoVoST 2 and CVSS. The results show that
our work is comparable with some other early supervised methods in some
language pairs. While cascaded systems always suffer from severe error
propagation problems, we proposed denoising back-translation (DBT), a novel
approach to building robust unsupervised neural machine translation (UNMT). DBT
successfully increases the BLEU score by 0.7--0.9 in all three translation
directions. Moreover, we simplified the pipeline of our cascaded system to
reduce inference latency and conducted a comprehensive analysis of every part
of our work. We also demonstrate our unsupervised speech translation results on
the established website.


  We show that unit $\mathcal{O}_{F,X}^\Lambda$-modules of Emerton and Kisin
provide an analogue of locally constant sheaves in the context of B\"ockle-Pink
$\Lambda$-crystals. For example they form a tannakian category if the
coefficient algebra $\Lambda$ is a field. Our results hold for a big class of
coefficien algebras which includes Drinfeld rings, and for arbitary locally
noetherian base schemes.


  The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascade, an
evolutionarily conserved motif present in all eukaryotic cells, is involved in
coordinating critical cell-fate decisions, regulating protein synthesis, and
mediating learning and memory. While the steady-state behavior of the pathway
stimulated by a time-invariant signal is relatively well-understood, we show
using a computational model that it exhibits a rich repertoire of transient
adaptive responses to changes in stimuli. When the signal is switched on, the
response is characterized by long-lived modulations in frequency as well as
amplitude. On withdrawing the stimulus, the activity decays over timescales
much longer than that of phosphorylation-dephosphorylation processes,
exhibiting reverberations characterized by repeated spiking in the activated
MAPK concentration. The long-term persistence of such post-stimulus activity
suggests that the cascade retains memory of the signal for a significant
duration following its removal, even in the absence of any explicit feedback or
cross-talk with other pathways. We find that the molecular mechanism underlying
this behavior is related to the existence of distinct relaxation rates for the
different cascade components. This results in the imbalance of fluxes between
different layers of the cascade, with the repeated reuse of activated kinases
as enzymes when they are released from sequestration in complexes leading to
one or more spike events following the removal of the stimulus. The persistent
adaptive response reported here, indicative of a cellular "short-term" memory,
suggests that this ubiquitous signaling pathway plays an even more central role
in information processing by eukaryotic cells.


  Laser spectroscopy of the $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th nuclear clock transition is
necessary for the future construction of a nuclear-based optical clock.
Precision laser sources with broad spectral coverage in the vacuum ultraviolet
are needed for this task. Here, we present a tunable vacuum-ultraviolet
frequency comb based on cavity-enhanced seventh-harmonic generation. Its
tunable spectrum covers the current uncertainty range of the
$^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th nuclear clock transition.


  Mira variables are asymptotic giant branch pulsating stars with long
pulsation periods and large amplitudes in optical bands. By applying the random
forest algorithm to the I-band light curves for the Miras in the Magellanic
Clouds, we have classified these Miras into regular Miras and non-regular
Miras. Wherein non-regular Miras exhibit a long-term variation in addition to
their primary pulsation periods. Our results confirm that the period-luminosity
relation for maximum light has a smaller dispersion, but only occurs on the
regular oxygen-rich (O-rich) Miras, which we recommend to be applied in future
distance scale work. We have also collected multi-band photometry for these
Miras to perform a spectral-energy-distribution (SED) fitting with stellar and
dust components, showing that a significant fraction of dust is present around
the non-regular Miras. According to our results, we believe that the periodic
long-term variations seen in the non-regular Miras might be due to the presence
of dust.


  We study the structure of the circumstellar medium surrounding SN 1987A in
the equatorial plane. Furthermore, we study the evolution of the SN shock
within this medium during the first 25 years, and the resulting hard X-ray and
radio emission from the remnant.


  The recently established existence of spherical harmonic functions,
$Y_\ell^{m}(\theta,\phi)$ for half-odd-integer values of $\ell$ and $m$, allows
for the introduction into quantum chemistry of explicit electron
spin-coordinates; i.e. spherical polar angles $\theta_s, \phi_s$, that specify
the orientation of the spin angular momentum vector in space. In this
coordinate representation the spin angular momentum operators, $S^2, S_z$, are
represented by the usual differential operators in spherical polar coordinates
(commonly used for $L^2, L_z$), and their electron-spin eigenfunctions are
$\sqrt{\sin\theta_s} \exp(\pm\phi_s/2)$. This eigenfunction representation has
the pedagogical advantage over the abstract spin eigenfunctions, $\alpha,
\beta,$ that ``integration over spin coordinates'' is a true integration (over
the angles $\theta_s, \phi_s$). In addition they facilitate construction of
many electron wavefunctions in which the electron spins are neither parallel
nor antiparallel, but inclined at an intermediate angle. In particular this may
have application to the description of EPR correlation experiments.


  The dynamics of spin in external electromagnetic, gravitational, and axion
fields is analysed in the framework of the gravitoelectromagnetism approach in
Einstein's general relativity theory. We consistently extend the recent studies
from the flat Minkowski geometry to the curved spacetime manifolds,
contributing to the discussion of the possible new role of a precessing spin as
an ``axion antenna'' that can be used to detect the hypothetical axion-like
dark matter. The formalism developed helps to clarify the subtle influence of
the gravitational/inertial and axion fields in the ultra-sensitive high-energy
spin experiments with charged particles and neutrons at accelerators and
storage rings devoted to testing fundamental physical symmetries, including
attempts to establish the nature of dark matter in the Universe.


  Abridged: Alpha Virginis is a binary system whose proximity and brightness
allow detailed investigations of the internal structure and evolution of stars
undergoing time-variable tidal interactions. Previous studies have led to the
conclusion that the internal structure of Spica's primary star may be more
centrally condensed than predicted by theoretical models of single stars,
raising the possibility that the interactions could lead to effects that are
currently neglected in structure and evolution calculations. The key parameters
in confirming this result are the values of the orbital eccentricity $e$, the
apsidal period $U$, and the primary star's radius, R_1. We analyze the impact
that line profile variability has on the derivation of its orbital elements and
R_1. We use high SNR observations obtained in 2000, 2008, and 2013 to derive
the orbital elements from fits to the radial velocity curves. We produce
synthetic line profiles using an ab initio tidal interaction model. Results:
The variations in the line profiles can be understood in terms of the tidal
flows, whose large-scale structure is relatively fixed in the rotating binary
system reference frame. Fits to the radial velocity curves yield
$e$=0.108$\pm$0.014. However, the analogous RV curves from theoretical line
profiles indicate that the distortion in the lines causes the fitted value of
$e$ to depend on the argument of periastron; i.e., on the epoch of observation.
As a result, the actual value of $e$ may be as high as 0.125. We find that
$U$=117.9$\pm$1.8, which is in agreement with previous determinations. Using
the value $R_1=6.8 R_\odot$ derived by Palate et al. (2013) the value of the
observational internal structure constant $k_{2,obs}$ is consistent with
theory. We confirm the presence of variability in the line profiles of the
secondary star.


