  We present a systematic study of spherically symmetric self-dual solutions of
SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on Euclidean Schwarzschild space. All the previously
known solutions are recovered and a new one-parameter family of instantons is
obtained. The newly found solutions have continuous actions and interpolate
between the classic Charap and Duff instantons. We examine the physical
properties of this family and show that it consists of dyons of unit (magnetic
and electric) charge.


  We study the sensitivity of the r-process abundance pattern to neutron
capture rates along the rare earth region (A~150 to A~180). We introduce the
concepts of large nuclear flow and flow saturation which determine the neutron
capture rates that are influential in setting the rare earth abundances. We
illustrate the value of the two concepts by considering high entropy conditions
favorable for rare earth peak production and identifying important neutron
capture rates among the rare earth isotopes. We also show how these rates
influence nuclear flow and specific sections of the abundance pattern.


  We prove that combinatorial demand functions are characterized by two
properties: continuity and the law of demand.


  We present a programmable time alignment scheme used in an ASIC for the ATLAS
forward muon trigger development. The scheme utilizes regenerated clocks with
programmable phases to compensate for the timing offsets introduced by
different detector trace lengths. Each ASIC used in the design has 104 input
channels with delay compensation circuitry providing steps of ~ 3 ns and a full
range of 25 ns for each channel. Detailed implementation of the scheme
including majority logic to suppress single-event effects is presented. The
scheme is flexible and fully synthesizable. The approach is adaptable to other
applications with similar phase shifting requirements. In addition, the design
is resource efficient and is suitable for cost-effective digital implementation
with a large number of channels.


  We construct a many-body Gaussian variational approach for the
two-dimensional trapped Bose gas in the condensate phase. Interaction between
particles is modelized by a generalized pseudo-potential of zero range that
allows recovering perturbative results in the ultra-dilute limit, while back
action of non-condensate particles on the condensate part is taken into account
for higher density. As an application, we derive the equation of state and
solve stability problems encountered in similar mean-field formalisms for a
single vortex configuration.


  We study the classical vibration problem of a chain with spring constants
which are modulated in a quasiperiodic manner, {\it i. e.}, a model in which
the elastic energy is $\sum_j k_j( u_{j-1}-{u_j})^2$, where $k_j=1+\Delta
cos[2\pi\sigma(j-1/2)+\theta]$ and $\sigma$ is an irrational number. For
$\Delta < 1$, it is shown analytically that the spectrum is absolutely
continuous, {\it i.e.}, all the eigen modes are extended. For $\Delta=1$,
numerical scaling analysis shows that the spectrum is purely singular
continuous, {\it i.e.}, all the modes are critical.


  Exact static, spherically symmetric solutions to the Einstein-Abelian
gauge-dilaton equations, in $D$-dimensional gravity with a chain of $n$
Ricci-flat internal spaces are considered, with the gauge field potential
having three nonzero components: the temporal, Coulomb-like one, the one
pointing to one of the extra dimensions, and the one responsible for a radial
magnetic field. For dilaton coupling implied by string theory an
$(n+5)$-parametric family of exact solutions is obtained, while for other
dilaton couplings only $(n+3)$-parametric ones. The geometric properties and
special cases of the solutions are discussed, in particular, those when there
are horizons in the space-time. Two types of horizons are distinguished: the
conventional black-hole (BH) ones and those at which the physical section of
the space-time changes its signature ({\it T-horizons}). Two theorems are
proved, one fixing the BH and T-horizon existence conditions, the other
discarding the possibility of a regular center. Different conformal gauges are
used to characterize the system from the $D$-dimensional and 4-dimensional
viewpoints.


  We answer the title question for sigma-unital C*-algebras. The answer is that
the algebra must be the direct sum of a dual C*-algebra and a C*-algebra
satisfying a certain local unitality condition. We also discuss similar
problems in the context of Hilbert C*-bimodules and imprimitivity bimodules and
in the context of centralizers of Pedersen's ideal.


  We prove a stable shock formation result for a large class of systems of
quasilinear wave equations in two spatial dimensions. We give a precise
description of the dynamics all the way up to the singularity. Our main theorem
applies to systems of two wave equations featuring two distinct wave speeds and
various quasilinear and semilinear nonlinearities, while the solutions under
study are (non-symmetric) perturbations of simple outgoing plane symmetric
waves. The two waves are allowed to interact all the way up to the singularity.
Our approach is robust and could be used to prove shock formation results for
other related systems with many unknowns and multiple speeds, in various
solution regimes, and in higher spatial dimensions. However, a fundamental
aspect of our framework is that it applies only to solutions in which the
"fastest wave" forms a shock while the remaining solution variables do not.
  Our approach is based on an extended version of the geometric vectorfield
method developed by D. Christodoulou in his study of shock formation for scalar
wave equations as well as the framework developed in our recent joint work with
J. Luk, in which we proved a shock formation result for a quasilinear
wave-transport system featuring a single wave operator. A key new difficulty
that we encounter is that the geometric vectorfields that we use to commute the
equations are, by necessity, adapted to the wave operator of the
(shock-forming) fast wave and therefore exhibit very poor commutation
properties with the slow wave operator, much worse than their commutation
properties with a transport operator. To overcome this difficulty, we rely on a
first-order reformulation of the slow wave equation, which, though somewhat
limiting in the precision it affords, allows us to avoid uncontrollable
commutator terms.


  The infrared absorption of charge density waves coupled to a magnetic
background is first observed in two manganites La{1-x}Ca{x}MnO{3} with x = 0.5
and x = 0.67. In both cases a BCS-like gap 2 Delta (T), which for x=0.5 follows
the hysteretic ferro-antiferromagnetic transition, fully opens at a finite T{0}
< T{Neel}, with 2 Delta(T{0})/kT{c} close to 5. These results may also explain
the unusual coexistence of charge ordering and ferromagnetism in
La{0.5}Ca{0.5}MnO{3}.


  The principle of constructing a new class of systems with hyperbolic chaotic
attractors is proposed. It is based on using oscillators, the transfer of
excitation between which is provided resonantly due to the difference in the
frequencies of small and large oscillations by an integer number of times being
accompanied by phase transformation according to Bernoulli nap. We consider a
system with Smale-Williams attractor, which is based on two coupled
Bonhoeffer-van der Pol oscillators. The oscillators manifest activity and
suppression turn by turn. With appropriate selection of the modulation,
relaxation oscillations occur at the end of each activity stage, the frequency
of which is by an integer factor $M = 2,3,4,\ldots$ smaller than that of small
oscillations. When the partner oscillator enters the activity stage, the
oscillations start being stimulated by the M-th harmonic of the relaxation
oscillations, so that the transformation of phase during the modulation period
corresponds to the M-fold Bernoulli map. In the state space of the Poincar\'e
map this corresponds to Smale-Williams attractor, constructed with M-fold
increase in the number of turns of the winding at each step of the mapping. The
results of numerical studies confirming the occurrence of the hyperbolic
attractors in certain parameter domains are presented, including the portraits
of attractors, diagrams illustrating the phase transformation according to the
Bernoulli map, Lyapunov exponents, and charts of regimes in parameter planes.
The hyperbolic nature of the attractors is verified by numerical tests that
confirm absence of tangencies of stable and unstable manifolds for trajectories
on the attractor (criterion of angles). An electronic circuit is proposed that
implements this principle of obtaining the hyperbolic chaos and its functioning
is demonstrated using the software package Multisim.


  Multi-armed bandit (MAB) is a class of online learning problems where a
learning agent aims to maximize its expected cumulative reward while repeatedly
selecting to pull arms with unknown reward distributions. We consider a
scenario where the reward distributions may change in a piecewise-stationary
fashion at unknown time steps. We show that by incorporating a simple
change-detection component with classic UCB algorithms to detect and adapt to
changes, our so-called M-UCB algorithm can achieve nearly optimal regret bound
on the order of $O(\sqrt{MKT\log T})$, where $T$ is the number of time steps,
$K$ is the number of arms, and $M$ is the number of stationary segments.
Comparison with the best available lower bound shows that our M-UCB is nearly
optimal in $T$ up to a logarithmic factor. We also compare M-UCB with the
state-of-the-art algorithms in numerical experiments using a public Yahoo!
dataset to demonstrate its superior performance.


  The scattering of f-modes by magnetic tubes is analyzed using
three-dimensional numerical simulations. An f-mode wave packet is propagated
through a solar atmosphere embedded with three different flux tube models which
differ in radius and total magnetic flux. A quiet Sun simulation without a tube
present is also performed as a reference. Waves are excited inside the flux
tube and propagate along the field lines, and jacket modes are generated in the
surroundings of the flux tube, carrying 40% as much energy as the tube modes.
The resulting scattered wave is mainly an f-mode composed of a mixture of m=0
and m=+/-1 modes. The amplitude of the scattered wave approximately scales with
the magnetic flux. A small amount of power is scattered into the p_1-mode. We
have evaluated the absorption and phase shift from a Fourier-Hankel
decomposition of the photospheric vertical velocities. They are compared with
the results obtained from the emsemble average of 3400 small magnetic elements
observed in high-resolution MDI Doppler datacubes. The comparison shows that
the observed dependence of the phase shift with wavenumber can be matched
reasonably well with the simulated flux tube model. The observed variation of
the phase-shifts with the azimuthal order $m$ appears to depend on details of
the ensemble averaging, including possible motions of the magnetic elements and
asymmetrically shaped elements.


  This paper analyzes the robustness and stability of a disturbance observer
(DOB) and a reaction torque observer (RTOB) based robust motion control
systems. Conventionally, a DOB is analyzed by using an ideal velocity
measurement that is obtained without using a low-pass-filter (LPF); however, it
is impractical due to noise constraints. An LPF of velocity measurement changes
the robustness of a DOB significantly and puts a new design constraint on the
bandwidth of a DOB. An RTOB, which is used to estimate environmental impedance,
is an application of a DOB. The stability of an RTOB based robust force control
system has not been reported yet since its oversimplified model is derived by
assuming that an RTOB has a feed-forward control structure. However, in
reality, it has a feed-back control structure; therefore, not only the
performance but also the stability is affected by the design parameters of a
RTOB. A new practical stability analysis method is proposed for a RTOB based
robust force control system. Besides that novel and practical design methods,
which improve the robustness of a DOB and the stability and performance of an
RTOB based robust force control system, are proposed by using the new analysis
methods. The validity of the proposals is verified by simulation and
experimental results.


