  Modern processor designs use a variety of microarchitectural methods to
achieve high performance. Unfortunately, new side-channels have often been
uncovered that exploit these enhanced designs. One area that has received
little attention from a security perspective is the processor's hard-ware
prefetcher, a critical component used to mitigate DRAM latency in today's
systems. Prefetchers, like branch predictors, hold critical state related to
the execution of the application, and have the potential to leak secret
information. But up to now, there has not been a demonstration of a generic
prefetcher side-channel that could be actively exploited in today's hardware.
  In this paper, we present AfterImage, a new side-channel that exploits the
Intel Instruction Pointer-based stride prefetcher. We observe that, when the
execution of the processor switches between different private domains, the
prefetcher trained by one domain can be triggered in another. To the best of
our knowledge, this work is the first to publicly demonstrate a methodology
that is both algorithm-agnostic and also able to leak kernel data into
userspace. AfterImage is different from previous works, as it leaks data on the
non-speculative path of execution. Because of this, a large class of work that
has focused on protecting transient, branch-outcome-based data will be unable
to block this side-channel. By reverse-engineering the IP-stride prefetcher in
modern Intel processors, we have successfully developed three variants of
AfterImage to leak control flow information across code regions, processes and
the user-kernel boundary. We find a high level of accuracy in leaking
information with our methodology (from 91%, up to 99%), and propose two
mitigation techniques to block this side-channel, one of which can be used on
hardware systems today.


  Domain-independent planning is a hard combinatorial problem. Taking into
account plan quality makes the task even more difficult. This article
introduces Planning by Rewriting (PbR), a new paradigm for efficient
high-quality domain-independent planning. PbR exploits declarative
plan-rewriting rules and efficient local search techniques to transform an
easy-to-generate, but possibly suboptimal, initial plan into a high-quality
plan. In addition to addressing the issues of planning efficiency and plan
quality, this framework offers a new anytime planning algorithm. We have
implemented this planner and applied it to several existing domains. The
experimental results show that the PbR approach provides significant savings in
planning effort while generating high-quality plans.


  The advent of high-angular resolution IR and sub-mm interferometry allows for
spatially-resolved observations of the parsec-scale environment of active
galactic nuclei (AGN), commonly referred to as the "torus." While molecular
lines show the presence of large, massive disks, the IR observations appear to
be dominated by a strong polar component that has been interpreted as a dusty
wind. This paper aims at using characteristics shared by AGN in each of the
wavebands and a set of simple physical principles to form a unifying view of
these seemingly contradictory observations: Dusty molecular gas flows in from
galactic scales of ~100 pc to the sub-parsec environment via a disk with small
to moderate scale height. The hot, inner part of the disk puffs up due to IR
radiation pressure and unbinds a large amount of the inflowing gas from the
black hole's gravitational potential, providing the conditions to launch a wind
driven by the radiation pressure from the AGN. The dusty wind feeds back mass
into the galaxy at a rate of the order of ~0.1-100 $M_\odot$/yr, depending on
AGN luminosity and Eddington ratio. Angle-dependent obscuration as required by
AGN unification is provided by a combination of disk, wind, and wind launching
region.


  Data-driven machine learning methods have the potential to dramatically
accelerate the rate of materials design over conventional human-guided
approaches. These methods would help identify or, in the case of generative
models, even create novel crystal structures of materials with a set of
specified functional properties to then be synthesized or isolated in the
laboratory. For crystal structure generation, a key bottleneck lies in
developing suitable atomic structure fingerprints or representations for the
machine learning model, analogous to the graph-based or SMILES representations
used in molecular generation. However, finding data-efficient representations
that are invariant to translations, rotations, and permutations, while
remaining invertible to the Cartesian atomic coordinates remains an ongoing
challenge. Here, we propose an alternative approach to this problem by taking
existing non-invertible representations with the desired invariances and
developing an algorithm to reconstruct the atomic coordinates through
gradient-based optimization using automatic differentiation. This can then be
coupled to a generative machine learning model which generates new materials
within the representation space, rather than in the data-inefficient Cartesian
space. In this work, we implement this end-to-end structure generation approach
using atom-centered symmetry functions as the representation and conditional
variational autoencoders as the generative model. We are able to successfully
generate novel and valid atomic structures of sub-nanometer Pt nanoparticles as
a proof of concept. Furthermore, this method can be readily extended to any
suitable structural representation, thereby providing a powerful, generalizable
framework towards structure-based generation.


  We derive a general formula of the tensor network representation for
$d$-dimensional lattice fermions with ultra-local interactions, including
Wilson fermions, staggered fermions, and domain-wall fermions. The Grassmann
tensor is concretely defined with auxiliary Grassmann variables that play a
role in bond degrees of freedom. Compared to previous works, our formula does
not refer to the details of lattice fermions and is derived by using the
singular value decomposition for the given Dirac matrix without any ad-hoc
treatment for each fermion. We numerically test our formula for free Wilson and
staggered fermions and find that it properly works for them. We also find that
Wilson fermions show better performance than staggered fermions in the tensor
renormalization group approach, unlike the Monte Carlo method.


  Enhancements in technology always follow Consumer requirements. Consumer
requires best of service with least possible mismatch and on time. Numerous
applications available today are based on Web Services and Cloud Computing.
Recently, there exist many Web Services with similar functional
characteristics. Choosing a right Service from group of similar Web Service is
a complicated task for Service Consumer. In that case, Service Consumer can
discover the required Web Service using non functional attributes of the Web
Services such as QoS. Proposed layered architecture and Web Service Cloud
i.e.WS Cloud computing Framework synthesizes the Non functional attributes that
includes reliability, availability, response time, latency etc. The Service
Consumer is projected to provide the QoS requirements as part of Service
discovery query. This framework will discover and filter the Web Services form
the cloud and rank them according to Service Consumer preferences to facilitate
Service on time.


  We introduce a framework to approximate a Markov Decision Process that stands
on two pillars: state aggregation -- as the algorithmic infrastructure; and
central-limit-theorem-type approximations -- as the mathematical underpinning
of optimality guarantees. The theory is grounded in recent work Braverman et al
(2020} that relates the solution of the Bellman equation to that of a PDE
where, in the spirit of the central limit theorem, the transition matrix is
reduced to its local first and second moments. Solving the PDE is
$\textit{not}$ required by our method. Instead, we construct a "sister"
(controlled) Markov chain whose two local transition moments are approximately
identical with those of the focal chain. Because of this $\textit{moment
matching}$, the original chain and its "sister" are coupled through the PDE, a
coupling that facilitates optimality guarantees. Embedded into standard soft
aggregation algorithms, moment matching provided a disciplined mechanism to
tune the aggregation and disaggregation probabilities. The computational gains
arise from the reduction of the effective state space from $N$ to
$N^{\frac{1}{2}+\epsilon}$ is as one might intuitively expect from
approximations grounded in the central limit theorem.


  We present ground-based optical and near infrared photometric observations
and Hubble Space Telescope COS spectroscopic observations of the old nova V842
Cen (Nova Cen 1986). Analysis of the optical light curves reveals a peak at
56.5 +/- 0.3s with an amplitude of 8.9 +/- 4.2 mma, which is consistent with
the rotation of a magnetic white dwarf primary in V842 Cen that was detected
earlier by Woudt et al., and led to its classification as an intermediate
polar.However, our UV lightcurve created from the COS time-tag spectra does not
show this periodicity. Our synthetic spectral analysis of an HST COS spectrum
rules out a hot white dwarf photosphere as the source of the FUV flux. The
best-fitting model to the COS spectrum is a full optically thick accretion disk
with no magnetic truncation, a low disk inclination angle, low accretion rate
and a distance less than half the published distance that was determined on the
basis of interstellar sodium D line strengths.Truncated accretion disks with
truncation radii of 3Rwd and 5Rwd yielded unsatisfactory agreement with the COS
data. The accretion rate is unexpectedly low for a classical nova only 24 years
after the explosion when the accretion rate is expected to be high and the
white dwarf should still be very hot, especially if irradiation of the donor
star took place. Our low accretion rate is consistent with low accretion rates
derived from X-ray and ground-based optical data.


  We calculate the flux of non-thermal radiations from the supernova remnant RX
J1713.7-3946 in the context of the non-linear theory of particle acceleration
at shocks, which allows us to take into account self-consistently the dynamical
reaction of the accelerated particles, the generation of magnetic fields in the
shock proximity and the dynamical reaction of the magnetic field on the plasma.
When the fraction of particles which get accelerated is of order $\sim
10^{-4}$, we find that the strength of the magnetic field obtained as a result
of streaming instability induced by cosmic rays is compatible with the
interpretation of the X-ray emitting filaments being produced by strong
synchrotron losses in $\sim 100 \mu G$ magnetic fields. If the X-ray filaments
are explained in alternative ways, the constraint on the magnetic field
downstream of the shock disappears and the HESS data can be marginally fit with
ICS of relativistic electrons off a complex population of photons, tailored to
comprise CMB and ambient IR/Optical photons. The fit, typically poor at the
highest energies, requires a large density of target photons within the
remnant; only a fraction of order $\sim 10^{-6}$ of the background particles
gets accelerated; the local magnetic field is of order $\sim 20\mu G$ and the
maximum energy of protons is much lower than the knee energy. Current HESS
gamma ray observations combined with recent X-ray observations by Suzaku do not
allow as yet to draw a definitive conclusion on whether RX J1713.7-3946 is an
efficient cosmic ray accelerator, although at the present time a hadronic
interpretation of HESS data seems more likely. We discuss the implications of
our results for the GLAST gamma ray telescope, which should be able to
discriminate the two scenarios discussed above.


  This paper shows that a classic metalogical framework, including all Boolean
operators, can be used to support the development of a metric behavioural
theory for Markov processes. Previously, only intuitionistic frameworks or
frameworks without negation and logical implication have been developed to
fulfill this task. The focus of this paper is on continuous Markovian logic
(CML), a logic that characterizes stochastic bisimulation of Markov processes
with an arbitrary measurable state space and continuous-time transitions. For a
parameter epsilon>0 interpreted as observational error, we introduce an
epsilon-parameterized metatheory for CML: we define the concepts of
epsilon-satisfiability and epsilon-provability related by a sound and complete
axiomatization and prove a series of "parameterized" metatheorems including
decidability, weak completeness and finite model property. We also prove
results regarding the relations between metalogical concepts defined for
different parameters. Using this framework, we can characterize both the
stochastic bisimulation relation and various observational preorders based on
behavioural pseudometrics. The main contribution of this paper is proving that
all these analyses can actually be done using a unified complete Boolean
framework. This extends the state of the art in this field, since the related
works only propose intuitionistic contexts that limit, for instance, the use of
the Boolean logical implication.