  This paper provides a rigorous study of the localization transition for a
Gaussian free field on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ interacting with a quenched disordered
substrate that acts on the interface when the interface height is close to
zero. The substrate has the tendency to localize or repel the interface at
different sites and one can show that a localization-delocalization transition
takes place when varying the average pinning potential $h$: the free energy
density is zero in the delocalized regime, that is for $h$ smaller than a
threshold $h_c$, and it is positive for $h>h_c$. For $d\ge 3$ we compute $h_c$
and we show that the transition happens at the same value as for the annealed
model. However we can show that the critical behavior of the quenched model
differs from the one of the annealed one. While the phase transition of the
annealed model is of first order, we show that the quenched free energy is
bounded above by $ (h-h_c)_+^2$ times a positive constant and that, for
Gaussian disorder, the quadratic behavior is sharp. Therefore this provides an
example in which a {\sl relevant disorder critical exponent} can be made
explicit: in theoretical physics disorder is said to be {\sl relevant} when the
disorder changes the critical behavior of a system and, while there are cases
in which it is known that disorder is relevant, the exact critical behavior is
typically unknown. For $d=2$ we are not able to decide whether the quenched and
annealed critical points coincide, but we provide an upper bound for the
difference between them.


  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are attracting the attention of people
all over the world. Regardless the platform, numbers of registrants for online
courses are impressive but in the same time, completion rates are
disappointing. Understanding the mechanisms of dropping out based on the
learner profile arises as a crucial task in MOOCs, since it will allow
intervening at the right moment in order to assist the learner in completing
the course. In this paper, the dropout behaviour of learners in a MOOC is
thoroughly studied by first extracting features that describe the behavior of
learners within the course and then by comparing three classifiers (Logistic
Regression, Random Forest and AdaBoost) in two tasks: predicting which users
will have dropped out by a certain week and predicting which users will drop
out on a specific week. The former has showed to be considerably easier, with
all three classifiers performing equally well. However, the accuracy for the
second task is lower, and Logistic Regression tends to perform slightly better
than the other two algorithms. We found that features that reflect an active
attitude of the user towards the MOOC, such as submitting their assignment,
posting on the Forum and filling their Profile, are strong indicators of
persistence.


  The multi relational data mining approach has developed as an alternative way
for handling the structured data such that RDBMS. This will provides the mining
in multiple tables directly. In MRDM the patterns are available in multiple
tables (relations) from a relational database. As the data are available over
the many tables which will affect the many problems in the practice of the data
mining. To deal with this problem, one either constructs a single table by
Propositionalisation, or uses a Multi-Relational Data Mining algorithm. MRDM
approaches have been successfully applied in the area of bioinformatics. Three
popular pattern finding techniques classification, clustering and association
are frequently used in MRDM. Multi relational approach has developed as an
alternative for analyzing the structured data such as relational database. MRDM
allowing applying directly in the data mining in multiple tables. To avoid the
expensive joining operations and semantic losses we used the MRDM technique.
This paper focuses some of the application areas of MRDM and feature directions
as well as the comparison of ILP, GM, SSDM and MRDM


  Microcavity solitons enable miniaturized coherent frequency comb sources.
However, the formation of microcavity solitons can be disrupted by stimulated
Raman scattering (SRS), particularly in the emerging crystalline microcomb
materials with high Raman gain. Here, we propose and implement dissipation
control---tailoring the energy dissipation of selected cavity modes---to
purposely raise/lower the threshold of Raman lasing in a strongly Raman-active
lithium niobate microring resonator, and realize on-demand soliton mode-locking
or Raman lasing. Numerical simulations are carried out to confirm our analyses
and agree well with experiment results. Our work demonstrates an effective
approach to address strong SRS for microcavity soliton generation.


  We used the Immersion GRating Infrared Spectrometer (IGRINS) to determine
fundamental parameters for 61 K- and M-type young stellar objects (YSOs)
located in the Ophiuchus and Upper Scorpius star-forming regions. We employed
synthetic spectra and a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to fit specific
K-band spectral regions and determine the photospheric temperature ($T_{\rm
eff}$), surface gravity ($\log$ g), magnetic field strength (B), projected
rotational velocity ($v \sin i$), and K-band veiling ($r_{\rm K}$). We
determined B for $\sim$46% of our sample. Stellar parameters were compared to
the results from Taurus-Auriga and the TW Hydrae Association (TWA) presented in
Paper I of this series. We classified all the YSOs in the IGRINS survey with
infrared spectral indices from 2MASS and WISE photometry between 2 and
24~$\mu$m. We found that Class II YSOs typically have lower $\log$ g and $v\sin
i$, similar B, and higher K-band veiling than their Class III counterparts.
Additionally, we determined the stellar parameters for a sample of K and M
field stars also observed with IGRINS. We have identified intrinsic
similarities and differences at different evolutionary stages with our
homogeneous determination of stellar parameters in the IGRINS YSO Survey.
Considering $\log$ g as a proxy for age, we found that the Ophiuchus and Taurus
samples have a similar age. We also find that Upper Scorpius and TWA YSOs have
similar ages, and are more evolved than Ophiuchus/Taurus YSOs.


  We investigate Gauss maps of (not necessarily normal) projective toric
varieties over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic. The
main results are as follows: (1) The structure of the Gauss map of a toric
variety is described in terms of combinatorics in any characteristic. (2) We
give a developability criterion in the toric case. In particular, we show that
any toric variety whose Gauss map is degenerate must be the join of some toric
varieties in characteristic zero. (3) As applications, we provide two
constructions of toric varieties whose Gauss maps have some given data (e.g.,
fibers, images) in positive characteristic.


  We prove the uniqueness of higher dimensional (dilatonic) charged black holes
in static and asymptotically flat spacetimes for arbitrary vector-dilaton
coupling constant. An application to the uniqueness of a wide class of black
p-branes is also given.


  Let $L=-\Delta+V$ be a Schr\"{o}dinger operator, where $\Delta $ is the
Laplacian operator on $\rz$, while the nonnegative potential $V$ belongs to
certain reverse H\"{o}lder class. In this paper, we establish some weighted
norm inequalities for commutators of Littlewood-Paley functions related to
Schr\"odinger operators.