  Many implicit inferences exist in text depending on how it is structured that
can critically impact the text's interpretation and meaning. One such
structural aspect present in text with chronology is the order of its
presentation. For narratives or stories, this is known as the narrative order.
Reordering a narrative can impact the temporal, causal, event-based, and other
inferences readers draw from it, which in turn can have strong effects both on
its interpretation and interestingness. In this paper, we propose and
investigate the task of Narrative Reordering (NAREOR) which involves rewriting
a given story in a different narrative order while preserving its plot. We
present a dataset, NAREORC, with human rewritings of stories within ROCStories
in non-linear orders, and conduct a detailed analysis of it. Further, we
propose novel task-specific training methods with suitable evaluation metrics.
We perform experiments on NAREORC using state-of-the-art models such as BART
and T5 and conduct extensive automatic and human evaluations. We demonstrate
that although our models can perform decently, NAREOR is a challenging task
with potential for further exploration. We also investigate two applications of
NAREOR: generation of more interesting variations of stories and serving as
adversarial sets for temporal/event-related tasks, besides discussing other
prospective ones, such as for pedagogical setups related to language skills
like essay writing and applications to medicine involving clinical narratives.


  Exploration poses a fundamental challenge in Reinforcement Learning (RL) with
sparse rewards, limiting an agent's ability to learn optimal decision-making
due to a lack of informative feedback signals. Self-Imitation Learning
(self-IL) has emerged as a promising approach for exploration, leveraging a
replay buffer to store and reproduce successful behaviors. However, traditional
self-IL methods, which rely on high-return transitions and assume singleton
environments, face challenges in generalization, especially in
procedurally-generated (PCG) environments. Therefore, new self-IL methods have
been proposed to rank which experiences to persist, but they replay transitions
uniformly regardless of their significance, and do not address the diversity of
the stored demonstrations. In this work, we propose tailored self-IL sampling
strategies by prioritizing transitions in different ways and extending
prioritization techniques to PCG environments. We also address diversity loss
through modifications to counteract the impact of generalization requirements
and bias introduced by prioritization techniques. Our experimental analysis,
conducted over three PCG sparse reward environments, including MiniGrid and
ProcGen, highlights the benefits of our proposed modifications, achieving a new
state-of-the-art performance in the MiniGrid-MultiRoom-N12-S10 environment.


  We introduce an architecture, the Tensor Product Recurrent Network (TPRN). In
our application of TPRN, internal representations learned by end-to-end
optimization in a deep neural network performing a textual question-answering
(QA) task can be interpreted using basic concepts from linguistic theory. No
performance penalty need be paid for this increased interpretability: the
proposed model performs comparably to a state-of-the-art system on the SQuAD QA
task. The internal representation which is interpreted is a Tensor Product
Representation: for each input word, the model selects a symbol to encode the
word, and a role in which to place the symbol, and binds the two together. The
selection is via soft attention. The overall interpretation is built from
interpretations of the symbols, as recruited by the trained model, and
interpretations of the roles as used by the model. We find support for our
initial hypothesis that symbols can be interpreted as lexical-semantic word
meanings, while roles can be interpreted as approximations of grammatical roles
(or categories) such as subject, wh-word, determiner, etc. Fine-grained
analysis reveals specific correspondences between the learned roles and parts
of speech as assigned by a standard tagger (Toutanova et al. 2003), and finds
several discrepancies in the model's favor. In this sense, the model learns
significant aspects of grammar, after having been exposed solely to
linguistically unannotated text, questions, and answers: no prior linguistic
knowledge is given to the model. What is given is the means to build
representations using symbols and roles, with an inductive bias favoring use of
these in an approximately discrete manner.


  Using a semi-analytic model of non-linear diffusive shock acceleration, we
model the spectrum of cosmic ray (CR) electrons accelerated by supernova
remnants (SNRs). Because electrons experience synchrotron losses in the
amplified magnetic fields characteristic of SNRs, they exhibit substantially
steeper spectra than protons. In particular, we find that the difference
between the electron and proton spectral index (power law slope) ranges from
0.1 to 0.4. Our findings must be reckoned with theories of Galactic CR
transport, which often assume that electrons and protons are injected with the
same slope, and may especially have implications for the observed "positron
excess."


  Tracking users' activities on the World Wide Web (WWW) allows researchers to
analyze each user's internet behavior as time passes and for the amount of time
spent on a particular domain. This analysis can be used in research design, as
researchers may access to their participant's behaviors while browsing the web.
Web search behavior has been a subject of interest because of its real-world
applications in marketing, digital advertisement, and identifying potential
threats online. In this paper, we present an image-processing based method to
extract domains which are visited by a participant over multiple browsers
during a lab session. This method could provide another way to collect users'
activities during an online session given that the session recorder collected
the data. The method can also be used to collect the textual content of
web-pages that an individual visits for later analysis


  In this paper we will compare the Plateau's problem with \v{C}ech and
singular homological boundary conditions, we also compare these with the size
minimizing problem for integral currents with a given boundary. Finally we get
the agreement on the infimum values for these Plateau's problem.


  Recent experiments imaging fluid flow around swimming microorganisms have
revealed complex time-dependent velocity fields that differ qualitatively from
the stresslet flow commonly employed in theoretical descriptions of active
matter. Here we obtain the most general flow around a finite sized active
particle by expanding the surface stress in irreducible Cartesian tensors. This
expansion, whose first term is the stresslet, must include, respectively,
third-rank polar and axial tensors to minimally capture crucial features of the
active oscillatory flow around translating Chlamydomonas and the active
swirling flow around rotating Volvox. The representation provides explicit
expressions for the irreducible symmetric, antisymmetric and isotropic parts of
the continuum active stress. Antisymmetric active stresses do not conserve
orbital angular momentum and our work thus shows that spin angular momentum is
necessary to restore angular momentum conservation in continuum hydrodynamic
descriptions of active soft matter.


  In this paper, the problem of error control of stepwise multiple testing
procedures is considered. For two-sided hypotheses, control of both type 1 and
type 3 (or directional) errors is required, and thus mixed directional
familywise error rate control and mixed directional false discovery rate
control are each considered by incorporating both types of errors in the error
rate. Mixed directional familywise error rate control of stepwise methods in
multiple testing has proven to be a challenging problem, as demonstrated in
Shaffer (1980). By an appropriate formulation of the problem, some new stepwise
procedures are developed that control type 1 and directional errors under
independence and various dependencies.


  The studies based on $A+A \rightarrow \emptyset$ and $A+B\rightarrow
\emptyset$ diffusion-annihilation processes have so far been studied on
weighted uncorrelated scale-free networks and fractal scale-free networks. In
the previous reports, it is widely accepted that the segregation of particles
in the processes is introduced by the fractal structure. In this paper, we
study these processes on a family of weighted scale-free networks with
identical degree sequence. We find that the depletion zone and segregation are
essentially caused by the disassortative mixing, namely, high-degree nodes tend
to connect with low-degree nodes. Their influence on the processes is governed
by the correlation between the weight and degree. Our finding suggests both the
weight and degree distribution don't suffice to characterize the
diffusion-annihilation processes on weighted scale-free networks.


  In this paper, we introduce complex functional maps, which extend the
functional map framework to conformal maps between tangent vector fields on
surfaces. A key property of these maps is their orientation awareness. More
specifically, we demonstrate that unlike regular functional maps that link
functional spaces of two manifolds, our complex functional maps establish a
link between oriented tangent bundles, thus permitting robust and efficient
transfer of tangent vector fields. By first endowing and then exploiting the
tangent bundle of each shape with a complex structure, the resulting operations
become naturally orientationaware, thus favoring orientation and angle
preserving correspondence across shapes, without relying on descriptors or
extra regularization. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, we demonstrate how
these objects enable several practical applications within the functional map
framework. We show that functional maps and their complex counterparts can be
estimated jointly to promote orientation preservation, regularizing pipelines
that previously suffered from orientation-reversing symmetry errors.


  We show that carbon nanotubes (CNT) can be driven through a topological phase
transition using either strain or a magnetic field. This can naturally lead to
Jackiw-Rebbi soliton states carrying fractionalized charges, similar to those
found in a domain wall in the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, in a setup with a
spatially inhomogeneous strain and an axial field. Two types of fractionalized
states can be formed at the interface between regions with different strain: a
spin-charge separated state with integer charge and spin zero (or zero charge
and spin $\pm \hbar/2$), and a state with charge $\pm e/2$ and spin $\pm
\hbar/4$. The latter state requires spin-orbit coupling in the CNT. We show
that in our setup, the precise quantization of the fractionalized interface
charges is a consequence of the symmetry of the CNT under a combination of a
spatial rotation by $\pi$ and time reversal. Finally, we comment on the effects
of many-body interaction on this phenomena.


  In this work we will show that if $F$ is a positive integer, then the set
${\mathrm{Arf}}(F)=\{S\mid S \mbox{ is an Arf numerical semigroup with
Frobenius number } F\}$ verifies the following conditions: 1)
$\Delta(F)=\{0,F+1,\rightarrow\}$ is the minimum of ${\mathrm{Arf}}(F),$ 2) if
$\{S, T\} \subseteq {\mathrm{Arf}}(F)$, then $S \cap T \in {\mathrm{Arf}}(F),$
3) if $S \in {\mathrm{Arf}}(F),$ $S\neq \Delta(F)$ and ${\mathrm m}(S)=\min (S
\backslash \{0\})$, then $S\backslash \{{\mathrm m}(S)\} \in
{\mathrm{Arf}}(F)$.
  The previous results will be used to give an algorithm which calculates the
set ${\mathrm{Arf}}(F).$ Also we will see that if $X\subseteq S\backslash
\Delta(F)$ for some $S\in {\mathrm{Arf}}(F),$ then there is the smallest
element of ${\mathrm{Arf}}(F)$ containing $X.$


  In voting theory, bribery is a form of manipulative behavior in which an
external actor (the briber) offers to pay the voters to change their votes in
order to get her preferred candidate elected. We investigate a model of bribery
where the price of each vote depends on the amount of change that the voter is
asked to implement. Specifically, in our model the briber can change a voter's
preference list by paying for a sequence of swaps of consecutive candidates.
Each swap may have a different price; the price of a bribery is the sum of the
prices of all swaps that it involves. We prove complexity results for this
model, which we call swap bribery, for a broad class of election systems,
including variants of approval and k-approval, Borda, Copeland, and maximin.


