  We show that, after a transformation, the dynamics of linear perturbations
(spin waves) around a singular Bloch point soliton is formally equivalent to a
quantum system of an electron in a magnetic monopole field. The analytical
solution to this problem is known and allows us to find the spectrum and the
scattering of a wave in a Bloch point field.


  We show that the minimal rate of noise needed to catalytically erase the
entanglement in a bipartite quantum state is given by the regularized relative
entropy of entanglement. This offers a solution to the central open question
raised in [Groisman, PRA 72, 032317 (2005)] and complements their main result
that the minimal rate of noise needed to erase all correlations is given by the
quantum mutual information. We extend our discussion to the tripartite setting
where we show that an asymptotic rate of noise given by the regularized
relative entropy of recovery is sufficient to catalytically transform the state
to a locally recoverable version of the state.


  By abstracting a connection between gauge symmetry and gauge identity on a
noncommutative space, we analyse star (deformed) gauge transformations with
usual Leibnitz rule as well as undeformed gauge transformations with a twisted
Leibnitz rule. Explicit structures of the gauge generators in either case are
computed. It is shown that, in the former case, the relation mapping the
generator with the gauge identity is a star deformation of the commutative
space result. In the latter case, on the other hand, this result gets twisted
to yield the desired map.


  The ever-increasing demand for unlicensed spectrum has prompted regulators in
the US and Europe to consider opening up the 6 GHz bands for unlicensed access.
These bands will open up 1.2 GHz of additional spectrum for unlicensed radio
access technologies (RATs), such as Wi-Fi and 5G New Radio Unlicensed (NR-U),
in the US and if permitted, 500 MHz of additional spectrum in Europe. The
abundance of spectrum in these bands creates new opportunities for the design
of mechanisms and features that can support the emerging bandwidth-intensive
and latency-sensitive applications. However, coexistence of unlicensed devices
both with the bands' incumbent users and across different unlicensed RATs
present significant challenges. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive
survey of the existing literature on various issues surrounding the operations
of unlicensed RATs in the 6 GHz bands. In particular, we discuss how key
features in next-generation Wi-Fi are being designed to leverage these
additional unlicensed bands. We also shed light on the foreseeable challenges
that designers of unlicensed RATs might face in the near future. Our survey
encompasses key research papers, contributions submitted to standardization
bodies and regulatory agencies, and documents presented at various other
venues. Finally, we highlight a few key research problems that are likely to
arise due to unlicensed operations in the 6 GHz bands. Tackling these research
challenges effectively will be critical in ensuring that the new unlicensed
bands are efficiently utilized while guaranteeing the interference-free
operation of the bands' incumbent users.


  The gauged Witten equation was essentially introduced by Witten in his
formulation of gauged linear $\sigma$-model (GLSM). GLSM is a physics theory
which explains the so-called Landau-Ginzburg/Calabi-Yau correspondence. This is
the first paper in a series towards a mathematical construction of GLSM. In
this paper we study some analytical properties of the gauged Witten equation
for a Lagrange multiplier type superpotential. It contains the asymptotic
property of finite energy solutions, the linear Fredholm property, the uniform
$C^0$-bound, and the compactness of the moduli space of solutions over a fixed
smooth $r$-spin curve with uniform energy bound.


  The radiative B_c -> l nu gamma decay is investigated in the Standard Model
in framework of the light cone QCD. The transition form factors and decay width
are calculated. A comparison of light cone QCD and constituent quark model
predictions on these quantities is presented.


  Current state-of-the-art video object segmentation models have achieved great
success using supervised learning with massive labeled training datasets.
However, these models are trained using a single source domain and evaluated
using videos sampled from the same source domain. When these models are
evaluated using videos sampled from a different target domain, their
performance degrades significantly due to poor domain generalization, i.e.,
their inability to learn from multi-domain sources simultaneously using
traditional supervised learning. In this paper, We propose a dynamically
growing tree of sub-networks (DGT) to learn effectively from multi-domain
sources. DGT uses a novel lifelong learning technique that allows the model to
continuously and effectively learn from new domains without forgetting the
previously learned domains. Hence, the model can generalize to out-of-domain
videos. The proposed work is evaluated using single-source in-domain
(traditional video object segmentation), multi-source in-domain, and
multi-source out-of-domain video object segmentation. The results of DGT show a
single source in-domain performance gain of 0.2% and 3.5% on the DAVIS16 and
DAVIS17 datasets, respectively. However, when DGT is evaluated using in-domain
multi-sources, the results show superior performance compared to
state-of-the-art video object segmentation and other lifelong learning
techniques with an average performance increase in the F-score of 6.9% with
minimal catastrophic forgetting. Finally, in the out-of-domain experiment, the
performance of DGT is 2.7% and 4% better than state-of-the-art in 1 and
5-shots, respectively.


  We study the lifetime of the excited state of an atom or molecule near a
plane surface with a given random surface roughness. In particular, we discuss
the impact of the scattering of surface modes within the rough surface. Our
study is completed by considering the lateral correlation length of the decay
rate and the variance discussing its relation to the C0 correlation.


  RNA molecules in living cells form what look like liquid droplets formed by
liquid/liquid phase separation. But unlike the molecules in conventional phase
separating mixtures, RNA molecules are transported by molecular motors that
consume energy and so are out of equilibrium. Motivated by this we consider
what sort of simple rules for the dynamics of model mRNA molecules lead to
liquid/liquid phase separation. We find that dynamics that slow as the local
density of molecules increases, drive the formation of liquids. We also look at
the analogous separation of the two blocks of a block copolymer, in which the
monomers of one block have dynamics that depend on the local density of
monomers of that block. We find that this block condenses and separates from
the monomers of the other block. This is a simple model of the
out-of-equilibrium domain formation found in the chromatin in the nucleus of
cells.


  First, we fill in key gaps in Steiner's nice characterization of the most
nearly circular ellipse which passes through the vertices of a convex
quadrilateral, D. Steiner proved that there is only one pair of conjugate
directions, M1 and M2, that belong to all ellipses of circumscription. Then he
proves that if there is an ellipse, E, whose equal conjugate diameters possess
the directional constants M1 and M2, then E must be an ellipse of
circumscription which has minimal eccentricity. However, Steiner does not show
the existence or uniqueness of such an ellipse. We prove that there is a unique
ellipse of minimal eccentricity which passes through the vertices of D. We also
show that there exists an ellipse which passes through the vertices of D and
whose equal conjugate diameters possess the directional constants M1 and M2. We
also show that there exists a unique ellipse of minimal area which passes
through the vertices of D. Finally, we call a convex quadrilateral, D,
bielliptic if the unique inscribed and circumscribed ellipses of minimal
eccentricity have the same eccentricity. This generalizes the notion of
bicentric quadrilaterals. In particular we show the existence of a bielliptic
convex quadrilateral which is not bicentric.


  Cloud computing is becoming an increasingly lucrative branch of the existing
information and communication technologies (ICT). Enabling a debate about cloud
usage scenarios can help with attracting new customers, sharing best-practices,
and designing new cloud services. In contrast to previous approaches, which
have attempted mainly to formalize the common service delivery models (i.e.,
Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service),
in this work, we propose a formalism for describing common cloud usage
scenarios referred to as cloud usage patterns. Our formalism takes a
structuralist approach allowing decomposition of a cloud usage scenario into
elements corresponding to the common cloud service delivery models.
Furthermore, our formalism considers several cloud usage patterns that have
recently emerged, such as hybrid services and value chains in which mediators
are involved, also referred to as value chains with mediators. We propose a
simple yet expressive textual and visual language for our formalism, and we
show how it can be used in practice for describing a variety of real-world
cloud usage scenarios. The scenarios for which we demonstrate our formalism
include resource provisioning of global providers of infrastructure and/or
platform resources, online social networking services, user-data processing
services, online customer and ticketing services, online asset management and
banking applications, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications, and
online social gaming applications.


  We study subvarieties of the flag variety called Hessenberg varieties,
defined by certain linear conditions. These subvarieties arise naturally in
applications including geometric representation theory, number theory, and
numerical analysis. We describe completely the homology of Hessenberg varieties
over GL_n(C) and show that they have no odd-dimensional homology. We provide an
explicit geometric construction which partitions each Hessenberg variety into
pieces homeomorphic to affine space. We characterize these affine pieces by
fillings of Young tableaux and show that the dimension of the affine piece can
be computed by combinatorial rules generalizing the Eulerian numbers. We give
an equivalent formulation of this result in terms of roots. We conclude with a
section on open questions.


  We give characterizations of unital uniform topological algebras and
saturated locally multiplicatively convex algebras by means of multiplicative
linear functionals. Some automatic continuity theorems in advertibly complete
uniform topological algebras are extended to a larger class of algebras.
Consequences and applications are given.


  This paper introduces SCALER, a quadrupedal robot that demonstrates climbing
on bouldering walls, overhangs, ceilings and trotting on the ground. SCALER is
one of the first high-degrees of freedom four-limbed robots that can free-climb
under the Earth's gravity and one of the most mechanically efficient quadrupeds
on the ground. Where other state-of-the-art climbers specialize in climbing,
SCALER promises practical free-climbing with payload \textit{and} ground
locomotion, which realizes true versatile mobility. A new climbing gait, SKATE
gait, increases the payload by utilizing the SCALER body linkage mechanism.
SCALER achieves a maximum normalized locomotion speed of $1.87$ /s, or $0.56$
m/s on the ground and $1.0$ /min, or $0.35$ m/min in bouldering wall climbing.
Payload capacity reaches $233$ % of the SCALER weight on the ground and $35$ %
on the vertical wall. Our GOAT gripper, a mechanically adaptable underactuated
two-finger gripper, successfully grasps convex and non-convex objects and
supports SCALER.


  We identify Melrose's suspended algebra of pseudodifferential operators with
a subalgebra of the algebra of parametric pseudodifferential operators with
parameter space $\R$. For a general algebra of parametric pseudodifferential
operators, where the parameter space may now be a cone $\Gamma\subset\R^p$, we
construct a unique ``symbol valued trace'', which extends the $L^2$-trace on
operators of small order. This allows to construct various trace functionals in
a systematic way. Furthermore we study the higher-dimensional eta-invariants on
algebras with parameter space $\R^{2k-1}$. Using Clifford representations we
construct for each first order elliptic differential operator a natural family
of parametric pseudodifferential operators over $\R^{2k-1}$. The eta-invariant
of this family coincides with the spectral eta-invariant of the operator.


