  We have investigated the thermally induced proton/deuteron exchange in mixed
amorphous H$_2$O:D$_2$O ices by monitoring the change in intensity of
characteristic vibrational bending modes of H$_2$O, HDO, and D$_2$O with time
and as function of temperature. The experiments have been performed using an
ultra-high vacuum setup equipped with an infrared spectrometer that is used to
investigate the spectral evolution of homogeneously mixed ice upon
co-deposition in thin films, for temperatures in the 90 to 140 K domain. With
this non-energetic detection method we find a significantly lower activation
energy for H/D exchange -- $3840 \pm 125$ K -- than previously reported. Very
likely this is due to the amorphous nature of the interstellar ice analogues
involved. This provides reactive timescales ($\tau<10^4$ years at $T$ $>70$ K)
fast enough for the process to be important in interstellar environments.
Consequently, an astronomical detection of D$_2$O will be even more challenging
because of its potential to react with H$_2$O to form HDO. Furthermore,
additional experiments, along with previous studies, show that proton/deuteron
swapping also occurs in ice mixtures of water with other hydrogen bonded
molecules, in particular on the OH and NH moieties. We conclude that H/D
exchange in ices is a more general process that should be incorporated into ice
models that are applied to protoplanetary disks or to simulate the warming up
of cometary ices in their passage of the perihelion, to examine the extent of
its influence on the final deuteron over hydrogen ratio.


  We show that for a class of quantum light spectroscopy (QLS) experiments
using n = 0,1,2,$\cdots$ classical light pulses and an entangled photon pair (a
biphoton state) where one photon acts as a reference without interacting with
the matter sample, identical signals can be obtained by replacing the biphotons
with classical-like coherent states of light, where these are defined
explicitly in terms of the parameters of the biphoton states. An input-output
formulation of quantum nonlinear spectroscopy is used to prove this
equivalence. We demonstrate the equivalence numerically by comparing a
classical pump - quantum probe experiment with the corresponding classical pump
- classical probe experiment. This analysis shows that understanding the
equivalence between entangled biphoton probes and carefully designed
classical-like coherent state probes leads to quantum-inspired classical
experiments and provides insights for future design of QLS experiments that
could provide a true quantum advantage.


  In the baseline design of the International Linear Collider (ILC) an
undulator-based source is foreseen for the positron source. In this study the
energy deposition in the pulsed flux concentrator (FC) of positron source is
calculated for the ILC at 250 GeV center-of-mass energy. The peak energy of 33
J/g deposited by one beam pulse in the current design of the FC is above the
limit for copper material. Several promising options were considered to solve
the issue of overheating the FC: the quarter wave transformer (QWT) has a
significantly bigger aperture and is considered as an valuable and safe
alternative for the FC. Since the positron source with a QWT is expected to
lead to a lower positron capture efficiency, also the expected positron yield
was calculated in addition to the energy deposition in QWT.


  This study implements a novel Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) framework for
addressing large complex socio-ecological problems. These are characterized as
qualitative, dominated by uncertainty, human involvement with different and
vague perceptions/expectations, and complex systems dynamics due to feedback
relations. The FCM framework provides a participatory soft computing approach
to develop consensus solutions. We demonstrate its implementation in a case
study: a national-scale acute water scarcity crisis. The model has eight steps
starting from collecting data from stakeholders in the form of FCMs
(bi-directional graphs) represented by nodes and imprecise connections. All
subsequent steps operate within a new fuzzy 2-tuple framework that overcomes
previous FCM limitations through advanced processing methods, where large FCMs
are fuzzified and analyzed, condensed, and aggregated using graph-theoretic
measures. FCMs are simulated as Auto-Associative Neural Networks (AANN) to
assess policy solutions to address the problem. In this study, very large
cognitive maps were developed through interviews capturing perceptions of five
different stakeholder groups taking into consideration the causes, consequences
and challenges of the acute water scarcity problem in Jordan. The complex FCMs
containing 186 variables comprehensively covered all aspects of water scarcity.
FCMs were condensed into smaller maps in two levels. They were also combined
into five stakeholder group FCMs and one whole system FCM (total 123 FCMs).
AANN simulations of policy scenarios were conducted on the whole system FCM,
first at the most condensed level and then moved top-down through the next two
levels of granularity to explore potential solutions. These were ranked by a
novel fuzzy Appropriateness criterion to provide a number of high level and
effective strategies to mitigate the water crisis.


  The leading explanation for the origin of galactic cosmic rays is particle
acceleration at the shocks surrounding young supernova remnants (SNRs),
although crucial aspects of the acceleration process are unclear. The similar
collisionless plasma shocks frequently encountered by spacecraft in the solar
wind are generally far weaker (lower Mach number) than these SNR shocks.
However, the Cassini spacecraft has shown that the shock standing in the solar
wind sunward of Saturn (Saturn's bow shock) can occasionally reach this
high-Mach number astrophysical regime. In this regime Cassini has provided the
first in situ evidence for electron acceleration under quasi-parallel upstream
magnetic conditions. Here we present the full picture of suprathermal electrons
at Saturn's bow shock revealed by Cassini. The downstream thermal electron
distribution is resolved in all data taken by the low-energy electron detector
(CAPS-ELS, <28 keV) during shock crossings, but the higher energy channels were
at (or close to) background. The high-energy electron detector (MIMI-LEMMS, >18
keV) measured a suprathermal electron signature at 31 of 508 crossings, where
typically only the lowest energy channels (<100 keV) were above background. We
show that these results are consistent with theory in which the "injection" of
thermal electrons into an acceleration process involves interaction with
whistler waves at the shock front, and becomes possible for all upstream
magnetic field orientations at high Mach numbers like those of the strong
shocks around young SNRs. A future dedicated study will analyze the rare
crossings with evidence for relativistic electrons (up to ~1 MeV).


  The origin of the unusual 90^o ferroelectric / ferroelastic domains,
consistently observed in recent studies on meso and nanoscale free-standing
single crystals of BaTiO3 [Schilling et al., Physical Review B, 74, 024115
(2006); Schilling et al., Nano Letters, 7, 3787 (2007)], has been considered. A
model has been developed which postulates that the domains form as a response
to elastic stress induced by a surface layer which does not undergo the
paraelectric-ferroelectric, cubic-tetragonal phase transition. This model was
found to accurately account for the changes in domain periodicity as a function
of size that had been observed experimentally. The physical origin of the
surface layer might readily be associated with patterning damage, seen in
experiment; however, when all evidence of physical damage is removed from the
BaTiO3 surfaces by thermal annealing, the domain configuration remains
practically unchanged. This suggests a more intrinsic origin, such as the
increased importance of surface tension at small dimensions. The effect of
surface tension is also shown to be proportional to the difference in hardness
between the surface and the interior of the ferroelectric. The present model
for surface tension induced twinning should also be relevant for finely grained
or core-shell structured ceramics.


  Climate change mitigation is a global challenge that, however, needs to be
resolved by national-level authorities, resembling a tragedy of the commons.
This paradox is reflected at European scale, as climate commitments are made by
the EU collectively, but implementation is the responsibility of individual
Member States. Here, we investigate 30.000 near-optimal effort-sharing
scenarios where the European electricity sector is decarbonized by at least 55%
relative to 1990, in line with 2030 ambitions. Using a highly detailed
brownfield electricity system optimization model, the optimal electricity
system is simulated for a suite of effort-sharing scenarios. Results reveal
large inequalities in the efforts required to decarbonize national electricity
sectors, with some countries facing cost-optimal pathways to reach 55% emission
reductions, while others are confronted with relatively high abatement costs.
Specifically, we find that several countries with modest or low levels of GDP
per capita will experience high abatement costs, and when passed over into
electricity prices this may lead to increased energy poverty in certain parts
of Europe


  A method for determination of bound state energies for an asymmetric quantum
well with an arbitrary shape of the bottom is suggested. It is shown that how
the equation determining the energy levels can be easily derived if one knows
the electron transmission and reflection amplitudes corresponding to the part
of potential inside the well. The results are applied to three difference test
problems.


  We propose NeuMIP, a neural method for representing and rendering a variety
of material appearances at different scales. Classical prefiltering
(mipmapping) methods work well on simple material properties such as diffuse
color, but fail to generalize to normals, self-shadowing, fibers or more
complex microstructures and reflectances. In this work, we generalize
traditional mipmap pyramids to pyramids of neural textures, combined with a
fully connected network. We also introduce neural offsets, a novel method which
allows rendering materials with intricate parallax effects without any
tessellation. This generalizes classical parallax mapping, but is trained
without supervision by any explicit heightfield. Neural materials within our
system support a 7-dimensional query, including position, incoming and outgoing
direction, and the desired filter kernel size. The materials have small storage
(on the order of standard mipmapping except with more texture channels), and
can be integrated within common Monte-Carlo path tracing systems. We
demonstrate our method on a variety of materials, resulting in complex
appearance across levels of detail, with accurate parallax, self-shadowing, and
other effects.


  We introduce a new very large family of transformations of rectangular
diagrams of links that preserve the isotopy class of the link. We provide an
example when two diagrams of the same complexity are related by such a
transformation and are not obtained from one another by any sequence of
`simpler' moves not increasing the complexity of the diagram along the way.


  In order to study the magnetic excitation behaviors in colossal
magnetoresistance manganites, a magnon-phonon interacting system is
investigated. Sudden broadening of magnon linewidth is obtained when a magnon
branch crosses over an optical phonon branch. Onset of the broadening is
approximately determined by the magnon density of states. Anomalous magnon
damping at the brillouine zone boundary observed in low Curie temperature
manganites is explained.


  For the past forty years the search for dark matter has been one of the
primary foci of astrophysics, although there has yet to be any direct evidence
for its existence (Porter et al. 2011). Indirect evidence for the existence of
dark matter is largely rooted in the rotational speeds of stars within their
host galaxies, where, instead of having a ~ r^1/2 radial dependence, stars
appear to have orbital speeds independent of their distance from the galactic
center, which led to proposed existence of dark matter (Porter et al. 2011;
Peebles 1993). We propose an alternate explanation for the observed stellar
motions within galaxies, combining the standard treatment of a fluid-like
spacetime with the possibility of a "bulk flow" of mass through the Universe.
The differential "flow" of spacetime could generate vorticies capable of
providing the "perceived" rotational speeds in excess of those predicted by
Newtonian mechanics. Although a more detailed analysis of our theory is
forthcoming, we find a crude "order of magnitude" calculation can explain this
phenomena. We also find that this can be used to explain the graviational
lensing observed around globular clusters like "Bullet Cluster".


