  The rapid advancement in text-to-video (T2V) generative models has enabled
the synthesis of high-fidelity video content guided by textual descriptions.
Despite this significant progress, these models are often susceptible to
hallucination, generating contents that contradict the input text, which poses
a challenge to their reliability and practical deployment. To address this
critical issue, we introduce the SoraDetector, a novel unified framework
designed to detect hallucinations across diverse large T2V models, including
the cutting-edge Sora model. Our framework is built upon a comprehensive
analysis of hallucination phenomena, categorizing them based on their
manifestation in the video content. Leveraging the state-of-the-art keyframe
extraction techniques and multimodal large language models, SoraDetector first
evaluates the consistency between extracted video content summary and textual
prompts, then constructs static and dynamic knowledge graphs (KGs) from frames
to detect hallucination both in single frames and across frames. Sora Detector
provides a robust and quantifiable measure of consistency, static and dynamic
hallucination. In addition, we have developed the Sora Detector Agent to
automate the hallucination detection process and generate a complete video
quality report for each input video. Lastly, we present a novel meta-evaluation
benchmark, T2VHaluBench, meticulously crafted to facilitate the evaluation of
advancements in T2V hallucination detection. Through extensive experiments on
videos generated by Sora and other large T2V models, we demonstrate the
efficacy of our approach in accurately detecting hallucinations. The code and
dataset can be accessed via GitHub.


  In this article, we consider a topological dynamical system. The generic
limit set is the smallest closed subset which has a comeager realm of
attraction. We study some of its topological properties, and the links with
equicontinuity and sensitivity. We emphasize the case of cellular automata, for
which the generic limit set is included in all subshift attractors, and discuss
directional dynamics, as well as the link with measure-theoretical similar
notions.


  The condition number of solutions to full rank linear least-squares problem
are shown to be given by an optimization problem that involves nuclear norms of
rank 2 matrices. The condition number is with respect to the least-squares
coefficient matrix and 2-norms. It depends on three quantities each of which
can contribute ill-conditioning. The literature presents several estimates for
this condition number with varying results; even standard reference texts
contain serious overestimates. The use of the nuclear norm affords a single
derivation of the best known lower and upper bounds on the condition number and
shows why there is unlikely to be a closed formula.


  The X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft provided
measurements of major-element ratios across Mercury's surface. We present
global maps of Mg/Si, Al/Si, S/Si, Ca/Si, and Fe/Si derived from XRS data
collected throughout MESSENGER's orbital mission. We describe the procedures we
used to select and filter data and to combine them to make the final maps,
which are archived in NASA's Planetary Data System. Areal coverage is variable
for the different element-ratio maps, with 100% coverage for Mg/Si and Al/Si,
but only 18% coverage for Fe/Si north of 30 $^{\circ}$ N, where the spatial
resolution is highest. The spatial resolution is improved over previous maps by
10-15% because of the inclusion of higher-resolution data from late in the
mission when the spacecraft periapsis altitude was low. Unlike typical
planetary data maps, however, the spatial resolution of the XRS maps can vary
from pixel to pixel, and thus care must be taken in interpreting small-scale
features. We provide several examples of how the XRS maps can be used to
investigate elemental variations in the context of geological features on
Mercury, which range in size from single $\sim$100-km-diameter craters to large
impact basins. We expect that these maps will provide the basis for and/or
contribute to studies of Mercury's origin and geological history for many years
to come.


  In models of hopping disorder in the absence of external fields and at the
band center, the electrons are less localized in space than the standard
exponential Anderson localization. A signature of this anomalous localization
is the square root dependence of the logarithmic average of the conductance on
the system length, in contrast to the linear length dependence for Anderson
localized systems. We study the effect of a time-periodic external field in the
scaling and distribution of the conductance of a quantum wire with hopping
disorder. In the low-frequency regime, we show a transition between anomalous
localization and Anderson localization as a function of the parameters of the
external field. The Floquet modes mix different energy contributions and
standard length dependence of the logarithmic average of the conductance is
gradually recovered as we lower the frequency or increase the amplitude of the
external field. In the high-frequency regime, the system presents still
anomalous localization but the conductance is also renormalized, depending on
the parameters of the external field, by interference effects at the coupling
to the leads. This allows for a high degree of control of the average of the
conductance.


  Exceptional field theory (EFT) gives a geometric underpinning of the
U-duality symmetries of M-theory. In this talk I give an overview of the
surprisingly rich algebraic structures which naturally appear in the context of
EFT. This includes Borcherds superalgebras, Cartan type superalgebras (tensor
hierarchy algebras) and $L_\infty$ algebras. This is the written version of a
talk based mainly on refs. [1-6], presented at ISQS25, Prague, June 2017, at
QTS-10/LT-12, Varna, June 2017, at SQS 2017, Dubna, Aug. 2017, and at the 9th
Mathematical Physics Meeting, Belgrade, Sept. 2017.


  This paper presents our system developed for the SemEval-2024 Task 1:
Semantic Textual Relatedness for African and Asian Languages. The shared task
aims at measuring the semantic textual relatedness between pairs of sentences,
with a focus on a range of under-represented languages. In this work, we
propose using machine translation for data augmentation to address the
low-resource challenge of limited training data. Moreover, we apply
task-adaptive pre-training on unlabeled task data to bridge the gap between
pre-training and task adaptation. For model training, we investigate both full
fine-tuning and adapter-based tuning, and adopt the adapter framework for
effective zero-shot cross-lingual transfer. We achieve competitive results in
the shared task: our system performs the best among all ranked teams in both
subtask A (supervised learning) and subtask C (cross-lingual transfer).


  In this article we examine the conjecture of Neumann and Reid that the only
hyperbolic knots in the $3$-sphere which admit hidden symmetries are the
figure-eight knot and the two dodecahedral knots. Knots whose complements cover
hyperbolic reflection orbifolds admit hidden symmetries, and we verify the
Neumann-Reid conjecture for knots which cover small hyperbolic reflection
orbifolds. We also show that a reflection orbifold covered by the complement of
an AP knot is necessarily small. Thus when $K$ is an AP knot, the complement of
$K$ covers a reflection orbifold exactly when $K$ is either the figure-eight
knot or one of the dodecahedral knots.


  We propose a new method of quantization of a wide class of dynamical systems
that originates directly from the equations of motion. The method is based on
the correspondence between the classical and the quantum Poisson brackets,
postulated by Dirac. This correspondence applied to open (non-Hamiltonian)
systems allows one to point out the way of transition from the quantum
description based on the Lindblad equation to the dynamical description of
their classical analogs by the equations of motion and vice versa. As the
examples of using of the method we describe the procedure of the quantization
of three widely considered dynamical systems: 1) the harmonic oscillator with
friction, 2) the oscillator with a nonlinear damping that simulates the process
of the emergence of the limit cycle, and 3) the system of two periodic rotators
with a weak interaction that synchronizes their oscillations. We discuss a
possible application of the method for a description of quantum fluctuations in
Josephson junctions with a strong damping and for the quantization of open
magnetic systems with a dissipation and a pumping.


  Digital transformation is a process of digitizing the working and living
environment in which people are at the center of digitization. In this paper,
we present a personas-based guideline for system developers on how the
humanization of digital transformation integrates into the design process. The
proposed guideline uses the positive personas from the beginning as a basis for
the transformation of the working environment into the digital form. We used
the literature research as a preliminary study for the process of
wellbeing-driven digital transformation design, consisting of questions for
structuring the required information in the positive personas as well as a
potential method that could be integrated into the wellbeing-based design
process.


  In our contemporary academic inquiry, we present "Diffusion-C," a
foundational methodology to analyze the generative restrictions of Diffusion
Models, particularly those akin to GANs, DDPM, and DDIM. By employing input
visual data that has been subjected to a myriad of corruption modalities and
intensities, we elucidate the performance characteristics of those Diffusion
Models. The noise component takes center stage in our analysis, hypothesized to
be a pivotal element influencing the mechanics of deep learning systems. In our
rigorous expedition utilizing Diffusion-C, we have discerned the following
critical observations: (I) Within the milieu of generative models under the
Diffusion taxonomy, DDPM emerges as a paragon, consistently exhibiting superior
performance metrics. (II) Within the vast spectrum of corruption frameworks,
the fog and fractal corruptions notably undermine the functional robustness of
both DDPM and DDIM. (III) The vulnerability of Diffusion Models to these
particular corruptions is significantly influenced by topological and
statistical similarities, particularly concerning the alignment between mean
and variance. This scholarly work highlights Diffusion-C's core understandings
regarding the impacts of various corruptions, setting the stage for future
research endeavors in the realm of generative models.


  The equations describing the two-dimensional vortices first described by
Chaplygin in 1899 and 1903 are shown to have solutions of higher order that
differ from a simple dipole. It is also shown that for these higher-order
vortices a very small asymmetry dramatically changes the topology of the stream
function. These vortices could be important for understanding the phenomenon of
atmospheric blocking.


  Full tests to stellar models below 1 Msun have been hindered until now by the
scarce number of precise measurements of the stars' most fundamental
parameters: their masses and radii. With the current observational techniques,
the required precision to distinguish between different models (errors < 2-3 %)
can only be achieved using detached eclipsing binaries where 1) both stars are
similar in mass, i.e. q = M1/M2 ~ 1.0, and 2) each star is a main sequence
object below 1 Msun.
  Until 2003 only three such binaries had been found and analyzed in detail.
Two new systems were published in 2005 (Creevey et al.; Lopez-Morales & Ribas),
almost doubling the previous number of data points. Here we present preliminary
results for 3 new low-mass detached eclipsing binaries. These are the first
studied systems from our sample of over 41 new binaries (Shaw & Lopez-Morales,
this proceedings). We also provide an updated comparison between the
Mass-Radius and the Mass-Teff relations predicted by the models and the
observational data from detached eclipsing binaries.


  It is well known that the reversibility of Stokes flow makes it difficult for
small microorganisms to swim. Inertial effects break this reversibility,
allowing new mechanisms of propulsion and feeding. Therefore it is important to
understand the effects of unsteady and fluid inertia on the dynamics of
microorganisms in flow. In this work, we show how to translate known inertial
effects for non-motile organisms to motile ones, from passive to active
particles. The method relies on a principle used earlier by Legendre and
Magnaudet (1997) to deduce inertial corrections to the lift force on a bubble
from the inertial drag on a solid sphere, using the fact that small inertial
effects are determined by the far field of the disturbance flow. The method
allows for example to compute the inertial effect of unsteady fluid
accelerations on motile organisms, and the inertial forces such organisms
experience in steady shear flow. We explain why the method fails to describe
the effect of convective fluid inertia.


