  Testing gravity by binary pulsars nowadays becomes a key issue. Screened
modified gravity is a kind of scalar-tensor theory with screening mechanism in
order to satisfy the tight Solar System tests. In this paper, we investigate
how the screening mechanism affects the orbital dynamics of binary pulsars, and
calculate in detail the five post-Keplerian (PK) parameters in this theory.
These parameters differ from those of general relativity (GR), and the
differences are quantified by the scalar charges, which lead to the dipole
radiation in this theory. We combine the observables of PK parameters for the
ten binary pulsars, respectively, to place the constraints on the scalar
charges and possible deviations from GR. The dipole radiation in the neutron
star (NS) - white dwarf (WD) binaries leads to more stringent constraints on
deviations from GR. The most constraining systems for the scalar charges of NS
and WD are PSR~B1913$+$16 and PSR~J1738$+$0333, respectively. The results of
all tests exclude significant strong-field deviations and show good agreement
with GR.


  We have observed 433 z<=0.08 brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in a full-sky
survey of Abell clusters. The BCG Hubble diagram is consistent to within 2% of
a Omega_m=0.3, Lambda=0.7 Hubble relation. The L_m-alpha relation for BCGs,
which uses alpha, the log-slope of the BCG photometric curve of growth, to
predict metric luminosity, L_m, has 0.27 mag residuals. We measure central
stellar velocity dispersions, sigma, of the BCGs, finding the Faber-Jackson
relation to flatten as the metric aperture grows to include an increasing
fraction of the total BCG luminosity. A 3-parameter "metric plane" relation
using alpha and sigma together gives the best prediction of L_m, with 0.21 mag
residuals. The projected spatial offset, r_x, of BCGs from the X-ray-defined
cluster center is a gamma=-2.33 power-law over 1<r_x<10^3 kpc. The median
offset is ~10 kpc, but ~15% of the BCGs have r_x>100 kpc. The absolute
cluster-dispersion normalized BCG peculiar velocity |Delta V_1|/sigma_c follows
an exponential distribution with scale length 0.39+/-0.03. Both L_m and alpha
increase with sigma_c. The alpha parameter is further moderated by both the
spatial and velocity offset from the cluster center, with larger alpha
correlated with the proximity of the BCG to the cluster mean velocity or
potential center. At the same time, position in the cluster has little effect
on L_m. The luminosity difference between the BCG and second-ranked galaxy, M2,
increases as the peculiar velocity of the BCG within the cluster decreases.
Further, when M2 is a close luminosity "rival" of the BCG, the galaxy that is
closest to either the velocity or X-ray center of the cluster is most likely to
have the larger alpha. We conclude that the inner portions of the BCGs are
formed outside the cluster, but interactions in the heart of the galaxy cluster
grow and extend the envelopes of the BCGs.


  I describe the classic circle-packing problem on a sphere, and the analytic
and numerical approaches that have been used to study it. I then present a very
simple Markov-chain Monte Carlo algorithm, which succeeds in finding the best
solutions known today. The behavior of the algorithm is put into the context of
the statistical physics of glasses.


  We investigate the dispersive Casimir-Polder interaction between a Rubidium
atom and a suspended graphene sheet subjected to an external magnetic field B.
We demonstrate that this concrete physical system allows for an unprecedented
control of dispersive interactions at micro and nanoscales. Indeed, we show
that the application of an external magnetic field can induce a 80% reduction
of the Casimir-Polder energy relative to its value without the field. We also
show that sharp discontinuities emerge in the Casimir-Polder interaction energy
for certain values of the applied magnetic field at low temperatures. Moreover,
for sufficiently large distances these discontinuities show up as a
plateau-like pattern with a quantized Casimir-Polder interaction energy, in a
phenomenon that can be explained in terms of the quantum Hall effect. In
addition, we point out the importance of thermal effects in the Casimir-Polder
interaction, which we show that must be taken into account even for
considerably short distances. In this case, the discontinuities in the
atom-graphene dispersive interaction do not occur, which by no means prevents
the tuning of the interaction in ~50% by the application of the external
magnetic field.


  Mounting evidence indicates that our planet might experience runaway effects
associated to rising temperatures and ecosystem overexploitation, leading to
catastrophic shifts on short time scales. Remediation scenarios capable of
counterbalancing these effects involve geoengineering, sustainable practices
and carbon sequestration, among others. None of these scenarios seems powerful
enough to achieve the desired restoration of safe boundaries. We hypothesise
that synthetic organisms with the appropriate engineering design could be used
to safely prevent declines in some stressed ecosystems and help improving
carbon sequestration. Such schemes would include engineering mutualistic
dependencies preventing undesired evolutionary processes. We hypothesise that
some particular design principles introduce unescapable constraints to the
engineered organisms that act as effective firewalls. Testing this designed
organisms can be achieved by using controlled bioreactor models and accurate
computational models including different scales (from genetic constructs and
metabolic pathways to population dynamics). Our hypothesis heads towards a
future anthropogenic action that should effectively act as Terraforming agents.
It also implies a major challenge in the existing biosafety policies, since we
suggest release of modified organisms as potentially necessary strategy for
success.


  We study the role of magnetic monopoles at high enough temperature $T>2T_c$,
when they can be considered heavy, rare objects embedded into matter consisting
mostly of the usual "electric" quasiparticles, quarks and gluons. We review
available lattice results on monopoles at finite temperatures. Then we proceed
to classical and quantum charge-monopole scattering, solving the problem of
gluon-monopole scattering for the first time. We find that, while this process
hardly influences thermodynamic quantities, it does produce a large transport
cross section, significantly exceeding that for pQCD gluon-gluon scattering up
to quite high $T$. Thus, in spite of their relatively small density at high
$T$, monopoles are extremely important for QGP transport properties, keeping
viscosity small enough for hydrodynamics to work at LHC.


  Let $\mathbf{M}$ be the basic set theory that consists of the axioms of
extensionality, emptyset, pair, union, powerset, infinity, transitive
containment, $\Delta_0$-separation and set foundation. This paper studies the
relative strength of set theories obtained by adding fragments of the
set-theoretic collection scheme to $\mathbf{M}$. We focus on two common
parameterisations of collection: $\Pi_n$-collection, which is the usual
collection scheme restricted to $\Pi_n$-formulae, and strong
$\Pi_n$-collection, which is equivalent to $\Pi_n$-collection plus
$\Sigma_{n+1}$-separation. The main result of this paper shows that for all $n
\geq 1$,
  (1) $\mathbf{M}+\Pi_{n+1}\textrm{-collection}+\Sigma_{n+2}\textrm{-induction
on } \omega$ proves the consistency of Zermelo Set Theory plus
$\Pi_{n}$-collection,
  (2) the theory $\mathbf{M}+\Pi_{n+1}\textrm{-collection}$ is
$\Pi_{n+3}$-conservative over the theory $\mathbf{M}+\textrm{strong }\Pi_n
\textrm{-collection}$.
  It is also shown that (2) holds for $n=0$ when the Axiom of Choice is
included in the base theory. The final section indicates how the proofs of (1)
and (2) can be modified to obtain analogues of these results for theories
obtained by adding fragments of collection to a base theory (Kripke-Platek Set
Theory with Infinity and $V=L$) that does not include the powerset axiom.


  We study families of linear spaces in projective space whose union is a
proper subvariety X of the expected dimension. We establish relations between
configurations of focal points and existence or non-existence of a fixed
tangent space to X along a general element of the family. We apply our results
to the classification of ruled 3-dimensional varieties.


  Frequentist and likelihood methods of inference based on the multivariate
skew-normal model encounter several technical difficulties with this model. In
spite of the popularity of this class of densities, there are no broadly
satisfactory solutions for estimation and testing problems. A general
population Monte Carlo algorithm is proposed which: 1) exploits the latent
structure stochastic representation of skew-normal random variables to provide
a full Bayesian analysis of the model and 2) accounts for the presence of
constraints in the parameter space. The proposed approach can be defined as
weakly informative, since the prior distribution approximates the actual
reference prior for the shape parameter vector. Results are compared with the
existing classical solutions and the practical implementation of the algorithm
is illustrated via a simulation study and a real data example. A generalization
to the matrix variate regression model with skew-normal error is also
presented.


  We investigate the impact of a common external system, which we call a common
environment, on the Oscillator Death (OD) states of a group of Stuart-Landau
oscillators. The group of oscillators yield a completely symmetric OD state
when uncoupled to the external system, i.e. the two OD states occur with equal
probability. However, remarkably, when coupled to a common external system this
symmetry is significantly broken. For exponentially decaying external systems,
the symmetry breaking is very pronounced for low environmental damping and
strong oscillator-environment coupling. This is evident through the sharp
transition from the symmetric to asymmetric state occurring at a critical
oscillator-environment coupling strength and environmental damping rate.
Further, we consider time-varying connections to the common external
environment, with a fraction of oscillator-environment links switching on and
off. Interestingly, we find that the asymmetry induced by environmental
coupling decreases as a power law with increase in fraction of such on-off
connections. The suggests that blinking oscillator-environment links can
restore the symmetry of the OD state. Lastly, we demonstrate the generality of
our results for a constant external drive, and find marked breaking of symmetry
in the OD states there as well. When the constant environmental drive is large,
the asymmetry in the OD states is very large, and the transition between the
symmetric and asymmetric state with increasing oscillator-environment coupling
is very sharp. So our results demonstrate an environmental coupling-induced
mechanism for the prevalence of certain OD states in a system of oscillators,
and suggests an underlying process for obtaining certain states preferentially
in ensembles of oscillators with environment-mediated coupling.


