  We identify the bright Am-type star HD 181793 to be a previously-unknown
eclipsing, chemically peculiar heartbeat binary, the second of its kind known.
The system carries an orbital period of $P = 11.47578275 \pm 0.00000055$ days.
We use TESS photometry and LCOGT NRES radial velocity data to build a
self-consistent orbital model and determine the fundamental stellar
characteristics of the primary. We use a spectral separation method to unveil
the secondary and measure the masses of both stars. The radial velocity
amplitude of the primary, $K_1 = 47.41+0.13-0.12 km s^{-1}$, gives a mass $M_1
= 1.57 \pm 0.01 $ Msun. The secondary radial velocity amplitude $K_2 =
84.95+0.12-0.09 km s^{-1}$ yields a mass ratio $q = 0.558 \pm 0.002$ and a
secondary mass $M_2 = 0.87 \pm 0.01 $ Msun. From the spectral energy
distribution and Gaia parallax we find a radius $R_1 = 2.04 \pm 0.05$ Rsun. The
grazing transit profile and spectroscopic luminosity ratio indicate $R_2 =
1.04+0.15-0.10$ Rsun, suggesting an early-K spectral type. We show that the
heartbeat feature in the TESS light curve can be explained by time-varying
ellipsoidal variation, driven by the orbital eccentricity of $e =
0.3056+0.0024-0.0026$, and relativistic beaming of the light of the primary. We
find no evidence of tidally-excited oscillations.


  We present a robust and fast laser cooling scheme suitable for trapped atoms
and ions. Based on quantum interference, generated by a special laser
configuration, it is able to rapidly cool the system such that the final phonon
occupation vanishes to zeroth order in the Lamb-Dicke parameter in contrast to
existing cooling schemes. Furthermore, it is robust under conditions of
fluctuating laser intensity and frequency, thus making it a viable candidate
for experimental applications.


  In this talk, I briefly review a selection of SUSY effects in B physics.
First, I consider models with Minimal Flavour Violation. Then I discuss SUSY
models with new sources of flavour violation in squark mass matrices, analyzing
present constraints and possible developments with forthcoming data on b -> s
and b -> d transitions.


  The class of operator-valued functions which are homogeneous of degree one,
holomorphic in the open right polyhalfplane, have positive semidefinite real
parts there and take selfadjoint operator values at real points, and its
subclass consisting of functions representable in the form of Schur complement
of a block of a linear pencil of operators with positive semidefinite operator
coefficients, are investigated. The latter subclass is a generalization of the
class of characteristic matrix functions of passive 2n-poles considered as
functions of impedances of its elements, which was introduced by M. F.
Bessmertny\u\i. Several equivalent characterizations of the generalized
Bessmertny\u{\i} class are given, and its intimate connection with the
Agler--Schur class of holomorphic contractive operator-valued functions on the
unit polydisk is established.


  We present a practical semiclassical method for computing the electron spin
dynamics of a radical in which the electron spin is hyperfine coupled to a
large number of nuclear spins. This can be used to calculate the singlet and
triplet survival probabilities and quantum yields of radical recombination
reactions in the presence of magnetic fields. Our method differs from the early
semiclassical theory of Schulten and Wolynes [J. Chem. Phys. 68, 3292 (1978)]
in allowing each individual nuclear spin to precess around the electron spin,
rather than assuming that the hyperfine coupling-weighted sum of nuclear spin
vectors is fixed in space. The downside of removing this assumption is that one
can no longer obtain a simple closed-form expression for the electron spin
correlation tensor: our method requires a numerical calculation. However, the
computational effort increases only linearly with the number of nuclear spins,
rather than exponentially as in an exact quantum mechanical calculation. The
method is therefore applicable to arbitrarily large radicals. Moreover, it
approaches quantitative agreement with quantum mechanics as the number of
nuclear spins increases and the environment of the electron spin becomes more
complex, owing to the rapid quantum decoherence in complex systems. Unlike the
Schulten-Wolynes theory, the present semiclassical theory predicts the correct
long-time behaviour of the electron spin correlation tensor, and it therefore
correctly captures the low magnetic field effect in the singlet yield of a
radical recombination reaction with a slow recombination rate.


  We present the results of measuring the geocentric lunar distance using what
we propose is the simplest method to achieve a precise result. Although lunar
distance has been systematically measured to a precision of few millimeters
using powerful lasers and retroreflectors installed on the moon by the Apollo
missions, the method devised and applied here can be readily used by
nonscientist citizens (e.g. amateur astronomers or students) and it requires
only a good digital camera. After launching a citizen science project called
the Aristarchus Campaign, intended to involve astronomy enthusiasts in
scientific measurement of the Lunar Eclipse of 15 April 2014, we compiled and
measured a series of pictures obtained by one of us (J.C. Figueroa). These
measurements allowed us to estimate the lunar distance to a precision of 3%. We
describe here how to perform the measurements and the method to calculate from
them the geocentric lunar distance using only the pictures time stamps and a
precise measurement of the instantaneous lunar apparent diameter. Our aim here
is not to provide any improved measurement of a well-known astronomical
quantity, but rather to demonstrate how the public could be engaged in
scientific endeavors and how using simple instrumentation and readily available
technological devices such as smartphones and digital cameras, any person can
measure the local Universe as ancient astronomers did.


  Building a quantum computer that surpasses the computational power of its
classical counterpart is a great engineering challenge. Quantum software
optimizations can provide an accelerated pathway to the first generation of
quantum computing applications that might save years of engineering effort.
Current quantum software stacks follow a layered approach similar to the stack
of classical computers, which was designed to manage the complexity. In this
review, we point out that greater efficiency of quantum computing systems can
be achieved by breaking the abstractions between these layers. We review
several works along this line, including two hardware-aware compilation
optimizations that break the quantum Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)
abstraction and two error-correction/information-processing schemes that break
the qubit abstraction. Last, we discuss several possible future directions.


  The Error Function \begin{eqnarray} V(x) & \equiv & \sqrt{\pi} e^{x^2} [1 -
\hbox{erf}(x)] \\ & = & \int_0^\infty \frac{ e^{-u} }{\sqrt{x^2 + u}} du = 2
e^{x^2}\int_x^\infty e^{-t^2} dt \nonumber \end{eqnarray} arises in many
contexts, from probability to mathematical physics. We give estimates for the
Error Function from above and below which are optimal within a certain class of
functions.


  We consider oblique incidence of (p)TM-polarized wave on the anisotropic
superconducting slab, immersed on a dielectric media, such that its uniaxial
(c) axis is perpendicular to the surfaces. The below and above plasma frequency
transmissivity patterns are studied and several of its properties determined,
within the context of the Maxwell-London theory. Below, the regime is
attenuated for any incident angle, and there is a transmissivity maximum, quite
pronounced in case of a very high external dielectric constant. Above, a
propagative regime exists where the superconductor is a natural optical
resonator, and we show here that the minimum of the transmission peaks are
modulated by an envelope function associated to the Brewster condition. We
propose this set-up to obtain light with an extremely small transverse
wavelength inside the superconductor.


  In order to investigate corrections to the common KdV approximation for
surface water waves in a canal, we derive modulation equations for the
evolution of long wavelength initial data. We work in Lagrangian coordinates.
The equations which govern corrections to the KdV approximation consist of
linearized and inhomogeneous KdV equations plus an inhomogeneous wave equation.
These equations are explicitly solvable and we prove estimates showing that
they do indeed give a significantly better approximation than the KdV equation
alone.


  We probe turbulence structure from centimetric to metric scales by
simultaneous imagery at mid-infrared and visible wavelengths at the VLT
telescope and show that it departs significantly from the commonly used
Kolmogorov model. The data can be fitted by the von Karman model with an outer
scale of the order of 30 m and we see clear signs of the phase structure
function saturation across the 8-m VLT aperture. The image quality improves in
the infrared faster than the standard lambda^{-1/5} scaling and may be
diffraction-limited at 30-m apertures even without adaptive optics at
wavelengths longer than 8 micron.


  Recent graph computation approaches have demonstrated that a single PC can
perform efficiently on billion-scale graphs. While these approaches achieve
scalability by optimizing I/O operations, they do not fully exploit the
capabilities of modern hard drives and processors. To overcome their
performance, in this work, we introduce the Bimodal Block Processing (BBP), an
innovation that is able to boost the graph computation by minimizing the I/O
cost even further. With this strategy, we achieved the following contributions:
(1) M-Flash, the fastest graph computation framework to date; (2) a flexible
and simple programming model to easily implement popular and essential graph
algorithms, including the first single-machine billion-scale eigensolver; and
(3) extensive experiments on real graphs with up to 6.6 billion edges,
demonstrating M-Flash's consistent and significant speedup.


  We review the EfficientQA competition from NeurIPS 2020. The competition
focused on open-domain question answering (QA), where systems take natural
language questions as input and return natural language answers. The aim of the
competition was to build systems that can predict correct answers while also
satisfying strict on-disk memory budgets. These memory budgets were designed to
encourage contestants to explore the trade-off between storing retrieval
corpora or the parameters of learned models. In this report, we describe the
motivation and organization of the competition, review the best submissions,
and analyze system predictions to inform a discussion of evaluation for
open-domain QA.


  We study the solutions to the Klein-Gordon equation for the massive scalar
field in the universal covering space of two-dimensional anti-de Sitter space.
For certain values of the mass parameter, we impose a suitable set of boundary
conditions which make the spatial component of the Klein-Gordon operator
self-adjoint. This makes the time-evolution of the classical field well
defined. Then, we use the transformation properties of the scalar field under
the isometry group of the theory, namely, the universal covering group of
$\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$, in order to determine which self-adjoint boundary
conditions are invariant under this group, and which lead to the
positive-frequency solutions forming a unitary representation of this group
and, hence, to a vacuum state invariant under this group. Then we examine the
cases where the boundary condition leads to an invariant theory with
non-invariant vacuum state and determine the unitary representation to which
the vacuum state belongs.