  The effect of a local Kondo coupling and Hubbard interaction on the
topological phase of the one-dimensional topological Kondo insulator (TKI) is
numerically investigated using the infinite matrix-product state density-matrix
renormalization group algorithm. The groundstate of the TKI is a
symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase protected by inversion symmetry. It
is found that on its own, the Hubbard interaction that tends to force fermions
into a one-charge per site order is insufficient to destroy the SPT phase.
However when the local Kondo Hamiltonian term that favors a topologically
trivial groundstate with a one-charge per site order is introduced, the Hubbard
interaction assists in the destruction of the SPT phase. This topological phase
transition occurs in the charge sector where the correlation length of the
charge excitation diverges while the correlation length of the spin excitation
remains finite. The critical exponents, central charge and the phase diagram
separating the SPT phase from the topologically trivial phase are presented.


  This paper presents a neural network-based turbulence modeling approach for
transonic flows based on the ensemble Kalman method. The approach adopts a
tensor basis neural network for the Reynolds stress representation, with
modified inputs to consider fluid compressibility. The normalization of input
features is also investigated to avoid feature collapsing in the presence of
shock waves. Moreover, the turbulent heat flux is accordingly estimated with
the neural network-based turbulence model based on the gradient diffusion
hypothesis. The ensemble Kalman method is used to train the neural network with
the experimental data in velocity and wall pressure due to its derivative-free
nature. The proposed framework is tested in two canonical configurations, i.e.,
2D transonic flows over the RAE2822 airfoils and 3D transonic flows over the
ONERA M6 wings. Numerical results demonstrate the capability of the proposed
method in learning accurate turbulence models for external transonic flows.


  The linear and nonlinear transport through a multi-level lateral quantum dot
connected to two leads is investigated using a generalized finite-$U$
slave-boson mean field approach. For a two-level quantum dot, our calculation
demonstrates a substantial conductance enhancement near the degeneracy point of
the spin singlet and triplet states, a non-monotonic temperature-dependence of
conductance and a sharp dip and nonzero bias maximum of the differential
conductance. These agree well with recent experiment observations. This
two-stage Kondo effect in an out-of-equilibrium situation is attributed to the
interference between the two energy levels.


  We derive a "semi-analytic" solution for a stock loan in which the lender
forces liquidation when the loan-to-collateral ratio drops beneath a certain
threshold. We use this to study the sensitivity of the contract to model
parameters.


  Alongside the development of quantum algorithms and quantum complexity theory
in recent years, quantum techniques have also proved instrumental in obtaining
results in classical (non-quantum) areas. In this paper we survey these results
and the quantum toolbox they use.


  Quantum charge pumping phenomenon connects band topology through the dynamics
of a one-dimensional quantum system. In terms of a microscopic model, the
Su-Schrieffer-Heeger/Rice-Mele quantum pump continues to serve as a fruitful
starting point for many considerations of topological physics. Here we present
a generalized Creutz scheme as a distinct two-band quantum pump model. By
noting that it undergoes two kinds of topological band transitions accompanying
with a Zak-phase-difference of $\pi$ and $2\pi$, respectively, various charge
pumping schemes are studied by applying an elaborate Peierl's phase
substitution. Translating into real space, the transportation of quantized
charges is a result of cooperative quantum interference effect. In particular,
an all-flux quantum pump emerges which operates with time-varying fluxes only
and transports two charge units. This puts cold atoms with artificial gauge
fields as an unique system where this kind of phenomena can be realized.


  We investigate how the statistics of extremes and records is affected when
taking the moving average over a window of width $p$ of a sequence of
independent, identically distributed random variables. An asymptotic analysis
of the general case, corroborated by exact results for three distributions
(exponential, uniform, power-law with unit exponent), evidences a very robust
dichotomy, irrespective of the window width, between superexponential and
subexponential distributions. For superexponential distributions the statistics
of records is asymptotically unchanged by taking the moving average, up to
interesting distribution-dependent corrections to scaling. For subexponential
distributions the probability of record breaking at late times is increased by
a universal factor $R_p$, depending only on the window width.


  In this chapter, we introduce methods to address resiliency issues for
control systems. The main challenge for control systems is its cyber-physical
system nature which strongly couples the cyber systems with physical layer
dynamics. Hence the resiliency issues for control systems need to be addressed
by integrating the cyber resiliency with the physical layer resiliency. We
introduce frameworks that can provide a holistic view of the control system
resiliency and a quantitative design paradigm that can enable an optimal
cross-layer and cross-stage design at the planning, operation, and recovery
stage of control systems. The control systems are often large-scale systems in
industrial application and critical infrastructures. Decentralized control of
such systems is indispensable. We extend the resiliency framework to address
distributed and collaborative resiliency among decentralized control agents.


  We present here a new mechanism of high-T_c (critical temperature)
superconductivity. This new model is able to explain all the HTSC (high-T_c
superconductivity) properties, like high T_c, origin and nature of NSPG (normal
state pseudogap), anomalous superconducting state (SS) energy gap (SSEG)
properties, absence of NMR spin relaxation rate coherence peak, existence of
NSPG below T_c, nature of high-T_c magnetic superconductivity, external
magnetic field (H) dependence of the NSPG formation temperature T^*, etc. The
coexistence of NSPG and SS BCS enegy gap (EG), below T_c, has been predicted by
the model before its experimental observation, showing that the observed SSEG
is a superposition of NSPG and SS BCS EG. The model, called the paired cluster
(PC) model, is also able to explain the pseudogap critical concentration,
vortex core pseudogap and possible stripe phase in high-T_c superconductors. We
do not find any experimental observation which is not in favour of the model.
Their results follow as a natural consequence of the physical picture contained
in the model. Several such results are discussed.


  In this article a classification of some proposed macroscopic entropy
production (MEP) principles is given. With the help of simple electrical
network models, at least six interesting and most used principles are
distinguished: the least dissipation, the near-equilibrium (linear) minimum
entropy production (MinEP), the near-equilibrium (linear) maximum entropy
production (MaxEP), the far-from-equilibrium (non-linear) non-variational
MaxEP, the far-from equilibrium variational MaxEP and the optimization MinEP.
With this framework, the different assumptions, regions of validity,
constraints and applications are explained, as well as their theoretical
proofs, counterexamples or experimental verifications. The examples will be
kept as simple as possible, in order to focus more on the concepts instead of
the technicalities. By better defining the settings of the principles, this
classification sheds some new light on some principles, and new ideas for
future research are presented, especially for the more recent
far-from-equilibrium principles.


  Digital Hadronic Calorimeters (DHCAL) were suggested for future Colliders as
part of the particle-flow concept. Though studied mainly with Resistive Plate
Chambers (RPC), studies focusing on Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detector (MPGD)-based
sampling elements have shown the potential advantages; they can be operated
with environmental friendly gases and reach similar detection efficiency at
lower average pad-multiplicity. We summarize here the experimental test-beam
results of a small-size DHCAL prototype, incorporating six Micromegas (MM) and
two Resistive-Plate WELL (RPWELL) sampling elements, interlaced with
steel-absorber plates. It was investigated with 2-6 GeV pion beam at the
CERN/PS beam facility. The data permitted validating a GEANT4 simulation
framework of a DHCAL, and evaluating the expected pion energy resolution of a
full-scale RPWELL-based calorimeter. The pion energy resolution of
$\frac{\sigma}{E[GeV]}=\frac{50.8\%}{\sqrt{E[GeV]}} \oplus 10.3\%$ derived
expected with the RPWELL concept is competitive to that of glass RPC and MM
sampling techniques.


  In {\em Physica D} {\bf 91}, 223 (1996), results were obtained regarding the
tangent bifurcation of the band edge modes ($q=0,\pi$) of nonlinear Hamiltonian
lattices made of $N$ coupled oscillators. Introducing the concept of {\em
partial isochronism} which characterises the way the frequency of a mode,
$\omega$, depends on its energy, $\epsilon$, we generalize these results and
show how the bifurcation energies of these modes are intimately connected to
their degree of isochronism. In particular we prove that in a lattice of
coupled purely isochronous oscillators ($\omega(\epsilon)$ strictly constant),
the in-phase mode ($q=0$) never undergoes a tangent bifurcation whereas the
out-of-phase mode ($q=\pi$) does, provided the strength of the nonlinearity in
the coupling is sufficient. We derive a discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger
equation governing the slow modulations of small-amplitude band edge modes and
show that its nonlinear exponent is proportional to the degree of isochronism
of the corresponding orbits. This equation may be seen as a link between the
tangent bifurcation of band edge modes and the possible emergence of localized
modes such as discrete breathers.


  The temperature dependence of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) for currents
parallel and perpendicular to the multilayer plane, is discussed by taking
account of the random exchange potentials, phonon scatterings and spin
fluctuations. The effect of spin fluctuations, which plays an important role at
finite temperatures, is included by means of the static functional-integral
method developed previously by the present author. Our model calculations well
explain the observed features of the parallel and perpendicular GMR of Fe/Cr
and Co/Cu multilayers recently reported by Gijs {\it et al}.


  We present the phase diagram for the current states of superconducting films,
based on the experimental investigation of the resistive transition induced by
transport current. We found that a rather narrow film never enters the vortex
state, but experiences direct transition from the purely superconducting state
to the resistive state with phase-slip centers as soon as the current exceeds
the Ginzburg-Landau critical current Ic. The Meissner current state of the
films of intermediate width transforms at I > 0.8Ic to the vortex resistive
state which exists within the current interval 0.8Ic < I < Im, where the value
Im of the upper critical current is in a good agreement with the theory. The
vortex state of wide films is realized within the current region I^{AL} < I <
Im, where I^{AL} is the transition point to the vortex state by Aslamazov and
Lempitskiy. At I>Im, the wide films enter a vortex-free resistive state with
phase-slip lines.