  Adder neural network (AdderNet) is a new kind of deep model that replaces the
original massive multiplications in convolutions by additions while preserving
the high performance. Since the hardware complexity of additions is much lower
than that of multiplications, the overall energy consumption is thus reduced
significantly. To further optimize the hardware overhead of using AdderNet,
this paper studies the winograd algorithm, which is a widely used fast
algorithm for accelerating convolution and saving the computational costs.
Unfortunately, the conventional Winograd algorithm cannot be directly applied
to AdderNets since the distributive law in multiplication is not valid for the
l1-norm. Therefore, we replace the element-wise multiplication in the Winograd
equation by additions and then develop a new set of transform matrixes that can
enhance the representation ability of output features to maintain the
performance. Moreover, we propose the l2-to-l1 training strategy to mitigate
the negative impacts caused by formal inconsistency. Experimental results on
both FPGA and benchmarks show that the new method can further reduce the energy
consumption without affecting the accuracy of the original AdderNet.


  The Kalman variety of a linear subspace is a vector space consisting of all
endomorphisms that have an eigenvector in that subspace. We resolve a
conjecture of Ottaviani and Sturmfels and give the minimal defining equations
of the Kalman variety over a field of characteristic 0.


  The evolution of the C-type low frequency quasi-periodic oscillations
(LFQPOs) and associated time lag in transient black hole sources as a function
of time can be explained by variation of the Compton cloud size in a Two
Component Advective Flow solution (TCAF). A similar study of a persistent
source, GRS~1915+105, has not been attempted. We fit the evolution of QPOs with
propagatory oscillating shock (POS) solution for two sets of so-called
$\chi$-state observations and find that the shock steadily recedes with almost
constant velocity when QPO frequency is decreasing and the spectrum is
hardening. The shock moves inward with a constant velocity $v_0=473.0$ cm
s$^{-1}$ and $v_0=400.0$ cm s$^{-1}$ respectively in these two cases, when the
QPO frequency is increasing and the spectrum softens. This behavior is similar
to what was observed in XTE~J1550-564 during the 1998 outburst. The time lag
measured at the QPO frequency varies in a similar way as the size of the
Compton cloud. Most interestingly, in both the cases, the lag switches sign
(hard lag to soft lag) at a QPO frequency of $\sim 2.3 - 2.5$ Hz irrespective
of the energy of photons. We find, at very low frequencies $< 1$ Hz, the
Comptonizing Efficiency (CE) increases with QPO frequency and at higher QPO
frequencies the trend is opposite. The time lags become mostly positive at all
energies when CE is larger than $\sim 0.85\%$ for both the sources.


  While we have learned much about Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies (UDGs) in groups and
clusters, relatively little is known about them in less-dense environments.
More isolated UDGs are important for our understanding of UDG formation
scenarios because they form via secular mechanisms, allowing us to determine
the relative importance of environmentally-driven formation in groups and
clusters. We have used the public Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) together with the
Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) to constrain the abundance
and properties of UDGs in the field, targeting sources with low surface
brightness (24.0$\leq$\bar{\mu}_{e,r}}$\leq$\26.5) and large apparent sizes
(3.0\arcsec$\leq$\bar{r}_{e,r}}$\leq$8.0\arcsec). Accounting for several
sources of interlopers in our selection based on canonical scaling relations,
and using an empirical UDG model based on measurements from the literature, we
show that a scenario in which cluster-like red sequence UDGs occupy a
significant number of field galaxies is unlikely, with most field UDGs being
significantly bluer and showing signs of localised star formation. An immediate
conclusion is that UDGs are much more efficiently quenched in high-density
environments. We estimate an upper-limit on the total field abundance of UDGs
of 8$\pm$3$\times10^{-3}$cMpc$^{-3}$ within our selection range. We also
compare the total field abundance of UDGs to a measurement of the abundance of
HI-rich UDGs from the literature, suggesting that they occupy at least
one-fifth of the overall UDG population. The mass formation efficiency of UDGs
implied by this upper-limit is similar to what is measured in groups and
clusters.


  This study explores innovative methods for improving Visual Question
Answering (VQA) using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), autoencoders, and
attention mechanisms. Leveraging a balanced VQA dataset, we investigate three
distinct strategies. Firstly, GAN-based approaches aim to generate answer
embeddings conditioned on image and question inputs, showing potential but
struggling with more complex tasks. Secondly, autoencoder-based techniques
focus on learning optimal embeddings for questions and images, achieving
comparable results with GAN due to better ability on complex questions. Lastly,
attention mechanisms, incorporating Multimodal Compact Bilinear pooling (MCB),
address language priors and attention modeling, albeit with a
complexity-performance trade-off. This study underscores the challenges and
opportunities in VQA and suggests avenues for future research, including
alternative GAN formulations and attentional mechanisms.


  We investigate the applicability of inhomogeneous absorber models in the
formation of AGN outflow absorption-troughs. The models we explore are limited
to monotonic gradients of absorbing column densities in front of a finite
emission source. Our main finding is that simple power-law and gaussian
distributions are hard pressed to fit the Mrk 279 high-quality UV outflow data.
An acceptable fit for the O VI troughs can only be obtained by assuming
unrealistic optical depth values (upward of 100). The strongest constraints
arise from the attempt to fit the Lyman series troughs. In this case it is
evident that even allowing for complete freedom of both the power-law exponent
and the optical depth as a function of velocity cannot yield an acceptable fit.
In contrast, partial covering models do yield good fits for the Lyman series
troughs. We conclude that monotonic inhomogeneous absorber models that do not
include a sharp edge in the optical depth distribution across the source are
not an adequate physical model to explain the trough formation mechanism for
the outflow observed in Mrk 279.


  We propose a class of curvaton models which we call passive curvaton. In this
paper, two kinds of passive curvaton is considered. The first one is a
pseudoscalar curvaton couples to a gauge field. Different from the inflaton
case, the constraint from formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) is much
weaker and large non-gaussianity (of the equiliteral type) can be produced. The
second model is a dilaton-like scalar curvaton couples to a gauge field. We
investigate the scale dependence of non-gaussianity in this model. In both
models, the spectrum and non-Gaussianity are enhanced by the slow-roll
parameter of the curvaton field. Other possible passive curvaton models are
also mentioned.


  The BICEP2 collaboration has recently released data showing that the
scalar-to-tensor ratio $r$ is much larger than expected. The immediate
consequence, in the context of $f(R)$ gravity, is that the Starobinsky model of
inflation is ruled out since it predicts a value of $r$ much smaller than what
is observed. Of course, the BICEP2 data need verification, especially from
Planck with which there is some tension, therefore any conclusion seems
premature. However, it is interesting to ask what would be the functional form
of $f(R)$ in the case when the value of $r$ is different from the one predicted
by the Starobinsky model. In this paper, we show how to determine the form of
$f(R)$, once the slow-roll parameters are known with some accuracy. The
striking result is that, for given values of the scalar spectral index $n_{S}$
and $r$, the effective Lagrangian has the form $f(R)=R^{\zeta}$, where
$\zeta=2-\varepsilon$ and $|\varepsilon|\ll 1$. Therefore, it appears that the
inflationary phase of the Universe is best described by a $R^{2}$ theory, with
a small deviation that, as we show, can be obtained by quantum corrections.


