  The mixed component of the non-commutative parameter \theta_{\mu M}, where
\mu = 0,1,2,3 and M is an extra dimensional index may violate four-dimensional
CPT invariance. We calculate one and two-loop induced couplings of \theta_{\mu
5} with the four-dimensional axial vector current and with the CPT odd dim=6
operators starting from five-dimensional Yukawa and U(1) theories. The
resulting bounds from clock comparison experiments place a stringent constraint
on \theta_{\mu 5}, |\theta_{\mu 5}|^{-1/2} > 5\times 10^{11} GeV. The orbifold
projection and/or localization of fermions on a 3-brane lead to CPT-conserving
physics, in which case the constraints on \theta{\mu 5} are softened.


  We report on an investigation of various problems related to the theory of
the electroweak phase transition. This includes a determination of the nature
of the phase transition, a discussion of the possible role of higher order
radiative corrections and the theory of the formation and evolution of the
bubbles of the new phase. We find in particular that no dangerous linear terms
appear in the effective potential. However, the strength of the first order
phase transition is 2/3 times less than what follows from the one-loop
approximation. This rules out baryogenesis in the minimal version of the
electroweak theory.


  Based on a conceptual model, this paper aims to explore the background of the
decision-making process leading to the introduction of business information
systems among enterprises in Hungary. Together with presenting the problems
arising in the course of the implementation of such systems, their usage
patterns are also investigated. A strong correlation is established between the
size of an enterprise, the scope of its business activities and the range of
the business information systems it applies.


  Having built up Linux clusters to more than 1000 nodes over the past five
years, we already have practical experience confronting some of the LHC scale
computing challenges: scalability, automation, hardware diversity, security,
and rolling OS upgrades. This paper describes the tools and processes we have
implemented, working in close collaboration with the EDG project [1],
especially with the WP4 subtask, to improve the manageability of our clusters,
in particular in the areas of system installation, configuration, and
monitoring. In addition to the purely technical issues, providing shared
interactive and batch services which can adapt to meet the diverse and changing
requirements of our users is a significant challenge. We describe the
developments and tuning that we have introduced on our LSF based systems to
maximise both responsiveness to users and overall system utilisation. Finally,
this paper will describe the problems we are facing in enlarging our
heterogeneous Linux clusters, the progress we have made in dealing with the
current issues and the steps we are taking to gridify the clusters


  We study the $K^+p\to \pi^+KN$ reaction with kinematical condition suited to
the production of the $\Theta^+$ resonance. It is shown that in this reaction
with the polarization experiment, a combined consideration of the strength at
the peak and the angular dependence of cross section can help determine the
$\Theta^+$ quantum numbers.


  We fine-tune GPT-3 to answer long-form questions using a text-based
web-browsing environment, which allows the model to search and navigate the
web. By setting up the task so that it can be performed by humans, we are able
to train models on the task using imitation learning, and then optimize answer
quality with human feedback. To make human evaluation of factual accuracy
easier, models must collect references while browsing in support of their
answers. We train and evaluate our models on ELI5, a dataset of questions asked
by Reddit users. Our best model is obtained by fine-tuning GPT-3 using behavior
cloning, and then performing rejection sampling against a reward model trained
to predict human preferences. This model's answers are preferred by humans 56%
of the time to those of our human demonstrators, and 69% of the time to the
highest-voted answer from Reddit.


  We discuss how contributions to the order ${\cal O} (m \alpha^8)$
orthopositronium decay rate can be separated into two categories, one due to
relativistic momenta and calculable in terms of QED scattering amplitudes, the
other due to low momenta and calculable in the simpler framework of a
low-energy effective theory (NRQED). We report new results for all low-momentum
contributions, and give a formula relating the remaining contributions to
conventional (on-shell) QED scattering amplitudes.


  The present paper is concerned with differential forms on log canonical
varieties. It is shown that any p-form defined on the smooth locus of a variety
with canonical or klt singularities extends regularly to any resolution of
singularities. In fact, a much more general theorem for log canonical pairs is
established. The proof relies on vanishing theorems for log canonical varieties
and on methods of the minimal model program. In addition, a theory of
differential forms on dlt pairs is developed. It is shown that many of the
fundamental theorems and techniques known for sheaves of logarithmic
differentials on smooth varieties also hold in the dlt setting.
  Immediate applications include the existence of a pull-back map for reflexive
differentials, generalisations of Bogomolov-Sommese type vanishing results, and
a positive answer to the Lipman-Zariski conjecture for klt spaces.


  We consider one-round games between a classical referee and two players. One
of the main questions in this area is the parallel repetition question: Is
there a way to decrease the maximum winning probability of a game without
increasing the number of rounds or the number of players? Classically, efforts
to resolve this question, open for many years, have culminated in Raz's
celebrated parallel repetition theorem on one hand, and in efficient product
testers for PCPs on the other.
  In the case where players share entanglement, the only previously known
results are for special cases of games, and are based on techniques that seem
inherently limited. Here we show for the first time that the maximum success
probability of entangled games can be reduced through parallel repetition,
provided it was not initially 1. Our proof is inspired by a seminal result of
Feige and Kilian in the context of classical two-prover one-round interactive
proofs. One of the main components in our proof is an orthogonalization lemma
for operators, which might be of independent interest.


  The dynamics of the discrete Gaussian model for the surface of a crystal
deposited on a disordered substrate is investigated by Monte Carlo simulations.
The mobility of the growing surface was studied as a function of a small
driving force $F$ and temperature $T$. A continuous transition is found from
high-temperature phase characterized by linear response to a low-temperature
phase with nonlinear, temperature dependent response. In the simulated regime
of driving force the numerical results are in general agreement with recent
dynamic renormalization group predictions.


  We suggest a scheme of using two-mode squeezed vacuum for conditional
teleportation of quantum states of optical field. Alice mixes the input state
with one of the squeezed modes on another squeezing device and detects the
output photon numbers. The result is then communicated to Bob who shifts the
photon number of his part accordingly. This is a principally realizable
modification of the recent scheme [G.J. Milburn and S.L. Braunstein, Phys. Rev.
A 60, 937 (1999)] where measurements of photon number difference and phase sum
are considered. We show that for some classes of states this method can yield
very high fidelity of teleportation, nevertheless, the success probability may
be limited.


  Holographic superconductor phase transition and spontaneous scalarization are
triggered by the instability of the underlying vacuum black hole spacetime.
Although both hairy black hole solutions are closely associated with the
tachyonic instability of the scalar degree of freedom, they are understood to
be driven by distinct causes. It is, therefore, interesting to explore the
interplay between the two phenomena in the context of a scenario where both
mechanisms are present. To this end, we investigate the
Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet theory in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetime
with a Maxwell field. On the one hand, the presence of the charged scalar and
Maxwell fields in anti-de Sitter spacetime furnishes the celebrated framework
for a holographic superconductor. On the other hand, the non-minimal
Gauss-Bonnet coupling between the scalar field and the gravitational sector
triggers spontaneous scalarization. However, near the transition curve, the two
phases are found to be largely indistinguishable regarding both the radial
profile and effective potential. This raises the question of whether the hairy
black holes triggered by different mechanisms are smoothly joined by a phase
transition or whether these are actually identical solutions. To assess the
transition more closely, we evaluate the phase diagram in terms of temperature
and chemical potential and discover a smooth but first-order transition between
the two hairy solutions by explicitly evaluating Gibbs free energy and its
derivatives. In particular, one can elaborate a thermodynamic process through
which a superconducting black hole transits into a scalarized one by raising or
decreasing the temperature. Exhausting the underlying phase space, we analyze
the properties and the interplay between the two hairy solutions.


  Let A= (a_{ij}) be a symmetric non-negative integer 2k x 2k matrix. A is
homogeneous if a_{ij} + a_{kl}=a_{il} + a_{kj} for any choice of the four
indexes. Let A be a homogeneous matrix and let F be a general form in C[x_1,
\dots x_n] with 2deg(F) = trace(A). We look for the least integer, s(A), so
that F= pfaff(M_1) + \cdots + pfaff(M_{s(A)}), where the M_i's are 2k x 2k
skew-symmetric matrices of forms with degree matrix A. We consider this problem
for n= 4 and we prove that s(A) < k+1 for all A.


  This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in
Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.


  The age and mass of red giants are essential for understanding the structure
and evolution of the Milky Way. Traditional isochrone methods for these
estimations are inherently limited due to overlapping isochrones in the
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, while asteroseismology, though more precise,
requires high-precision, long-term observations. In response to these
challenges, we developed a novel framework, Spectral Transformer (SPT), to
predict the age and mass of red giants aligned with asteroseismology from their
spectra. A key component of SPT, the Multi-head Hadamard Self-Attention
mechanism, designed specifically for spectra, can capture complex relationships
across different wavelength. Further, we introduced a Mahalanobis
distance-based loss function to address scale imbalance and interaction mode
loss, and incorporated Monte Carlo dropout for quantitative analysis of
prediction uncertainty.Trained and tested on 3,880 red giant spectra from
LAMOST, the SPT achieved remarkable age and mass estimations with average
percentage errors of 17.64% and 6.61%, respectively, and provided uncertainties
for each corresponding prediction. The results significantly outperform those
of traditional machine learning algorithms and demonstrate a high level of
consistency with asteroseismology methods and isochrone fitting techniques. In
the future, our work will leverage datasets from the Chinese Space Station
Telescope and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to enhance the precision of
the model and broaden its applicability in the field of astronomy and
astrophysics.


  We calculate the number statistics of a single-mode molecular field excited
by photoassociation or via a Feshbach resonance from an atomic Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC), a normal atomic Fermi gas and a Fermi system with pair
correlations (BCS state). We find that the molecule formation from a BEC is a
collective process that leads for short times to a coherent molecular state in
the quantum optical sense. Atoms in a normal Fermi gas, on the other hand, are
converted into molecules independently of each other and result for short times
in a molecular state analogous to that of a classical chaotic light source. The
BCS situation is intermediate between the two and goes from producing an
incoherent to a coherent molecular field with increasing gap parameter.