  Supersymmetry, if realized in Nature, predicts the existence of new
particles, as chargino and neutralino, which might manifest themselves with
peculiar signatures. Three leptons and large missing transverse energy in the
event could signal their associated production. We report the latest results of
the search performed by the CDF Collaboration in proton-antiproton collisions
at Tevatron Run II.


  Failures in robotics can have disastrous consequences that worsen rapidly
over time. This, the ability to rely on robotic systems, depends on our ability
to monitor them and intercede when necessary, manually or autonomously. Prior
work in this area surveys intrusion detection and security challenges in
robotics, but a discussion of the more general anomaly detection problems is
lacking. As such, we provide a brief insight-focused discussion and frameworks
of thought on some compelling open problems with anomaly detection in robotic
systems. Namely, we discuss non-malicious faults, invalid data, intentional
anomalous behavior, hierarchical anomaly detection, distribution of
computation, and anomaly correction on the fly. We demonstrate the need for
additional work in these areas by providing a case study which examines the
limitations of implementing a basic anomaly detection (AD) system in the Robot
Operating System (ROS) 2 middleware. Showing that if even supporting a basic
system is a significant hurdle, the path to more complex and advanced AD
systems is even more problematic. We discuss these ROS 2 platform limitations
to support solutions in robotic anomaly detection and provide recommendations
to address the issues discovered.


  What is a visualization? There is limited utility in trifling with
definitions, except insofar as one serves as a tool for communicating and
conceptualizing our subject matter; a statement of identity for a community. To
establish Visualization Psychology as a viable inter-disciplinary research
programme, we must first define the object(s) of our collective inquiry. I
propose that while we might refer to the study of "visualization" for the
term's colloquial accessibility and pragmatic alignment with other fields, we
should consider for exploration a class of artifacts and corresponding
processes more expansive and profound: external representations. What follows
is an argument for the study of external representation as the foundation for a
new interdisciplinary endeavor, and approach to mapping the corresponding
problem space.


  We discuss the prospects of exploring the neutrino mass parameters with a
CERN based Beta-beam experiment using two different detectors at two different
baselines. The proposed set-up consists of a 50 kton iron calorimeter (ICAL) at
a baseline of around 7150 km which is roughly the magic baseline, e.g.,
ICAL@INO, and a 50 kton Totally Active Scintillator Detector at a distance of
730 km, e.g., at Gran Sasso. We take 8B and 8Li source ions with a boost factor
$\gamma$ of 650 for the magic baseline while for the closer detector we
consider 18Ne and 6He ions with a range of Lorentz boosts. We find that the
locations of the two detectors complement each other leading to an exceptional
high sensitivity. With $\gamma=650$ for 8B/8Li and $\gamma=575$ for 18Ne/6He
and total luminosity corresponding to $5\times (1.1\times 10^{19})$ and
$5\times (2.9\times 10^{19})$ useful ion decays in neutrino and antineutrino
modes respectively, we find that the two-detector set-up can probe maximal CP
violation and establish the neutrino mass ordering if $\sin^22\theta_{13}$ is
$1.8 \times 10^{-5}$ and $4.6 \times 10^{-5}$, respectively, or more. The
sensitivity reach for $\sin^22\theta_{13}$ itself is $5.3 \times 10^{-5}$. CP
violation can be discovered for 64% of the possible $\delta_{CP}$ values for
$\sin^22\theta_{13} \geq 8\times 10^{-5}$.


  We study the time evolution of a three dimensional quantum particle,
initially in a bound state, under the action of a time-periodic zero range
interaction with ``strength'' (\alpha(t)). Under very weak generic conditions
on the Fourier coefficients of (\alpha(t)), we prove complete ionization as (t
\to \infty). We prove also that, under the same conditions, all the states of
the system are scattering states.


  Isogeometric Analysis (IgA) is a framework for setting up spline-based
discretizations of partial differential equations, which has been introduced
around a decade ago and has gained much attention since then. If large spline
degrees are considered, one obtains the approximation power of a high-order
method, but the number of degrees of freedom behaves like for a low-order
method. One important ingredient to use a discretization with large spline
degree, is a robust and preferably parallelizable solver. While numerical
evidence shows that multigrid solvers with standard smoothers (like Gauss
Seidel) does not perform well if the spline degree is increased, the multigrid
solvers proposed by the authors and their co-workers proved to behave optimal
both in the grid size and the spline degree. In the present paper, the authors
want to show that those solvers are parallelizable and that they scale well in
a parallel environment.


  There are now several analyses reporting quantized differences in the
redshifts between pairs of galaxies. In the simplest cases, these differential
redshifts are found to be harmonics of fundamental periods of approximately 72
km/s and 37.5 km/s. In this paper a wave equation is derived based on
cosmological general relativity, which is a space-velocity theory of the
expanding Universe. The wave equation is approximated to first order and
comparisons are made between the quantized solutions and the reported
observations.


  In this paper, we review our novel information geometrodynamical approach to
chaos (IGAC) on curved statistical manifolds and we emphasize the usefulness of
our information-geometrodynamical entropy (IGE) as an indicator of chaoticity
in a simple application. Furthermore, knowing that integrable and chaotic
quantum antiferromagnetic Ising chains are characterized by asymptotic
logarithmic and linear growths of their operator space entanglement entropies,
respectively, we apply our IGAC to present an alternative characterization of
such systems. Remarkably, we show that in the former case the IGE exhibits
asymptotic logarithmic growth while in the latter case the IGE exhibits
asymptotic linear growth. At this stage of its development, IGAC remains an
ambitious unifying information-geometric theoretical construct for the study of
chaotic dynamics with several unsolved problems. However, based on our recent
findings, we believe it could provide an interesting, innovative and
potentially powerful way to study and understand the very important and
challenging problems of classical and quantum chaos.


  A recurring theme in attempts to break the curse of dimensionality in the
numerical approximations of solutions to high-dimensional partial differential
equations (PDEs) is to employ some form of sparse tensor approximation.
Unfortunately, there are only a few results that quantify the possible
advantages of such an approach. This paper introduces a class $\Sigma_n$ of
functions, which can be written as a sum of rank-one tensors using a total of
at most $n$ parameters and then uses this notion of sparsity to prove a
regularity theorem for certain high-dimensional elliptic PDEs. It is shown,
among other results, that whenever the right-hand side $f$ of the elliptic PDE
can be approximated with a certain rate $\mathcal{O}(n^{-r})$ in the norm of
${\mathrm H}^{-1}$ by elements of $\Sigma_n$, then the solution $u$ can be
approximated in ${\mathrm H}^1$ from $\Sigma_n$ to accuracy
$\mathcal{O}(n^{-r'})$ for any $r'\in (0,r)$. Since these results require
knowledge of the eigenbasis of the elliptic operator considered, we propose a
second "basis-free" model of tensor sparsity and prove a regularity theorem for
this second sparsity model as well. We then proceed to address the important
question of the extent such regularity theorems translate into results on
computational complexity. It is shown how this second model can be used to
derive computational algorithms with performance that breaks the curse of
dimensionality on certain model high-dimensional elliptic PDEs with
tensor-sparse data.


  In 1962, Erd\H{o}s proved a theorem on the existence of Hamilton cycles in
graphs with given minimum degree and number of edges. Significantly
strengthening in case of balanced bipartite graphs, Moon and Moser proved a
corresponding theorem in 1963. In this paper we establish several spectral
analogues of Moon and Moser's theorem on Hamilton paths in balanced bipartite
graphs and nearly balanced bipartite graphs. One main ingredient of our proofs
is a structural result of its own interest, involving Hamilton paths in
balanced bipartite graphs with given minimum degree and number of edges.


  We investigate a mean field optimal control problem obtained in the limit of
the optimal control of large particle systems with forcing and terminal data
which are not assumed to be convex. We prove that the value function, which is
known to be Lipschitz continuous but not of class C 1 , in general, without
convexity, is actually smooth in an open and dense subset of the space of times
and probability measures. As a consequence, we prove a new quantitative
propagation of chaos-type result for the optimal solutions of the particle
system starting from this open and dense set.


  Given an endogenous timescale set by invasion in a constant environment, we
introduced periodic temporal variation in competitive superiority by
alternating the species' propagation rates. By manipulating habitat size and
introduction rate, we simulated environments where successful invasion proceeds
through growth of many spatial clusters, and where invasion can occur only as a
single-cluster process. In the multi-cluster invasion regime, rapid
environmental variation produced spatial mixing of the species and
non-equilibrium coexistence. The dynamics' dominant response effectively
averaged environmental fluctuation, so that each species could avoid
competitive exclusion. Increasing the environment's half-period to match the
population-dynamic timescale let the (initially) more abundant resident
repeatedly repel the invader. Periodic transition in propagation-rate advantage
rarely interrupted the exclusion process when the more abundant species had
competitive advantage. However, at infrequent and randomly occurring times, the
rare species could invade and reverse the density pattern by rapidly eroding
the resident's preemption of space. In the single-cluster invasion regime,
environmental variation occurring faster than the population-dynamic timescale
prohibited successful invasion; the first species to reach its stationary
density (calculated for a constant environment) continued to repel the other
during long simulations. When the endogenous and exogenous timescales matched,
the species randomly reversed roles of resident and invader; the waiting times
for reversal of abundances indicate stochastic resonance. For both invasion
regimes, environmental fluctuation occurring much slower than the endogenous
dynamics produced symmetric limit cycles, alternations of the
constant-environment pattern.


  We study the time evolution of a single spin excitation state in certain
linear spin chains, as a model for quantum communication. Some years ago it was
discovered that when the spin chain data (the nearest neighbour interaction
strengths and the magnetic field strengths) are related to the Jacobi matrix
entries of Krawtchouk polynomials or dual Hahn polynomials, so-called perfect
state transfer takes place. The extension of these ideas to other types of
discrete orthogonal polynomials did not lead to new models with perfect state
transfer, but did allow more insight in the general computation of the
correlation function. In the present paper, we extend the study to discrete
orthogonal polynomials of q-hypergeometric type. A remarkable result is a new
analytic model where perfect state transfer is achieved: this is when the spin
chain data are related to the Jacobi matrix of q-Krawtchouk polynomials. The
other cases studied here (affine q-Krawtchouk polynomials, quantum q-Krawtchouk
polynomials, dual q-Krawtchouk polynomials, q-Hahn polynomials, dual q-Hahn
polynomials and q-Racah polynomials) do not give rise to models with perfect
state transfer. However, the computation of the correlation function itself is
quite interesting, leading to advanced q-series manipulations.