  In this paper, we study the problem of finding a maximum matching in the
semi-streaming model when edges arrive in a random order. In the semi-streaming
model, an algorithm receives a stream of edges and it is allowed to have a
memory of $\tilde{O}(n)$ where $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph. A
recent inspiring work by Assadi et al. shows that there exists a streaming
algorithm with the approximation ratio of $\frac{2}{3}$ that uses
$\tilde{O}(n^{1.5})$ memory. However, the memory of their algorithm is much
larger than the memory constraint of the semi-streaming algorithms. In this
work, we further investigate this problem in the semi-streaming model, and we
present simple algorithms for approximating maximum matching in the
semi-streaming model. Our main results are as follows.
  We show that there exists a single-pass deterministic semi-streaming
algorithm that finds a $\frac{3}{5} (= 0.6)$ approximation of the maximum
matching in bipartite graphs using $\tilde{O}(n)$ memory. This result
significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art result of Konrad that finds a
$0.539$ approximation of the maximum matching using $\tilde{O}(n)$ memory.
  By giving a black-box reduction from finding a matching in general graphs to
finding a matching in bipartite graphs, we show there exists a single-pass
deterministic semi-streaming algorithm that finds a $\frac{6}{11} (\approx
0.545)$ approximation of the maximum matching in general graphs, improving upon
the state-of-art result $0.506$ approximation by Gamlath et al.


  We argue the possibility that a real part of a flavor neutrino mass matrix
only respects a mu-tau symmetry. This possibility is shown to be extended to
more general case with a phase parameter \theta, where the mu-tau symmetric
part has a phase of \theta/2. This texture shows maximal CP violation and no
Majorana CP violation.


  Recently, many authors have cast doubts on the validity of ABC model choice.
It has been shown that the use of sufficient statistic in ABC model selection
leads, apart from few exceptional cases in which the sufficient statistic is
also cross-model sufficient, to unreliable results. In a single model context
and given a sufficient summary statistic, we show that it is possible to fully
recover the posterior normalising constant, without using the likelihood
function. The idea can be applied, in an approximate way, to more realistic
scenarios in which the sufficient statistic is not unavailable but a "good"
summary statistic for estimation is available.


  The electromagnetic form factors are fundamental observables that parametrise
the electric and magnetic structure of hadrons and provide a key to the strong
interaction. The Beijing Spectrometer (BESIII) is located at the Beijng
Electron Positron Collider (BEPCII), a symmetric $e^+e^-$ collider running at
center-of-mass energies between 2.0 and 4.6 GeV. This wide energy range allows
the measurement of electromagnetic form factors both from direct $e^+e^-$
annihilation and from initial-state radiation processes. Based on
$157~\mathrm{pb}^{-1}$ of data collected at center-of-mass energies between
2.23 and 3.67 GeV, BESIII published results on the channel $e^+e^-\rightarrow
p\bar{p}$. More recently, preliminary results from the analysis of the
initial-state radiation process $e^+e^- \rightarrow p\bar{p}\gamma$ based on
7.41 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of data have also been released. Besides nucleons, all
hyperons in the SU(3) spin 1/2 octet and spin 3/2 decuplet are energetically
accessible at BESIII. Preliminary results from the $e^+e^-\rightarrow
\Lambda\bar{\Lambda}$ channel and the $e^+e^- \rightarrow \Lambda_c
\bar{\Lambda}_c$ channel from the charmed sector are already available.
Furthermore, a world-leading data sample for precision measurements of baryon
form factors was collected in 2015. This data will enable the measurement of
baryon electromagnetic form factors with unprecedented accuracy.


  We derived the luminosity function (LF) of dwarf galaxies in the Coma Cluster
down to M_R=-10 at three fields located at the center, intermediate, and
outskirt. The LF (-19<M_R<-10) shows no significant differences among the three
fields. It shows a clear dip at M_R\sim-13, and is composed of two distinct
components of different slopes; the bright component with -19<M_R<-13 has a
flatter slope than the faint component with -13<M_R<-10 which has a steep
slope. The bright component (-19<M_R<-13) consists of mostly red extended
galaxies including few blue galaxies whose colors are typical of late-type
galaxies. On the other hand, the faint component (-13<M_R<-10) consists of
largely PSF-like compact galaxies. We found that both these compact galaxies
and some extended galaxies are present in the center while only compact
galaxies are seen in the outskirt. In the faint component, the fraction of blue
galaxies is larger in the outskirt than in the center. We suggest that the
dwarf galaxies in the Coma Cluster, which make up the two components in the LF,
are heterogeneous with some different origins.


  The electricity grid is expected to require vast investments due to the
decarbonization-by-electrification trend, calling for a change in grid tariff
design which provides proper incentives for reducing peak loads. However, price
signals from grid tariffs could be distorted from electricity spot prices which
also represents a significant of the total consumer electricity bill. This
paper attempts to identify whether there is a price signal conflict between
grid tariffs and spot prices. Four different grid tariff designs are compared,
using a generic demand response model as part of a cost-minimizing linear
program to simulate the reduction in peak load. The method is applied to
metered electricity demand from 3608 consumers in Oslo, Norway. Results show
that new grid tariff designs reduce peak loads by 1-4%, and that reduction in
peak load is smaller when consumers are subject to electricity spot prices.


  G292.0+1.8 (G292) is a young ($\sim$3000 yr), Galactic textbook-type
core-collapse supernova remnant (CCSNR). It is characterized by X-ray, optical
and infrared emission from ejecta and circumstellar medium (CSM) features, and
contains a pulsar (PSR J1124-5916) and pulsar wind nebula that have been
observed in X-rays and radio. Previous studies have revealed a complex,
dynamically evolving, oxygen-rich remnant, a striking relic from the explosion
of a massive star. Here, using our deep (530 ks) $\textit{Chandra}$ ACIS data,
we present high spatial-resolution maps (based on a regional grid size of a few
arcsec) of the shocked CSM and metal-rich ejecta in G292. We make the first
$\textit{Chandra}$-detection of Fe-rich ejecta in G292. We identify the X-ray
counterpart of the northern equatorial belt, a component of a ring-like CSM
structure identified earlier in the infrared band. We show the detailed spatial
distributions of ejecta enriched in O, Ne, Mg, Si, S and Fe. We find that the
bulk of the Si, S and Fe-rich X-ray-emitting ejecta are located in the
northwestern hemisphere of the remnant, opposite to the pulsar's projected
angular displacement to the southeast from the SNR's center. This suggests that
the pulsar's kick may have originated from gravitational and hydrodynamic
forces during an asymmetric explosion, rather than from anisotropic neutrino
emission. Based on abundance ratios and our estimated CSM and ejecta masses, we
constrain the progenitor mass to 13 M$_{\odot}$ $\lesssim$ M $\lesssim$ 30
M$_{\odot}$


  We explore the possibility that color symmetry SU(3) was not an exact
symmetry at all times in the early universe, using minimal extensions of the
standard model that contain a color triplet scalar field and perhaps other
fields. We show that, for a range of temperatures, there can exist a phase in
which the free energy is minimized when the color triplet scalar has a
non-vanishing vacuum expectation value, spontaneously breaking color. At very
high temperatures and at lower temperatures color symmetry is restored. The
breaking of color in this phase is accompanied by the spontaneous breaking of
B-L if the color triplet scalar Yukawa couples to quarks and/or leptons. We
discuss the requirements on the minimal extensions needed for consistency of
this scenario with present collider bounds on new colored scalar particles.


  We propose a simple O([n^5/\log n]L) algorithm for linear programming
feasibility, that can be considered as a polynomial-time implementation of the
relaxation method. Our work draws from Chubanov's "Divide-and-Conquer"
algorithm [4], where the recursion is replaced by a simple and more efficient
iterative method. A similar approach was used in a more recent paper of
Chubanov [6].


  Flat bands and electron correlation in moir\'e lattices give rise to many
exotic phases, including Mott insulators, superconductivity, and topological
states. Within the first moir\'e band, integer and fractional quantum anomalous
Hall effects have been observed in twisted bilayer MoTe2 (tMoTe2) at one hole
doping and fractional doping per moir\'e unit cell, respectively. When the
second moir\'e band is fully hole doped, quantum spin Hall insulator has also
been reported in tMoTe2 at a certain twist angle. Exotic topological states
together with ferromagnetic (FM) states in the high moir\'e band can
potentially exist as well. In this study, we report the observation of a FM
phase in the second moir\'e band in tMoTe2. The FM phase can be tuned by both
the doping level and displacement field. At filling around 2.58 holes per
moir\'e unit cell, the FM phase reaches a Curie temperature of 3.5 K. A large
displacement field can suppress the FM phase, like the FM phase at the filling
of -1. Our results demonstrate the realization of time-reversal
symmetry-breaking states in the higher moir\'e bands in tMoTe2.


  For given graphs $G$ and $H$, let $|Hom(G,H)|$ denote the set of graph
homomorphisms from $G$ to $H$. We show that for any finite, $n$-regular,
bipartite graph $G$ and any finite graph $H$ (perhaps with loops), $|Hom(G,H)|$
is maximum when $G$ is a disjoint union of $K_{n,n}$'s. This generalizes a
result of J. Kahn on the number of independent sets in a regular bipartite
graph. We also give the asymptotics of the logarithm of $|Hom(G,H)|$ in terms
of a simply expressed parameter of $H$.
  We also consider weighted versions of these results which may be viewed as
statements about the partition functions of certain models of physical systems
with hard constraints.


  We present a resource-management model for ML-style programming languages,
designed to be compatible with the OCaml philosophy and runtime model. This is
a proposal to extend the OCaml language with destructors, move semantics, and
resource polymorphism, to improve its safety, efficiency, interoperability, and
expressiveness. It builds on the ownership-and-borrowing models of systems
programming languages (Cyclone, C++11, Rust) and on linear types in functional
programming (Linear Lisp, Clean, Alms). It continues a synthesis of resources
from systems programming and resources in linear logic initiated by Baker.
  It is a combination of many known and some new ideas. On the novel side, it
highlights the good mathematical structure of Stroustrup's "Resource
acquisition is initialisation" (RAII) idiom for resource management based on
destructors, a notion sometimes confused with finalizers, and builds on it a
notion of resource polymorphism, inspired by polarisation in proof theory, that
mixes C++'s RAII and a tracing garbage collector (GC).
  The proposal targets a new spot in the design space, with an automatic and
predictable resource-management model, at the same time based on lightweight
and expressive language abstractions. It is backwards-compatible: current code
is expected to run with the same performance, the new abstractions fully
combine with the current ones, and it supports a resource-polymorphic extension
of libraries. It does so with only a few additions to the runtime, and it
integrates with the current GC implementation. It is also compatible with the
upcoming multicore extension, and suggests that the Rust model for eliminating
data-races applies.
  Interesting questions arise for a safe and practical type system, many of
which have already been thoroughly investigated in the languages and prototypes
Cyclone, Rust, and Alms.