  While semidefinite programming (SDP) problems are polynomially solvable in
theory, it is often difficult to solve large SDP instances in practice. One
technique to address this issue is to relax the global
positive-semidefiniteness (PSD) constraint and only enforce PSD-ness on smaller
$k\times k$ principal submatrices --- we call this the sparse SDP relaxation.
Surprisingly, it has been observed empirically that in some cases this approach
appears to produce bounds that are close to the optimal objective function
value of the original SDP. In this paper, we formally attempt to compare the
strength of the sparse SDP relaxation vis-\`a-vis the original SDP from a
theoretical perspective.
  In order to simplify the question, we arrive at a data independent version of
it, where we compare the sizes of SDP cone and the $k$-PSD closure, which is
the cone of matrices where PSD-ness is enforced on all $k\times k$ principal
submatrices. In particular, we investigate the question of how far a matrix of
unit Frobenius norm in the $k$-PSD closure can be from the SDP cone. We provide
two incomparable upper bounds on this farthest distance as a function of $k$
and $n$. We also provide matching lower bounds, which show that the upper
bounds are tight within a constant in different regimes of $k$ and $n$. Other
than linear algebra techniques, we extensively use probabilistic methods to
arrive at these bounds. One of the lower bounds is obtained by observing a
connection between matrices in the $k$-PSD closure and matrices satisfying the
restricted isometry property (RIP).


  While multiple testing procedures have been the focus of much statistical
research, an important facet of the problem is how to deal with possible
confounding. Procedures have been developed by authors in genetics and
statistics. In this chapter, we relate these proposals. We propose two new
multiple testing approaches within this framework. The first combines
sensitivity analysis methods with false discovery rate estimation procedures.
The second involves construction of shrinkage estimators that utilize the
mixture model for multiple testing. The procedures are illustrated with
applications to a gene expression profiling experiment in prostate cancer.


  It is well-known that two-dimensional Coulomb gases at a special inverse
temperature $\beta = 2$ can be analyzed by using the orthogonal polynomial
method borrowed from the theory of random matrices. In this paper, such Coulomb
gas molecules are studied when they are distributed on an elliptic annulus, and
the asymptotic forms of the molecule correlation functions in the thermodynamic
limit are evaluated. For that purpose, two-dimensional orthogonality relations
of the Chebyshev polynomials on an elliptic annulus are utilized.


  We present broad band analysis of the Be/X-ray transient 1A 1118-61 by Suzaku
at the peak of its 3rd observed outburst in January 2009 and 2 weeks later when
the source flux had decayed by an order of magnitude. The continuum was modeled
with a \texttt{cutoffpl} model as well as a compTT model, with both cases
requiring an additional black body component at lower energies. We confirm the
detection of a cyclotron line at ~5 keV and discuss the possibility of a first
harmonic at ~110 keV. Pulse profile comparisons show a change in the profile
structure at lower energies, an indication for possible changes in the
accretion geometry. Phase resolved spectroscopy in the outburst data show a
change in the continuum throughout the pulse period. The decrease in the CRSF
centroid energy also indicates that the viewing angle on the accretion column
is changing throughout the pulse period.


  We analyze cooling of neutron stars, assuming the presence of localized
protons in the densest region of their cores. Choosing a single threshold
density for proton localization and adjusting neutron star mass, we reproduce
the observational data on effective surface temperatures of Vela and PSR
0656+14, with or without an accreted hydrogen envelope. However, the presence
of a tiny hydrogen envelope is mandatory, in this model, for reproducing the
Geminga data.


  Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) are standardizable candles that allow us to
measure the recent expansion rate of the Universe. Due to uncertainties in
progenitor physics, potential astrophysical dependencies may bias cosmological
measurements if not properly accounted for. The dependency of the intrinsic
luminosity of SNe Ia with their host-galaxy environment is often used to
standardize SNe Ia luminosity and is commonly parameterized as a step function.
This functional form implicitly assumes two-populations of SNe Ia. In the
literature, multiple environmental indicators have been considered, finding
different, sometimes incompatible, step function amplitudes. We compare these
indicators in the context of a two-populations model, based on their ability to
distinguish the two populations. We show that local H$\alpha$-based specific
star formation rate (lsSFR) and global stellar mass are better tracers than,
for instance, host galaxy morphology. We show that tracer accuracy can explain
the discrepancy between the observed SNe Ia step amplitudes found in the
literature. Using lsSFR or global mass to distinguish the two populations can
explain all other observations, though lsSFR is favoured. As lsSFR is strongly
connected to age, our results favour a prompt and delayed population model. In
any case, there exists two populations that differ in standardized magnitude by
at least $0.121\pm0.010\,\mathrm{mag}$.


  This paper introduces two methods of creating differentially private (DP)
synthetic data that are now incorporated into the \textit{synthpop} package for
\textbf{R}. Both are suitable for synthesising categorical data, or numeric
data grouped into categories. Ten data sets with varying characteristics were
used to evaluate the methods. Measures of disclosiveness and of utility were
defined and calculated The first method is to add DP noise to a cross
tabulation of all the variables and create synthetic data by a multinomial
sample from the resulting probabilities. While this method certainly reduced
disclosure risk, it did not provide synthetic data of adequate quality for any
of the data sets. The other method is to create a set of noisy marginal
distributions that are made to agree with each other with an iterative
proportional fitting algorithm and then to use the fitted probabilities as
above. This proved to provide useable synthetic data for most of these data
sets at values of the differentially privacy parameter $\epsilon$ as low as
0.5. The relationship between the disclosure risk and $\epsilon$ is illustrated
for each of the data sets. Results show how the trade-off between
disclosiveness and data utility depend on the characteristics of the data sets.


  We investigate tomography of 21-cm brightness temperature fluctuations during
the Dark Ages as a probe for constraining primordial non-Gaussianity. We expand
the 21- cm brightness temperature up to cubic order in perturbation theory and
improve previous models of the signal by including the effect of the free
electron fraction. Using modified standard perturbation theory methods that
include baryonic pressure effects we derive an improved secondary bispectrum
and for the first time derive the secondary trispectrum of 21-cm brightness
temperature fluctuations. We then forecast the amount of information available
from the Dark Ages to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity, including the
imprints of massive particle exchange during inflation and we determine how
much signal is lost due to secondary non-Gaussianity. We find that although
secondary non-Gaussianity swamps the primordial signal, primordial
non-Gaussianity can still be extracted with signal-to-noise ratios that surpass
current and future CMB experiments by several orders of magnitude, depending on
the experimental setup. Furthermore, we conclude that for the bi- and
trispectra of massive particle exchange marginalizing over other primordial
shapes affects signal-to-noise ratios more severely than secondary shapes.
Baryonic pressure effects turn out to have a negligible impact on our
forecasts, even at scales close to the Jeans scale. The results of this work
reinforce the prospects of 21-cm brightness temperature fluctuations from the
Dark Ages as the ultimate probe for primordial non-Gaussianity.


  This is the manual of Cyan, a prototype-based object-oriented language. Cyan
supports static typing, single inheritance, mixin objects (similar to mixin
classes with mixin inheritance), generic prototypes, and Java-like interfaces.
The language has several innovations: a completely object-oriented exception
system, statically-typed closures, a kind of graphical metaobjects called
codegs, optional dynamic typing, user-defined literal objects (an innovative
way of creating objects), context objects (a generalization of closures), and
grammar methods and message sends (which makes it easy to define Domain
Specific Languages).


  In this paper, we propose an effective and robust method of spatial feature
extraction for acoustic scene analysis utilizing partially synchronized and/or
closely located distributed microphones. In the proposed method, a new cepstrum
feature utilizing a graph-based basis transformation to extract spatial
information from distributed microphones, while taking into account whether any
pairs of microphones are synchronized and/or closely located, is introduced.
Specifically, in the proposed graph-based cepstrum, the log-amplitude of a
multichannel observation is converted to a feature vector utilizing the inverse
graph Fourier transform, which is a method of basis transformation of a signal
on a graph. Results of experiments using real environmental sounds show that
the proposed graph-based cepstrum robustly extracts spatial information with
consideration of the microphone connections. Moreover, the results indicate
that the proposed method more robustly classifies acoustic scenes than
conventional spatial features when the observed sounds have a large
synchronization mismatch between partially synchronized microphone groups.


  Bitcoin is a digital currency which relies on a distributed set of miners to
mint coins and on a peer-to-peer network to broadcast transactions. The
identities of Bitcoin users are hidden behind pseudonyms (public keys) which
are recommended to be changed frequently in order to increase transaction
unlinkability.
  We present an efficient method to deanonymize Bitcoin users, which allows to
link user pseudonyms to the IP addresses where the transactions are generated.
Our techniques work for the most common and the most challenging scenario when
users are behind NATs or firewalls of their ISPs. They allow to link
transactions of a user behind a NAT and to distinguish connections and
transactions of different users behind the same NAT. We also show that a
natural countermeasure of using Tor or other anonymity services can be cut-off
by abusing anti-DoS countermeasures of the bitcoin network. Our attacks require
only a few machines and have been experimentally verified. We propose several
countermeasures to mitigate these new attacks.


  We discuss in detail the parasupersymmetric quantum mechanics of arbitrary
order where the parasupersymmetry is between the normal bosons and those
corresponding to the truncated harmonic oscillator. We show that even though
the parasusy algebra is different from that of the usual parasusy quantum
mechanics, still the consequences of the two are identical. We further show
that the parasupersymmetric quantum mechanics of arbitrary order p can also be
rewritten in terms of p supercharges (i.e. all of which obey $Q_i^{2} = 0$).
However, the Hamiltonian cannot be expressed in a simple form in terms of the p
supercharges except in a special case. A model of conformal parasupersymmetry
is also discussed and it is shown that in this case, the p supercharges, the p
conformal supercharges along with Hamiltonian H, conformal generator K and
dilatation generator D form a closed algebra.


  We consider the Schr\"odinger-Poisson system
\begin{eqnarray}\left\{\begin{array} [c]{ll} -\Delta u+V(x)
u+|u|^{p-2}u=\lambda \phi u, & \mbox{in}\mathbb{R}^{3},\\ -\Delta\phi= u^{2}, &
\mbox{in}\mathbb{R}^{3}. \end{array} \right.\nonumber \end{eqnarray} where
$\lambda>0$ is a parameter, $3< p<6$, $V\in C(\mathbb{R}^{3}) $ is $1$-periodic
in $x_j$ for $j = 1,2,3$ and 0 is in a spectral gap of the operator
$-\Delta+V$. This system is strongly indefinite, i.e., the operator $-\Delta+V$
has infinite-dimensional negative and positive spaces and it has a competitive
interplay of the nonlinearities $|u|^{p-2}u$ and $\lambda \phi u$.
  Moreover, the functional corresponding to this system does not satisfy the
Palai-Smale condition. Using a new infinite-dimensional linking theorem, we
prove that, for sufficiently small $\lambda>0,$ this system has a nontrivial
solution.