  In this paper, we consider online planning in partially observable domains.
Solving the corresponding POMDP problem is a very challenging task,
particularly in an online setting. Our key contribution is a novel algorithmic
approach, Simplified Information Theoretic Belief Space Planning (SITH-BSP),
which aims to speed-up POMDP planning considering belief-dependent rewards,
without compromising on the solution's accuracy. We do so by mathematically
relating the simplified elements of the problem to the corresponding
counterparts of the original problem. Specifically, we focus on belief
simplification and use it to formulate bounds on the corresponding original
belief-dependent rewards. These bounds in turn are used to perform branch
pruning over the belief tree, in the process of calculating the optimal policy.
We further introduce the notion of adaptive simplification, while re-using
calculations between different simplification levels and exploit it to prune,
at each level in the belief tree, all branches but one. Therefore, our approach
is guaranteed to find the optimal solution of the original problem but with
substantial speedup. As a second key contribution, we derive novel analytical
bounds for differential entropy, considering a sampling-based belief
representation, which we believe are of interest on their own. We validate our
approach in simulation using these bounds and where simplification corresponds
to reducing the number of samples, exhibiting a significant computational
speedup while yielding the optimal solution.


  A persistence module is a functor $f: \mathbf{I} \to \mathsf{E}$, where
$\mathbf{I}$ is the poset category of a totally ordered set. This work
introduces saecular decomposition: a categorically natural method to decompose
$f$ into simple parts, called interval modules. Saecular decomposition exists
under generic conditions, e.g., when $\mathbf{I}$ is well ordered and
$\mathsf{E}$ is a category of modules or groups. This represents a substantial
generalization of existing factorizations of 1-parameter persistence modules,
leading to, among other things, persistence diagrams not only in homology, but
in homotopy.
  Applications of saecular decomposition include inverse and extension problems
involving filtered topological spaces, the 1-parameter generalized persistence
diagram, and the Leray-Serre spectral sequence. Several examples -- including
cycle representatives for generalized barcodes -- hold special significance for
scientific applications.
  The key tools in this approach are modular and distributive order lattices,
combined with Puppe exact categories.


  We have studied the thermal stability of Quarkonia states by computing the
effects of color-screening and vacuum screening based on a temperature
dependent screened coulomb plus power potential for the quark-antiquark
interaction. Medium effects on the properties of charmonia and bottomonia
states are studied. The color screening and the vacuum screening effects on the
stability of the quarkonia states are also separately calculated for
comparison.


  In this paper we consider fundamental processes of the disturbance and
propagation of internal gravity waves in the ocean modeled as a vertically
stratified, horizontally non-uniform, and non-stationary medium. We develop
asymptotic methods for describing the wave dynamics by generalizing the
spatiotemporal ray-tracing method (a geometrical optics method). We present
analytical and numerical algorithms for calculating the internal gravity wave
fields using actual ocean parameters such as physical characteristics of the
sea water, topography of its floor, etc. We demonstrate that our mathematical
models can realistically describe the internal gravity wave dynamics in the
ocean. Our numerical and analytical results show that the internal gravity
waves have a significant impact on underwater objects in the ocean.


  In this paper, weak symmetries of the Benjamin-Bona-Mahony (BBM) equation
have been investigated. Indeed, this method has been performed by applying the
non-classical symmetries of the BBM equation and the infinitesimal generators
of the classical symmetry algebra of the KdV equation as the starting
constraints. Similarity reduced equations as well as some exact solutions of
the BBM equation are obtained via this method.


  We construct certain non-degenerate maps and sets, mainly in the
complex-analytic category. For example, we show that for every countable subset
S in an irreducible complex space X there exists a holomorphic map from the
unit disk to X such that S is contained in the image. Furthermore, given an
irreducible complex space X, there is always an infinite subset S such that for
every proper analytic subspace Z of X the intersection of S with Z is finite.


  Two common concepts of nonreciprocity in sound propagation are based on
nonlinear effects [1, 2] and on local circulation of fluid [3, 4]. They
originate from two known methods of breaking a time reversal symmetry, that is
necessary for observation of nonreciprocal effects. Both concepts require
additional devices to be installed with their own power sources. Recently it
was demonstrated that acoustical losses may serve as a source of T-symmetry
violation, thus leading to nonreciprocity in reflection of sound from
gradient-index metasurface [5]. Here, we explore viscosity of fluid as a
natural factor of T-symmetry breaking. We report experimental observation of
the nonreciprocal transmission of ultrasound through a water-submerged phononic
crystal consisting of asymmetric rods. Asymmetry, or broken P-symmetry, is the
second necessary factor for nonreciprocity. Experimental results are in
agreement with numerical simulations based on the Navier-Stokes equation. This
passive nonreciprocal linear device is cheap, robust and does not require an
energy source.


  We consider the energy and helicity densities of circularly polarised light
within a lossless chiral medium, characterised by the chirality parameter
$\beta$. A form for the helicity density is introduced, valid to first order in
$\beta$, that produces a helicity of $\pm\hbar$ per photon for right and left
circular polarisation, respectively. This is in contrast to the result obtained
if we use the form of the helicity density employed for linear media. We
examine the helicity continuity equation, and show that this modified form of
the helicity density is required for consistency with the dual symmetry
condition of a chiral medium with a constant value of ${\epsilon}/{\mu}$.
Extending the results to arbitrary order in $\beta$ establishes an exact
relationship between the energy and helicity densities in a chiral medium.


  Let $X$ be a compact K\"ahler manifold. The set $\cha(X)$ of one-dimensional
complex valued characters of the fundamental group of $X$ forms an algebraic
group. Consider the subset of $\cha(X)$ consisting of those characters for
which the corresponding local system has nontrivial cohomology in a given
degree $d$. This set is shown to be a union of finitely many components that
are translates of algebraic subgroups of $\cha(X)$. When the degree $d$ equals
1, it is shown that some of these components are pullbacks of the character
varieties of curves under holomorphic maps. As a corollary, it is shown that
the number of equivalence classes (under a natural equivalence relation) of
holomorphic maps, with connected fibers, of $X$ onto smooth curves of a fixed
genus $>1$ is a topological invariant of $X$. In fact it depends only on the
fundamental group of $X$.