  Though half of cosmic starlight is absorbed by dust and reradiated at long
wavelengths (3$\mu$m-3mm), constraints on the infrared through millimeter
galaxy luminosity function (the `IRLF') are poor in comparison to the
rest-frame ultraviolet and optical galaxy luminosity function, particularly at
z>2.5. Here we present a backward evolution model for interpreting number
counts, redshift distributions, and cross-band flux density correlations in the
infrared and submillimeter sky, from 70$\mu$m-2mm, using a model for the IRLF
out to the epoch of reionization. Mock submillimeter maps are generated by
injecting sources according to the prescribed IRLF and flux densities drawn
from model spectral energy distributions that mirror the distribution of SEDs
observed in $0<z<5$ dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). We explore two extreme
hypothetical case-studies: a dust-poor early Universe model, where DSFGs
contribute negligibly ($<$10%) to the integrated star-formation rate density at
$z>4$, and an alternate dust-rich early Universe model, where DSFGs dominate
$\sim$90% of $z>4$ star-formation. We find that current submm/mm datasets do
not clearly rule out either of these extreme models. We suggest that future
surveys at 2mm will be crucial to measuring the IRLF beyond $z\sim4$. The model
framework developed in this paper serves as a unique tool for the
interpretation of multiwavelength IR/submm extragalactic datasets and will
enable more refined constraints on the IRLF than can be made from direct
measurements of individual galaxies' integrated dust emission.


  We report an analysis of neutron diffraction from single crystals of the
spin-liquid pyrochlore Tb2Ti2O7 under the application of magnetic fields along
the crystallographic $[110]$ direction. Such a perturbation has been shown to
destroy the spin liquid ground state and induce long-range order, although the
nature of the ordered state was not immediately determined. Recently, it has
been proposed that the ordered state is characterized by spin-ice-like
correlations, evincing an emergent ferromagnetic tendency in this material
despite the large negative Curie-Weiss constant. Here, we argue instead that
the ordered state is dominated by $Q \neq 0$ correlations that emerge either
from strong antiferromagnetism or magnetoelastic distortion of the crystal. In
contrast to previous reports, we observe no evidence for re-entrant behaviour
in the high field limit. Extreme sensitivity of the ordered state to the
alignment of the applied field is suggested to account for these discrepancies.


  A search for excited leptons is carried out with the CMS detector at the LHC,
using 36 inverse picobarns of pp collision data recorded at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV.
The search is performed for associated production of a lepton and an oppositely
charged excited lepton pp to l l*, followed by the decay l* to l gamma,
resulting in the l l gamma final state, where l = electron or muon. No excess
of events above the standard model expectation is observed. Interpreting the
findings in the context of l* production through four-fermion contact
interactions and subsequent decay via electroweak processes, first upper limits
are reported for l* production at this collision energy. The exclusion region
in the compositeness scale Lambda and excited lepton mass M(l*) parameter space
is extended beyond previously established limits. For Lambda = M(l*), excited
lepton masses are excluded below 1070 GeV/c^2 for e* and 1090 GeV/c^2 for mu*
at the 95% confidence level.


  Early-type dwarf galaxies are not simply featureless, old objects, but were
found to be much more diverse, hosting substructures and a variety of stellar
population properties. To explore the stellar content of faint early-type
galaxies, and to investigate in particular those with recent central star
formation, we study colours and colour gradients within one effective radius in
optical (g-r) and near-infrared (i-H) bands for 120 Virgo cluster early types
with -19 mag < $M_{r}$ < -16 mag. Twelve galaxies turn out to have blue cores,
when defined as g-r colour gradients larger than 0.10 mag/$R_{\rm eff}$, which
represents the positive tail of the gradient distribution. For these galaxies,
we find that they have the strongest age gradients, and that even outside the
blue core, their mean stellar population is younger than the mean of ordinary
faint early types. The metallicity gradients of these blue-cored early-type
dwarf galaxies are, however, in the range of most normal faint early types,
which we find to have non-zero gradients with higher central metallicity. The
blue central regions are consistent with star formation activity within the
last few 100 Myr. We discuss that these galaxies could be explained by
environmental quenching of star formation in the outer galaxy regions, while
the inner star formation activity has continued.


  We present GPS++, a hybrid Message Passing Neural Network / Graph Transformer
model for molecular property prediction. Our model integrates a well-tuned
local message passing component and biased global attention with other key
ideas from prior literature to achieve state-of-the-art results on large-scale
molecular dataset PCQM4Mv2. Through a thorough ablation study we highlight the
impact of individual components and find that nearly all of the model's
performance can be maintained without any use of global self-attention, showing
that message passing is still a competitive approach for 3D molecular property
prediction despite the recent dominance of graph transformers. We also find
that our approach is significantly more accurate than prior art when 3D
positional information is not available.


  In this paper, we consider linear MIMO transceiver design for a cellular
two-way amplify-and-forward relaying system consisting of a single
multi-antenna base station, a single multi-antenna relay station, and multiple
multi-antenna mobile stations (MSs). Due to the two-way transmission, the MSs
could suffer from tremendous multi-user interference. We apply an interference
management model exploiting signal space alignment and propose a transceiver
design algorithm, which allows for alleviating the loss in spectral efficiency
due to half-duplex operation and providing flexible performance optimization
accounting for each user's quality of service priorities. Numerical comparisons
to conventional two-way relaying schemes based on bidirectional channel
inversion and spatial division multiple access-only processing show that the
proposed scheme achieves superior error rate and average data rate performance.


  We prove that the operator norm on weighted Lebesgue space L2(w) of the
commutators of the Hilbert, Riesz and Beurling transforms with a BMO function b
depends quadratically on the A2-characteristic of the weight, as opposed to the
linear dependence known to hold for the operators themselves. It is known that
the operator norms of these commutators can be controlled by the norm of the
commutator with appropriate Haar shift operators, and we prove the estimate for
these commutators. For the shift operator corresponding to the Hilbert
transform we use Bellman function methods, however there is now a general
theorem for a class of Haar shift operators that can be used instead to deduce
similar results. We invoke this general theorem to obtain the corresponding
result for the Riesz transforms and the Beurling-Ahlfors operator. We can then
extrapolate to Lp(w), and the results are sharp for 1 < p < 1.


  Let X_R be a geometrically irreducible smooth projective curve, defined over
R, such that X_R does not have any real points. Let X= X_R\times_R C be the
complex curve. We show that there is a universal real algebraic line bundle
over X_R x Pic^d(X_R)$ if and only if $\chi(L)$ is odd for L in Pic^d(X_R)$.
There is a universal quaternionic algebraic line bundle over X x Pic^d(X) if
and only if the degree d is odd.
  Take integers r and d such that r > 1, and d is coprime to r. Let
M_{X_R}(r,d) (respectively, M_X(r,d)$) be the moduli space of stable vector
bundles over X_R (respectively, X) of rank r and degree d. We prove that there
is a universal real algebraic vector bundle over X_R x M_{X_R}(r,d) if and only
if \chi(E) is odd for E in M_{X_R}(r,d). There is a universal quaternionic
vector bundle over X x M_X(r,d) if and only if the degree d is odd.
  The cases where X_R is geometrically reducible or X_R has real points are
also investigated.


  We extend the statistical analysis of Lissauer et al. (2012, ApJ 750, 112),
which demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Kepler candidate multiple
transiting systems (multis) represent true transiting planets, and develop
therefrom a procedure to validate large numbers of planet candidates in multis
as bona fide exoplanets. We show that this statistical framework correctly
estimates the abundance of false positives already identified around Kepler
targets with multiple sets of transit-like signatures based on their abundance
around targets with single sets of transit-like signatures. We estimate the
number of multis that represent split systems of one or more planets orbiting
each component of a binary star system. We use the high reliability rate for
multis to validate more than one dozen particularly interesting multi-planet
systems are validated in a companion paper by Rowe et al. (2014, ApJ, this
issue). We note that few very short period (P < 1.6 days) planets orbit within
multiple transiting planet systems and discuss possible reasons for their
absence. There also appears to be a shortage of planets with periods exceeding
a few months in multis.


  Global extreme ultraviolet (EUV) waves are spectacular traveling disturbances
in the solar corona associated with energetic eruptions such as coronal mass
ejections (CMEs) and flares. Over the past 15 years, observations from three
generations of space-borne EUV telescopes have shaped our understanding of this
phenomenon and at the same time led to controversy about its physical nature.
Since its launch in 2010, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the
Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has observed more than 210 global EUV waves in
exquisite detail, thanks to its high spatio-temporal resolution and full-disk,
wide-temperature coverage. A combination of statistical analysis of this large
sample, 30 some detailed case studies, and data-driven MHD modeling, has been
leading their physical interpretations to a convergence, favoring a bimodal
composition of an outer, fast-mode magnetosonic wave component and an inner,
non-wave CME component. Adding to this multifaceted picture, AIA has also
discovered new EUV wave and wave-like phenomena associated with various
eruptions, including quasi-periodic fast propagating (QFP) wave trains,
magnetic Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities (KHI) in the corona and associated
nonlinear waves, and a variety of mini EUV waves. Seismological applications
using such waves are now being actively pursued, especially for the global
corona. We review such advances in EUV wave research focusing on recent SDO/AIA
observations, their seismological applications, related data analysis
techniques, and numerical and analytical models.


  We show that every flat nonlinear discrete-time system with two inputs can be
transformed into a structurally flat normal form by state- and input
transformations. This normal form has a triangular structure and allows to read
off the flat output, as well as a systematic construction of the
parameterization of all system variables by the flat output and its
forward-shifts. For flat continuous-time systems no comparable normal form
exist.


  Nonlinear excitation of second sound in superfluid solutions He3-He4 by light
waves due to their absorption is discussed. Nonlinear wave equations that model
the interaction of second-sound waves with light waves are derived, the
expression for the nonlinear interaction length is obtained and an
order-of-magnitude numerical estimate of the distance at which a second-sound
wave could be amplified from a fluctuation level up to observable values is
performed.