  In IEEE 802.11bc, the broadcast mode on wireless local area networks (WLANs),
data rate control that is based on acknowledgement (ACK) mechanism similar to
the one in the current IEEE 802.11 WLANs is not applicable because ACK
mechanism is not implemented. This paper addresses this challenge by proposing
ACK-less data rate adaptation methods by capturing non-broadcast uplink frames
of STAs. In IEEE 802.11bc, an use case is assumed, where a part of STAs in the
broadcast recipients is also associated with non-broadcast APs, and such STAs
periodically transmit uplink frames including ACK frames. The proposed method
is based on the idea that by overhearing such uplink frames, the broadcast AP
surveys channel conditions at partial STAs, thereby setting appropriate data
rates for the STAs. Furthermore, in order to avoid reception failures in a
large portion of STAs, this paper proposes deep reinforcement learning
(DRL)-based data rate adaptation framework that uses a sim-to-real approach.
Therein, information of reception success/failure at broadcast recipient STAs,
that could not be notified to the broadcast AP in real deployments, are made
available by simulations beforehand, thereby forming data rate adaptation
strategies. Numerical results show that utilizing overheard uplink frames of
recipients makes it feasible to manage data rates in ACK-less broadcast WLANs,
and using the sim-to-real DRL framework can decrease reception failures.


  An analytic theory of species abundance patterns (SAPs) in biological
networks is presented. The theory is based on multispecies replicator dynamics
equivalent to the Lotka-Volterra equation, with diverse interspecies
interactions. Various SAPs observed in nature are derived from a single
parameter. The abundance distribution is formed like a widely observed
left-skewed lognormal distribution. As the model has a general form, the result
can be applied to similar patterns in other complex biological networks, e.g.
gene expression.


  Neural Persistence is a prominent measure for quantifying neural network
complexity, proposed in the emerging field of topological data analysis in deep
learning. In this work, however, we find both theoretically and empirically
that the variance of network weights and spatial concentration of large weights
are the main factors that impact neural persistence. Whilst this captures
useful information for linear classifiers, we find that no relevant spatial
structure is present in later layers of deep neural networks, making neural
persistence roughly equivalent to the variance of weights. Additionally, the
proposed averaging procedure across layers for deep neural networks does not
consider interaction between layers. Based on our analysis, we propose an
extension of the filtration underlying neural persistence to the whole neural
network instead of single layers, which is equivalent to calculating neural
persistence on one particular matrix. This yields our deep graph persistence
measure, which implicitly incorporates persistent paths through the network and
alleviates variance-related issues through standardisation. Code is available
at https://github.com/ExplainableML/Deep-Graph-Persistence .


  A method of evaluation of spacelike QCD observables ${\cal D}(Q^2)$ is
presented, motivated by the renormalon structure of these quantities.


  We introduce VISOR, a new dataset of pixel annotations and a benchmark suite
for segmenting hands and active objects in egocentric video. VISOR annotates
videos from EPIC-KITCHENS, which comes with a new set of challenges not
encountered in current video segmentation datasets. Specifically, we need to
ensure both short- and long-term consistency of pixel-level annotations as
objects undergo transformative interactions, e.g. an onion is peeled, diced and
cooked - where we aim to obtain accurate pixel-level annotations of the peel,
onion pieces, chopping board, knife, pan, as well as the acting hands. VISOR
introduces an annotation pipeline, AI-powered in parts, for scalability and
quality. In total, we publicly release 272K manual semantic masks of 257 object
classes, 9.9M interpolated dense masks, 67K hand-object relations, covering 36
hours of 179 untrimmed videos. Along with the annotations, we introduce three
challenges in video object segmentation, interaction understanding and
long-term reasoning.
  For data, code and leaderboards: http://epic-kitchens.github.io/VISOR


  The simultaneous photometric and spectroscopic observations of the RR Lyrae
variables in the globular cluster, M3, published in Jurcsik et al. (2017, Paper
I) made it possible to perform Baade-Wesselink (BW) analysis of a large sample
of Blazhko stars for the first time. The BW distances of Blazhko stars turned
out to be unreliable, as significantly different distances were obtained for
the stars of the Blazhko sample and also for the same star in different
modulation phases. Even the results of small modulation-amplitude Blazhko stars
may be doubtful. This result warns that the application of the BW method to
Blazhko stars is not trustworthy.
  Keeping the distance fixed for each Blazhko star in each modulation phase, a
significant difference between the spectroscopic and the photometric radius
($R_{\textrm{sp}}$, $R_{\textrm{ph}}$) variations is detected. The phase and
amplitude variations of $R_{\textrm{sp}}$ follow the changes of the light curve
during the Blazhko cycle but the $R_{\textrm{ph}}$ curve seems to be not (or
only marginally) affected by the modulation. The asynchronous behaviour of
$R_{\textrm{sp}}$ and $R_{\textrm{ph}}$ supports the interpretation of the
Blazhko effect as a depth-dependent phenomenon, as the spectroscopic radius
variation reflects the radial displacement of the line-forming region high in
the atmosphere, while the photospheric radius variation is derived from the
information of the observed visual-band light emitted mostly by the lower
photosphere. The stability of $R_{\textrm{ph}}$ may be interpreted as a strong
argument against the non-radial-mode explanation of the Blazhko phenomenon.


  In this paper, we focus on the BDS test, which is a nonparametric test of
independence. Specifically, the null hypothesis $H_{0}$ of it is that
$\{u_{t}\}$ is i.i.d. (independent and identically distributed), where
$\{u_{t}\}$ is a random sequence. The BDS test is widely used in economics and
finance, but it has a weakness that cannot be ignored: over-rejecting $H_{0}$
even if the length $T$ of $\{u_{t}\}$ is as large as $(100,2000)$. To improve
the over-rejection problem of BDS test, considering that the correlation
integral is the foundation of BDS test, we not only accurately describe the
expectation of the correlation integral under $H_{0}$, but also calculate all
terms of the asymptotic variance of the correlation integral whose order is
$O(T^{-1})$ and $O(T^{-2})$, which is essential to improve the finite sample
performance of BDS test. Based on this, we propose a revised BDS (RBDS) test
and prove its asymptotic normality under $H_{0}$. The RBDS test not only
inherits all the advantages of the BDS test, but also effectively corrects the
over-rejection problem of the BDS test, which can be fully confirmed by the
simulation results we presented. Moreover, based on the simulation results, we
find that similar to BDS test, RBDS test would also be affected by the
parameter estimations of the ARCH-type model, resulting in size distortion, but
this phenomenon can be alleviated by the logarithmic transformation
preprocessing of the estimate residuals of the model. Besides, through some
actual datasets that have been demonstrated to fit well with ARCH-type models,
we also compared the performance of BDS test and RBDS test in evaluating the
goodness-of-fit of the model in empirical problem, and the results reflect
that, under the same condition, the performance of the RBDS test is more
encouraging.


  We investigate the stabilization of a hydrogen atom in circularly polarized
laser fields. We use a time-dependent, fully three dimensional approach to
study the quantum dynamics of the hydrogen atom subject to high intensity,
short wavelength laser pulses. We find enhanced survival probability as the
field is increased under fixed envelope conditions. We also confirm wavepacket
dynamics seen in prior time-dependent computations restricted to two
dimensions.


  For a fixed positive $\epsilon$, we show the existence of a constant
$C_\epsilon$ with the following property: Given a $\pm1$-edge-labeling
$c:E(K_n)\to \{ -1,1\}$ of the complete graph $K_n$ with $c(E(K_n))=0$, and a
spanning forest $F$ of $K_n$ of maximum degree $\Delta$, one can determine in
polynomial time an isomorphic copy $F'$ of $F$ in $K_n$ with $|c(E(F'))|\leq
\left(\frac{3}{4}+\epsilon\right)\Delta+C_\epsilon.$ Our approach is based on
the method of conditional expectation.


  Low-field magnetoresistance is ubiquitous in low-dimensional metallic systems
with high resistivity and well understood as arising due to quantum
interference on self-intersecting diffusive trajectories. We have found that in
graphene this weak-localization magnetoresistance is strongly suppressed and,
in some cases, completely absent. This unexpected observation is attributed to
mesoscopic corrugations of graphene sheets which cause a dephasing effect
similar to that of a random magnetic field.


  The observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) such as 980425, 031203 and
060218, with luminosities much lower than those of other classic bursts, lead
to the definition of a new class of GRBs -- low-luminosity GRBs. The nature of
the outflow responsible for them is not clear yet. Two scenarios have been
suggested: one is the conventional relativistic outflow with initial Lorentz
factor of order of $\Gamma_0\ga 10$ and the other is a trans-relativistic
outflow with $\Gamma_0\simeq 1-2$. Here we compare the high energy gamma-ray
afterglow emission from these two different models, taking into account both
synchrotron self inverse-Compton scattering (SSC) and the external
inverse-Compton scattering due to photons from the cooling supernova or
hypernova envelope (SNIC). We find that the conventional relativistic outflow
model predicts a relatively high gamma-ray flux from SSC at early times ($<10^4
{\rm s}$ for typical parameters) with a rapidly decaying light curve, while in
the trans-relativistic outflow model, one would expect a much flatter light
curve of high-energy gamma-ray emission at early times, which could be
dominated by both the SSC emission and SNIC emission, depending on the
properties of the underlying supernova and the shock parameter $\epsilon_e$ and
$\epsilon_B$. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope should be able to distinguish
between the two models in the future.


  EuTiO_3 is shown to exhibit novel strong spin-charge-lattice coupling deep in
the paramagnetic phase. Its existence is evidenced by an, until now, unknown
response of the paramagnetic susceptibility at temperatures exceeding the
structural phase transition temperature T_S = 282K. The "extra" features in the
susceptibility follow the rotational soft zone boundary mode temperature
dependence above and below T_S. The theoretical modeling consistently
reproduces this behavior and provides reasoning for the stabilization of the
soft optic mode other than quantum fluctuations.