  We use equations for Faddeev amplitudes to solve the shell-model problem for
four nucleons in the model space that includes up to 14 hbar Omega
harmonic-oscillator excitations above the unperturbed ground state. Two- and
three-body effective interactions derived from the Reid93 and Argonne V8'
nucleon-nucleon potentials are used in the calculations. Binding energies,
excitations energies, point-nucleon radii and electromagnetic and strangeness
charge form factors for 4He are studied. The structure of the Faddeev-like
equations is discussed and a formula for matrix elements of the permutation
operators in a harmonic-oscillator basis is given. The dependence on
harmonic-oscillator excitations allowed in the model space and on the
harmonic-oscillator frequency is investigated. It is demonstrated that the use
of the three-body effective interactions improves the convergence of the
results.


  Context. Recent, nonlinear simulations of wave generation and propagation in
full-star models have been carried out in the anelastic approximation using
spectral methods. Although it makes long time steps possible, this approach
excludes the physics of sound waves completely and rather high artificial
viscosity and thermal diffusivity are needed for numerical stability. Direct
comparison with observations is thus limited. Aims. We explore the capabilities
of our compressible multidimensional hydrodynamics code SLH to simulate stellar
oscillations. Methods. We compare some fundamental properties of internal
gravity and pressure waves in 2D SLH simulations to linear wave theory using
two test cases: (1) an interval gravity wave packet in the Boussinesq limit and
(2) a realistic $3\mathrm{M}_\odot$ stellar model with a convective core and a
radiative envelope. Oscillation properties of the stellar model are also
discussed in the context of observations. Results. Our tests show that
specialized low-Mach techniques are necessary when simulating oscillations in
stellar interiors. Basic properties of internal gravity and pressure waves in
our simulations are in good agreement with linear wave theory. As compared to
anelastic simulations of the same stellar model, we can follow internal gravity
waves of much lower frequencies. The temporal frequency spectra of velocity and
temperature are flat and compatible with observed spectra of massive stars.
Conclusion. The low-Mach compressible approach to hydrodynamical simulations of
stellar oscillations is promising. Our simulations are less dissipative and
require less luminosity boosting than comparable spectral simulations. The
fully-compressible approach allows the coupling of gravity and pressure waves
to be studied too.


  We study the class of ADS rings and modules introduced by Fuchs. We give some
connections between this notion and classical notions such as injectivity and
quasi-continuity. A simple ring R such that R is ADS as a right R-module must
be either right self-injective or indecomposable as a right R-module. Under
certain conditions we can construct a unique ADS hull up to isomorphism. We
introduce the concept of completely ADS modules and characterize completely ADS
semiperfect right modules as direct sum of semisimple and local modules.


  We have measured the separations and position angles of the two components of
the binary transneptunian object 1997 CQ29 at eight epochs. From these data we
are able to constrain the orbit and mass of this binary system. The best
fitting orbit has an orbital period of P = 312+/-3 days. The orbital
eccentricity is e = 0.45+/-0.03 and the semimajor axis is a = 8,010+/-80 km.
The mass of the system is surprisingly low at 0.42+/-0.02 x 10^18 kg. To
account for the observed brightness consistent with the low mass and a range of
plausible densities, the geometric albedo must be very high; for an assumed
density of 1000 kg m^-3 we find a red geometric albedo of p_R = 0.37, an order
of magnitude higher than has been generally assumed for transneptunian objects.
If objects with comparably high albedos are common in the Kuiper belt,
estimates of the mass of the belt must be significantly reduced. The semimajor
axis of 1997 CQ29's orbit is 2.8% of the Hill radius of the primary, a value
strikingly similar to this same ratio in other transneptunian binaries,
main-belt binaries, and regular satellite systems.


  Power splitters play a crucial role in virtually all photonic circuits,
enabling precise control of on-chip signal distribution. However,
state-of-the-art solutions typically present trade-offs in terms of loss,
bandwidth, and fabrication robustness, especially when targeting multimode
operation. Here, we present a novel multimode 3-dB power splitter based on a
symmetric Y-junction assisted by subwavelength grating metamaterials. The
inclusion of the metamaterial structure circumvents the practical limitations
of conventional Y-junction tips and realizes smooth modal transitions.
Simulations for a standard 220-nm-thick silicon-on-insulator platform predict
minimal excess loss (< 0.2 dB) for the fundamental and the first-order
transverse-electric modes over an ultra-broad 700 nm bandwidth (1300-2000 nm).
For the fundamental transverse-magnetic mode, losses are less than 0.3 dB in
the 1300-1800 nm range. Experimental measurements validate these predictions in
the 1430-1630 nm wavelength range, demonstrating losses < 0.4 dB for all three
modes, even in the presence of fabrication deviations of up to \pm 10 nm. We
believe that this device is suitable for the implementation of advanced
photonic systems requiring high-performance distribution of optical signals.


  We employ the mean-field approach in the fermionic picture of the spin-1/2
XXZ chain to investigate the dynamics of bipartite quantum discord and
concurrence under sudden quenching. In the case, when quenching is performed in
the anisotropy from an initial value to the critical point, the quantum
correlations show periodic cusps in time. Moreover, the first suppression
(cusp) in quantum correlations can be explained in terms of the semi-classical
picture of quasiparticle propagation. On the other hand, quenching to, as well
as away from the criticality point shows that the longtime pairwise quantum
discord gets enhanced from its initial state. Finally, we show that in the
gapped region a quench in the transverse field displays survival of the
next-nearest-neighbor quantum discord. Our results provide a further insight
into the dynamical behavior of quantum correlations and their connections to
quantum criticality.


  Pulsed excitation of broad spectra requires very high field strengths if
monochromatic pulses are used. If the corresponding high power is not available
or not desirable, the pulses can be replaced by suitable low-power pulses that
distribute the power over a wider bandwidth. As a simple case, we use microwave
pulses with a linear frequency chirp. We use these pulses to excite spectra of
single NV-centers in a Ramsey experiment. Compared to the conventional Ramsey
experiment, our approach increases the bandwidth by at least an order of
magnitude. Compared to the conventional ODMR experiment, the chirped Ramsey
experiment does not suffer from power broadening and increases the resolution
by at least an order of magnitude. As an additional benefit, the chirped Ramsey
spectrum contains not only `allowed' single quantum transitions, but also
`forbidden' zero- and double quantum transitions, which can be distinguished
from the single quantum transitions by phase-shifting the readout pulse with
respect to the excitation pulse or by variation of the external magnetic field
strength.


  Non-renormalisable versions of $SO(10)$ based on irreducible representations
with lesser degrees of freedom, are free of running into the catastrophe of
non-perturbativity of standard model gauge couplings in contrast to the
renormalisable versions having tensors with many degrees of freedom. $16_H$ is
the smallest representation, participates in Yukawa Lagrangian at the
non-renormalisable level, contributing to the charged and neutral fermion
masses, and has six distinct scalars with different $B-L$ charges. We computed
the leptoquark and diquark couplings of different pairs of scalars stemming
from all possible decomposition of the term resulting from the coupling of
$16_{\rm{H}}$ with the $\mathbf{16}$ dimensional fermion multiplet of $SO(10)$,
i.e. $\frac{\mathbf{16}\,\mathbf{16}\,16_{\rm{H}}\,16_{\rm{H}}}{\Lambda}$.
Computing the tree and loop level contribution of different pairs to the
effective dimension six, $B-L$ conserving operators, it turns out only three
pairs, viz $\sigma\big(1,1,0\big)- T\big(3,1,\frac{1}{3}\big)$, and
$H\big(1,2,-\frac{1}{2}\big)-\Delta\big(3,2,\frac{1}{6}\big)$, and $H-T$ can
induce proton decay at tree level. Assuming that the Yukawa couplings of the
$16_{\rm{H}}$ are comparable to those of the $\overline{126}_{\rm{H}}$ of a
realistic SO(10) model and setting the cutoff scale to the Planck scale
typically constrains the $B-L$ breaking scale to be $4\sim 5$ orders of
magnitude less than the cutoff scale $(\Lambda)$. Moreover, analysing the
branching pattern of the leading two-body decay modes of the proton, we
observed a preference for the proton to decay into second-generation mesons due
to the hierarchical nature of Yukawa couplings. In a realistic $SO(10)$
scenario, we find that $M_T >10^{8}$ TeV, while $M_\Delta$ could be as light as
a few TeV$s$.


  Non-gravitating (stealth) scalar fields associated with Minkowski space in
scalar-tensor gravity are examined. Analytical solutions for both non-minimally
coupled scalar field theory and for Brans-Dicke gravity are studied and their
stability with respect to tensor perturbations is assessed using a covariant
and gauge-invariant formalism developed for alternative gravity. For
Brans-Dicke solutions, the stability with respect to homogeneous perturbations
is also studied. There are regions of parameter space corresponding to
stability and other regions corresponding to instability.


  The quality of a fundus image can be compromised by numerous factors, many of
which are challenging to be appropriately and mathematically modeled. In this
paper, we introduce a novel diffusion model based framework, named Learning
Enhancement from Degradation (LED), for enhancing fundus images. Specifically,
we first adopt a data-driven degradation framework to learn degradation
mappings from unpaired high-quality to low-quality images. We then apply a
conditional diffusion model to learn the inverse enhancement process in a
paired manner. The proposed LED is able to output enhancement results that
maintain clinically important features with better clarity. Moreover, in the
inference phase, LED can be easily and effectively integrated with any existing
fundus image enhancement framework. We evaluate the proposed LED on several
downstream tasks with respect to various clinically-relevant metrics,
successfully demonstrating its superiority over existing state-of-the-art
methods both quantitatively and qualitatively. The source code is available at
https://github.com/QtacierP/LED.