  A digital computer is generally believed to be an efficient universal
computing device; that is, it is believed able to simulate any physical
computing device with an increase in computation time of at most a polynomial
factor. This may not be true when quantum mechanics is taken into
consideration. This paper considers factoring integers and finding discrete
logarithms, two problems which are generally thought to be hard on a classical
computer and have been used as the basis of several proposed cryptosystems.
Efficient randomized algorithms are given for these two problems on a
hypothetical quantum computer. These algorithms take a number of steps
polynomial in the input size, e.g., the number of digits of the integer to be
factored.


  Although conventional logical systems based on logical calculi have been
successfully used in mathematics and beyond, they have definite limitations
that restrict their application in many cases. For instance, the principal
condition for any logical calculus is its consistency. At the same time,
knowledge about large object domains (in science or in practice) is essentially
inconsistent. Logical prevarieties and varieties were introduced to eliminate
these limitations in a logically correct way. In this paper, the Logic of
Reasonable Inferences is described. This logic has been applied successfully to
model legal reasoning with inconsistent knowledge. It is demonstrated that this
logic is a logical variety and properties of logical varieties related to legal
reasoning are developed.


  This paper considers the problem of implementing a previously proposed direct
coupling quantum observer for a closed linear quantum system. This observer is
shown to be able to estimate some but not all of the plant variables in a time
averaged sense. The paper proposes a possible experimental implementation of
the observer plant system using a non-degenerate parametric amplifier.


  We report mode-locked ~1550 nm output of transform-limited ~180 fs pulses
from a large mode-area (diameter ~ 50 {\mu}m) guided-wave erbium
fluorozirconate glass laser. The passively mode-locked oscillator generates
pulses with 25 nm bandwidth at 156 MHz repetition rate and peak-power of 260 W.
Scalability to higher repetition rate is demonstrated by transform-limited 410
fs pulse output at 1.3 GHz. To understand the origins of the broad spectral
output, the laser cavity is simulated by using a numerical solution to the
Ginzburg-Landau equation. This paper reports the widest bandwidth and shortest
pulses achieved from an ultra-fast laser inscribed waveguide laser.


  Some tasks, such as surface normals or single-view depth estimation, require
per-pixel ground truth that is difficult to obtain on real images but easy to
obtain on synthetic. However, models learned on synthetic images often do not
generalize well to real images due to the domain shift. Our key idea to improve
domain adaptation is to introduce a separate anchor task (such as facial
landmarks) whose annotations can be obtained at no cost or are already
available on both synthetic and real datasets. To further leverage the implicit
relationship between the anchor and main tasks, we apply our \freeze technique
that learns the cross-task guidance on the source domain with the final network
layers, and use it on the target domain. We evaluate our methods on surface
normal estimation on two pairs of datasets (indoor scenes and faces) with two
kinds of anchor tasks (semantic segmentation and facial landmarks). We show
that blindly applying domain adaptation or training the auxiliary task on only
one domain may hurt performance, while using anchor tasks on both domains is
better behaved. Our \freeze technique outperforms competing approaches,
reaching performance in facial images on par with a recently popular surface
normal estimation method using shape from shading domain knowledge.


  The scarcity of labeled data often impedes the application of deep learning
to the segmentation of medical images. Semi-supervised learning seeks to
overcome this limitation by exploiting unlabeled examples in the learning
process. In this paper, we present a novel semi-supervised segmentation method
that leverages mutual information (MI) on categorical distributions to achieve
both global representation invariance and local smoothness. In this method, we
maximize the MI for intermediate feature embeddings that are taken from both
the encoder and decoder of a segmentation network. We first propose a global MI
loss constraining the encoder to learn an image representation that is
invariant to geometric transformations. Instead of resorting to
computationally-expensive techniques for estimating the MI on continuous
feature embeddings, we use projection heads to map them to a discrete cluster
assignment where MI can be computed efficiently. Our method also includes a
local MI loss to promote spatial consistency in the feature maps of the decoder
and provide a smoother segmentation. Since mutual information does not require
a strict ordering of clusters in two different assignments, we incorporate a
final consistency regularization loss on the output which helps align the
cluster labels throughout the network. We evaluate the method on four
challenging publicly-available datasets for medical image segmentation.
Experimental results show our method to outperform recently-proposed approaches
for semi-supervised segmentation and provide an accuracy near to full
supervision while training with very few annotated images.


  We present a unified derivation of the dynamical correlation functions
including density-density, density-current and current-current, of
three-dimensional Weyl/Dirac semimetals by use of the Passarino-Veltman
reduction scheme at zero temperature. The generalized Kramers-Kronig relations
with arbitrary order of subtraction are established to verify these correlation
functions. Our results lead to the exact chiral magnetic conductivity and
directly recover the previous ones in several limits. We also investigate the
magnetic susceptibilities, the orbital magnetization and briefly discuss the
impact of electron interactions on these physical quantities within the random
phase approximation. Our work could provide a starting point for the
investigation of the nonlocal transport and optical properties due to the
higher-order spatial dispersion in three-dimensional Weyl/Dirac semimetals.


  Let $D$ be a Dedekind domain. Roughly speaking, a simultaneous
$\mathfrak{p}$-ordering is a sequence of elements from $D$ which is
equidistributed modulo every power of every prime ideal in $D$ as well as
possible. Bhargava asked which subsets of the Dedekind domains admit
simultaneous $\mathfrak{p}$-orderings. We give an overview on the progress in
this problem. We also explain how it relates to the theory of integer valued
polynomials and list some open problems.


  Although gamma ray showers are muon-poor, they still produce a number of
muons sufficient to make the sources observed by GeV and TeV telescopes
observable also in muons. For sources with hard gamma ray spectra there is a
relative `enhancement' of muons from gamma ray primaries as compared to that
from nucleon primaries. All shower gamma rays above the photoproduction
threshold contribute to the number of muons $N_\mu$, which is thus proportional
to the primary gamma ray energy. With gamma ray energy 50 times higher than the
muon energy and a probability of muon production by the gammas of about 1\%,
muon detectors can match the detection efficiency of a GeV satellite detector
if their effective area is larger by $10^4$. The muons must have enough energy
for sufficiently accurate reconstruction of their direction for doing
astronomy. These conditions are satisfied by relatively shallow neutrino
detectors such as AMANDA and Lake Baikal and by gamma ray detectors like
MILAGRO. TeV muons from gamma ray primaries, on the other hand, are rare
because they are only produced by higher energy gamma rays whose flux is
suppressed by the decreasing flux at the source and by absorption on
interstellar light. We show that there is a window of opportunity for muon
astronomy with the AMANDA, Lake Baikal and MILAGRO detectors.


  The Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP) underpins all metric theories of
gravity. One of its key aspects is the local position invariance (LPI) of
non-gravitational experiments, which is captured by the gravitational
red-shift. The iconic gravitational red-shift experiment places two fermionic
systems, used as clocks, in different gravitational potentials and compares
them using the electromagnetic field. However, the electromagnetic field itself
can be used as a clock, by comparing the phases acquired by two optical pulses
propagating through different gravitational potentials. A fundamental point in
the implementation of a satellite large-distance optical interferometric
experiment is the suppression of the first-order Doppler effect, which
dominates the weak gravitational signal necessary to test the EEP. Here, we
propose a novel scheme to suppress it, by subtracting the phase-shifts measured
in the one-way and in the two-way configuration between a ground station and a
satellite. We present a detailed analysis of this technique within the
post-Newtonian framework and perform some simulations of its performance using
realistic satellite orbits and the state-of-the-art fiber technology at the
telecom wavelength of 1550 nm.


  This paper considers point and interval estimation of the $\ell_q$ loss of an
estimator in high-dimensional linear regression with random design. We
establish the minimax rate for estimating the $\ell_{q}$ loss and the minimax
expected length of confidence intervals for the $\ell_{q}$ loss of rate-optimal
estimators of the regression vector, including commonly used estimators such as
Lasso, scaled Lasso, square-root Lasso and Dantzig Selector. Adaptivity of the
confidence intervals for the $\ell_{q}$ loss is also studied. Both the setting
of known identity design covariance matrix and known noise level and the
setting of unknown design covariance matrix and unknown noise level are
studied. The results reveal interesting and significant differences between
estimating the $\ell_2$ loss and $\ell_q$ loss with $1\le q <2$ as well as
between the two settings.
  New technical tools are developed to establish rate sharp lower bounds for
the minimax estimation error and the expected length of minimax and adaptive
confidence intervals for the $\ell_q$ loss. A significant difference between
loss estimation and the traditional parameter estimation is that for loss
estimation the constraint is on the performance of the estimator of the
regression vector, but the lower bounds are on the difficulty of estimating its
$\ell_q$ loss. The technical tools developed in this paper can also be of
independent interest.


  Stars stripped of their envelopes from interaction with a binary companion
emit a significant fraction of their radiation as ionizing photons. They are
potentially important stellar sources of ionizing radiation, however, they are
still often neglected in spectral synthesis simulations or simulations of
stellar feedback. We modeled the radiative contribution from stripped stars by
using detailed evolutionary and spectral models. We estimated their impact on
the integrated spectra and specifically on the emission rates of HI-, HeI-, and
HeII-ionizing photons from stellar populations.
  We find that stripped stars have the largest impact on the ionizing spectrum
of a population in which star formation halted several Myr ago. In such stellar
populations, stripped stars dominate the emission of ionizing photons,
mimicking a younger stellar population in which massive stars are still
present. Our models also suggest that stripped stars have harder ionizing
spectra than massive stars.
  The additional ionizing radiation affects observable properties that are
related to the ionizing emission from stellar populations. In co-eval stellar
populations, the ionizing radiation from stripped stars increases the
ionization parameter and the production efficiency of HI-ionizing photons. They
also cause high values for these parameters for about ten times longer than
what is predicted for massive stars. The hard ionizing radiation from stripped
stars likely introduces a characteristic ionization structure of the nebula,
which leads to the emission of highly ionized elements such as O$^{2+}$ and
C$^{3+}$. We, therefore, expect that the presence of stripped stars affects the
location in the BPT diagram and the diagnostic ratio of OIII to OII nebular
emission lines. Our models are publicly available through CDS database and on
the Starburst99 website.


  Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous explosions and can be
detectable out to the edge of Universe. It has long been thought they can
extend the Hubble diagram to very high redshifts. Several correlations between
temporal or spectral properties and GRB luminosities have been proposed to make
GRBs cosmological tools. However, those correlations cannot be properly
standardized. In this paper, we select a long GRB sample with X-ray plateau
phases produced by electromagnetic dipole emissions from central new-born
magnetars. A tight correlation is found between the plateau luminosity and the
end time of the plateau in X-ray afterglows out to the redshift $z=5.91$. We
standardize these long GRBs X-ray light curves to a universal behavior by this
correlation for the first time, with a luminosity dispersion of 0.5 dex. The
derived distance-redshift relation of GRBs is in agreement with the standard
$\Lambda$CDM model both at low and high redshifts. The evidence of accelerating
universe from this GRB sample is $3\sigma$, which is the highest statistical
significance from GRBs to date.


  We report observations of Neptune made in H-(1.4-1.8 {\mu}m) and K'-(2.0-2.4
{\mu}m) bands on 14 and 16 July 2009 from the 10-m W.M. Keck II Telescope using
the near-infrared camera NIRC2 coupled to the Adaptive Optics (AO) system. We
track the positions of 54 bright atmospheric features over a few hours to
derive their zonal and latitudinal velocities, and perform radiative transfer
modeling to measure the cloud-top pressures of 50 features seen simultaneously
in both bands.
  We observe one South Polar Feature (SPF) on 14 July and three SPFs on 16 July
at ~65 deg S. The SPFs observed on both nights are different features,
consistent with the high variability of Neptune's storms.
  There is significant dispersion in Neptune's zonal wind velocities about the
smooth Voyager wind profile fit of Sromovsky et al., Icarus 105, 140 (1993),
much greater than the upper limit we expect from vertical wind shear, with the
largest dispersion seen at equatorial and southern mid-latitudes. Comparison of
feature pressures vs. residuals in zonal velocity from the smooth Voyager wind
profile also directly reveals the dominance of mechanisms over vertical wind
shear in causing dispersion in the zonal winds.
  Vertical wind shear is not the primary cause of the difference in dispersion
and deviation in zonal velocities between features tracked in H-band on 14 July
and those tracked in K'-band on 16 July. Dispersion in the zonal velocities of
features tracked over these short time periods is dominated by one or more
mechanisms, other than vertical wind shear, that can cause changes in the
dispersion and deviation in the zonal velocities on timescales of hours to
days.


  The dissolution of a body into quiescent water leads to density
stratifications at the interfaces that drive buoyant flows. Where the
stratification is unstable, the flow destabilizes into convective solute
plumes. By analogy with the Rayleigh-B\'enard instability where concentration
replaces temperature, this phenomenon is known as the solutal Rayleigh-B\'enard
instability. Here we report experiments of the dissolution of inclined
rectangular blocks made of salt, caramel or plaster in aqueous solutions of
various concentrations. The solute flows along the block while forming plumes
before they detach and sink. This flow along the block organizes the emission
of plumes within longitudinal parallel stripes with a well-defined millimeter
scale wavelength. The instability of the flow reflects on the concentration
field in the boundary layer, which engraves longitudinal grooves onto the
block. These grooves interact with the flow and turn into a paving of 3
dimensional cup like patterns that grow in size and propagate upstream. These
bedforms are reminiscent of the scallop bedforms observed on the walls of cave
or icebergs. Whereas the block interface is highly dynamical and evolves
through time, it remains flat on the global scale and recedes at a stationary
rate. We derive scaling laws for the receding velocity and the pattern genesis
at the inclined interface that is based on a concentration boundary layer of
constant thickness, which is controlled by the flow instability, but where the
patterns nor the flow along the block do not play any role. We apply these
results to the formation of sublimation patterns.


  Let (M,g) be a compact n-dimensional Riemannian manifold with boundary. This
article is concerned with the set of scalar-flat metrics on M which are in the
conformal class of g and have the boundary as a constant mean curvature
hypersurface. We construct examples of metrics on the unit ball, in dimensions
n>=25, for which this set is noncompact. These manifolds have umbilic boundary,
but they are not conformally equivalent to the unit ball.


  While mixtures of Gaussian distributions have been studied for more than a
century (Pearson, 1894), the construction of a reference Bayesian analysis of
those models still remains unsolved, with a general prohibition of the usage of
improper priors (Fruwirth-Schnatter, 2006) due to the ill-posed nature of such
statistical objects. This difficulty is usually bypassed by an empirical Bayes
resolution (Richardson and Green, 1997). By creating a new parameterisation
cantered on the mean and possibly the variance of the mixture distribution
itself, we manage to develop here a weakly informative prior for a wide class
of mixtures with an arbitrary number of components. We demonstrate that some
posterior distributions associated with this prior and a minimal sample size
are proper. We provide MCMC implementations that exhibit the expected
exchangeability. We only study here the univariate case, the extension to
multivariate location-scale mixtures being currently under study. An R package
called Ultimixt is associated with this paper.


  The physics that underpins modern technology is based on Einstein's theories
of relativity and quantum mechanics. Most school students complete their
compulsory science education without being taught any of these Einsteinian
concepts. Only those who take a specialised physics course have the opportunity
to learn modern physics. In 2011, the first study of a modern physics teaching
intervention with an Australian upper primary (aged 10{11) class was conducted.
The initial intervention was the first step of the Einstein-First collaboration
towards challenging the current paradigm of Newtonian teaching in schools. It
was found that modern physics concepts could be taught to these students. In
2020, 11 participants of the initial study (out of a total of 26) were
contacted for a follow-up questionnaire and interview to investigate any
long-term impact. The results of the follow-up indicate that the intervention
maintained a positive impression on participants. The models and analogies used
during the six-week intervention were highly memorable. The participants
indicated that they found the intervention to be beneficial to their future
learning. Even close to ten years after the intervention, the participants
remembered several key concepts (such as curved space-time). The long-term
follow-up indicates that Einsteinian physics can be taught at the upper primary
level and be recalled several years later.


  Forty years after the discovery of rotation-powered pulsars, we still do not
understand many aspects of their pulsed emission. In the last few years there
have been some fundamental developments in acceleration and emission models. I
will review both the basic physics of the models as well as the latest
developments in understanding the high-energy emission of rotation-powered
pulsars, with particular emphasis on the polar-cap and slot-gap models. Special
and general relativistic effects play important roles in pulsar emission, from
inertial frame-dragging near the stellar surface to aberration, time-of-flight
and retardation of the magnetic field near the light cylinder. Understanding
how these effects determine what we observe at different wavelengths is
critical to unraveling the emission physics. I will discuss how current and
future X-ray and gamma-ray detectors can test the predictions of these models.


  A recent ATLAS search for diboson resonances and a CMS search for $eejj$
resonances which both show excesses with significance around 3 sigma have
generated interest in $SU(2)_R$ gauge extensions of the Standard Model with a
$W'$ mass around 2 TeV. We investigate the possibility that an $SU(2)_R$ gauge
extension of the MSSM compatible with an explanation of the diboson anomaly
might give rise to a significant enhancement of the Higgs mass above the MSSM
tree level bound $m_{h, \text{tree}} < 90 \; \text{GeV}$ due to non-decoupling
D-terms. This model contains a vector-like charge -1/3 $SU(2)_R$ singlet quark
for each generation which mixes significantly with the $SU(2)_R$ doublet
quarks, affecting the $W_R$ phenomenology. We find that it is possible to
achieve $m_{h, \text{tree}} > 110 \; \text {GeV}$, and this requires that the
$Z'$ mass is close to 3 TeV.


  We extend the entanglement bootstrap approach to (3+1)-dimensions. We study
knotted excitations of (3+1)-dimensional liquid topological orders and exotic
fusion processes of loops. As in previous work in (2+1)-dimensions, we define a
variety of superselection sectors and fusion spaces from two axioms on the
ground state entanglement entropy. In particular, we identify fusion spaces
associated with knots. We generalize the information convex set to a new class
of regions called immersed regions, promoting various theorems to this new
context. Examples from solvable models are provided; for instance, a concrete
calculation of knot multiplicity shows that the knot complement of a trefoil
knot can store quantum information. We define spiral maps that allow us to
understand consistency relations for torus knots as well as spiral fusions of
fluxes.


  In this work, we study the extent to which structural connectomes and
topological derivative measures are unique to individual changes within human
brains. To do so, we classify structural connectome pairs from two large
longitudinal datasets as either belonging to the same individual or not. Our
data is comprised of 227 individuals from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging
Initiative (ADNI) and 226 from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative
(PPMI). We achieve 0.99 area under the ROC curve score for features which
represent either weights or network structure of the connectomes (node degrees,
PageRank and local efficiency). Our approach may be useful for eliminating
noisy features as a preprocessing step in brain aging studies and early
diagnosis classification problems.


  It is shown that the class of algebro-geometrical (finite-gap) solutions of
the Ernst equation constructed several years ago in [D.Korotkin,
Theor.Math.Phys., 77 (1989), p. 1018] contains the solutions recently
constructed by R.Meinel and G.Neugebauer as a subset.


  In this work we revisit the process of constructing wave equations for the
scalar and vector potentials of an electromagnetic field, and show that a wave
equation with an arbitrary velocity (including a velocity higher than the
velocity of light in vacuum) for the scalar potential exists in the framework
of classical electrodynamics. Some consequences of this fact are considered. It
is shown (in the Appendix) at what point this work differs from works concerned
of the problem of the gauge invariance in the classical electrodynamics.


  An observable stochastic background of gravitational waves is generated
whenever primordial black holes are created in the early universe thanks to a
small-scale enhancement of the curvature perturbation. We calculate the
anisotropies and non-Gaussianity of such stochastic gravitational waves
background which receive two contributions, the first at formation time and the
second due to propagation effects. The former contribution can be generated if
the distribution of the curvature perturbation is characterized by a local and
scale-invariant shape of non-Gaussianity. Under such an assumption, we conclude
that a sizeable magnitude of anisotropy and non-Gaussianity in the
gravitational waves would suggest that primordial black holes may not comply
the totality of the dark matter.