  In 2009, Kyaw proved that every $n$-vertex connected $K_{1,4}$-free graph $G$
with $\sigma_4(G)\geq n-1$ contains a spanning tree with at most $3$ leaves. In
this paper, we prove an analogue of Kyaw's result for connected $K_{1,5}$-free
graphs. We show that every $n$-vertex connected $K_{1,5}$-free graph $G$ with
$\sigma_5(G)\geq n-1$ contains a spanning tree with at most $4$ leaves.
Moreover, the degree sum condition `$\sigma_5(G)\geq n-1$' is best possible.


  Gaussian processes are the leading class of distributions on random
functions, but they suffer from well known issues including difficulty scaling
and inflexibility with respect to certain shape constraints (such as
nonnegativity). Here we propose Deep Random Splines, a flexible class of random
functions obtained by transforming Gaussian noise through a deep neural network
whose output are the parameters of a spline. Unlike Gaussian processes, Deep
Random Splines allow us to readily enforce shape constraints while inheriting
the richness and tractability of deep generative models. We also present an
observational model for point process data which uses Deep Random Splines to
model the intensity function of each point process and apply it to neural
population data to obtain a low-dimensional representation of spiking activity.
Inference is performed via a variational autoencoder that uses a novel
recurrent encoder architecture that can handle multiple point processes as
input. We use a newly collected dataset where a primate completes a pedaling
task, and observe better dimensionality reduction with our model than with
competing alternatives.


  We present a new structural (or syntatic) approach for estimating the
satisfiability threshold of random 3-SAT formulae. We show its efficiency in
obtaining a jump from the previous upper bounds, lowering them to 4.506. The
method combines well with other techniques, and also applies to other problems,
such as the 3-colourability of random graphs.


  Letting a deep network be aware of the quality of its own predictions is an
interesting yet important problem. In the task of instance segmentation, the
confidence of instance classification is used as mask quality score in most
instance segmentation frameworks. However, the mask quality, quantified as the
IoU between the instance mask and its ground truth, is usually not well
correlated with classification score. In this paper, we study this problem and
propose Mask Scoring R-CNN which contains a network block to learn the quality
of the predicted instance masks. The proposed network block takes the instance
feature and the corresponding predicted mask together to regress the mask IoU.
The mask scoring strategy calibrates the misalignment between mask quality and
mask score, and improves instance segmentation performance by prioritizing more
accurate mask predictions during COCO AP evaluation. By extensive evaluations
on the COCO dataset, Mask Scoring R-CNN brings consistent and noticeable gain
with different models, and outperforms the state-of-the-art Mask R-CNN. We hope
our simple and effective approach will provide a new direction for improving
instance segmentation. The source code of our method is available at
\url{https://github.com/zjhuang22/maskscoring_rcnn}.


  In this paper we define the analogue of Calabi--Yau geometry for generic
$D=4$, $\mathcal{N}=2$ flux backgrounds in type II supergravity and M-theory.
We show that solutions of the Killing spinor equations are in one-to-one
correspondence with integrable, globally defined structures in
$E_{7(7)}\times\mathbb{R}^+$ generalised geometry. Such "exceptional
Calabi--Yau" geometries are determined by two generalised objects that
parametrise hyper- and vector-multiplet degrees of freedom and generalise
conventional complex, symplectic and hyper-Kahler geometries. The integrability
conditions for both hyper- and vector-multiplet structures are given by the
vanishing of moment maps for the "generalised diffeomorphism group" of
diffeomorphisms combined with gauge transformations. We give a number of
explicit examples and discuss the structure of the moduli spaces of solutions.
We then extend our construction to $D=5$ and $D=6$ flux backgrounds preserving
eight supercharges, where similar structures appear, and finally discuss the
analogous structures in $O(d,d)\times\mathbb{R}^+$ generalised geometry.


  We establish the most general class of spin-1/2 integrable Richardson-Gaudin
models including an arbitrary magnetic field, returning a fully anisotropic
(XYZ) model. The restriction to spin-1/2 relaxes the usual integrability
constraints, allowing for a general solution where the couplings between spins
lack the usual antisymmetric properties of Richardson-Gaudin models. The full
set of conserved charges are constructed explicitly and shown to satisfy a set
of quadratic equations, allowing for the numerical treatment of a fully
anisotropic central spin in an external magnetic field. While this approach
does not provide expressions for the exact eigenstates, it allows their
eigenvalues to be obtained, and expectation values of local observables can
then be calculated from the Hellmann-Feynman theorem.


  We have detected CO 1-0 emission along the tidal tail of the NGC 4194 (the
Medusa) merger. It is the first CO detection in the optical tail of a minor
merger. Emission is detected both in the centre of the tail and at its tip. The
molecular mass in the 33'' Onsala 20m beam is estimated to be >= 8.5 x 10^7
M_{sun} which is at least 4% of the total molecular mass measured so far in
this system. We suggest that the emission is a molecular tidal tail which is
part of the extended structure of the main body, and that the molecular gas was
thrown out by the collision instead of having formed in situ from condensing
atomic material. We find it unlikely that the emission is associated with a
tidal dwarf galaxy (even if the future formation of such an object is
possible), but high resolution HI, CO and optical observations are necessary to
resolve the issue. The Medusa is very likely the result of an elliptical+spiral
collison and our detection supports the notion that molecular gas in minor
mergers can be found at great distances from the merger centre.


  Nova explosions occur on the white dwarf (WD) component of a Cataclysmic
Variable stellar system which is accreting matter lost by a companion. A Type
Ia supernova explosion is thought to result when a WD, in a similar binary
configuration, grows in mass to the Chandrasekhar Limit. Here, we present
calculations of accretion of Solar matter, at a variety of mass accretion
rates, onto hot ($2.3 \times 10^{5}$K), luminous (30L$_\odot$), massive
(1.25M$_\odot$, 1.35M$_\odot$) Carbon-Oxygen WDs. In contrast to our nova
simulations where the WD has a low initial luminosity and a thermonuclear
runaway (TNR) occurs and ejects material, these simulations do not eject
material (or only a small fraction of the accreted material) and the WD grows
in mass. A hydrogen TNR does not occur because hydrogen fuses to helium in the
surface layers, and we call this process Surface Hydrogen Burning (SHB). As the
helium layer grows in mass, it gradually fuses either to carbon and oxygen or
to more massive nuclei depending on the WD mass and mass accretion rate. If
such a WD were to explode in a SN Ia event, therefore, it would show neither
hydrogen nor helium in its spectrum as is observed. Moreover, the luminosities
and effective temperatures of our simulations agree with the observations of
some of the Super Soft X-ray Binary Sources and, therefore, our results
strengthen previous speculation that some of them (CAL 83 and CAL 87 for
example) are probably progenitors of SN Ia explosions. Finally, we have
achieved SHB for values of the mass accretion rate that almost span the
observed values of the Cataclysmic Variables.


  We consider variational discretization of a parabolic optimal control problem
governed by space-time measure controls. For the state discretization we use a
Petrov-Galerkin method employing piecewise constant states and piecewise linear
and continuous test functions in time. For the space discretization we use
piecewise linear and continuous functions. As a result the controls are
composed of Dirac measures in space-time, centered at points on the discrete
space-time grid. We prove that the optimal discrete states and controls
converge strongly in $L^q$ and weakly-$*$ in $\mathcal{M}$, respectively, to
their smooth counterparts, where $q \in (1,\min\{2,1+2/d\}]$ is the spatial
dimension. Furthermore, we compare our approach to a approach by Casas, E. and
Kunisch, K., where the corresponding control problem is discretized employing a
discontinuous Galerkin method for the state discretization and where the
discrete controls are piecewise constant in time and Dirac measures in space.
Numerical experiments highlight the features of our discrete approach.


  In this paper we show that three cavity fields can be entangled when they are
tuned on resonance with an ensemble of dressed three-level atoms. The master
equation for the three cavity modes is derived by using atomic dressed states
and the inseparability of the three output cavity modes is described by using a
sufficient criterion proposed by van Loock and Furusawa. The physical cause is
the atomic coherence effects, by which the quantum correlations are created in
the field dynamics.


  We report on the existence and stability of multicolor lattice vortex
solitons constituted by coupled fundamental frequency and second-harmonic waves
in optical lattices in quadratic nonlinear media. It is shown that the solitons
are stable almost in the entire domain of their existence, and that the
instability domain decreases with the increase of the lattice depth. We also
show the generation of the solitons, and the feasibility of the concept of
lattice soliton algebra.


  According to d'Espagnat we must choose between nonlinear breaks in quantum
state evolution and weak objectivity. In this comment it is shown that this
choice is forced on us by an inconsistent pseudo-realistic interpretation of
quantum states. A strongly objective one-world interpretation of linear quantum
mechanics is presented. It is argued that the weak objectivity favored by
d'Espagnat is, in fact, inconsistent with quantum mechanics.


  Server breaches are an unfortunate reality on today's Internet. In the
context of deep neural network (DNN) models, they are particularly harmful,
because a leaked model gives an attacker "white-box" access to generate
adversarial examples, a threat model that has no practical robust defenses. For
practitioners who have invested years and millions into proprietary DNNs, e.g.
medical imaging, this seems like an inevitable disaster looming on the horizon.
  In this paper, we consider the problem of post-breach recovery for DNN
models. We propose Neo, a new system that creates new versions of leaked
models, alongside an inference time filter that detects and removes adversarial
examples generated on previously leaked models. The classification surfaces of
different model versions are slightly offset (by introducing hidden
distributions), and Neo detects the overfitting of attacks to the leaked model
used in its generation. We show that across a variety of tasks and attack
methods, Neo is able to filter out attacks from leaked models with very high
accuracy, and provides strong protection (7--10 recoveries) against attackers
who repeatedly breach the server. Neo performs well against a variety of strong
adaptive attacks, dropping slightly in # of breaches recoverable, and
demonstrates potential as a complement to DNN defenses in the wild.


  Recently (Phys. Lett. A302 (2002) 253, hep-th/0208210; hep-th/0403146)
employing bounded infinite-dimensional representations of the rotation group we
have argued that one can obtain the consistent monopole theory with generalized
Dirac quantization condition, $2\kappa\mu \in \mathbb Z$, where $\kappa$ is the
weight of the Dirac string. Here we extend this proof to the unbounded
infinite-dimensional representations.