  Using class field theory one associates to each curve C over a finite field,
and each subgroup G of its divisor class group, unramified abelian covers of C
whose genus is determined by the index of G. By listing class groups of curves
of small genus one may get examples of curves with many points; we do this for
all curves of genus 2 over the fields of cardinality 5,7,9,11,13 and 16, giving
new entries for the tables of curves with many points (www.manYPoints.org).


  Facial attributes (\eg, age and attractiveness) estimation performance has
been greatly improved by using convolutional neural networks. However, existing
methods have an inconsistency between the training objectives and the
evaluation metric, so they may be suboptimal. In addition, these methods always
adopt image classification or face recognition models with a large amount of
parameters, which carry expensive computation cost and storage overhead. In
this paper, we firstly analyze the essential relationship between two
state-of-the-art methods (Ranking-CNN and DLDL) and show that the Ranking
method is in fact learning label distribution implicitly. This result thus
firstly unifies two existing popular state-of-the-art methods into the DLDL
framework. Second, in order to alleviate the inconsistency and reduce resource
consumption, we design a lightweight network architecture and propose a unified
framework which can jointly learn facial attribute distribution and regress
attribute value. The effectiveness of our approach has been demonstrated on
both facial age and attractiveness estimation tasks. Our method achieves new
state-of-the-art results using the single model with 36$\times$ fewer
parameters and 3$\times$ faster inference speed on facial age/attractiveness
estimation. Moreover, our method can achieve comparable results as the
state-of-the-art even though the number of parameters is further reduced to
0.9M (3.8MB disk storage).


  Deformations of a Courant Algebroid E and its Dirac subbundle A have been
widely considered under the assumption that the pseudo-Euclidean metric is
fixed. In this paper, we attack the same problem in a setting that allows the
pseudo-Euclidean metric to deform. Thanks to Roytenberg, a Courant algebroid is
equivalent to a symplectic graded Q-manifold of degree 2. From this viewpoint,
we extend the notions of graded Q-manifold, DGLA and L_\infty-algebra all to
"blended" version so that Poisson manifold, Lie algebroid and Courant algebroid
are unified as blended Q-manifolds; and define a submaniold A of "coisotropic
type" which naturally generalizes the concepts of coisotropic submanifolds, Lie
subalgebroids and Dirac subbundles. It turns out the deformations a blended
homological vector field Q is controlled by a blended DGLA, and the
deformations of A is controlled by a blended L_\infty-algebra. The results
apply to the deformations of a Courant algebroid and its Dirac structures, the
deformations of a Poisson manifold and its coisotropic submanifold, the
deformations of a Lie algebroid and its Lie subalgebroid.


  We propose a "microscopic" model of gemini surfactants in aqueous solution.
Carrying out extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we study the variation of the
critical micellar concentration (CMC) of these model gemini surfactants with
the variation of the (a) length of the spacer connecting the two hydrophilic
heads, (b) length of the hydrophobic tail and (c) the bending rigidity of the
hydrocarbon chains forming the spacer and the tail; some of the trends of
variation are counter-intuitive but are in excellent agreement with the
available experimental results. Our simulations also elucidate the dependence
of the shapes of the micellar aggregates and the magnitude of the CMC on the
geometrical shape and size of the surfactant molecules and the electrical
charge on the hydrophilic heads.


  Soft Gamma Repeaters (SGRs) are a class of rare, high-energy galactic
transients that have episodes of short (~0.1 sec), soft (~30 keV), intense
(~100 Crab), gamma-ray bursts. We report an analysis of the x-ray emission from
95 SGR1806-20 events observed by the International Cometary Explorer. The
spectral shape remains remarkably constant for bursts that differ in intensity
by a range of 50. Below 15 keV the number spectrum falls off rapidly such that
we can estimate the total intensity of the events. Assuming that SGR1806-20 is
associated with the supernova remnant G10.0-0.3 (Kulkarni and Frail, Murakami
\etal), the brightest events had a total luminosity of ~1.8 x 10^42 erg sec^-1,
a factor of 2 x 10^4 above the Eddington limit. A third of the emission was
above 30 keV. There are at least three processes that are consistent with the
spectral rollover below 15 keV. (1)The rollover is consistent with some forms
of self absorption. Typical thermal temperatures are ~20 keV and require an
emitting surface with a radius between 10 and 50 km. The lack of spectral
variability implies that only the size of the emitting surface varies between
events. If the process is thermal synchrotron the required magnetic field might
be too small to confine the plasma against the super Eddington flux. (2)The low
energy rollover could be due to photoelectric absorption by ~10^24 Hydrogen
atoms cm^-2 of neutral material with a cosmic abundance assuming a continuum
similar to TB with T= ~22 keV. (3) Emission in the two lowest harmonics from a
1.3 x 10^12 Gauss field would appear as Doppler broadened lines and fall off
rapidly below 15 keV.


  The large-scale structure of the Universe is thought to evolve by a process
of gravitational amplification from low-amplitude Gaussian noise generated in
the early Universe. The later, non-linear stages of gravitation-induced
clustering produce phase correlations with well-defined statistical properties.
In particular, the distribution of phase differences $D$ between neighboring
Fourier modes provides useful insights into the clustering phenomenon. Here we
develop an approximate theory for the probability distribution $D$ and test it
using a large battery of numerical simulations. We find a remarkable universal
form for the distribution which is well described by theoretical arguments.


  A fundamental mystery in earthquake physics is ``how can an earthquake be
triggered by distant seismic sources?'' Here, we use discrete element method
simulations of a granular layer, during stick-slip, that is subject to
transient vibrational excitation to gain further insight into the physics of
dynamic earthquake triggering. Using Coulomb friction law for grains
interaction, we observe delayed triggering of slip in the granular gouge. We
find that at a critical vibrational amplitude (strain) there is an abrupt
transition from negligible time-advanced slip (clock advance) to full clock
advance, {\it i.e.}, transient vibration and triggered slip are simultaneous.
The critical strain is order of $10^{-6}$, similar to observations in the
laboratory and in Earth. The transition is related to frictional weakening of
the granular layer due to a dramatic decrease in coordination number and the
weakening of the contact force network. Associated with this frictional
weakening is a pronounced decrease in the elastic modulus of the layer. The
study has important implications for mechanisms of triggered earthquakes and
induced seismic events and points out the underlying processes in response of
the fault gouge to dynamic transient stresses.


  Probabilistic pushdown automata (pPDA) are a natural operational model for a
variety of recursive discrete stochastic processes. In this paper, we study
certificates - succinct and easily verifiable proofs - for upper and lower
bounds on various quantitative properties of a given pPDA. We reveal an
intimate, yet surprisingly simple connection between the existence of such
certificates and the expected time to termination of the pPDA at hand. This is
established by showing that certain intrinsic properties, like the spectral
radius of the Jacobian of the pPDA's underlying polynomial equation system, are
directly related to expected runtimes. As a consequence, we obtain that there
always exist easy-to-check proofs for positive almost-sure termination: does a
pPDA terminate in finite expected time?


  We consider the propagation of strong gravitational waves interacting with a
nonperturbative vacuum of spinor fields. To described the latter, we suggest an
approximate model. The corresponding Einstein equation has the form of the
Schr\"odinger equation. Its gravitational-wave solution is analogous to the
solution of the Schr\"odinger equation for an electron moving in a periodic
potential. The general solution for the periodic gravitational waves is found.
The analog of the Kronig-Penney model for gravitational waves is considered. It
is shown that the suggested gravitational-wave model permits the existence of
weak electric charge and current densities concomitant with the gravitational
wave. Based on this observation, a possible experimental verification of the
model is suggested.


  Second-order dynamical systems are important tools for solving optimization
problems, and most of existing works in this field have focused on
unconstrained optimization problems. In this paper, we propose an inertial
primal-dual dynamical system with constant viscous damping and time scaling for
the linear equality constrained convex optimization problem, which consists of
a second-order ODE for the primal variable and a first-order ODE for the dual
variable. When the scaling satisfies certain conditions, we prove its
convergence property without assuming strong convexity. Even the convergence
rate can become exponential when the scaling grows exponentially. We also show
that the obtained convergence property of the dynamical system is preserved
under a small perturbation.


  We consider a distance-regular graph $\G$ with diameter $d \ge 3$ and
eigenvalues $k=\theta_0>\theta_1>... >\theta_d$. We show the intersection
numbers $a_1, b_1$ satisfy $$ (\theta_1 + {k \over a_1+1}) (\theta_d + {k \over
a_1+1}) \ge - {ka_1b_1 \over (a_1+1)^2}. $$ We say $\G$ is {\it tight} whenever
$\G$ is not bipartite, and equality holds above. We characterize the tight
property in a number of ways. For example, we show $\G$ is tight if and only if
the intersection numbers are given by certain rational expressions involving
$d$ independent parameters. We show $\G$ is tight if and only if $a_1\not=0$,
$a_d=0$, and $\G$ is 1-homogeneous in the sense of Nomura. We show $\G$ is
tight if and only if each local graph is connected strongly-regular, with
nontrivial eigenvalues $-1-b_1(1+\theta_1)^{-1}$ and $-1-b_1(1+\theta_d)^{-1}$.
Three infinite families and nine sporadic examples of tight distance-regular
graphs are given.


  It is fundamental for personal robots to reliably navigate to a specified
goal. To study this task, PointGoal navigation has been introduced in simulated
Embodied AI environments. Recent advances solve this PointGoal navigation task
with near-perfect accuracy (99.6% success) in photo-realistically simulated
environments, assuming noiseless egocentric vision, noiseless actuation, and
most importantly, perfect localization. However, under realistic noise models
for visual sensors and actuation, and without access to a "GPS and Compass
sensor," the 99.6%-success agents for PointGoal navigation only succeed with
0.3%. In this work, we demonstrate the surprising effectiveness of visual
odometry for the task of PointGoal navigation in this realistic setting, i.e.,
with realistic noise models for perception and actuation and without access to
GPS and Compass sensors. We show that integrating visual odometry techniques
into navigation policies improves the state-of-the-art on the popular Habitat
PointNav benchmark by a large margin, improving success from 64.5% to 71.7%
while executing 6.4 times faster.