  The Nijmegen Unitarized Meson Model and its application to scalar mesons is
briefly revisited. It is shown that all scalar states up to 1.5 GeV can be
described as triplet-P-zero quark+antiquark states coupled to the OZI-allowed
open and closed two-meson channels consisting of pseudoscalar and vector
mesons. Crucial are the manifestation of a resonance-doubling phenomenon,
typical for strong S-wave decay, and the employment of truly flavor-symmetric
coupling constants. Also S-wave meson-meson scattering is thus reasonably well
described, without any parameter fit.


  The alignment of the products of very high energy interactions seen in
mountain altitude experiments is one of the most puzzling phenomena in cosmic
ray physics for quite a long time. The observations of the Pamir and Chacaltaya
emulsion chamber groups and by the Tien-Shan extensive air shower experiment,
together with a very clear event seen in the Concorde French-Japanese
experiment in the stratosphere, makes the experimental basis very substantial.
In the present paper a novel possible explanation is put forward.


  The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in
contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on
the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The
colloidal rods are modelled as hard cylinders of the same diameter and
different lengths, in the approximation of perfect alignment. A
fundamental--measure density functional is used to obtain equilibrium density
profiles and thermodynamic properties such as surface tensions and adsorption
coefficients. The bulk phase diagram exhibits nematic-smectic and
smectic-smectic demixing, with smectic phases having different compositions; in
some cases they are microfractionated. The calculated surface phase diagram of
the wall-nematic interface shows a very rich phase behavior, including layering
transitions and complete wetting at high pressures, whereby an infinitely thick
smectic film grows at the wall via an infinite sequence of stepwise
first--order layering transitions. For lower pressures complete wetting also
obtains, but here the smectic film grows in a continuous fashion. Finally, at
very low pressures, the wall-nematic interface exhibits critical adsorption by
the smectic phase, due to the second-order character of the bulk
nematic-smectic transition.


  Given two combinatorial notions $\mathsf{P}_0$ and $\mathsf{P}_1$, can we
encode $\mathsf{P}_0$ via $\mathsf{P}_1$. In this talk we address the question
where $\mathsf{P}_0$ is 3-coloring of integers and $\mathsf{P}_1$ is product of
finitely many 2-colorings of integers. We firstly reduce the question to a
lemma which asserts that certain $\Pi^0_1$ class of colorings admit two members
violating a particular combinatorial constraint. Then we took a digression to
see how complex does the class has to be so as to maintain the cross
constraint. We weaken the two members in the lemma in certain way to address an
open question of Cholak, Dzhafarov, Hirschfeldt and Patey, concerning a sort of
Weihrauch degree of stable Ramsey's theorem for pairs. It turns out the
resulted strengthen of the lemma is a basis theorem for $\Pi^0_1$ class with
additional constraint. We look at several such variants of basis theorem, among
them some are unknown. We end up by introducing some results and questions
concerning product of infinitely many colorings.


  We report here the magnetic properties of electron-doped Sm1-xCaxMnO3
manganites with the doping level of x=0.91. Exchange bias effect has been
observed in Sm0.09Ca0.91MnO3 nanomanagnites system and can be tuned by the
strength of cooling magnetic field (Hcool). The values of exchange bias
parameter i.e. exchange bias fields (HE), coercivity (HC), remanence asymmetry
(ME) and magnetic coercivity (MC) are found to strongly depend on Hcool. The
larger effective magnetic moments and deviation of inverse susceptibility
(\c{hi}-1) from Curie-Weiss law indicate the possible existence of Griffiths
phase (GP). A rigorous measurement of linear and nonlinear ac and dc magnetic
susceptibility in nanomanganites proves the existence of Griffiths phase (GP)
in the temperature range TC<T<TG (Griffiths temperature). The effect of size
reduction on exchange bias effect and GP is addressed here. The enhancement of
exchange bias effect and GP has been argued to be due to the modification of
the phase separated state on size reduction.


  Classification of cancer cellularity within tissue samples is currently a
manual process performed by pathologists. This process of correctly determining
cancer cellularity can be time intensive. Deep Learning (DL) techniques in
particular have become increasingly more popular for this purpose, due to the
accuracy and performance they exhibit, which can be comparable to the
pathologists. This work investigates the capabilities of two DL approaches to
assess cancer cellularity in whole slide images (WSI) in the SPIE-AAPM-NCI
BreastPathQ challenge dataset. The effects of training on augmented data via
rotations, and combinations of multiple architectures into a single network
were analyzed using a modified Kendall Tau-b prediction probability metric
known as the average prediction probability PK. A deep, transfer learned,
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) InceptionV3 was used as a baseline,
achieving an average PK value of 0.884, showing improvement from the average PK
value of 0.83 achieved by pathologists. The network was then trained on
additional training datasets which were rotated between 1 and 360 degrees,
which saw a peak increase of PK up to 4.2%. An additional architecture
consisting of the InceptionV3 network and VGG16, a shallow, transfer learned
CNN, was combined in a parallel architecture. This parallel architecture
achieved a baseline average PK value of 0.907, a statistically significantly
improvement over either of the architectures' performances separately (p<0.0001
by unpaired t-test).


  In this paper, we use elementary method to give a classification of the
multiplicative maps on matrix algebra $M_{n}(\mF)$ over a field $\mF$ of
characteristic $0$. All the multiplicative maps are classified into three
classes: the trivial ones, the degenerate ones and the non-degenerate ones.


  Sounds originate from object motions and vibrations of surrounding air.
Inspired by the fact that humans is capable of interpreting sound sources from
how objects move visually, we propose a novel system that explicitly captures
such motion cues for the task of sound localization and separation. Our system
is composed of an end-to-end learnable model called Deep Dense Trajectory
(DDT), and a curriculum learning scheme. It exploits the inherent coherence of
audio-visual signals from a large quantities of unlabeled videos. Quantitative
and qualitative evaluations show that comparing to previous models that rely on
visual appearance cues, our motion based system improves performance in
separating musical instrument sounds. Furthermore, it separates sound
components from duets of the same category of instruments, a challenging
problem that has not been addressed before.


  In this article, the authors introduce a class of mixed-norm Herz spaces,
$\dot{E}^{\vec{\alpha},\vec{p}}_{\vec{q}}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$, which is a natural
generalization of mixed Lebesgue spaces and some special cases of which
naturally appear in the study of the summability of Fourier transforms on
mixed-norm Lebesgue spaces. The authors also give their dual spaces and obtain
the Riesz-Thorin interpolation theorem on
$\dot{E}^{\vec{\alpha},\vec{p}}_{\vec{q}}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$. Applying these
Riesz-Thorin interpolation theorem and using some ideas from the extrapolation
theorem, the authors establish both the boundedness of the Hardy-Littlewood
maximal operator and the Fefferman-Stein vector-valued maximal inequality on
$\dot{E}^{\vec{\alpha},\vec{p}}_{\vec{q}}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$. As applications,
the authors develop various real-variable theory of Hardy spaces associated
with $\dot{E}^{\vec{\alpha},\vec{p}}_{\vec{q}}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$ by using the
existing results of Hardy spaces associated with ball quasi-Banach function
spaces. These results strongly depend on the duality of
$\dot{E}^{\vec{\alpha},\vec{p}}_{\vec{q}}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$ and the non-trivial
constructions of auxiliary functions in the Riesz-Thorin interpolation theorem.


  We present simple coding strategies, which are variants of the
Schalkwijk-Kailath scheme, for communicating reliably over additive white noise
channels in the presence of corrupted feedback. More specifically, we consider
a framework comprising an additive white forward channel and a backward link
which is used for feedback. We consider two types of corruption mechanisms in
the backward link. The first is quantization noise, i.e., the encoder receives
the quantized values of the past outputs of the forward channel. The
quantization is uniform, memoryless and time invariant (that is,
symbol-by-symbol scalar quantization), with bounded quantization error. The
second corruption mechanism is an arbitrarily distributed additive bounded
noise in the backward link. Here we allow symbol-by-symbol encoding at the
input to the backward channel. We propose simple explicit schemes that
guarantee positive information rate, in bits per channel use, with positive
error exponent. If the forward channel is additive white Gaussian then our
schemes achieve capacity, in the limit of diminishing amplitude of the noise
components at the backward link, while guaranteeing that the probability of
error converges to zero as a doubly exponential function of the block length.
Furthermore, if the forward channel is additive white Gaussian and the backward
link consists of an additive bounded noise channel, with signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) constrained symbol-by-symbol encoding, then our schemes are also
capacity-achieving in the limit of high SNR.


  We investigated various methods of parallelization of the
Frish-Hasslacher-Pomeau (FHP) cellular automata algorithm for modeling fluid
flow. These methods include SSE, AVX, and POSIX Threads for central processing
units (CPUs) and CUDA for graphics processing units (GPUs). We present
implementation details of the FHP algorithm based on AVX/SSE and CUDA
technologies. We found that (a) using AVX or SSE is necessary to fully utilize
the potential of modern CPUs; (b) CPUs and GPUs are comparable in terms of
computational and economic efficiency only if the CPU code uses AVX or SSE
instructions; (c) AVX does not offer any substantial improvement relative to
SSE.


  We propose a Las Vegas transformation of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
estimators of Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs). We denote our approach
Markov Chain Las Vegas (MCLV). MCLV gives statistical guarantees in exchange
for random running times. MCLV uses a stopping set built from the training data
and has maximum number of Markov chain steps K (referred as MCLV-K). We present
a MCLV-K gradient estimator (LVS-K) for RBMs and explore the correspondence and
differences between LVS-K and Contrastive Divergence (CD-K), with LVS-K
significantly outperforming CD-K training RBMs over the MNIST dataset,
indicating MCLV to be a promising direction in learning generative models.