  Four wave mixing (FWM) is an important way to generate supercontinuum and
frequency combs in the mid-infrared band. Here, we obtain simultaneous
synthetic FWM in the visible and mid-infrared bands by cascading quadratic
nonlinear processes in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal (PPLN),
which has a 110dB(at 3000nm) higher conversion efficiency than the FWM directly
generated by third-order susceptibilities in bulk PPLN crystals. A general
model of this process is developed that is in full agreement with the
experimental verifications. The frequency difference between the new frequency
components can be freely tuned by changing the frequency difference of the dual
pump lasers. Furthermore, by increasing the conversion bandwidth and efficiency
of the cascaded processes, it is feasible to generate frequency combs in three
bands the visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared bands simultaneously through
high-order cascaded processes. This work opens up a new avenue toward
free-tuning multiband frequency comb generation with multi-octaves frequency
spanning, which will have significant applications in fields such as
mid-infrared gas sensing, lidar and precision spectroscopy.


  Storage and distribution of quantum information are key elements of quantum
information processing and quantum communication. Here, using atom-photon
entanglement as the main physical resource, we experimentally demonstrate the
preparation of a distant atomic quantum memory. Applying a quantum
teleportation protocol on a locally prepared state of a photonic qubit, we
realized this so-called remote state preparation on a single, optically trapped
87Rb atom. We evaluated the performance of this scheme by the full tomography
of the prepared atomic state, reaching an average fidelity of 82%.


  A novel framework has recently been proposed for designing the molecular
structure of chemical compounds with a desired chemical property using both
artificial neural networks and mixed integer linear programming. In this paper,
we design a new method for inferring a polymer based on the framework. For
this, we introduce a new way of representing a polymer as a form of monomer and
define new descriptors that feature the structure of polymers. We also use
linear regression as a building block of constructing a prediction function in
the framework. The results of our computational experiments reveal a set of
chemical properties on polymers to which a prediction function constructed with
linear regression performs well. We also observe that the proposed method can
infer polymers with up to 50 non-hydrogen atoms in a monomer form.


  The calculations of the first and the second ionization potentials of
lawrencium and lutetium and the electron affinity of lawrencium are performed
within the relativistic coupled cluster framework. These results are corrected
by including the contributions of extrapolation to the complete basis set limit
and higher order contributions due to relativity and electron correlation. The
excellent agreement between our predictions of the ionization potentials of Lu
and Lr and experimental values supports the accuracy of our predictions of the
second ionization potential and the electron affinity of Lr.


  Theorem 6.1.1 of [H.A.H.A.] on the existence of a model structure on the
category of operads is not valid in the generality claimed. We present here a
counter-example (due to B. Fresse) and a corrected version of the theorem.


  This is a brief review of recent progress in constructing solutions to the
matrix model Virasoro equations. These equations are parameterized by a degree
n polynomial W_n(x), and the general solution is labeled by an arbitrary
function of n-1 coefficients of the polynomial. We also discuss in this general
framework a special class of (multi-cut) solutions recently studied in the
context of \cal N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories.


  The experimental capability of recognizing the presence of b quarks in
complex hadronic final states has addressed the attention towards final states
with b\bar{b} pairs for observing the production of the Higgs boson at the LHC,
in the intermediate Higgs mass range.We point out that double parton scattering
processes are going to represent a sizeable background to the process.


  In the present paper, homeomorphisms in metric spaces which generalize
quasiconformal mappings, are investigated. It is proved that, at some
conditions on metric spaces and boundaries of corresponding domains, families
of above mappings are equicontinuous in a closure of a given domain.


  It is widely acknowledged that the development of traditional terrestrial
communication technologies cannot provide all users with fair and high quality
services due to the scarce network resource and limited coverage areas. To
complement the terrestrial connection, especially for users in rural,
disaster-stricken, or other difficult-to-serve areas, satellites, unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs), and balloons have been utilized to relay the
communication signals. On the basis, Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks
(SAGINs) have been proposed to improve the users' Quality of Experience (QoE).
However, compared with existing networks such as ad hoc networks and cellular
networks, the SAGINs are much more complex due to the various characteristics
of three network segments. To improve the performance of SAGINs, researchers
are facing many unprecedented challenges. In this paper, we propose the
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique to optimize the SAGINs, as the AI
technique has shown its predominant advantages in many applications. We first
analyze several main challenges of SAGINs and explain how these problems can be
solved by AI. Then, we consider the satellite traffic balance as an example and
propose a deep learning based method to improve the traffic control
performance. Simulation results evaluate that the deep learning technique can
be an efficient tool to improve the performance of SAGINs.


  We study the contribution to the QCD axion dark matter abundance that is
produced by string defects during the so-called scaling regime. Clear evidence
of scaling violations is found, the most conservative extrapolation of which
strongly suggests a large number of axions from strings. In this regime,
nonlinearities at around the QCD scale are shown to play an important role in
determining the final abundance. The overall result is a lower bound on the QCD
axion mass in the post-inflationary scenario that is substantially stronger
than the naive one from misalignment.


  Quantum absorption refrigerator (QAR) autonomously extracts heat from a cold
bath and dumps into a hot bath by exploiting the input heat from a higher
temperature reservoir. QARs typically require three-body interactions. We
propose and examine a two-body QAR model based upon optomechanical-like
coupling in the working medium composed of either two two-level systems or two
harmonic oscillators or one two-level atom and a harmonic oscillator. In the
ideal case without internal dissipation, within the experimentally realizable
parameters, our model can attain the coefficient of performance that is
arbitrarily close to the Carnot bound. We study the efficiency at maximum
power, a bound for practical purposes, and show that by using suitable
reservoir engineering and exploiting the nonlinear optomechanial-like coupling,
one can achieve efficiency at maximum power close to the Carnot bound, though
the power gradually approaches to zero as the efficiency approaches the Carnot
bound. Moreover, we discuss the impact of non-classical correlations and the
size of Hilbert space on the cooling power. Finally, we consider a more
realistic version of our model in which we consider heat leaks that makes QAR
non-ideal and prevent it to achieve the Carnot efficiency.


  The substructure of atomic nuclei resulting from the clustering of nucleons
is crucial for understanding nuclear structure and dynamics. Various cluster
configurations can emerge depending on excitation energy, the number and types
of core clusters, and the presence of excess neutrons. Despite the prevalence
of tightly bound cluster formations in low-lying states, understanding the
correlation between clusters and their formation mechanisms remains incomplete.
This exploring study investigates nuclear clustering at the Electron-Ion
Collider (EIC) using simulations based on the modified BeAGLE model. By
simulating collisions involving $e$+$^{9}$Be, $e$+$^{12}$C, and $e$+$^{16}$O
nuclei, we find that the average energy of particles $\langle E \rangle$ and
the system size ratios of particles at forward rapidity exhibit sensitivity to
alpha clustering and its various configurations. These findings offer valuable
insights into the dynamics of nuclear clustering and its implications for
future studies at the EIC.


  We present the first measurements of tritium beta-decay spectrum in the
electron energy range 16-18.6 keV. The goal is to find distortions which may
correspond to the presence of a heavy sterile neutrinos. A possible
contribution of this kind would manifest itself as a kink in the spectrum with
a similar shape but with end point shifted by the value of a heavy neutrino
mass. We set a new upper limits to the neutrino mixing matrix element U^2_{e4}
which improve existing limits by a factor from 2 to 5 in the mass range 0.1-2
keV.


  We calculate the decoherence caused by photon emission for a charged particle
travelling through an interferometer; the decoherence rate gives a quantitative
measure of how much "which-path" quantum information is gained by the
electromagnetic field. We isolate the quantum information content of both
leading and sub-leading soft photons, and show that it can be extracted
entirely from information about the endpoints of the particle's paths. When
infrared dressing is used to cure the infrared divergences in the theory, the
leading order soft photons then give no contribution to decoherence, and carry
no quantum information. The sub-leading soft photons in contrast may carry
finite which-path information, and the sub-leading contribution to decoherence
takes an extremely simple, time-independent form depending only on the size of
the interferometer. An interesting open question is whether or not dressing
should also be applied at sub-leading order; we discuss the possibility of
answering this question experimentally.


  We analyze threshold photoproduction of heavy mesons off a deuteron and
Helium-4, using the QCD factorization method. Assuming large skewness, the
production amplitude is dominated by the leading twist-2 gluonic
energy-momentum tensor (EMT). We use our recent results for the gluonic
gravitational form factors of light nuclei in the impulse approximation, to
estimate the differential cross sections for $J/\Psi$ production off a deuteron
and Helium-4 at current electron facilities.


  In this paper, we obtain some Hermite-Hadamard type inequalities for
functions whose third derivatives in absolute value are preinvex and
prequasiinvex.


  Descriptor revision by Hansson is a framework for addressing the problem of
belief change. In descriptor revision, different kinds of change processes are
dealt with in a joint framework. Individual change requirements are qualified
by specific success conditions expressed by a belief descriptor, and belief
descriptors can be combined by logical connectives. This is in contrast to the
currently dominating AGM paradigm shaped by Alchourr\'on, G\"ardenfors, and
Makinson, where different kinds of changes, like a revision or a contraction,
are dealt with separately. In this article, we investigate the realisation of
descriptor revision for a conditional logic while restricting descriptors to
the conjunction of literal descriptors. We apply the principle of conditional
preservation developed by Kern-Isberner to descriptor revision for
conditionals, show how descriptor revision for conditionals under these
restrictions can be characterised by a constraint satisfaction problem, and
implement it using constraint logic programming. Since our conditional logic
subsumes propositional logic, our approach also realises descriptor revision
for propositional logic.


  We present a compact analytic two-loop expression of the $SU(3)_f$ breaking
effects on the ratio of the pseudoscalar decay constants $R_P \equiv
f_{P_S}/f_P$ ($P \equiv D,B $), from which, we extract the precise values :
$R_D = 1.15 \pm .04$, $R_B = 1.16 \pm .05 $, where the errors are mainly due to
the uncalculated $\alpha_s^2$-corrections. We also scan carefully the $M_c$
(resp. $M_b$) mass dependence of $f_D$ (resp. $f_B$) in view of precise
measurements of the ``perturbative'' c and b pole quark masses from the future
data of the decay constants $f_P$.