  We give a complete classification of Riemannian and Lorentzian surfaces of
arbitrary codimension in a pseudo-sphere whose pseudo-spherical Gauss maps are
of 1-type or, in particular, harmonic. In some cases a concrete global
classification is obtained, while in other cases the solutions are described by
an explicit system of partial differential equations.


  We give an example of a finite-state two-player turn-based stochastic game
with safety objectives for both players which has no stationary Nash
equilibrium. This answers an open question of Secchi and Sudderth.


  The live streaming is more challenging than on-demand streaming, because the
low latency is also a strong requirement in addition to the trade-off between
video quality and jitters in playback. To balance several inherently
conflicting performance metrics and improve the overall quality of experience
(QoE), many adaptation schemes have been proposed. Bitrate adaptation is one of
the major solutions for video streaming under time-varying network conditions,
which works even better combining with some latency control methods, such as
adaptive playback rate control and frame dropping. However, it still remains a
challenging problem to design an algorithm to combine these adaptation schemes
together. To tackle this problem, we propose a hybrid control scheme for
adaptive live streaming, namely HYSA, based on heuristic playback rate control,
latency-constrained bitrate control and QoE-oriented adaptive frame dropping.
The proposed scheme utilizes Kaufman's Adaptive Moving Average (KAMA) to
predict segment bitrates for better rate decisions. Extensive simulations
demonstrate that HYSA outperforms most of the existing adaptation schemes on
overall QoE.


  The differentiable implementation of logic yields a seamless combination of
symbolic reasoning and deep neural networks. Recent research, which has
developed a differentiable framework to learn logic programs from examples, can
even acquire reasonable solutions from noisy datasets. However, this framework
severely limits expressions for solutions, e.g., no function symbols are
allowed, and the shapes of clauses are fixed. As a result, the framework cannot
deal with structured examples. Therefore we propose a new framework to learn
logic programs from noisy and structured examples, including the following
contributions. First, we propose an adaptive clause search method by looking
through structured space, which is defined by the generality of the clauses, to
yield an efficient search space for differentiable solvers. Second, we propose
for ground atoms an enumeration algorithm, which determines a necessary and
sufficient set of ground atoms to perform differentiable inference functions.
Finally, we propose a new method to compose logic programs softly, enabling the
system to deal with complex programs consisting of several clauses. Our
experiments show that our new framework can learn logic programs from noisy and
structured examples, such as sequences or trees. Our framework can be scaled to
deal with complex programs that consist of several clauses with function
symbols.


  We create a gray optical lattice structure using a blue detuned laser field
coupling an atomic ground state of angular momentum J simultaneously to two
excited states with angular momenta J and J-1. The atoms are cooled and trapped
at locations of purely circular polarization. The cooling process efficiently
accumulates almost half of the atomic population in the lowest energy band
which is only weakly coupled to the light field. Very low kinetic temperatures
are obtained by adiabatically reducing the optical potential. The dynamics of
this process is analysed using a full quantum Monte Carlo simulation. The
calculations explicitly show the mapping of the band populations on the
corresponding momentum intervals of the free atom. In an experiment with
subrecoil momentum resolution we measure the band populations and find
excellent absolut agreement with the theoretical calculations.


  Background: The relative contribution of different aging-associated processes
to the age phenotype may differ among individuals, creating variability in
aging manifestations among age-peers. Capturing this variability can
significantly advance understanding the aging and mortality. An index of
age-associated health disorders (deficits), called a "frailty index" (FI),
appears to be a promising characteristic of such processes. In this study we
address the connections of the FI with age focusing on disabled individuals who
might be at excessive risk of frailty. Methods: The National Long Term Care
Survey (NLTCS) assessed health and functioning of the U.S. elderly in 1982,
1984, 1989, 1994, and 1999. Detailed information for our sample was assessed
from about 26,700 interviews. The individual FI is defined as a proportion of
deficits for a given person. We perform cross-sectional empirical analysis of
the FI age-patterns. Results: FI in the NLTCS exhibits accelerated (quadratic)
increase with age. Deficits might accumulate faster among the elderly who, at
younger ages, had a low mean FI ("healthy" group) than a high FI ("disabled"
group). Age-patterns for "healthy" and "disabled" groups converge at advanced
ages. The rate of deficit accumulation is sex-sensitive. Convergence of the
(sex-specific) FI for "healthy" and "disabled" groups in later ages determines
biological age limits, associated with given levels of health-maintenance in
the society, which correspond to 109.4 years for females and 92.5 years for
males. Conclusions: The FI can be employed as a measure of biological age and
population heterogeneity for modeling aging processes and mortality in elderly
individuals.


  The Alcubierre spacetime was simulated by means of a Tamm medium which is
asymptotically identical to vacuum and has constitutive parameters which are
ontinuous functions of the spatial coordinates. Accordingly, the Tamm medium is
amenable to physical realization as a nanostructured metamaterial. A
comprehensive characterization of ray trajectories in the Tamm medium was
undertaken, within the geometric-optics regime. Propagation directions
corresponding to evanescent waves were identified: these occur in the region of
the Tamm medium which corresponds to the warp bubble of the Alcubierre
spacetime, especially for directions perpendicular to the velocity of the warp
bubble at high speeds of that bubble. Ray trajectories are acutely sensitive to
the magnitude and direction of the warp bubble's velocity, but rather less
sensitive to the thickness of the transition zone between the warp bubble and
its background. In particular, for rays which travel in the same direction as
the warp bubble, the latter acts as a focusing lens, most notably at high
speeds.


  In this paper, we provide some equivalences on dentability in normed spaces.
Among others we prove: the origin is a denting point of a pointed cone $C$ if
and only if it is a point of continuity for such a cone and
$\overline{C^*-C^*}=X^*$; $x$ is a denting point of a convex set $A$ if and
only if $x$ is a point of continuity and a weakly strongly extreme point of
$A$. We also analize how our results help us to shed some light on several open
problems in the literature.


  Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand
discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision
cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is
within reach, thanks to newly available precision measurements. We highlight
the importance of distances and model independent distances and masses.
  Distances are fundamental in astrophysics and their knowledge can change our
perception of phenomena dramatically: e.g., in antiquity, the Heliocentric
model was rejected because the predicted stellar parallaxes were not observed.
  Distance measurements are directly related to the history & fate of the uni-
verse as they provide 2 of 3 methods available to date the universe. The 1st
method is based on the ages of stars, which can be ascertained if their lumi-
nosities (distances) are accurately known. The 2nd method relies on cosmolo-
gical methods. To 1st order, the age of the universe is the inverse H_0.
  As stressed by the previous decadal report, "the fundamental goal of ...
astrophysics is to understand how the universe ... galaxies [and] stars ...
formed, how they evolved, and what their destiny will be." These questions can
be answered partly by micro-arcsecond astrometry: 1) Galactic archeology: a
detailed reconstruction of the formation history of the Milky Way and other
Local Group galaxies, 2) the very oldest stars in the Milky Way and the age of
the Universe, and 3) H_0 and concordance cosmology.
  These goals are achievable by combining muas-arcsecond astrometry from the
proposed SIM-Lite mission supplemented with ground-based spectroscopy. The
results of our proposed project will force the biggest reassessment of stellar
astrophysics in 50 years, which will affect most branches of astrophysics.


  We study the non-uniqueness of factorizations of non zero-divisors into atoms
(irreducibles) in noncommutative rings. To do so, we extend concepts from the
commutative theory of non-unique factorizations to a noncommutative setting.
Several notions of factorizations as well as distances between them are
introduced. In addition, arithmetical invariants characterizing the
non-uniqueness of factorizations such as the catenary degree, the
$\omega$-invariant, and the tame degree, are extended from commutative to
noncommutative settings. We introduce the concept of a cancellative semigroup
being permutably factorial, and characterize this property by means of
corresponding catenary and tame degrees. Also, we give necessary and sufficient
conditions for there to be a weak transfer homomorphism from a cancellative
semigroup to its reduced abelianization. Applying the abstract machinery we
develop, we determine various catenary degrees for classical maximal orders in
central simple algebras over global fields by using a natural transfer
homomorphism to a monoid of zero-sum sequences over a ray class group. We also
determine catenary degrees and the permutable tame degree for the semigroup of
non zero-divisors of the ring of $n \times n$ upper triangular matrices over a
commutative domain using a weak transfer homomorphism to a commutative
semigroup.


  Reinforcement learning (RL) and trajectory optimization (TO) present strong
complementary advantages. On one hand, RL approaches are able to learn global
control policies directly from data, but generally require large sample sizes
to properly converge towards feasible policies. On the other hand, TO methods
are able to exploit gradient-based information extracted from simulators to
quickly converge towards a locally optimal control trajectory which is only
valid within the vicinity of the solution. Over the past decade, several
approaches have aimed to adequately combine the two classes of methods in order
to obtain the best of both worlds. Following on from this line of research, we
propose several improvements on top of these approaches to learn global control
policies quicker, notably by leveraging sensitivity information stemming from
TO methods via Sobolev learning, and augmented Lagrangian techniques to enforce
the consensus between TO and policy learning. We evaluate the benefits of these
improvements on various classical tasks in robotics through comparison with
existing approaches in the literature.


  We derive the Kramers-Moyal equation for the conditional probability density
of velocity increments from the theoretical model recently proposed by V.Yakhot
[Phys.Rev.E {\bf 57}, 1737 (1998)] in the limit of high Reynolds number limit.
We show that the higher order (n>=3) Kramers-Moyal coefficients tends to zero
and the velocity increments are evolved by the Fokker-Planck operator. Our
result is compatible with the phenomenological descriptions by R.Friedrich and
J.Peinke [Phys.Rev.Lett. {\bf 78}, 863 (1997)].