  In this paper we consider the Stratonovich reflected stochastic differential
equation $dX_t=\sigma(X_t)\circ dW_t+b(X_t)dt+dL_t$ in a bounded domain $\O$
which satisfies conditions, introduced by Lions and Sznitman, which are
specified below. Letting $W^N_t$ be the $N$-dyadic piecewise linear
interpolation of $W_t$ what we show is that one can solve the reflected
ordinary differential equation $\dot X^N_t=\sigma(X^N_t)\dot
W^N_t+b(X^N_t)+\dot L^N_t$ and that the distribution of the pair
$(X^N_t,L^N_t)$ converges weakly to that of $(X_t,L_t)$. Hence, what we prove
is a distributional version for reflected diffusions of the famous result of
Wong and Zakai. Perhaps the most valuable contribution made by our procedure
derives from the representation of $\dot X^N_t$ in terms of a projection of
$\dot W_t^N$. In particular, we apply our result in hand to derive some
geometric properties of coupled reflected Brownian motion in certain domains,
especially those properties which have been used in recent work on the "hot
spots" conjecture for special domain.


  We present a new evaluation of the negatively charged pion mass based on the
simultaneous spec-troscopy of pionic nitrogen and muonic oxygen transitions
using a gaseous target composed by a N 2 /O 2 mixture at 1.4 bar. We present
the experimental setup and the methods for deriving the pion mass value from
the spatial separation from the 5g -- 4 f $\pi$N transition line and the 5g --
4 f $\mu$O transition line used as reference. Moreover, we discuss the
importance to use dilute targets in order to minimize the influence of
additional spectral lines from the presence of remaining electrons during the
radiative emission. The occurrence of possible satellite lines is investigated
via hypothesis testing methods using the Bayes factor.


  The studies of FUors, EXors and other young eruptive stars are very important
for the understanding of the earliest stages of pre-main-sequence evolution. We
describe the current situation in this field. This is the short version of the
review, presented in ``Non-stationary processes in the protoplanetary disks and
their observational manifestations'' conference, Crimean Astrophysical
Observatory


  We study the distribution of families of multiplicative functions among the
coprime residue classes to moduli varying uniformly in a wide range, obtaining
analogues of the Siegel--Walfisz Theorem for large classes of multiplicative
functions. We extend a criterion of Narkiewicz for families of multiplicative
functions that can be controlled by values of polynomials at the first few
prime powers, and establish results that are completely uniform in the modulus
as well as optimal in most parameters and hypotheses. This also significantly
generalizes and improves upon previous work done for a single such function in
specialized settings. Our results have applications for most interesting
multiplicative functions, such as the Euler totient function $\phi(n)$, the
sum-of-divisors function $\sigma(n)$, the coefficients of the Eisenstein
series, etc., and families of these functions. For instance, an application of
our results shows that for any fixed $\epsilon>0$, the functions $\phi(n)$ and
$\sigma(n)$ are jointly asymptotically equidistributed among the reduced
residue classes to moduli $q$ coprime to $6$ varying uniformly up to $(\log
x)^{(1-\epsilon)\alpha(q)}$, where $\alpha(q) = \prod_{\ell \mid q}
(\ell-3)/(\ell-1)$; furthermore, the coprimality restriction is necessary and
the range of $q$ is essentially optimal. One of the primary themes behind our
arguments is the quantitative detection of a certain mixing (or ergodicity)
phenomenon in multiplicative groups via methods belonging to the `anatomy of
integers', but we also rely heavily on more pure analytic arguments (such as a
suitable modification of the Landau-Selberg-Delange method), -- whilst using
several tools from arithmetic and algebraic geometry, and from linear algebra
over rings as well.


  We study the full backreaction of anti-D3 branes smeared over the tip of the
deformed conifold. Requiring the 5-form flux and warp factor at the tip to be
that of anti-D3 branes, we find a simple power counting argument showing that
if the three-form fluxes have no IR singularity, they will be necessarily
imaginary-anti-self-dual. Hence the only solution with anti-D3 branes at the
tip of the conifold that is regular in the IR and the UV is the
anti-Klebanov-Strassler solution, and there is no regular solution whose
D3-charge is negative in the IR and positive in the UV.


  To explore superfluidity in flat-band systems, we consider a Bose-Hubbard
model on a cross-linked ladder with $\pi$ flux, which has a flat band with a
gap between the other band for noninteracting particles, where we study the
effect of the on-site repulsion nonperturbatively. For low densities, we find
exact degenerate ground states, each of which is a Wigner solid with
nonoverlapping Wannier states on the flat band. At higher densities, the
many-body system, when projected onto the lower flat band, can be mapped to a
spin-chain model. This mapping enables us to reveal the existence of a
Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid comprising it pairs of bosons. Interestingly, the
high- and low- density regions have an overlap, where the two phases coexist.


  In 2008, Haglund, Morse and Zabrocki formulated a Compositional form of the
Shuffle Conjecture of Haglund et al. In very recent work, Gorsky and Negut by
combining their discoveries with the work of Schiffmann-Vasserot on the
symmetric function side and the work of Hikita and Gorsky-Mazin on the
combinatorial side, were led to formulate an infinite family of conjectures
that extend the original Shuffle Conjecture of Haglund et al. In fact, they
formulated one conjecture for each pair (m,n) of coprime integers. This work of
Gorsky-Negut leads naturally to the question as to where the Compositional
Shuffle Conjecture of Haglund-Morse-Zabrocki fits into these recent
developments. Our discovery here is that there is a compositional extension of
the Gorsky-Negut Shuffle Conjecture for each pair (km,kn), with (m,n) co-prime
and k > 1.


  Fourier-positivity, i.e. the mathematical property that a function has a
positive Fourier transform, can be used as a constraint on the parametrization
of QCD dipole-target cross-sections or Wilson line correlators in transverse
position (r) space. They are Bessel transforms of positive transverse momentum
dependent gluon distributions. Using mathematical Fourier-positivity
constraints on the limit r -> 0 behavior of the dipole amplitudes, we identify
the common origin of the violation of Fourier-positivity for various, however
phenomenologically convenient, dipole models. It is due to the behavior
r^{2+epsilon}, epsilon>0, softer, even slightly, than color transparency.
Fourier-positivity seems thus to conflict with the present dipole formalism
when it includes a QCD running coupling constant alpha(r).