  We deal with finite dimensional differentiable manifolds. All items are
concerned with are differentiable as well. The class of differentiability is
$C^\infty$. A metric structure in a vector bundle $E$ is a constant rank
symmetric bilinear vector bundle homomorphism of $E\times E$ in the trivial
bundle line bundle. We address the question whether a given gauge structure in
$E$ is metric. That is the main concerns. We use generalized Amari functors of
the information geometry for introducing two index functions defined in the
moduli space of gauge structures in $E$. Beside we introduce a differential
equation whose analysis allows to link the new index functions just mentioned
with the main concerns. We sketch applications in the differential geometry
theory of statistics. Reader interested in a former forum on the question
whether a giving connection is metric are referred to appendix.


  We present CLIPPER (Consistent LInking, Pruning, and Pairwise Error
Rectification), a framework for robust data association in the presence of
noise and outliers. We formulate the problem in a graph-theoretic framework
using the notion of geometric consistency. State-of-the-art techniques that use
this framework utilize either combinatorial optimization techniques that do not
scale well to large-sized problems, or use heuristic approximations that yield
low accuracy in high-noise, high-outlier regimes. In contrast, CLIPPER uses a
relaxation of the combinatorial problem and returns solutions that are
guaranteed to correspond to the optima of the original problem. Low time
complexity is achieved with an efficient projected gradient ascent approach.
Experiments indicate that CLIPPER maintains a consistently low runtime of 15 ms
where exact methods can require up to 24 s at their peak, even on small-sized
problems with 200 associations. When evaluated on noisy point cloud
registration problems, CLIPPER achieves 100% precision and 98% recall in 90%
outlier regimes while competing algorithms begin degrading by 70% outliers. In
an instance of associating noisy points of the Stanford Bunny with 990 outlier
associations and only 10 inlier associations, CLIPPER successfully returns 8
inlier associations with 100% precision in 138 ms. Code is available at
https://mit-acl.github.io/clipper.


  The wide-angle photo- and electroproduction of pions is investigated within
the handbag mechanism in which the $\gamma^{(*)} N\to \pi N'$ amplitudes
factorize into subprocess amplitudes,$\gamma^{(*)} q\to \pi q'$, and form
factors representing $1/x$-moments of generalized parton distributions (GPDs).
The subprocess is calculated to twist-3 accuracy taking into account both the
2- and 3-body Fock components of the pion. The cross-sections are compared to
experiment and spin-effects are discussed.


  Given an undirected graph $\mathcal{G}=(\mathcal{N},\mathcal{E})$ of agents
$\mathcal{N}=\{1,\ldots,N\}$ connected with edges in $\mathcal{E}$, we study
how to compute an optimal decision on which there is consensus among agents and
that minimizes the sum of agent-specific private convex composite functions
$\{\Phi_i\}_{i\in\mathcal{N}}$ while respecting privacy requirements, where
$\Phi_i\triangleq \xi_i + f_i$ belongs to agent-$i$. Assuming only agents
connected by an edge can communicate, we propose a distributed proximal
gradient method DPGA for consensus optimization over both unweighted and
weighted static (undirected) communication networks. In one iteration, each
agent-$i$ computes the prox map of $\xi_i$ and gradient of $f_i$, and this is
followed by local communication with neighboring agents. We also study its
stochastic gradient variant, SDPGA, which can only access to noisy estimates of
$\nabla f_i$ at each agent-$i$. This computational model abstracts a number of
applications in distributed sensing, machine learning and statistical
inference. We show ergodic convergence in both sub-optimality error and
consensus violation for DPGA and SDPGA with rates $\mathcal{O}(1/t)$ and
$\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{t})$, respectively.


  Model based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) algorithms for low-dose X-ray CT
are computationally complex because of the repeated use of the forward and
backward projection. Inspired by this success of deep learning in computer
vision applications, we recently proposed a deep convolutional neural network
(CNN) for low-dose X-ray CT and won the second place in 2016 AAPM Low-Dose CT
Grand Challenge. However, some of the texture are not fully recovered, which
was unfamiliar to some radiologists. To cope with this problem, here we propose
a direct residual learning approach on directional wavelet domain to solve this
problem and to improve the performance against previous work. In particular,
the new network estimates the noise of each input wavelet transform, and then
the de-noised wavelet coefficients are obtained by subtracting the noise from
the input wavelet transform bands. The experimental results confirm that the
proposed network has significantly improved performance, preserving the detail
texture of the original images.


  A recent paper (arXiv:1404.5619) claimed the presence of a loophole in the
current-algebra proof of Goldstone Theorem. The enforcing of manifest
covariance would lead to contradictory results also in scalar theory. We show
that the argument proposed is not in contradiction with covariance, thus not
invalidating the theorem. Moreover, the counterexample proposed of a scalar
operator with a non-zero vacuum expectation value in an unbroken theory is
ill-defined.


  We prove a laplacian comparison theorem in the barrier sense for the function
distance to the boundary of Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci
curvature, area and mean curvature of the boundary bounded above. As an
application we get volume estimates, different to the ones obtained by
Heintz-Karcher, and area estimates. With those estimates we prove
Sormani-Wenger Intrinsic Flat (SWIF) compactness theorems for sequences of such
manifolds with uniform bounds.


  We study several Tauberian properties of regularizing transforms of tempered
distributions with values in Banach spaces, that is, transforms of the form
$M^{\mathbf{f}}_{\phi}(x,y)=(\mathbf{f}\ast\phi_{y})(x)$, where the kernel
$\phi$ is a test function and $\phi_{y}(\cdot)=y^{-n}\phi(\cdot/y)$. If the
zeroth moment of $\phi$ vanishes, it is a wavelet type transform; otherwise, we
say it is a non-wavelet type transform.
  The first aim of this work is to show that the scaling (weak) asymptotic
properties of distributions are \emph{completely} determined by boundary
asymptotics of the regularizing transform plus natural Tauberian hypotheses.
Our second goal is to characterize the spaces of Banach space-valued tempered
distributions in terms of the transform $M^{\mathbf{f}}_{\phi}(x,y)$. We
investigate conditions which ensure that a distribution that a priori takes
values in locally convex space actually takes values in a narrower Banach
space. Special attention is paid to find the \emph{optimal} class of kernels
$\phi$ for which these Tauberian results hold.
  We give various applications of our Tauberian theory in the pointwise and
(micro-)local regularity analysis of Banach space-valued distributions, and
develop a number of techniques which are specially useful when applied to
scalar-valued functions and distributions. Among such applications, we obtain
the full weak-asymptotic series expansion of the family of Riemann-type
distributions $R_{\beta}(x)=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}e^{i\pi xn^{2}}/n^{2\beta}$,
$\beta\in\mathbb{C}$, at every rational point. We also apply the results to
regularity theory within generalized function algebras, to the stabilization of
solutions for a class of Cauchy problems, and to Tauberian theorems for the
Laplace transform.


  We calculate inclusive dijet production cross section in high energy hadron
collisions within the BFKL resummation formalism for the QCD Pomeron. We take
into account the Pomerons which are adjacent to the hadrons. With these
adjacent Pomerons we define a new object - the BFKL structure function of
hadron - which enables one to calculate the inclusive dijet production for any
rapidity intervals. We present predictions for the dijet K-factor and azimuthal
angle decorrelation. Estimations for some NLO BFKL corrections are also given.
  (To appear in the Proceedings of the Workshop on Particle Theory and
Phenomenology, the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics,
Ames, Iowa, May 1995)


  In the paper autonilpotent groups were characterized as groups $G$ such that
$\mathrm{Aut}G$ stabilizes some chain of subgroups of $G$. It was shown that a
$p$-group is autonilpotent if and only if its group of automorphisms is also a
$p$-group. Analogues of Baer's theorem about the hypercenter and Frobenius
$p$-nilpotency criterion were obtained for autonilpotent groups.


  We discuss observing strategy for the Near Infrared Coronagraphic Imager
(NICI) on the 8-m Gemini South telescope. NICI combines a number of techniques
to attenuate starlight and suppress superspeckles: 1) coronagraphic imaging, 2)
dual channel imaging for Spectral Differential Imaging (SDI) and 3) operation
in a fixed Cassegrain rotator mode for Angular Differential Imaging (ADI). NICI
will be used both in service mode and for a dedicated 50 night planet search
campaign. While all of these techniques have been used individually in large
planet-finding surveys, this is the first time ADI and SDI will be used with a
coronagraph in a large survey. Thus, novel observing strategies are necessary
to conduct a viable planet search campaign.


  High-precision hydrogen spectroscopy is an active field which helps to
determine the Rydberg constant and proton charge radius, tests bound-state QED,
and can search for Beyond Standard Model (BSM) Physics. Additionally, with
recent demonstrations of anti-hydrogen trapping and spectroscopy, a new line of
investigation is possible whereby hydrogen can be compared to its antimatter
counterpart. The next generation of precision hydrogen spectroscopy will likely
require additional motional control of the atomic sample - similar to what is
possible with heavier elements. Unfortunately, laser cooling - one of the
cornerstones of modern precision atomic physics - is difficult in hydrogen due
to the vacuum ultraviolet radiation required. Here, we sidestep the challenges
inherent in laser cooling and demonstrate a technique whereby we load
metastable atoms from a cryogenic beam into a moving optical lattice,
decelerate the lattice, and observe a commensurate deceleration of the atoms.
Since the optical lattice is governed by standard optoelectronics, this
technique represents a robust platform for the motional control of hydrogen.
Our technique could enable greater precision in hydrogen spectroscopy and be
transferred to exotic simple atoms such as antihydrogen.


  We find new classes of exact solutions to the Einstein-Maxwell system of
equations for a charged sphere with a particular choice of the electric field
intensity and one of the gravitational potentials. The condition of pressure
isotropy is reduced to a linear, second order differential equation which can
be solved in general. Consequently we can find exact solutions to the
Einstein-Maxwell field equations corresponding to a static spherically
symmetric gravitational potential in terms of hypergeometric functions. It is
possible to find exact solutions which can be written explicitly in terms of
elementary functions, namely polynomials and product of polynomials and
algebraic functions. Uncharged solutions are regainable with our choice of
electric field intensity; in particular we generate the Einstein universe for
particular parameter values.