  The handling of communication breakdowns and loss of engagement is an
important aspect of spoken dialogue systems, particularly for chatting systems
such as attentive listening, where the user is mostly speaking. We presume that
a human is best equipped to handle this task and rescue the flow of
conversation. To this end, we propose a semi-autonomous system, where a remote
operator can take control of an autonomous attentive listening system in
real-time. In order to make human intervention easy and consistent, we
introduce automatic detection of low interest and engagement to provide
explicit takeover prompts to the remote operator. We implement this
semi-autonomous system which detects takeover points for the operator and
compare it to fully tele-operated and fully autonomous attentive listening
systems. We find that the semi-autonomous system is generally perceived more
positively than the autonomous system. The results suggest that identifying
points of conversation when the user starts to lose interest may help us
improve a fully autonomous dialogue system.


  For the one-dimensional telegraph process, we obtain explicit distribution of
the occupation time of the positive half-line. The long-term limiting
distribution is then derived when the initial location of the process is in the
range of sub-normal or normal deviations from the origin; in the former case,
the limit is given by the arcsine law. These limit theorems are also extended
to the case of more general occupation-type functionals.


  Event classification can add valuable information for semantic search and the
increasingly important topic of fact validation in news. So far, only few
approaches address image classification for newsworthy event types such as
natural disasters, sports events, or elections. Previous work distinguishes
only between a limited number of event types and relies on rather small
datasets for training. In this paper, we present a novel ontology-driven
approach for the classification of event types in images. We leverage a large
number of real-world news events to pursue two objectives: First, we create an
ontology based on Wikidata comprising the majority of event types. Second, we
introduce a novel large-scale dataset that was acquired through Web crawling.
Several baselines are proposed including an ontology-driven learning approach
that aims to exploit structured information of a knowledge graph to learn
relevant event relations using deep neural networks. Experimental results on
existing as well as novel benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of the
proposed ontology-driven approach.


  In the present paper, we are concerned with the semilinear viscoelastic wave
equation subject to a locally distributed dissipative effect of Kelvin-Voigt
type, posed on a bounded domain with smooth boundary. We begin with an
auxiliary problem and we show that its solution decays exponentially in the
weak phase space. The method of proof combines an observability inequality and
unique continuation properties. Then, passing to the limit, we recover the
original model and prove its global existence as well as the exponential
stability.


  In a recent note Ellis criticizes varying speed of light theories on the
grounds of a number of foundational issues. His reflections provide us with an
opportunity to clarify some fundamental matters pertaining to these theories.


  Some questions arising in the application of the thermal model to hadron
production in heavy ion collisions are studied. We do so by applying the
thermal model of hadron production to particle yields calculated by the
microscopic transport model RQMD(v2.3). We study the bias of incomplete
information about the final hadronic state on the extraction of thermal
parameters.It is found that the subset of particles measured typically in the
experiments looks more thermal than the complete set of stable particles. The
hadrons which show the largest deviations from thermal behaviour in RQMD(v2.3)
are the multistrange baryons and antibaryons. We also looked at the influence
of rapidity cuts on the extraction of thermal parameters and found that they
lead to different thermal parameters and larger disagreement between the RQMD
yields and the thermal model.


  The selective confinement of light-holes (LHs) is demonstrated by introducing
a low-dimensional system consisting of highly tensile-strained Ge quantum well
enabling the design of an ultrafast gate-defined spin qubit under the electric
dipole spin resonance. The qubit size-dependent $g$-factor and dipole moment
are mapped, and the parameters inducing their modulation are discussed. It is
found that the LH qubit dipole moment is 2 to 3 orders of magnitude higher than
that of the canonical heavy-hole qubit. This behavior originates from the
significant spin splitting resulting from the combined action of large cubic
and linear Rashba spin-orbit interactions that are peculiar to LHs. The qubit
relaxation rate is also affected by the strong spin-orbit interaction and
follows typically a $B^7$ behavior. The proposed all-group IV, direct bandgap
LH qubit provides an effective platform for a scalable qubit-optical photon
interface sought-after for long-range entanglement distribution and quantum
networks.


  Biological condensates are assemblies of proteins and nucleic acids that form
membraneless compartments in cells and play essential roles in cellular
functions. In many cases they exhibit the physical properties of liquid
droplets that coexist in a surrounding fluid. Recently, quantitative studies on
the material properties of biological condensates have become available,
revealing complex material properties. In vitro experiments have shown that
protein condensates exhibit time dependent material properties, similar to
aging in glasses. To understand this phenomenon from a theoretical perspective,
we develop a rheological model based on the physical picture of protein
diffusion and stochastic binding inside condensates. The complex nature of
protein interactions is captured by a distribution of binding energies,
incorporated in a trap model originally developed to study glass transitions.
Our model can describe diffusion of constituent particles, as well as the
material response to time-dependent forces, and it recapitulates the age
dependent relaxation time of Maxwell glass observed experimentally both in
active and passive rheology. We derive a generalized fluctuation-response
relations of our model in which the relaxation function does not obey time
translation invariance. Our study sheds light on the complex material
properties of biological condensates and provides a theoretical framework for
understanding their aging behavior.


  Massive states (of order 10 Gev and more) of hadron string (with scale 1 Gev)
can have very small coupling constants with usual baryons of the Universe.
Corresponding mean times for them are found to be order and even more than the
age of the Universe. They are proposed as possible candidates for weak
interacting massive particles (WIMP) of Dark Matter.


  The paper mentioned in the title introduces the entropic value at risk. I
give some extra comments and using the general theory make a relation with some
commonotone risk measures.


  This paper, I, presents new results from neutron inelastic scattering
experiments on single crystals of UPd2Al3. The focus is on the experimental
position whilst the sequel, II, advances theoretical perspectives. We present a
detailed and complete characterisation of the wavevector- and energy-dependent
magnetisation dynamics in UPd2Al3 as measured by neutron inelastic scattering
primarily in the form of extensive surveys in energy-momentum space under a
wide range of experimental conditions, and put our observations in context with
data that has been previously published by two independent groups. In this way
we emphasize the commonality and robust nature of the data which indicate the
intricate nature of the dynamic magnetic susceptibility of this material. Our
results yield unique insight into the low temperature ground state which
exhibits a microscopic coexistence of antiferromagnetism and superconductivity
making UPd2Al3 one of the most accessible heavy-fermion superconductors that
can be fully characterised by neutron spectroscopy.


  All powers of lexsegment ideals with linear resolution (equivalently, with
linear quotients) have linear quotients with respect to suitable orders of the
minimal monomial generators. For a large subclass of the lexsegment ideals the
corresponding Rees algebra has a quadratic Gr\"obner basis, thus it is Koszul.
We also find other classes of monomial ideals with linear quotients whose
powers have linear quotients too.


  Edge centrality measures are functions that evaluate the importance of edges
in a network. They can be used to assess the role of a backlink for the
popularity of a website as well as the importance of a flight in virus
spreading. Various node centralities have been translated to apply for edges,
including Edge Betweenness, Eigenedge (edge version of Eigenvector centrality)
and Edge PageRank. With this paper, we initiate the discussion on the axiomatic
properties of edge centrality measures. We do it by proposing an axiomatic
characterization of Edge PageRank. Our characterization is the first
characterization of any edge centrality measure in the literature.


  We study nondeterministic strategies in parity games with the aim of
computing a most permissive winning strategy. Following earlier work, we
measure permissiveness in terms of the average number/weight of transitions
blocked by the strategy. Using a translation into mean-payoff parity games, we
prove that the problem of computing (the permissiveness of) a most permissive
winning strategy is in NP intersected coNP. Along the way, we provide a new
study of mean-payoff parity games. In particular, we prove that the opponent
player has a memoryless optimal strategy and give a new algorithm for solving
these games.


  Free spectrahedra are natural objects in the theories of operator systems and
spaces and completely positive maps. They also appear in various engineering
applications. In this paper, free spectrahedra satisfying a Reinhardt symmetry
condition are characterized graph theoretically. It is also shown that, for a
simple class of such spectrahedra, automorphisms are linear.


  We introduce and study a number of invariants of locally compact quantum
groups defined by their scaling and modular groups and the spectrum of their
modular elements. Focusing mainly on compact quantum groups we consider the
question whether triviality of one of the invariants is equivalent to the
quantum group being of Kac type and show that it has a positive answer in many
cases including duals of second countable type $\mathrm{I}$ discrete quantum
groups. We perform a complete calculation of the invariants for all
$q$-deformations of compact, simply connected, semisimple Lie groups as well as
for some non-compact quantum groups and the compact quantum groups
$\operatorname{U}_F^+$. Finally we introduce a family of conditions for
discrete quantum groups which for classical discrete groups are all equivalent
to the fact that the group is i.c.c. We show that the above mentioned question
about characterization of Kac type quantum groups by one of our invariants has
a positive answer for duals of discrete quantum groups satisfying such an
i.c.c.-type condition and illustrate this with the example of
$\operatorname{U}_F^+$.


  In 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose dispatched a manuscript introducing the concept
now known as Bose statistics to Albert Einstein. Bose could hardly have
imagined that the exotic statistics of certain emergent particles of quantum
matter would one day suggest a route to fault-tolerant quantum computation.
This non-technical Commentary on "anyons," namely particles whose statistics is
intermediate between Bose and Fermi, aims to convey the underlying concept as
well as its experimental manifestations to the uninitiated.