  Model-based studies of auditory nerve responses to electrical stimulation can
provide insight into the functioning of cochlear implants. Ideally, these
studies can identify limitations in sound processing strategies and lead to
improved methods for providing sound information to cochlear implant users. To
accomplish this, models must accurately describe auditory nerve spiking while
avoiding excessive complexity that would preclude large-scale simulations of
populations of auditory nerve fibers and obscure insight into the mechanisms
that influence neural encoding of sound information. In this spirit, we develop
a point process model of the auditory nerve that provides a compact and
accurate description of neural responses to electric stimulation. Inspired by
the framework of generalized linear models, the proposed model consists of a
cascade of linear and nonlinear stages. We show how each of these stages can be
associated with biophysical mechanisms and related to models of neuronal
dynamics. Moreover, we derive a semi-analytical procedure that uniquely
determines each parameter in the model on the basis of fundamental statistics
from recordings of single fiber responses to electric stimulation, including
threshold, relative spread, jitter, and chronaxie. The model also accounts for
refractory and summation effects that influence the responses of auditory nerve
fibers to high pulse rate stimulation. Throughout, we compare model predictions
to published physiological data and explain differences in auditory nerve
responses to high and low pulse rate stimulation. We close by performing an
ideal observer analysis of simulated spike trains in response to sinusoidally
amplitude modulated stimuli and find that carrier pulse rate does not affect
modulation detection thresholds.


  Graphene-based moir\'e superlattice featuring flat bands is a promising
platform for studying strongly correlated states. By tuning two twist angles
and displacement fields in twisted mono-mono-bilayer graphene (TMMBG), we
observed a correlated metallic state evolved into a valley-polarized correlated
insulator at the filling factor of $\nu = -2$, with the coupling strength
between the top two monolayer graphene intensifying. Moreover, the
corresponding effective g-factor obtained from fitting the thermal activation
gap is enhanced with the coupling strength, suggesting that TMMBG can be
harnessed for developing valleytronics devices. In addition, the observation of
an unconventional correlated electron-hole insulator suggests that this state
might be a candidate for an excitonic insulator, which may generated by the
correlation from band nesting, which encourages further research in non-Fermi
liquid physics. Our work reveals that tuning multiple twist angles can provide
a unique route for studying quantum many-body states in twistronics.


  When a structure displays dependence on distance and azimuthal angle from a
center (for example the spiral arms of galaxies or the diffraction spikes of
stars), projecting the pixels to polar coordinates greatly simplifies their
study. This projection from one pixel grid to another is known as a "polar
plot". For this purpose, a new option has been added to the GNU Astronomy
Utilities (Gnuastro) in version 0.23 to "astscript-radial-profile" script,
which we describe in this research note. The figures of this research note are
reproducible with Maneage, on the Git commit 5d34243.


  In this article, we discuss the local rigidity of Clifford-Klein forms of
homogeneous spaces of 1-connected completely solvable Lie groups. In fact, we
introduce a splitting of the local rigidity: vertical rigidity and horizontal
rigidity. By using this splitting, we refine some existing results about the
local rigidity and introduce a new approach to Baklouti's conjecture about the
local rigidity.


  Constraining the parameters of physical models with $>5-10$ parameters is a
widespread problem in fields like particle physics and astronomy. The
generation of data to explore this parameter space often requires large amounts
of computational resources. The commonly used solution of reducing the number
of relevant physical parameters hampers the generality of the results. In this
paper we show that this problem can be alleviated by the use of active
learning. We illustrate this with examples from high energy physics, a field
where simulations are often expensive and parameter spaces are
high-dimensional. We show that the active learning techniques
query-by-committee and query-by-dropout-committee allow for the identification
of model points in interesting regions of high-dimensional parameter spaces
(e.g. around decision boundaries). This makes it possible to constrain model
parameters more efficiently than is currently done with the most common
sampling algorithms and to train better performing machine learning models on
the same amount of data. Code implementing the experiments in this paper can be
found on GitHub.


  Wood is a multi-scale material exhibiting a complex viscoplastic response. We
study avalanches in small wood samples in compression. "Woodquakes" measured by
acoustic emission are surprisingly similar to earthquakes and crackling noise
in rocks and laboratory tests on brittle materials. Both the distributions of
event energies and of waiting (silent) times follow power-laws. The stress-
strain response exhibits clear signatures of localization of deformation to
"weak spots" or softwood layers, as identified using Digital Image Correlation.
Even though material structure-dependent localization takes place, the
avalanche behavior remains scale-free.


  We argue that one of the main obstacles for developing effective Continual
Reinforcement Learning (CRL) algorithms is the negative transfer issue
occurring when the new task to learn arrives. Through comprehensive
experimental validation, we demonstrate that such issue frequently exists in
CRL and cannot be effectively addressed by several recent work on mitigating
plasticity loss of RL agents. To that end, we develop Reset & Distill (R&D), a
simple yet highly effective method, to overcome the negative transfer problem
in CRL. R&D combines a strategy of resetting the agent's online actor and
critic networks to learn a new task and an offline learning step for distilling
the knowledge from the online actor and previous expert's action probabilities.
We carried out extensive experiments on long sequence of Meta-World tasks and
show that our method consistently outperforms recent baselines, achieving
significantly higher success rates across a range of tasks. Our findings
highlight the importance of considering negative transfer in CRL and emphasize
the need for robust strategies like R&D to mitigate its detrimental effects.


  We present the identification of the previously unnoticed physical
association between the Corona Australis molecular cloud (CrA), traced by
interstellar dust emission, and two shell-like structures observed with line
emission of atomic hydrogen (HI) at 21 cm. Although the existence of the two
shells had already been reported in the literature, the physical link between
the HI emission and CrA was never highlighted before. We use both Planck and
Herschel data to trace dust emission and the Galactic All Sky HI Survey (GASS)
to trace HI. The physical association between CrA and the shells is assessed
based both on spectroscopic observations of molecular and atomic gas and on
dust extinction data with Gaia. The shells are located at a distance between
140 and 190 pc, comparable to the distance of CrA, which we derive as 150.5 +-
6.3 pc. We also employ dust polarization observations from Planck to trace the
magnetic-field structure of the shells. Both of them show patterns of
magnetic-field lines following the edge of the shells consistently with the
magnetic-field morphology of CrA. We estimate the magnetic-field strength at
the intersection of the two shells via the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (DCF)
method. Albeit the many caveats that are behind the DCF method, we find a
magnetic-field strength of 27 +- 8 $\mu$G, at least a factor of two larger than
the magnetic-field strength computed off of the HI shells. This value is also
significantly larger compared to the typical values of a few $\mu$G found in
the diffuse HI gas from Zeeman splitting. We interpret this as the result of
magnetic-field compression caused by the shell expansion. This study supports a
scenario of molecular-cloud formation triggered by supersonic compression of
cold magnetized HI gas from expanding interstellar bubbles.


  It is widely believed that central star binarity plays an important role in
the formation and evolution of aspherical planetary nebulae, however
observational support for this hypothesis is lacking. Here, we present the most
recent results of a continuing programme to model the morphologies of all
planetary nebulae known to host a close binary central star. Initially, this
programme allows us to compare the inclination of the nebular symmetry axis to
that of the binary plane, testing the theoretical expectation that they will
lie perpendicular - to date, all have satisfied this expectation, indicating
that each nebula has been shaped by its central binary star. As a greater
sample of nebulae are modelled, it will be possible to search for trends
connecting the parameters of both nebula and central binary, strengthening our
understanding of the processes at work in these objects. I will discuss some of
the more obvious comparisons, and their current statuses, as well as the
obvious links to common envelope evolution.


  Over a regular local ring of dimension two with maximal ideal m, we study the
Buchsbaum-Rim multiplicity of a finitely generated module M of finite colength
in a free module F. First, we investigate the colength of an m-primary ideal
and its Hilbert-Samuel multiplicity using linkage theory. As applications, we
establish several multiplicity formula that express the Buchsbaum-Rim
multiplicity of M in terms of the Hilbert-Samuel multiplicities of ideals
related to a certain minimal reduction U of M. Moreover, there exists m-primary
Bourbaki ideals I and J of the modules F and M respectively such that F/M is
isomorphic to I/J. We also have a formula for the Buchsbaum-Rim multiplicity
whenever such I and J are given. The latter part is related to a graphical
interpretation of the multiplicities in the case of monomial ideals.


  The adoption of high-fidelity models for many-query optimization problems is
majorly limited by the significant computational cost required for their
evaluation at every query. Multifidelity Bayesian methods (MFBO) allow to
include costly high-fidelity responses for a sub-selection of queries only, and
use fast lower-fidelity models to accelerate the optimization process.
State-of-the-art methods rely on a purely data-driven search and do not include
explicit information about the physical context. This paper acknowledges that
prior knowledge about the physical domains of engineering problems can be
leveraged to accelerate these data-driven searches, and proposes a generalized
formulation for MFBO to embed a form of domain awareness during the
optimization procedure. In particular, we formalize a bias as a multifidelity
acquisition function that captures the physical structure of the domain. This
permits to partially alleviate the data-driven search from learning the domain
properties on-the-fly, and sensitively enhances the management of multiple
sources of information. The method allows to efficiently include high-fidelity
simulations to guide the optimization search while containing the overall
computational expense. Our physics-aware multifidelity Bayesian optimization is
presented and illustrated for two classes of optimization problems frequently
met in science and engineering, namely design optimization and health
monitoring problems.


  This paper deals with optimal policy learning (OPL) with observational data,
i.e. data-driven optimal decision-making, in multi-action (or multi-arm)
settings, where a finite set of decision options is available. It is organized
in three parts, where I discuss respectively: estimation, risk preference, and
potential failures. The first part provides a brief review of the key
approaches to estimating the reward (or value) function and optimal policy
within this context of analysis. Here, I delineate the identification
assumptions and statistical properties related to offline optimal policy
learning estimators. In the second part, I delve into the analysis of decision
risk. This analysis reveals that the optimal choice can be influenced by the
decision maker's attitude towards risks, specifically in terms of the trade-off
between reward conditional mean and conditional variance. Here, I present an
application of the proposed model to real data, illustrating that the average
regret of a policy with multi-valued treatment is contingent on the
decision-maker's attitude towards risk. The third part of the paper discusses
the limitations of optimal data-driven decision-making by highlighting
conditions under which decision-making can falter. This aspect is linked to the
failure of the two fundamental assumptions essential for identifying the
optimal choice: (i) overlapping, and (ii) unconfoundedness. Some conclusions
end the paper.