  The residual network is now one of the most effective structures in deep
learning, which utilizes the skip connections to ``guarantee" the performance
will not get worse. However, the non-convexity of the neural network makes it
unclear whether the skip connections do provably improve the learning ability
since the nonlinearity may create many local minima. In some previous works
\cite{freeman2016topology}, it is shown that despite the non-convexity, the
loss landscape of the two-layer ReLU network has good properties when the
number $m$ of hidden nodes is very large. In this paper, we follow this line to
study the topology (sub-level sets) of the loss landscape of deep ReLU neural
networks with a skip connection and theoretically prove that the skip
connection network inherits the good properties of the two-layer network and
skip connections can help to control the connectedness of the sub-level sets,
such that any local minima worse than the global minima of some two-layer ReLU
network will be very ``shallow". The ``depth" of these local minima are at most
$O(m^{(\eta-1)/n})$, where $n$ is the input dimension, $\eta<1$. This provides
a theoretical explanation for the effectiveness of the skip connection in deep
learning.


  Given a probability space $(\Omega,\Sigma,\mu)$, the Hardy space
$\mathrm{H}_1(\Omega)$ which is associated to the martingale square function
does not admit a classical atomic decomposition when the underlying filtration
is not regular. In this paper we construct a decomposition of
$\mathrm{H}_1(\Omega)$ into "atomic blocks"${}$ in the spirit of Tolsa, which
we will introduce for martingales. We provide three proofs of this result. Only
the first one also applies to noncommutative martingales, the main target of
this paper. The other proofs emphasize alternative approaches for commutative
martingales. One might be well-known to experts, using a weaker notion of atom
and approximation by atomic filtrations. The last one adapts Tolsa's argument
replacing medians by conditional medians.


  We study the projective tensor norm as a measure of the largest Bell
violation of a quantum state. In order to do this, we consider a truncated
version of a well-known SDP relaxation for the quantum value of a two-prover
one-round game, one which has extra restrictions on the dimension of the SDP
solutions. Our main result provides a quite accurate upper bound for the
distance between the classical value of a Bell inequality and the corresponding
value of the relaxation. Along the way, we give a simple proof that the best
complementation constant of $\ell_2^n$ in $\ell_1(\ell_\infty)$ is of order
$\sqrt{\ln n}$. As a direct consequence, we show that we cannot remove a
logarithmic factor when we are computing the largest Bell violation attainable
by the maximally entangled state.


  We produce a master identity {m}{m}=0 for homotopy Gerstenhaber algebras, as
defined by Getzler and Jones and utilized by Kimura, Voronov, and Zuckerman in
the context of topological conformal field theories. To this end, we introduce
the notion of a "partitioned multilinear map" and explain the mechanics of
composing such maps. In addition, many new examples of pre-Lie algebras and
homotopy Gerstenhaber algebras are given.


  Searches for the prebiotically-relevant cyanamide (NH$_2$CN) towards
solar-type protostars have not been reported in the literature. We here present
the first detection of this species in the warm gas surrounding two solar-type
protostars, using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array
Protostellar Interferometric Line Survey (PILS) of IRAS 16293-2422 B and
observations from the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer of NGC1333 IRAS2A. We
furthermore detect the deuterated and $^{13}$C isotopologues of NH$_2$CN
towards IRAS 16293-2422 B. This is the first detection of NHDCN in the
interstellar medium. Based on a local thermodynamic equilibrium analysis, we
find that the deuteration of cyanamide ($\sim$ 1.7%) is similar to that of
formamide (NH$_2$CHO), which may suggest that these two molecules share NH$_2$
as a common precursor. The NH$_2$CN/NH$_2$CHO abundance ratio is about 0.2 for
IRAS 16293-2422 B and 0.02 for IRAS2A, which is comparable to the range of
values found for Sgr B2. We explored the possible formation of NH$_2$CN on
grains through the NH$_2$ + CN reaction using the chemical model MAGICKAL.
Grain-surface chemistry appears capable of reproducing the gas-phase abundance
of NH$_2$CN with the correct choice of physical parameters.


  The projective construction is a powerful approach to deriving the bulk and
edge field theories of non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states and
yields an understanding of non-Abelian FQH states in terms of the simpler
integer quantum Hall states. Here we show how to apply the projective
construction to the Z_k parafermion (Laughlin/Moore-Read/Read-Rezayi) FQH
states, which occur at filling fraction \nu = k/(kM+2). This allows us to
derive the bulk low energy effective field theory for these topological phases,
which is found to be a Chern-Simons theory at level 1 with a U(M) \times Sp(2k)
gauge field. This approach also helps us understand the non-Abelian quasiholes
in terms of holes of the integer quantum Hall states.


  In this report we describe the design and simulation of a Sigma Delta ADC in
Matlan/Simulink


  Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein integral functions are of importance not only
in quantum statistics but for their mathematical properties, in themselves.
Here, we have extended these functions by introducing an extra parameter in a
way that gives new insights into these functions and their relation to the
family of zeta functions. These extensions are "dual" to each other in a sense
that is explained. Some identities are proved for them and the relation between
them and the general Hurwitz-Lerch zeta function (\phi(z,s,v) is exploited to
deduce new identities.


  Satellite IoT is an emerging technology that combines the advantages of
satellite communication and IoT, providing global coverage, high reliability,
and flexible networking. It has a wide range of applications in various fields,
including smart agriculture, smart transportation, smart cities, environmental
monitoring, and emergency response. With the continuous development of
satellite communication, IoT, edge computing, cloud computing, AI, and ML
technology, satellite IoT will play an increasingly important role in the
future, supporting the digital transformation and sustainable development of
society.


  We report a new analytical method for exact solution of homogeneous linear
ordinary differential equations with arbitrary order and variable coefficients.
The method is based on the definition of jump transfer matrices and their
extension into limiting differential form. The approach reduces the $n$th-order
differential equation to a system of $n$ linear differential equations with
unity order. The full analytical solution is then found by the perturbation
technique. The important feature of the presented method is that it deals with
the evolution of independent solutions, rather than its derivatives. We prove
the validity of method by direct substitution of the solution in the original
differential equation. We discuss the general properties of differential
transfer matrices and present several analytical examples, showing the
applicability of the method. We show that the Abel-Liouville-Ostogradski
theorem can be easily recovered through this approach.


  In this 4-page manuscript we discuss the problem of long-term AI Safety from
a Software Engineering (SE) research viewpoint. We briefly summarize long-term
AI Safety, and the challenge of avoiding harms from AI as systems meet or
exceed human capabilities, including software engineering capabilities (and
approach AGI / "HLMI"). We perform a quantified literature review suggesting
that AI Safety discussions are not common at SE venues. We make conjectures
about how software might change with rising capabilities, and categorize
"subproblems" which fit into traditional SE areas, proposing how work on
similar problems might improve the future of AI and SE.


  We establish the equality of the specialization $E_{w\lambda}(x;q,0)$ of the
nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomial $E_{w\lambda}(x;q,t)$ at $t=0$ with the
graded character $\mathop{\rm gch} U_{w}^{+}(\lambda)$ of a certain
Demazure-type submodule $U_{w}^{+}(\lambda)$ of a tensor product of
"single-column" Kirillov--Reshetikhin modules for an untwisted affine Lie
algebra, where $\lambda$ is a dominant integral weight and $w$ is a (finite)
Weyl group element, this generalizes our previous result, that is, the equality
between the specialization $P_{\lambda}(x;q,0)$ of the symmetric Macdonald
polynomial $P_{\lambda}(x;q,t)$ at $t=0$ and the graded character of a tensor
product of single-column Kirillov--Reshetikhin modules. We also give two
combinatorial formulas for the mentioned specialization of a nonsymmetric
Macdonald polynomial: one in terms of quantum Lakshmibai-Seshadri paths and the
other in terms of the quantum alcove model.


  We discuss the possible relationship between geodesic flow, integrability and
supersymmetry, using fermionic extensions of the KdV equation, as well as the
recently introduced supersymmetrisation of the Camassa-Holm equation, as
illustrative examples.


  Applying a well known result for attracting fixed points of biholomorphisms
\cite{RR, V}, we observe that one immediately obtains the following result: if
$(M^n,g)$ is a complete non-compact gradient K\"ahler-Ricci soliton which is
either steady with positive Ricci curvature so that the scalar curvature
attains its maximum at some point, or expanding with non-negative Ricci
curvature, then $M$ is biholomorphic to $\ce ^n$.


  The understanding of hydrogen attachment to carbonaceous surfaces is
essential to a wide variety of research fields and technologies such as
hydrogen storage for transportation, precise localization of hydrogen in
electronic devices and the formation of cosmic H2. For coronene cations as
prototypical Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules, the existence of
magic numbers upon hydrogenation was uncovered experimentally. Quantum
chemistry calculations show that hydrogenation follows a site-specific sequence
leading to the appearance of cations having 5, 11, or 17 hydrogen atoms
attached, exactly the magic numbers found in the experiments. For these
closed-shell cations, further hydrogenation requires appreciable structural
changes associated with a high transition barrier. Controlling specific
hydrogenation pathways would provide the possibility to tune the location of
hydrogen attachment and the stability of the system. The sequence to
hydrogenate PAHs, leading to PAHs with magic numbers of H atoms attached,
provides clues to understand that carbon in space is mostly aromatic and
partially aliphatic in PAHs. PAH hydrogenation is fundamental to assess the
contribution of PAHs to the formation of cosmic H2.


  We propose a novel soft-aided low-complexity decoder for product codes based
on dynamic reliability scores and error-and-erasure decoding. We observe coding
gains of up to 1.2 dB compared to conventional hard-decision decoders.


  In Private Information Retrieval (PIR), a client queries an n-bit database in
order to retrieve an entry of her choice, while maintaining privacy of her
query value. Chor, Goldreich, Kushilevitz, and Sudan showed that, in the
information-theoretical setting, a linear amount of communication is required
for classical PIR protocols (and thus that the trivial protocol is optimal).
This linear lower bound was shown by Nayak to hold also in the quantum setting.
Here, we extend Nayak's result by considering approximate privacy, and
requiring security only against "specious" adversaries, which are, in analogy
to classical honest-but-curious adversaries, the weakest reasonable quantum
adversaries. We show that, even in this weakened scenario, Quantum Private
Information Retrieval (QPIR) requires n qubits of communication. From this
follows that Le Gall's recent QPIR protocol with sublinear communication
complexity is not information-theoretically private, against the weakest
reasonable cryptographic adversary.