  High resolution SQUID magnetization measurements in lead nanoparticles are
used to study the fluctuating diamagnetism in zero-dimensional condition,
namely for particle size d lesser than the coherence length. The diamagnetic
magnetization Mdia (H, T= const) as a function of the field H at constant
temperature is reported in the critical region and compared with the behaviour
in the temperature range where the first-order fluctuation correction is
expected to hold. The magnetization curves are analysed in the framework of
exact fluctuation theories based on the Ginzburg-Landau functional for the
coherence length much greater than d. The role of the upturn field Hup where
Mdia reverses the field dependence is discussed and its relevance for the study
of the fluctuating diamagnetism, particularly in the critical region where the
first-order fluctuation correction breaks down, is pointed out. The size and
temperature dependence of Hup is theoretically derived and compared to the
experimental data. The relevance and the magnetization curves for
non-evanescent field and of the upturn field for the study of the fluctuating
diamagnetism above the superconducting transition temperature is emphasized.


  In Europe, Germany is taking the lead in the switch from the conventional to
renewable energy. This poses new challenges as wind and solar energy are
fundamentally intermittent, weather-dependent and less predictable. It is
therefore of considerable interest to investigate the evolution of price
volatility in this post-transition era. There are a number of reasons, however,
that makes the practical studies difficult. For instance, EPEX prices can be
zero or negative. Consequently, the standard approach in financial time series
analysis to switch to logarithmic measures is inapplicable. Furthermore, in
contrast to the stock market prices which are only available for trading days,
EPEX prices cover the whole year, including weekends and holidays. Accordingly,
there is a lot of underlying variability in the data which has nothing to do
with volatility, but simply reflects diurnal activity patterns. An important
distinction of the present work is the application of matrix decomposition
techniques, namely the singular value decomposition (SVD), for defining an
alternative notion of volatility. This approach is systematically more robust
toward outliers and also the diurnal patterns. Our observations show that the
day-ahead market is becoming less volatile in recent years.


  A recently proposed scheme for the analytical treatment of the dynamics of
two-dimensional hybrid Josephson junction arrays is extended to a class of
generalized hybrid arrays with ''horizontal'' shunts involving a capacitive as
well as an inductive component. This class of arrays is of special interest,
because the internal cell coupling has been shown numerically to favor in-phase
synchronization for certain parameter values. As a result, we derive limits on
the circuit design parameters for realizing this state. In addition, we obtain
formulas for the flux-dependent frequency including flux-induced switching
processes between the in-phase and anti-phase oscillation regime. The treatment
covers unloaded arrays as well as arrays shunted via an external load.


  In this article, we propose a novel method for sampling potential functions
based on noisy observation data of a finite number of observables in quantum
canonical ensembles, which leads to the accurate sampling of a wide class of
test observables. The method is based on the Bayesian inversion framework,
which provides a platform for analyzing the posterior distribution and
naturally leads to an efficient numerical sampling algorithm. We highlight
that, the stability estimate is obtained by treating the potential functions as
intermediate variables in the following way: the discrepancy between two sets
of observation data of training observables can bound the distance between
corresponding posterior distributions of potential functions, while the latter
naturally leads to a bound of the discrepancies between corresponding thermal
averages of test observables. Besides, the training observables can be more
flexible than finite samples of the local density function, which are mostly
used in previous researches. The method also applies to the multi-level quantum
systems in the non-adiabatic regime. In addition, we provide extensive
numerical tests to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed
algorithm.


  In this paper, the capacity of wireless channels is characterized based on
electromagnetic and antenna theories with only minimal assumptions. We assume
the transmitter can generate an arbitrary current distribution inside a
spherical region and the receive antennas are uniformly distributed on a bigger
sphere surrounding the transmitter. The capacity is shown to be $(\alpha P/N_0)
\log e$ [bits/sec] in the limit of large number of receive antennas, where $P$
is the transmit power constraint, $\alpha$ is the normalized density of the
receive antennas and $N_0$ is the noise power spectral density. Although this
result may look trivial, it is surprising in two ways. First, this result holds
regardless of the bandwidth (bandwidth can even be negligibly small). Second,
this result shows that the capacity is irrespective of the size of the region
containing the transmitter. This is against some previous results that claimed
the maximum degrees of freedom is proportional to the surface area containing
the transmitter normalized by the square of the wavelength. Our result has
important practical implications since it shows that even a compact antenna
array with negligible bandwidth and antenna spacing well below the wavelength
can provide a huge throughput as if the array was big enough so that the
antenna spacing is on the order of the wavelength.


  We investigate the steering dissipative dynamics of a two-level system
(qubit) by means of the modulation of an assisted tunneling degree of freedom
which is described by a quantum-oscillator spin-boson model. Our results reveal
that the decoherence rate of the qubit can be significantly suppressed and
simultaneously its quality factor is enhanced. Moreover, the modulated
dynamical susceptibility exhibits a multi-peak feature which is indicative of
the underlying structure and measurable in experiment. Our findings demonstrate
that the interplay between the combined degrees of freedom and the qubit is
crucial for reducing the dissipation of qubit and expanding the coherent regime
of quantum operation much large. The strategy might be used to fight against
deterioration of quantum coherence in quantum information processing.


  It is well established that neural networks with deep architectures perform
better than shallow networks for many tasks in machine learning. In statistical
physics, while there has been recent interest in representing physical data
with generative modelling, the focus has been on shallow neural networks. A
natural question to ask is whether deep neural networks hold any advantage over
shallow networks in representing such data. We investigate this question by
using unsupervised, generative graphical models to learn the probability
distribution of a two-dimensional Ising system. Deep Boltzmann machines, deep
belief networks, and deep restricted Boltzmann networks are trained on thermal
spin configurations from this system, and compared to the shallow architecture
of the restricted Boltzmann machine. We benchmark the models, focussing on the
accuracy of generating energetic observables near the phase transition, where
these quantities are most difficult to approximate. Interestingly, after
training the generative networks, we observe that the accuracy essentially
depends only on the number of neurons in the first hidden layer of the network,
and not on other model details such as network depth or model type. This is
evidence that shallow networks are more efficient than deep networks at
representing physical probability distributions associated with Ising systems
near criticality.


  We study the problem of detecting the correlation between two Gaussian
databases $\mathsf{X}\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times d}$ and $\mathsf{Y}^{n\times d}$,
each composed of $n$ users with $d$ features. This problem is relevant in the
analysis of social media, computational biology, etc. We formulate this as a
hypothesis testing problem: under the null hypothesis, these two databases are
statistically independent. Under the alternative, however, there exists an
unknown permutation $\sigma$ over the set of $n$ users (or, row permutation),
such that $\mathsf{X}$ is $\rho$-correlated with $\mathsf{Y}^\sigma$, a
permuted version of $\mathsf{Y}$. We determine sharp thresholds at which
optimal testing exhibits a phase transition, depending on the asymptotic regime
of $n$ and $d$. Specifically, we prove that if $\rho^2d\to0$, as $d\to\infty$,
then weak detection (performing slightly better than random guessing) is
statistically impossible, irrespectively of the value of $n$. This compliments
the performance of a simple test that thresholds the sum all entries of
$\mathsf{X}^T\mathsf{Y}$. Furthermore, when $d$ is fixed, we prove that strong
detection (vanishing error probability) is impossible for any
$\rho<\rho^\star$, where $\rho^\star$ is an explicit function of $d$, while
weak detection is again impossible as long as $\rho^2d\to0$. These results
close significant gaps in current recent related studies.


  We investigate the effects of accretion of phantom energy onto primordial
black holes. Since Hawking radiation and phantom energy accretion contribute to
a {\it decrease} of the mass of the black hole, the primordial black hole that
would be expected to decay now due to the Hawking process would decay {\it
earlier} due to the inclusion of the phantom energy. Equivalently, to have the
primordial black hole decay now it would have to be more massive initially. We
find that the effect of the phantom energy is substantial and the black holes
decaying now would be {\it much} more massive -- over 10 orders of magnitude!
This effect will be relevant for determining the time of production and hence
the number of evaporating black holes expected in a universe accelerating due
to phantom energy.


  In a normal-metal/insulator/superconductor (NIS) tunnel junction
refrigerator, the normal-metal electrons are cooled and the dissipated power
heats the superconducting electrode. This paper presents a review of the
mechanisms by which heat leaves the superconductor and introduces overlayer
quasiparticle traps for more effective heatsinking. A comprehensive thermal
model is presented that accounts for the described physics, including the
behavior of athermal phonons generated by both quasiparticle recombination and
trapped quasiparticles. We compare the model to measurements of a large area
(>400 um^2) NIS refrigerator with overlayer quasiparticle traps, and
demonstrate that the model is in good agreement experiment. The refrigerator IV
curve at a bath temperature of 300 mK is consistent with an electron
temperature of 82 mK. However, evidence from independent thermometer junctions
suggests that the refrigerator junction is creating an athermal electron
distribution whose total excitation energy corresponds to a higher temperature
than is indicated by the refrigerator IV curve.


  The interplay between magnetic field and microwave applied in a
single-electron transistor(SET) has a profound influence on the Kondo effect,
as shown in a recent experiment[B. Hemingway, S. Herbert, M. Melloch and A.
Kogan, arXiv:1304.0037(2013)]. For a given microwave frequency, the Kondo
differential conductance shows a non-monotonic magnetic field dependence, and a
very sharp peak is observed for certain field applied. Additionally, the
microwave frequency is found to be larger of about one order than the
corresponding Zeeman energy. These two features are not understood in the
current theory. Here we propose a phenomenological mechanism to explain these
observations. When both magnetic field and microwave are applied in the SET, if
the frequency matches the (renormalized) Zeeman energy, it is assumed that the
microwave is able to induce spin-flip in the SET, which leads to two
consequences. One is the dot level shifts down and the other is the
renormalization of the Zeeman energy. This picture can not only explain
qualitatively the main findings in the experiment but also further stimulate
the related experimental study of the dynamic response of the Kondo effect in
out-of-equilibrium devices.


  We consider distributed optimization on undirected connected graphs. We
propose a novel distributed conditional gradient method with (O(1/\sqrt{k}))
convergence. Compared with existing methods, each iteration of our method uses
both communication and linear minimization step only once rather than multiple
times. We further extend our results to cases with composite local constraints.
We demonstrate our results via examples on distributed matrix completion
problem.