  Fomalhaut plays an important role in the study of debris disks and small
bodies in other planetary systems. The proximity and luminosity of the star
make key features of its debris, like the water ice-line, accessible. Here we
present ALMA cycle 1, 870 \mu m (345 GHz) observations targeted at the inner
part of the Fomalhaut system with a synthesized beam of 0.45"x0.37" (~3 AU
linear resolution at the distance of Fomalhaut) and a rms of 26 \mu Jy/beam.
The high angular resolution and sensitivity of the ALMA data enable us to place
strong constraints on the nature of the warm excess revealed by Spitzer and
Herschel observations. We detect a point source at the star position with a
total flux consistent with thermal emission from the stellar photosphere. No
structures that are brighter than 3\sigma\ are detected in the central 15 AU x
15 AU region. Modeling the spectral energy distribution using parameters
expected for a dust-producing planetesimal belt indicates a radial location in
the range ~8-15 AU. This is consistent with the location where ice sublimates
in Fomalhaut, i.e., an asteroid-belt analog. The 3\sigma\ upper limit for such
a belt is <1.3 mJy at 870 \mu m. We also interpret the 2 and 8-13 \mu m
interferometric measurements to reveal the structure in the inner 10 AU region
as dust naturally connected to this proposed asteroid belt by
Poynting-Robertson drag, dust sublimation, and magnetically trapped nano
grains.


  We present a detailed study of the spherically symmetric solutions in Lorentz
breaking massive gravity. There is an undetermined function $\mathcal{F}(X,
w_1, w_2, w_3)$ in the action of St\"{u}ckelberg fields
$S_{\phi}=\Lambda^4\int{d^4x\sqrt{-g}\mathcal{F}}$, which should be resolved
through physical means. In the general relativity, the spherically symmetric
solution to the Einstein equation is a benchmark and its massive deformation
also play a crucial role in Lorentz breaking massive gravity. $\mathcal{F}$
will satisfy the constraint equation $T_0^1=0$ from the spherically symmetric
Einstein tensor $G_0^1=0$, if we maintain that any reasonable physical theory
should possess the spherically symmetric solutions. The St\"{u}ckelberg field
$\phi^i$ is taken as a 'hedgehog' configuration $\phi^i=\phi(r)x^i/r$, whose
stability is guaranteed by the topological one. Under this ans\"{a}tz,
$T_0^1=0$ is reduced to $d\mathcal{F}=0$. The functions $\mathcal{F}$ for
$d\mathcal{F}=0$ form a commutative ring $R^{\mathcal{F}}$. We obtain a general
expression of solution to the functional differential equation with spherically
symmetry if $\mathcal{F}\in R^{\mathcal{F}}$. If $\mathcal{F}\in
R^{\mathcal{F}}$ and $\partial\mathcal{F}/\partial X=0$, the functions
$\mathcal{F}$ form a subring $S^{\mathcal{F}}\subset R^{\mathcal{F}}$. We show
that the metric is Schwarzschild, AdS or dS if $\mathcal{F}\in
S^{\mathcal{F}}$. When $\mathcal{F}\in R^{\mathcal{F}}$ but $\mathcal{F}\notin
S^{\mathcal{F}}$, we will obtain some new metric solutions. Using the general
formula and the basic property of function ring $R^{\mathcal{F}}$, we give some
analytical examples and their phenomenological applications. Furthermore, we
also discuss the stability of gravitational field by the analysis of Komar
integral and the results of QNMs.


  We present a wide field census of resolved stellar populations in the
northern half of M81, conducted with Suprime-Cam on the 8-m Subaru telescope
and covering an area ~ 0.3 square degrees. The resulting color-magnitude
diagram reaches over one magnitude below the red giant branch (RGB) tip,
allowing a detailed comparison between the young and old stellar spatial
distributions. The surface density of stars with ages <~ 100 Myr is correlated
with that of neutral hydrogen in a manner similar to the disk-averaged
Kennicutt-Schmidt relation. We trace this correlation down to gas densities of
~ 2 x 10^20 cm^{-2}, lower than typically probed with H-alpha flux. Both
diffuse light and resolved RGB star counts show compelling evidence for a
faint, extended structural component beyond the bright optical disk, with a
much flatter surface brightness profile. The star counts allow us to probe this
component to significantly fainter levels than is possible with the diffuse
light alone. From the colors of its RGB stars, we estimate this component has a
peak global metallicity [M/H] ~ -1.1 +/- 0.3 at deprojected radii 32 - 44 kpc
assuming an age of 10 Gyr and distance of 3.6 Mpc. The spatial distribution of
its RGB stars follows a power-law surface density profile, I(r) ~ r^{-gamma},
with gamma ~ 2. [Abridged]


  One of the most intriguing properties of the Ap (and Bp) stars is their slow
rotation, compared to the superficially normal main-sequence stars in the same
temperature range. In recent years, it has emerged that several percent of the
Ap stars have rotation periods exceeding one year, and that the longest
rotation periods reach several centuries. Perhaps even more puzzling is the
spread of the rotation periods of the Ap stars, as some of them are as short as
0.5 d. Thus, the rotation periods of these stars span 5 to 6 orders of
magnitude, with no evidence for evolution besides conservation of the angular
momentum during their main-sequence lifetime. Explaining how period
differentiation over such a wide range is achieved in stars that are
essentially at the same evolutionary stage represents a major challenge.
  Consideration of the extremely slowly rotating Ap stars is of particular
importance for the understanding of the origin and the evolution of the
rotational properties of Ap stars as a class. We review recent progress in the
knowledge of the periods and magnetic fields of the sharpest-lined and most
slowly rotating Ap stars, and discuss the prospects and concerns for future
progress in their study.


  NVMe(Non-Volatile Memory Express) is an industry standard for solid-state
drives (SSDs) that has been widely adopted in data centers. NVMe virtualization
is crucial in cloud computing as it allows for virtualized NVMe devices to be
used by virtual machines (VMs), thereby improving the utilization of storage
resources. However, traditional software-based solutions have flexibility
benefits but often come at the cost of performance degradation or high CPU
overhead. On the other hand, hardware-assisted solutions offer high performance
and low CPU usage, but their adoption is often limited by the need for special
hardware support or the requirement for new hardware development.
  In this paper, we propose LightIOV, a novel software-based NVMe
virtualization mechanism that achieves high performance and scalability without
consuming valuable CPU resources and without requiring special hardware
support. LightIOV can support thousands of VMs on each server. The key idea
behind LightIOV is NVMe hardware I/O queues passthrough, which enables VMs to
directly access I/O queues of NVMe devices, thus eliminating virtualization
overhead and providing near-native performance. Results from our experiments
show that LightIOV can provide comparable performance to VFIO, with an IOPS of
97.6%-100.2% of VFIO. Furthermore, in high-density VMs environments, LightIOV
achieves 31.4% lower latency than SPDK-Vhost when running 200 VMs, and an
improvement of 27.1% in OPS performance in real-world applications.


  We demonstrate a hole double quantum dot in an undoped GaAs/AlGaAs
heterostructure. The interdot coupling can be tuned over a wide range, from
formation of a large single dot to two well-isolated quantum dots. Using charge
sensing, we show the ability to completely empty the dot of holes and control
the charge occupation in the few-hole regime. The device should allow for
control of individual hole spins in single and double quantum dots in GaAs.


  We study the three-dimensional spontaneous flow transition of an active
nematic in an infinite slab geometry using a combination of numerics and
analytics. We show that it is determined by the interplay of two eigenmodes --
called S- and D-mode -- that are unstable at the same activity threshold and
spontaneously breaks both rotational symmetry and chiral symmetry. The onset of
the unstable modes is described by a non-Hermitian integro-differential
operator, which we determine their exponential growth rates from using
perturbation theory. The S-mode is the fastest growing. After it reaches a
finite amplitude, the growth of the D-mode is anisotropic, being promoted
perpendicular to the S-mode and suppressed parallel to it, forming a steady
state with a full three-dimensional director field and a well-defined
chirality. Lastly, we derive a model of the leading-order time evolution of the
system close to the activity threshold.


  We introduce a new class of qubit codes that we call Evenbly codes, building
on a previous proposal of hyperinvariant tensor networks. Its tensor network
description consists of local, non-perfect tensors describing CSS codes
interspersed with Hadamard gates, placed on a hyperbolic $\{p,q\}$ geometry
with even $q\geq 4$, yielding an infinitely large class of subsystem codes. We
construct an example for a $\{5,4\}$ manifold and describe strategies of
logical gauge fixing that lead to different rates $k/n$ and distances $d$,
which we calculate analytically, finding distances which range from $d=2$ to $d
\sim n^{2/3}$ in the ungauged case. Investigating threshold performance under
erasure, depolarizing, and pure Pauli noise channels, we find that the code
exhibits a depolarizing noise threshold of about $19.1\%$ in the code-capacity
model and $50\%$ for pure Pauli and erasure channels under suitable gauges. We
also test a constant-rate version with $k/n = 0.125$, finding excellent error
resilience (about $40\%$) under the erasure channel. Recovery rates for these
and other settings are studied both under an optimal decoder as well as a more
efficient but non-optimal greedy decoder. We also consider generalizations
beyond the CSS tensor construction, compute error rates and thresholds for
other hyperbolic geometries, and discuss the relationship to holographic
bulk/boundary dualities. Our work indicates that Evenbly codes may show promise
for practical quantum computing applications.


  Frobenius reciprocity asserts that induction from a subgroup and restriction
to it are adjoint functors in categories of unitary G-modules. In the 1980s,
Guillemin and Sternberg established a parallel property of Hamiltonian
G-spaces, which (as we show) unfortunately fails to mirror the situation where
more than one G-module "quantizes" a given Hamiltonian G-space. This paper
offers evidence that the situation is remedied by working in the category of
*prequantum* G-spaces, where this ambiguity disappears; there, we define
induction and multiplicity spaces, and establish Frobenius reciprocity as well
as the "induction in stages" property.


  In the past few years, the number of IoT devices has grown substantially, and
this trend is likely to continue. An increasing amount of effort is being put
into developing software for the ever-increasing IoT devices. Every IoT system
at its core has software that enables the devices to function efficiently. But
security has always been a concern in this age of information and technology.
Security for IoT devices is now a top priority due to the growing number of
threats. This study introduces best practices for ensuring security in the IoT,
with an emphasis on guidelines to be utilized in software development for IoT
devices. The objective of the study is to raise awareness of potential threats,
emphasizing the secure software development lifecycle. The study will also
serve as a point of reference for future developments and provide a solid
foundation for securing IoT software and dealing with vulnerabilities.