  Collective variable-based enhanced sampling methods are routinely used on
systems with metastable states, where high free energy barriers impede proper
sampling of the free energy landscapes when using conventional molecular
dynamics simulations. One such method is variationally enhanced sampling (VES),
which is based on a variational principle where a bias potential in the space
of some chosen slow degrees of freedom, or collective variables, is constructed
by minimizing a convex functional. In practice, the bias potential is taken as
a linear expansion in some basis function set. So far, primarily basis
functions delocalized in the collective variable space, like plane waves,
Chebyshev, or Legendre polynomials, have been used. However, there has not been
an extensive study of how the convergence behavior is affected by the choice of
the basis functions. In particular, it remains an open question if localized
basis functions might perform better. In this work, we implement, tune, and
validate Daubechies wavelets as basis functions for<EMAIL_ADDRESS>The wavelets
construct orthogonal and localized bases that exhibit an attractive
multiresolution property. We evaluate the performance of wavelet and other
basis functions on various systems, going from model potentials to the calcium
carbonate association process in water. We observe that wavelets exhibit
excellent performance and much more robust convergence behavior than all other
basis functions, as well as better performance than metadynamics. In
particular, using wavelet bases yields far smaller fluctuations of the bias
potential within individual runs and smaller differences between independent
runs. Based on our overall results, we can recommend wavelets as basis
functions for VES.


  In the present work we have studied some features of the generalized
Brans-Dicke (BD) model in which the scalar field is allowed to couple
non-minimally with matter sector. Extended holographic Ricci dark energy
(EHRDE) has been considered in the above framework of BD cosmology. Some
restrictions have been derived for the BD parameter $\omega$ and a stronger
matter-chameleon coupling has been observed with expansion of the universe. In
this framework, the equation of state parameter of EHRDE has behaved like
quintom. Also, we have reconstructed the potential and coupling function for BD
model for the EHRDE. It has been observed that potential function is increasing
as the matter-chameleon coupling is getting stronger.


  This paper describes the main characteristics of the Virtual Observatory as a
research infrastructure in Astronomy, and identifies those fields in which it
can be of help for the community of spectral stellar libraries.


  In this paper, we introduce and investigate monadic NM-algebras: a variety of
NM-algebras equipped with universal quantifiers. Also, we obtain some
conditions under which monadic NM-algebras become monadic Boolean algebras.
Besides, we show that the variety of monadic NM-algebras faithfully the axioms
on quantifiers in monadic predicate NM logic. Furthermore, we discuss relations
between monadic NM-algebras and some related structures, likeness modal
NM-algebras and rough approximation spaces. In addition, we investigate monadic
filters in monadic NM-algebras. In particular, we characterize simple and
subdirectly irreducible monadic NM-algebras and obtain a representation theorem
for monadic NM-algebras. Finally, we present monadic NM-logic and prove the
(chain) completeness of monadic NM-logic based on monadic NM-algebras. These
results constitute a crucial first step for providing a solid algebraic
foundation for the monadic predicate NM logic.


  Ultra-Fast Charging (UFC) is a rising technology that can shorten the time of
charging an Electric Vehicle (EV) from hours to minutes. However, the power
consumption characteristics of UFC bring new challenges to the existing power
system, and its pros and cons are yet to be studied. This project aims to set
up a framework for studying the different aspects of substituting the normal
non-residential EV chargers within the San Francisco Bay Area with Ultra-Fast
Charging (UFC) stations. Three objectives were defined for three stakeholders
involved in this simulation, namely: the EV user, the station owner, and the
grid operator. The results show that, UFCs will significantly contribute to
increase of peak load and power consumption during the peak demand period,
which is an undesirable outcome from grid operation perspective. Total
electricity and operations and maintenance costs for station owner would
increase subsequently, while this can be justified by analyzing the value of
time (VOT) from an EV-user perspective. Additionally, peak-shaving using
battery storage facilities is studied for complementing the applied technology
change and mitigating the impacts of higher power consumption on the grid.


  General anesthetics are known to cause depression of the freezing point of
transitions in biomembranes. This is a consequence of ideal mixing of the
anesthetic drugs in the membrane fluid phase and exclusion from the solid
phase. Such a generic law provides physical justification of the famous
Meyer-Overton rule. We show here that general anesthetics, barbiturates and
local anesthetics all display the same effect on melting transitions. Their
effect is reversed by hydrostatic pressure. Thus, the thermodynamic behavior of
local anesthetics is very similar to that of general anesthetics. We present a
detailed thermodynamic analysis of heat capacity profiles of membranes in the
presence of anesthetics. This analysis is able to describe experimentally
observed calorimetric profiles and permits prediction of the anesthetic
features of arbitrary molecules. In addition, we discuss the thermodynamic
origin of the cutoff-effect of long-chain alcohols and the additivity of the
effect of general and local anesthetics.


  In this paper, the problem of content-aware user clustering and content
caching in wireless small cell networks is studied. In particular, a service
delay minimization problem is formulated, aiming at optimally caching contents
at the small cell base stations (SCBSs). To solve the optimization problem, we
decouple it into two interrelated subproblems. First, a clustering algorithm is
proposed grouping users with similar content popularity to associate similar
users to the same SCBS, when possible. Second, a reinforcement learning
algorithm is proposed to enable each SCBS to learn the popularity distribution
of contents requested by its group of users and optimize its caching strategy
accordingly. Simulation results show that by correlating the different
popularity patterns of different users, the proposed scheme is able to minimize
the service delay by 42% and 27%, while achieving a higher offloading gain of
up to 280% and 90%, respectively, compared to random caching and unclustered
learning schemes.


  Monolayer materials are strongly affected by their potential fluctuations,
which are induced by an intrinsic corrugation or the surface roughness of the
substrate. We compare the effective exciton-exciton annihilation (EEA) rate
constants of monolayer WS2 on substrates with different surface topographies.
We show that monolayer WS2 on the substrate with atomically flat terraces
displays small effective EEA rate constant deviating from the overall tendency
and multiple exciton decay components, which cannot be accounted for by a
conventional EEA model. To obtain a correct description, we use a quantized EEA
model. The intrinsic EEA rate constant for the flat-terrace substrates
determined by this new model is comparable to that of hBN-encapsulated
monolayer WS2.


  Data-driven design and innovation is a process to reuse and provide valuable
and useful information. However, existing semantic networks for design
innovation is built on data source restricted to technological and scientific
information. Besides, existing studies build the edges of a semantic network
only on either statistical or semantic relationships, which is less likely to
make full use of the benefits from both types of relationships and discover
implicit knowledge for design innovation. Therefore, we constructed WikiLink, a
semantic network based on Wikipedia. Combined weight which fuses both the
statistic and semantic weights between concepts is introduced in WikiLink, and
four algorithms are developed for inspiring new ideas. Evaluation experiments
are undertaken and results show that the network is characterised by high
coverage of terms, relationships and disciplines, which proves the network's
effectiveness and usefulness. Then a demonstration and case study results
indicate that WikiLink can serve as an idea generation tool for innovation in
conceptual design. The source code of WikiLink and the backend data are
provided open-source for more users to explore and build on.


  The exclusive and inclusive electroproduction off the polarized deuteron is
considered at large $Q^2$ and $x \ge 0.5$. It is shown that the use of a
polarized target will allow to emphasize smaller than average internucleon
distances in the deuteron. As a result, we expect amplification of all the
effects (color transparency, relativistic dynamics, etc.) sensitive to small
internucleon distances. Numerical estimates are given for the processes $e+
\vec d \rightarrow e +p+n$ and $e+ \vec d \rightarrow e +X$.


  Humanoid robots are playing increasingly important roles in real-life tasks
especially when it comes to indoor applications. Providing robust solutions for
the tasks such as indoor environment mapping, self-localisation and object
recognition are essential to make the robots to be more autonomous, hence, more
human-like. The well-known Aldebaran service robot Pepper is a suitable
candidate for achieving these goals. In this paper, a hybrid system combining
Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm with object recognition
is developed and tested with Pepper robot in real-world conditions for the
first time. The ORB SLAM 2 algorithm was taken as a seminal work in our
research. Then, an object recognition technique based on Scale-Invariant
Feature Transform (SIFT) and Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) was combined with
SLAM to recognise and localise objects in the mapped indoor environment. The
results of our experiments showed the system's applicability for the Pepper
robot in real-world scenarios. Moreover, we made our source code available for
the community at https://github.com/PaolaArdon/Salt-Pepper.


  Classification and patterns extraction from customer data is very important
for business support and decision making. Timely identification of newly
emerging trends is very important in business process. Large companies are
having huge volume of data but starving for knowledge. To overcome the
organization current issue, the new breed of technique is required that has
intelligence and capability to solve the knowledge scarcity and the technique
is called Data mining. The objectives of this paper are to identify the
high-profit, high-value and low-risk customers by one of the data mining
technique - customer clustering. In the first phase, cleansing the data and
developed the patterns via demographic clustering algorithm using IBM I-Miner.
In the second phase, profiling the data, develop the clusters and identify the
high-value low-risk customers. This cluster typically represents the 10-20
percent of customers which yields 80% of the revenue.


  Given a finite set $E$, a subset $D\sub E$ (viewed as a function $E\to \F_2$)
is orthogonal to a given subspace $\FF$ of the $\F_2$-vector space of functions
$E\to \F_2$ as soon as $D$ is orthogonal to every $\sub$-minimal element of
$\FF$. This fails in general when $E$ is infinite.
  However, we prove the above statement for the six subspaces $\FF$ of the edge
space of any 3-connected locally finite graph that are relevant to its
homology: the topological, algebraic, and finite cycle and cut spaces. This
solves a problem of [5]


  Cross-lingual summarization (XLS) aims to generate a summary in a target
language different from the source language document. While large language
models (LLMs) have shown promising zero-shot XLS performance, their few-shot
capabilities on this task remain unexplored, especially for low-resource
languages with limited parallel data. In this paper, we investigate the
few-shot XLS performance of various models, including Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2,
GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. Our experiments demonstrate that few-shot learning
significantly improves the XLS performance of LLMs, particularly GPT-3.5 and
GPT-4, in low-resource settings. However, the open-source model
Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 struggles to adapt effectively to the XLS task with
limited examples. Our findings highlight the potential of few-shot learning for
improving XLS performance and the need for further research in designing LLM
architectures and pre-training objectives tailored for this task. We provide a
future work direction to explore more effective few-shot learning strategies
and to investigate the transfer learning capabilities of LLMs for cross-lingual
summarization.