  A key challenge with controlling complex dynamical systems is to accurately
model them. However, this requirement is very hard to satisfy in practice.
Data-driven approaches such as Gaussian processes (GPs) have proved quite
effective by employing regression based methods to capture the unmodeled
dynamical effects. However, GPs scale cubically with data, and is often a
challenge to perform real-time regression. In this paper, we propose a
semi-parametric framework exploiting sparsity for learning-based control. We
combine the parametric model of the system with multiple sparse GP models to
capture any unmodeled dynamics. Multi-Sparse Gaussian Process (MSGP) divides
the original dataset into multiple sparse models with unique hyperparameters
for each model. Thereby, preserving the richness and uniqueness of each sparse
model. For a query point, a weighted sparse posterior prediction is performed
based on $N$ neighboring sparse models. Hence, the prediction complexity is
significantly reduced from $\mathcal{O}(n^3)$ to $\mathcal{O}(Npu^2)$, where
$p$ and $u$ are data points and pseudo-inputs respectively for each sparse
model. We validate MSGP's learning performance for a quadrotor using a
geometric controller in simulation. Comparison with GP, sparse GP, and local GP
shows that MSGP has higher prediction accuracy than sparse and local GP, while
significantly lower time complexity than all three. We also validate MSGP on a
hardware quadrotor for unmodeled mass, inertia, and disturbances. The
experiment video can be seen at: https://youtu.be/zUk1ISux6ao


  Human intention prediction is a growing area of research where an activity in
a video has to be anticipated by a vision-based system. To this end, the model
creates a representation of the past, and subsequently, it produces future
hypotheses about upcoming scenarios. In this work, we focus on pedestrians'
early intention prediction in which, from a current observation of an urban
scene, the model predicts the future activity of pedestrians that approach the
street. Our method is based on a multi-modal transformer that encodes past
observations and produces multiple predictions at different anticipation times.
Moreover, we propose to learn the attention masks of our transformer-based
model (Temporal Adaptive Mask Transformer) in order to weigh differently
present and past temporal dependencies. We investigate our method on several
public benchmarks for early intention prediction, improving the prediction
performances at different anticipation times compared to the previous works.


  This article describes the crystal selection and quality control utilized to
develop and calibrate a high resolution array of CsI(TI) scintillator crystals
for the detection of energetic charged particles. Alpha sources are used to
test the light output variation due to thallium doping gradients. Selection of
crystals with better than 1% non-uniformity in light output is accomplished
using this method. Tests with 240 MeV alpha beam reveal that local light output
variations within each of the tested CsI(TI) crystals limit the resolution to
about 0.5%. Charge and mass dependences in the energy - light output
relationship are determined by calibrating with energetic projectile
fragmentation beams.


  We analyze oscillations of intermediate neutrinos in terms of the scattering
of particles described by Gaussian wave packets. We study a scalar model as in
a previous paper (I) but in realistic situations, where the two particles of
the initial state and final state are wave packets and neutrinos are in the
intermediate state. The oscillation of the intermediate neutrino is found from
the time evolution of the total transition probability between the initial
state and final state. The effect of a finite lifetime and a finite relaxation
time are also studied. We find that the oscillation pattern depends on the
magnitude of wave packet sizes of particles in the initial state and final
state and the lifetime of the initial particle. For $\Delta m^2_{21}=3\times
10^{-2}$ eV$^2$, the oscillation probability deviates from that of the standard
formula if the wave packet sizes are around $10^{-13}$ m for 0.4 MeV neutrino.


  Two fibre integral field units (IFU) are being built in the SAAO fibre-lab
for the Robert Stobie Spectrograph's visible arm and the future red arm. Each
IFU sits in its own slit-mask cassette and is referred to as a slit-mask IFU
(SMI). They will be available some time in 2022. The smaller, 200 micron fibre
IFU has 309 X 0.9 arcsec diameter spatial elements covering an elongated
hexagonal footprint of 18 X 23 arcsec. The larger, 400 micron fibre IFU has 178
X 1.8 arcsec diameter spatial elements covering an on-sky area of 21 X 44
arcsec. In both cases there are two groups of 13 fibres offset by roughly 50
arcsec on either side of the primary array to sample sky. The 1.8 and 0.9
arcsec spatial resolution SMIs provide median spectral resolution of 1200 and
2400 respectively at H alpha wavelengths in the low resolution mode covering
320 to 740 nm bandpass. At a higher grating angle the SMI will deliver spectral
resolution up to 5000 and 10000 with 400 and 200 micron core fibre
respectively. A future red-arm will extend the simultaneous wavelength coverage
up to 900 nm at a median resolution of 3000/6000 for the same flavors of IFUs.
SMIs are inserted in the same fashion as the existing longslit cassettes at the
SALT focal plane. Prismatic fold mirrors direct the focal plane into the fibre
IFU and then back into the RSS collimator after the fibres are routed 180 deg
within the cassette and formatted into a pseudo-slit. Fold prisms ensure that
the spectrograph collimator continues to see the same focal plane. In this
paper we describe the design, fabrication, assembly and characterization of
Slit Mask IFUs.


  A novel, non-power, expansion of QCD quantities replacing the standard
perturbative expansion in powers of the renormalized couplant a has recently
been introduced and examined by two of us. Being obtained by analytic
continuation in the Borel plane, the new expansion functions W_n(a) share the
basic analyticity properties with the expanded quantity. In this note we
investigate the renormalization scale dependence of finite order sums of this
new expansion for the phenomenologically interesting case of the tau-lepton
decay rate.


  High-critical-temperature (Tc) superconductivity at 48 K is reported for
hydrogen-doped SmFeAsO epitaxial films on MgO single-crystal substrates. The
key processes are pulsed laser deposition to grow undoped SmFeAsO epitaxial
films and subsequent topotactic chemical reaction using CaH2 powders under
evacuated silica-glass ampule atmosphere. Based on this post-deposition thermal
annealing treatment that we have developed, a maximum hydrogen concentration x
= ~0.35 was realized in SmFeAs(O1-xHx). Disordered hydrogen-substitution at O
sites is experimentally confirmed directly by atomic-scale microstructural
observations. Magnetization measurement validates the bulk nature of the
high-Tc superconductivity in the films. This method will become an effective
and general method to fabricate various high-quality oxyhydride epitaxial
films.


  For quantum fields on a curved spacetime with an Euclidean section, we derive
a general expression for the stress energy tensor two-point function in terms
of the effective action. The renormalized two-point function is given in terms
of the second variation of the Mellin transform of the trace of the heat kernel
for the quantum fields. For systems for which a spectral decomposition of the
wave opearator is possible, we give an exact expression for this two-point
function. Explicit examples of the variance to the mean ratio $\Delta' =
(<\rho^2>-<\rho>^2)/(<\rho>^2)$ of the vacuum energy density $\rho$ of a
massless scalar field are computed for the spatial topologies of $R^d\times
S^1$ and $S^3$, with results of $\Delta'(R^d\times S^1) =(d+1)(d+2)/2$, and
$\Delta'(S^3) = 111$ respectively. The large variance signifies the importance
of quantum fluctuations and has important implications for the validity of
semiclassical gravity theories at sub-Planckian scales. The method presented
here can facilitate the calculation of stress-energy fluctuations for quantum
fields useful for the analysis of fluctuation effects and critical phenomena in
problems ranging from atom optics and mesoscopic physics to early universe and
black hole physics.


  We introduce and study skew product Smale endomorphisms over finitely
irreducible topological Markov shifts with countable alphabets. We prove that
almost all conditional measures of equilibrium states of summable and locally
Holder continuous potentials are dimensionally exact, and that their dimension
is equal to the ratio of the (global) entropy and the Lyapunov exponent. We
also prove for them a formula of Bowen type for the Hausdorff dimension of all
fibers. We develop a version of thermodynamic formalism for finitely
irreducible two-sided topological Markov shifts with countable alphabets. We
describe then the thermodynamic formalism for Smale skew products over
countable-to-1 endomorphisms, and give several applications to measures on
natural extensions of endomorphisms. We show that the exact dimensionality of
conditional measures on fibers, implies the global exact dimensionality of the
measure, in certain cases. We then study equilibrium states for skew products
over endomorphisms generated by graph directed Markov systems, in particular
for skew products over expanding Markov-Renyi(EMR) maps, and we settle the
question of the exact dimensionality of such measures. In particular, this
applies to skew products over the continued fractions transformation, and over
parabolic maps. We prove next two results related to Diophantine approximation,
which make the renowned Doeblin-Lenstra Conjecture more general and more
precise, for a different class of measures than in the classical case. In the
end, we prove exact dimensionality and find a computable formula for the
dimension of equilibrium measures, for induced maps of natural extensions
$\mathcal T_\beta$ of beta-maps, for arbitrary \beta > 1.


  For a smooth affine group scheme $G$ over the ring of $p$-adic integers
$\mathbb{Z}_p$ and a cocharacter $\mu$ of $G$, we study $G$-$\mu$-displays over
the prismatic site of Bhatt-Scholze. In particular, we obtain several descent
results for them. If $G=\mathrm{GL}_n$, then our $G$-$\mu$-displays can be
thought of as Breuil-Kisin modules with some additional conditions. The
relation between our $G$-$\mu$-displays and prismatic $F$-gauges introduced by
Drinfeld and Bhatt-Lurie is also discussed. In fact, our results are formulated
and proved for smooth affine group schemes over the ring of integers
$\mathcal{O}_E$ of any finite extension $E$ of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ by using
$\mathcal{O}_E$-prisms, which are $\mathcal{O}_E$-analogues of prisms.


  The understanding of the universe is confused by the unknown nature of about
95% of its matter, required to confine the motions of space objects in cosmic
structures. The idea of this paper is that the self-similar transformations of
one postulated basic matter create the fundamental dynamic fractal elements of
the universe. The elements are described with equation of unifying interaction
drawn into their fundamental framework. The equation transforms into the
inverse square laws, the principle of uncertainty, Maxwell equations of
electromagnetic field and into MOND like expression after modification of its
parameters at the scales where these laws and principle are found to hold. The
introduced equation is also confirmed with calculations based on the orbital
data for bodies that move around the nucleus of the Milky Way Galaxy, the
centers of the Earth and the Sun and orbit the huge 87 Sylvia asteroid. The
puzzling constant sunward force that acts on the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft,
the flat rotational curves of stars far from the galactic nuclei, the nature of
dark matter and the enigmatic cosmic repulsion are explained in terms of
contracting and expanding 3D-spirally-faster-inward-oscillating vortexes of
basic matter, called dynamic fractals. The latter create new fundamental
framework, which allows qualitative and quantitative modeling by fitting of the
parameters of the equation of unifying interaction to experimental data. The
calculations based on the proposed dynamic fractal framework are in agreement
with the considered orbital data. Many testable predictions are made and
natural hazard precursors are suggested.