  Motivated by recent experiments, we append long ranged Coulomb interactions
to dominant strong local correlations and study the resulting $t$-$J$-$V_C$
model for the 2-dimensional cuprate materials. This model includes the effect
of short ranged Hubbard-Gutzwiller-Kanamori type correlations and long ranged
Coulomb interactions on tight binding electrons. We calculate the $
\{\vec{q},\omega\}$ dependent charge density fluctuations in this model using
the extremely correlated fermi liquid theory, characterized by quasiparticles
with very small weight $Z$. We develop a novel set of formulae to represent the
dynamical charge susceptibility and the dielectric function, using a version of
the charge-current continuity equation for a band system valid for arbitrary
$\vec{q}$. Combining these ingredients, we present results for the dynamical
charge susceptibility $\widetilde{\chi}_{\rho\rho}(\vec{q},\omega)$,
(longitudinal) dielectric function $\varepsilon(\vec{q},\omega)$, current
susceptibility $\widetilde{\chi}_{J J}(\vec{q},\omega)$, conductivity
$\sigma(\vec{q},\omega)$, and the plasma frequency for any $\vec{q}$. We also
present calculations for the first moment of the structure function and discuss
a characteristic energy scale $\Omega_p(\vec{q})$, which locates a peak in $\Im
m \, \widetilde{\chi}_{\rho\rho}(\vec{q},\omega)$.


  Pretrained large language models (LLMs) exhibit exceptional general language
processing capabilities but come with significant demands on memory and
computational resources. As a powerful compression technology, binarization can
extremely reduce model weights to a mere 1 bit, lowering the expensive
computation and memory requirements. However, existing quantization techniques
fall short of maintaining LLM performance under ultra-low bit-widths. In
response to this challenge, we present BiLLM, a groundbreaking 1-bit
post-training quantization scheme tailored for pretrained LLMs. Based on the
weight distribution of LLMs, BiLLM first identifies and structurally selects
salient weights, and minimizes the compression loss through an effective binary
residual approximation strategy. Moreover, considering the bell-shaped
distribution of the non-salient weights, we propose an optimal splitting search
to group and binarize them accurately. BiLLM achieving for the first time
high-accuracy inference (e.g. 8.41 perplexity on LLaMA2-70B) with only 1.08-bit
weights across various LLMs families and evaluation metrics, outperforms SOTA
quantization methods of LLM by significant margins. Moreover, BiLLM enables the
binarization process of the LLM with 7 billion weights within 0.5 hours on a
single GPU, demonstrating satisfactory time efficiency. Our code is available
at https://github.com/Aaronhuang-778/BiLLM.


  The necessity of an explicit architecture description has been continuously
emphasized to communicate the system functionality and for system maintenance
activities. This paper presents an approach to extract architecture
descriptions using the {\em centrality measures} from the theory of Social
Network Analysis. The architecture recovery approach presented in this paper
works in two phases. The first phase aims to calculate centrality measures for
each program element in the system. The second phase assumes that the system
has been designed around the layered architecture style and assigns layers to
each program element. Two techniques to assign program elements are presented.
The first technique of layer assignment uses a set of pre-defined rules, while
the second technique learns the rules of assignment from a pre-labelled data
set. The paper presents the evaluation of both approaches.


  In this paper, we prove Wiener's criterion for parabolic equations with
singular and degenerate coefficients. To be precise, we study the problem of
the regularity of boundary points for the Dirichlet problem for degenerate
parabolic equations, and give a geometric characterization of those boundary
points that are regular.


  We investigate unsupervised models that can map a variable-duration speech
segment to a fixed-dimensional representation. In settings where unlabelled
speech is the only available resource, such acoustic word embeddings can form
the basis for "zero-resource" speech search, discovery and indexing systems.
Most existing unsupervised embedding methods still use some supervision, such
as word or phoneme boundaries. Here we propose the encoder-decoder
correspondence autoencoder (EncDec-CAE), which, instead of true word segments,
uses automatically discovered segments: an unsupervised term discovery system
finds pairs of words of the same unknown type, and the EncDec-CAE is trained to
reconstruct one word given the other as input. We compare it to a standard
encoder-decoder autoencoder (AE), a variational AE with a prior over its latent
embedding, and downsampling. EncDec-CAE outperforms its closest competitor by
24% relative in average precision on two languages in a word discrimination
task.


  We describe a simple technique for optimizing the extraction of the
forward-backward asymmetry ($A_{fb}$) of Drell-Yan lepton pairs ($e^+e^-$,$
\mu^+\mu^-$) produced in $\bar{p}p$ and $pp$ collisions at hadron colliders.
The method employs simple event weights which are functions of the rapidity and
$cos\theta$ decay angle of the lepton pair. It yields the best estimate of the
acceptance corrected parton level ($\bar{q}q$) forward backward asymmetry as a
function of final state dilepton mass ($M_{\ell\ell}$). Typically, when
compared to the simple count method, the technique reduces the statistical
errors by 20% for $\bar{p}p$, and 40% for $pp$ collisions, respectively. The
technique can be used to search for new high mass and large width Z' bosons
which may be best detected through the observation of deviations from the
Standard Model expectation for the forward-backward asymmetry. In addition, we
derive expressions for the QCD angular coefficients for Drell-Yan events.


  We analyse the hydrodynamical behavior of the long jumps symmetric exclusion
process in the presence of a slow barrier. The jump rates are given by a
symmetric transition probability $p(\cdot)$ with infinite variance. When jumps
occur from $\mathbb{Z}_{-}^{*}$ to $\mathbb N$ the rates are slowed down by a
factor $\alpha n^{-\beta}$ (with $\alpha>0$ and $\beta\geq 0$). We obtain
several partial differential equations given in terms of the regional
fractional Laplacian on $\mathbb R^*$ and with different boundary conditions.
Surprisingly, in opposition to the diffusive regime, we get different regimes
depending on whether $\alpha=1$ (all bonds with the same rate) or $\alpha\neq
1$.


  The electronic structure of a cubic $\mathcal{T}$-symmetric Weyl semimetal is
analysed in the presence of atomic-sized vacancy defects. Isolated vacancies
are shown to generate nodal bound states with $r^{{\scriptscriptstyle -2}}$
asymptotic tails, even when immersed in a weakly disordered environment. These
states show up as a significantly enhanced nodal density of states which, as
the concentration of defects is increased, reshapes into a nodal peak that is
broadened by inter-vacancy hybridisation into a comb of satellite resonances at
finite energies. Our results establish point defects as a crucial source of
elastic scattering that leads to nontrivial modifications in the electronic
structure of Weyl semimetals.