  Warm absorbers are an important new probe of the central region of active
galaxies (AGN). Observing and modeling this component provides a wealth of
information on the nature of the warm absorber itself, its relation to other
components of the active nucleus, and the intrinsic AGN X-ray spectral shape.
  We briefly review the general properties of dusty warm gas. For the first
time, we then apply such a model to the IR loud quasar IRAS 13349+2438. It was
the first to be suggested to host a dusty warm absorber (Brandt et al. 1996),
but has not yet been modeled as such.


  Measurements of nuclear spin-dependent parity-violating (NSD-PV) effects
provide an excellent opportunity to test nuclear models and to search for
physics beyond the Standard Model. Molecules possess closely-spaced states with
opposite parity which may be easily tuned to degeneracy to greatly enhance the
observed parity-violating effects. A high-sensitivity measurement of NSD-PV
effects using light triatomic molecules is in preparation [E. B. Norrgard, et
al., Commun. Phys. 2, 77 (2019)]. Importantly, by comparing these measurements
in light nuclei with prior and ongoing measurements in heavier systems, the
contribution to NSD-PV from $Z^0$-boson exchange between the electrons and the
nuclei may be separated from the contribution of the nuclear anapole moment.
Furthermore, light triatomic molecules offer the possibility to search for new
particles, such as the postulated $Z^{\prime}$ boson. In this work, we detail a
sensitive measurement scheme and present high-accuracy molecular and nuclear
calculations needed for interpretation of NSD-PV experiments on triatomic
molecules composed of light elements Be, Mg, N, and C. The ab initio nuclear
structure calculations, performed within the No-Core Shell Model (NCSM) provide
a reliable prediction of the magnitude of different contributions to the NSD-PV
effects in the four nuclei. These results differ significantly from the
predictions of the standard single-particle model and highlight the importance
of including many-body effects in such calculations. In order to extract the
NSD-PV contributions from measurements, a parity-violating interaction
parameter $W_{\text{PV}}$, which depends on molecular structure, needs to be
known with high accuracy. We have calculated these parameters for the triatomic
molecules of interest using the relativistic coupled-cluster approach.


  We demonstrate a novel phase transition from stable to unstable fluid
behaviour for fluid-filled cosmological spacetimes undergoing decelerated
expansion. This transition occurs when the fluid speed of sound $c_S$ exceeds a
critical value relative to the expansion rate $a(t) = t^\alpha$ of spacetime.
We present an explicit relationship between $\alpha$ and $c_S$ , which
subdivides the $(\alpha,c_S)$-parameter space into two regions. Using rigorous
techniques, we establish stability of quiet fluid solutions in the first stable
region. Numerical experiments reveal that the complement of the stable region
consists of unstable solutions, implying sharpness of our stability result. We
provide a definitive analytical bound and high-precision numerical evidence for
the exact location of the critical line separating the stable from the unstable
region.


  The magnetic domain structure is studied in epitaxial
Fe$_{100-x}$Ga$_x$/MgO(001) films with 0 $<$ x $<$ 30 and thicknesses below 60
nm by magnetic force microscopy. For low gallium content, domains with the
magnetization lying in the film plane and domain walls separating micrometric
areas are observed. Above x $\approx$ 20, the magnetic contrast shows a fine
corrugation, ranging from 300 to 900 nm, suggesting a ripple substructure with
a periodic oscillation of the magnetization. We discuss the presence of a
random magnetic anisotropy contribution, that superimposed to the cubic
coherent anisotropy, is able to break the uniform orientation of the
magnetization. The origin of that random anisotropy is attributed to several
factors: coexistence of crystal phases in the films, inhomogeneous distribution
of both internal strain and Ga-Ga next nearest neighbor pairs and interface
magnetic anisotropy due to the Fe-O bond.


  In this manuscript we study the behaviour of the entanglement measure dubbed
negativity in the context of the toric code model. Using a method introduced
recently by Calabrese, Cardy and Tonni [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 130502 (2012)],
we obtain an exact expression which illustrates how the non-local correlations
present in a topologically ordered state reflect in the behaviour of the
negativity of the system. We find that the negativity has a leading area-law
contribution, if the subsystems are in direct contact with one another (as
expected in a zero-range correlated model). We also find a topological
contribution directly related to the topological entropy, provided that the
partitions are topologically non-trivial in both directions on a torus. We also
show that the negativity captures only quantum contributions to the
entanglement. Indeed, we show that the negativity vanishes identically for the
classical topologically ordered 8-vertex model, which on the contrary exhibits
a finite von Neumann entropy, inclusive of topological correction.


  Recent experiments by Hayashi et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 226804 (2003)]
demonstrate coherent oscillations of a charge quantum bit (qubit) in laterally
defined quantum dots. We study the intrinsic electron-phonon decoherence and
gate performance for the next step: a system of two coupled charge qubits. The
effective decoherence model contains properties of local as well as collective
decoherence. Decoherence channels can be classified by their multipole moments,
which leads to different low-energy spectra. It is shown that due to the
super-Ohmic spectrum, the gate quality is limited by the single-qubit Hadamard
gates. It can be significantly improved, by using double-dots with weak tunnel
coupling.


  We give sufficient conditions for the non-triviality of the Poisson boundary
of random walks on $H(\mathbb{Z})$ and its subgroups. The group $H(\mathbb{Z})$
is the group of piecewise projective homeomorphisms over the integers defined
by Monod. For a finitely generated subgroup $H$ of $H(\mathbb{Z})$, we prove
that either $H$ is solvable, or every measure on $H$ with finite first moment
that generates it as a semigroup has non-trivial Poisson boundary. In
particular, we prove the non-triviality of the Poisson boundary of measures on
Thompson's group $F$ that generate it as a semigroup and have finite first
moment, which answers a question by Kaimanovich.


  Recently, Domagoj Brada\v{c}, Oliver Janzer, Benny Sudakov and Istv\'an Tomon
have proved that the Tur\'an number of $2$-dimensional grids is
$\Theta(n^{3/2})$, or more general,
$\mathrm{ex}\left(n,T\square{P}\right)=\Theta(n^{3/2})$, where $T$ is a
non-trivial tree, $P$ is a non-trivial path, and $T\square{P}$ denotes the
Cartesian product. In their proof, they exhibited a novel way of using the
tensor power trick, which has lots of potential in Tur\'an type problems. By
the end of their proof, they conjectured that
$\mathrm{ex}\left(n,T\square{R}\right)=\Theta(n^{3/2})$ for non-trivial trees
$T$ and $R$. This paper is an extension based on their work, we successfully
prove the above conjecture by adapting their approach.


  In this paper, we prove that if a $3$-dimensional quasi-projective variety
$X$ over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p>3$ has only log
canonical singularities, then so does a general hyperplane section $H$ of $X$.
We also show that the same is true for klt singularities, which is a slight
extension of \cite{ST20}. In the course of the proof, we provide a sufficient
condition for log canonical (resp.~klt) surface singularities to be
geometrically log canonical (resp.~geometrically klt) over a field.


  Let $\Sigma$ be a compact oriented surface. The Dehn twist along every simple
closed curve $\gamma \subset \Sigma$ induces an automorphism of the fundamental
group $\pi$ of $\Sigma$. There are two possible ways to generalize such
automorphisms if the curve $\gamma$ is allowed to have self-intersections. One
way is to consider the `generalized Dehn twist' along $\gamma$: an automorphism
of the Malcev completion of $\pi$ whose definition involves intersection
operations and only depends on the homotopy class $[\gamma]\in \pi$ of
$\gamma$. Another way is to choose in the usual cylinder $U:=\Sigma \times
[-1,+1]$ a knot $L$ projecting onto $\gamma$, to perform a surgery along $L$ so
as to get a homology cylinder $U_L$, and let $U_L$ act on every nilpotent
quotient $\pi/\Gamma_{j} \pi$ of $\pi$ (where $\Gamma_j\pi$ denotes the
subgroup of $\pi$ generated by commutators of length $j$). In this paper,
assuming that $[\gamma]$ is in $\Gamma_k \pi$ for some $k\geq 2$, we prove that
(whatever the choice of $L$ is) the automorphism of $\pi/\Gamma_{2k+1} \pi$
induced by $U_L$ agrees with the generalized Dehn twist along $\gamma$ and we
explicitly compute this automorphism in terms of $[\gamma]$ modulo
${\Gamma_{k+2}}\pi$. As applications, we obtain new formulas for certain
evaluations of the Johnson homomorphisms showing, in particular, how to realize
any element of their targets by some explicit homology cylinders and/or
generalized Dehn twists.


  This work is devoted to a method to generate particle cluster assemblies, and
connected to evaporative lithography. Experiments are carried out using
nonuniform evaporation of an isopropanol film containing polystyrene
microspheres in a cylindrical cell. The local inhomogeneity of the vapor flux
density is achieved by exploiting the temperature gradient. A copper rod is
mounted in the central part of the bottom of the cell for further heating. The
thermocapillary flow resulting from the surface tension gradient, due in turn
to the temperature drop, transfers the particles that were originally at rest
at the bottom of the cell. The effect of the initial thickness of the liquid
layer on the height and base area of the cluster formed in the central region
of the cell is studied. The velocity is measured using particle image
velocimetry. A model describing the initial stage of the process is developed.
The equations of heat transfer and thermal conductivity are used to define the
temperature distribution in the liquid and in the cell. The fluid flow is
simulated using the lubrication approximation. The particle distribution is
modeled using the convection-diffusion equation. The evaporation flux density
is calculated using the Hertz-Knudsen equation. The dependence of the liquid
viscosity on the particle concentration is described by Mooney's formula.
Numerical results show that the liquid film gradually becomes thinner in the
central region, as the surface tension decreases with the increasing
temperature. The liquid flow is directed to the heater near the substrate, and
it transfers the particles to the center of the cell. The volume fraction of
the particles increases over time in this region. The heat flow from the heater
affects the geometry of the cluster for two reasons: first, the Marangoni flow
velocity depends on the temperature gradient, and second, the decrease ...