  A number of phenomenologically relevant processes at hadron colliders, such
as Higgs and Z boson production in association with b quarks, can be
conveniently described as scattering of heavy quarks in the initial state. We
present a detailed analysis of this class of processes, identifying the form of
the leading initial-state collinear logarithms that allow the relation of
calculations performed in different flavour schemes in a simple and reliable
way. This procedure makes it possible to assess the size of the logarithmically
enhanced terms and the effects of their resummation via heavy-quark parton
distribution functions. As an application, we compare the production of
(SM-like and heavy) scalar and vector bosons in association with b quarks at
the LHC in the four- and five-flavour schemes as well as the production of a
heavy Z' in association with top quarks at a future 100 TeV hadron collider in
the five- and six-flavour schemes. We find that, in agreement with a previous
analysis of single heavy-quark initiated processes, the size of the
initial-state logarithms is mitigated by a kinematical suppression. The most
important effects of the resummation are a shift of the central predictions
typically of about 20% at a justified value of the scale of each considered
process and a significant reduction of scale variation uncertainties.


  Solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics systems will form scalable nodes
of future quantum networks, allowing the storage, processing and retrieval of
quantum bits, where a real-time control of the radiative interaction in the
cavity is required to achieve high efficiency. We demonstrate here the dynamic
molding of the vacuum field in a coupled-cavity system to achieve the ultrafast
nonlocal modulation of spontaneous emission of quantum dots in photonic crystal
cavities, on a timescale of ~200 ps, much faster than their natural radiative
lifetimes. This opens the way to the ultrafast control of semiconductor-based
cavity quantum electrodynamics systems for application in quantum interfaces
and to a new class of ultrafast lasers based on nano-photonic cavities.


  We have developed a parallel algorithm for radial basis function (RBF)
interpolation that exhibits O(N) complexity,requires O(N) storage, and scales
excellently up to a thousand processes. The algorithm uses a GMRES iterative
solver with a restricted additive Schwarz method (RASM) as a preconditioner and
a fast matrix-vector algorithm. Previous fast RBF methods, --,achieving at most
O(NlogN) complexity,--, were developed using multiquadric and polyharmonic
basis functions. In contrast, the present method uses Gaussians with a small
variance (a common choice in particle methods for fluid simulation, our main
target application). The fast decay of the Gaussian basis function allows rapid
convergence of the iterative solver even when the subdomains in the RASM are
very small. The present method was implemented in parallel using the PETSc
library (developer version). Numerical experiments demonstrate its capability
in problems of RBF interpolation with more than 50 million data points, timing
at 106 seconds (19 iterations for an error tolerance of 10^-15 on 1024
processors of a Blue Gene/L (700 MHz PowerPC processors). The parallel code is
freely available in the open-source model.


  We propose two easy-to-study observables in the quantum Ising chain with open
boundary conditions. They measure the length at which boundaries affect the
longitudinal or transverse magnetization. We show that their finite-size
scaling behaviour encodes the position of the quantum critical point and the
universal scaling exponent $\nu$. The applicability of proposed observables in
small systems is also discussed. We expect that our results will be useful in
quantum simulation of spin systems.


  Most ectotherms show an inverse relationship between developmental
temperature and body size, a phenomenon known as the temperature size rule
(TSR). Several competing hypotheses have been proposed to explain its
occurrence. According to one set of views, the TSR results from inevitable
biophysical effects of temperature on the rates of growth and differentiation,
whereas other views suggest the TSR is an adaptation that can be achieved by a
diversity of mechanisms in different taxa. Our data reveal that the fruit fly,
Drosophila melanogaster, obeys the TSR using a novel mechanism: reduction of
critical size at higher temperatures. In holometabolous insects, attainment of
critical size initiates the hormonal cascade that terminates growth, and hence,
Drosophila larvae appear to instigate the signal to stop growth at a smaller
size at higher temperatures. This is in contrast to findings from another
holometabolous insect, Manduca sexta, in which the TSR results from the effect
of temperature on the rate and duration of growth. This contrast suggests that
there is no single mechanism that accounts for the TSR. Instead, the TSR
appears to be an adaptation that is achieved at a proximate level through
different mechanisms in different taxa.


  We propose a valid and consistent test for the hypothesis that two latent
distance random graphs on the same vertex set have the same generating latent
positions, up to some unidentifiable similarity transformations. Our test
statistic is based on first estimating the edge probabilities matrices by
truncating the singular value decompositions of the averaged adjacency matrices
in each population and then computing a Spearman rank correlation coefficient
between these estimates. Experimental results on simulated data indicate that
the test procedure has power even when there is only one sample from each
population, provided that the number of vertices is not too small. Application
on a dataset of neural connectome graphs showed that we can distinguish between
scans from different age groups while application on a dataset of epileptogenic
recordings showed that we can discriminate between seizure and non-seizure
events.


  Let $K$ be any field with $\textup{char}K\neq 2,3$. We classify all cubic
homogeneous polynomial maps $H$ over $K$ with $\textup{rk} JH\leq 2$. In
particular, we show that, for such an $H$, if $F=x+H$ is a Keller map then $F$
is invertible, and furthermore $F$ is tame if the dimension $n\neq 4$.


  Azimuthal angle correlations of the jets in Hjj events at the LHC provide a
probe of the CP nature of Higgs couplings to gauge bosons. In weak boson fusion
the HWW and HZZ couplings are tested. Gluon fusion processes probe the tensor
structure of the effective Hgg vertex and thus the CP nature of the dominant
quark couplings.


  Thousands of exoplanets have been found with many widely different from the
ones in our own system. Despite the success, systems with planets in wide
orbits analogous to those of Jupiter and Saturn, in the critical first several
hundred million years of evolution, are virtually unexplored. Where are the
low-mass planets that are hidden from our exoplanet detection techniques? Is
our Solar System's planetary architecture unique? High-fidelity debris disk
images offer an effective method to answer these questions. We can use them to
study the formation and evolution of low-mass planets from youth to the age of
the Solar System, providing snapshots of the complex processes and valuable
insights into the formation and migration history of giant planets at wide
orbits. This white paper focuses on resolving debris structures in thermal
emission that is applicable to a large unbiased sample. We summarize the
properties of the known debris disks and assess the feasibility of resolving
them within our current and future infrared and millimeter facilities by
adopting uniform criteria. JWST and the 9-m Origins Space Telescope are the
most promising missions in the coming decades to resolve almost half of the
known disks at high fidelity. Resolved debris structures at multiple
wavelengths and at all stages of evolution would reveal the properties of
unseen planet populations, enabling a unique demographic study of overall
planet formation and evolution.


  H$_2$O maser emission associated with the massive star formation region W49N
were observed with the Space-VLBI mission RadioAstron. The procedure for
processing of the maser spectral line data obtained in the RadioAstron
observations is described. Ultra-fine spatial structures in the maser emission
were detected on space-ground baselines of up to 9.6 Earth diameters. The
correlated flux densities of these features range from 0.1% to 0.6% of the
total flux density. These low values of correlated flux density are probably
due to turbulence either in the maser itself or in the interstellar medium.


  Quantum computers can execute algorithms that sometimes dramatically
outperform classical computation. Undoubtedly the best-known example of this is
Shor's discovery of an efficient quantum algorithm for factoring integers,
whereas the same problem appears to be intractable on classical computers.
Understanding what other computational problems can be solved significantly
faster using quantum algorithms is one of the major challenges in the theory of
quantum computation, and such algorithms motivate the formidable task of
building a large-scale quantum computer. This article will review the current
state of quantum algorithms, focusing on algorithms for problems with an
algebraic flavor that achieve an apparent superpolynomial speedup over
classical computation.


  This paper presents an automated method for 3D character skeleton extraction
that can be applied for generic 3D shapes. Our work is motivated by the
skeleton-based prior work on automatic rigging focused on skeleton extraction
and can automatically aligns the extracted structure to fit the 3D shape of the
given 3D mesh. The body mesh can be subsequently skinned based on the extracted
skeleton and thus enables rigging process. In the experiment, we apply public
dataset to drive the estimated skeleton from different body shapes, as well as
the real data obtained from 3D scanning systems. Satisfactory results are
obtained compared to the existing approaches.


  We study the thermal phase transition in colour SU(3) Quantum Chromodynamics
(QCD) with a variable number of fermions in the fundamental representation by
using lattice Monte-Carlo simulations. We collect the (pseudo) critical
couplings for N_f=(0, 4, 6,8), and we investigate the pre-conformal dynamics
associated with the infra-red fixed point in terms of the N_f dependence of the
transition temperature. We propose three independent estimates of the number of
flavour N_f^* where the conformal phase would emerge, which give consistent
results within the largish errors. We consider lines of fixed N_t in the space
of (N_f, bare lattice coupling), and locate the vanishing of the step scaling
function for N_f^*\sim 11.1\pm 1.6. We define a typical interaction strength
(g_TC) at the scale of critical temperature T_c, and we find that g_TC meets
the zero temperature critical couplings estimated by the two-loop Schwinger
Dyson equation or the IRFP coupling in the four-loop beta-function at N_f^*\sim
12.5\pm 0.7. Further, we study the N_f dependences of T_c/M where M is a UV N_f
independent reference scale determined by utilising the coupling at the scale
of the lattice spacing. Then, T_c/M turns out to be a decreasing function of
N_f, and the vanishing T_c/M indicates the emergence of the conformal window at
N_f^* \sim 10.4 \pm 1.2.