  Detailed morphological and spatially resolved spectral studies reveal the
very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray aspects of this object with unprecedented
precision. We confirm previous results obtained in a survey of the Galactic
Plane in 2004. The gamma-ray emission extends asymmetrically to the south and
south-west of the energetic pulsar PSR J1826-1334, that is thought to power the
pulsar wind nebula. The differential gamma-ray spectrum of the whole emission
region is measured over more than two orders of magnitude, from 270 GeV to 35
TeV, and shows indications for a deviation from a pure power law. Spectra have
also been determined for spatially separated regions of HESS J1825-137. The
photon indices from a power-law fit in the different regions show a softening
of the spectrum with increasing distance from the pulsar and therefore an
energy dependent morphology. This is the first time that an energy dependent
morphology has been detected in the VHE gamma-ray regime. The VHE gamma-ray
emission of HESS J1825-137 is phenomenologically discussed in the scenario
where the gamma-rays are produced by VHE electrons via Inverse Compton
scattering. The high gamma-ray luminosity of the source cannot be explained on
the basis of constant spin-down power of the pulsar and requires higher
injection power in past.


  It is proposed that convection driven dynamos operating in planetary cores
could be oscillatory even when the oscillations are not directly noticeable
from the outside. Examples of dynamo simulations are pointed out that exhibit
oscillations in the structure of the azimuthally averaged toroidal magnetic
flux while the mean poloidal field shows only variations in its amplitude. In
the case of the geomagnetic field, global excursions may be associated with
these oscillations. Long period dynamo simulations indicate that the
oscillations may cause reversals once in a while. No special attempt has been
made to use most realistic parameter values. Nevertheless some similarities
between the simulations and the paleomagnetic record can be pointed out.


  The strong lensing gravitational wave (SLGW) is a promising transient
phenomenon that encompasses a wealth of physics. However, the long-wave nature
of gravitational waves (GW) poses a significant challenge in identification of
its host galaxy. To tackle this challenge, we propose a multi-messenger method
triggered by the wave optics effect of microlensing. The microlensing
diffraction/interference fringes introduce frequency-dependent fluctuations in
the waveform. Our method has three steps. First, we reconstruct the GW
waveforms by using the template-independent and template-dependent methods. The
mismatch of two reconstructions serves as an indicator of SLGWs. This step can
identify $10\%$ SLGWs. Second, we pair the SLGW's multi-signals by employing
the sky localization overlapping. Third, we find the host galaxy by requiring
the consistency of time delays between Galaxy-Galaxy strong lensing (GGSL) and
SLGW. With the help of CSST and JWST, one can identify $1$ quadruple-image
system in roughly $3$ years.


  Recently Sahoo and Sen obtained a series of remarkable results concerning
sub-leading soft photon and graviton theorems in four dimensions. Even though
the S- matrix is infrared divergent, they have shown that the sub-leading soft
theorems are well defined and exact statements in QED and perturbative Quantum
Gravity. However unlike the well studied Cachazo-Strominger soft theorems in
tree-level amplitudes, the new sub-leading soft expansion is at the order ln
{\omega} (where {\omega} is the soft frequency) and the corresponding soft
factors structurally show completely different properties then their tree-level
counterparts. Whence it is natural to ask if these theorems are associated to
asymptotic symmetries of the S-matrix. We consider this question in the context
of sub-leading soft photon theorem in scalar QED and show that there are indeed
an infinity of conservation laws whose Ward identities are equivalent to the
loop-corrected soft photon theorem. This shows that in the case of four
dimensional QED, the leading and sub-leading soft photon theorems are
equivalent to Ward identities of (asymptotic) charges.


  Einstein's General Relativity (GR) is the basis of modern astronomy and
astrophysics. Testing the validity of basic assumptions of GR is important. In
this work, we test a possible violation of the Weak Equivalence Principle
(WEP), i.e., there might be a time-lag between photons of different frequencies
caused by the effect of gravitational fields if the speeds of photons are
slightly different at different frequencies. We use Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) ,
which are astronomical transients with millisecond timescales detected in the
radio frequency range. Being at cosmological distances, accumulated time delay
of FRBs can be caused by the plasma in between an FRB source and an observer,
and by gravitational fields in the path of the signal. We segregate the delay
due to dispersion and gravitational field using the post-Newtonian formalism
(PPN) parameter $\Delta \gamma$, which defines the space-curvature due to
gravity by a unit test mass. We did not detect any time-delay from FRBs but
obtained tight constraints on the upper limit of $\Delta \gamma$. For
FRB20181117C with $z = 1.83 \pm 0.28$ and $\nu_{obs}$ = $676.5\,{\rm MHz}$, the
best possible constraint is obtained at log($\Delta \gamma$) = $-21.58
^{+0.10}_{-0.12}$ and log($\Delta \gamma$/$r_{\rm E}$) = $-21.75
^{+0.10}_{-0.14}$, respectively, where $r_{\rm E}$ is the energy ratio of two
photons of the same FRB signal. This constraint is about one order of magnitude
better than the previous constraint obtained with FRBs, and five orders tighter
than any constraint obtained using other cosmological sources.


  We discuss the relevance of studying ecology within the framework of
Complexity Science from a statistical mechanics approach. Ecology is concerned
with understanding how systems level properties emerge out of the multitude of
interactions amongst large numbers of components, leading to ecosystems that
possess the prototypical characteristics of complex systems. We argue that
statistical mechanics is at present the best methodology available to obtain a
quantitative description of complex systems, and that ecology is in urgent need
of ``integrative'' approaches that are quantitative and non-stationary. We
describe examples where combining statistical mechanics and ecology has led to
improved ecological modelling and, at the same time, broadened the scope of
statistical mechanics.


  A description of the set of $m$-sectorial extensions of a dual pair
$\{A_1,A_2\}$ of nonnegative operators is obtained. Some classes of
nonaccretive extensions of the dual pair $\{A_1,A_2\}$ are described too. Both
problems are reduced to similar problems for a dual pair $\{T_1,T_2\}$ of
nondensely defined symmetric contractions $T_j=(I-A_j)(I+A_j)^{-1},\
j\in\{1,2\}$. In turn these problems are reduced to the investigation of the
corresponding operator "holes". A complete description of the set of all proper
and improper extensions of a nonnegative operator is obtained too.


  The focus of past machine learning research for Reading Comprehension tasks
has been primarily on the design of novel deep learning architectures. Here we
show that seemingly minor choices made on (1) the use of pre-trained word
embeddings, and (2) the representation of out-of-vocabulary tokens at test
time, can turn out to have a larger impact than architectural choices on the
final performance. We systematically explore several options for these choices,
and provide recommendations to researchers working in this area.


  I shall present three arguments for the proposition that intelligent life is
very rare in the universe. First, I shall summarize the consensus opinion of
the founders of the Modern Synthesis (Simpson, Dobzhanski, and Mayr) that the
evolution of intelligent life is exceedingly improbable. Second, I shall
develop the Fermi Paradox: if they existed they'd be here. Third, I shall show
that if intelligent life were too common, it would use up all available
resources and die out. But I shall show that the quantum mechanical principle
of unitarity (actually a form of teleology!) requires intelligent life to
survive to the end of time. Finally, I shall argue that, if the universe is
indeed accelerating, then survival to the end of time requires that intelligent
life, though rare, to have evolved several times in the visible universe. I
shall argue that the acceleration is a consequence of the excess of matter over
antimatter in the universe. I shall suggest experiments to test these claims.


  Let $L$ be a Galois algebra with Galois group $G$ and let $x$ be a normal
element of $L$. The moduli space $\mathcal X$ of pairs $(L,x)$ is isomorphic to
an open subset of the quotient variety $\mathbb P/G$, where $\mathbb P$ is the
projective space of the regular representation of $G$. We provide a formula for
the height of any pair $(L,x) \in \mathcal X(\mathbb Q)$ in terms of algebraic
invariants of $L$ and $x$ with respect to a natural adelic metric on the
anticanonical divisor of $\mathbb P/G$.


  We study different aspects of integrable boundary quantum field theories,
focusing mostly on the ``boundary sine-Gordon model'' and its applications to
condensed matter physics. The first part of the review deals with formal
problems. We analyze the classical limit and perform semi-classical
quantization. We show that the non-relativistic limit corresponds to the
Calogero-Moser model with a boundary potential. We construct a lattice
regularization of the problem via the XXZ chain. We classify boundary bound
states. We generalize the Destri de Vega method to compute the ground state
energy of the theory on a finite interval. The second part deals with some
applications to condensed matter physics. We show how to compute analytically
time and space dependent correlations in one-dimensional quantum integrable
systems with an impurity. Our approach is based on a description of these
systems in terms of massless scattering of quasiparticles. Correlators follow
then from matrix elements of local operators between multiparticle states --
the massless form-factors. Although, in general an infinite sum of these
form-factors has to be considered, we find that for the current, spin and
energy operators only a few (two or three) are necessary to obtain an accuracy
of more than 1\%. Our results hold for arbitrary impurity strength, in contrary
to the perturbative expansions in the coupling constants. As an example, we
compute the frequency dependent condunctance, at zero temperature, in a
Luttinger liquid with an impurity, and also discuss the susceptibility in the
Kondo model and the time-dependent properties of the two-state problem with
dissipation.


  AIMS: To investigate the very high energy (VHE: >100 GeV) gamma-ray emission
from the high-frequency peaked BL Lac 1ES 0229+200.
  METHODS: Observations of 1ES 0229+200 at energies above 580 GeV were
performed with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) in 2005 and 2006.
  RESULTS: 1ES 0229+200 is discovered by HESS to be an emitter of VHE photons.
A signal is detected at the 6.6 sigma level in the HESS observations (41.8 h
live time). The integral flux above 580 GeV is (9.4 +- 1.5 {stat} +- 1.9
{syst}) x 10^{-13} cm^{-2} s^{-1}, corresponding to ~1.8% of the flux observed
from the Crab Nebula. The data show no evidence for significant variability on
any time scale. The observed spectrum is characterized by a hard power law
(Gamma = 2.50 +- 0.19 {stat} +- 0.10 {syst}) from 500 GeV to ~15 TeV.
  CONCLUSIONS: The high-energy range and hardness of the observed spectrum,
coupled with the object's relatively large redshift (z=0.1396), enable the
strongest constraints so far on the density of the Extragalactic Background
Light (EBL) in the mid-infrared band. Assuming that the emitted spectrum is not
harder than Gamma_{int} ~ 1.5, the HESS data support an EBL spectrum ~
lambda^{-1} and density close to the lower limit from source counts measured by
Spitzer, confirming the previous indications from the HEGRA data of 1ES
1426+428 (z=0.129). Irrespective of the EBL models used, the intrinsic spectrum
of 1ES 0229+200 is hard, thus locating the high-energy peak of its spectral
energy distribution above a few TeV.