  We consider certain self-adjoint observables for the KMS state associated to
the Hamiltonian $H= \sigma^x \otimes \sigma^x$ over the quantum spin lattice
$\mathbb{C}^2 \otimes \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes ...$. For a
fixed observable of the form $L \otimes L \otimes L \otimes ...$, where
$L:\mathbb{C}^2 \to \mathbb{C}^2 $, and for the zero temperature limit one can
get a naturally defined stationary probability $\mu$ on the Bernoulli space
$\{1,2\}^\mathbb{N}$. This probability is ergodic but it is not mixing for the
shift map. It is not a Gibbs state for a continuous normalized potential but
its Jacobian assume only two values almost everywhere. Anyway, for such
probability $\mu$ we can show that a Large Deviation Principle is true for a
certain class of functions. The result is derived by showing the explicit form
of the free energy which is differentiable.


  We report the influence of uniaxial tensile mechanical strain in the range
0-2.2% on the phonon spectra and bandstructures of monolayer and bilayer
molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) two-dimensional crystals. First, we employ Raman
spectroscopy to observe phonon softening with increased strain, breaking the
degeneracy in the E' Raman mode of MoS2, and extract a Gr\"uneisen parameter of
~1.06. Second, using photoluminescence spectroscopy we measure a decrease in
the optical band gap of MoS2 that is roughly linear with strain, ~45 meV%
strain for monolayer MoS2 and ~120 meV% strain for bilayer MoS2. Third, we
observe a pronounced strain-induced decrease in the photoluminescence intensity
of monolayer MoS2 that is indicative of the direct-to-indirect transition of
the character of the optical band gap of this material at applied strain of
~1.5%, a value supported by first-principles calculations that include
excitonic effects. These observations constitute the first demonstration of
strain engineering the band structure in the emergent class of two-dimensional
crystals, transition-metal dichalcogenides.


  The local equicontinuity of an operator $T:X\rightrightarrows X^{*}$ with
proper Fitzpatrick function $\varphi_{T}$ and defined in a barreled locally
convex space $X$ has been shown to hold on the algebraic interior of
$\operatorname*{Pr}\,_{X}(\operatorname*{dom}\varphi_{T})$). The current note
presents direct consequences of the aforementioned result with regard to the
local equicontinuity of a maximal monotone operator defined in a barreled
locally convex space.


  Today's increasing rate of technological change results from the rapid growth
in computer processing speed, when combined with the cost decline of processing
capacity, and is of historical import. The daily life of billions of
individuals worldwide has been forever changed by technology in just the last
few years. Costly data breaches continue at an alarming rate. The challenge
facing humans as they attempt to govern the process of artificial intelligence,
machine learning, and the impact of billions of sensory devices connected to
the Internet is the subject of this Article.
  We proceed in nine sections. First, we define the Internet of Things (IoT),
comment on the explosive growth in sensory devices connected to the Internet,
provide examples of IoT devices, and speak to the promise of the IoT. Second,
we discuss legal requirements for corporate governance as a foundation for
considering the challenge of governing the IoT. Third, we look at potential IoT
threats. Fourth, we discuss the Mirai botnet. Fifth, is a look at the IoT
threat vector vulnerabilities during times of crisis. Sixth, we discuss the
Manufactured Usage Description (MUD) methodology. Seventh, is a discussion of
recent regulatory developments. Next, we look at a few recommendations. And
finally, we conclude. We believe this Article contributes to our understanding
of the widespread exposure to malware associated with IoT and adds to the
nascent but emerging literature on governance of enterprise risk, a subject of
vital societal importance.


  In this work, the divergence and curl operators are obtained using the
coordinate free non rigid basis formulation of differential geometry. Although
the authors have attempted to keep the presentation self-contained as much as
possible, some previous exposure to the language of differential geometry may
be helpful. In this sense the work is aimed to late undergraduate or beginners
graduate students interested in mathematical physics. To illustrate the
development, we graphically present the eleven coordinate systems in which the
Laplace operator is separable. We detail the development of the basis and the
connection for the cylindrical and paraboloidal coordinate systems. We also
present in [1] codes both in Maxima and Maple for the spherical orthonormal
basis, which serves as a working model for calculations in other situations of
interest. Also in [1] the codes to obtain the coordinate surfaces are given.


  We investigate percolation in the Boolean model with convex grains in high
dimension. For each dimension d, one fixes a compact, convex and symmetric set
K $\subset$ R d with non empty interior. In a first setting, the Boolean model
is a reunion of translates of K. In a second setting, the Boolean model is a
reunion of translates of K or $\rho$K for a further parameter $\rho$ $\in$ (1,
2). We give the asymptotic behavior of the percolation probability and of the
percolation threshold in the two settings.


  Let G be a locally compact group. We describe elements of KK^G (A,B) by
equivariant homomorphisms, following Cuntz's treatment in the non-equivariant
case. This yields another proof for the universal property of KK^G: It is the
universal split exact stable homotopy functor.
  To describe a Kasparov triple (E, phi, F) by an equivariant homomorphism, we
have to arrange for the Fredholm operator F to be equivariant. This can be done
if A is of the form K(L^2G) otimes A' and more generally if the group action on
A is proper in the sense of Rieffel and Exel.


  We investigate the newtonian stationary accretion of a polytropic perfect
fluid onto a central body with a hard surface. The selfgravitation of the fluid
and its interaction with luminosity is included in the model. We find that for
a given luminosity, asymptotic mass and temperature of the fluid there exist
two solutions with different cores.


  This paper presents a novel architecture to detect social groups in real-time
from a continuous image stream of an ego-vision camera. F-formation defines
social orientations in space where two or more person tends to communicate in a
social place. Thus, essentially, we detect F-formations in social gatherings
such as meetings, discussions, etc. and predict the robot's approach angle if
it wants to join the social group. Additionally, we also detect outliers, i.e.,
the persons who are not part of the group under consideration. Our proposed
pipeline consists of -- a) a skeletal key points estimator (a total of 17) for
the detected human in the scene, b) a learning model (using a feature vector
based on the skeletal points) using CRF to detect groups of people and outlier
person in a scene, and c) a separate learning model using a multi-class Support
Vector Machine (SVM) to predict the exact F-formation of the group of people in
the current scene and the angle of approach for the viewing robot. The system
is evaluated using two data-sets. The results show that the group and outlier
detection in a scene using our method establishes an accuracy of 91%. We have
made rigorous comparisons of our systems with a state-of-the-art F-formation
detection system and found that it outperforms the state-of-the-art by 29% for
formation detection and 55% for combined detection of the formation and
approach angle.


  In this paper, we consider the 3D Jordan--Moore--Gibson--Thompson equation
arising in nonlinear acoustics. First, we prove that the solution exists
globally in time provided that the lower order Sobolev norms of the initial
data are considered to be small, while the higher-order norms can be
arbitrarily large. This improves some available results in the literature.
Second, we prove a new decay estimate for the linearized model and removing the
$L^1$-assumption on the initial data. The proof of this decay estimate is based
on the high-frequency and low-frequency decomposition of the solution together
with an interpolation inequality related to Sobolev spaces with negative order.


  Personal devices have adopted diverse authentication methods, including
biometric recognition and passcodes. In contrast, headphones have limited input
mechanisms, depending solely on the authentication of connected devices. We
present Moonwalk, a novel method for passive user recognition utilizing the
built-in headphone accelerometer. Our approach centers on gait recognition;
enabling users to establish their identity simply by walking for a brief
interval, despite the sensor's placement away from the feet. We employ
self-supervised metric learning to train a model that yields a highly
discriminative representation of a user's 3D acceleration, with no retraining
required. We tested our method in a study involving 50 participants, achieving
an average F1 score of 92.9% and equal error rate of 2.3%. We extend our
evaluation by assessing performance under various conditions (e.g. shoe types
and surfaces). We discuss the opportunities and challenges these variations
introduce and propose new directions for advancing passive authentication for
wearable devices.


  Unstructured data refers to information that does not have a predefined data
model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Loosely speaking,
unstructured data refers to text data that is generated by humans. In
after-sales service businesses, there are two main sources of unstructured
data: customer complaints, which generally describe symptoms, and technician
comments, which outline diagnostics and treatment information. A legitimate
customer complaint can eventually be tracked to a failure or a claim. However,
there is a delay between the time of a customer complaint and the time of a
failure or a claim. A proactive strategy aimed at analyzing customer complaints
for symptoms can help service providers detect reliability problems in advance
and initiate corrective actions such as recalls. This paper introduces
essential text mining concepts in the context of reliability analysis and a
method to detect emerging reliability issues. The application of the method is
illustrated using a case study.


  We investigate how star formation is spatially organized in the grand-design
spiral NGC 1566 from deep HST photometry with the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV
Survey (LEGUS). Our contour-based clustering analysis reveals 890 distinct
stellar conglomerations at various levels of significance. These star-forming
complexes are organized in a hierarchical fashion with the larger congregations
consisting of smaller structures, which themselves fragment into even smaller
and more compact stellar groupings. Their size distribution, covering a wide
range in length-scales, shows a power-law as expected from scale-free
processes. We explain this shape with a simple "fragmentation and enrichment"
model. The hierarchical morphology of the complexes is confirmed by their
mass--size relation which can be represented by a power-law with a fractional
exponent, analogous to that determined for fractal molecular clouds. The
surface stellar density distribution of the complexes shows a log-normal shape
similar to that for supersonic non-gravitating turbulent gas. Between 50 and 65
per cent of the recently-formed stars, as well as about 90 per cent of the
young star clusters, are found inside the stellar complexes, located along the
spiral arms. We find an age-difference between young stars inside the complexes
and those in their direct vicinity in the arms of at least 10 Myr. This
timescale may relate to the minimum time for stellar evaporation, although we
cannot exclude the in situ formation of stars. As expected, star formation
preferentially occurs in spiral arms. Our findings reveal turbulent-driven
hierarchical star formation along the arms of a grand-design galaxy.