  We propose a modification of the gauge-fixing procedure in the Lagrangian
method of superfield BRST quantization for general gauge theories which
simultaneously provides a natural generalization of the well-known BV
quantization scheme as far as gauge-fixing is concerned. A superfield form of
BRST symmetry for the vacuum functional is found. The gauge-independence of the
S-matrix is established.


  We study dissipationless spin transport induced by a charge supercurrent in a
monolayer van der Waals superconductor under the applied magnetic field and in
a bilayer superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) heterostructure with no external
field. It is shown that in both cases a combined action of the Ising-type
spin-orbit coupling and the Zeeman field results in appearance of a nonunitary
superconducting triplet correlations with nonzero average Cooper pair spin,
which carry spin current in the presence of a condensate motion. Properties of
this dissipationless spin current are investigated. In particular, it is shown
that it manifests a rectification effect. In addition, in S/F heterostructures
the amplitude and the sign of the spin current are controlled by gating.


  Visual compatibility is critical for fashion analysis, yet is missing in
existing fashion image synthesis systems. In this paper, we propose to
explicitly model visual compatibility through fashion image inpainting. To this
end, we present Fashion Inpainting Networks (FiNet), a two-stage image-to-image
generation framework that is able to perform compatible and diverse inpainting.
Disentangling the generation of shape and appearance to ensure photorealistic
results, our framework consists of a shape generation network and an appearance
generation network. More importantly, for each generation network, we introduce
two encoders interacting with one another to learn latent code in a shared
compatibility space. The latent representations are jointly optimized with the
corresponding generation network to condition the synthesis process,
encouraging a diverse set of generated results that are visually compatible
with existing fashion garments. In addition, our framework is readily extended
to clothing reconstruction and fashion transfer, with impressive results.
Extensive experiments with comparisons with state-of-the-art approaches on
fashion synthesis task quantitatively and qualitatively demonstrate the
effectiveness of our method.


  Privacy policies are expected to inform data subjects about their data
protection rights and should explain the data controller's data management
practices. Privacy policies only fulfill their purpose, if they are correctly
interpreted, understood, and trusted by the data subject. This implies that a
privacy policy is written in a fair way, e.g., it does not use polarizing
terms, does not require a certain education, or does not assume a particular
social background. We outline our approach to assessing fairness in privacy
policies. We identify from fundamental legal sources and fairness research, how
the dimensions informational fairness, representational fairness and ethics /
morality are related to privacy policies. We propose options to automatically
assess policies in these fairness dimensions, based on text statistics,
linguistic methods and artificial intelligence. We conduct initial experiments
with German privacy policies to provide evidence that our approach is
applicable. Our experiments indicate that there are issues in all three
dimensions of fairness. This is important, as future privacy policies may be
used in a corpus for legal artificial intelligence models.


  We give a quasi-isometric characterization of cacti, which is similar to
Manning's characterization of quasi-trees by the bottleneck property. We also
give another quasi-isometric characterization of cacti using fat theta curves.


  Conjunction assessment requires knowledge of the uncertainty in the predicted
orbit. Errors in the atmospheric density are a major source of error in the
prediction of low Earth orbits. Therefore, accurate estimation of the density
and quantification of the uncertainty in the density is required. Most
atmospheric density models, however, do not provide an estimate of the
uncertainty in the density. In this work, we present a new approach to quantify
uncertainties in the density and to include these for calculating the
probability of collision Pc. For this, we employ a recently developed dynamic
reduced-order density model that enables efficient prediction of the
thermospheric density. First, the model is used to obtain accurate estimates of
the density and of the uncertainty in the estimates. Second, the density
uncertainties are propagated forward simultaneously with orbit propagation to
include the density uncertainties for Pc calculation. For this, we account for
the effect of cross-correlation in position uncertainties due to density errors
on the Pc. Finally, the effect of density uncertainties and cross-correlation
on the Pc is assessed. The presented approach provides the distinctive
capability to quantify the uncertainty in atmospheric density and to include
this uncertainty for conjunction assessment while taking into account the
dependence of the density errors on location and time. In addition, the results
show that it is important to consider the effect of cross-correlation on the
Pc, because ignoring this effect can result in severe underestimation of the
collision probability.


  In this article, we present a problem of nonlinear constraint optimization
with equality and inequality constraints. Objective functions are defined to be
nonlinear and optimizers may have a lower and upper bound. We solve the
optimization problem using the open-source R package nloptr. Several examples
have been presented.


  A model -- by myself and Masao Ninomiya -- which in principle predicts the
initial conditions in a way as to minimze a certain functional of the history
of the Universe through both past and future -- a functional conceived of as an
imaginary part of the action -- is suggested to be also helpful in solving some
problems for quantum mechanics. Especially as our model almost makes it
possible in principle to calculate the full history of the universe, it even
makes it in principle calculable, which one among several measurement results
in a quantum experiment will actually be realized!
  Our "complex action model" thus is a special case of superdeterminism - in
Bells way - and does not have true causality, but rather even in some cases
true backward causation. In fact we claim in our model that the SSC
(Superconducting Supercollider) were stopped by the US Congress due to the
backward causation from the big amounts of Higgs particles, which it would have
produced, if it had been allowed to run. The noumenon ("das Ding an sich") in
our model is the Feyman path integrand or better some fundamental quantities
determined from second order effects of the latter integrand.


  For high bunch intensities the long-range beam-beam interactions are strong
enough to provoke effects on the orbit. As a consequence the closed orbit
changes. The closed orbit of an unperturbed machine with respect to a machine
where the beam-beam force becomes more and more important has been studied and
the results are presented in this paper.


  The amount of molecular gas is a key for understanding the future star
formation in a galaxy. Because H2 is difficult to observe directly in dense and
cold clouds, tracers like CO are used. However, at low metallicities
especially, CO only traces the shielded interiors of the clouds. mm dust
emission can be used as a tracer to unveil the total dense gas masses. The
comparison of masses deduced from the continuum SIMBA 1.2 mm emission and
virial masses in a sample of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), in the SW region of
the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), showed a discrepancy that is in need of an
explanation. This study aims at better assessing possible uncertainties on the
dust emission observed in the sample of GMCs from the SMC and focuses on the
densest parts of the GMCs where CO is detected. New observations were obtained
with the LABOCA camera on the APEX telescope. All GMCs previously observed in
CO are detected and their emission at 870microns is compared to ancillary data.
The different contributions to the sub-mmm emission are estimated, as well as
dust properties, in order to deduce molecular cloud masses precisely. The
(sub-)mm emission observed in the GMCs in the SW region of the SMC is dominated
by dust emission and masses are deduced for the part of each cloud where CO is
detected and compared to the virial masses. The mass discrepancy between both
methods is confirmed at 870microns with the LABOCA observations: the virial
masses are on average 4 times smaller than the masses of dense gas deduced from
dust emission, contrary to what is observed for equivalent clouds in our
Galaxy. The origin of this mass discrepancy in the SMC remains unkown. The
direct interpretation of this effect is that the CO linewidth used to compute
virial masses do not measure the full velocity distribution of the gas.
Geometrical effects and uncertainties on the dust properties are also
discussed.


  Antichains of a finite bounded poset are assigned antichains playing a role
analogous to that played by blockers in the Boolean lattice of all subsets of a
finite set. Some properties of lattices of generalized blockers are discussed.


  Despite being widely used, face recognition models suffer from bias: the
probability of a false positive (incorrect face match) strongly depends on
sensitive attributes such as the ethnicity of the face. As a result, these
models can disproportionately and negatively impact minority groups,
particularly when used by law enforcement. The majority of bias reduction
methods have several drawbacks: they use an end-to-end retraining approach, may
not be feasible due to privacy issues, and often reduce accuracy. An
alternative approach is post-processing methods that build fairer decision
classifiers using the features of pre-trained models, thus avoiding the cost of
retraining. However, they still have drawbacks: they reduce accuracy (AGENDA,
PASS, FTC), or require retuning for different false positive rates (FSN). In
this work, we introduce the Fairness Calibration (FairCal) method, a
post-training approach that simultaneously: (i) increases model accuracy
(improving the state-of-the-art), (ii) produces fairly-calibrated
probabilities, (iii) significantly reduces the gap in the false positive rates,
(iv) does not require knowledge of the sensitive attribute, and (v) does not
require retraining, training an additional model, or retuning. We apply it to
the task of Face Verification, and obtain state-of-the-art results with all the
above advantages.


  Let $X$ be a finite or infinite chain and let $O(X)$ be the monoid of all
endomorphisms of $X$. In this paper, we describe the largest regular
subsemigroup of $O(X)$ and Green's relations on $O(X)$. In fact, more
generally, if $Y$ is a nonempty subset of $X$ and $O(X,Y)$ the subsemigroup of
$O(X)$ of all elements with range contained in $Y$, we characterize the largest
regular subsemigroup of $O(X,Y)$ and Green's relations on $O(X,Y)$. Moreover,
for finite chains, we determine when two semigroups of the type $O(X,Y)$ are
isomorphic and calculate their ranks.


  Approximations based on the 2PI effective action are used to investigate the
process of equilibration in phi^4 theory in 3+1 dimensions, both in the
symmetric and broken phase. A special emphasis is put on the study of the
kinetic and chemical equilibration.


  One of the key requirement of many schemes is that of random numbers.
Sequence of random numbers are used at several stages of a standard
cryptographic protocol. A simple example is of a Vernam cipher, where a string
of random numbers is added to massage string to generate the encrypted code. It
is represented as $C=M \oplus K $ where $M$ is the message, $K$ is the key and
$C$ is the ciphertext. It has been mathematically shown that this simple scheme
is unbreakable is key K as long as M and is used only once. For a good
cryptosystem, the security of the cryptosystem is not be based on keeping the
algorithm secret but solely on keeping the key secret. The quality and
unpredictability of secret data is critical to securing communication by modern
cryptographic techniques. Generation of such data for cryptographic purposes
typically requires an unpredictable physical source of random data. In this
manuscript, we present studies of three different methods for producing random
number. We have tested them by studying its frequency, correlation as well as
using the test suit from NIST.