  Vector-valued discrete Fourier transforms (DFTs) and ambiguity functions are
defined. The motivation for the definitions is to provide realistic modeling of
multi-sensor environments in which a useful time-frequency analysis is
essential. The definition of the DFT requires associated uncertainty principle
inequalities. The definition of the ambiguity function requires a component
that leads to formulating a mathematical theory in which two essential
algebraic operations can be made compatible in a natural way. The theory is
referred to as frame multiplication theory. These definitions, inequalities,
and theory are interdependent, and they are the content of the paper with the
centerpiece being frame multiplication theory.
  The technology underlying frame multiplication theory is the theory of
frames, short time Fourier transforms (STFTs), and the representation theory of
finite groups. The main results have the following form: frame multiplication
exists if and only if the finite frames that arise in the theory are of a
certain type, e.g., harmonic frames, or, more generally, group frames.
  In light of the complexities and the importance of the modeling of
time-varying and dynamical systems in the context of effectively analyzing
vector-valued multi-sensor environments, the theory of vector-valued DFTs and
ambiguity functions must not only be mathematically meaningful, but it must
have constructive implementable algorithms, and be computationally viable. This
paper presents our vision for resolving these issues, in terms of a significant
mathematical theory, and based on the goal of formulating and developing a
useful vector-valued theory.


  We show that the character spectrum $Sp_\chi(\lambda)$, for a singular
cardinal $\lambda$ of countable cofinality, may include any prescribed set of
regular cardinals between $\lambda$ and $2^\lambda$.


  Multiple sampling strategies commonly used in molecular dynamics, such as
umbrella sampling and alchemical free energy methods, involve sampling from
multiple thermodynamic states. Commonly, the data are then recombined to
construct estimates of free energies and ensemble averages using the Multistate
Bennett Acceptance Ratio (MBAR) formalism. However, the error of the MBAR
estimator is not well-understood: previous error analysis of MBAR assumed
independent samples and did not permit attributing contributions to the total
error to individual thermodynamic states. In this work, we derive a novel
central limit theorem for MBAR estimates. This central limit theorem yields an
error estimator which can be decomposed into contributions from the individual
Markov chains used to sample the states. We demonstrate the error estimator for
an umbrella sampling calculation of the alanine dipeptide in two dimensions and
an alchemical calculation of the hydration free energy of methane. In both
cases, the states' individual contributions to the error provide insight into
the sources of error of the simulations. Our numerical results demonstrate that
the time required for the Markov chain to decorrelate in individual
thermodynamic states contributes considerably to the total MBAR error.
Moreover, they indicate that it may be possible to use the contributions to
tune the sampling and improve the accuracy of MBAR calculations.


  In arXiv:1107.4675 Ralph uses our post-selection model of closed timelike
curves (P-CTC) to construct an "unproven-theorem" paradox, and claims that this
voids our argument that P-CTCs are able to resolve such types of paradoxes.
Here we point out that Ralph has not accounted for all the interactions needed
for his construction. A more careful analysis confirms that indeed there is no
paradox, contrary to his claims.


  We report electron counting experiments in a silicon
metal-oxide-semiconductor quantum dot architecture which has been previously
demonstrated to generate a quantized current in excess of 80 pA with
uncertainty below 30 parts per million. Single-shot detection of electrons
pumped into a reservoir dot is performed using a capacitively coupled
single-electron transistor. We extract the full probability distribution of the
transfer of n electrons per pumping cycle for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. We find
that the probabilities extracted from the counting experiment are in agreement
with direct current measurements in a broad range of dc electrochemical
potentials of the pump. The electron counting technique is also used to confirm
the improving robustness of the pumping mechanism with increasing electrostatic
confinement of the quantum dot.


  End-to-end spoken language understanding (SLU) systems that process
human-human or human-computer interactions are often context independent and
process each turn of a conversation independently. Spoken conversations on the
other hand, are very much context dependent, and dialog history contains useful
information that can improve the processing of each conversational turn. In
this paper, we investigate the importance of dialog history and how it can be
effectively integrated into end-to-end SLU systems. While processing a spoken
utterance, our proposed RNN transducer (RNN-T) based SLU model has access to
its dialog history in the form of decoded transcripts and SLU labels of
previous turns. We encode the dialog history as BERT embeddings, and use them
as an additional input to the SLU model along with the speech features for the
current utterance. We evaluate our approach on a recently released spoken
dialog data set, the HarperValleyBank corpus. We observe significant
improvements: 8% for dialog action and 30% for caller intent recognition tasks,
in comparison to a competitive context independent end-to-end baseline system.


  Machine generated text is increasingly difficult to distinguish from human
authored text. Powerful open-source models are freely available, and
user-friendly tools that democratize access to generative models are
proliferating. ChatGPT, which was released shortly after the first edition of
this survey, epitomizes these trends. The great potential of state-of-the-art
natural language generation (NLG) systems is tempered by the multitude of
avenues for abuse. Detection of machine generated text is a key countermeasure
for reducing abuse of NLG models, with significant technical challenges and
numerous open problems. We provide a survey that includes both 1) an extensive
analysis of threat models posed by contemporary NLG systems, and 2) the most
complete review of machine generated text detection methods to date. This
survey places machine generated text within its cybersecurity and social
context, and provides strong guidance for future work addressing the most
critical threat models, and ensuring detection systems themselves demonstrate
trustworthiness through fairness, robustness, and accountability.


  We classify up to conjugation by $\operatorname{GL}(2,\mathbb{R})$ (more
precisely, block diagonal symplectic matrices) all the semidirect products
inside the maximal parabolic of $\operatorname{Sp}(2,\mathbb{R})$ by means of
an essentially geometric argument. This classification has already been
established without geometry, under a stricter notion of equivalence, namely
conjugation by arbitrary symplectic matrices. The present approach might be
useful in higher dimensions and provides some insight.


  Exploiting cross-lingual resources is an effective way to compensate for data
scarcity of low resource languages. Recently, a novel multilingual model fusion
technique has been proposed where a model is trained to learn cross-lingual
acoustic-phonetic similarities as a mapping function. However, handcrafted
lexicons have been used to train hybrid DNN-HMM ASR systems. To remove this
dependency, we extend the concept of learnable cross-lingual mappings for
end-to-end speech recognition. Furthermore, mapping models are employed to
transliterate the source languages to the target language without using
parallel data. Finally, the source audio and its transliteration is used for
data augmentation to retrain the target language ASR. The results show that any
source language ASR model can be used for a low-resource target language
recognition followed by proposed mapping model. Furthermore, data augmentation
results in a relative gain up to 5% over baseline monolingual model.


  Masked image modeling (MIM) performs strongly in pre-training large vision
Transformers (ViTs). However, small models that are critical for real-world
applications cannot or only marginally benefit from this pre-training approach.
In this paper, we explore distillation techniques to transfer the success of
large MIM-based pre-trained models to smaller ones. We systematically study
different options in the distillation framework, including distilling targets,
losses, input, network regularization, sequential distillation, etc, revealing
that: 1) Distilling token relations is more effective than CLS token- and
feature-based distillation; 2) An intermediate layer of the teacher network as
target perform better than that using the last layer when the depth of the
student mismatches that of the teacher; 3) Weak regularization is preferred;
etc. With these findings, we achieve significant fine-tuning accuracy
improvements over the scratch MIM pre-training on ImageNet-1K classification,
using all the ViT-Tiny, ViT-Small, and ViT-base models, with +4.2%/+2.4%/+1.4%
gains, respectively. Our TinyMIM model of base size achieves 52.2 mIoU in AE20K
semantic segmentation, which is +4.1 higher than the MAE baseline. Our TinyMIM
model of tiny size achieves 79.6% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet-1K image
classification, which sets a new record for small vision models of the same
size and computation budget. This strong performance suggests an alternative
way for developing small vision Transformer models, that is, by exploring
better training methods rather than introducing inductive biases into
architectures as in most previous works. Code is available at
https://github.com/OliverRensu/TinyMIM.


  In this paper we study several aspects of the geometry of conformally
stationary Lorentz manifolds, and particularly of GRW spaces, due to the
presence of a closed conformal vector field. More precisely, we begin by
extending to these spaces a result of J. Simons on the minimality of cones in
Euclidean space, and apply it to the construction of complete, noncompact
maximal submanifolds of both de Sitter and anti-de Sitter spaces. Then we state
and prove very general Bernstein-type theorems for spacelike hypersurfaces in
conformally stationary Lorentz manifolds, one of which not assuming the
hypersurface to be of constant mean curvature. Finally, we study the strong
$r$-stability of spacelike hypersurfaces of constant $r$-th mean curvature in a
conformally stationary Lorentz manifold of constant sectional curvature,
extending previous results in the current literature.


  It is a wide open problem to give an intrinsic criterion for a II_1 factor
$M$ to admit a Cartan subalgebra $A$. When $A \subset M$ is a Cartan
subalgebra, the $A$-bimodule $L^2(M)$ is "simple" in the sense that the left
and right action of $A$ generate a maximal abelian subalgebra of $B(L^2(M))$. A
II_1 factor $M$ that admits such a subalgebra $A$ is said to be s-thin. Very
recently, Popa discovered an intrinsic local criterion for a II_1 factor $M$ to
be s-thin and left open the question whether all s-thin II_1 factors admit a
Cartan subalgebra. We answer this question negatively by constructing s-thin
II_1 factors without Cartan subalgebras.


  We study the issues of scaling and universality in spectral and transport
properties of the infinite dimensional particle--hole symmetric (half-filled)
Hubbard model within dynamical mean field theory. One of the simplest and
extensively used impurity solvers, namely the iterated perturbation theory
approach is reformulated to avoid problems such as analytic continuation of
Matsubara frequency quantities or calculating multi-dimensional integrals,
while taking full account of the very sharp structures in the Green's functions
that arise close to the Mott transitions and in the Mott insulator regime. We
demonstrate its viability for the half-filled Hubbard model. Previous known
results are reproduced within the present approach. The universal behavior of
the spectral functions in the Fermi liquid regime is emphasized, and adiabatic
continuity to the non-interacting limit is demonstrated. The dc resistivity in
the metallic regime is known to be a non-monotonic function of temperature with
a `coherence peak'. This feature is shown to be a universal feature occurring
at a temperature roughly equal to the low energy scale of the system. A
comparison to pressure dependent dc resistivity experiments on Selenium doped
NiS$_2$ yields qualitatively good agreement. Resistivity hysteresis across the
Mott transition is shown to be described qualitatively within the present
framework. A direct comparison of the thermal hysteresis observed in V$_2$O$_3$
with our theoretical results yields a value of the hopping integral, which we
find to be in the range estimated through first-principle methods. Finally, a
systematic study of optical conductivity is carried out and the changes in
absorption as a result of varying interaction strength and temperature are
identified.