  The evolution of the rate of price inflation and unemployment in Japan has
been modeled within the Phillips curve framework. As an extension to the
Phillips curve, we represent both variables as linear functions of the change
rate of labor force. All models were first estimated in 2005 for the period
between 1980 and 2003. Here we update these original models with data through
2012. The revisited models accurately describe disinflation during the 1980s
and 1990s as well as the whole deflationary period started in the late 1990s.
The Phillips curve for Japan confirms the original concept that growing
unemployment results in decreasing inflation. A linear and lagged generalized
Phillips curve expressed as a link between inflation, unemployment, and labor
force has been also re-estimated and validated by new data. Labor force
projections allow a long-term inflation and unemployment forecast: the GDP
deflator will be negative (between -0.5% and -2% per year) during the next 40
years. The rate of unemployment will increase from 4.3% in 2012 to 5.5% in
2050.


  Visible light communications (VLC) have emerged as strong candidates for
meeting the escalating demand for high data rates. Consider a VLC network,
where multiple access-points (APs) serve both energy-harvesting users (EHUs),
i.e., users which harvest energy from light intensity, and information-users
(IUs), i.e., users which gather data information. In order to jointly balance
the achievable sum-rate at the IUs and the energy harvested by the EHUs, the
paper considers maximizing a network-wide utility, which consists of a
weighted-sum of the IUs sum-rate and the EHUs harvested energy, subject to
individual IU rate constraint, individual EHU harvested-energy constraint, and
AP power constraints, so as to jointly determine the direct current (DC)-bias
value at each AP, and the users powers. The paper solves such a difficult
non-convex optimization problem using an iterative approach which relies on
inner convex approximations, and compensates for the used approximations using
proper outer-loop updates. The paper further considers solving the special
cases of the problem, i.e., maximizing the sum-rate, and maximizing the total
harvested-energy, both subject to the same constraints. Numerical results
highlight the significant performance improvement of the proposed algorithms,
and illustrate the impacts of the network parameters on the performance
trade-off between the sum-rate and harvested-energy.


  Organized Autotelescopes for Serendipitous Event Survey (OASES) is an optical
observation project that aims to detect and investigate stellar occultation
events by kilometer-sized trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). In this project,
multiple low-cost observation systems for wide-field and high-speed photometry
were developed in order to detect rare and short-timescale stellar occultation
events. The observation system consists of commercial off-the-shelf $0.28 \
{\rm m}$ aperture $f/1.58$ optics providing a $2.3 \times 1.8$ square-degree
field of view. A commercial CMOS camera is coupled to the optics to obtain
full-frame imaging with a frame rate greater than $10 \ {\rm Hz}$. As of
September 2016, this project exploits two observation systems, which are
installed on Miyako Island, Okinawa, Japan. Recent improvements in CMOS
technology in terms of high-speed imaging and low readout noise mean that the
observation systems are capable of monitoring $\sim 2000$ stars in the Galactic
plane simultaneously with magnitudes down to ${\rm V} \sim 13.0$, providing
$\sim 20\%$ photometric precision in light curves with a sampling cadence of
$15.4 \ {\rm Hz}$. This number of monitored stars is larger than for any other
existing instruments for coordinated occultation surveys. In addition, a
precise time synchronization method needed for simultaneous occultation
detection is developed using faint meteors. The two OASES observation systems
are executing coordinated monitoring observations of a dense stellar field in
order to detect occultations by kilometer-sized TNOs for the first time.


  The moving contact-line problem is of both theoretical and practical
interest. The dynamic contact angle changes with the capillary number defined
by the contact-line speed, and the correlation also depends on the equilibrium
contact angle measured at the static state. This correlation is usually
required as an input to the traditional solvers based on the Navier-Stokes-like
equations, but it is simulated as an output in the current study using the
lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) in a displacement process of two-immiscible
fluids. The macroscopic theory and the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation had
shown a linear scaling law for the cosine of dynamic contact angle, which is
also observed in the previous LBM study in a short range of small capillary
numbers and for two neutral wetting conditions. However, our study shows that
this linear scaling law holds in the whole range of capillary numbers and is
universal for all wetting conditions. In a special case of complete wetting
(spreading) with a zero equilibrium contact angle, a thin film of the wetting
fluid occurs when the wettability is very strong, which leads to a hysteresis
that substantial capillary number is required to initiate the deviation of the
dynamic contact angle from its equilibrium state. This observation is
consistent with the previous report on a new mechanism for the static contact
angle hysteresis due to the presence of free liquid films. With an increasing
capillary number, the fluid-fluid interface starts oscillating before
fingering. Different fingering patterns are observed for cases with different
equilibrium contact angles.


  Autonomous driving systems are always built on motion-related modules such as
the planner and the controller. An accurate and robust trajectory tracking
method is indispensable for these motion-related modules as a primitive
routine. Current methods often make strong assumptions about the model such as
the context and the dynamics, which are not robust enough to deal with the
changing scenarios in a real-world system. In this paper, we propose a Deep
Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based trajectory tracking method for the
motion-related modules in autonomous driving systems. The representation
learning ability of DL and the exploration nature of RL bring strong robustness
and improve accuracy. Meanwhile, it enhances versatility by running the
trajectory tracking in a model-free and data-driven manner. Through extensive
experiments, we demonstrate both the efficiency and effectiveness of our method
compared to current methods. Code and documentation are released to facilitate
both further research and industrial deployment.


  We consider the problem of designing a Private Information Retrieval (PIR)
scheme on $m$ files replicated on $k$ servers that can collude or, even worse,
can return incorrect answers. Our goal is to correctly retrieve a specific
message while keeping its identity private from the database servers. We
consider the asymptotic information-theoretic capacity of this problem defined
as the maximum ratio of the number of correctly retrieved symbols to the
downloaded one for a large enough number of stored files. We propose an
achievable scheme with a small file size and prove that such a file size is
minimal for the fixed number of retrieved symbols, solving the problem pointed
out by Banawan and Ulukus.


  We have derived the unitarity bounds in the high energy limit for the minimal
B-L extension of the Standard Model by analysing the full class of Higgs and
would-be Goldstone boson two-to-two scatterings at tree level. Moreover, we
have investigated how these limits could vary at some lower critical value of
the energy.


  Muon spin relaxation measurements are reported on three members of the
LixMPO4 series. The magnetic properties of stoichiometric samples with M = Ni,
Co, Fe, were investigated at low-temperature. In LiNiPO4 we observe different
forms of the muon decay asymmetry in the commensurate and incommensurate
antiferromagnetic phases, accompanied by a change in the temperature dependence
of the muon oscillation frequency. In LiCoPO4 the form of the muon decay
asymmetry indicates that the correlation between layers decreases as the Neel
temperature is approached from below. LiFePO4 shows more conventional
behaviour, typical for an antiferromagnet. Measurements on LixFePO4 with x =
0.8, 0.9, and 1 show evidence for lithium diffusion below ~250 K and muon
diffusion dominating the form of the relaxation at higher temperature. The
thermally activated form of the observed hopping rate suggests an activation
barrier for lithium diffusion of ~ 100 meV and a diffusion constant of D_Li ~
10^-10 - 10^-9 cm2/s at room temperature.


  In a cyclic entropy model in which the extroverse is jettisoned at turnaround
with a Come Back Empty assumption, we address matching of the contraction scale
factor $f(t_T)a(t)$ to the expansion scale factor $a(t)$, where $f(t_T)$ is the
ratio at turnaround of the introverse to extroverse radii. Such matching is
necessary for infinite cyclicity and fixes the CBE period at $\sim 2.6$ Ty. We
then compare such a CBE model with alternative cyclic cosmologies including
Penrose Conformal Cyclic Cosmology of period $10^{100}$ y, and speculate that
the CBE model may be related to the CCC model by a highly nontrivial
isomorphism.


  In 1924 Louis de Broglie introduced the concept of wave-particle duality: the
Planck constant $h$ relates the momentum $p$ of a massive particle to its de
Broglie wavelength $\lambda=h/p$. The superposition principle is one of the
main postulates of quantum mechanics; diffraction and interference phenomena
are therefore predicted and have been observed on objects of increasing
complexity, from electrons to neutrons and molecules. Beyond the early electron
diffraction experiments, the demonstration of single-electron double-slit-like
interference was a highly sought-after result. Initially proposed by Richard
Feynman as a thought experiment it was finally carried out in 1976. A few years
later, positron diffraction was first observed. However, an analog of the
double-slit experiment has not been performed to date on any system containing
antimatter. Here we present the first observation of matter wave interference
of single positrons, by using a period-magnifying Talbot-Lau interferometer
based on material diffraction gratings. Individual positrons in the 8-14 keV
energy range from a monochromatic beam were detected by high-resolution nuclear
emulsions. The observed energy dependence of fringe contrast proves the
quantum-mechanical origin of the detected periodic pattern and excludes
classical projective effects. Talbot-Lau interferometers are well-suited to the
experimental challenges posed by low intensity antimatter beams and represent a
promising option for measuring the gravitational acceleration of neutral
antimatter.


  Theoretical models of galaxy formation predict that galaxies acquire most of
their baryons via cold mode accretion. Observations of high-redshift galaxies,
while showing ubiquitous outflows, have so far not revealed convincing traces
of the predicted cold streams, which has been interpreted as a challenge for
the current models. Using high-resolution, zoom-in smooth particle
hydrodynamics simulations of Lyman break galaxy (LBG) halos combined with
ionizing radiative transfer, we quantify the covering factor of the cold
streams at z=2-4. We focus specifically on Lyman limit systems (LLSs) and
damped Ly-alpha absorbers (DLAs), which can be probed by absorption
spectroscopy using a background galaxy or quasar sightline, and which are
closely related to low-ionization metal absorbers. We show that the covering
factor of these systems is relatively small and decreases with time. At z=2,
the covering factor of DLAs within the virial radius of the simulated galaxies
is ~3% (~1% within twice this projected distance), and arises principally from
the galaxy itself. The corresponding values for LLSs are ~10% and ~4%. Because
of their small covering factor compared to the order unity covering fraction
expected for galactic winds, the cold streams are naturally dominated by
outflows in stacked spectra. We conclude that the existing observations are
consistent with the predictions of cold mode accretion, and outline promising
kinematic and chemical diagnostics to separate out the signatures of galactic
accretion and feedback.