  Skyrme chains are topologically-nontrivial solutions of the Skyrme model
which are (quasi-)periodic in one spatial direction. We report numerical and
analytic investigations which show that such solutions exist. Chains of
1-skyrmions are reasonably well approximated both as parallel vortex-antivortex
pairs, and in terms of the holonomy of Yang-Mills calorons. As the period
increases, the 1-skyrmions clump together, for example giving chains of
2-skyrmions or 4-skyrmions.


  Consider the space of `long knots' in R^n, K_{n,1}. This is the space of
knots as studied by V. Vassiliev. Based on previous work of the authors, it
follows that the rational homology of K_{3,1} is free Gerstenhaber-Poisson
algebra. A partial description of a basis is given here. In addition, the mod-p
homology of this space is a `free, restricted Gerstenhaber-Poisson algebra'.
Recursive application of this theorem allows us to deduce that there is
p-torsion of all orders in the integral homology of K_{3,1}.
  This leads to some natural questions about the homotopy type of the space of
long knots in R^n for n>3, as well as consequences for the space of smooth
embeddings of S^1 in S^3.


  We publish here the second part of our spectroscopic survey at high
dispersion of some known and suspected lambda Bootis stars with a view to
detecting circumstellar shell features. Eight stars of our sample exhibit such
features. These stars are fast rotators, a result which is in line with
Holweger and Rentzsch-Holm's study (1995). The analysis of the photometric data
has allowed us to confirm the exclusion of a few stars misclassified from the
lambda Bootis group.


  The search for extraterrestrial intelligence by looking for signals from
advanced technological civilizations has been ongoing for some decades. We
suggest that it could possibly be made more efficient by focusing on stars from
which the solar system can be observed via mini-eclipsings of the Sun by
transiting planets.


  The degree-of-presence (of the quantum system) concept, accompanying that of
the wavefunction-reality postulate, is introduced and studied in two ways. To
begin with, an incomplete exposition of the present author's views is given.
Subsequently, a short historical and philosophical review of answers to the
question about the meaning of indeterminate individual-system probabilities is
presented from the literature. It is done in the form of a carefully selected
collage of quotations mostly with polemic comments by the present author and
with further elaboration of his point of view. The advocated notion of 'degree
of presence' generalizes the intuitively most easily acceptable idea of
'delocalization' in (roughly called)wavelike behavior of a quantum system.


  Text-guided 3D shape generation remains challenging due to the absence of
large paired text-shape data, the substantial semantic gap between these two
modalities, and the structural complexity of 3D shapes. This paper presents a
new framework called Image as Stepping Stone (ISS) for the task by introducing
2D image as a stepping stone to connect the two modalities and to eliminate the
need for paired text-shape data. Our key contribution is a two-stage
feature-space-alignment approach that maps CLIP features to shapes by
harnessing a pre-trained single-view reconstruction (SVR) model with multi-view
supervisions: first map the CLIP image feature to the detail-rich shape space
in the SVR model, then map the CLIP text feature to the shape space and
optimize the mapping by encouraging CLIP consistency between the input text and
the rendered images. Further, we formulate a text-guided shape stylization
module to dress up the output shapes with novel textures. Beyond existing works
on 3D shape generation from text, our new approach is general for creating
shapes in a broad range of categories, without requiring paired text-shape
data. Experimental results manifest that our approach outperforms the
state-of-the-arts and our baselines in terms of fidelity and consistency with
text. Further, our approach can stylize the generated shapes with both
realistic and fantasy structures and textures.


  The chromatic functor of a simple graph is a functorization of the chromatic
polynomial. M. Yoshinaga showed in \cite{Yoshinaga2015} that two finite graphs
have isomorphic chromatic functors if and only if they have the same chromatic
polynomial. The key ingredient in the proof is the use of stable partitions of
graphs. The latter is shown to be closely related to chromatic functors. In
this note, we further investigate some interesting properties of chromatic
functors associated to simple graphs using stable partitions. Our first result
is the determination of the group of natural automorphisms of the chromatic
functor, which is in general a larger group than the automorphism group of the
graph. The second result is that the composition of the chromatic functor
associated to a finite graph restricted to the category $\mathrm{FI}$ of finite
sets and injections with the free functor into the category of complex vector
spaces yields a consistent sequence of representations of symmetric groups
which is representation stable in the sense of Church-Farb \cite{Church2013}.


  The linear equations that arise in interior methods for constrained
optimization are sparse symmetric indefinite and become extremely
ill-conditioned as the interior method converges. These linear systems present
a challenge for existing solver frameworks based on sparse LU or LDL^T
decompositions. We benchmark five well known direct linear solver packages
using matrices extracted from power grid optimization problems. The achieved
solution accuracy varies greatly among the packages. None of the tested
packages delivers significant GPU acceleration for our test cases.


  The sensitivity of laser interferometers can be pushed into regimes that
enable the direct observation of quantum behaviour of mechanical oscillators.
In the past, membranes with subwavelength thickness (thin films) have been
proposed as high-mechanical-quality, low-thermal-noise oscillators. Thin films
from a homogenous material, however, generally show considerable light
transmission accompanied by heating due to light absorption, which typically
reduces the mechanical quality and limits quantum opto-mechanical experiments
in particular at low temperatures. In this work, we experimentally analyze a
Michelson-Sagnac interferometer including a translucent silicon nitride (SiN)
membrane with subwavelength thickness. We find that such an interferometer
provides an operational point being optimally suited for quantum
opto-mechanical experiments with translucent oscillators. In case of a balanced
beam splitter of the interferometer, the membrane can be placed at a node of
the electro-magnetic field, which simultaneously provides lowest absorption and
optimum laser noise rejection at the signal port. We compare the optical and
mechanical model of our interferometer with experimental data and confirm that
the SiN membrane can be coupled to a laser power of the order of one Watt at
1064 nm without significantly degrading the membrane's quality factor of the
order 10^6, at room temperature.


  We study a version of the minority game in which one agent is allowed to join
the game in a random fashion. It is shown that in the crowded regime, i.e., for
small values of the memory size $m$ of the agents in the population, the agent
performs significantly well if she decides to participate the game randomly
with a probability $q$ {\em and} she records the performance of her strategies
only in the turns that she participates. The information, characterized by a
quantity called the inefficiency, embedded in the agent's strategies
performance turns out to be very different from that of the other agents.
Detailed numerical studies reveal a relationship between the success rate of
the agent and the inefficiency. The relationship can be understood analytically
in terms of the dynamics in which the various possible histories are being
visited as the game proceeds. For a finite fraction of randomly participating
agents up to 60% of the population, it is found that the winning edge of these
agents persists.


  Due to its potential wide applications in video surveillance and other
computer vision tasks like tracking, person re-identification (ReID) has become
popular and been widely investigated. However, conventional person
re-identification can only handle RGB color images, which will fail at dark
conditions. Thus RGB-infrared ReID (also known as Infrared-Visible ReID or
Visible-Thermal ReID) is proposed. Apart from appearance discrepancy in
traditional ReID caused by illumination, pose variations and viewpoint changes,
modality discrepancy produced by cameras of the different spectrum also exists,
which makes RGB-infrared ReID more difficult. To address this problem, we focus
on extracting the shared cross-spectrum features of different modalities. In
this paper, a novel multi-spectrum image generation method is proposed and the
generated samples are utilized to help the network to find discriminative
information for re-identifying the same person across modalities. Another
challenge of RGB-infrared ReID is that the intra-person (images from the same
person) discrepancy is often larger than the inter-person (images from
different persons) discrepancy, so a dual-subspace pairing strategy is proposed
to alleviate this problem. Combining those two parts together, we also design a
one-stream neural network combining the aforementioned methods to extract
compact representations of person images, called Cross-spectrum Dual-subspace
Pairing (CDP) model. Furthermore, during the training process, we also propose
a Dynamic Hard Spectrum Mining method to automatically mine more hard samples
from hard spectrum based on the current model state to further boost the
performance. Extensive experimental results on two public datasets, SYSU-MM01
with RGB + near-infrared images and RegDB with RGB + far-infrared images, have
demonstrated the efficiency and generality of our proposed method.


  The immersed boundary (IB) method is a general mathematical framework for
studying problems involving fluid-structure interactions in which an elastic
structure is immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid. In the IB formulation,
the fluid described by Eulerian variables is coupled with the immersed
structure described by Lagrangian variables via the use of the Dirac delta
function. From a numerical standpoint, the Lagrangian force spreading and the
Eulerian velocity interpolation are carried out by a regularized, compactly
supported discrete delta function, which is assumed to be a tensor product of a
single-variable immersed-boundary kernel. IB kernels are derived from a set of
postulates designed to achieve approximate grid translational invariance,
interpolation accuracy and computational efficiency. In this note, we present
new 5-point and 6-point immersed-boundary kernels that are $\mathscr{C}^3$ and
yield a substantially improved translational invariance compared to other
common IB kernels.


  The pursuit of high performance on public benchmarks has been the driving
force for research in scene text recognition, and notable progress has been
achieved. However, a close investigation reveals a startling fact that the
state-of-the-art methods perform well on images with words within vocabulary
but generalize poorly to images with words outside vocabulary. We call this
phenomenon "vocabulary reliance". In this paper, we establish an analytical
framework to conduct an in-depth study on the problem of vocabulary reliance in
scene text recognition. Key findings include: (1) Vocabulary reliance is
ubiquitous, i.e., all existing algorithms more or less exhibit such
characteristic; (2) Attention-based decoders prove weak in generalizing to
words outside vocabulary and segmentation-based decoders perform well in
utilizing visual features; (3) Context modeling is highly coupled with the
prediction layers. These findings provide new insights and can benefit future
research in scene text recognition. Furthermore, we propose a simple yet
effective mutual learning strategy to allow models of two families
(attention-based and segmentation-based) to learn collaboratively. This remedy
alleviates the problem of vocabulary reliance and improves the overall scene
text recognition performance.