  We analyze numerically how the voltage-current (V-I) characteristics near the
so-called Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition of 2D
superconductors are affected by a random spatial Gaussian distribution of
critical temperature inhomogeneities with long characteristic lengths (much
larger than the in-plane superconducting coherence length amplitude). Our
simulations allow to quantify the broadening around the average BKT transition
temperature of both the exponent alpha in V I^alpha and of the resistance V/I.
These calculations reveal that strong spatial redistributions of the local
current will occur around the transition as either I or the temperature T are
varied. Our results also support that the condition alpha=3 provides a good
estimate for the location of the average BKT transition temperature, and that
extrapolating to alpha->1 the alpha(T) behaviour well below the transition
provides a good estimate for the average mean-field critical temperature.


  We report the discovery of PSR J0952$-$0607, a 707-Hz binary millisecond
pulsar which is now the fastest-spinning neutron star known in the Galactic
field (i.e., outside of a globular cluster). PSR J0952$-$0607 was found using
LOFAR at a central observing frequency of 135 MHz, well below the 300 MHz to 3
GHz frequencies typically used in pulsar searches. The discovery is part of an
ongoing LOFAR survey targeting unassociated Fermi Large Area Telescope
$\gamma$-ray sources. PSR J0952$-$0607 is in a 6.42-hr orbit around a very
low-mass companion ($M_\mathrm{c}\gtrsim0.02$ M$_\odot$) and we identify a
strongly variable optical source, modulated at the orbital period of the
pulsar, as the binary companion. The light curve of the companion varies by 1.6
mag from $r^\prime=22.2$ at maximum to $r^\prime>23.8$, indicating that it is
irradiated by the pulsar wind. Swift observations place a 3-$\sigma$ upper
limit on the $0.3-10$ keV X-ray luminosity of $L_X < 1.1 \times 10^{31}$ erg
s$^{-1}$ (using the 0.97 kpc distance inferred from the dispersion measure).
Though no eclipses of the radio pulsar are observed, the properties of the
system classify it as a black widow binary. The radio pulsed spectrum of PSR
J0952$-$0607, as determined through flux density measurements at 150 and 350
MHz, is extremely steep with $\alpha\sim-3$ (where $S \propto \nu^{\alpha}$).
We discuss the growing evidence that the fastest-spinning radio pulsars have
exceptionally steep radio spectra, as well as the prospects for finding more
sources like PSR J0952$-$0607.


  With bolometric luminosities exceeding $10^{48}$ erg s$^{-1}$, powerful jets
and supermassive black holes at their center, MeV blazars are some of the most
extreme sources in the Universe. Recently, the Fermi-Large Area Telescope
detected five new $\gamma$-ray emitting MeV blazars beyond redshift $z=3.1$.
With the goal of precisely characterizing the jet properties of these extreme
sources, we started a multiwavelength campaign to follow them up with joint
NuSTAR, Swift and SARA observations. We observe six high-redshift quasars, four
of them belonging to the new $\gamma$-ray emitting MeV blazars. Thorough X-ray
analysis reveals spectral flattening at soft X-ray for three of these objects.
The source NVSS J151002$+$570243 also shows a peculiar re-hardening of the
X-ray spectrum at energies $E>6\,\rm keV$. Adopting a one-zone leptonic
emission model, this combination of hard X-rays and $\gamma$-rays enables us to
determine the location of the Inverse Compton peak and to accurately constrain
the jet characteristics. In the context of the jet-accretion disk connection,
we find that all six sources have jet powers exceeding accretion disk
luminosity, seemingly validating this positive correlation even beyond $z>3$.
Our six sources are found to have $10^9 \rm M_{\odot}$ black holes, further
raising the space density of supermassive black holes in the redshift bin
$z=[3,4]$.


  Among various methods of reversible data hiding (RDH) in JPEG images, the
consideration in designing is only the image quality, but the image quality and
the file size expansion are equally important in JPEG images. Based on this
situation, we propose a RDH scheme in JPEG images considering both the image
quality and the file size expansion while designing the algorithm. The
multi-objective optimization strategy is utilized to realize the balance of the
two objectives. Specifically, the cover is divided into several non-overlapping
signals firstly, and after that, the embedding costs of signals are calculated
using the knowledge of the JPEG compression. Next, the optimized combination of
signals for embedding data is gained by the multi-objective optimization.
Experimental results show the better performance of our proposed RDH compared
with state-of-the-art RDH in JPEG images.


  Although current neural text-to-speech (TTS) models are able to generate
high-quality speech, intensity controllable emotional TTS is still a
challenging task. Most existing methods need external optimizations for
intensity calculation, leading to suboptimal results or degraded quality. In
this paper, we propose EmoDiff, a diffusion-based TTS model where emotion
intensity can be manipulated by a proposed soft-label guidance technique
derived from classifier guidance. Specifically, instead of being guided with a
one-hot vector for the specified emotion, EmoDiff is guided with a soft label
where the value of the specified emotion and \textit{Neutral} is set to
$\alpha$ and $1-\alpha$ respectively. The $\alpha$ here represents the emotion
intensity and can be chosen from 0 to 1. Our experiments show that EmoDiff can
precisely control the emotion intensity while maintaining high voice quality.
Moreover, diverse speech with specified emotion intensity can be generated by
sampling in the reverse denoising process.


  Egocentric action anticipation consists in predicting a future action the
camera wearer will perform from egocentric video. While the task has recently
attracted the attention of the research community, current approaches assume
that the input videos are "trimmed", meaning that a short video sequence is
sampled a fixed time before the beginning of the action. We argue that, despite
the recent advances in the field, trimmed action anticipation has a limited
applicability in real-world scenarios where it is important to deal with
"untrimmed" video inputs and it cannot be assumed that the exact moment in
which the action will begin is known at test time. To overcome such
limitations, we propose an untrimmed action anticipation task, which, similarly
to temporal action detection, assumes that the input video is untrimmed at test
time, while still requiring predictions to be made before the actions actually
take place. We design an evaluation procedure for methods designed to address
this novel task, and compare several baselines on the EPIC-KITCHENS-100
dataset. Experiments show that the performance of current models designed for
trimmed action anticipation is very limited and more research on this task is
required.


  The cross section for e^+e^- to pi^+pi^-J/psi between 3.8 and 5.5 GeV/c^2 is
measured using a 548 fb^{-1} data sample collected on or near the Upsilon(4S)
resonance with the Belle detector at KEKB. A peak near 4.25 GeV/c^2,
corresponding to the so called Y(4260), is observed. In addition, there is
another cluster of events at around 4.05 GeV/c^2. A fit using two interfering
Breit-Wigner shapes describes the data better than one that uses only the
Y(4260), especially for the lower mass side of the 4.25 GeV enhancement.


  GN-z11 was photometrically selected as a luminous star-forming galaxy
candidate at redshift z > 10 based on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging
data. Follow-up HST near-infrared grism observations detected a continuum break
that was explained as the Ly-alpha break corresponding to z = 11.09
(+0.08-0.12). However, its accurate redshift remained unclear. Here we report a
probable detection of three ultraviolet (UV) emission lines from GN-z11, which
can be interpreted as the [C III] 1907, C III] 1909 doublet and O III] 1666 at
z = 10.957+/-0.001 (when the Universe was only ~420 Myr old, or ~3% of its
current age). This is consistent with the redshift of the previous grism
observations, supporting GN-z11 as the most distant galaxy known to date. Its
UV lines likely originate from dense ionized gas that is rarely seen at low
redshifts, and its strong [C III] and C III] emission is partly due to an
active galactic nucleus (AGN) or enhanced carbon abundance. GN-z11 is luminous
and young, yet moderately massive, implying a rapid build-up of stellar mass in
the past. Future facilities will be able to find the progenitors of such
galaxies at higher redshift and probe the cosmic epoch in the beginning of
re-ionization.


  This paper develops a detailed lattice-continuum correspondence for all
common examples of Abelian gauge theories, with and without matter. These rules
for extracting a continuum theory out of a lattice one represent an elementary
way to rigorously define continuum gauge theories. The focus is on (2+1)D but
the techniques developed here work in all dimensions.
  The first half of this paper is devoted to pure Maxwell theory. It is
precisely shown how continuum Maxwell theory emerges at low energies in an
appropriate parameter regime of the $\mathbb{Z}_K$ lattice gauge theory at
large $K$. The familiar features of this theory -- its OPE structure, the
distinction between compact and noncompact degrees of freedom, infrared
"particle-vortex" dualities, and the Coulomb law behavior of its Wilson loop --
are all derived directly from the lattice.
  The rest of the paper studies gauge fields coupled to either bosonic or
fermionic matter. Scalar QED is analyzed at the same level of precision as pure
Maxwell theory, with new comments on its phase structure and its connections to
the topological BF theory. Ordinary QED (Dirac fermions coupled to Maxwell
theory) is constructed with an eye toward properly defining spinors and
avoiding global anomalies. The conventional continuum QED is shown to arise
from a specific restriction of the starting theory to smoothly varying fields.
Such smoothing also turns out to be a necessary condition for Chern-Simons
theory to arise from integrating out massive fermions in a path integral
framework. In an effort to find a canonical origin of Chern-Simons theory that
does not rely on path integral smoothing, a simple flux-attached lattice gauge
theory is shown to give rise to a Chern-Simons-like action in the confining
regime.


  The layered van der Waals antiferromagnet MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ has been predicted
to combine the band ordering of archetypical topological insulators such as
Bi$_2$Te$_3$ with the magnetism of Mn, making this material a viable candidate
for the realization of various magnetic topological states. We have
systematically investigated the surface electronic structure of
MnBi$_2$Te$_4$(0001) single crystals by use of spin- and angle-resolved
photoelectron spectroscopy experiments. In line with theoretical predictions,
the results reveal a surface state in the bulk band gap and they provide
evidence for the influence of exchange interaction and spin-orbit coupling on
the surface electronic structure.