  A short gas discharge layer sandwiched with a semiconductor layer between
planar electrodes shows a variety of spatio-temporal patterns. The paper
focusses on the spatially homogeneous spontaneous oscillations while a DC
voltage is applied; the results on these homogeneous oscillations apply equally
to a planar discharge in series with any resistor with capacitance. We define
the minimal model, identify its independent dimensionless parameters and then
present results of the full time-dependent numerical solutions of the model as
well as of a linear stability analysis of the stationary state. Full numerical
solutions and the results of the stability analysis agree very well. The
stability analysis is then used for calculating bifurcation diagrams. We find
semi-quantitative agreement with experiment for the diagram of bifurcations
from stationary to oscillating solutions as well as for amplitude and frequency
of the developing limit cycle oscillations.


  Recent advances in Neural Architecture Search (NAS) which extract specialized
hardware-aware configurations (a.k.a. "sub-networks") from a hardware-agnostic
"super-network" have become increasingly popular. While considerable effort has
been employed towards improving the first stage, namely, the training of the
super-network, the search for derivative high-performing sub-networks is still
largely under-explored. For example, some recent network morphism techniques
allow a super-network to be trained once and then have hardware-specific
networks extracted from it as needed. These methods decouple the super-network
training from the sub-network search and thus decrease the computational burden
of specializing to different hardware platforms. We propose a comprehensive
system that automatically and efficiently finds sub-networks from a pre-trained
super-network that are optimized to different performance metrics and hardware
configurations. By combining novel search tactics and algorithms with
intelligent use of predictors, we significantly decrease the time needed to
find optimal sub-networks from a given super-network. Further, our approach
does not require the super-network to be refined for the target task a priori,
thus allowing it to interface with any super-network. We demonstrate through
extensive experiments that our system works seamlessly with existing
state-of-the-art super-network training methods in multiple domains. Moreover,
we show how novel search tactics paired with evolutionary algorithms can
accelerate the search process for ResNet50, MobileNetV3 and Transformer while
maintaining objective space Pareto front diversity and demonstrate an 8x faster
search result than the state-of-the-art Bayesian optimization WeakNAS approach.


  We present a detailed parameter study of collapsing turbulent cloud cores,
varying the initial density profile and the initial turbulent velocity field.
We systematically investigate the influence of different initial conditions on
the star formation process, mainly focusing on the fragmentation, the number of
formed stars, and the resulting mass distributions. Our study compares four
different density profiles (uniform, Bonnor-Ebert type, $\rho\propto r^{-1.5}$,
and $\rho\propto r^{-2}$), combined with six different supersonic turbulent
velocity fields (compressive, mixed, and solenoidal, initialised with two
different random seeds each) in three-dimensional simulations using the
adaptive-mesh refinement, hydrodynamics code FLASH. The simulations show that
density profiles with flat cores produce hundreds of low-mass stars, either
distributed throughout the entire cloud or found in subclusters, depending on
the initial turbulence. Concentrated density profiles always lead to the
formation of one high-mass star in the centre of the cloud and, if at all,
low-mass stars surrounding the central one. In uniform and Bonnor-Ebert type
density distributions, compressive initial turbulence leads to local collapse
about 25% earlier than solenoidal turbulence. However, central collapse in the
steep power-law profiles is too fast for the turbulence to have any significant
influence. We conclude that (I) the initial density profile and turbulence
mainly determine the cloud evolution and the formation of clusters, (II) the
initial mass function (IMF) is not universal for all setups, and (III) that
massive stars are much less likely to form in flat density distributions. The
IMFs obtained in the uniform and Bonnor-Ebert type density profiles are more
consistent with the observed IMF, but shifted to lower masses.


  Lower bounds for the dimension of a triangulated category are provided. These
bounds are applied to stable derived categories of Artin algebras and of
commutative complete intersection local rings. As a consequence, one obtains
bounds for the representation dimensions of certain Artin algebras.


  We study the $\gamma^* \gamma^*\to\eta_c$ transition form factor,
$F_{\eta_c\gamma\gamma}(Q_1^2,Q_2^2),$ with the local-duality (LD) version of
QCD sum rules. We analyse the extraction of this quantity from two different
correlators, $<PVV>$ and $<AVV>,$ with $P,$ $A,$ and $V$ being the
pseudoscalar, axial-vector, and vector currents, respectively. The QCD
factorization theorem for $F_{\eta_c\gamma\gamma}(Q_1^2,Q_2^2)$ allows us to
fix the effective continuum thresholds for the $<PVV>$ and $<AVV>$ correlators
at large values of $Q^2=Q_2^2$ and some fixed value of $\beta\equiv
Q_1^2/Q_2^2$. We give arguments that, in the region $Q^2\ge10$--$15 GeV^2$, the
effective threshold should be close to its asymptotic value such that the LD
sum rule provides reliable predictions for
$F_{\eta_c\gamma\gamma}(Q_1^2,Q_2^2).$ We show that, for the experimentally
relevant kinematics of one real and one virtual photon, the result of the LD
sum rule for $F_{\eta_c\gamma}(Q^2)\equiv F_{\eta_c\gamma\gamma}(0,Q^2)$ may be
well approximated by the simple monopole formula
$F_{\eta_c\gamma}(Q^2)={2e_c^2N_cf_P}(M_V^2+Q^2)^{-1},$ where $f_P$ is the
$\eta_c$ decay constant, $e^2_c$ is the $c$-quark charge, and the parameter
$M_V$ lies in the mass range of the lowest $\bar cc$ vector states.


  Gaining control over the motion of active particles is crucial for
applications ranging from targeted cargo delivery to nanomedicine. While much
progress has been made recently to control active motion based on external
forces, flows or gradients in concentration or light intensity, which all have
a well-defined direction or bias, little is known about how to steer active
particles in situations where no permanent bias can be realized. Here, we show
that ac fields with a vanishing time average provide an alternative route to
steering active particles. We exemplify this route for inertial active
particles in a gravitational field, observing that a substantial fraction of
them persistently travels in the upward direction upon switching on the ac
field, resulting in an inverted sedimentation profile at the top wall of a
confining container. Our results offer a generic control principle which could
be used in the future to steer active motion, to direct collective behaviors
and to purify mixtures.


  A direct numerical simulation of Faraday waves is carried out in a minimal
hexagonal domain. Over long times, we observe the alternation of patterns we
call quasi-hexagons and beaded stripes. The symmetries and spatial Fourier
spectra of these patterns are analyzed.


  What is the form of the neutrino mass matrix which governs the oscillations
of the atmospheric and solar neutrinos? Features of the data have led to a
dominant viewpoint where the mass matrix has an ordered, regulated pattern,
perhaps dictated by a flavor symmetry. We challenge this viewpoint, and
demonstrate that the data are well accounted for by a neutrino mass matrix
which appears to have random entries.


  The classical Loewner's theorem states that operator monotone functions on
real intervals are described by holomorphic functions on the upper half-plane.
We characterize local order isomorphisms on operator domains by biholomorphic
automorphisms of the generalized upper half-plane, which is the collection of
all operators with positive invertible imaginary part. We describe such maps in
an explicit manner, and examine properties of maximal local order isomorphisms.
Moreover, in the finite-dimensional case, we prove that every order embedding
of a matrix domain is a homeomorphic order isomorphism onto another matrix
domain.


  We study stable finiteness of extensions of 2-graph C*-algebras determined by
saturated hereditary sets of vertices. We use two iterations of the
Pimsner-Voiculescu sequence to calculate the map in K-theory induced by the
inclusion of a hereditary subgraph into the larger 2-graph it lives in. We then
apply a theorem of Spielberg about stable finiteness of extensions to provide a
sufficient condition for the C*-algebra of the larger 2-graph to be stably
finite. We illustrate our results with examples.


  Actomyosin actively generates contractile forces that provide the plasma
membrane with the deformation stresses essential to carry out biological
processes. Although the contractile property of purified actomyosin has been
extensively studied, to understand the physical contribution of the actiomyosin
contractile force on a deformable membrane is still a challenging problem and
of great interest in the field of biophysics. Here, we reconstituted a model
system with a cell-sized deformable interface that exhibits anomalous curvature
dependent wrinkling caused by actomyosin cortex underneath the spherical closed
interface. Through the shape analysis of the wrinkling deformation, we found
that the dominant contributor on the wrinkled shape changes from bending
elasticity to stretching elasticity of the reconstituted cortex by increasing
the droplet curvature radius of the order of the cell-size, i.e., tens of
micrometer. The observed curvature dependence was explained by the theoretical
description of the cortex elasticity and contractility. Our present results
provide a fundamental insight on the deformation of a curved membrane induced
by the actomyosin cortex.


  The formation and evolution of galactic spiral arms is not yet clearly
understood despite many analytic and numerical work. Recently, a new idea has
been proposed that local density enhancements (waklets) arising in the galactic
disk connect with each other and make global spiral arms. However, the
understanding of this mechanism is not yet sufficient. We analyze the
interaction of wakelets by using N-body simulations including perturbing point
masses, which are heavier than individual N-body particles and act as the seeds
for wakelets. Our simulation facilitates more straightforward interpretation of
numerical results than previous work by putting a certain number of perturbers
in a well-motivated configuration. We detected a clear sign of non-linear
interaction between wakelets, which make global spiral arms by connecting two
adjacent wakelets. We found that the wave number of the strongest non-linear
interaction depends on galactic disk mass and shear rate. This dependence is
consistent with the prediction of swing amplification mechanism and other
previous results. Our results provide unification of previous results which
seemed not consistent with each other.


  Recommender systems are promising ways to filter the overabundant information
in modern society. Their algorithms help individuals to explore decent items,
but it is unclear how they allocate popularity among items. In this paper, we
simulate successive recommendations and measure their influence on the
dispersion of item popularity by Gini coefficient. Our result indicates that
local diffusion and collaborative filtering reinforce the popularity of hot
items, widening the popularity dispersion. On the other hand, the heat
conduction algorithm increases the popularity of the niche items and generates
smaller dispersion of item popularity. Simulations are compared to mean-field
predictions. Our results suggest that recommender systems have reinforcing
influence on global diversification.