  Motivated by modeling transport processes in the growth of neurons, we
present results on (nonlinear) Fokker-Planck equations where the total mass is
not conserved. This is either due to in- and outflow boundary conditions or to
spatially distributed reaction terms. We are able to prove exponential decay
towards equilibrium using entropy methods in several situations. As there is no
conservation of mass it is difficult to exploit the gradient flow structure of
the differential operator which renders the analysis more challenging. In
particular, classical logarithmic Sobolev inequalities are not applicable any
more. Our analytic results are illustrated by extensive numerical studies.


  Is Power Line Communications (PLC) a good candidate for Smart Grid
applications? The objective of this paper is to address this important
question. To do so we provide an overview of what PLC can deliver today by
surveying its history and describing the most recent technological advances in
the area. We then address Smart Grid applications as instances of sensor
networking and network control problems and discuss the main conclusion one can
draw from the literature on these subjects. The application scenario of PLC
within the Smart Grid is then analyzed in detail. Since a necessary ingredient
of network planning is modeling, we also discuss two aspects of engineering
modeling that relate to our question. The first aspect is modeling the PLC
channel through fading models. The second aspect we review is the Smart Grid
control and traffic modeling problem which allows us to achieve a better
understanding of the communications requirements. Finally, this paper reports
recent studies on the electrical and topological properties of a sample power
distribution network. Power grid topological studies are very important for PLC
networking as the power grid is not only the information source \textit{but
also} the information delivery system - a unique feature when PLC is used for
the Smart Grid.


  The present paper aims at investigating the effect of rotation up to third
order in the angular velocity of a star on p and g modes, based on the
formalism developed by Soufi et al. (1998). Our ultimate goal is the study of
oscillations of $\beta$ Cephei stars which are often rapidly rotating stars.
Our study shows that the third-order perturbation formalism presented by Soufi
et al. (1998) must be corrected for some missing terms and some misprints in
the equations. As a first step in our study of $\beta$ Cephei stars, we
quantify by numerical calculations the effect of rotation on the oscillation
frequencies of a uniformly rotating zero-age main-sequence star with
12~$M_\odot$. For an equatorial velocity of 100~$\rm km \, s^{-1}$, it is found
that the second- and third-order corrections for $(l,m)=(2,2)$, for instance,
are of order of 0.01$\%$ of the frequency for radial order $n=6$ and reaches up
to 0.5$\%$ for $n=14$.


  We report temperature and density dependences of the spin susceptibility of
strongly interacting electrons in Si inversion layers. We measured (i) the
itinerant electron susceptibility $\chi^*$ from the Shubnikov-de Haas
oscillations in crossed magnetic fields and (ii) thermodynamic susceptibility
$\chi_{\rm T}$ sensitive to all the electrons in the layer. Both $\chi^*$ and
$\chi_{\rm T}$ are strongly enhanced with lowering the electron density in the
metallic phase. However, there is no sign of divergency of either quantity at
the density of the metal-insulator transition $n_c$. Moreover, the value of
$\chi_{\rm T}$, which can be measured across the transition down to very low
densities deep in the insulating phase, increases with density at $n<n_c$, as
expected. In the absence of magnetic field, we found the temperature dependence
of $\chi^*$ to be consistent with Fermi-liquid-based predictions, and to be
much weaker than the power-law, predicted by non-Fermi-liquid models. We
attribute a much stronger temperature dependence of $\chi_{\rm T}$ to localized
spin droplets. In strong enough in-plane magnetic field, we found the
temperature dependence of $\chi^*$ to be stronger than that expected for the
Fermi liquid interaction corrections.


  Many time-trial and triathlon bicycle races take place on relatively flat,
closed-circuit courses. In the absence of hills, riding-speed is limited almost
solely by aerodynamic drag; consequently, winds can have a big effect on
elapsed times. I analyze the special case of a straight out-and-back race in a
steady wind, assuming the rider has a given total amount of energy to expend
and can choose only two speeds - the aided speed with tailwind and the hindered
speed into headwind. In this ideal circumstance the problem of choosing optimal
riding speeds reduces to a constrained nonlinear optimization that can be
solved with elementary calculus. My analysis reveals a practical rule of thumb
that can be used more generally to choose optimal riding speeds for time-trial
racing on closed-circuit courses in the presence of headwinds and tailwinds.


  We investigate Faraday's law of induction manifested in the quantum state of
Aharonov-Bohm loops. In particular, we propose a flux-switching experiment for
a double-dot AB ring to verify the phase shift induced by Faraday's law. We
show that the induced {\em Faraday phase} is geometric and nontopological. Our
study demonstrates that the relation between the local phases of a ring at
different fluxes is not arbitrary but is instead determined by Faraday's
inductive law, which is in strong contrast to the arbitrary local phase of an
Aharonov-Bohm ring for a given flux.


  We study the effects of rapidly cooling to T = 0 a spin chain with conserved
dynamics and competing interactions. Depending on the degree of competition,
the system is found to get arrested in different kinds of metastable states.
The most interesting of these has an inhomogeneous mixture of interspersed
active and quiescent regions. In this state, the steady-state autocorrelation
function decays as a stretched exponential $\sim
\exp(-{(t/\tau_{o})}^{{1}\over{3}})$, and there is a two-step relaxation to
equilibrium when the temperature is raised slightly.


  The discriminability of feature representation is the key to open-set face
recognition. Previous methods rely on the learnable weights of the
classification layer that represent the identities. However, the evaluation
process learns no identity representation and drops the classifier from
training. This inconsistency could confuse the feature encoder in understanding
the evaluation goal and hinder the effect of identity-based methods. To
alleviate the above problem, we propose a novel approach namely Contrastive
Regularization for Face recognition (CoReFace) to apply image-level
regularization in feature representation learning. Specifically, we employ
sample-guided contrastive learning to regularize the training with the
image-image relationship directly, which is consistent with the evaluation
process. To integrate contrastive learning into face recognition, we augment
embeddings instead of images to avoid the image quality degradation. Then, we
propose a novel contrastive loss for the representation distribution by
incorporating an adaptive margin and a supervised contrastive mask to generate
steady loss values and avoid the collision with the classification supervision
signal. Finally, we discover and solve the semantically repetitive signal
problem in contrastive learning by exploring new pair coupling protocols.
Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy and efficiency of our CoReFace
which is highly competitive with the state-of-the-art approaches.


  We propose the multi-layered cepstrum (MLC) method to estimate multiple
fundamental frequencies (MF0) of a signal under challenging contamination such
as high-pass filter noise. Taking the operation of cepstrum (i.e., Fourier
transform, filtering, and nonlinear activation) recursively, MLC is shown as an
efficient method to enhance MF0 saliency in a step-by-step manner. Evaluation
on a real-world polyphonic music dataset under both normal and low-fidelity
conditions demonstrates the potential of MLC.


  We perform for the first time N-body simulations of Interacting Dark Energy
assuming non-Gaussian initial conditions, with the aim of investigating
possible degeneracies of these two theoretically independent phenomena in
different observational probes. We focus on the large-scale matter
distribution, as well as on the statistical and structural properties of
collapsed halos and cosmic voids. On very large scales, we show that it is
possible to choose the Interaction and non-Gaussian parameters such that their
effects on the halo power spectrum cancel, and the power spectrum is
indistinguishable from a $\mathrm{\Lambda CDM}$ model. On small scales,
measurements of the non-linear matter power spectrum, halo-matter bias, halo
and subhalo mass function and cosmic void number function validate the
degeneracy determined on large scales. However, the internal structural
properties of halos and cosmic voids, namely halo concentration-mass relation
and void density profile, are very different from those measured in the
$\mathrm{\Lambda CDM}$ model, thereby breaking the degeneracy. In practice, the
values of $\mathrm{f_{NL}}$ required to cancel the effect of interaction are
already ruled by observations. Our results show in principle that the
combination of large- and small-scale probes is needed to constrain Interacting
Dark Energy and Primordial non-Gaussianity separately.


  We have developed a model that explains cosmic rays with energies E between
\~0.3 PeV and the energy of the second knee at E_2 ~ 3*10^{17} eV as
originating from a recent Galactic gamma-ray burst (GRB) that occurred ~1 Myr
ago within 1 kpc from Earth. Relativistic shocks from GRBs are assumed to
inject power-law distributions of cosmic rays (CRs) to the highest energies.
Diffusive propagation of CRs from the local GRB explains the CR spectrum near
and above the first knee at E_1 ~ 3*10^{15} eV. The first and the second knees
are explained as being directly connected with the injection of plasma
turbulence in the interstellar medium on a ~1 pc and ~100 pc scales,
respectively. Transition to CRs from extragalactic GRBs occurs at E > E_2. The
origin of the ankle in the CR spectrum at E ~ 4*10^{18} eV is due to photopair
energy losses of UHECRs on cosmological timescales, as also suggested by
Berezinsky and collaborators. Any significant excess flux of extremely high
energy CRs deviating from the exponential cutoff behavior at E> E_{GZK} =
6*10^{19} eV would imply a significant contribution due to recent GRB activity
on timescales t < 10^8 yrs from local extragalactic sources within ~10 Mpc.


  Here we describe model calculations to follow the spatio-temporal evolution
of secondary electron cascades in diamond. The band structure of the insulator
has been explicitly incorporated into the calculations as it affects
ionizations from the valence band. A Monte-Carlo model was constructed to
describe the path of electrons following the impact of a single electron of
energy E 250 eV. The results show the evolution of the secondary electron
cascades in terms of the number of electrons liberated, the spatial
distribution of these electrons, and the energy distribution among the
electrons as a function of time. The predicted ionization rates (5-13 electrons
in 100 fs) lie within the limits given by experiments and phenomenological
models. Calculation of the local electron density and the corresponding Debye
length shows that the latter is systematically larger than the radius of the
electron cloud. This means that the electron gas generated does not represent a
plasma in a single impact cascade triggered by an electron of E 250 eV energy.
This is important as it justifies the independent-electron approximation used
in the model. At 1 fs, the (average) spatial distribution of secondary
electrons is anisotropic with the electron cloud elongated in the direction of
the primary impact. The maximal radius of the cascade is about 50 A at this
time. As the system cools, energy is distributed more equally, and the spatial
distribution of the electron cloud becomes isotropic. At 90 fs maximal radius
is about 150 A. The Monte-Carlo model described here could be adopted for the
investigation of radiation damage in other insulators and has implications for
planned experiments with intense femtosecond X-ray sources.