  In this Letter, we bring together two topics in the holographic
correspondence - quantum chaos and quark-gluon plasma (QGP). We establish that
the first relativistic correction to drag force experienced by a charge carrier
moving through a thermal medium (for example, a quark in QGP) at a constant
velocity is fixed by the butterfly velocity. Moreover, we show that this result
is robust against stringy corrections and anisotropy. For the jet quenching
parameter, we find that it is related to the butterfly velocity along the
momentum broadening direction and temperature in the spirit of the ``Planckian
bound''. This opens a way to the reconstruction of butterfly velocity of
quark-gluon plasma and other strongly-coupled systems experimentally from
rather simple observables.


  We report the observation of the Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM) of Abell 85 by
the X-ray satellite BeppoSAX. We have both analysed the spectrum obtained in
the central 8 arcmin circular region centred on the Very Steep Spectrum Radio
Source (VSSRS) and the spectra from a number of sub-regions. Analysis of the
spectra allowed us to independently obtain new estimates of the temperature,
metallicity and line-of-sight hydrogen density column, both globally
(T=6.6\pm0.3 keV, Z = 0.38\pm0.06 Z_\odot and N_H = 5.5^+0.9_-0.7 10^20 cm^-2)
and locally. These measures are in good agreement with previous measures based
on ROSAT and ASCA data. In the region of the VSRSS, we have tried to
disentangle the thermal from the non-thermal X-ray emission. Although we could
not do this unambiguously, we have nonetheless estimated the extended magnetic
field using the radio spectrum available for this region. We obtain a lower
limit intensity of 0.9 \mu G, consistent with our previous estimate. We also
derive alpha-elements/iron abundance ratios that turn out to be higher than 1.
Such a result tends to support the burst model for elliptical galaxies, where a
strong galactic wind develops early in the galaxy history and type II
supernovae (SN) may have the main role in the enrichment of the ICM. A
two-temperature ICM model was fitted in the central region yielding a main
component with roughly the mean cluster temperature and a cooler component with
temperature less than 0.1 keV.


  We propose PSFormer, an effective point transformer model for 3D salient
object detection. PSFormer is an encoder-decoder network that takes full
advantage of transformers to model the contextual information in both
multi-scale point- and scene-wise manners. In the encoder, we develop a Point
Context Transformer (PCT) module to capture region contextual features at the
point level; PCT contains two different transformers to excavate the
relationship among points. In the decoder, we develop a Scene Context
Transformer (SCT) module to learn context representations at the scene level;
SCT contains both Upsampling-and-Transformer blocks and Multi-context
Aggregation units to integrate the global semantic and multi-level features
from the encoder into the global scene context. Experiments show clear
improvements of PSFormer over its competitors and validate that PSFormer is
more robust to challenging cases such as small objects, multiple objects, and
objects with complex structures.


  The Rectified Linear Unit is currently a state-of-the-art activation function
in deep convolutional neural networks. To combat ReLU's dying neuron problem,
we propose the Parametric Variational Linear Unit (PVLU), which adds a
sinusoidal function with trainable coefficients to ReLU. Along with introducing
nonlinearity and non-zero gradients across the entire real domain, PVLU acts as
a mechanism of fine-tuning when implemented in the context of transfer
learning. On a simple, non-transfer sequential CNN, PVLU substitution allowed
for relative error decreases of 16.3% and 11.3% (without and with data
augmentation) on CIFAR-100. PVLU is also tested on transfer learning models.
The VGG-16 and VGG-19 models experience relative error reductions of 9.5% and
10.7% on CIFAR-10, respectively, after the substitution of ReLU with PVLU. When
training on Gaussian-filtered CIFAR-10 images, similar improvements are noted
for the VGG models. Most notably, fine-tuning using PVLU allows for relative
error reductions up to and exceeding 10% for near state-of-the-art residual
neural network architectures on the CIFAR datasets.


  We analyze observations of the quadruple lensed quasar Q2237+0305, taken with
the WFPC2 camera in the F336W and F300W bands. 25 exposures were performed
within 15 hours real time on 3 November 1995. On a timescale of 3--4 hours, we
observe no variation in component A of greater than 0.02 mag. The other
components are constant over a period of 10 hours to within about 0.05 mag. In
the final 5 hours there is some evidence (not conclusive) for variation of
component D by about 0.1 mag. Component A was brighter than component B by
about 0.3 mag. Components C and D were fainter than component A by about 1.3
and 1.4 mag. Any fifth (central) component was at least 6.5 mag fainter than
component A. Using the PC chip, we measure the relative distances of the four
components with high accuracy. Our values are systematically larger than other
investigators' (by 0.1% to 2.0%). The F336W filter had been chosen for the
observations because it could have allowed us to see extended Ly-alpha emission
from the Broad-Line Region (BLR). However, the quasar components are consistent
with a point source. We conclude that there cannot be a Ly-alpha feature in the
image plane brighter than about 23.5 mag in F336W and further from the quasar
core than 100 mas. According to a lensing model by Rix, Scheider & Bahcall
(1992), this would preclude any such features in the source plane further than
20 mas (~ 100 h^{-1} pc, assuming q_0 = 0.5) from the quasar core and brighter
than 25 mag before magnification.


  We construct the exact ground state for an antiferromagnetic spin-3/2 model
on the two-leg ladder as an optimum ground state. The ground state contains a
discrete parameter "sigma"=+/-1 and a continuous parameter "a" which controls
z-axis anisotropy. For most values of "a" the global ground state is unique. It
has vanishing sublattice magnetization and exponentially decaying correlation
functions. By using the transfer matrix technique, we calculate exactly the
fluctuations of the magnetization, the nearest-neighbour correlation, and the
longitudinal correlation length as functions of the parameters.


  We explore the non-linear dynamics of two parallel periodically patterned
metal surfaces that are coupled by the zero-point fluctuations of the
electromagnetic field between them. The resulting Casimir force generates for
asymmetric patterns with a time-periodically driven surface-to-surface distance
a ratchet effect, allowing for directed lateral motion of the surfaces in
sizeable parameter ranges. It is crucial to take into account inertia effects
and hence chaotic dynamics which are described by Langevin dynamics. Multiple
velocity reversals occur as a function of driving, mean surface distance, and
effective damping. These transport properties are shown to be stable against
weak ambient noise.


  Motivated by the fact that characteristics of different sound classes are
highly diverse in different temporal scales and hierarchical levels, a novel
deep convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture is proposed for the
environmental sound classification task. This network architecture takes raw
waveforms as input, and a set of separated parallel CNNs are utilized with
different convolutional filter sizes and strides, in order to learn feature
representations with multi-temporal resolutions. On the other hand, the
proposed architecture also aggregates hierarchical features from multi-level
CNN layers for classification using direct connections between convolutional
layers, which is beyond the typical single-level CNN features employed by the
majority of previous studies. This network architecture also improves the flow
of information and avoids vanishing gradient problem. The combination of
multi-level features boosts the classification performance significantly.
Comparative experiments are conducted on two datasets: the environmental sound
classification dataset (ESC-50), and DCASE 2017 audio scene classification
dataset. Results demonstrate that the proposed method is highly effective in
the classification tasks by employing multi-temporal resolution and multi-level
features, and it outperforms the previous methods which only account for
single-level features.


  This paper presents a theoretical and numerical investigation of the
following practical question: Should the time difference quotients of the
snapshots be used to generate the proper orthogonal decomposition basis
functions? The answer to this question is important, since some published
numerical studies use the time difference quotients, whereas other numerical
studies do not. The criterion used in this paper to answer this question is the
rate of convergence of the error of the reduced order model with respect to the
number of proper orthogonal decomposition basis functions. Two cases are
considered: the no_DQ case, in which the snapshot difference quotients are not
used, and the DQ case, in which the snapshot difference quotients are used. The
error estimates suggest that the convergence rates in the $C^0(L^2)$-norm and
in the $C^0(H^1)$-norm are optimal for the DQ case, but suboptimal for the
no_DQ case. The convergence rates in the $L^2(H^1)$-norm are optimal for both
the DQ case and the no_DQ case. Numerical tests are conducted on the heat
equation and on the Burgers equation. The numerical results support the
conclusions drawn from the theoretical error estimates. Overall, the
theoretical and numerical results strongly suggest that, in order to achieve
optimal pointwise in time rates of convergence with respect to the number of
proper orthogonal decomposition basis functions, one should use the snapshot
difference quotients.


  We introduce a representative minimal model for phoretically interacting
active colloids. Combining kinetic theory, linear stability analyses, and a
general relation between self-propulsion and phoretic interactions in
auto-diffusiophoretic and auto-thermophoretic Janus colloids collapses the
parameter space to two dimensions: area fraction and P\'eclet number. This
collapse arises when the lifetime of the self-generated phoretic fields is not
too short, and leads to a universal phase diagram showing that phoretic
interactions {\it generically} induce pattern formation in typical Janus
colloids, even at very low density. The resulting patterns include waves and
dynamic aggregates closely resembling the living clusters found in experiments
on dilute suspension of Janus colloids.


  A coreset is a point set containing information about geometric properties of
a larger point set. A series of previous works show that in many machine
learning problems, especially in clustering problems, coreset could be very
useful to build efficient algorithms. Two main measures of an coreset
construction algorithm's performance are the running time of the algorithm and
the size of the coreset output by the algorithm. In this paper we study the
construction of coresets for the $(k,z)$-clustering problem, which is a
generalization of $k$-means and $k$-median problem. By properly designing a
sketching-based distance estimation data structure, we propose faster
algorithms that construct coresets with matching size of the state-of-the-art
results.


  The electron-phonon coupling strength in single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT)
bundles has been studied directly in the time-domain by femtosecond
time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. We have measured the dependence of
H(T_e,T_l), the rate of energy-transfer between the electronic system and the
lattice as a function of electron and lattice temperatures T_e and T_l. The
experiments are consistent with a T^5 dependence of H on the electron- and
lattice-temperatures, respectively. The results can be related to the e-ph mass
enhancement parameter lambda. The experimentally obtained value for
lambda/theta_D^2, where theta_D is the Debye temperature, suggests that e-ph
scattering times at the Fermi level of SWNT bundles can be exceptionally long,
exceeding 1.5 ps at room temperature.


  In this paper, we introduce and study the notions of uniformly $S$-finitely
presented modules and uniformly $S$-coherent rings (modules) which are
"uniform" versions of ($c$-)$S$-finitely presented modules and
($c$-)$S$-coherent rings (modules) introduced by Bennis and Hajoui \cite{bh18}.
Among the results, uniformly $S$-versions of Chase's result, Chase Theorem and
Matlis Theorem are obtained.