  In this paper, an improved GEF fast addition algorithm is proposed. The
proposed algorithm reduces time and memory space. In this algorithm, carry is
calculated on the basis of arrival timing of the operand's bits without
overhead of sorting. Intermediate terms are generated from the most significant
bit and the carry is generated from the least significant bit using the
functions of efficient operators. This algorithm shows better performance for
use in the fastest computational devices of the near future.


  Detecting cyber attacks in the network environments used by
Internet-of-things (IoT) and preventing them from causing physical
perturbations play an important role in delivering dependable services. To
achieve this goal, we propose in-network Honeypot based on Software-Defined
Networking (SDN) to disrupt and mislead adversaries into exposures while they
are in an early stage of preparing an attack. Different from traditional
Honeypot requiring dedicated hardware setup, the in-network Honeypot directly
reroutes traffic from suspicious nodes and intelligently spoofs the network
traffic to them by adding misleading information into normal traffic.
Preliminary evaluations on real networks demonstrate that the in-network
Honeypot can have little impacts on the performance of IoT networks.


  The preparation of the long-term telescope schedule follows the submission
and scientific review of new proposals. At the European Southern Observatory
(ESO) this process entails scheduling the scientific proposals according to
their scientific merit and available observing resources, as well as scheduling
technical, maintenance, and commissioning activities for all operational
telescopes of the La Silla Paranal Observatory. After the recent overhaul of
the phase 1 proposal submission software, ESO started the development of a new
telescopes time allocation and scheduling tool. The new tool makes the
scheduling process more efficient while optimising the use of observing
facilities. Besides scheduling activities and allocating time according to
scientific merit, available resources, operational and programmatic needs, the
tool will enable simultaneous scheduling of multiple telescopes to
appropriately account for dependencies between them. The implementation of this
new Time Allocation tool opens the possibility for dynamic re-scheduling of the
telescopes, which is a pre-requisite to implementing a "Yearly Call for
Proposals" along with the "Fast Track Channel" at ESO.


  The importance of pulse-coupled oscillators (PCOs) in biology and engineering
has motivated research to understand basic properties of PCO networks. Despite
the large body of work addressing PCOs, a global synchronization result for
networks that are more general than all-to-all connected is still unavailable.
In this paper we address global synchronization of PCO networks described by
cycle graphs. It is shown for the bidirectional cycle case that as the number
of oscillators in the cycle grows, the coupling strength must be increased in
order to guarantee synchronization for arbitrary initial conditions. For the
unidirectional cycle case, the strongest coupling cannot ensure global
synchronization yet a refractory period in the phase response curve is
sufficient to enable global synchronization. Analytical findings are confirmed
by numerical simulations.


  This paper proposes a hybrid architecture, namely VMaSC-LTE, combining IEEE
802.11p based multi-hop clustering and the fourth generation cellular system,
Long Term Evolution (LTE), with the goal of achieving high data packet delivery
ratio and low delay while keeping the usage of the cellular architecture at the
minimum level. In VMaSC-LTE, vehicles are clustered based on a novel approach
named VMaSC: Vehicular Multi-hop algorithm for Stable Clustering. From the
clustered topology, elected cluster heads operate as dual-interface nodes with
the functionality of IEEE 802.11p and LTE interface to link VANET to LTE
network. Using various key metrics of interest including data packet delivery
ratio, delay, control overhead and clustering stability, we demonstrate
superior performance of the proposed architecture compared to both previously
proposed hybrid architectures and alternative routing mechanisms including
flooding and cluster based routing via extensive simulations in ns-3 with the
vehicle mobility input from the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO). The
proposed architecture also allows achieving higher required reliability of the
application quantified by the data packet delivery ratio at the cost of higher
LTE usage determined by the number of cluster heads in the network.


  We discuss the classical and quantum reduction to the space of physical
degrees of freedom of Yang--Mills theory on a circle (so that space-time is a
cylinder). Although the classical reduced phase space is finite-dimensional,
the quantum reduction procedure is mathematically fascinating, involving
firstly the Wiener measure on a loop group, secondly a generalization of the
Cameron--Martin theorem to loop groups, and thirdly Hall's coherent states for
compact Lie groups. Our approach is based on a quantum analogue of the
classical Marsden--Weinstein symplectic reduction process.


  Unit testing is a vital part of the software development process and involves
developers writing code to verify or assert production code. Furthermore, to
help comprehend the test case and troubleshoot issues, developers have the
option to provide a message that explains the reason for the assertion failure.
In this exploratory empirical study, we examine the characteristics of
assertion messages contained in the test methods in 20 open-source Java
systems. Our findings show that while developers rarely utilize the option of
supplying a message, those who do, either compose it of only string literals,
identifiers, or a combination of both types. Using standard English readability
measuring techniques, we observe that a beginner's knowledge of English is
required to understand messages containing only identifiers, while a 4th-grade
education level is required to understand messages composed of string literals.
We also discuss shortcomings with using such readability measuring techniques
and common anti-patterns in assert message construction. We envision our
results incorporated into code quality tools that appraise the
understandability of assertion messages.


  We start from the QED Lagrangian to describe a charged many-particle system
coupled to the radiation field. A covariant density matrix approach to kinetic
theory of QED plasmas, subjected to a strong external electro-magnetic field
has recently been developed [1,2]. We use the hyperplane formalism in order to
perform a manifest covariant quantization and to implement initial correlations
to the solution of the Liouville-von Neumann equation. A perturbative expansion
in orders of the fine structure constant for the correlation functions as well
as the statistical operator is applied. The non-equilibrium state of the system
is given within generalized linear response theory. Expressions for the
susceptibility tensor, describing the plasma response, are calculated within
different approximations, like the RPA approximation or considering collisions
within the Born-approximation. In particular, the process of relativistic
inverse bremsstrahlung in a plasma is discussed.


  TThe prototypical problem we study here is the following. Given a $2L\times
2L$ square, there are approximately $\exp(4KL^2/\pi )$ ways to tile it with
dominos, i.e. with horizontal or vertical $2\times 1$ rectangles, where
$K\approx 0.916$ is Catalan's constant [Kasteleyn '61, Temperley-Fisher '61]. A
conceptually simple (even if computationally not the most efficient) way of
sampling uniformly one among so many tilings is to introduce a Markov Chain
algorithm (Glauber dynamics) where, with rate $1$, two adjacent horizontal
dominos are flipped to vertical dominos, or vice-versa. The unique invariant
measure is the uniform one and a classical question [Wilson
2004,Luby-Randall-Sinclair 2001] is to estimate the time $T_{mix}$ it takes to
approach equilibrium (i.e. the running time of the algorithm). In
[Luby-Randall-Sinclair 2001, Randall-Tetali 2000], fast mixin was proven:
$T_{mix}=O(L^C)$ for some finite $C$. Here, we go much beyond and show that $c
L^2\le T_{mix}\le L^{2+o(1)}$. Our result applies to rather general domain
shapes (not just the $2L\times 2L$ square), provided that the typical height
function associated to the tiling is macroscopically planar in the large $L$
limit, under the uniform measure (this is the case for instance for the
Temperley-type boundary conditions considered in [Kenyon 2000]). Also, our
method extends to some other types of tilings of the plane, for instance the
tilings associated to dimer coverings of the hexagon or square-hexagon
lattices.


  Let $n$ be a positive integer, and let $A$ be a set of $k\ge 2n-1$ integers.
For the restricted sumset $$ S_n(A)=\{a_1+\cdots +a_n:\ a_1,\ldots,a_n\in A,\
\text{and}\ a_i^2\neq a_j^2\ \text{for} \ 1\le i<j\le n\}, $$ by a 2002 result
of Liu and Sun we have $$|S_n(A)|\ge (k-1)n-\frac 32n(n-1)+1.$$ In this paper,
we determine the structure of $A$ when the lower bound is attained.


  Using a blend of combinatorics and geometry, we give an algorithm for
algebraically finding all flags in any zero-dimensional intersection of
Schubert varieties with respect to three transverse flags, and more generally,
any number of flags. In particular, the number of flags in a triple
intersection is also a structure constant for the cohomology ring of the flag
manifold. Our algorithm is based on solving a limited number of determinantal
equations for each intersection (far fewer than the naive approach). These
equations may be used to compute Galois and monodromy groups of intersections
of Schubert varieties. We are able to limit the number of equations by using
the permutation arrays of Eriksson and Linusson, and their permutation array
varieties, introduced as generalizations of Schubert varieties. We show that
there exists a unique permutation array corresponding to each realizable
Schubert problem and give a simple recurrence to compute the corresponding rank
table, giving in particular a simple criterion for a Littlewood-Richardson
coefficient to be 0. We describe pathologies of Eriksson and Linusson's
permutation array varieties (failure of existence, irreducibility,
equidimensionality, and reducedness of equations), and define the more natural
permutation array schemes. In particular, we give several counterexamples to
the Realizability Conjecture based on classical projective geometry. Finally,
we give examples where Galois/monodromy groups experimentally appear to be
smaller than expected.


  The same-origin policy is a fundamental part of the Web. Despite the
restrictions imposed by the policy, embedding of third-party JavaScript code is
allowed and commonly used. Nothing is guaranteed about the integrity of such
code. To tackle this deficiency, solutions such as the subresource integrity
standard have been recently introduced. Given this background, this paper
presents the first empirical study on the temporal integrity of cross-origin
JavaScript code. According to the empirical results based on a ten day polling
period of over 35 thousand scripts collected from popular websites, (i)
temporal integrity changes are relatively common; (ii) the adoption of the
subresource integrity standard is still in its infancy; and (iii) it is
possible to statistically predict whether a temporal integrity change is likely
to occur. With these results and the accompanying discussion, the paper
contributes to the ongoing attempts to better understand security and privacy
in the current Web.


  We discuss the production of charginos, neutralinos, and third generation
sfermions in $e^+e^-$ annihilation in the energy range $\sqrt{s} = 0.2-1$ TeV.
We present numerical predictions within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard
Model for the cross sections and study the importance of beam polarization for
the determination of the underlying SUSY parameters.