  SARS-CoV-2, like any other virus, continues to mutate as it spreads,
according to an evolutionary process. Unlike any other virus, the number of
currently available sequences of SARS-CoV-2 in public databases such as GISAID
is already several million. This amount of data has the potential to uncover
the evolutionary dynamics of a virus like never before. However, a million is
already several orders of magnitude beyond what can be processed by the
traditional methods designed to reconstruct a virus's evolutionary history,
such as those that build a phylogenetic tree. Hence, new and scalable methods
will need to be devised in order to make use of the ever increasing number of
viral sequences being collected.
  Since identifying variants is an important part of understanding the
evolution of a virus, in this paper, we propose an approach based on clustering
sequences to identify the current major SARS-CoV-2 variants. Using a $k$-mer
based feature vector generation and efficient feature selection methods, our
approach is effective in identifying variants, as well as being efficient and
scalable to millions of sequences. Such a clustering method allows us to show
the relative proportion of each variant over time, giving the rate of spread of
each variant in different locations -- something which is important for vaccine
development and distribution. We also compute the importance of each amino acid
position of the spike protein in identifying a given variant in terms of
information gain. Positions of high variant-specific importance tend to agree
with those reported by the USA's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), further demonstrating our approach.


  The widespread use of mobile phones is changing how learning takes place in
many disciplines and contexts. As a scenario in a constructionist learning
environment, students are given powerful tools to create games using their own
ideas. In the "No One Left Behind" (NOLB) project we will study through
experimental cycles whether the use of mobile game design has an impact on
learning, understanding, and retention of knowledge for students at risk of
social exclusion. We will use the mobile learning app Pocket Code with partner
schools in three countries: Austria, Spain, and the UK. This paper focuses on
the Austrian pilot, which is exploring gender inclusion in game creation within
an educational environment. We first study differences in game creation between
girls and boys. This study that started in September 2015, will help teachers
to integrate Pocket Code effectively into their courses. For future studies an
enhanced school version of Pocket Code will be designed using the results and
insights gathered at schools with pupils and teachers.


  The evolution of an accreting white dwarf (WD) with strong magnetic field
toward a type Ia supernova (SN Ia) may differ from the classical
single-degenerate (SD) channel. In this paper, we perform binary population
synthesis (BPS) simulations for the SD channel with a main-sequence (MS)
companion, including the strongly magnetized WD accretion. Under a reasonable
assumption that the fraction of such systems is $\sim 15$%, the resulting delay
time distribution (DTD) roughly follows the $t^{-1}$ power-law distribution.
Within the (WD/MS) SD channel, the contribution from the highly magnetized WD
is estimated to be comparable to that from the classical, non-magnetized WD
channel. The contribution of the SD channel toward SNe Ia can be at least $\sim
30$% among the whole SN Ia population. We suggest that the SNe Ia resulting
from the highly-magnetized WD systems would not share observational properties
expected for the classical SD channel; for every (potentially peculiar) SN
observationally associated with the SD channel, we expect a comparable number
of the `hidden' SD population in the normal class.


  A suspended carbon nanotube can act as a nanoscale resonator with remarkable
electromechanical properties and the ability to detect adsorption on its
surface at the level of single atoms. Understanding adsorption on nanotubes and
other graphitic materials is key to many sensing and storage applications. Here
we show that nanotube resonators offer a powerful new means of investigating
fundamental aspects of adsorption on carbon, including the collective behaviour
of adsorbed matter and its coupling to the substrate electrons. By monitoring
the vibrational resonance frequency in the presence of noble gases, we observe
the formation of monolayers on the cylindrical surface and phase transitions
within these monolayers, and simultaneous modification of the electrical
conductance. The monolayer observations also demonstrate the possibility of
studying the fundamental behaviour of matter in cylindrical geometry.


  The effective action for the Josephson junction arrays should contain the
topological term, which violates the particle-hole symmetry. This term is
responsible for the nonzero Magnus force acting on the vortex. The Magnus force
is however small because the parameter of the particle-hole asymmetry in
superconductors is small.


  General relativity allows solutions exhibiting closed timelike curves. Time
travel generates paradoxes and quantum mechanics generalizations were proposed
to solve those paradoxes. The implications of self-consistent interactions on
acausal region of space-time are investigated. If the correspondence principle
is true, then all generalizations of quantum mechanics on acausal manifolds are
not renormalizable. Therefore quantum mechanics can only be defined on global
hyperbolic manifolds and all general relativity solutions exhibiting time
travel are unphysical.


  We study collective excitations in a helical electron liquid on a surface of
three-dimensional topological insulator. Electron in helical liquid obeys
Dirac-like equation for massless particless and direction of its spin is
strictly determined by its momentum. Due to this spin-momentum locking,
collective excitations in the system manifest themselves as coupled charge- and
spin-density waves. We develop quantum field-theoretical description of
spin-plasmons in helical liquid and study their properties and internal
structure. Value of spin polarization arising in the system with excited
spin-plasmons is calculated. We also consider the scattering of spin-plasmons
on magnetic and nonmagnetic impurities and external potentials, and show that
the scattering occurs mainly into two side lobes. Analogies with Dirac electron
gas in graphene are discussed.


  With the advent and widespread deployment of Multimodal Large Language Models
(MLLMs), the imperative to ensure their safety has become increasingly
pronounced. However, with the integration of additional modalities, MLLMs are
exposed to new vulnerabilities, rendering them prone to structured-based
jailbreak attacks, where semantic content (e.g., "harmful text") has been
injected into the images to mislead MLLMs. In this work, we aim to defend
against such threats. Specifically, we propose \textbf{Ada}ptive
\textbf{Shield} Prompting (\textbf{AdaShield}), which prepends inputs with
defense prompts to defend MLLMs against structure-based jailbreak attacks
without fine-tuning MLLMs or training additional modules (e.g., post-stage
content detector). Initially, we present a manually designed static defense
prompt, which thoroughly examines the image and instruction content step by
step and specifies response methods to malicious queries. Furthermore, we
introduce an adaptive auto-refinement framework, consisting of a target MLLM
and a LLM-based defense prompt generator (Defender). These components
collaboratively and iteratively communicate to generate a defense prompt.
Extensive experiments on the popular structure-based jailbreak attacks and
benign datasets show that our methods can consistently improve MLLMs'
robustness against structure-based jailbreak attacks without compromising the
model's general capabilities evaluated on standard benign tasks. Our code is
available at https://github.com/rain305f/AdaShield.


  It is shown that for any fixed $c \geq 3$ and $r$, the maximum possible
chromatic number of a graph on $n$ vertices in which every subgraph of radius
at most $r$ is $c$ colorable is $\tilde{\Theta}\left(n ^ {\frac{1}{r+1}}
\right)$ (that is, $n^\frac{1}{r+1}$ up to a factor poly-logarithmic in $n$).
The proof is based on a careful analysis of the local and global colorability
of random graphs and implies, in particular, that a random $n$-vertex graph
with the right edge probability has typically a chromatic number as above and
yet most balls of radius $r$ in it are $2$-degenerate.


  We discuss a covariant extension of interactions between scalar fields and
fermions in a flat space-time. We show, in a covariant theory, how to evade
fermionic ghosts appearing because of the extra degrees of freedom behind a
fermionic nature even in the Lagrangian with first derivatives. We will give a
concrete example of a quadratic theory with up to the first derivative of
multiple scalar fields and a Weyl fermion. We examine not only the maximally
degenerate condition, which makes the number of degrees of freedom correct, but
also a supplementary condition guaranteeing that the time evolution takes place
properly. We also show that proposed derivative interaction terms between
scalar fields and a Weyl fermion cannot be removed by field redefinitions.


  MALTA is part of the Depleted Monolithic Active Pixel sensors designed in
Tower 180nm CMOS imaging technology. A custom telescope with six MALTA planes
has been developed for test beam campaigns at SPS, CERN, with the ability to
host several devices under test. The telescope system has a dedicated custom
readout, online monitoring integrated into DAQ with realtime hit map, time
distribution and event hit multiplicity. It hosts a dedicated fully
configurable trigger system enabling to trigger on coincidence between
telescope planes and timing reference from a scintillator. The excellent time
resolution performance allows for fast track reconstruction, due to the
possibility to retain a low hit multiplicity per event which reduces the
combinatorics. This paper reviews the architecture of the system and its
performance during the 2021 and 2022 test beam campaign at the SPS North Area.


  (abridged) We introduce and discuss the properties of a theoretical
(B-K)-(J-K) integrated colour diagram for single-age, single-metallicity
stellar populations. This combination of integrated colours is able to largely
disentangle the well known age-metallicity degeneracy when the age of the
population is greater than ~300 Myr. We discuss in detail the effect on this
colour-colour diagram of alpha-enhanced metal abundance ratios, the presence of
blue horizontal branch stars unaccounted for in the theoretical calibration,
and of statistical colour fluctuations in low mass stellar systems. In the case
of populations with multiple stellar generations, the luminosity-weighted mean
age obtained from this diagram is shown to be heavily biased towards the
youngest stellar components. We apply this method to several datasets for which
optical and near-IR photometry are available in the literature. For the two
Local Group dwarf galaxies NGC185 and NGC6822, the mean ages derived from the
integrated colours are consistent with the star formation histories inferred
independently from photometric observations of their resolved stellar
populations. A sample of bright field and Virgo cluster elliptical galaxies is
found to exhibit a range of luminosity-weighted mean ages from 3 to 14 Gyr,
with a mean of 8 Gyr, independent of environment, and mean metallicities at or
just above the solar value. Colour gradients are found in all of the galaxies
studied, in the sense that central regions are redder. Aperture data for five
Virgo early-type dwarf galaxies show that these galaxies appear to be shifted
to lower mean metallicities and lower mean ages (range 1 to 6 Gyr) than their
higher luminosity counterparts.


  We consider the Alexander polynomial of a plane algebraic curve twisted by a
linear representation. We show that it divides the product of the polynomials
of the singularity links, for unitary representations. Moreover, their quotient
is given by the determinant of its Blanchfield intersection form. Specializing
in the classical case, this gives a geometrical interpretation of Libgober's
divisibility Theorem. We calculate twisted polynomials for some algebraic
curves and show how they can detect Zariski pairs of equivalent Alexander
polynomials and that they are sensitive to nodal degenerations.