  Exact analytic expressions for planetary orbits and light trajectories in the
Reissner-Nordstrom geometry are presented. They are characterized in a map
specified by three dimensionless parameters for the planetary orbits, while two
dimensionless parameters are required to map the trajectories of light. Notable
differences with the corresponding orbits and trajectories in the Schwarzschild
geometry are indicated. In particular, when the energy and angular momentum of
the planet are fixed, the precession angle of the orbit decreases as the net
electric charge of the massive star or black hole increases. A similar result
also holds for the deflection angle of a light ray.


  CFD users of supercomputers usually resort to rule-of-thumb methods to select
the number of subdomains (partitions) when relying on MPI-based
parallelization. One common approach is to set a minimum number of elements or
cells per subdomain, under which the parallel efficiency of the code is "known"
to fall below a subjective level, say 80%. The situation is even worse when the
user is not aware of the "good" practices for the given code and a huge amount
of resources can thus be wasted. This work presents an elastic computing
methodology to adapt at runtime the resources allocated to a simulation
automatically. The criterion to control the required resources is based on a
runtime measure of the communication efficiency of the execution. According to
some analytical estimates, the resources are then expanded or reduced to fulfil
this criterion and eventually execute an efficient simulation.


  The energy spectrum of a system containing a static quark anti-quark pair is
computed for a wide range of source separations using lattice QCD with
$N_\mathrm{f}=2+1$ dynamical flavours. By employing a variational method with a
basis including operators resembling both the gluon string and systems of two
separated static mesons, the first three energy levels are determined up to and
beyond the distance where it is energetically favourable for the vacuum to
screen the static sources through light- or strange-quark pair creation,
enabling both these screening phenomena to be observed. The separation
dependence of the energy spectrum is reliably parameterised over this
saturation region with a simple model which can be used as input for subsequent
investigations of quarkonia above threshold and heavy-light and heavy-strange
coupled-channel meson scattering.


  For the first time, the Relativistic Mean Field (RMF) model is applied to the
shears band recently observed in $_{37}^{84}$Rb. Signals of the appearance of
the shears mechanism, such as smooth decreases of the shears angle and of the
$B$(M1)/$B$(E2) ratio with keeping the nearly constant tilt angle, are well
reproduced. Thus it is shown that the microscopic RMF model can nicely describe
the shears band in this nucleus.


  We provide a ribbon tensor equivalence between the representation category of
small quantum SL(2), at parameter q=exp($\pi$ i/p), and the representation
category of the triplet vertex operator algebra at integral parameter p>1. We
provide similar quantum group equivalences for representation categories
associated to the Virasoro, and singlet vertex operator algebras at central
charge c=1-6(p-1)^2/p. These results resolve a number of fundamental
conjectures coming from studies of logarithmic CFTs in type A_1.


  We have investigated the structural, magnetic, thermodynamic, and charge
transport properties of Mn1/3NbS2 single crystals through x-ray and neutron
diffraction, magnetization, specific heat, magnetoresistance, and Hall effect
measurements. Mn1/3NbS2 displays a magnetic transition at TC ~ 45 K with highly
anisotropic behavior expected for a hexagonal structured material. Below TC,
neutron diffraction reveals increased scattering near the structural Bragg
peaks having a wider Q-dependence along the c-axis than the nuclear Bragg
peaks. This indicates helimagnetism with a long pitch length of ~250 nm (or a
wavevector q~0.0025 {\AA}-1) along the c-axis. This q is substantially smaller
than that found for the helimagnetic state in isostructural Cr1/3NbS2 (0.015
{\AA}-1). Specific heat capacity measurements confirm a second-order magnetic
phase transition with a substantial magnetic contribution that persists to low
temperature. The large low-temperature specific heat capacity is consistent
with a large density of low-lying magnetic excitations that are likely
associated with topologically interesting magnetic modes. Changes to the
magnetoresistance, the magnetization, and the magnetic neutron diffraction,
which become more apparent below 20 K, imply a modification in the character of
the magnetic ordering corresponding to the magnetic contribution to the
specific heat capacity. These observations signify a more complex magnetic
structure both at zero and finite fields for Mn1/3NbS2 than for the
well-investigated Cr1/3NbS2.


  Unit-interval parking functions are subset of parking functions in which cars
park at most one spot away from their preferred parking spot. In this paper, we
characterize unit-interval parking functions by understanding how they
decompose into prime parking functions and count unit-interval parking
functions when exactly $k<n$ cars do not park in their preference. This count
yields an alternate proof of a result of Hadaway and Harris establishing that
unit-interval parking functions are enumerated by the Fubini numbers. Then, our
main result, establishes that for all integers $0\leq k<n$, the unit-interval
parking functions of length $n$ with displacement $k$ are in bijection with the
$k$-dimensional faces of the permutohedron of order $n$. We conclude with some
consequences of this result.


  The multinomial and related distributions have long been used to model
categorical, count-based data in fields ranging from bioinformatics to natural
language processing. Commonly utilized variants include the standard
multinomial and the Dirichlet multinomial distributions due to their
computational efficiency and straightforward parameter estimation process.
However, these distributions make strict assumptions about the mean, variance,
and covariance between the categorical features being modeled. If these
assumptions are not met by the data, it may result in poor parameter estimates
and loss in accuracy for downstream applications like classification. Here, we
explore efficient parameter estimation and supervised classification methods
using an alternative distribution, called the Beta-Liouville multinomial, which
relaxes some of the multinomial assumptions. We show that the Beta-Liouville
multinomial is comparable in efficiency to the Dirichlet multinomial for
Newton-Raphson maximum likelihood estimation, and that its performance on
simulated data matches or exceeds that of the multinomial and Dirichlet
multinomial distributions. Finally, we demonstrate that the Beta-Liouville
multinomial outperforms the multinomial and Dirichlet multinomial on two out of
four gold standard datasets, supporting its use in modeling data with low to
medium class overlap in a supervised classification context.


  The time dependence of quantum evanescent waves generated by a point source
with an infinite or a limited frequency band is analyzed. The evanescent wave
is characterized by a forerunner (transient) related to the precise way the
source is switched on. It is followed by an asymptotic, monochromatic wave
which at long times reveals the oscillation frequency of the source. For a
source with a sharp onset the forerunner is exponentially larger than the
monochromatic solution and a transition from the transient regime to the
asymtotic regime occurs only at asymptotically large times. In this case, the
traversal time for tunneling plays already a role only in the transient regime.
To enhance the monochromatic solution compared to the forerunner we investigate
(a) frequency band limited sources and (b) the short time Fourier analysis (the
spectrogram) corresponding to a detector which is frequency band limited.
Neither of these two methods leads to a precise determination of the traversal
time. However, if they are limited to determine the traversal time only with a
precision of the traversal time itself both methods are successful: In this
case the transient behavior of the evanescent waves is at a time of the order
of the traversal time followed by a monochromatic wave which reveals the
frequency of the source.


  Two unitary integral transforms with a very-well poised $_7F_6$-function as a
kernel are given. For both integral transforms the inverse is the same as the
original transform after an involution on the parameters. The $_7F_6$-function
involved can be considered as a non-polynomial extension of the Wilson
polynomial, and is therefore called a Wilson function. The two integral
transforms are called a Wilson function transform of type I and type II.
Furthermore, a few explicit transformations of hypergeometric functions are
calculated, and it is shown that the Wilson function transform of type I maps a
basis of orthogonal polynomials onto a similar basis of polynomials.


  Grothendieck point residue is considered in the context of computational
complex analysis. A new effective method is proposed for computing Grothendieck
point residues mappings and residues. Basic ideas of our approach are the use
of Grothendieck local duality and a transformation law for local cohomology
classes. A new tool is devised for efficiency to solve the extended ideal
membership problems in local rings. The resulting algorithms are described with
an example to illustrate them. An extension of the proposed method to
parametric cases is also discussed as an application.


  Transport coefficients can be obtained from 2-point correlators using the
Kubo formulae. It has been shown that the full leading order result for
electrical conductivity and (QCD) shear viscosity is contained in the re-summed
2-point function that is obtained from the 3-loop 3PI effective action. The
theory produces all leading order contributions without the necessity for power
counting, and in this sense it provides a natural framework for the calculation
and suggests that one can calculate the next-to-leading contribution to
transport coefficients from the 4-loop 4PI effective action. The integral
equations have been derived for shear viscosity for a scalar theory with cubic
and quartic interactions, with a non-vanishing field expectation value. We
review these results, and explain how the calculation could be done at higher
orders.


  One of the main questions in magnetic reconnection is the origin of
triggering behavior with on/off properties that accounts, once it is activated,
for the fast magnetic energy conversion to kinetic and thermal energies at the
heart of explosive events in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas. Over the
past decade progress has been made on the initiation of fast reconnection via
the plasmoid instability and what has been called "ideal" tearing, which sets
in once current sheets thin to a critical inverse aspect ratio $(a/L)_c$: as
shown by Pucci and Velli (2014), at $(a/L)_c \sim S^{-1/3}$ the time scale for
the instability to develop becomes of the order of the Alfv\'en time and
independent of the Lundquist number (here defined in terms of current sheet
length $L$). However, given the large values of $S$ in natural plasmas, this
transition might occur for thicknesses of the inner resistive singular layer
which are comparable to the ion inertial length $d_i$. When this occurs, Hall
currents produce a three-dimensional quadrupole structure of magnetic field,
and the dispersive waves introduced by the Hall effect accelerate the
instability. Here we present a linear study showing how the "ideal" tearing
mode critical aspect ratio is modified when Hall effects are taken into
account, including more general scaling laws of the growth rates in terms of
sheet inverse aspect ratio: the critical inverse aspect ratio is amended to
$a/L \simeq (di/L)^ {0.29} (1/S)^{0.19}$, at which point the instability growth
rate becomes Alfv\'enic and does not depend on either of the (small) parameters
$d_i/L, 1/S$. We discuss the implications of this generalized triggering aspect
ratio for recently developed phase diagrams of magnetic reconnection.