  This paper presents the first wireless and programmable neural stimulator
leveraging magnetoelectric (ME) effects for power and data transfer. Thanks to
low tissue absorption, low misalignment sensitivity and high power transfer
efficiency, the ME effect enables safe delivery of high power levels (a few
milliwatts) at low resonant frequencies (~250 kHz) to mm-sized implants deep
inside the body (30-mm depth). The presented MagNI (Magnetoelectric Neural
Implant) consists of a 1.5-mm$^2$ 180-nm CMOS chip, an in-house built 4x2 mm ME
film, an energy storage capacitor, and on-board electrodes on a flexible
polyimide substrate with a total volume of 8.2 mm$^3$ . The chip with a power
consumption of 23.7 $\mu$W includes robust system control and data recovery
mechanisms under source amplitude variations (1-V variation tolerance). The
system delivers fully-programmable bi-phasic current-controlled stimulation
with patterns covering 0.05-to-1.5-mA amplitude, 64-to-512-$\mu$s pulse width,
and 0-to-200Hz repetition frequency for neurostimulation.


  An effect that is an analogue to the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect in a uniform
space would be observed in a space with a boundary of well reflecting light
metal-dielectric. The main difference is in that quanta of some electron volt
would be excited by an electron of energy of some tens of electron volts. This
would become possible because the surface plasmon velocity is very small as
compared with the velocity of waves of a uniform space. Beetwen excited
plasmons there is a plasmon with a linear momentum as high as the doubled
initial momentum of the electron.


  Designing modern photonic devices often involves traversing a large parameter
space via an optimization procedure, gradient based or otherwise, and typically
results in the designer performing electromagnetic simulations of correlated
devices. In this paper, we present an approach to accelerate the Generalized
Minimal Residual (GMRES) algorithm for the solution of frequency-domain
Maxwell's equations using two machine learning models (principal component
analysis and a convolutional neural network) trained on simulations of
correlated devices. These data-driven models are trained to predict a subspace
within which the solution of the frequency-domain Maxwell's equations lie. This
subspace can then be used for augmenting the Krylov subspace generated during
the GMRES iterations. By training the proposed models on a dataset of grating
wavelength-splitting devices, we show an order of magnitude reduction ($\sim 10
- 50$) in the number of GMRES iterations required for solving frequency-domain
Maxwell's equations.


  We present a class of magnetically charged brane solutions for the theory of
Einstein-Maxwell gravity with a negative cosmological constant in an arbitrary
number of spacetime dimensions.


  It is shown that the qc Yamabe problem has a solution on any compact qc
manifold which is non-locally qc equivalent to the standard 3-Sasakian sphere.
Namely, it is proved that on a compact non-locally spherical qc manifold there
exists a qc conformal qc structure with constant qc scalar curvature


  We study the problem of transforming a tripartite pure state to a bipartite
one using stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC). It
is known that the tripartite-to-bipartite SLOCC convertibility is characterized
by the maximal Schmidt rank of the given tripartite state, i.e. the largest
Schmidt rank over those bipartite states lying in the support of the reduced
density operator. In this paper, we further study this problem and exhibit
novel results in both multi-copy and asymptotic settings. In the multi-copy
regime, we observe that the maximal Schmidt rank is strictly
super-multiplicative, i.e. the maximal Schmidt rank of the tensor product of
two tripartite pure states can be strictly larger than the product of their
maximal Schmidt ranks. We then provide a full characterization of those
tripartite states whose maximal Schmidt rank is strictly super-multiplicative
when taking tensor product with itself. In the asymptotic setting, we focus on
determining the tripartite-to-bipartite SLOCC entanglement transformation rate,
which turns out to be equivalent to computing the asymptotic maximal Schmidt
rank of the tripartite state, defined as the regularization of its maximal
Schmidt rank. Despite the difficulty caused by the super-multiplicative
property, we provide explicit formulas for evaluating the asymptotic maximal
Schmidt ranks of two important families of tripartite pure states, by resorting
to certain results of the structure of matrix spaces, including the study of
matrix semi-invariants. These formulas give a sufficient and necessary
condition to determine whether a given tripartite pure state can be transformed
to the bipartite maximally entangled state under SLOCC, in the asymptotic
setting. Applying the recent progress on the non-commutative rank problem, we
can verify this condition in deterministic polynomial time.


  The face is a rich source of information that can be utilized to infer a
person's biological age, sex, phenotype, genetic defects, and health status.
All of these factors are relevant for predicting an individual's remaining
lifespan. In this study, we collected a dataset of over 24,000 images (from
Wikidata/Wikipedia) of individuals who died of natural causes, along with the
number of years between when the image was taken and when the person passed
away. We made this dataset publicly available. We fine-tuned multiple
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models on this data, at best achieving a
mean absolute error of 8.3 years in the validation data using VGGFace. However,
the model's performance diminishes when the person was younger at the time of
the image. To demonstrate the potential applications of our remaining lifespan
model, we present examples of using it to estimate the average loss of life (in
years) due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to predict the increase in life
expectancy that might result from a health intervention such as weight loss.
Additionally, we discuss the ethical considerations associated with such
models.


  Risk is traditionally described as the expected likelihood of an undesirable
outcome, such as collisions for autonomous vehicles. Accurately predicting risk
or potentially risky situations is critical for the safe operation of
autonomous vehicles. In our previous work, we showed that risk could be
characterized by two components: 1) the probability of an undesirable outcome
and 2) an estimate of how undesirable the outcome is (loss). This paper is an
extension to our previous work. In this paper, using our trained deep
reinforcement learning model for navigating around crowds, we developed a
risk-based decision-making framework for the autonomous vehicle that integrates
the high-level risk-based path planning with the reinforcement learning-based
low-level control. We evaluated our method in a high-fidelity simulation such
as CARLA. This work can improve safety by allowing an autonomous vehicle to one
day avoid and react to risky situations.


  Felty and Miller have described what they claim to be a faithful encoding of
the dependently typed lambda calculus LF in the logic of hereditary Harrop
formulas, a sublogic of an intuitionistic variant of Church's Simple Theory of
Types. Their encoding is based roughly on translating object expressions in LF
into terms in a simply typed lambda calculus by erasing dependencies in typing
and then recapturing the erased dependencies through the use of predicates.
Unfortunately, this idea does not quite work. In particular, we provide a
counterexample to the claim that the described encoding is faithful. The
underlying reason for the falsity of the claim is that the mapping from
dependently typed lambda terms to simply typed ones is not one-to-one and hence
the inverse transformation is ambiguous. This observation has a broad
implication for other related encodings.


  I review challenges in the understanding of long distance effects in
theoretical calculations of mixing rates of charmed mesons in the standard
model.


  We report on a novel response to biases in deterministic superdiffusion. For
its reduced map, we show using infinite ergodic theory that the time-averaged
velocity (TAV) is intrinsically random and its distribution obeys the
generalized arc-sine distribution. A distributional limit theorem indicates
that the TAV response to a bias appears in the distribution, which is an
example of what we term a distributional response induced by a bias. Although
this response in single trajectories is intrinsically random, the
ensemble-averaged TAV response is linear.


  We consider the homogeneous Bose gas on a unit torus in the mean-field regime
when the interaction strength is proportional to the inverse of the particle
number. In the limit when the number of particles becomes large, we derive a
two-term expansion of the one-body density matrix of the ground state. The
proof is based on a cubic correction to Bogoliubov's approximation of the
ground state energy and the ground state.


  An overview of new experimental results on high-\pT{} particle production and
jets in heavy ion collisions from the Quark Matter 2006 conference is
presented.


  All nonlinear dispersive wave equations in the general class
$m_t+f(u,u_x)m+(g(u,u_x)m)_x =0$ are known to possess multi-peakon weak
solutions. A classification is presented for families of multi-peakon equations
in this class that possess conserved momentum; conserved $H^1$ norm of $u$;
conserved $H^2$ norm of $u$; conserved $L^2$ norm of $m$; related conservation
laws. The results yield, among others, two interesting wide families of
equations: $m_t + 2u_x h(u,u_x)m + u (h(u,u_x)m)_x=0$ for which the $H^1$ norm
of $u$ is conserved; $m_t -\tfrac{1}{2}u_x h'(u)m + (h(u)m)_x =0$ for which the
$L^2$ norm of $m$ is conserved. The overlap of these two families yields a
singular equation which is nevertheless found to possess both smooth solitary
wave solutions and peakon travelling wave solutions.


  Recently using entanglement as resource to distinguish orthogonal product
states by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) has been studied
intensively. Zhang. et al. presented protocols to use entanglement to
distinguish certain classes of orthogonal product states in
$\mathbb{C}^m\otimes \mathbb{C}^n$\cite{Zhang016}. In this paper, we study
local distinguishability of multipartite orthogonal product states and provide
a practical solution. Our method relies upon a special class of locally
indistinguishable multipartite product states introduced by Wang et. al. to
build a protocol to distinguishes perfectly multipartitie quantum states by
LOCC using an entangled state as a resource for implementing quantum
measurements.


  The spin of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is directly related to the
radiative efficiency of accretion on to the hole, and therefore impacts the
amount of fuel required for the black hole to reach a certain mass. Thus, a
knowledge of the SMBH spin distribution and evolution is necessary to develop a
comprehensive theory of the growth of SMBHs and their impact on galaxy
formation. Currently, the only direct measurement of SMBH spin is through
fitting the broad Fe K line in AGNs. The evolution of spins could be determined
by fitting the broad line in the integrated spectra of AGNs over different
redshift intervals. The accuracy of these measurements will depend on the
observed integrated line strength. Here, we present theoretical predictions of
the integrated relativistic Fe K line strength as a function of redshift and
AGN luminosity. The equivalent widths of the integrated lines are much less
than 300 eV. Searches for the integrated line will be easiest for unobscured
AGNs with 2-10 keV luminosities between 44 < log L_{X} <= 45. The total
integrated line makes up less than 4% of the X-ray background, but its shape is
sensitive to the average SMBH spin. By following these recommendations, future
International X-ray Observatory surveys of broad Fe K lines should be able to
determine the spin evolution of SMBHs.