  Accurate parallax measurements allow us to determine physical properties of
brown dwarfs, and help us to constrain evolutionary and atmospheric models,
break the age-mass degeneracy and reveal unresolved binaries.
  We measured absolute trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of 6 cool
brown dwarfs using background galaxies to establish an absolute reference
frame. We derive the absolute J-mag. The six T brown dwarfs in our sample have
spectral types between T2.5 and T7.5 and magnitudes in J between 13.9 and 18.0,
with photometric distances below 25 pc.
  The observations were taken in the J-band with the Omega-2000 camera on the
3.5 m telescope at Calar Alto, during a time period of 27 months, between March
2011 and June 2013. The number of epochs varied between 11 and 12 depending on
the object. The reduction of the astrometric measurements was carried out with
respect to the field stars. The relative parallax and proper motions were
transformed into absolute measurements using the background galaxies in our
fields.
  We obtained absolute parallaxes for our six brown dwarfs with a precision
between 3 and 6 mas. We compared our results in a color-magnitude diagram with
other brown dwarfs with determined parallax and with the BT-Settl 2012
atmospheric models. For four of the six targets we found a good agreement in
luminosity with objects of similar spectral types. We obtained an improved
accuracy in the parallaxes and proper motions in comparison to previous works.
The object 2MASS J11061197+2754225 is more than 1 mag overluminous in all bands
pointing to binarity or high order multiplicity.


  We investigate how the neutron drip line is related to the density dependence
of the symmetry energy, by using a macroscopic nuclear model that allows us to
calculate nuclear masses in a way dependent on the equation of state of
asymmetric nuclear matter. The neutron drip line obtained from these masses is
shown to appreciably shift to a neutron-rich side in a nuclear chart as the
density derivative of the symmetry energy increases. Such shift is clearly seen
for light nuclei, a feature coming mainly from the surface property of
neutron-rich nuclei.


  We discuss the results of a full relativistic treatment of the hydrodynamics
of disconnected quark regions during the final stages of the cosmological
quark-hadron transition. In this study, which represents a further development
of a previous analysis of the evaporation of cosmological quark drops, the
effects of long range energy and momentum transfer via electromagnetically
interacting particles are consistently taken into account. For this purpose, a
set of relativistic Lagrangian equations describing the evolution of the
strongly interacting fluids is coupled to a system of equivalent equations
accounting for the hydrodynamics of the fluid of electromagnetically
interacting particles. The complete set of equations has then been solved
numerically and results are presented from this. The inclusion of relativistic
radiative transfer produces significantly different results, with the formation
of high density regions at the end of the drop evaporation being particularly
relevant. A comparison is made with results obtained for the previous
radiation-free model and the cosmological implications concerning baryon number
concentrations are briefly discussed.


  Ultrasound shear wave elastography (SWE) is a noninvasive way to measure
stiffness of soft tissue for medical diagnosis. In SWE imaging, an acoustic
radiation force induces tissue displacement, which creates shear waves (SWs)
that travel laterally through the medium. Finding the lateral arrival times of
SWs at different tissue locations helps figure out the shear wave speed (SWS),
which is directly linked to the stiffness of the medium. Traditional SWS
estimation techniques, however, are not noise resilient enough handling noise
and reflection artifacts filled data. This paper proposes new techniques to
estimate SWS in both time and frequency domains. These new methods optimize a
loss function that is based on the lateral signal shift parameter between known
locations and is constrained by neighborhood displacement group shift
determined from the time-lateral plane-denoised SW propagation data. The
proposed constrained optimization is formed by coupling losses of local
particles with a Gaussian kernel giving an optimum arrival time for the center
particle by enforcing stiffness homogeneity in a small neighborhood to enable
inherent noise resilience. The denoising scheme involves isolating the
transitioning SW profile in each time-lateral plane, creating a parameterized
mask. Moreover, lateral interpolation is performed to enhance reconstruction
resolution and obtain increased displacement groups to enhance the reliability
of the optimization. The proposed noise robust scheme is tested on a simulation
and three experimental datasets. The performance of the method is compared with
3 ToF and 2 frequency-domain methods. The evaluations show visually and
quantitatively superior and noise-robust reconstructions compared to
state-of-the-art methods. Due to its high contrast and minimal error, the
proposed technique can find its application in tissue health inspection and
cancer diagnosis.


  Global symmetries and symmetry breaking patterns of QCD with light quarks, in
particular chiral symmetry, provide basic guidance not only for low-energy
hadron physics but also for nuclear forces and the nuclear many-body problem.
Recent developments of Chiral Effective Field Theory applications to nuclear
and neutron matter are summarized, with special emphasis on a
(non-perturbative) extension using functional renormalisation group methods.
Topics include: nuclear thermodynamics, extrapolations to dense baryonic matter
and constraints from neutron star observables.


  We consider the influence of non-equilibrium electronic neutrinos (and
anti-neutrinos) on the neutron-to-proton ratio. These neutrinos would come from
massive $\nu_\tau$ annihilations $\bar \nu_\tau \nu_\tau \rightarrow \bar \nu_e
\nu_e$. For sufficiently large $\nu_\tau$ masses this new effect would strongly
enhance the (n/p)-ratio, leading to a very stringent bound on the $\nu_\tau$
mass, even adopting a rather weak upper bound on the effective number on
neutrino species during nucleosynthesis.


  Automatic identification of clinical trials for which a patient is eligible
is complicated by the fact that trial eligibility is stated in natural
language. A potential solution to this problem is to employ text classification
methods for common types of eligibility criteria. In this study, we focus on
seven common exclusion criteria in cancer trials: prior malignancy, human
immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, psychiatric illness,
drug/substance abuse, and autoimmune illness. Our dataset consists of 764 phase
III cancer trials with these exclusions annotated at the trial level. We
experiment with common transformer models as well as a new pre-trained clinical
trial BERT model. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of automatically
classifying common exclusion criteria. Additionally, we demonstrate the value
of a pre-trained language model specifically for clinical trials, which yields
the highest average performance across all criteria.


  Supervised artificial neural networks with the rapidity-mass matrix (RMM)
inputs were studied using several Monte Carlo event samples for various pp
collision processes. The study shows the usability of this approach for general
event classification problems. The proposed standardization of the ANN feature
space can simplify searches for signatures of new physics at the LHC when using
machine learning techniques. In particular, we illustrate how to improve
signal-over-background ratios in searches for new physics, how to filter out
Standard Model events for model-agnostic searches, and how to separate gluon
and quark jets for Standard Model measurements.


  We derive formulas for the matrix elements of the lattice Green function for
the discrete Poisson equation on an infinite square lattice. The partial
difference equation for the matrix elements is solved by reducing it to a
series of first order difference equations, which can then be solved
sequentially. These formulas are useful in solving two dimensional Poisson
equation problems using the finite difference approximation.


  Spacetime, understood as a globally hyperbolic manifold, may be characterized
by spectral data using a 3+1 splitting into space and time, a description of
space by spectral triples and by employing causal relationships, as proposed
earlier. Here, it is proposed to use the Hadamard condition of quantum field
theory as a smoothness principle.