  Spin-orbit interaction (SOI) have provided a new viable roadmap for the
development of spin-based photonics devices. However, existing strategies to
control the SOI focus commonly on tailoring the spatial dimension of light
fields yet neglecting the inherent temporal one. Herein, we first present
ultrafast temporal effects on both spin-to-orbit and orbit-to-local-spin
conversions based on the time-assistant vectorial diffractive theory and the
fast Fourier transformation. Such interconversions depend upon whether the
incident hybridly vectorial light pulse carries vortex phase or not in a single
high numerical aperture geometry. For the case of the absence of vortex phase,
we find that it enables orbit angular momentum-carrying transverse component
fields, and the resultant orbit angular momentum embedded within focused light
fields remains constantly revolving as time elapses, which indicates that the
controllable spin-to-orbit conversion occurs. By contrast, it is revealed that
hybridly polarized vectorial-vortex light pulses allow access to the locally
excited circular polarization at the focus, and this induced local circular
polarization is independent of ultrafast varying time, whereas the resulting
spin angular momentum density components experience the alternation between the
appearance and annihilation over time, thus giving rise to the tunable
orbit-to-local-spin conversion. These exotic ultrafast interconversions not
only breathe a new life into the area of ultrafast photonics, but refresh our
understanding on the paradigm of photonic SOI.


  If heavy partners of the Standard Model matter fields are discovered at the
LHC it will be imperative to determine their spin in order to uncover the
underlying theory. In decay chains, both the spin and the mass hierarchy of all
particles involved can influence the resulting angular correlations. We present
the necessary conditions for decays involving the matter partners to exhibit
angular correlations. In particular we find that when the masses are not
degenerate, a heavy fermionic sector always displays angular correlations in
cascade decays. When the masses are closely degenerate the size of spin effects
is controlled by a global phase parameter. In a large region of the parameter
space, correlations are strongly suppressed. In other regions, such as in UED
model where this phase is fixed by 5-d Lorentz invariance, the correlations are
pronounced. In addition, we show that in certain cases one may even have enough
information to determine the spin of other heavy partners involved in the decay
(such as the Lightest Stable Partner or a heavy gluon).


  In 2011, super-resolution imaging by microsphere superlens was emerged as a
simple yet effective method to overcome the diffraction limit that limits the
resolution of conventional lenses. Significant progress has since been made.
Key advances including the development of scanning superlens system,
metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL), super-resolution physics and
bio-superlens will be discussed. Challenges and solutions are then discussed.


  We consider the multiuser successive refinement (MSR) problem, where the
users are connected to a central server via links with different noiseless
capacities, and each user wishes to reconstruct in a successive-refinement
fashion. An achievable region is given for the two-user two-layer case and it
provides the complete rate-distortion region for the Gaussian source under the
MSE distortion measure. The key observation is that this problem includes the
multiple description (MD) problem (with two descriptions) as a subsystem, and
the techniques useful in the MD problem can be extended to this case. We show
that the coding scheme based on the universality of random binning is
sub-optimal, because multiple Gaussian side informations only at the decoders
do incur performance loss, in contrast to the case of single side information
at the decoder. We further show that unlike the single user case, when there
are multiple users, the loss of performance by a multistage coding approach can
be unbounded for the Gaussian source. The result suggests that in such a
setting, the benefit of using successive refinement is not likely to justify
the accompanying performance loss. The MSR problem is also related to the
source coding problem where each decoder has its individual side information,
while the encoder has the complete set of the side informations. The MSR
problem further includes several variations of the MD problem, for which the
specialization of the general result is investigated and the implication is
discussed.


  Optimal distribution of power among generating units to meet a specific
demand subject to system constraints is an ongoing research topic in the power
system community. The problem, even in a static setting, turns out to be hard
to solve with conventional optimization methods owing to the consideration of
valve-point effects which make the cost function nonsmooth and nonconvex. This
difficulty gave rise to the proliferation of population-based global heuristics
in order to address the multi-extremal and nonsmooth problem. In this paper, we
address the economic load dispatch problem (ELDP) with valve-point effect in
its classic formulation where the cost function for each generator is expressed
as the sum of a quadratic term and a rectified sine term. We propose two
methods that resort to piecewise-quadratic surrogate cost functions, yielding
surrogate problems that can be handled by mixed-integer quadratic programming
(MIQP) solvers. The first method shows that the global solution of the ELDP can
often be found by using a fixed and very limited number of quadratic pieces in
the surrogate cost function. The second method adaptively builds
piecewise-quadratic surrogate under-estimations of the ELDP cost function,
yielding a sequence of surrogate MIQP problems. It is shown that any limit
point of the sequence of MIQP solutions is a global solution of the ELDP.
Moreover, numerical experiments indicate that the proposed methods outclass the
state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of minimization value and computation time
on practical instances.


  For the Hodge--Laplace equation in finite element exterior calculus, we
introduce several families of discontinuous Galerkin methods in the extended
Galerkin framework. For contractible domains, this framework utilizes seven
fields and provides a unifying inf-sup analysis with respect to all
discretization and penalty parameters. It is shown that the proposed methods
can be hybridized as a reduced two-field formulation.


  Semantic segmentation is applied extensively in autonomous driving and
intelligent transportation with methods that highly demand spatial and semantic
information. Here, an STDC-MA network is proposed to meet these demands. First,
the STDC-Seg structure is employed in STDC-MA to ensure a lightweight and
efficient structure. Subsequently, the feature alignment module (FAM) is
applied to understand the offset between high-level and low-level features,
solving the problem of pixel offset related to upsampling on the high-level
feature map. Our approach implements the effective fusion between high-level
features and low-level features. A hierarchical multiscale attention mechanism
is adopted to reveal the relationship among attention regions from two
different input sizes of one image. Through this relationship, regions
receiving much attention are integrated into the segmentation results, thereby
reducing the unfocused regions of the input image and improving the effective
utilization of multiscale features. STDC- MA maintains the segmentation speed
as an STDC-Seg network while improving the segmentation accuracy of small
objects. STDC-MA was verified on the verification set of Cityscapes. The
segmentation result of STDC-MA attained 76.81% mIOU with the input of 0.5x
scale, 3.61% higher than STDC-Seg.


  We investigate the problem of recovering jointly $r$-rank and $s$-bisparse
matrices from as few linear measurements as possible, considering arbitrary
measurements as well as rank-one measurements. In both cases, we show that $m
\asymp r s \ln(en/s)$ measurements make the recovery possible in theory,
meaning via a nonpractical algorithm. In case of arbitrary measurements, we
investigate the possibility of achieving practical recovery via an
iterative-hard-thresholding algorithm when $m \asymp r s^\gamma \ln(en/s)$ for
some exponent $\gamma > 0$. We show that this is feasible for $\gamma = 2$, and
that the proposed analysis cannot cover the case $\gamma \leq 1$. The precise
value of the optimal exponent $\gamma \in [1,2]$ is the object of a question,
raised but unresolved in this paper, about head projections for the jointly
low-rank and bisparse structure. Some related questions are partially answered
in passing. For rank-one measurements, we suggest on arcane grounds an
iterative-hard-thresholding algorithm modified to exploit the nonstandard
restricted isometry property obeyed by this type of measurements.


  Interruptions and context switches resulting from meetings, urgent tasks,
emails, and queries from colleagues contribute to productivity losses in
developers' daily routines. This is particularly challenging for tasks like
software testing, which are already perceived as less enjoyable, prompting
developers to seek distractions. To mitigate this, applying gamification to
testing activities can enhance motivation for test writing. One such
gamification tool is Gamekins, which integrates challenges, quests,
achievements, and leaderboards into the Jenkins CI (continuous integration)
platform. However, as Gamekins is typically accessed through a browser, it
introduces a context switch. This paper presents an IntelliJ plugin designed to
seamlessly integrate Gamekins' gamification elements into the IDE, aiming to
minimize context switches and boost developer motivation for test writing.


  We have compared the virtual corrections to single hard bremsstrahlung as
calculated by S. Jadach, M. Melles, B.F.L. Ward and S.A. Yost to several other
expressions. The most recent of these comparisons is to the leptonic tensor
calculated by J.H. Kuhn and G. Rodrigo for radiative return. Agreement is found
to within a part in 10^5 or better, as a fraction of the Born cross section,
for most of the range of photon energies. The massless limits have been shown
to agree analytically to NLL order.


  We analyze van der Waals interactions between two rigid polymers with
sequence-specific, anisotropic polarizabilities along the polymer backbones, so
that the dipole moments fluctuate parallel to the polymer backbones. Assuming
that each polymer has a quenched-in polarizability sequence which reflects, for
example, the polynucleotide sequence of a double-stranded DNA molecule, we
study the van der Waals interaction energy between a pair of such polymers with
rod-like structure for the cases where their respective polarizability
sequences are (i) distinct and (ii) identical, with both zero and non-zero
correlation length of the polarizability correlator along the polymer backbones
in the latter case. For identical polymers, we find a novel $r^{-5}$ scaling
behavior of the van der Waals interaction energy for small inter-polymer
separation $r$, in contradistinction to the $r^{-4}$ scaling behavior of
distinct polymers, with furthermore a pronounced angular dependence favoring
attraction between sufficiently aligned identical polymers. Such behavior can
assist the molecular recognition between polymers.


  In the context of supervised statistical learning, it is typically assumed
that the training set comes from the same distribution that draws the test
samples. When this is not the case, the behavior of the learned model is
unpredictable and becomes dependent upon the degree of similarity between the
distribution of the training set and the distribution of the test set. One of
the research topics that investigates this scenario is referred to as domain
adaptation. Deep neural networks brought dramatic advances in pattern
recognition and that is why there have been many attempts to provide good
domain adaptation algorithms for these models. Here we take a different avenue
and approach the problem from an incremental point of view, where the model is
adapted to the new domain iteratively. We make use of an existing unsupervised
domain-adaptation algorithm to identify the target samples on which there is
greater confidence about their true label. The output of the model is analyzed
in different ways to determine the candidate samples. The selected set is then
added to the source training set by considering the labels provided by the
network as ground truth, and the process is repeated until all target samples
are labelled. Our results report a clear improvement with respect to the
non-incremental case in several datasets, also outperforming other
state-of-the-art domain adaptation algorithms.


  Happel and Unger defined a partial order on the set of basic tilting modules.
The tilting quiver is the Hasse diagram of the poset of basic tilting modules.
We determine the number of arrows in the tilting quiver over a path algebra of
type $A$ or $D$.