  2MASS K_S band data of the inner 60 pc of the Galaxy are used to reconstruct
the line-of-sight distances of the giant molecular clouds located in this
region. Using the 2MASS H band image of the same region, two different
populations of point sources are identified according to their flux ratio in
the two bands. The population of blue point sources forms a homogeneous
foreground that has to be subtracted before analyzing the K_S band image. The
reconstruction is made using two basic assumptions: (i) an axis-symmetric
stellar distribution in the region of interest and
  (ii) optically thick clouds with an area filling factor of ~1 that block all
light of stars located behind them. Due to the reconstruction method, the
relative distance between the different cloud complexes is a robust result,
whereas it is not excluded that the absolute distance with respect to Sgr A* of
structures located more than 10 pc in front of Sgr A* are understimated by up
to a factor of 2. It is shown that all structures observed in the 1.2 mm
continuum and in the CS(2-1) line are present in absorption. We place the 50 km
s^-1 cloud complex close to, but in front of, Sgr A*. The 20 km s^-1 cloud
complex is located in front of the 50 km s^-1 cloud complex and has a large LOS
distance gradient along the direction of the galactic longitude. The bulk of
the Circumnuclear Disk is not seen in absorption. This leads to an upper limit
of the cloud sizes within the Circumnuclear Disk of ~0.06 pc.


  We consider the quot scheme $\mathrm{Quot}^d_{\mathcal F^r/ \mathbb P^1/ k}$
of locally free quotients of $\mathcal F^r:= \bigoplus ^{ r} \mathcal
O_{\mathbb P^1 }$ with Hilbert polynomial $p(t)=d$. We prove that it is a
smooth variety of dimension $dr$, locally isomorphic to $\mathbb A^{dr}$. We
introduce a new notion of support for modules in $\mathrm{Quot}^d_{\mathcal
F^r/ \mathbb P^1/ k}$, called Hilb-support that allows us to define a natural
surjective morphism of schemes $\xi :\mathrm{Quot}^d_{\mathcal F^r/ \mathbb
P^1/ k} \to \mathrm{Hilb}^d_{\mathcal O_{\mathbb P^1}} $ associating to each
module its Hilb-support and study the fibres of $\xi$ over each $k$-point $Z$
of $\mathrm{Hilb}^d_{\mathcal O_{\mathbb P^1}}$. If $Z=Y_1+\dots+Y_n$, with
$Y_j=t_jR_j$, where $R_1, \dots, R_n$ are distinct points, the fibre of $\xi$
over $Z$ is isomorphic to $\mathrm{Quot}^{t_1}_{\mathcal F\otimes \mathcal
O_{Y_1}/ Y_1/ k}\times\dots \times \mathrm{Quot}^{t_n}_{\mathcal F\otimes
\mathcal O_{Y_n}/ Y_n/ k}$.
  We then study the Quot scheme $\mathrm{Quot}^{t}_{\mathcal F^r\otimes
\mathcal O_{Y}/ Y/ k}$ with $Y=tR$. For $t=1$, $\mathrm{Quot}^{t}_{\mathcal
F^r\otimes \mathcal O_{Y}/ Y/ k}$ is isomorphic to $\mathbb P^{r-1}$, while for
$t\geq 2$ we prove that it is formed by a main irreducible, reduced and
singular component of dimension $t(r-1)$ and by some embedded component of
lower dimension.


  We investigate ultracold collisions in a novel mixture of $^6$Li and
$^{53}$Cr fermionic atoms, discovering more than 50 interspecies Feshbach
resonances via loss spectroscopy. Building a full coupled-channel model, we
unambiguously characterize the $^{6}$Li-$^{53}$Cr scattering properties and
yield predictions for other isotopic pairs. In particular, we identify various
Feshbach resonances that enable the controlled tuning of elastic $s$- and
$p$-wave $^{6}$Li-$^{53}$Cr interactions. Our studies thus make
lithium-chromium mixtures emerge as optimally-suited platforms for the
experimental search of elusive few- and many-body regimes of highly-correlated
fermionic matter, and for the realization of a new class of ultracold polar
molecules possessing both electric and magnetic dipole moments.


  We prove that, for any connected graph on $N\geq 3$ vertices, the spectral
gap from the value $1$ with respect to the normalized Laplacian is at most
$1/2$. Moreover, we show that equality is achieved if and only if the graph is
either a petal graph (for $N$ odd) or a book graph (for $N$ even). This implies
that $(\frac12,\frac32)$ is a maximal gap interval for the normalized Laplacian
on connected graphs. This is closely related to the Alon-Boppana bound on
regular graphs and a recent result by Koll\'ar and Sarnak on cubic graphs. Our
result also provides a sharp bound for the convergence rate of some eigenvalues
of the Laplacian on neighborhood graphs.


  A recent experiment on Nb-doped Bi2Se3 showed that zero field magnetization
appears below the superconducting transition temperature. This gives evidence
that the superconducting state breaks time-reversal symmetry spontaneously and
possibly be in the chiral topological phase. This is in sharp contrast to the
Cu-doped case which is possibly in the nematic phase and breaks rotational
symmetry spontaneously. By deriving the free energy of the system from a
microscopic model, we show that the magnetic moments of the Nb atoms can be
polarized by the chiral Cooper pairs and enlarge the phase space of the chiral
topological phase compared to the nematic phase. We further show that the
chiral topological phase is a Weyl superconducting phase with bulk nodal points
which are connected by surface Majorana arcs.


  In this paper we propose a new method to stabilise non-symmetric indefinite
problems. The idea is to solve a forward and an adjoint problem simultaneously
using a suitable stabilised finite element method. Both stabilisation of the
element residual and jumps of certain derivatives of the discrete solution over
element faces may be used. Under the assumption of well posedness of the
partial differential equation and its associated adjoint problem we prove
optimal error estimates in $H^1$ and $L^2$ norms in an abstract framework. Some
examples of problems that are neither symmetric nor coercive, but that enter
the abstract framework are given. First we treat indefinite
convection-diffusion equations, with non-solenoidal transport velocity and
either pure Dirichlet conditions or pure Neumann conditions and then a Cauchy
problem for the Helmholtz operator. Some numerical illustrations are given.


  The planets' gravitational interaction causes rhythmic changes in Earth's
orbital parameters (also called Milankovi\'c cycles), which have powerful
applications in geology and astrochronology. For instance, the primary
astronomical eccentricity cycle due to the secular frequency term (g2-g5) (~405
kyr in the recent past) utilized in deep-time analyses is dominated by Venus'
and Jupiter's orbits, aka long eccentricity cycle. The widely accepted and
long-held view is that (g2-g5) was practically stable in the past and may hence
be used as a "metronome" to reconstruct accurate ages and chronologies.
However, using state-of-the-art integrations of the solar system, we show here
that (g2-g5) can become unstable over long time scales, without major changes
in, or destabilization of, planetary orbits. The (g2-g5) disruption is due to
the secular resonance $\sigma_{12}$ = (g1 - g2) + (s1 - s2), a major
contributor to solar system chaos. We demonstrate that entering/exiting the
$\sigma_{12}$ resonance is a common phenomenon on long time scales, occurring
in ~40% of our solutions. During $\sigma_{12}$-resonance episodes, (g2-g5) is
very weak or absent and Earth's orbital eccentricity and climate-forcing
spectrum are unrecognizable compared to the recent past. Our results have
fundamental implications for geology and astrochronology, as well as climate
forcing because the paradigm that the longest Milankovi\'c cycle dominates
Earth's astronomical forcing, is stable, and has a period of ~405 kyr requires
revision.


  Network function virtualization (NFV) fosters innovation in the networking
field and reduces the complexity involved in managing modern-day conventional
networks. Via NFV, the provisioning of a network service becomes more agile,
whereby virtual network functions can be instantiated on commodity servers and
data centers on demand. Network functions can be either mandatory or
best-effort. The former type is strictly necessary for the correctness of a
network service, whereas the latter is preferrable yet not necessary. In this
paper, we study the online provisioning of NFV-enabled network services. We
consider both unicast and multicast NFV-enabled services with multiple
mandatory and best-effort NF instances. We propose a primal-dual based online
approximation algorithm that allocates both processing and transmission
resources to maximize a profit function, subject to resource constraints on
physical links and NFV nodes. The online algorithm resembles a joint admission
mechanism and an online composition, routing and NF placement framework. The
online algorithm is derived from an offline formulation through a primal-dual
based analysis. Such analysis offers direct insights and a fundamental
understanding on the nature of the profit-maximization problem for NFV-enabled
services with multiple resource types.


  We report on analyses of tau lepton decays $\tau^- \to \eta K^- \nu_{\tau}$
and $\tau^- \to \eta \pi^- \nu_{\tau}$, with $\eta \to \pi^+ \pi^- \pi^0$,
using 470 fb$^{-1}$ of data from the Babar experiment at PEP-II, collected at
center-of-mass energies at and near the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance. We measure
the branching fraction for the $\tau^- \to \eta K^- \nu_{\tau}$ decay mode,
$\Br(\tau^- \to \eta K^- \nu_{\tau}) =
(1.42\pm0.11\text{(stat)}\pm0.07\text{(syst)})\times10^{-4}$, and report a 95%
confidence level upper limit for the second-class current process $\tau^- \to
\eta \pi^- \nu_{\tau}$, $\Br(\tau^- \to \eta \pi^- \nu_{\tau}) <
9.9\times10^{-5}$.


  This paper is devoted to the inverse problem of determining the spatially
dependent source in a time fractional diffusion-wave equation, with the aid of
extra measurement data at subboundary. Uniqueness result is obtained by using
the analyticity and the new established unique continuation principle provided
that the coefficients are all temporally independent. We also derive a
Lipschitz stability of our inverse source problem under a suitable topology
whose norm is given via the adjoint system of the fractional diffusion-wave
equation.


  Energy management is a crucial challenge in wireless sensor networks. To
date, many techniques have been proposed to reduce energy consumption. Duty
cycle methods reduce the energy consumption of wireless sensor networks since
energy consumption declines in the sleep mode. Using quorum-based methods,
sensors can stay in the sleep mode and be awaken periodically to send and
receive data from adjacent nodes. In this paper, we review a subset of these
methods called asynchronous quorum-based methods, independent of
synchronization between nodes, and investigate their performances in different
metrics. Then, we propose a new metric to investigate the latency of adjacent
nodes in wireless sensor networks. Next, we study the performances of all
discussed methods using the proposed metric. Finally, we introduce the best and
worst methods based on different metrics.