  We investigate the effect of planetary rotation on the transit spectrum of an
extrasolar giant planet. During ingress and egress, absorption features arising
from the planet's atmosphere are Doppler shifted by of order the planet's
rotational velocity (~1-2 km/s) relative to where they would be if the planet
were not rotating. We focus in particular on the case of HD209458b, which ought
to be at least as good a target as any other known transiting planet. For
HD209458b, this shift should give rise to a small net centroid shift of ~60
cm/s on the stellar absorption lines. Using a detailed model of the
transmission spectrum due to a rotating star transited by a rotating planet
with an isothermal atmosphere, we simulate the effect of the planet's rotation
on the shape of the spectral lines, and in particular on the magnitude of their
width and centroid shift. We then use this simulation to determine the expected
signal-to-noise ratio for distinguishing a rotating from a non-rotating planet,
and assess how this S/N scales with various parameters of HD209458b. We find
that with a 6 m telescope, an equatorial rotational velocity of ~2 km/s could
be detected with a S/N~5 by accumulating the signal over many transits over the
course of several years. With a 30 m telescope, the time required to make such
a detection reduces to less than 2 months.


  We analyze optical binary communication assisted by entanglement and show
that: i) ideal entangled channels have smaller error probability than ideal
single-mode coherent channels if the photon number of the channel is larger
than one; ii) realistic entangled channels with heterodyne receivers have
smaller error probability than ideal single-mode coherent channels if the
photon number of the channel is larger than a threshold of about five photons.


  We study the local cohomology modules H^i_B(R) for a reduced monomial ideal B
in a polynomial ring R=k[X_1,...,X_n]. We consider a grading on R which is
coarser than the Z^n-grading such that each component of H^i_B(R) is finite
dimensional and we give an effective way to compute these components. Using
Cox's description for sheaves on toric varieties, we apply these results to
compute the cohomology of coherent sheaves on toric varieties. We give
algorithms for this computation which have been implemented in the Macaulay 2
system. We obtain also a topological description for the cohomology of rank one
torsionfree sheaves on toric varieties.


  An exact solution was recently found in the massive gravity theory having the
form of Schwarzschild-dS black holes with some additional background fields.
Hawking radiation will occur at the event and cosmological horizons having the
blackbody spectrum, which will be modified by the geometry outside the black
hole. In this paper, we study the greybody factors of a test scalar,
considering its minimal coupling with the background geometry. The case of
small black holes with the horizon radius much smaller than the cosmological dS
radius is studied numerically. The case of near-extremal black holes with the
horizon radius comparable to the cosmological dS radius is studied
analytically. In addition, we considered the coupling of the test field with
the background {St\"uckelberg} fields, which in turn leads to reductions in
particle emission and some non-trivial features (resonances) in the greybody
factors.


  We succeeded in modifying and controlling the electrical resistance of a
standard High Pressure Laminate (HPL) panel through the use of a Gas Electron
Multiplier (GEM) foil that has been embedded into the bulk of the HPL plate
itself. Electrical characterizations were made and preliminary data show that
this HPL-GEM embedded system can easily vary its bulk resistance by more than
one order of magnitude. Data show that the bulk resistance change is
exponential with the applied voltage to the embedded GEM.


  The level of quasi-stationary planetary wave (QSW) activity in the Antarctic
winter stratosphere provides insights into the likely behavior of the ozone
hole in the following spring months. Observation of an anomalously large
amplitude of the QSW in winter stratospheric temperatures is an indicator that
strong disturbances to the polar vortex are likely to occur, and may lead to
large reductions in both the area of the Antarctic ozone hole area and the
overall amount of stratospheric ozone that is depleted. In the sudden
stratospheric warming (SSW) preconditions in 2019, the maximum QSW amplitude
over Antarctica in August was approximately 12 K, which was only 2 K less than
conditions prior to the unprecedented major Antarctic SSW in 2002. Under these
conditions, the Antarctic SSW in 2019 has the potential to become a major SSW.
The additional factors disturbing the Antarctic stratosphere in 2019 was
anomalously warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the central tropical
Pacific Ocean and western Indian Ocean, and the descending easterly phase of
the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation. The combination of these factors - the large
amplitude of the QSW, the warm tropical SSTs and transitioning phase of the QBO
- has the potential to cause the early disruption of the ozone hole and reduce
the overall level of ozone depletion in 2019, and may also have important
regional consequences for weather conditions in the Southern Hemisphere.


  Side-channel attacks that use machine learning (ML) for signal analysis have
become prominent threats to computer security, as ML models easily find
patterns in signals. To address this problem, this paper explores using
Adversarial Machine Learning (AML) methods as a defense at the computer
architecture layer to obfuscate side channels. We call this approach Defensive
ML, and the generator to obfuscate signals, defender. Defensive ML is a
workflow to design, implement, train, and deploy defenders for different
environments. First, we design a defender architecture given the physical
characteristics and hardware constraints of the side-channel. Next, we use our
DefenderGAN structure to train the defender. Finally, we apply defensive ML to
thwart two side-channel attacks: one based on memory contention and the other
on application power. The former uses a hardware defender with ns-level
response time that attains a high level of security with half the performance
impact of a traditional scheme; the latter uses a software defender with
ms-level response time that provides better security than a traditional scheme
with only 70% of its power overhead.


  We propose a new framework for the recognition of online handwritten
graphics. Three main features of the framework are its ability to treat symbol
and structural level information in an integrated way, its flexibility with
respect to different families of graphics, and means to control the tradeoff
between recognition effectiveness and computational cost. We model a graphic as
a labeled graph generated from a graph grammar. Non-terminal vertices represent
subcomponents, terminal vertices represent symbols, and edges represent
relations between subcomponents or symbols. We then model the recognition
problem as a graph parsing problem: given an input stroke set, we search for a
parse tree that represents the best interpretation of the input. Our graph
parsing algorithm generates multiple interpretations (consistent with the
grammar) and then we extract an optimal interpretation according to a cost
function that takes into consideration the likelihood scores of symbols and
structures. The parsing algorithm consists in recursively partitioning the
stroke set according to structures defined in the grammar and it does not
impose constraints present in some previous works (e.g. stroke ordering). By
avoiding such constraints and thanks to the powerful representativeness of
graphs, our approach can be adapted to the recognition of different graphic
notations. We show applications to the recognition of mathematical expressions
and flowcharts. Experimentation shows that our method obtains state-of-the-art
accuracy in both applications.


  What is the probability that a macroscopic void will spontaneously arise, at
a specified time T, in an initially homogeneous gas? We address this question
for diffusive lattice gases, and also determine the most probable density
history leading to the void formation. We employ the macroscopic fluctuation
theory by Bertini et al and consider both annealed and quenched averaging
procedures (the initial condition is allowed to fluctuate in the annealed
setting). We show that in the annealed case the void formation probability is
given by the equilibrium Boltzmann-Gibbs formula, so the probability is
independent of T (and also of the void shape, as only the volume matters). In
the quenched case, which is intrinsically non-equilibrium, we evaluate the void
formation probability analytically for non-interacting random walkers and probe
it numerically for the simple symmetric exclusion process. For voids that are
small compared with the diffusion length, the equilibrium result for the void
formation probability is recovered. We also re-derive our main results for
non-interacting random walkers from an exact microscopic analysis.


  Since the 1980s, and particularly with the Hopfield model, recurrent neural
networks or RNN became a topic of great interest. The first works of neural
networks consisted of simple systems of a few neurons that were commonly
simulated through analogue electronic circuits. The passage from the equations
to the circuits was carried out directly without justification and subsequent
formalisation. The present work shows a way to formally obtain the equivalence
between an analogue circuit and a neural network and formalizes the connection
between both systems. We also show which are the properties that these
electrical networks must satisfy. We can have confidence that the
representation in terms of circuits is mathematically equivalent to the
equations that represent the network.


  We prove decidability of univariate real algebra extended with predicates for
rational and integer powers, i.e., $(x^n \in \mathbb{Q})$ and $(x^n \in
\mathbb{Z})$. Our decision procedure combines computation over real algebraic
cells with the rational root theorem and witness construction via algebraic
number density arguments.


  Twinkling Artifact is a valuable tool in detecting dense objects such as
kidney stones, calculi etc., especially when there is no acoustic shadowing and
presence of hyperechogenic tissues obstructs visualization. This phenomenon is
not completely understood. Different scientific groups have contradictory
findings concerning its properties: some of them observed a decrease in
Twinkling intensity at elevated pulse repetition frequencies (PRF), while
others found Twinkling to be independent from PRF, etc. In this paper we
hypothesize that this kind of contradictions can be partially resolved on an
assumption that there are two types of Twinkling. The 1st type presumably is
produced by random-phased reflections from microcavitation and can be
registered even at PRF high enough to suppress blood flow. The 2nd is
originated from elastic vibrations as the object under investigation swings
like a pendulum in the field of ultrasound. These vibrations can be associated
with an external source such as a muscles contraction, etc. or the acoustic
radiation force from signals emitted by the transducer. The 2nd type of
Twinkling disappears at high PRF and can be regularly observed in silicone and
polyurethane phantoms where the occurrence of cavitation microbubbles is highly
unlikely. Key Words: Ultrasound Imaging, Twinkling Artifact, Stone Detection,
Doppler Effect, Color Frame Mapping, Acoustic Radiation Force, Elastic
Vibration, Ultrasound Phantom, Cavitation, Microbubbles.


  We analyse the evolution of light Q-balls in a cosmological background, and
find a number of interesting features. For Q-balls formed with a size
comparable to the Hubble radius, we demonstrate that there is no charge
radiation, and that the Q-ball maintains a constant physical radius. Large
expansion rates cause charge migration to the surface of the Q-ball,
corresponding to a non-homogeneous internal rotation frequency. We argue that
this is an important phenomenon as it leads to a large surface charge and
possible fragmentation of the Q-ball. We also explore the deviation of the
Q-ball profile function from the static case. By introducing a parameter
$\epsilon$, which is the ratio of the Hubble parameter to the frequency of
oscillation of the Q-ball field, and using solutions to an analytically
approximated equation for the profile function, we determine the dependence of
the new features on the expansion rate. This allows us to gain an understanding
of when they should be considered and when they can be neglected, thereby
placing restrictions on the existence of homogeneous Q-balls in expanding
backgrounds.