  We study a new and stronger notion of fault-tolerant graph structures whose
size bounds depend on the degree of the failing edge set, rather than the total
number of faults. For a subset of faulty edges $F \subseteq G$, the
faulty-degree $\deg(F)$ is the largest number of faults in $F$ incident to any
given vertex. We design new fault-tolerant structures with size comparable to
previous constructions, but which tolerate every fault set of small
faulty-degree $\deg(F)$, rather than only fault sets of small size $|F|$. Our
main results are:
  - New FT-Certificates: For every $n$-vertex graph $G$ and degree threshold
$f$, one can compute a connectivity certificate $H \subseteq G$ with $|E(H)| =
\widetilde{O}(fn)$ edges that has the following guarantee: for any edge set $F$
with faulty-degree $\deg(F)\leq f$ and every vertex pair $u,v$, it holds that
$u$ and $v$ are connected in $H \setminus F$ iff they are connected in $G
\setminus F$. This bound on $|E(H)|$ is nearly tight. Since our certificates
handle some fault sets of size up to $|F|=O(fn)$, prior work did not imply any
nontrivial upper bound for this problem, even when $f=1$.
  - New FT-Spanners: We show that every $n$-vertex graph $G$ admits a
$(2k-1)$-spanner $H$ with $|E(H)| = O_k(f^{1-1/k} n^{1+1/k})$ edges, which
tolerates any fault set $F$ of faulty-degree at most $f$. This bound on
$|E(H)|$ optimal up to its hidden dependence on $k$, and it is close to the
bound of $O_k(|F|^{1/2} n^{1+1/k} + |F|n)$ that is known for the case where the
total number of faults is $|F|$ [Bodwin, Dinitz, Robelle SODA '22]. Our proof
of this theorem is non-constructive, but by following a proof strategy of
Dinitz and Robelle [PODC '20], we show that the runtime can be made polynomial
by paying an additional $\text{polylog } n$ factor in spanner size.


  With time-dependent Lindblad operators, an open system may have a
time-dependent decoherence-free subspace (t-DFS). In this paper, we define the
t-DFS and present a necessary and sufficient condition for the t-DFS. Two
examples are presented to illustrate the t-DFS, showing that this t-DFS is not
trivial, when the dimension of the t-DFS varies.


  Most population I Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are the He-rich descendants of the
most massive stars (M_i = 25 - 100 M_sun). Evidence has been accumulating over
the years that among all pop I WR stars, those of the relatively cool, N-rich
subtype "WN8" are among the most peculiar: 1. They tend to be runaways, with
large space velocity and/or avoid clusters. 2. Unlike their equally luminous
WN6,7 cousins, only a very small number of WN8 stars are known to belong to a
close binary with an OB companion. 3. They are the systematically most highly
stochastically variable among all (single) WR stars. Taken together, these
suggest that many WN8 stars may originally have been in close binaries (like
half of all stars), in which the original primary exploded as a supernova,
leaving behind a very close binary containing a massive star with a neutron
star/black hole companion (like Cyg X-3). When the massive remaining star
evolved in turn, it engulfed and eventually swallowed the compact companion,
leading to the presently puffed-up, variable WN8 star. Such stars could fall in
the realm of the exotic Thorne-Zytkow objects.


  The HoloLens (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA), a head-worn, optically
see-through augmented reality display, is the main player in the recent boost
in medical augmented reality research. In medical settings, the HoloLens
enables the physician to obtain immediate insight into patient information,
directly overlaid with their view of the clinical scenario, the medical student
to gain a better understanding of complex anatomies or procedures, and even the
patient to execute therapeutic tasks with improved, immersive guidance. In this
systematic review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the usage of the
first-generation HoloLens within the medical domain, from its release in March
2016, until the year of 2021, were attention is shifting towards it's
successor, the HoloLens 2. We identified 171 relevant publications through a
systematic search of the PubMed and Scopus databases. We analyze these
publications in regard to their intended use case, technical methodology for
registration and tracking, data sources, visualization as well as validation
and evaluation. We find that, although the feasibility of using the HoloLens in
various medical scenarios has been shown, increased efforts in the areas of
precision, reliability, usability, workflow and perception are necessary to
establish AR in clinical practice.


  Homophily is a significant mechanism for link prediction in complex network,
of which principle describes that people with similar profiles or experiences
tend to tie with each other. In a multi-relationship network, friendship among
people has been utilized to reinforce similarity of taste for recommendation
system whose basic idea is similar to homophily, yet how the taste inversely
affects friendship prediction is little discussed. This paper contributes to
address the issue by analyzing two benchmark datasets both including user's
behavioral information of taste and friendship based on the principle of
homophily. It can be found that the creation of friendship tightly associates
with personal taste. Especially, the behavioral information of taste involving
with popular objects is much more effective to improve the performance of
friendship prediction. However, this result seems to be contradictory to the
finding in [Q.M. Zhang, et al., PLoS ONE 8(2013)e62624] that the behavior
information of taste involving with popular objects is redundant in
recommendation system. We thus discuss this inconformity to comprehensively
understand the correlation between them.


  We present a proof of the Amitsur--Levitzki theorem which is a basis for a
general theory of equivariant skew--symmetric maps on matrices.


  Frequency-degenerate pulsed type-I parametric downconversion is a widely used
source of squeezed light for numerous quantum optical applications. However,
this source is typically spectrally multimode and the generated squeezing is
distributed between many spectral modes with a limited degree of squeezing per
mode. We show that in a nonlinear crystal, where the condition of complete
group velocity matching for the pump and the signal is satisfied, the number of
generated modes may be as low as 2 or 3 modes. We illustrate the general theory
with the example of the MgO-doped lithium niobate crystal pumped at 775 nm and
generating squeezed light at 1.55 $\mu$m. Our model includes the derivation of
the degree of squeezing from the properties of the pump and the crystal and
shows that 12 dB of squeezing can be obtained in a periodically poled crystal
of length 80 mm.


  The Floquet exponents of periodic field lines are studied through the
variations of the magnetic action on the magnetic axis, which is assumed to be
elliptical. The near-axis formalism developed by Mercier, Solov'ev and
Shafranov is combined with a Lagrangian approach. The on-axis Floquet exponent
is shown to coincide with the on-axis rotational transform, and this is a
coordinate-independent result. A discrete solution suitable for numerical
implementation is introduced, which gives the Floquet exponents as solutions to
an eigenvalue problem. This discrete formalism expresses the exponents as the
eigenvalues of a $6\times 6$ matrix.


  We study the spectrum of the product of two Toeplitz operators. Assume that
the symbols of these operators are continuous and real-valued and that one of
them is non-negative. We prove that the spectrum of the product of finite
section Toeplitz matrices converges to the spectrum of the product of the
semi-infinite Toeplitz operators. We give an example showing that the supremum
of this set is not always the supremum of the product of the two symbols.
Finally, we provide an application in probability which is the first motivation
of this study. More precisely, we obtain a large deviation principle for
Gaussian quadratic forms.


  We propose and analyze a class of vectorial crystallization problems, with
applications to crystallization of anisotropic molecules and collective
behavior such as birds flocking and fish schooling.
  We focus on two-dimensional systems of "oriented" particles: Admissible
configurations are represented by vectorial empirical measures with density in
$\mathcal S^1$. We endow such configurations with a graph structure, where the
bonds represent the "convenient" interactions between particles, and the
proposed variational principle consists in maximizing their number.
  The class of bonds is determined by hard sphere type pairwise potentials,
depending both on the distance between the particles and on the angles between
the segment joining two particles and their orientations, through threshold
criteria.
  Different ground states emerge by tuning the angular dependence in the
potential, mimicking ducklings swimming in a row formation and predicting as
well, for some specific values of the angular parameter, the so-called {\it
diamond formation} in fish schooling.


  Generative Commonsense Reasoning (GCR) requires a model to reason about a
situation using commonsense knowledge, while generating coherent sentences.
Although the quality of the generated sentences is crucial, the diversity of
the generation is equally important because it reflects the model's ability to
use a range of commonsense knowledge facts. Large Language Models (LLMs) have
shown proficiency in enhancing the generation quality across various tasks
through in-context learning (ICL) using given examples without the need for any
fine-tuning. However, the diversity aspect in LLM outputs has not been
systematically studied before. To address this, we propose a simple method that
diversifies the LLM generations, while preserving their quality. Experimental
results on three benchmark GCR datasets show that our method achieves an ideal
balance between the quality and diversity. Moreover, the sentences generated by
our proposed method can be used as training data to improve diversity in
existing commonsense generators.


  Understanding crystal characteristics down to the atomistic level
increasingly emerges as a crucial insight for creating solid state platforms
for qubits with reproducible and homogeneous properties. Here, isotope
composition depth profiles in a SiGe/$^{28}$Si/SiGe heterostructure are
analyzed with atom probe tomography (APT) and time-of-flight secondary-ion mass
spectrometry. Spin-echo dephasing times $T_2^{echo}=128 \mu s$ and valley
energy splittings around $200 \mu eV$ have been observed for single spin qubits
in this quantum well (QW) heterostructure, pointing towards the suppression of
qubit decoherence through hyperfine interaction or via scattering between
valley states. The concentration of nuclear spin-carrying $^{29}$Si is 50 ppm
in the $^{28}$Si QW. APT allows to uncover that both the top SiGe/$^{28}$Si and
the bottom $^{28}$Si/SiGe interfaces of the QW are shaped by epitaxial growth
front segregation signatures on a few monolayer scale. A subsequent thermal
treatment broadens the top interface by about two monolayers, while the width
of the bottom interface remains unchanged. Using a tight-binding model
including SiGe alloy disorder, these experimental results suggest that the
combination of the slightly thermally broadened top interface and of a minimal
Ge concentration of $0.3 \%$ in the QW, resulting from segregation, is
instrumental for the observed large valley splitting. Minimal Ge additions $< 1
\%$, which get more likely in thin QWs, will hence support high valley
splitting without compromising coherence times. At the same time, taking
thermal treatments during device processing as well as the occurrence of
crystal growth characteristics into account seems important for the design of
reproducible qubit properties.