  Prices of NAND flash memories are falling drastically due to market growth
and fabrication process mastering while research efforts from a technological
point of view in terms of endurance and density are very active. NAND flash
memories are becoming the most important storage media in mobile computing and
tend to be less confined to this area. The major constraint of such a
technology is the limited number of possible erase operations per block which
tend to quickly provoke memory wear out. To cope with this issue,
state-of-the-art solutions implement wear leveling policies to level the wear
out of the memory and so increase its lifetime. These policies are integrated
into the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) and greatly contribute in decreasing the
write performance. In this paper, we propose to reduce the flash memory wear
out problem and improve its performance by absorbing the erase operations
throughout a dual cache system replacing FTL wear leveling and garbage
collection services. We justify this idea by proposing a first performance
evaluation of an exclusively cache based system for embedded flash memories.
Unlike wear leveling schemes, the proposed cache solution reduces the total
number of erase operations reported on the media by absorbing them in the cache
for workloads expressing a minimal global sequential rate.


  Electrical resonators are widely used in quantum information processing, by
engineering an electromagnetic interaction with qubits based on real or virtual
exchange of microwave photons. This interaction relies on strong coupling
between the qubits' transition dipole moments and the vacuum fluctuations of
the resonator in the same manner as cavity QED, and has consequently come to be
called "circuit QED" (cQED). Great strides in the control of quantum
information have already been made experimentally using this idea. However, the
central role played by photon exchange induced by quantum fluctuations in cQED
does result in some characteristic limitations. In this paper, we discuss an
alternative method for coupling qubits electromagnetically via a resonator, in
which no photons are exchanged, and where the resonator need not have strong
quantum fluctuations. Instead, the interaction can be viewed in terms of
classical, effective "forces" exerted by the qubits on the resonator, and the
resulting resonator dynamics used to produce qubit entanglement are purely
classical in nature. We show how this type of interaction is similar to that
encountered in the manipulation of atomic ion qubits, and we exploit this
analogy to construct two-qubit entangling operations that are largely
insensitive to thermal or other noise in the resonator, and to its quality
factor. These operations are also extensible to larger numbers of qubits,
allowing interactions to be selectively generated among any desired subset of
those coupled to a single resonator. Our proposal is potentially applicable to
a variety of physical qubit modalities, including superconducting and
semiconducting solid-state qubits, trapped molecular ions, and possibly even
electron spins in solids.


  We obtain a decomposition for the Hochschild cochain complex of a split
algebra and we study some properties of the cohomology of each term of this
decomposition. Then, we consider the case of trivial extensions, specially of
Frobenius algebras. In particular, we determine completely the cohomology of
the trivial extension of a finite dimensional Hopf algebra. Finally, as an
application, we obtain a result about the Hochschild cohomology of Frobenius
algebras.


  We study polynomial generalizations of the Kontsevich automorphisms acting on
the skew-field of formal rational expressions in two non-commuting variables.
Our main result is the Laurentness and pseudo-positivity of iterations of these
automorphisms. The resulting expressions are described combinatorially using a
generalization of the combinatorics of compatible pairs in a maximal Dyck path
developed by Lee, Li, and Zelevinsky. By specializing to quasi-commuting
variables we obtain pseudo-positive expressions for rank 2 quantum generalized
cluster variables. In the binomial case when all internal exchange coefficients
are zero, this quantum specialization provides a positive combinatorial
construction of counting polynomials for Grassmannians of submodules in
exceptional representations of valued quivers with two vertices.


  We present TeV gamma-ray observations of the Crab Nebula, the standard
reference source in ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, using data from the High
Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory. In this analysis we use
two independent energy-estimation methods that utilize extensive air shower
variables such as the core position, shower angle, and shower lateral energy
distribution. In contrast, the previously published HAWC energy spectrum
roughly estimated the shower energy with only the number of photomultipliers
triggered. This new methodology yields a much improved energy resolution over
the previous analysis and extends HAWC's ability to accurately measure
gamma-ray energies well beyond 100 TeV. The energy spectrum of the Crab Nebula
is well fit to a log parabola shape $\left(\frac{dN}{dE} = \phi_0
\left(E/\textrm{7 TeV}\right)^{-\alpha-\beta\ln\left(E/\textrm{7
TeV}\right)}\right)$ with emission up to at least 100 TeV. For the first
estimator, a ground parameter that utilizes fits to the lateral distribution
function to measure the charge density 40 meters from the shower axis, the
best-fit values are
$\phi_o$=(2.35$\pm$0.04$^{+0.20}_{-0.21}$)$\times$10$^{-13}$ (TeV cm$^2$
s)$^{-1}$, $\alpha$=2.79$\pm$0.02$^{+0.01}_{-0.03}$, and
$\beta$=0.10$\pm$0.01$^{+0.01}_{-0.03}$. For the second estimator, a neural
network which uses the charge distribution in annuli around the core and other
variables, these values are
$\phi_o$=(2.31$\pm$0.02$^{+0.32}_{-0.17}$)$\times$10$^{-13}$ (TeV cm$^2$
s)$^{-1}$, $\alpha$=2.73$\pm$0.02$^{+0.03}_{-0.02}$, and
$\beta$=0.06$\pm$0.01$\pm$0.02. The first set of uncertainties are statistical;
the second set are systematic. Both methods yield compatible results. These
measurements are the highest-energy observation of a gamma-ray source to date.


  The Orion OB1a sub-association is a rich low mass star (LMS) region. Previous
spectroscopic studies have confirmed 160 LMSs in the 25 Orionis stellar group
(25 Ori), which is the most prominent overdensity of Orion OB1a. Nonetheless,
the current census of the 25 Ori members is estimated to be less than 50%
complete, leaving a large number of members to be still confirmed. We retrieved
172 low-resolution stellar spectra in Orion OB1a observed as ancillary science
in the SDSS-III/BOSS survey, for which we classified their spectral types and
determined physical parameters. To determine memberships, we analyzed the
H$_\alpha$ emission, LiI$\lambda$6708 absorption, and NaI$\lambda\lambda$8183,
8195 absorption as youth indicators in stars classified as M-type. We report 50
new LMSs spread across the 25 Orionis, ASCC 18, and ASCC 20 stellar groups with
spectral types from M0 to M6, corresponding to a mass range of 0.10$\le
m/\textrm{M}_\odot \le$0.58. This represents an increase of 50% in the number
of known LMSs in the area and a net increase of 20% in the number of 25 Ori
members in this mass range. Using parallax values from the Gaia DR1 catalog, we
estimated the distances to these three stellar groups and found that they are
all co-distant, at 338$\pm$66 pc. We analyzed the spectral energy distributions
of these LMSs and classified their disks by evolutionary classes. Using H-R
diagrams, we found a suggestion that 25 Ori could be slightly older that the
other two observed groups in Orion OB1a.


  In this lecture we discuss some interesting developments in the modern theory
of electromagnetic field(s). In particular, by using the methods developed in
Dirac's constraint dynamics we derive the Schr\"{o}dinger equation for the free
electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field that arises only contains
combinations of transverse photons and does not include any scalar and/or
longitudinal photons. This approach is also used to determine and investigate
the actual symmetry of the free electromagnetic field. Then we discuss the
Majorana representation of the Maxwell equations, the symmetric form of Maxwell
equations and an original approach to electrodynamics called the "scalar
electrodynamics".


  360-degree video becomes increasingly popular among users. In the current
network bandwidth, serving high resolution 360 degree video to users is quite
difficult. Most of the work has been devoted to the prediction of user
viewports or tile-based adaptive algorithms. However, it is difficult to
predict user viewports more accurately using only information such as user's
historical viewports or video saliency maps. In this paper, we propose a
viewport adaptive 360-degree video streaming method based on tile priority
(VATP360), which tries to balance between the performance and the overhead. The
proposed VATP360 consists of three main modules: viewport prediction, tile
priority classification and bitrate allocation. In the viewport prediction
module, object motion trajectory and predicted user's region-of-interest (ROI)
are used to achieve accurate prediction of the user's future viewport. Then,
the predicted viewport, along with the object motion trajectory, are fed into
the proposed tile priority classification algorithm to assign different
priorities to tiles, which would reduce the computational complexity of the
bitrate allocation module. Finally in the bitrate allocation stage, we
adaptively assign bitrates to tiles of different priority by reinforcement
learning. Experimental results on publicly available datasets have demonstrated
the effectiveness of the proposed method.


  The extended models of the standard model with a single Majorana fermion
could be realized as the low-energy effective theory of the well-motivated
ultraviolet models. We study the electric dipole moments generated by the
effective operators which are composed of the Majorana fermion and the standard
model Higgs bosons, especially focusing on the renormalization effects of the
effective operators. We give the one-loop anomalous dimension of the effective
operators from the scale where the operators are generated to the electroweak
scale. In this proceedings, we focused on the electric dipole moments from
electroweak Majorana fermions, triplet and 5-plet. We found the renormalization
effects could give an enhancement factor being of the order of O(10)% for a
triplet model and being more than two in a 5-plet fermion model.


  Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although
strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be
fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at
singularities it would give at the beginning of the universe, and (3) our
universe has many properties that cannot be explained by a classical
description of them. A quantum state of the universe should obey certain
constraints, such as the Wheeler-DeWitt equations. One approach to interpreting
such a state is {\it Sensible Quantum Mechanics} (SQM), in which nothing is
probabilistic, except, in a certain frequency sense, conscious perceptions.
Sets of these perceptions can be deterministically realized with measures given
by expectation values of positive-operator-valued {\it awareness operators}.
These may be defined even when the quantum state itself is not normalizable,
though there still seem to be problems of divergences when one has an infinite
amount of inflation, producing infinitely large spatial volumes with presumably
infinite measures of perceptions. Ratios of the measures for sets of
perceptions (if finite) can be interpreted as frequency-type probabilities for
many actually existing sets rather than as propensities for potentialities to
be actualized, so there is nothing indeterministic in a specific SQM. One can
do a Bayesian analysis to test between different specific SQMs. One can also
make statistical predictions of what one might perceive within a specific SQM
by invoking the {\it Conditional Aesthemic Principle}: among the set of all
conscious perceptions, our perceptions are likely to be typical.