  The nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process of electron-positron pair production off
a probe photon colliding with a low-frequency and a high-frequency
electromagnetic wave that propagate in the same direction is analyzed. We
calculate the pair-production probability and the spectra of the created pair
in the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler processes of pair production off a probe photon
colliding with two plane waves or one of these two plane waves. The differences
of these two cases are discussed. We evidently show, in the two-wave case, the
possibility of Breit-Wheeler pair production with simultaneous photon emission
into the low-frequency wave and the high multiphoton phenomena: (i)
Breit-Wheeler pair production by absorption of the probe photon and a large
number of photons from the low-frequency wave, in addition to the absorption of
one photon from the high-frequency wave; (ii) Breit-Wheeler pair production by
absorption of the probe photon and one photon from the high-frequency wave with
simultaneous emission of a large number of photons into the low-frequency wave.
The phenomenon of photon emission into the wave cannot happen in the one-wave
case. Compared with the one-wave case, the contributions from high multiphoton
processes are largely enhanced in the two-wave case. The results presented in
this article show a possible way to access the observations of the phenomenon
of photon emission into the wave and high multiphoton phenomenon in
Breit-Wheeler pair production even with the laser-beam intensity of order
$10^{18}~\rm{W/cm^2}$.


  At $T_N\simeq 305~\text{K}$ the layered insulator BaCoS$_2$ transitions to a
columnar antiferromagnet that signals non-negligible magnetic frustration
despite the relatively high $T_N$, all the more surprising given its quasi
two-dimensional structure. Here, we show by combining ab initio and model
calculations that the magnetic transition is an order-from-disorder phenomenon,
which not only drives the columnar $C_4\to C_2$ symmetry breaking, but also,
and more importantly, the inter-layer coherence responsible for the finite
N\'eel transition temperature. This uncommon ordering mechanism, actively
contributed by orbital degrees of freedom, hints at an abundance of low energy
excitations below and, especially, above $T_N$, not in disagreement with
experimental evidences, and might as well emerge in other layered correlated
compounds showing frustrated magnetism at low temperature.


  We study refined topological string theory in the presence of orientifolds by
counting second-quantized BPS states in M-theory. This leads us to propose a
new integrality condition for both refined and unrefined topological strings
when orientifolds are present. We define the SO(2N) refined Chern-Simons theory
which computes refined open string amplitudes for branes wrapping Seifert
three-manifolds. We use the SO(2N) refined Chern-Simons theory to compute new
invariants of torus knots that generalize the Kauffman polynomials. At large N,
the SO(2N) refined Chern-Simons theory on the three-sphere is dual to refined
topological strings on an orientifold of the resolved conifold, generalizing
the Gopakumar-Sinha-Vafa duality. Finally, we use the (2,0) theory to define
and solve refined Chern-Simons theory for all ADE gauge groups.


  We analyze the intriguing possibility to explain both dark mass components in
a galaxy: the dark matter (DM) halo and the supermassive dark compact object
lying at the center, by a unified approach in terms of a quasi-relaxed system
of massive, neutral fermions in general relativity. The solutions to the mass
distribution of such a model that fulfill realistic halo boundary conditions
inferred from observations, develop a highly-density core supported by the
fermion degeneracy pressure able to mimic massive black holes at the center of
galaxies. Remarkably, these dense core-diluted halo configurations can explain
the dynamics of the closest stars around Milky Way's center (SgrA*) all the way
to the halo rotation curve, without spoiling the baryonic bulge-disk
components, for a narrow particle mass range $mc^2 \sim 10$-$10^2$~keV.


  Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disease that is a major public
health challenge. The disease is characterised by inflammation of synovial
joints and cartilage erosion, which leads to chronic pain, poor life quality
and, in some cases, premature mortality. Understanding the biological
mechanisms behind the progression of the disease, as well as developing new
methods for quantitative predictions of disease progression in the
presence/absence of various therapies is important for the success of
therapeutic approaches. The aim of this study is to review various quantitative
predictive modelling approaches for understanding rheumatoid arthritis. To this
end, we start by discussing briefly the biology of this disease and some
current treatment approaches, as well as emphasising some of the open problems
in the field. Then we review various mathematical mechanistic models derived to
address some of these open problems. We discuss models that investigate the
biological mechanisms behind the progression of the disease, as well as
pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic models for various drug therapies.
Furthermore, we highlight models aimed at optimising the costs of the
treatments while taking into consideration the evolution of the disease and
potential complications.


  We observe an anomalously high electric field of terahertz (THz) radiation
acting on a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) placed beneath a thin gold
film, which, however, is supposed to be opaque at THz frequencies. We show that
the anomalously strong penetration of the THz electric field through a very
high conductive gold film emerges if two conditions are fulfilled
simultaneously: (i) the film's thickness is less than the skin depth and (ii)
the THz electric field is measured beneath the film at distances substantially
smaller than the radiation wavelength. We demonstrate that under these
conditions the strength of the field acting on a 2DEG is almost the same as it
would be in the absence of the gold film. The effect is detected for
macroscopically homogeneous perforation-free gold films illuminated by
THz-laser radiation with a spot smaller than the film area. This eliminates the
near-field of the edge diffraction as a possible cause of the anomalous
penetration. The microscopic origin of the effect remains unexplained in its
details, yet. The observed effect can be used for the development of THz
devices based on two-dimensional materials requiring robust highly conducting
top gates placed at less than nanometer distance from the electron gas
location.


  We present a $T=0K$ renormalization group (RG) phase diagram for the
electronic Hubbard model in two dimensions on the square lattice at, and away
from, half filling. The RG procedure treats quantum fluctuations in the single
particle occupation number nonperturbatively via the unitarily decoupling of
one electronic state at every RG step. The resulting phase diagram thus possess
the quantum fluctuation energy scale ($\omega$) as one of its axes. A relation
is derived between $\omega$ and the effective temperature scale upto which
gapless, as well as emergent gapped, phases can be obtained. We find that the
transition in the half-filled Hubbard model involves, for any on-site
repulsion, passage from a marginal Fermi liquid to a topologically-ordered
gapped Mott liquid through a pseudogapped phase bookended by Fermi surface
topology-changing Lifshitz transitions. Using effective Hamiltonians and
wavefunctions for the low-energy many-body eigenstates for the doped Mott
liquid obtained from the stable fixed point of the RG flow, we demonstrate the
collapse of the pseudogap for charge excitations (Mottness) at a quantum
critical point possessing a nodal non-Fermi liquid with superconducting
fluctuations, and spin-pseudogapping near the antinodes. d-wave Superconducting
order is shown to arise from this quantum critical state of matter.
Benchmarking of the ground state energy per particle and the double-occupancy
fraction against existing numerical results also yields excellent agreement. We
present detailed insight into the $T=0$ origin of several experimentally
observed findings in the cuprates, including Homes law and Planckian
dissipation. Our results offer insight on the ubiquitous origin of
superconductivity in doped Mott insulating states, and pave the way towards a
systematic search for higher superconducting transition temperatures in such
systems.


  Asymmetric information distances are used to define asymmetric norms and
quasimetrics on the statistical manifold and its dual space of random
variables. Quasimetric topology, generated by the Kullback-Leibler (KL)
divergence, is considered as the main example, and some of its topological
properties are investigated.


  The independent eigenstates of the total orbital angular momentum operators
for a three-body system in an arbitrary D-dimensional space are presented by
the method of group theory. The Schr\"{o}dinger equation is reduced to the
generalized radial equations satisfied by the generalized radial functions with
a given total orbital angular momentum denoted by a Young diagram
$[\mu,\nu,0,...,0]$ for the SO(D) group. Only three internal variables are
involved in the functions and equations. The number of both the functions and
the equations for the given angular momentum is finite and equal to
$(\mu-\nu+1)$.


  This is the unabridged table of all 8595 rank three reflective Lorentzian
lattices, intended as a supplement to the author's paper classifying them. The
abridged table in that paper is complete too, but less explicit, so the main
purpose of this document is archival. The TeX sourcecode is simultaneously a
Perl script, which when run prints out all the lattices in computer-readable
format.


  Today we have a solid, if incomplete, physical picture of how inertia is
created in the standard model. We know that most of the visible baryonic `mass'
in the Universe is due to gluonic back-reaction on accelerated quarks, the
latter of which attribute their own inertia to a coupling with the Higgs field
-- a process that elegantly and self-consistently also assigns inertia to
several other particles. But we have never had a physically viable explanation
for the origin of rest-mass energy, in spite of many attempts at understanding
it towards the end of the nineteenth century, culminating with Einstein's own
landmark contribution in his Annus Mirabilis. Here, we introduce to this
discussion some of the insights we have garnered from the latest cosmological
observations and theoretical modeling to calculate our gravitational binding
energy with that portion of the Universe to which we are causally connected,
and demonstrate that this energy is indeed equal to mc^2 when the inertia m is
viewed as a surrogate for gravitational mass.


  This is an elaboration about the "extra" advantage of the performance of
quantized physical systems over classical ones; both in terms of single
outcomes as well as probabilistic predictions. From a formal point of view, it
is based upon entities related to (dual) vectors in (dual) Hilbert spaces, as
compared to the Boolean algebra of subsets of a set and the additive measures
they support.


  Incremental value (IncV) evaluates the performance change from an existing
risk model to a new model. It is one of the key considerations in deciding
whether a new risk model performs better than the existing one. Problems arise
when different IncV metrics contradict each other. For example, compared with a
prescribed-dose model, an ovarian-dose model for predicting acute ovarian
failure has a slightly lower area under the receiver operating characteristic
curve (AUC) but increases the area under the precision-recall curve (AP) by
48%. This phenomenon of conflicting conclusions is not uncommon, and it creates
a dilemma in medical decision making. In this article, we examine the
analytical connections and differences between two IncV metrics: IncV in AUC
(IncV-AUC) and IncV in AP (IncV-AP). Additionally, since they are both
semi-proper scoring rules, we compare them with a strictly proper scoring rule:
the IncV of the scaled Brier score (IncV-sBrS), via a numerical study. We
demonstrate that both IncV-AUC and IncV-AP are weighted averages of the changes
(from the existing model to the new one) in separating the risk score
distributions between events and non-events. However, IncV-AP assigns heavier
weights to the changes in the high-risk group, whereas IncV-AUC weights the
changes equally. In the numerical study, we find that IncV-AP has a wide range,
from negative to positive, but the size of IncV-AUC is much smaller. In
addition, IncV-AP and IncV-sBr Sare highly consistent, but IncV-AUC is
negatively correlated with IncV-sBrS and IncV-AP at a low event rate. IncV-AUC
and IncV-AP are the least consistent among the three pairs, and their
differences are more pronounced as the event rate decreases.