  This paper investigates the application of mesh adaptation techniques in the
Non-Ideal Compressible Fluid Dynamic (NICFD) regime, a region near the
vapor-liquid saturation curve where the flow behavior significantly departs
from the ideal gas model, as indicated by a value of the fundamental derivative
of gasdynamics less than one. A recent interpolation-free finite-volume
adaptive scheme is exploited to modify the grid connectivity in a conservative
way, and the governing equations for compressible inviscid flows are solved
within the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian framework by including special
fictitious fluxes representing volume modifications due to mesh adaptation.The
absence of interpolation of the solution to the new grid prevents spurious
oscillations that may make the solution of the flow field in the NICFD regime
more difficult and less robust.Non-ideal gas effects are taken into account by
adopting the polytropic Peng-Robinson thermodynamic model. The numerical
results focus on the problem of a piston moving in a tube filled with siloxane
$\mathrm{MD_4M}$, a simple configuration which can be the core of experimental
research activities aiming at investigating the thermodynamic behavior of NICFD
flows. Several numerical tests involving different piston movements and initial
states in 2D and 3D assess the capability of the proposed adaption technique to
correctly capture compression and expansion waves, as well as the generation
and propagation of shock waves, in the NICFD and in the non-classical regime.


  An analysis is presented of frequency versus wave-vector dispersion in
elliptically birefringent one-dimensional layered periodic structures. The
presence of local normal mode polarization state variations from one layer to
the next is found to lead to mode coupling and to affect the wave-vector
dispersion and the character of the Bloch states of the system.


  We survey the proof of the Nash conjecture for surfaces and show how
geometric and topological ideas developed in previous articles by the authors
influenced it. Later we summarize the main ideas in the higher dimensional
statement and proof by de Fernex and Docampo. We end the paper by explaining
later developments on generalized Nash problem and on Koll\'ar and Nemethi's
study about holomorphic arcs.


  The equilibrium texture of nematic shells is studied as a function of their
thickness. For ultrathin shells the ground state has four short 1/2
disclination lines but, as the thickness of the film increases, a three
dimensional escaped configuration composed of two pairs of half-hedgehogs
becomes energetically favorable. We derive an exact solution for the nematic
ground state in the one Frank constant approximation and study the stability of
the corresponding texture against thermal fluctuations.


  We report on a timing of the eclipse arrival times of the low mass X-ray
binary and X-ray pulsar 2A 1822-371 performed using all available observations
of the Proportional Counter Array on board the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer,
XMM-Newton pn, and Chandra. These observations span the years from 1996 to
2008. Combining these eclipse arrival time measurements with those already
available covering the period from 1977 to 1996, we obtain an orbital solution
valid for more than thirty years. The time delays calculated with respect to a
constant orbital period model show a clear parabolic trend, implying that the
orbital period in this source constantly increases with time at a rate $\dot
P_orb = 1.50(7) \times 10^{-10}$ s/s. This is 3 orders of magnitude larger than
what is expected from conservative mass transfer driven by magnetic braking and
gravitational radiation. From the conservation of the angular momentum of the
system we find that to explain the high and positive value of the orbital
period derivative the mass transfer rate must not be less than 3 times the
Eddington limit for a neutron star, suggesting that the mass transfer has to be
partially non-conservative. With the hypothesis that the neutron star accretes
at the Eddington limit we find a consistent solution in which at least 70% of
the transferred mass has to be expelled from the system.


  Learning on synthetic data and transferring the resulting properties to their
real counterparts is an important challenge for reducing costs and increasing
safety in machine learning. In this work, we focus on autoencoder architectures
and aim at learning latent space representations that are invariant to
inductive biases caused by the domain shift between simulated and real images
showing the same scenario. We train on synthetic images only, present
approaches to increase generalizability and improve the preservation of the
semantics to real datasets of increasing visual complexity. We show that
pre-trained feature extractors (e.g. VGG) can be sufficient for generalization
on images of lower complexity, but additional improvements are required for
visually more complex scenes. To this end, we demonstrate a new sampling
technique, which matches semantically important parts of the image, while
randomizing the other parts, leads to salient feature extraction and a
neglection of unimportant parts. This helps the generalization to real data and
we further show that our approach outperforms fine-tuned classification models.


  We simulate the formation of bipolar planetary nebulae (PNe) through very
short impulsive mass ejection events from binary systems, where the asymptotic
giant branch (AGB) star ejects a mass shell that is accelerated by jets
launched from a compact companion. The acceleration process takes place at very
short distances from the binary system, such that the photon-diffusion time is
long enough to prevent rapid cooling of the shocked jets' material. When the
shocked jets' gas density is lower than the shell density the flow becomes
Rayleigh-Taylor unstable and dense clumps are formed in the flow. At later
times a PN with clumpy lobes that have a linear distance-velocity relation will
be observed. This process might account for the formation of bipolar PNe with
clumpy lobes, such as NGC 6302. The energy radiated during the months to years
duration of such an event will appear as an intermediate-luminosity optical
transient (ILOT)


  Sepsis is a leading cause of mortality in intensive care units and costs
hospitals billions annually. Treating a septic patient is highly challenging,
because individual patients respond very differently to medical interventions
and there is no universally agreed-upon treatment for sepsis. In this work, we
propose an approach to deduce treatment policies for septic patients by using
continuous state-space models and deep reinforcement learning. Our model learns
clinically interpretable treatment policies, similar in important aspects to
the treatment policies of physicians. The learned policies could be used to aid
intensive care clinicians in medical decision making and improve the likelihood
of patient survival.


  This study considers a simple variation of the voter model with two competing
parties. In particular, we represent the case of political elections, where
people can choose to support one of the two candidates or to remain neutral.
People operate within a social network and their opinions depend on those of
the people with whom they interact. Therefore, they may change their opinions
over time, which may mean supporting one particular candidate or none.
Candidates attempt to gain people's support by interacting with them, whether
they are in the same social circle (i.e. neighbors) or not. In particular,
candidates follow a strategy of interacting for a time with people they do not
know (that is, people who are not their neighbors). Our analysis of the
proposed model sought to establish which network strategies are the most
effective for candidates to gain popular support. We found that the most
suitable strategy depends on the topology of the social network. Finally, we
investigated the role of charisma in these dynamics. Charisma is relevant in
several social contexts, since charismatic people usually exercise a strong
influence over others. Our results showed that candidates' charisma is an
important contributory factor to a successful network strategy in election
campaigns.


  The leading-order accurate description of top quark pair production, as
usually employed in standard Monte Carlo event generators, gives no rise to the
generation of a forward--backward asymmetry. Yet, non-negligible --
differential as well as inclusive -- asymmetries may be produced if coherent
parton showering is used in the hadroproduction of top quark pairs. In this
contribution we summarize the outcome of our study of this effect. We present a
short comparison of different parton shower implementations and briefly comment
on the phenomenology of the colour coherence effect at the Tevatron.