  We study the number of measurements required for quantum process tomography
under prior information, such as a promise that the unknown channel is unitary.
We introduce the notion of an interactive observable and we show that any
unitary channel acting on a $d$-level quantum system can be uniquely identified
among all other channels (unitary or otherwise) with only $O(d^2)$ interactive
observables, as opposed to the $O(d^4)$ required for tomography of arbitrary
channels. This result generalizes, so that channels with at most $q$ Kraus
operators can be identified with only $O(qd^2)$ interactive observables. Slight
improvements can be obtained if we wish to identify such a channel only among
unital channels or among other channels with $q$ Kraus operators. These results
are proven via explicit construction of large subspaces of Hermitian matrices
with various conditions on rank, eigenvalues, and partial trace. Our
constructions are built upon various forms of totally nonsingular matrices.


  This paper explores the geometric meaning of the failure of certain kinds of
Wahl maps to surject on a general curve. Sufficient conditions for surjectivity
are given. An approach used by Voisin to study canonical Wahl maps is applied
in this direction.


  Significant progress has been made in Video Object Segmentation (VOS), the
video object tracking task in its finest level. While the VOS task can be
naturally decoupled into image semantic segmentation and video object tracking,
significantly much more research effort has been made in segmentation than
tracking. In this paper, we introduce "tracking-by-detection" into VOS which
can coherently integrate segmentation into tracking, by proposing a new
temporal aggregation network and a novel dynamic time-evolving template
matching mechanism to achieve significantly improved performance. Notably, our
method is entirely online and thus suitable for one-shot learning, and our
end-to-end trainable model allows multiple object segmentation in one forward
pass. We achieve new state-of-the-art performance on the DAVIS benchmark
without complicated bells and whistles in both speed and accuracy, with a speed
of 0.14 second per frame and J&F measure of 75.9% respectively.


  Obtaining a thermodynamically accurate phase diagram through numerical
calculations is a computationally expensive problem that is crucially important
to understanding the complex phenomena of solid state physics, such as
superconductivity. In this work we show how this type of analysis can be
significantly accelerated through the use of modern GPUs. We illustrate this
with a concrete example of free energy calculation in multi-band iron-based
superconductors, known to exhibit a superconducting state with oscillating
order parameter. Our approach can also be used for classical BCS-type
superconductors. With a customized algorithm and compiler tuning we are able to
achieve a 19x speedup compared to the CPU (119x compared to a single CPU core),
reducing calculation time from minutes to mere seconds, enabling the analysis
of larger systems and the elimination of finite size effects.


  This paper is about the following question: How many riffle shuffles mix a
deck of card for games such as blackjack and bridge? An object that comes up in
answering this question is the descent polynomial associated with pairs of
decks, where the decks are allowed to have repeated cards. We prove that the
problem of computing the descent polynomial given a pair of decks is
$#P$-complete. We also prove that the coefficients of these polynomials can be
approximated using the bell curve. However, as must be expected in view of the
$#P$-completeness result, approximations using the bell curve are not good
enough to answer our question. Some of our answers to the main question are
supported by theorems, and others are based on experiments supported by
heuristic arguments. In the introduction, we carefully discuss the validity of
our answers.


  We study explicit formula (suggested by Gamayun, Iorgov, Lisovyy) for
Painlev\'e III($D_8$) $\tau$ function in terms of Virasoro conformal blocks
with central charge $1$. The Painlev\'e equation has two types of bilinear
forms, we call them Toda-like and Okamoto-like. We obtain these equations from
the representation theory using an embedding of a direct sum of two Virasoro
algebra in a certain superalgebra. These two types of bilinear forms correspond
to Neveu-Schwarz sector and Ramond sector of this algebra. We also obtain
$\tau$ functions of algebraic solutions of Painlev\'e III($D_8$) from the
special representations of the Virasoro algebra of highest weight $(n+1/4)^2$.


  The theory of generalized locally Toeplitz (GLT) sequences is a powerful
apparatus for computing the asymptotic spectral distribution of matrices $A_n$
arising from numerical discretizations of differential equations. Indeed, when
the mesh fineness parameter $n$ tends to infinity, these matrices $A_n$ give
rise to a sequence $\{A_n\}_n$, which often turns out to be a GLT sequence. In
this paper, we extend the theory of GLT sequences in several directions: we
show that every GLT sequence enjoys a normal form, we identify the spectral
symbol of every GLT sequence formed by normal matrices, and we prove that, for
every GLT sequence $\{A_n\}_n$ formed by normal matrices and every continuous
function $f:\mathbb C\to\mathbb C$, the sequence $\{f(A_n)\}_n$ is again a GLT
sequence whose spectral symbol is $f(\kappa)$, where $\kappa$ is the spectral
symbol of $\{A_n\}_n$. In addition, using the theory of GLT sequences, we prove
a spectral distribution result for perturbed normal matrices.


  In this paper, we give the first examples of connected Polish groups that
have ample generics, answering a question of Kechris and Rosendal. We show that
any Polish group with ample generics embeds into a connected Polish group with
ample generics and that full groups of type III hyperfinite ergodic equivalence
relations have ample generics. We also sketch a proof of the following result:
the full group of any type III ergodic equivalence relation has topological
rank 2.


  Background: Although the missing covariate indicator method (MCIM) has been
shown to be biased under extreme conditions, the degree and determinants of
bias have not been formally assessed. Methods: We derived the formula for the
relative bias in the MCIM and systematically investigated conditions under
which bias arises. Results: We found that the extent of bias is independent of
both the disease rate and the exposure-outcome association, but is a function
of 5 parameters: exposure and covariate prevalences, covariate missingness
proportion, and associations of covariate with exposure and outcome. The MCIM
was unbiased when the missing covariate is a risk factor for the outcome but
not a confounder. The average median relative bias was zero across each of the
parameters over a wide range of values considered. When missingness was no
greater than 50%, less than 5% of the scenarios considered had relative bias
greater than 10%. In several analyses of the Harvard cohort studies, the MCIM
produced materially the same results as the multiple imputation method.
Conclusion: The MCIM is nearly valid almost always in settings typically
encountered in epidemiology and its continued use is recommended, unless the
covariate is missing in an extreme proportion or acts as a strong confounder.


  The dimpling of the CuO_2 planes (spacing between the O2,3 and Cu2 layers) in
YBa_2Cu_3O_x has been measured as a function of oxygen concentration and
temperature by yttrium x-ray extended-fine-structure spectroscopy (EXAFS). The
relative variations of the dimpling with doping (x=6.806-6.984) and temperature
(20-300 K) are weak (within 0.05 AA), and arise mainly from displacements of
the Cu2 atoms off the O2,3 plane towards Ba. The dimpling appears to be
connected with the transition from the underdoped to the overdoped regimes at
x=6.95, and with a characteristic temperature in the normal state, T*=150 K.


  $C^\alpha$ and $W^{1,\infty}$ estimates for the first-order and second-order
correctors in the homogenization are presented based on the translation
invariant and Li-Vogelius's gradient estimate for the second order linear
elliptic equation with piecewise smooth coefficients. If the data are smooth
enough, the error of the first-order expansion for piecewise smooth
coefficients is locally $O(\epsilon)$ in the H\"older norm; it is locally
$O(\epsilon)$ in $W^{1,\infty}$ when coefficients are Lipschitz continuous. It
can be partly extended to the nonlinear parabolic equation.


  We give a combinatorial proof of a lattice point identity involving a lattice
polygon and its dual, generalizing the formula $area(\Delta) + area(\Delta^*) =
6$ for reflexive $\Delta$. The identity is equivalent to the stringy
Libgober-Wood identity for toric log del Pezzo surfaces.


  This study examines the relationship between H.264 video compression and the
performance of an object detection network (YOLOv5). We curated a set of 50
surveillance videos and annotated targets of interest (people, bikes, and
vehicles). Videos were encoded at 5 quality levels using Constant Rate Factor
(CRF) values in the set {22,32,37,42,47}. YOLOv5 was applied to compressed
videos and detection performance was analyzed at each CRF level. Test results
indicate that the detection performance is generally robust to moderate levels
of compression; using a CRF value of 37 instead of 22 leads to significantly
reduced bitrates/file sizes without adversely affecting detection performance.
However, detection performance degrades appreciably at higher compression
levels, especially in complex scenes with poor lighting and fast-moving
targets. Finally, retraining YOLOv5 on compressed imagery gives up to a 1%
improvement in F1 score when applied to highly compressed footage.


  We study the parameter space of cnoidal waves -- the periodic solitons of the
Korteweg-de Vries equation -- from the perspective of Virasoro coadjoint
orbits. The monodromy method familiar from inverse scattering implies that
many, but not all, of these solitons are conformally equivalent to uniform
field configurations (constant coadjoint vectors). The profiles that have no
uniform representative lie in Lam\'e band gaps and are separated from the
others by bifurcation lines along which the corresponding orbits change from
elliptic to hyperbolic. We show that such bifurcations can be produced by
shoaling: wave profiles become non-uniformizable once their pointedness
parameter crosses a certain critical value (which we compute). As a by-product,
we also derive asymptotic relations between the pointedness and velocity of
cnoidal waves along orbital level curves.


  In Sanskrit, small words (morphemes) are combined to form compound words
through a process known as Sandhi. Sandhi splitting is the process of splitting
a given compound word into its constituent morphemes. Although rules governing
word splitting exists in the language, it is highly challenging to identify the
location of the splits in a compound word. Though existing Sandhi splitting
systems incorporate these pre-defined splitting rules, they have a low accuracy
as the same compound word might be broken down in multiple ways to provide
syntactically correct splits.
  In this research, we propose a novel deep learning architecture called Double
Decoder RNN (DD-RNN), which (i) predicts the location of the split(s) with 95%
accuracy, and (ii) predicts the constituent words (learning the Sandhi
splitting rules) with 79.5% accuracy, outperforming the state-of-art by 20%.
Additionally, we show the generalization capability of our deep learning model,
by showing competitive results in the problem of Chinese word segmentation, as
well.