  The paper has been withdrawm. A completely new version on oscillating axionic
boson stars will appear.


  People commonly utilize visualizations not only to examine a given dataset,
but also to draw generalizable conclusions about the underlying models or
phenomena. Prior research has compared human visual inference to that of an
optimal Bayesian agent, with deviations from rational analysis viewed as
problematic. However, human reliance on non-normative heuristics may prove
advantageous in certain circumstances. We investigate scenarios where human
intuition might surpass idealized statistical rationality. In two experiments,
we examine individuals' accuracy in characterizing the parameters of known
data-generating models from bivariate visualizations. Our findings indicate
that, although participants generally exhibited lower accuracy compared to
statistical models, they frequently outperformed Bayesian agents, particularly
when faced with extreme samples. Participants appeared to rely on their
internal models to filter out noisy visualizations, thus improving their
resilience against spurious data. However, participants displayed
overconfidence and struggled with uncertainty estimation. They also exhibited
higher variance than statistical machines. Our findings suggest that analyst
gut reactions to visualizations may provide an advantage, even when departing
from rationality. These results carry implications for designing visual
analytics tools, offering new perspectives on how to integrate statistical
models and analyst intuition for improved inference and decision-making. The
data and materials for this paper are available at https://osf.io/qmfv6


  We revisit the long standing problem of the geometric free variable approach
to computing the generating function for disk amplitudes in the matrix model
formulation of the 3-state Potts model coupled to 2D discrete gravity. This
method is a mild generalisation of Schwinger Dyson (loop-)equations approach,
using graphical arguments to derive a single generating equation in
non-commutative variables that contain the information of all loop equations.
The method of constructing the generating equation is reviewed, we explain how
a larger class of constraints than previously known can be constructed and we
derive a closed set of equations that determine the spectral curve for the
planar graph generating function.


  The theory of the interaction of planetary nebulae with the interstellar
medium is important for the interpretation of nebular morphologies that deviate
from point symmetry. It can be used to probe the interstellar medium and its
magnetic field. We emphasize in this review the role of hydrodynamical
instabilities in the interaction.


  Quantitative understanding of human behaviors provides elementary
comprehension of the complexity of many human-initiated systems. A basic
assumption embedded in the previous analyses on human dynamics is that its
temporal statistics are uniform and stationary, which can be properly described
by a Poisson process. Accordingly, the interevent time distribution should have
an exponential tail. However, recently, this assumption is challenged by the
extensive evidence, ranging from communication to entertainment and work
patterns, that the human dynamics obeys non-Poisson statistics with
heavy-tailed interevent time distribution. This review article summarizes the
recent empirical explorations on human activity pattern, as well as the
corresponding theoretical models for both task-driven and interest-driven
systems. Finally, we outline some future open questions in the studies of the
statistical mechanics of human dynamics.


  In this article we inspect the dynamics of classical field theories with a
local conformal behavior. Our interest in the multisymplectic setting comes
from its suitable description of field theories, and the conformal character
has been added to account for field theories that are scale invariant, flat
spaces, and because some conformal fields can be exactly solved or classified.
In particular, we will solve the example of a conformal scalar field using the
geometric Hamilton-Jacobi theory that is explicitly proposed for conformal
fields on a multisymplectic manifold. To complete the geometric approach to
study field theories, we propose the Hamilton-Jacobi theory for conformal
fields in a Cauchy data space, in which space and time are split separately and
the dynamics is depicted in an infinite-dimensional manifold.


  Conformation of a protein (CorA) is examined in a matrix with mobile solute
constituents as a function of solute-residue interaction strength (f) by a
coarse-grained model with a Monte Carlo simulation. Solute particles are found
to reach their targeted residue due to their unique interactions with the
residues. Degree of slowing down of the protein depends on the interaction
strength f. Unlike a predictable dependence of the radius of gyration of the
same protein on interaction in an effective medium, it does not show a
systematic dependence on interaction due to pinning caused by the solute
binding. Spread of the protein chain is quantified by estimating its effective
dimension (D) from scaling of the structure factor. Even with a lower
solute-residue interaction, the protein chain appears to conform to a
random-coil conformation (D ~ 2) in its native phase where it is globular in
absence of such solute environment. The structural spread at small length scale
differs from that at large scale in presence of stronger interactions: D ~ 2.3
at smaller length scale and D ~ 1.4 on larger scale with f = 3.5 while D ~ 1.4
at smaller length scale and D ~ 2.5 at larger length scales with f = 4.0.


  In this paper, we study the local time spent by an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck
particle at some location till time t. Using the Feynman-Kac formalism, the
computation of the moment generating function of the local time can be mapped
to the problem of finding the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of a quantum
particle. We employ quantum perturbation theory to compute the eigenvalues and
eigenfunctions in powers of the argument of the moment generating function
which particularly help to directly compute the cumulants and correlations
among local times spent at different locations. In particular, we obtain
explicit expressions of the mean, variance, and covariance of the local times
in the presence and in the absence of an absorbing boundary, conditioned on
survival. In the absence of absorbing boundaries, we also study large
deviations of the local time and compute exact asymptotic forms of the
associated large deviation functions explicitly. In the second part of the
paper, we extend our study of the statistics of local time of the
Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particle to the case not conditioned on survival. In this
case, one expects the distribution of the local time to reach a stationary
distribution in the large time limit. Computations of such stationary
distributions are known in the literature as the problem of first passage
functionals. In this paper, we study the approach to this stationary state with
time by providing a general formulation for evaluating the moment generating
function. From this moment generating function, we compute the cumulants of the
local time exhibiting the approach to the stationary values explicitly for a
free particle and a Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particle. Our analytical results are
verified and supported by numerical simulations.


  We compute at one loop the two-point functions of massless scalars in the
Neumann-Dirichlet open-string sector of the type IIB orientifold compactified
on $T^2\times T^4/\mathbb{Z}_2$, when $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetry is
spontaneously broken. This is done by evaluating correlation functions of
``boundary-changing vertex operators'' which are analogous to correlators of
twist fields for closed strings. We use our results to compute the mass
developed at one loop by the moduli fields arising in the Neumann-Dirichlet
sector.


  In a recent experiment, a dissipative Aharaonov-Bohm (AB) chain was
implemented in the momentum space of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Formed by a
series of dissipative AB rings threaded by synthetic magnetic flux, the chain
exhibits the non-Hermitian skin effect, necessitating the non-Bloch band theory
to account for its topology. In this work, we systematically characterize
topological features of the dissipative AB chain, particularly beyond the
experimentally realized parameter regime. Further, we show that an
atom-injection spectroscopy is not only capable of revealing topological edge
states, as has been demonstrated in the experiment, but also the general band
structure of the system. We then discuss alternative dynamic detection schemes
for the topological edge states. Given the generality of the model and the
detection schemes, our work is helpful to future study of topological models
with non-Hermitian skin effects across a variety of quantum simulators.


  Usually it is believed that the Hartree-Fock state of quark matter is a Fermi
gas state with no polarisation of spins. We examine the possibility of the
polarised quark liquid interacting with the one-gluon-exchange interaction. It
is suggested that the Hartree-Fock state shows a spontaneous magnetic
instability at low densities through the same mechanism as the appearance of
ferromagnetism in electron gas. Metastability of the polarised quark liquid is
also discussed.


  Incompressible two-dimensional flows such as the advection (Liouville)
equation and the Euler equations have a large family of conservation laws
related to conservation of area. We present two Eulerian numerical methods
which preserve a discrete analog of area. The first is a fully discrete model
based on a rearrangement of cells; the second is more conventional, but still
preserves the area within each contour of the vorticity field. Initial tests
indicate that both methods suppress the formation of spurious oscillations in
the field.


  The N-Tuple Bandit Evolutionary Algorithm (NTBEA) has proven very effective
in optimising algorithm parameters in Game AI. A potential weakness is the use
of a simple average of all component Tuples in the model. This study
investigates a refinement to the N-Tuple model used in NTBEA by weighting these
component Tuples by their level of information and specificity of match. We
introduce weighting functions to the model to obtain Weighted- NTBEA and test
this on four benchmark functions and two game environments. These tests show
that vanilla NTBEA is the most reliable and performant of the algorithms
tested. Furthermore we show that given an iteration budget it is better to
execute several independent NTBEA runs, and use part of the budget to find the
best recommendation from these runs.


  Quantum graphs are defined by having a Laplacian defined on the edges of a
metric graph with boundary conditions on each vertex such that the resulting
operator, $\mathbf{L}$, is self-adjoint. We use Neumann boundary conditions
although we do a slight excursion into graphs with Dirichlet and $\delta$-type
boundary condititons towards the end of the paper. The spectrum of $\mathbf{L}$
does not determine the graph uniquely, that is, there exist non-isomorphic
graphs with the same spectra. There are few known examples of pairs of
non-isomorphic but isospectral quantum graphs. In this paper we start to
correctify this situation by finding hundreds of isospectral sets, using
computer algebra.
  We have found all sets of isospectral but non-isomorphic equilateral
connected quantum graphs with at most nine vertices. This includes thirteen
isospectral triplets and one isospectral set of four. One of the isospectral
triplets involves a loop where we could prove isospectrality. We also present
several different combinatorial methods to generate arbitrarily large sets of
isospectral graphs, including infinite graphs in different dimensions. As part
of this we have found a method to determine if two vertices have the same
Titchmarsh-Weyl $M$-function. We give combinatorial methods to generate sets of
graphs with arbitrarily large number of vertices with the same $M$-function. We
also find several sets of graphs that are isospectral under both Neumann and
Dirichlet boundary conditions as well as under more general, $\delta$-type and
$\delta'_s$-type, boundary conditions. We discuss the possibilities that our
program is incorrect, present our tests and open source it for inspection at
http://github.com/meapistol/Spectra-of-graphs


  This paper develops energy-efficient hybrid beamforming designs for mmWave
multi-user systems where analog precoding is realized by switches and phase
shifters such that radio frequency (RF) chain to transmit antenna connections
can be switched off for energy saving. By explicitly considering the effect of
each connection on the required power for baseband and RF signal processing, we
describe the total power consumption in a sparsity form of the analog precoding
matrix. However, these sparsity terms and sparsity-modulus constraints of the
analog precoding make the system energy-efficiency maximization problem
non-convex and challenging to solve. To tackle this problem, we first transform
it into a subtractive-form weighted sum rate and power problem. A compressed
sensing-based re-weighted quadratic-form relaxation method is employed to deal
with the sparsity parts and the sparsity-modulus constraints. We then exploit
alternating minimization of the mean-squared error to solve the equivalent
problem where the digital precoding vectors and the analog precoding matrix are
updated sequentially. The energy efficiency upper bound and a heuristic
algorithm are also examined for comparison purposes. Numerical results confirm
the superior performances of the proposed algorithm over benchmark
energy-efficiency hybrid precoding algorithms and heuristic ones.