  An economy of scale is found when storing many qubits in one highly entangled
block of a topological quantum code. The code is defined by construction of a
topologically convoluted 2-d surface and does not work by compressing
redundancy in the encoded information.


  Major advances have been made regarding the utilization of artificial
intelligence in health care. In particular, deep learning approaches have been
successfully applied for automated and assisted disease diagnosis and prognosis
based on complex and high-dimensional data. However, despite all justified
enthusiasm, overoptimistic assessments of predictive performance are still
common. Automated medical testing devices based on machine-learned prediction
models should thus undergo a throughout evaluation before being implemented
into clinical practice. In this work, we propose a multiple testing framework
for (comparative) phase III diagnostic accuracy studies with sensitivity and
specificity as co-primary endpoints. Our approach challenges the frequent
recommendation to strictly separate model selection and evaluation, i.e. to
only assess a single diagnostic model in the evaluation study. We show that our
parametric simultaneous test procedure asymptotically allows strong control of
the family-wise error rate. Moreover, we demonstrate in extensive simulation
studies that our multiple testing strategy on average leads to a better final
diagnostic model and increased statistical power. To plan such studies, we
propose a Bayesian approach to determine the optimal number of models to
evaluate. For this purpose, our algorithm optimizes the expected final model
performance given previous (hold-out) data from the model development phase. We
conclude that an assessment of multiple promising diagnostic models in the same
evaluation study has several advantages when suitable adjustments for multiple
comparisons are implemented.


  Let $H$ be a subgroup of a group $G$. A normal subgroup $N_H$ of $H$ is said
to be inheritably normal if there is a normal subgroup $N_G$ of $G$ such that
$N_H=N_G\cap H$. It is proved in the paper that a subgroup $N_{G_i}$ of a
factor $G_i$ of the $n$-periodic product $\prod_{i\in I}^nG_i$ with nontrivial
factors $G_i$ is an inheritably normal subgroup if and only if $N_{G_i}$
contains the subgroup $G_i^n$. It is also proved that for odd $n\ge 665$ every
nontrivial normal subgroup in a given $n$-periodic product $G=\prod_{i\in
I}^nG_i$ contains the subgroup $G^n$. It follows that almost all $n$-periodic
products $G=G_1\overset{n}{\ast}G_2$ are Hopfian, i.e., they are not isomorphic
to any of their proper quotient groups. This allows one to construct nonsimple
and not residually finite Hopfian groups of bounded exponents.


  Swelling is a volumetric-growth process in which a porous material expands by
spontaneous imbibition of additional pore fluid. Swelling is distinct from
other growth processes in that it is inherently poromechanical: Local expansion
of the pore structure requires that additional fluid be drawn from elsewhere in
the material, or into the material from across the boundaries. Here, we study
the swelling and subsequent drying of a sphere of hydrogel. We develop a
dynamic model based on large-deformation poromechanics and the theory of ideal
elastomeric gels, and we compare the predictions of this model with a series of
experiments performed with polyacrylamide spheres. We use the model and the
experiments to study the complex internal dynamics of swelling and drying, and
to highlight the fundamentally transient nature of these strikingly different
processes. Although we assume spherical symmetry, the model also provides
insight into the transient patterns that form and then vanish during swelling
as well as the risk of fracture during drying.


  We study the Mott transition of a mixed Bose-Fermi system of ultracold atoms
in an optical lattice, where the number of (spinless) fermions and bosons adds
up to one atom per lattice, n_F+n_B=1. For weak interactions, a Fermi surface
coexists with a Bose-Einstein condensate while for strong interaction the
system is incompressible but still characterized by a Fermi surface of
composite fermions. At the critical point, the spectral function of the
fermions, A(k,w), exhibits a pseudo-gapped behavior, rising as |w| at the Fermi
momentum, while in the Mott phase it is fully gapped. Taking into account the
interaction between the critical modes leads at very low temperatures either to
p-wave pairing or the transition is driven weakly first order. The same
mechanism should also be important in antiferromagnetic metals with a small
Fermi surface.


  In chaotic dynamical systems, a number of rare trajectories with low level of
chaoticity are embedded in chaotic sea, while extraordinary unstable
trajectories can exist even in weakly chaotic regions. In this study, a
quantitative method for searching these rare trajectories is developed; the
method is based on multicanonical Monte Carlo and can estimate the probability
of initial conditions that lead to trajectory fragments of a given level of
chaoticity. The proposed method is successfully tested with four-dimensional
coupled standard maps, where probabilities as small as $10^{-14}$ are
estimated.


  We develop a new tractable model for K-tier heterogeneous cellular networks
(HetNets), where each base station (BS) is powered solely by a self-contained
energy harvesting module. The BSs across tiers differ in terms of the energy
harvesting rate, energy storage capacity, transmit power and deployment
density. Since a BS may not always have enough energy, it may need to be kept
OFF and allowed to recharge while nearby users are served by neighboring BSs
that are ON. We show that the fraction of time a k^{th} tier BS can be kept ON,
termed availability \rho_k, is a fundamental metric of interest. Using tools
from random walk theory, fixed point analysis and stochastic geometry, we
characterize the set of K-tuples (\rho_1, \rho_2, ... \rho_K), termed the
availability region, that is achievable by general uncoordinated operational
strategies, where the decision to toggle the current ON/OFF state of a BS is
taken independently of the other BSs. If the availability vector corresponding
to the optimal system performance, e.g., in terms of rate, lies in this
availability region, there is no performance loss due to the presence of
unreliable energy sources. As a part of our analysis, we model the temporal
dynamics of the energy level at each BS as a birth-death process, derive the
energy utilization rate, and use hitting/stopping time analysis to prove that
there exists a fundamental limit on \rho_k that cannot be surpassed by any
uncoordinated strategy.


  We investigate the influence of bulk viscosity on late-time cosmic
acceleration within an extended $f(Q, L_m)$ gravity framework, where the
non-metricity $Q$ is non-minimally coupled with the matter Lagrangian $L_m$.
Analyzing the function $f(Q, L_m) = \alpha Q + \beta L_m$, we derive exact
solutions under non-relativistic matter domination. Using observational
datasets ($H(z)$, Pantheon supernovae, and their combination), we constrain the
model parameters $H_0$, $\alpha$, $\beta$, and $\zeta$. The deceleration
parameter transitions from positive to negative values around redshifts $z_t
\approx 0.80$ to $0.99 $, indicating current accelerated expansion. Moreover,
the effective equation of state parameter, $\omega_{eff}$, resembles
quintessence dark energy ($-1 < \omega_{eff} < -\frac{1}{3}$), with
corresponding values from respective datasets. Finally, we use the $Om(z)$
diagnostic, which confirms that our model demonstrates quintessence-like
behavior. Our findings underscore the significant role of bulk viscosity in
understanding accelerated expansion in the universe within alternative gravity
theories.


  Call a compact, connected, simple Lie group $G$ {\emph{adjoint simple}} if it
has trivial center. Let $C\subset G$ be a nontrivial conjugacy class, $e\in G$
the identity element of $G$. We prove the existence of an $N\in\mathbb{N}$,
depending on $G$ but not $C$, such that $e$ lies in the interior of $C^n$ for
all $n\geq N$. We then prove that a disk $D\subset\mathbb{C}$ of radius less
than 1, contained in the unit disk $D_1$ and tangent to $D_1$ at $z=1$,
contains the image of every normalized character $\chi(e)^{-1}\chi$ of $G$.


  We propose a way to construct manifestly gauge independent quantities out of
the gauge dependent quantities occurring in the linearized Einstein equations.
Thereupon, we show that these gauge-invariant combinations can be identified
with measurable perturbations to the particle and energy densities.
  In the radiation-dominated era we find, for small-scale perturbations,
acoustic waves with an increasing amplitude, while standard treatments predict
acoustic waves with a decaying amplitude. For large-scale perturbations we find
exactly the same growth rates as in the standard literature.
  When considering the non-relativistic limit of the linearized Einstein
equations we find the Poisson equation.
  It is shown, using the linearized Einstein equations, that the usual
Newtonian treatment of density perturbations does not describe the evolution of
density perturbations.


  We propose a general statistical mechanics framework for the collective
motion of animals. The framework considers the principle of maximum entropy,
the interaction, boundary, and desire effects, as well as the time-delay
effect. These factors provide the ability to describe and solve dynamic and
non-equilibrium problems under this framework. We show that the Vicsek model,
the social force model, and some of their variants can be considered special
cases of this framework. Furthermore, this framework can be extended to the
maximum caliber setting. We demonstrate the potential of this framework for
model comparisons and parameter estimations by applying the model to observed
data from a field study of the emergent behavior of termites. Finally, we
demonstrate the flexibility of the framework by simulating some collective
moving phenomena for birds and ants.


  This paper focuses on using curvature and torsion to describe the stability
of linear time-invariant system. We prove that for a two-dimensional system
$\dot{r}(t)= Ar(t)$, (i) if there exists an initial value, such that zero is
not the limit of curvature of trajectory as $t\to+\infty$, then the zero
solution of the system is stable; (ii) if there exists an initial value, such
that the limit of curvature of trajectory is infinity as $t\to+\infty$, then
the zero solution of the system is asymptotically stable. For a
three-dimensional system, (i) if there exists a measurable set whose Lebesgue
measure is greater than zero, such that for all initial values in this set,
zero is not the limit of curvature of trajectory as $t\to+\infty$, then the
zero solution of the system is stable; (ii) if the coefficient matrix is
invertible, and there exists a measurable set whose Lebesgue measure is greater
than zero, such that for all initial values in this set, the limit of curvature
of trajectory is infinity as $t\to+\infty$, then the zero solution of the
system is asymptotically stable; (iii) if there exists a measurable set whose
Lebesgue measure is greater than zero, such that for all initial values in this
set, zero is not the limit of torsion of trajectory as $t\to+\infty$, then the
zero solution of the system is asymptotically stable.