  We consider the effective type-II Two-Higgs doublet model originating from
Dirac gaugino models with extended supersymmetry in the gauge sector, which is
automatically aligned in the simplest realisations. We show that raising the
scale at which the extended supersymmetry is manifest and including quantum
corrections actually improves the alignment. Using an effective field theory
approach including new threshold corrections and two-loop RGEs, plus two-loop
corrections to the Higgs mass in the low-energy theory, we study the
implications from the Higgs mass and other experimental constraints on the
scale of superpartners. We contrast the results of the minimal Dirac gaugino
model, where alignment is automatic, with the hMSSM and the MRSSM, where it is
not, also providing an hMSSM-inspired analysis for the new models.


  We study inflationary solution in an extension of mimetic gravity with the
higher derivative interactions coupled to gravity. Because of the higher
derivative interactions, the setup is free from the ghost and gradient
instabilities while it hosts a number of novel properties. The dispersion
relation of scalar perturbations develops quartic momentum correction similar
to the setup of ghost inflation. Furthermore, the tilt of tensor perturbations
can take either signs with a modified consistency relation between the tilt and
the amplitude of tensor perturbations. Despite the presence of higher
derivative interactions coupled to gravity, the tensor perturbations propagate
with a speed equal to the speed of light as required by the LIGO observations.
Furthermore, the higher derivative interactions induce non-trivial interactions
in cubic Hamiltonian, generating non-Gaussianities in various shapes such as
the equilateral, orthogonal, and squeezed configurations with observable
amplitudes.


  Consider longitudinal data $x_{ij},$ with $i=1,...,n$ and $j=1,...,p_{i},$
where $x_{ij}$ is the $j-$th observation of the random function $X_{i}\left(
.\right) $ observed at time $t_{j}.$ The goal of this paper is to develop a
parsimonious representation of the data by a linear combination of a set of $q$
smooth functions $H_{k}\left( .\right) $ ($k=1,..,q)$ in the sense that
$x_{ij}\approx\mu_{j}+\sum_{k=1}^{q}\beta_{ki}H_{k}\left( t_{j}\right) ,$ such
that it fulfills three goals: it is resistant to atypical $X_{i}$'s ('case
contamination'), it is resistant to isolated gross errors at some $t_{ij}$
('cell contamination'), and it can be applied when some of the $x_{ij}$ are
missing ('irregularly spaced' ---or 'incomplete'-- data).
  Two approaches will be proposed for this problem. One deals with the three
goals stated above, and is based on ideas similar to MM-estimation (Yohai
1987). The other is a simple and fast estimator which can be applied to
complete data with case- and cellwise contamination, and is based on applying a
standard robust principal components estimate and smoothing the principal
directions. Experiments with real and simulated data suggest that with complete
data the simple estimator outperforms its competitors, while the MM estimator
is competitive for incomplete data.
  Keywords: Principal components, MM-estimator, longitudinal .data, B-splines,
incomplete data.


  Higher-order anisotropic flows $v_{4}$ and $v_{6}$ in heavy ion collisions at
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider are studied in a multiphase transport model
that has previously been used successfully for describing the elliptic flow
$v_2$ in these collisions. We find that the same parton scattering cross
section of about 10 \textrm{mb} used in explaining the measured $v_2$ can also
reproduce the recent data on $v_{4}$ and $v_{6}$ from Au + Au collisions at
$\sqrt{s}=200$ \textrm{AGeV}. It is further found that the $% v_{4}$ is a more
sensitive probe of the initial partonic dynamics in these collisions than
$v_{2}$. Moreover, higher-order parton anisotropic flows are nonnegligible and
satisfy the scaling relation $v_{n,q}(p_{T})\sim v_{2,q}^{n/2}(p_{T})$, which
leads naturally to the observed similar scaling relation among hadron
anisotropic flows when the coalescence model is used to describe hadron
production from the partonic matter.


  In this study, we propose a contagion model as a simple and powerful
mathematical approach for predicting the spatial spread and temporal evolution
of the onset and recession of flood waters in urban road networks. A network of
urban roads resilient to flooding events is essential for provision of public
services and for emergency response. The spread of floodwaters in urban
networks is a complex spatial-temporal phenomenon. This study presents a
mathematical contagion model to describe the spatial-temporal spread and
recession process of flood waters in urban road networks. The evolution of
floods within networks can be captured based on three macroscopic
characteristics-flood propagation rate ($\beta$), flood incubation rate
($\alpha$), and recovery rate ($\mu$)-in a system of ordinary differential
equations analogous to the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) model.
We integrated the flood contagion model with the network percolation process in
which the probability of flooding of a road segment depends on the degree to
which the nearby road segments are flooded. The application of the proposed
model was verified using high-resolution historical data of road flooding in
Harris County during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The results show that the model
can monitor and predict the fraction of flooded roads over time. Additionally,
the proposed model can achieve $90\%$ precision and recall for the spatial
spread of the flooded roads at the majority of tested time intervals. The
findings suggest that the proposed mathematical contagion model offers great
potential to support emergency managers, public officials, citizens, first
responders, and other decision makers for flood forecast in road networks.


  The finite XXZ spin chain with boundaries is studied. We derive the transfer
matrix from the q-difference equation discovered by Cherednik and construct its
eigenstates by the vertex operator approach. We point out that the eigenstates
with no magnetic fields have a symmetry called the turning symmetry. Making use
of this symmetry we calculate the spontaneous magnetization in the
thermodynamic limit, which is roughly twice as large as that in the
half-infinite XXZ spin chain.


  Quasi two-dimensional random site percolation model objects were fabricate
based on computer generated templates. Samples consisting of two compartments,
a reservoir of H$_2$O gel attached to a percolation model object which was
initially filled with D$_2$O, were examined with NMR (nuclear magnetic
resonance) microscopy for rendering proton spin density maps. The propagating
proton/deuteron inter-diffusion profiles were recorded and evaluated with
respect to anomalous diffusion parameters. The deviation of the concentration
profiles from those expected for unobstructed diffusion directly reflects the
anomaly of the propagator for diffusion on a percolation cluster. The fractal
dimension of the random walk, $d_w$, evaluated from the diffusion measurements
on the one hand and the fractal dimension, $d_f$, deduced from the spin density
map of the percolation object on the other permits one to experimentally
compare dynamical and static exponents. Approximate calculations of the
propagator are given on the basis of the fractional diffusion equation.
Furthermore, the ordinary diffusion equation was solved numerically for the
corresponding initial and boundary conditions for comparison. The anomalous
diffusion constant was evaluated and is compared to the Brownian case. Some ad
hoc correction of the propagator is shown to pay tribute to the finiteness of
the system. In this way, anomalous solutions of the fractional diffusion
equation could experimentally be verified for the first time.


  In this paper, a six-cylinder-port hohlraum is proposed to provide high
symmetry flux on capsule. It is designed to ignite a capsule with 1.2 mm radius
in indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) . Flux symmetry and laser
energy are calculated by using three dimensional view factor method and laser
energy balance in hohlraums. Plasma conditions are analyzed based on the two
dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations. There is no Ylm (l<=4)
asymmetry in the six-cylinder-port hohlraum when the influences of laser
entrance holes (LEHs) and laser spots cancel each other out with suitable
target parameters. A radiation drive with 300 eV and good flux symmetry can be
achieved with use of laser energy of 2.3 MJ and 500 TW peak power. According to
the simulations, the electron temperature and the electron density on the wall
of laser cone are high and low, respectively, which are similar to those of
outer cones in the hohlraums on National Ignition Facility (NIF). And the laser
intensity is also as low as those of NIF outer cones. So the backscattering due
to laser plasma interaction (LPI) is considered to be negligible. The
six-cyliner-port hohlraum could be superior to the traditional cylindrical
hohlraum and the octahedral hohlraum in both higher symmetry and lower
backscattering without supplementary technology at acceptable laser energy. It
is undoubted that the hohlraum will add to the diversity of ICF approaches.


  Within the setting of a recently proposed model of quantum fields on
noncommutative Minkowski spacetime, the consequences of the consistent
application of the proper, untwisted Poincare group as the symmetry group are
investigated. The emergent model contains an infinite family of fields which
are labelled by different noncommutativity parameters, and related to each
other by Lorentz transformations. The relative localization properties of these
fields are investigated, and it is shown that to each field one can assign a
wedge-shaped localization region of Minkowski space. This assignment is
consistent with the principles of covariance and locality, i.e. fields
localized in spacelike separated wedges commute.
  Regarding the model as a non-local, but wedge-local, quantum field theory on
ordinary (commutative) Minkowski spacetime, it is possible to determine
two-particle S-matrix elements, which turn out to be non-trivial. Some partial
negative results concerning the existence of observables with sharper
localization properties are also obtained.


  We obtain hydrodynamic equations describing a fluid consisting of chiral
molecules or a suspension of chiral particles in a Newtonian fluid. The
stresses arising in a flowing chiral liquid have a component forbidden by
symmetry in a Newtonian liquid. For example, a chiral liquid in a Poiseuille
flow between parallel plates exerts forces on the plates, which are
perpendicular to the flow. A generic flow results in spatial separation of
particles of different chirality. Thus even a racemic suspension will exhibit
chiral properties in a generic flow. A suspension of particles of random shape
in a Newtonian liquid is described by equations which are similar to those
describing a racemic mixture of chiral particles in a liquid.


  Squeezed spin states and squeezed light are both key resources for quantum
metrology and quantum information science, but have largely been separately
investigated experimentally so far. Simultaneous generation of these two types
of quantum states in one experiment setup is an intriguing goal, and could also
enable the study of the analogies and distinctions between atoms and light from
a new perspective. Here we report an experimental demonstration of concurrent
spin squeezing and light squeezing in a hot atomic ensemble, by judiciously
engineering a symmetric atom-light interaction Hamiltonian. The squeezing
process is deterministic, yielding fixed squeezing directions for the light
field and the collective atomic spin. Furthermore, the squeezed light modes lie
in the multiple frequency sidebands of a single spatial mode. This novel type
of dual squeezed state may be a promising resource for quantum information
science and technologies. Our method can be extended to other quantum platforms
such as optomechanical and cold atom systems.


  We consider Girsanov changes of measures that alter the intensity of point
processes in a suitable way, e.g., for the probability reference approach in
filtering. Such change of measure exists if a suitably related stochastic
exponential involving the intended new target intensity process is a proper
martingale. We show that the stochastic exponential is always a martingale when
the point process is a Cox process. In doing so, we show how Watanabe's
characterisation for conditional Poisson processes in terms of local
martingales can be formulated as a necessary and sufficient condition.