  Three giant flares have been detected so far from soft gamma-ray repeaters,
each characterized by an initial short hard spike and a pulsating tail. The
observed pulsating tails are characterized by a duration of $\sim100\,\rm{s}$,
an isotropic energy of $\sim 10^{44}\,\rm{erg}$, and a pulse period of a few
seconds. The pulsating tail emission likely originates from the residual energy
after the intense energy release during the initial spike, which forms a
trapped fireball composed of a photon-pair plasma in a closed field line region
of the magnetars. Observationally the spectra of pulsating tails can be fitted
by the superposition of a thermal component and a power-law component, with the
thermal component dominating the emission in the early and late stages of the
pulsating tail observations. In this paper, assuming that the trapped fireball
is from a closed field line region in the magnetosphere, we calculate the
atmosphere structure of the optically-thick trapped fireball and the
polarization properties of the trapped fireball. By properly treating the
photon propagation in a hot, highly magnetized, electron-positron pair plasma,
we tally photons in two modes (O mode and E mode) at a certain observational
angle through Monte Carlo simulations. Our results suggest that the
polarization degree depends on the viewing angle with respect to the magnetic
axis of the magnetar, and can be as high as $\Pi\simeq30\%$ in the
$1-30\,\rm{keV}$ band, and $\Pi\simeq10\%$ in the $30-100\,\rm{keV}$ band, if
the line of sight is perpendicular to the magnetic axis.


  For a bucket test with a single criterion for success and a fixed number of
samples or testing period, requiring a $p$-value less than a specified value of
$\alpha$ for the success criterion produces statistical confidence at level $1
- \alpha$. For multiple criteria, a Bonferroni correction that partitions
$\alpha$ among the criteria produces statistical confidence, at the cost of
requiring lower $p$-values for each criterion. The same concept can be applied
to decisions about early stopping, but that can lead to strict requirements for
$p$-values. We show how to address that challenge by requiring criteria to be
successful at multiple decision points.


  Ionic gating is a powerful technique to realize field-effect transistors
(FETs) enabling experiments not possible otherwise. So far, ionic gating has
relied on the use of top-electrolyte gates, which pose experimental constraints
and make device fabrication complex. Promising results obtained recently in
FETs based on solid-state electrolytes remain plagued by spurious phenomena of
unknown origin, preventing proper transistor operation, and causing limited
control and reproducibility. Here we explore a class of solid-state
electrolytes for gating (Lithium-ion conducting glass-ceramics, LICGCs),
identify the processes responsible for the spurious phenomena and
irreproducible behavior,and demonstrate properly functioning transistors
exhibiting high density ambipolar operation with gate capacitance of ~20-50
$\mu$F/cm$^2$ (depending on the polarity of the accumulated charges). Using
two-dimensional semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides we demonstrate
the ability to implement ionic-gate spectroscopy to determine the
semiconducting bandgap, and to accumulate electron densities above 10$^{14}$
cm$^{-2}$, resulting in gate-induced superconductivity in MoS$_2$ multilayers.
As LICGCs are implemented in a back-gate configuration, they leave the surface
of the material exposed, enabling the use of surface-sensitive techniques (such
as scanning tunneling microscopy and photoemission spectroscopy) impossible so
far in ionic-liquid gated devices. They also allow double ionic gated devices
providing independent control of charge density and electric field.


  The total twist number, which represents the first non-trivial Vassiliev knot
invariant, is derived from the second order expression of the Wilson loop
expectation value in the Chern-Simons theory. Using the well-known fact that
the analytical expression is an invariant, a non-recursive formulation of the
total twist based on the evaluation of knot diagrams is constructed by an
appropriate deformation of the knot line in the three-dimensional Euclidian
space. The relation to the original definition of the total twist is
elucidated.


  The analysis of eight molecular datasets involving human and teleost examples
along with morphological samples from several groups of Neotropical electric
fish (Order: Gymnotiformes) were used in this thesis to test the dynamics of
both intraspecific variation and interspecific diversity. In terms of
investigating molecular interspecific diversity among humans, two experimental
exercises were performed. A cladistic exchange experiment tested for the extent
of discontinuity and interbreeding between H. sapiens and neanderthal
populations. As part of the same question, another experimental exercise tested
the amount of molecular variance resulting from simulations which treated
neanderthals as being either a local population of modern humans or as a
distinct subspecies. Finally, comparisons of hominid populations over time with
fish species helped to define what constitutes taxonomically relevant
differences between morphological populations as expressed among both trait
size ranges and through growth patterns that begin during ontogeny. Compared to
the subdivision found within selected teleost species, H. sapiens molecular
data exhibited little variation and discontinuity between geographical regions.
Results of the two experimental exercises concluded that neanderthals exhibit
taxonomic distance from modern H. sapiens. However, this distance was not so
great as to exclude the possibility of interbreeding between the two
subspecific groups. Finally, a series of characters were analyzed among species
of Neotropical electric fish. These analyses were compared with hominid
examples to determine what constituted taxonomically relevant differences
between populations as expressed among specific morphometric traits that
develop during the juvenile phase.


  We prove a new lower bound for the number of pinned distances over finite
fields: if $A$ is a sufficiently small subset of $\mathbb{F}_q^2$, then there
is an element in $A$ that determines $\gg |A|^{2/3}$ distinct distances to
other elements of $A$. Combined with results for large subsets
$A\subseteq\mathbb{F}_q^2$, this improves all previously known lower bounds on
distinct distances over finite fields.
  In fact, we obtain an upper bound for the number of isosceles triangles
determined by $A$. For that we use the concept of bisector energy. It turns out
that the latter can be expressed as a point-plane incidence bound, so one can
use a theorem of the third author.
  The conversion to this incidence problem relies on the Blaschke-Gr\"unwald
kinematic mapping -- an embedding of the group of rigid motions of
$\mathbb{F}_q^2$ into an open subset of the projective three space. This has
long been known in kinematics and geometric algebra; we provide a proof for
arbitrary fields using Clifford algebras.


  We comment on several issues concerning both the physics and authorship of
article hep-lat/0305020.


  Generative AI has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, leading to a
wide array of applications across diverse domains. In this paper, we present a
comprehensive survey of more than 350 generative AI applications, providing a
structured taxonomy and concise descriptions of various unimodal and even
multimodal generative AIs. The survey is organized into sections, covering a
wide range of unimodal generative AI applications such as text, images, video,
gaming and brain information. Our survey aims to serve as a valuable resource
for researchers and practitioners to navigate the rapidly expanding landscape
of generative AI, facilitating a better understanding of the current
state-of-the-art and fostering further innovation in the field.


  We investigate the long time steady-state dissolution of CO$_{2}$ in a deep
saline aqquifer in the presence of a background hydrological flow. In
steady-state, the distribution of CO$_2$ in the groundwater upstream of the
aquifer involves a balance between three competing effects: (i) the
buoyancy-driven flow of CO$_2$ saturated water; (ii) the diffusion of CO$_2$
from saturated to under-saturated water; and (iii) the advection associated
with the oncoming background flow. This leads to three limiting regimes. In the
limit of very slow diffusion, a nearly static intrusion of dense fluid may
extend a finite distance upstream, balanced by the pressure gradient associated
with the oncoming background flow. In the limit of fast diffusion relative to
the flow, a gradient zone may become established in which the along aquifer
diffusive flux balances the advection associated with the background flow.
However, if the buoyancy-driven flow speed exceeds the background hydrological
flow speed, then a third, intermediate regime may become established. In this
regime, a convective recirculation develops upstream of the anticline involving
the vertical diffusion of CO$_2$ from an upstream propagating flow of dense
CO$_2$ saturated water into the downstream propagating flow of CO$_2$
unsaturated water. For each limiting case, we find analytical solutions for the
distribution of CO$_2$ upstream of the anticline, and test our analysis with
full numerical simulations. A key result is that, although there may be very
different controls on the distribution and extent of CO$_2$ bearing water
upstream of the anticline, in each case the dissolution rate is given by the
product of the background volume flux and the difference in concentration
between the CO$_2$ saturated water and the original aquifer water upstream.


  This addendum contains results about the inversion number and major index
polynomials for permutations avoiding 321 which did not fit well into the
original paper. In particular, we consider symmetry, unimodality, behavior
modulo 2, and signed enumeration.


  In this paper, we show how to discretize the abelian Chern-Simons gauge
theory on generic planar lattices/graphs (with or without translational
symmetries) embedded in arbitrary 2D closed orientable manifolds. We find that,
as long as a one-to-one correspondence between vertices and faces can be
defined on the graph such that each face is paired up with a neighboring vertex
(and vice versa), a discretized Chern-Simons theory can be constructed
consistently. We further verify that all the essential properties of the
Chern-Simons gauge theory are preserved in the discretized setup. In addition,
we find that the existence of such a one-to-one correspondence is not only a
sufficient condition for discretizing a Chern-Simons gauge theory but, for the
discretized theory to be nonsingular and to preserve some key properties of the
topological field theory, this correspondence is also a necessary one. A
specific example will then be provided, in which we discretize the Chern-Simons
gauge theory on a tetrahedron.