  High-dimensional data are widely used in the era of deep learning with
numerous applications. However, certain data which has sensitive information
are not allowed to be shared without privacy protection. In this paper, we
propose a novel differentially private data releasing method called
Differentially Private Data Publishing with Gaussian Optimized Model Inversion
(DPGOMI) to address this issue. Our approach involves mapping private data to
the latent space using a public generator, followed by a lower-dimensional
DP-GAN with better convergence properties. We evaluate the performance of
DPGOMI on standard datasets CIFAR10 and SVHN. Our results show that DPGOMI
outperforms the standard DP-GAN method in terms of Inception Score, Fr\'echet
Inception Distance, and classification performance, while providing the same
level of privacy. Our proposed approach offers a promising solution for
protecting sensitive data in GAN training while maintaining high-quality
results.


  The NGT field equations with sources are expanded first about a flat
Minkowski background and then about a GR background to first-order in the
antisymmetric part of the fundamental tensor, $g_{\mu\nu}$. From the general,
static spherically symmetric solution of the field equation in empty space, we
establish that there are two conserved charges $m$ and $\ell^2$ corresponding
to the two basic gauge invariances of NGT. There is no direct contribution to
the flux of gravitational waves from the antisymmetric, $g_{[\mu\nu]}$, sector
in the linearized, lowest order of approximation, nor in the non-linear theory.
It is demonstrated that the flux of gravitational waves is finite in magnitude
and positive definite for solutions of the field equations which satisfy the
boundary condition of asymptotic flatness.


  We report a demonstration of simple and effective loading of strontium ions
into a linear radio frequency Paul trap using photoionization. The ionization
pathway is 5s2 1S0 -- 5s5p 1P1 -- 5p2 1D2, and the 5p2 1D2 final state is
auto-ionizing. Both transitions are driven using diode lasers: a
grating-stabilized 922 nm diode doubled in a single pass through potassium
niobate to 461 nm and a bare diode at 405 nm. Using this technique, we have
reduced the background pressure during the ion loading process by a factor of 2
compared to the conventional technique of electron bombardment. Initial ion
temperatures are low enough that the ions immediately form crystals. It is also
possible to observe the trapping region with a CCD camera during ion creation,
allowing specific ion number loading with high probability.


  The interpretation of ferroelectric domain images obtained with piezoresponse
force microscopy (PFM) is discussed. The influences of an inherent experimental
background on the domain contrast in PFM images (enhancement, nulling,
inversion) as well as on the shape and the location of the domain boundaries
are described. We present experimental results to evidence our analysis of the
influence of the background on the domain contrast in PFM images.


  We propose and demonstrate spin manipulation by magnetically controlled
modulation of pure spin currents in cobalt/copper lateral spin valves,
fabricated on top of the magnetic insulator Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ (YIG). The
direction of the YIG magnetization can be controlled by a small magnetic field.
We observe a clear modulation of the non-local resistance as a function of the
orientation of the YIG magnetization with respect to the polarization of the
spin current. Such a modulation can only be explained by assuming a finite
spin-mixing conductance at the Cu/YIG interface, as it follows from the
solution of the spin-diffusion equation. These results open a new path towards
the development of spin logics.


  We construct a class of topological field theories with Wess-Zumino term in
spacetime dimensions $\ge 2$ whose target space has a geometrical structure
that suitably generalizes Poisson or twisted Poisson manifolds. Assuming a
field content comprising a set of scalar fields accompanied by gauge fields of
degree $(1,p-1,p)$ we determine a generic Wess-Zumino topological field theory
in $p+1$ dimensions with background data consisting of a Poisson 2-vector, a
$(p+1)$-vector $R$ and a $(p+2)$-form $H$ satisfying a specific geometrical
condition that defines a $H$-twisted $R$-Poisson structure of order $p+1$. For
this class of theories we demonstrate how a target space covariant formulation
can be found by means of an auxiliary connection without torsion. Furthermore,
we study admissible deformations of the generic class in special spacetime
dimensions and find that they exist in dimensions 2, 3 and 4. The
two-dimensional deformed field theory includes the twisted Poisson sigma model,
whereas in three dimensions we find a more general structure that we call
bi-twisted $R$-Poisson. This extends the twisted $R$-Poisson structure of order
3 by a non-closed 3-form and gives rise to a topological field theory whose
covariant formulation requires a connection with torsion and includes a twisted
Poisson sigma model in three dimensions as a special case. The relation of the
corresponding structures to differential graded Q-manifolds based on the degree
shifted cotangent bundle $T^{\ast}[p]T^{\ast}[1]M$ is discussed, as well as the
obstruction to them being QP-manifolds due to the Wess-Zumino term.


  In this paper, we adopt the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) to solve convex
quadratic second-order cone programming problems (SOCPs). Fruitful results on
the efficiency of the ALM have been established in the literature. Recently, it
has been shown in [Cui, Sun, and Toh, {\em Math. Program.}, 178 (2019), pp.
381--415] that if the quadratic growth condition holds at an optimal solution
for the dual problem, then the KKT residual converges to zero R-superlinearly
when the ALM is applied to the primal problem. Moreover, Cui, Ding, and Zhao
[{\em SIAM J. Optim.}, 27 (2017), pp. 2332-2355] provided sufficient conditions
for the quadratic growth condition to hold under the metric subregularity and
bounded linear regularity conditions for solving composite matrix optimization
problems involving spectral functions. Here, we adopt these recent ideas to
analyze the convergence properties of the ALM when applied to SOCPs. To the
best of our knowledge, no similar work has been done for SOCPs so far. In our
paper, we first provide sufficient conditions to ensure the quadratic growth
condition for SOCPs. With these elegant theoretical guarantees, we then design
an SOCP solver and apply it to solve various classes of SOCPs, such as minimal
enclosing ball problems, classical trust-region subproblems, square-root Lasso
problems, and DIMACS Challenge problems. Numerical results show that the
proposed ALM based solver is efficient and robust compared to the existing
highly developed solvers, such as Mosek and SDPT3.


  This is an introductory review of Musical Excellence of Mridangam by Dr.
Umayalpuram K Sivaraman, Dr. T Ramasami and Dr. Naresh, which is a scientific
treatise exploring the unique tonal properties of the ancient Indian classical
percussive instrument -- the Mridangam. This review aims to bridge the gap
between the primary intended audience of Musical Excellence of Mridangam -
listeners, artistes and makers -- and the scientific rigour with which the
original treatise is written, by first introducing the concepts of musical
analysis and then presenting and explaining the discoveries made within this
context. The first three chapters of this review introduce the basic scientific
concepts used in Musical Excellence of Mridangam and provides background to
previous scientific research into this instrument, starting from the seminal
work of Dr. CV Raman. This also includes brief discussions of the corresponding
chapters in Musical Excellence of Mridangam. The next chapters all serve the
purpose of explaining the main scientific results presented in Musical
Excellence of Mridangam in each of the corresponding chapters in the treatise,
and finally summarizing the relevance of the work.


  We consider the Brezis-Nirenberg problem: \begin{equation*} \begin{cases}
-\Delta u = \lambda u + |u|^{2^* -2}u & \hbox{in}\ \Omega\\ u=0 & \hbox{on}\
\partial \Omega, \end{cases} \end{equation*} where $\Omega$ is a smooth bounded
domain in $\mathbb{R}^N$, $N\geq 3$, $2^{*}=\frac{2N}{N-2}$ is the critical
Sobolev exponent and $\lambda>0$ a positive parameter.
  The main result of the paper shows that if $N=4,5,6$ and $\lambda$ is close
to zero there are no sign-changing solutions of the form
$$u_\lambda=PU_{\delta_1,\xi}-PU_{\delta_2,\xi}+w_\lambda, $$ where
$PU_{\delta_i}$ is the projection on $H_0^1(\Omega)$ of the regular positive
solution of the critical problem in $\mathbb{R}^N$, centered at a point $\xi
\in \Omega$ and $w_\lambda$ is a remainder term.
  Some additional results on norm estimates of $w_\lambda$ and about the
concentrations speeds of tower of bubbles in higher dimensions are also
presented.


  In models of inflation obtained from string compactification, moduli vacuum
misalignment leads to an epoch in the post-inflationary history of the universe
when the energy density is dominated by cold moduli particles. This effect
leads to a modification in the number of $e$-foldings ($N_{\rm pivot}$) between
horizon exit of the CMB modes and the end of inflation. Taking K\"ahler moduli
inflation as a prototype, the shift in $e$-foldings turns out to be a function
of the model parameters which also determines the inflationary observables. We
analyse this scenario numerically using publicly available {\sc{ModeChord}} and
{\sc{CosmoMC}} with the latest \emph{Planck+BICEP2/Keck array} data to
constrain the model parameters and $N_{\rm pivot}$. In light of the present and
future precision data, the results show the importance of careful consideration
of any post-inflationary non-standard epoch, as well as of the effects of
reheating.


  We discuss a model for the on-site matrix elements of the sp3d5s*
tight-binding hamiltonian of a strained diamond or zinc-blende crystal or
nanostructure. This model features on-site, off-diagonal couplings between the
s, p and d orbitals, and is able to reproduce the effects of arbitrary strains
on the band energies and effective masses in the full Brillouin zone. It
introduces only a few additional parameters and is free from any ambiguities
that might arise from the definition of the macroscopic strains as a function
of the atomic positions. We apply this model to silicon, germanium and their
alloys as an illustration. In particular, we make a detailed comparison of
tight-binding and ab initio data on strained Si, Ge and SiGe.


  We review the recently proposed \lc\ quantization of the matrix model which
is expected to have a critical point describing 2-d quantum gravity coupled to
$c=2$ matter. In the $N\to\infty$ limit, we derive a linear Schroedinger
equation for the free string spectrum. Numerical study of this equation
suggests that the spectrum is tachyonic, and that the string tension diverges
at the critical point.


  In counterfactual QKD information is transfered, in a secure way, between
Alice and Bob even when no particle carrying the information is in fact
transmitted between them. In this letter we fully implement the scheme for
counterfactual QKD proposed in [T. Noh, \PRL \textbf{103}, 230501 (2009)],
demonstrating for the first time that information can be transmitted between
two parties without the transmission of a carrier.