  We report the discovery of two new R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars in the
Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using the MACHO project photometry database. The
identification of both stars has been confirmed spectroscopically. One is a
cool RCB star (T_eff about 5000 K) characterized by very strong Swan bands of
C_2 and violet bands of CN, and weak or absent Balmer lines, G-band and 12C-13C
bands. The second star is an example of a hot RCB star of which only 3 were
previously known to exist in the Galaxy and none in the LMC. Its spectrum is
characterized by several C II lines in emission. Both stars have shown deep
declines of Delta V > 4 mag in brightness. The new stars are significantly
fainter at maximum light than the three previously known LMC RCB stars. The
amount of reddening toward these stars is somewhat uncertain but both seem to
have absolute magnitudes, M_V, about half a magnitude fainter than the other
three stars. Estimates of M_Bol find that the hot RCB star lies in the range of
the other three stars while the cool RCB star is fainter. The two cool LMC RCB
stars are the faintest at M_Bol. The discovery of these two new stars brings to
five the number of known RCB stars in the LMC and demonstrates the utility of
the MACHO photometric database for the discovery of new RCB stars.


  In this paper, we study area-minimizing hypersurfaces in manifolds of Ricci
curvature bounded below with Cheeger-Colding theory. Let $N_i$ be a sequence of
smooth manifolds with Ricci curvature $\geq-n\kappa^2$ on $B_{1+\kappa'}(p_i)$
for constants $\kappa\ge0$, $\kappa'>0$, and volume of $B_1(p_i)$ has a
positive uniformly lower bound. Assume $B_1(p_i)$ converges to a metric ball
$B_1(p_\infty)$ in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense. For an area-minimizing
hypersurface $M_i$ in $B_1(p_i)$ with $\partial M_i\subset\partial B_1(p_i)$,
we prove the continuity for the volume function of area-minimizing
hypersurfaces equipped with the induced Hausdorff topology. In particular, each
limit $M_\infty$ of $M_i$ is area-minimizing in $B_1(p_\infty)$ provided
$B_1(p_\infty)$ is a smooth Riemannian manifold. By blowing up argument, we get
sharp dimensional estimates for the singular set of $M_\infty$ in
$\mathcal{R}$, and $\mathcal{S}\cap M_\infty$. Here, $\mathcal{R}$,
$\mathcal{S}$ are the regular and singular parts of $B_1(p_\infty)$,
respectively.


  The refraction of surface gravity waves by currents leads to spatial
modulations in the wave field and, in particular, in the significant wave
height. We examine this phenomenon in the case of waves scattered by a
localised current feature, assuming (i) the smallness of the ratio between
current velocity and wave group speed, and (ii) a swell-like, highly
directional wave spectrum.
  We apply matched asymptotics to the equation governing the conservation of
wave action in the four-dimensional position--wavenumber space. The resulting
explicit formulas show that the modulations in wave action and significant wave
height past the localised current are controlled by the vorticity of the
current integrated along the primary direction of the swell.
  We assess the asymptotic predictions against numerical simulations using
WAVEWATCH III for a Gaussian vortex. We also consider vortex dipoles to
demonstrate the possibility of `vortex cloaking' whereby certain currents have
(asymptotically) no impact on the significant wave height. We discuss the role
of the ratio of the two small parameters characterising assumptions (i) and
(ii) above and show that caustics are only significant for unrealistically
large values of this ratio, corresponding to unrealistically narrow directional
spectra.


  We report first results from a large scale search for dark matter axions. The
experiment probes axion masses of 1.3-13 micro-eV at a sensitivity which is
about 50 times higher than previous pilot experiments. We have already scanned
part of this mass range at a sensitivity better than required to see at least
one generic axion model, the KSVZ axion. Data taking at full sensitivity
commenced in February 1996 and scanning the proposed mass range will require
three years.


  Interactive Video Object Segmentation (iVOS) is a challenging task that
requires real-time human-computer interaction. To improve the user experience,
it is important to consider the user's input habits, segmentation quality,
running time and memory consumption.However, existing methods compromise user
experience with single input mode and slow running speed. Specifically, these
methods only allow the user to interact with one single frame, which limits the
expression of the user's intent.To overcome these limitations and better align
with people's usage habits, we propose a framework that can accept multiple
frames simultaneously and explore synergistic interaction across frames (SIAF).
Concretely, we designed the Across-Frame Interaction Module that enables users
to annotate different objects freely on multiple frames. The AFI module will
migrate scribble information among multiple interactive frames and generate
multi-frame masks. Additionally, we employ the id-queried mechanism to process
multiple objects in batches. Furthermore, for a more efficient propagation and
lightweight model, we design a truncated re-propagation strategy to replace the
previous multi-round fusion module, which employs an across-round memory that
stores important interaction information. Our SwinB-SIAF achieves new
state-of-the-art performance on DAVIS 2017 (89.6%, J&F@60). Moreover, our
R50-SIAF is more than 3 faster than the state-of-the-art competitor under
challenging multi-object scenarios.


  The idea of using fast sweeping methods for solving stationary systems of
conservation laws has previously been proposed for efficiently computing
solutions with sharp shocks. We further develop these methods to allow for a
more challenging class of problems including problems with sonic points, shocks
originating in the interior of the domain, rarefaction waves, and
two-dimensional systems. We show that fast sweeping methods can produce
higher-order accuracy. Computational results validate the claims of accuracy,
sharp shock curves, and optimal computational efficiency.


  In this paper we measure the far-infrared (FIR) and radio flux densities of a
sample of 82 local gas-rich galaxies, including 70 "dwarf" galaxies ($M_* <
10^9 M_\odot$), from the Local Volume HI Survey (LVHIS), which is close to
volume limited. It is found that LVHIS galaxies hold a tight linear FIR-radio
correlation (FRC) over four orders of magnitude ($F_{1.4GHz} \propto
F_{FIR}^{1.00\pm0.08}$). However, for detected galaxies only, a trend of larger
FIR-to-radio ratio with decreasing flux density is observed. We estimate the
star formation rate by combining UV and mid-IR data using empirical
calibration. It is confirmed that both FIR and radio emission are strongly
connected with star formation but with significant non-linearity. Dwarf
galaxies are found radiation deficient in both bands, when normalized by star
formation rate. It urges a "conspiracy" to keep the FIR-to-radio ratio
generally constant for dwarf galaxies. By using partial correlation coefficient
in Pearson definition, we identify the key galaxy properties associated with
the FIR and radio deficiency. Some major factors, such as stellar mass surface
density, will cancel out when taking the ratio between FIR and radio fluxes.
The remaining factors, such as HI-to-stellar mass ratio and galaxy size, are
expected to cancel each other due to the distribution of galaxies in the
parameter space. Such cancellation is probably responsible for the "conspiracy"
to keep the FRC alive.


  The electron momentum distribution function in the $t-J$ model is studied in
the framework of slave particle approach. Within the decoupling scheme used in
the gauge field and related theories, we treat formally phase and amplitude
fluctuations as well as constraints without further approximations. Our result
indicates that the electron Fermi surface observed in the high-resolution
angle-resolved photoemission and inverse photoemission experiments cannot be
explained within this framework, and the sum rule for the physical electron is
not obeyed. A correct scaling behavior of the electron momentum distribution
function near $k \sim k_{F}$ and $k \sim 3k_{F}$ in one dimension can be
reproduced by considering the nonlocal string fields [Z. Y. Weng et al., Phys.
Rev. B45, 7850 (1992)], but the overall momentum distribution is still not
correct, at least at the mean field level.


  We determine the rate for $D_s^* \rightarrow D_s \gamma$ for the first time
from lattice QCD and include the full effect of $u$, $d$ and $s$ sea quarks.
The valence quarks are implemented using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark
(HISQ) formalism and we normalise the vector current nonperturbatively. We
obtain $M(D_s^*)-M(D_s)$ of 148(4) MeV, in good agreement with experiment. The
value of the decay constant of the $D_s^*$ we find to be 274(6) MeV, so that
$f_{D_s^*}/f_{D_s} = 1.10(2)$. For the radiative decay we find $\Gamma(D_s^*
\rightarrow D_s \gamma)$ = 0.066(26) keV. Given the experimental branching
fraction for this decay we predict a total width for the $D_s^*$ of 0.070(28)
keV, making this the longest lived charged vector meson.


  In quant-ph/0201134 Jennewein et al. report experiments demonstrating
entanglement swapping under various conditions. In one instance, they claim to
have exhibited Bell inequality violations by a pair of photons prior to
performing any entangling operations on the pair. However, the Bell inequality
violation results in this case from post-selection of the data, not from
quantum non-locality.


  Geometric Berry phase can be induced either by spin-orbit coupling, giving
rise to the anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnetic materials, or by chiral spin
texture, such as skyrmions, leading to the topological Hall effect. Recent
experiments have revealed that both phenomena can occur in topological
insulator films with magnetic doping, thus providing us with an intriguing
platform to study the interplay between these two phenomena. In this work, we
numerically study the anomalous Hall and topological Hall effects in a
four-band model that can properly describe the quantum well states in the
magnetic topological insulator films by combining Landauer-Buttiker formula and
the iterative Green's function method. Our numerical results suggest that
spin-orbit coupling in this model plays a different role in the quantum
transport in the clean and disordered limits. In the clean limit, spin-orbit
coupling mainly influences the longitudinal transport but does not have much
effect on topological Hall conductance. Such behavior is further studied
through the analytical calculation of scattering cross-section due to skyrmion
within the four-band model. In the disordered limit, the longitudinal transport
is determined by disorder scattering and spin-orbit coupling is found to affect
strongly the topological Hall conductance. This sharp contrast unveils a
dramatic interplay between spin-orbit coupling and disorder effect in
topological Hall effect in magnetic topological insulator systems.


  We present the first direct determination of meson-baryon resonance
parameters from a scattering amplitude calculated using lattice QCD. In
particular, we calculate the elastic $I=3/2$, $p$-wave nucleon-pion amplitude
on a single ensemble of $N_{\mathrm{f}}=2+1$ Wilson-clover fermions with
$m_{\pi}=280\mathrm{MeV}$ and $m_{K}=460\mathrm{MeV}$. At these quark masses,
the $\Delta(1232)$ resonance pole is found close to the $N-\pi$ threshold and a
Breit-Wigner fit to the amplitude gives $g^{\mathrm{BW}}_{\Delta
N\pi}=19.0(4.7)$ in agreement with phenomenological determinations.