  In this talk, an overview of the latest $R(D^{(*)})$ measurements performed
at the Belle and LHCb experiments is presented. The main approach and
methodology of each measurement is discussed, along with the current
limitations and potential improvements. Furthermore, the prospects for
$R(D^{(*)})$ measurements at Belle II and the tools developed to improve their
overall precision are also presented.


  Recent observations of high-redshift Type Ia supernovae have placed stringent
constraints on the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. We explore the implications
of these SNe observations for cosmological models in which a classically
evolving scalar field currently dominates the energy density of the Universe.
Such models have been shown to share the advantages of $\Lambda$ models:
compatibility with the spatial flatness predicted inflation; a Universe older
than the standard Einstein-de Sitter model; and, combined with cold dark
matter, predictions for large-scale structure formation in good agreement with
data from galaxy surveys. Compared to the cosmological constant, these scalar
field models are consistent with the SNe observations for a lower matter
density, $\Omega_{m0} \sim 0.2$, and a higher age, $H_0 t_0 \gtrsim 1$.
Combined with the fact that scalar field models imprint a distinctive signature
on the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, they remain currently viable and
should be testable in the near future.


  It is shown that standard quantum teleportation (SQT) with multi-qubit
resource result in fidelity $(2+C)/3$ where $C$ is concurrence of the resource
in bipartite entanglement between qubit going to receiver and rest of the
qubits. For perfect SQT, obviously, $C=1$. For a general 3-qubit resource, we
find conditions for getting perfect SQT for state expressed in any basis
states. Zha et al. [Mod. Phys. Lett. B 22, 2523-2528 (2008)], who studied
perfect SQT using 3-qubit resource, reported conditions for perfect SQT for
only those resource states which are given in the 3-qubit canonical form of
Acin representation. We show that there is an alternative easily derivable
representation which gives more generalized results. To illustrate the
difference between the two schemes, we build an example of 3-qubit entangled
state, giving perfect SQT and not included in Zha et al. results.


  We illustrate how finite-temperature charge and thermal Drude weights of
one-dimensional systems can be obtained from the relaxation of initial states
featuring global (left-right) gradients in the chemical potential or
temperature. The approach is tested for spinless interacting fermions as well
as for the Fermi-Hubbard model, and the behaviour in the vicinity of singular
points (such as half filling or isotropic chains) is discussed. We present
technical details on how to implement the calculation in practice using the
density matrix renormalization group and show that the non-equilibrium dynamics
is often less demanding to simulate numerically and features simpler
finite-time transients than the corresponding linear response current
correlators; thus, new parameter regimes can become accessible. As an
application, we determine the thermal Drude weight of the Hubbard model for
temperatures T which are an order of magnitude smaller than those reached in
the equilibrium approach. This allows us to demonstrate that at low T and half
filling, thermal transport is successively governed by spin excitations and
described quantitatively by the Bethe ansatz Drude weight of the Heisenberg
chain.


  The disk graph of a handlebody H of genus g at least 2 with m marked points
on the boundary is the graph whose vertices are isotopy classes of disks
disjoint from the marked points and where two vertices are connected by an edge
if they can be realized disjointly. We show that for m=1 the disk graph
contains quasi-isometrically embedded copies of R^2. The same holds true for
the sphere graph of the double handlebody with one marked point provided that g
is even.


  The influence of blood rheology on hemodynamic parameters is investigated
using Computational Fluid Dynamics on blood flow through the human carotid
artery. We performed three-dimensional modeling and simulation to study blood
flow through the carotid artery, which is divided into internal and exterior
parts with a decreased radius. The blood flow was classified as basic pulsatile
to simulate the human heart's rhythmic pulses. For hemodynamic modeling
viscosity of the fluid, the Carreau model was utilized with four distinct blood
instances: Anemic, diabetic, and two healthy blood types. The boundary
conditions with Carreau viscosity were applied using the Ansys Fluent
simulator, and the governing equations were solved using the finite volume
technique. Different time steps were tested for their impact on wall
deformation, strain rate, blood velocity, pressure, wall shear, and skin
friction coefficient. The hemodynamical parameters were calculated using many
cross-sectional planes along the artery. Finally, the impact of the four types
of blood cases listed above was investigated, and we discovered that each blood
case has a substantial impact on blood velocity, pressure, wall shear, and
strain rate along the artery.


  The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) very high energy gamma-ray
telescope array has added a fifth telescope of 600 m$^{2}$ mirror area to the
centre of the 4 existing telescopes, lowering its energy threshold to the
sub-100 GeV range and becoming the first operational IACT array using multiple
telescope designs. In order to properly access this low-energy range however,
some adaptation must be made to the existing event analysis. We present an
adaptation of the high-performance event reconstruction algorithm, Image
Pixelwise fit for Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (ImPACT), for performing
mono and stereo event reconstruction with the H.E.S.S. II array. The
reconstruction algorithm is based around the likelihood fitting of camera pixel
amplitudes to an expected image template, directly generated from Monte Carlo
simulations. This advanced reconstruction is combined with a multi variate
analysis based background rejection scheme to provide a sensitive and stable
analysis scheme in the sub-100 GeV gamma-ray energy range. We will present the
latest results of the ImPACT analysis on both simulated and real H.E.S.S. II
data, demonstrating the behaviour of the ImPACT analysis at the lowest
energies.


  The classical regular and partial autocorrelation functions are powerful
tools for stationary time series modelling and analysis. However, it is
increasingly recognized that many time series are not stationary and the use of
classical global autocorrelations can give misleading answers. This article
introduces two estimators of the local partial autocorrelation function and
establishes their asymptotic properties. The article then illustrates the use
of these new estimators on both simulated and real time series. The examples
clearly demonstrate the strong practical benefits of local estimators for time
series that exhibit nonstationarities.


  Recently, the extremely large magnetoresistance observed in transition metal
telluride, like WTe$_2$, attracted much attention because of the potential
applications in magnetic sensor. Here we report the observation of extremely
large magnetoresistance as 3.0$\times$10$^4$ % measured at 2 K and 9 T magnetic
field aligned along [001]-ZrSiS. The significant magnetoresistance change
(~1.4$\times$10$^4$ %) can be obtained when the magnetic field is titled from
[001] to [011]-ZrSiS. These abnormal magnetoresistance behaviors in ZrSiS can
be understood by electron-hole compensation and the open orbital of Fermi
surface. Because of these superior MR properties, ZrSiS may be used in the
novel magnetic sensors.


  Compute-in-memory (CIM) presents an attractive approach for energy-efficient
computing in data-intensive applications. However, the development of suitable
memory designs to achieve high-performance CIM remains a challenging task.
Here, we propose a cryogenic quasi-static embedded DRAM to address the
logic-memory mismatch of CIM. Guided by the re-calibrated cryogenic device
model, the designed four-transistor bit-cell achieves full-swing data storage,
low power consumption, and extended retention time at cryogenic temperatures.
Combined with the adoption of cryogenic write bitline biasing technique and
readout circuitry optimization, our 4Kb cryogenic eDRAM chip demonstrates a
1.37$\times$10$^6$ times improvement in retention time, while achieving a 75
times improvement in retention variability, compared to room-temperature
operation. Moreover, it also achieves outstanding power performance with a
retention power of 112 fW and a dynamic power of 108 $\mu$W at 4.2 K, which can
be further decreased by 7.1% and 13.6% using the dynamic voltage scaling
technique. This work reveals the great potential of cryogenic CMOS for
high-density data storage and lays a solid foundation for energy-efficient CIM
implementations.


  Threshold-linear networks consist of simple units interacting in the presence
of a threshold nonlinearity. Competitive threshold-linear networks have long
been known to exhibit multistability, where the activity of the network settles
into one of potentially many steady states. In this work, we find conditions
that guarantee the absence of steady states, while maintaining bounded
activity. These conditions lead us to define a combinatorial family of
competitive threshold-linear networks, parametrized by a simple directed graph.
By exploring this family, we discover that threshold-linear networks are
capable of displaying a surprisingly rich variety of nonlinear dynamics,
including limit cycles, quasiperiodic attractors, and chaos. In particular,
several types of nonlinear behaviors can co-exist in the same network. Our
mathematical results also enable us to engineer networks with multiple dynamic
patterns. Taken together, these theoretical and computational findings suggest
that threshold-linear networks may be a valuable tool for understanding the
relationship between network connectivity and emergent dynamics.
  The new Matlab package CTLN Basic 2.0 can be used to reproduce the
simulations in Figures 1-13. The package is available at
https://github.com/nebneuron/CTLN-Basic-2.0


  In this paper, we construct a three-phase model (that is, a system consisting
of three homogeneous regions with various scattering length densities), which
illustrate the behavior of small-angle scattering (SAS) scattering curves. Here
two phases are a deterministic fractal embedded in another deterministic mass
fractal, and they altogether are further embedded in a third phase, which can
be a solution or solid matrix. We calculate SAS intensities, derive expressions
for the crossover position (that is, the point where the power-law scattering
exponent changes) as a function of control parameters, including size,
concentration, and volumes of each phase. The corresponding SAS intensities
from these models describe a succession of power-law regimes in momentum space
where both regimes correspond to mass fractals. The models can be applied to
SAS data where the absolute value of the scattering exponent of the first
power-law regime is higher than that of the subsequent second power-law regime,
that is, the scattering curve of convex kind near the crossover position.


  Ionic transport in nanopores is a fundamentally and technologically important
problem in view of its occurrence in biological processes and its impact on
novel DNA sequencing applications. Using microscopic calculations, here we show
that ion transport may exhibit strong nonlinearities as a function of the pore
radius reminiscent of the conductance quantization steps as a function of the
transverse cross section of quantum point contacts. In the present case,
however, conductance steps originate from the break up of the hydration layers
that form around ions in aqueous solution. Once in the pore, the water
molecules form wavelike structures due to multiple scattering at the surface of
the pore walls and interference with the radial waves around the ion. We
discuss these effects as well as the conditions under which the step-like
features in the ionic conductance should be experimentally observable.