  We study the existence of similarity profiles for diffusion equations and
reaction diffusion systems on the real line, where the different nontrivial
limits are imposed for $ x \to -\infty$ and $x \to +\infty$. Theses similarity
profiles solve a coupled system of nonlinear ODEs that can be treated by
monotone operator theory.


  Pruning is a promising approach to compress deep learning models in order to
deploy them on resource-constrained edge devices. However, many existing
pruning solutions are based on unstructured pruning, which yields models that
cannot efficiently run on commodity hardware; and they often require users to
manually explore and tune the pruning process, which is time-consuming and
often leads to sub-optimal results. To address these limitations, this paper
presents Automatic Attention Pruning (AAP), an adaptive, attention-based,
structured pruning approach to automatically generate small, accurate, and
hardware-efficient models that meet user objectives. First, it proposes
iterative structured pruning using activation-based attention maps to
effectively identify and prune unimportant filters. Then, it proposes adaptive
pruning policies for automatically meeting the pruning objectives of
accuracy-critical, memory-constrained, and latency-sensitive tasks. A
comprehensive evaluation shows that AAP substantially outperforms the
state-of-the-art structured pruning works for a variety of model architectures.
Our code is at: https://github.com/kaiqi123/Automatic-Attention-Pruning.git.


  Near-infrared Imager Spectrometer and Polarimeter (NISP) is a camera, an
intermediate resolution spectrograph and an imaging polarimeter being developed
for upcoming 2.5m telescope of Physical Research Laboratory at Mount Abu,
India. NISP is designed to work in the Near-IR (0.8-2.5 micron) using a H2RG
detector. Collimator and camera lenses would transfer the image from the focal
plane of the telescope to the detector plane. The entire optics, mechanical
support structures, detector-SIDECAR assembly will be cooled to
cryo-temperatures using an open cycle Liquid Nitrogen tank inside a vacuum
Dewar. GFRP support structures would be used to isolate cryogenic system from
the Dewar. Two layer thermal shielding would be used to reduce the radiative
heat transfer. Molecular sieve (getter) would be used to enhance the vacuum
level inside Dewar. Magnet-reedswitch combination are used for absolute
positioning of filterwheels. Here we describe the mechanical aspects in detail.


  Nonequilibrium electron spin polarization is calculated under spin injection
from one ferromagnet to another in magnetic junction. It is shown that the
nonequilibrium spin polarization can be comparable with equilibrium one if the
material parameters are chosen appropriately. This leads to lowering the
threshold current density necessary for the junction switching and opens a
perspective to creating THz laser based on the spin-polarized current
injection.


  We systematically analyze constraints on supersymmetric theories imposed by
the experimental bounds on the electron, neutron, and mercury electric dipole
moments. We critically reappraise the known mechanisms to suppress the EDMs and
conclude that only the scenarios with approximate CP-symmetry or
flavour-off-diagonal CP violation remain attractive after the addition of the
mercury EDM constraint.


  We establish or refute the optimality of inexact second-order methods for
unconstrained nonconvex optimization from the point of view of worst-case
evaluation complexity, improving and generalizing the results of Cartis, Gould
and Toint (2010,2011). To this aim, we consider a new general class of inexact
second-order algorithms for unconstrained optimization that includes
regularization and trust-region variations of Newton's method as well as of
their linesearch variants. For each method in this class and arbitrary accuracy
threshold $\epsilon \in (0,1)$, we exhibit a smooth objective function with
bounded range, whose gradient is globally Lipschitz continuous and whose
Hessian is $\alpha-$H\"older continuous (for given $\alpha\in [0,1]$), for
which the method in question takes at least
$\lfloor\epsilon^{-(2+\alpha)/(1+\alpha)}\rfloor$ function evaluations to
generate a first iterate whose gradient is smaller than $\epsilon$ in norm.
Moreover, we also construct another function on which Newton's takes
$\lfloor\epsilon^{-2}\rfloor$ evaluations, but whose Hessian is Lipschitz
continuous on the path of iterates. These examples provide lower bounds on the
worst-case evaluation complexity of methods in our class when applied to smooth
problems satisfying the relevant assumptions. Furthermore, for $\alpha=1$, this
lower bound is of the same order in $\epsilon$ as the upper bound on the
worst-case evaluation complexity of the cubic and other methods in a class of
methods proposed in Curtis, Robinson and samadi (2017) or in Royer and Wright
(2017), thus implying that these methods have optimal worst-case evaluation
complexity within a wider class of second-order methods, and that Newton's
method is suboptimal.


  The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has
measured omega meson production via leptonic and hadronic decay channels in
p+p, d+Au, Cu+Cu, and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The invariant
transverse momentum spectra measured in different decay modes give consistent
results. Measurements in the hadronic decay channel in Cu+Cu and Au+Au
collisions show that omega production has a suppression pattern at high
transverse momentum, similar to that of pi^0 and eta in central collisions, but
no suppression is observed in peripheral collisions. The nuclear modification
factors, R_AA, are consistent in Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at similar numbers
of participant nucleons.


  Let r, s >= 2 be integers. Suppose that the number of blue r-cliques in a
red/blue coloring of the edges of the complete graph K_n is known and fixed.
What is the largest possible number of red s-cliques under this assumption? The
well known Kruskal-Katona theorem answers this question for r=2 or s=2. Using
the shifting technique from extremal set theory together with some analytical
arguments, we resolve this problem in general and prove that in the extremal
coloring either the blue edges or the red edges form a clique.


  With the rapid development of AI and robotics, transporting a large swarm of
networked robots has foreseeable applications in the near future. Existing
research in swarm robotics has mainly followed a bottom-up philosophy with
predefined local coordination and control rules. However, it is arduous to
verify the global requirements and analyze their performance. This motivates us
to pursue a top-down approach, and develop a provable control strategy for
deploying a robotic swarm to achieve a desired global configuration.
Specifically, we use mean-field partial differential equations (PDEs) to model
the swarm and control its mean-field density (i.e., probability density) over a
bounded spatial domain using mean-field feedback. The presented control law
uses density estimates as feedback signals and generates corresponding velocity
fields that, by acting locally on individual robots, guide their global
distribution to a target profile. The design of the velocity field is therefore
centralized, but the implementation of the controller can be fully distributed
-- individual robots sense the velocity field and derive their own velocity
control signals accordingly. The key contribution lies in applying the concept
of input-to-state stability (ISS) to show that the perturbed closed-loop system
(a nonlinear and time-varying PDE) is locally ISS with respect to density
estimation errors. The effectiveness of the proposed control laws is verified
using agent-based simulations.


  Even-denominator fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states, such as 5/2 and 7/2,
have been well known in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) for decades and
are still investigated as candidates of non-Abelian statistics. In this paper,
we present the observation of a 3/2 FQH plateau in a single-layer 2DEG with
lateral confinement at a bulk filling factor of 5/3. The 3/2 FQH plateau is
quantized at (h/e^2 )/(3/2) within 0.02%, and can survive up to 300 mK. This
even-denominator FQH plateau may imply intriguing edge structure and excitation
in FQH system with lateral confinement. The observations in this work
demonstrate that understanding the effect of the lateral confinement on the
many-body system is critical in the pursuit of important theoretical proposals
involving edge physics, such as the demonstration of non-Abelian statistics and
the realization of braiding for fault-tolerant quantum computation.


  We study the correspondence between phase-space localization of quantum
(quasi-)energy eigenstates and classical correlation decay, given by
Ruelle-Pollicott resonances of the Frobenius-Perron operator. It will be shown
that scarred (quasi-)energy eigenstates are correlated: Pairs of eigenstates
strongly overlap in phase space (scar in same phase-space regions) if the
difference of their eigenenergies is close to the phase of a leading classical
resonance. Phase-space localization of quantum states will be measured by $L^2$
norms of their Husimi functions.


  We review the formulation and proof of the Baum-Connes conjecture for the
dual of the quantum group $ SU_q(2) $ of Woronowicz. As an illustration of this
result we determine the $ K $-groups of quantum automorphism groups of simple
matrix algebras.


  Monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS$_2$) has emerged as an excellent 2D model
system because of its two inequivalent, direct-gap valleys that lead to exotic
bound and excited states. Here we focus on one such bound state, the negatively
charged trion. Unlike excitons, trions can radiatively decay with non-zero
momentum by kicking out an electron, resulting in an asymmetric trion
photoluminescence (PL) peak with a long low-energy tail. As a consequence, the
peak position does not correspond to the zero momentum trion energy. By
including the trion's long tail in our analysis we are able to accurately
separate the exciton from the trion contributions to the PL spectra. According
to theory, the asymmetric energy tail has both a size-dependent and a
temperature-dependent contribution. Analysis of the temperature-dependent data
reveals the effective trion size, consistent with literature, and the
temperature dependence of the band gap and spin-orbit splitting of the valence
band. Finally, we observe signatures of Pauli-blocking of the trion decay.


  We are interested in training general-purpose reinforcement learning agents
that can solve a wide variety of goals. Training such agents efficiently
requires automatic generation of a goal curriculum. This is challenging as it
requires (a) exploring goals of increasing difficulty, while ensuring that the
agent (b) is exposed to a diverse set of goals in a sample efficient manner and
(c) does not catastrophically forget previously solved goals. We propose
Curriculum Self Play (CuSP), an automated goal generation framework that seeks
to satisfy these desiderata by virtue of a multi-player game with four agents.
We extend the asymmetric curricula learning in PAIRED (Dennis et al., 2020) to
a symmetrized game that carefully balances cooperation and competition between
two off-policy student learners and two regret-maximizing teachers. CuSP
additionally introduces entropic goal coverage and accounts for the
non-stationary nature of the students, allowing us to automatically induce a
curriculum that balances progressive exploration with anti-catastrophic
exploitation. We demonstrate that our method succeeds at generating an
effective curricula of goals for a range of control tasks, outperforming other
methods at zero-shot test-time generalization to novel out-of-distribution
goals.