  Code bloat widely exists in production-run software. Left untackled, it not
only degrades software performance but also increases its attack surface. In
this work, we conduct a case study to understand this issue in statically
linked libraries. To be specific, we analyze midilib, a software package
enclosing statically linked libraries. We show that it is possible to leverage
dependence analysis to trim the resultless code statements re- siding in a
target library. With this observation, we believe it is possible to build a
tool to automatically cut off code pertaining to resultless operations.


  Investigating the relation between the structure and behavior of complex
biological networks often involves posing the following two questions: Is a
hypothesized structure of a regulatory network consistent with the observed
behavior? And can a proposed structure generate a desired behavior? Answering
these questions presupposes that we are able to test the compatibility of
network structure and behavior. We cast these questions into a parameter search
problem for qualitative models of regulatory networks, in particular
piecewise-affine differential equation models. We develop a method based on
symbolic model checking that avoids enumerating all possible parametrizations,
and show that this method performs well on real biological problems, using the
IRMA synthetic network and benchmark experimental data sets. We test the
consistency between the IRMA network structure and the time-series data, and
search for parameter modifications that would improve the robustness of the
external control of the system behavior.


  Let $\Gamma$ be a cancelation monoid with the neutral element $e$. Consider a
$\Gamma$-graded ring $A=\oplus_{\gamma\in\Gamma}A_{\gamma}$, which is not
necessarily commutative. It is proved that $A_e$, the degree-$e$ part of $A$,
is a local ring in the classical sense if and only if the graded two-sided
ideal $\mathfrak{M}$ of $A$ generated by all non-invertible homogeneous
elements is a proper ideal. Defining a $\Gamma$-graded local ring $A$ in terms
of this equivalence, it is proved that any two minimal homogeneous generating
sets of a finitely generated $\Gamma$-graded $A$-module have the same number of
generators, and furthermore, that most of the basic homological properties of
the local ring $A_e$ hold true for $A$ (at least) in the $\Gamma$-graded
context.


  The most general supersymmetric seesaw mechanism has too many parameters to
be predictive and thus can not be excluded by any measurements of lepton
flavour violating (LFV) processes. We focus on the simplest version of the
type-I seesaw mechanism assuming minimal supergravity boundary conditions. We
compute branching ratios for the LFV scalar tau decays, ${\tilde \tau}_2 \to
(e,\mu) + \chi^0_1$, as well as loop-induced LFV decays at low energy, such as
$l_i \to l_j + \gamma$ and $l_i \to 3 l_j$, exploring their sensitivity to the
unknown seesaw parameters. We find some simple, extreme scenarios for the
unknown right-handed parameters, where ratios of LFV branching ratios correlate
with neutrino oscillation parameters. If the overall mass scale of the left
neutrinos and the value of the reactor angle were known, the study of LFV
allows, in principle, to extract information about the so far unknown
right-handed neutrino parameters.


  Video retrieval is a challenging research topic bridging the vision and
language areas and has attracted broad attention in recent years. Previous
works have been devoted to representing videos by directly encoding from
frame-level features. In fact, videos consist of various and abundant semantic
relations to which existing methods pay less attention. To address this issue,
we propose a Visual Semantic Enhanced Reasoning Network (ViSERN) to exploit
reasoning between frame regions. Specifically, we consider frame regions as
vertices and construct a fully-connected semantic correlation graph. Then, we
perform reasoning by novel random walk rule-based graph convolutional networks
to generate region features involved with semantic relations. With the benefit
of reasoning, semantic interactions between regions are considered, while the
impact of redundancy is suppressed. Finally, the region features are aggregated
to form frame-level features for further encoding to measure video-text
similarity. Extensive experiments on two public benchmark datasets validate the
effectiveness of our method by achieving state-of-the-art performance due to
the powerful semantic reasoning.


  Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) based on visual evoked potentials (VEP)
allow for spelling from a keyboard of flashing characters. Among VEP BCIs,
code-modulated visual evoked potentials (c-VEPs) are designed for high-speed
communication . In c-VEPs, all characters flash simultaneously. In particular,
each character flashes according to a predefined 63-bit binary sequence
(m-sequence), circular-shifted by a different time lag. For a given character,
the m-sequence evokes a VEP in the electroencephalogram (EEG) of the subject,
which can be used as a template. This template is obtained during a calibration
phase at the beginning of each session. Then, the system outputs the desired
character after a predefined number of repetitions by estimating its time lag
with respect to the template. Our work avoids the calibration phase, by
extracting from the VEP relative lags between successive characters, and
predicting the full word using a dictionary.


  We construct accurate emulators for the projected and redshift space galaxy
correlation functions and excess surface density as measured by galaxy-galaxy
lensing, based on Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) modeling. Using the
complete Mira-Titan suite of 111 $N$-body simulations, our emulators vary over
eight cosmological parameters and include the effects of neutrino mass and
dynamical dark energy. We demonstrate that our emulators are sufficiently
accurate for the analysis of the BOSS DR12 CMASS galaxy sample over the range
0.5 < r < 50 Mpc/h. Furthermore, we show that our emulators are capable of
recovering unbiased cosmological constraints from realistic mock catalogs over
the same range. Our mock catalog tests show the efficacy of combining small
scale galaxy-galaxy lensing with redshift space clustering and that we can
constrain the growth rate and \sigma_8 to 7% and 4.5% respectively for a
CMASS-like sample using only the measurements covered by our emulator. With the
inclusion of a CMB prior on H_0, this reduces to a 2% measurement on the growth
rate.


  Measurements of the microwave field transmitted through a random medium
allows direct access to the field correlation function, whose complex square is
the short range or C1 contribution to the intensity correlation function C. The
frequency and spatial correlation function are compared to their Fourier pairs,
the time of flight distribution and the specific intensity, respectively. The
longer range contribution to intensity correlation is obtained directly by
subtracting C1 from C and is in good agreement with theory.


  In a previous paper, we described the set of words that appear in the coding
of smooth (resp. analytic) curves at arbitrary small scale. The aim of this
paper is to compute the complexity of those languages.


  In cost sharing games with delays, a set of agents jointly allocates a finite
subset of resources. Each resource has a fixed cost that has to be shared by
the players, and each agent has a nonshareable player-specific delay for each
resource. A prominent example is uncapacitated facility location (UFL), where
facilities need to be opened (at a shareable cost) and clients want to connect
to opened facilities. Each client pays a cost share and his non-shareable
physical connection cost. Given any profile of subsets allocated by the agents,
a separable cost sharing protocol determines cost shares that satisfy budget
balance on every resource and separability over the resources. Moreover, a
separable protocol guarantees existence of pure Nash equilibria in the induced
strategic game for the agents. In this paper, we study separable cost sharing
protocols in several general combinatorial domains. We provide black-box
reductions to reduce the design of a separable cost-sharing protocol to the
design of an approximation algorithm for the underlying cost minimization
problem. In this way, we obtain new separable cost-sharing protocols in games
based on arbitrary player-specific matroids, single-source connection games
without delays, and connection games on $n$-series-parallel graphs with delays.
All these reductions are efficiently computable - given an initial allocation
profile, we obtain a cheaper profile and separable cost shares turning the
profile into a pure Nash equilibrium. Hence, in these domains any approximation
algorithm can be used to obtain a separable cost sharing protocol with a price
of stability bounded by the approximation factor.


  A new algorithm for real root isolation of polynomial equations based on
hybrid computation is presented in this paper. Firstly, the approximate
(complex) zeros of the given polynomial equations are obtained via homotopy
continuation method. Then, for each approximate zero, an initial box relying on
the Kantorovich theorem is constructed, which contains the corresponding
accurate zero. Finally, the Krawczyk interval iteration with interval
arithmetic is applied to the initial boxes so as to check whether or not the
corresponding approximate zeros are real and to obtain the real root isolation
boxes. Meanwhile, an empirical construction of initial box is provided for
higher performance. Our experiments on many benchmarks show that the new hybrid
method is more efficient, compared with the traditional symbolic approaches.


  Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) are compact and efficient by using binary
weights instead of real-valued weights. Current BNNs use latent real-valued
weights during training, where several training hyper-parameters are inherited
from real-valued networks. The interpretation of several of these
hyperparameters is based on the magnitude of the real-valued weights. For BNNs,
however, the magnitude of binary weights is not meaningful, and thus it is
unclear what these hyperparameters actually do. One example is weight-decay,
which aims to keep the magnitude of real-valued weights small. Other examples
are latent weight initialization, the learning rate, and learning rate decay,
which influence the magnitude of the real-valued weights. The magnitude is
interpretable for real-valued weights, but loses its meaning for binary
weights. In this paper we offer a new interpretation of these magnitude-based
hyperparameters based on higher-order gradient filtering during network
optimization. Our analysis makes it possible to understand how magnitude-based
hyperparameters influence the training of binary networks which allows for new
optimization filters specifically designed for binary neural networks that are
independent of their real-valued interpretation. Moreover, our improved
understanding reduces the number of hyperparameters, which in turn eases the
hyperparameter tuning effort which may lead to better hyperparameter values for
improved accuracy. Code is available at
https://github.com/jorisquist/Understanding-WM-HP-in-BNNs


  A non-Hermitian coupled waveguide system with periodically varying
parameters, in which the Berry curvature is analogous to a hyperbolic magnetic
monopole or antimonopole, is investigated. It is shown to have a purely
imaginary Berry connection, and is consequently influenced by a geometric
multiplier. It is possible for this multiplier to induce net gain or loss in
the system, corresponding to the existence of the antimonopole or monopole in
parameter space, respectively. For the right choice of parameters, the system
will display an apparent non-adiabatic change in behaviour, which implies a
switch between the dominant eigenstate in the waveguides, leading to a change
in parameter space analogous to a charge reversal of the hyperbolic magnetic
monopole.


  Employing femtosecond laser pulses in front and back side pumping of
Au/Fe/MgO(001) combined with detection in two-photon photoelectron emission
spectroscopy we analyze local relaxation dynamics of excited electrons in
buried Fe, injection into Au across the Fe-Au interface, and electron transport
across the Au layer at 0.6 to 2.0 eV above the Fermi energy. By analysis as a
function of Au film thickness we obtain the electron lifetimes of bulk Au and
Fe and distinguish the relaxation in the heterostructure's constituents. We
also show that the excited electrons propagate through Au in a superdiffusive
regime and conclude further that electron injection across the epitaxial
interface proceeds ballistically by electron wavepacket propagation.