  We describe the construction of catalogues of galaxy clusters from the APM
Galaxy survey using an automated algorithm based on Abell-like selection
criteria. We investigate the effects of varying several parameters in our
selection algorithm, including the magnitude range, and radius from the cluster
centre used to estimate the cluster richnesses. We quantify the accuracy of the
photometric distance estimates by comparing with measured redshifts, and we
investigate the stability and completeness of the resulting catalogues. We find
that the angular correlation functions for different cluster catalogues are in
good agreement with one another, and are also consistent with the observed
amplitude of the spatial correlation function of rich clusters.


  Graphs and networks are used to model interactions in a variety of contexts.
There is a growing need to quickly assess the characteristics of a graph in
order to understand its underlying structure. Some of the most useful metrics
are triangle-based and give a measure of the connectedness of mutual friends.
This is often summarized in terms of clustering coefficients, which measure the
likelihood that two neighbors of a node are themselves connected. Computing
these measures exactly for large-scale networks is prohibitively expensive in
both memory and time. However, a recent wedge sampling algorithm has proved
successful in efficiently and accurately estimating clustering coefficients. In
this paper, we describe how to implement this approach in MapReduce to deal
with massive graphs. We show results on publicly-available networks, the
largest of which is 132M nodes and 4.7B edges, as well as artificially
generated networks (using the Graph500 benchmark), the largest of which has
240M nodes and 8.5B edges. We can estimate the clustering coefficient by degree
bin (e.g., we use exponential binning) and the number of triangles per bin, as
well as the global clustering coefficient and total number of triangles, in an
average of 0.33 seconds per million edges plus overhead (approximately 225
seconds total for our configuration). The technique can also be used to study
triangle statistics such as the ratio of the highest and lowest degree, and we
highlight differences between social and non-social networks. To the best of
our knowledge, these are the largest triangle-based graph computations
published to date.


  In this survey article, we present some panorama of groups acting on metric
spaces of non-positive curvature. We introduce the main examples and their
rigidity properties , we show the links between algebraic or analytic
properties of the group and geometric properties of the space. Finally, we
conclude with a few conjectures in the subject.


  We use the Holevo information in a two-dimensional conformal field theory
(CFT) with a large central charge $c$ to distinguish microstates from the
underlying thermal state. Holographically, the CFT microstates of a thermal
state are dual to black hole microstate geometries in three-dimensional anti-de
Sitter space. It was found recently that the holographic Holevo information
shows plateau behaviors at both short and long interval regions. This indicates
that the black hole microstates are indistinguishable from the thermal state by
measuring over a small region, and perfectly distinguishable over a region with
its size comparable to the whole system. In this letter, we demonstrate that
the plateaus are lifted by including the $1/c$ corrections from both the vacuum
and non-vacuum conformal families of CFT in either the canonical ensemble or
microcanonical ensemble thermal state. Our results imply that the
aforementioned indistinguishability and distinguishability of black hole
microstate geometries from the underlying black hole are spoiled by higher
order Newton constant $G_N$ corrections of quantum gravity.


  The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is the first
bolometric experiment searching for neutrinoless double beta decay that has
been able to reach the 1-ton scale. The detector consists of an array of 988
TeO2 crystals arranged in a cylindrical compact structure of 19 towers. The
construction of the experiment and, in particular, the installation of all
towers in the cryostat was completed in August 2016, followed by the cooldown
to base temperature at the beginning of 2017. The CUORE detector is now
operational and has been taking science data since Spring 2017. We present here
the initial performance of the detector and the preliminary results from the
first detector run.


  Extending the functionality of the Transformer model to accommodate longer
sequence lengths has become a critical challenge. This extension is crucial not
only for improving tasks such as language translation and long-context
processing but also for enabling novel applications like chatbots, code
generation, and multimedia content creation. The primary obstacle is the
self-attention mechanism, which scales quadratically with sequence length in
terms of computation time and memory requirements. LongLoRA proposed shifted
sparse attention (S\(^2\)-Attn), effectively enabling context extension and
leading to non-trivial computation savings with similar performance to
fine-tuning with vanilla attention. However, LongLoRA is still not as efficient
as vanilla attention, reaching only 39\% of the perplexity improvement compared
to full attention. This inefficiency is due to the cyclic shift applied within
different attention head patterns, causing either chaos in the attention head
structure or unnecessary information exchange between token groups. To address
these issues, We propose \textbf{SinkLoRA}, which features better work
partitioning. Specifically, (1) we developed SF-Attn with a segmentation and
reassembly algorithm to proportionally return cyclically shifted groups of
attention heads to their un-shifted state together with global attention of
"sink attention tokens", achieving 92\% of the perplexity improvement compared
to full attention after fine tuning, and (2) applied a SOTA KV cache
compression algorithm H$_2$O to accelerate inference. Furthermore, We conducted
supervised fine-tuning with SinkLoRA using a self collected LongAlpaca-plus
dataset. All our code, models, datasets, and demos are available at
\url{https://github.com/Dexter-GT-86/SinkLoRA}.


  We have carried out a comprehensive study of the molecular conditions and
star-forming activities in dark cloud L1174 with multi-wavelength data. Mapping
observations of L1174 in $^{13}$CO $J=2-1$ and $^{12}$CO $J=3-2$ were performed
using the KOSMA 3-meter telescope. Six molecular cores with masses ranging from
5 to 31 $M_\odot$ and sizes ranging from 0.17 to 0.39 pc are resolved. Large
area ahead of a Herbig Be star, HD 200775, is in expanding and core 1 is with
collapse signature. Large line widths of $^{13}$CO $J=2-1$ indicate the
ubiquity of turbulent motions in this region. Spectra of $^{12}$CO $J=3-2$
prevalently show conspicuously asymmetric double-peaked profiles. In a large
area, red-skewed profiles are detected and suggestive of a scenario of global
expansion. There is a large cavity around the Herbig Be star HD 200775, the
brightest star in L1174. The gas around the cavity has been severely compressed
by the stellar winds from HD 200775. Feedbacks from HD 200775 may have helped
form the molecular cores around the cavity. Seventeen 2MASS potential young
stellar objects were identified according to their 2MASS colour indices. The
spatial distribution of the these 2MASS sources indicates that some of them
have a triggered origin. All these suggest that feedbacks from a Herbig Ae/Be
star may also have the potential to trigger star forming activities.


  The realization of fundamental relations between supermassive black holes and
their host galaxies would have profound implications in astrophysics. To add
further context to studies of their co-evolution, an investigation is carried
out to gain insight as to whether quasars and their hosts at earlier epochs
follow the local relation between black hole (BH) mass and stellar velocity
dispersion. We use 584 SDSS quasars at 0.2 < z < 0.8 with black hole
measurements, and properties of their hosts from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru
Strategic Program. An inference of the stellar velocity dispersion is achieved
for each based on the stellar mass and size of the host galaxy by using the
galaxy mass fundamental plane for inactive galaxies at similar redshifts. In
agreement with past studies, quasars occupy an elevated position from the local
M_BH-sigma relation, considered as a flattening, while maintaining ratios of
M_BH/M* consistent with local values. Based on a forward-modeling of the
sample, we demonstrate that an evolving intrinsic M_BH-sigma relation can match
the observations. However, we hypothesize that these changes may be a
reflection of a non-evolving intrinsic relationship between M_BH and M*.
Reassuringly, there are signs of migration onto the local M_BH-sigma for
galaxies that are either massive, quiescent or compact. Thus, the majority of
the bulges of quasar hosts at high redshift are in a development stage and
likely to align with their black holes onto the mass scaling relation at later
times.


  We discuss the validity of the soft-virtual approximation and the threshold
expansion for the Higgs boson production cross-section at hadron colliders in
perturbative QCD up to next-to- next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO).


  Context. Mass loss is an important property in evolution models of massive
stars. As up to 90% of the massive stars have a visual or spectroscopic
companion and many of them exhibit mass exchange, mass-loss rates can be
acquired through the period study of massive binaries.
  Aims. Using our own photometric observations as well as archival data, we
look for variations in orbital periods of seven massive eclipsing binary
systems in the Cygnus OB2 association and estimate their mass-loss rates and
stellar parameters.
  Methods. We use a Bayesian parameter estimation method to simultaneously fit
the period and period change to all available data and a stellar modelling tool
to model the binary parameters from photometric and radial-velocity data.
  Results. Four out of the seven selected binaries show non-zero period change
values at two-sigma confidence level. We also report for the first time the
eclipsing nature of a star MT059.


  We show that unconstrained quadratic optimization over a Grassmannian
$\operatorname{Gr}(k,n)$ is NP-hard. Our results cover all scenarios: (i) when
$k$ and $n$ are both allowed to grow; (ii) when $k$ is arbitrary but fixed;
(iii) when $k$ is fixed at its lowest possible value $1$. We then deduce the
NP-hardness of unconstrained cubic optimization over the Stiefel manifold
$\operatorname{V}(k,n)$ and the orthogonal group $\operatorname{O}(n)$. As an
addendum we demonstrate the NP-hardness of unconstrained quadratic optimization
over the Cartan manifold, i.e., the positive definite cone
$\mathbb{S}^n_{\scriptscriptstyle++}$ regarded as a Riemannian manifold,
another popular example in manifold optimization. We will also establish the
nonexistence of $\mathrm{FPTAS}$ in all cases.


  We consider the quantization of gravity as an SL(2,C) gauge theory in terms
of Ashtekar's selfdual variables and reality conditions for the spatial metric
(RCI) and its evolution (RCII). We start from a holomorphic phase space
formulation. It is then natural to push for a quantization in terms of
holomorphic wave functions. Thus we consider holomorphic cylindrical wave
functions over SL(2,C) connections. We use an overall phase ambiguity of the
complex selfdual action to obtain Poisson brackets that mirror those of the
real theory. We then show that there is a representation of the corresponding
canonical commutation relations the space of holomorphic cylindrical functions.
We describe a class of cylindrically consistent measures that implements RCI.
We show that spin networks with SU(2) intertwiners form a basis for gauge
invariant states. They are still mutually orthogonal, but the normalisation is
different than for the Ashtekar-Lewandowski measure for SU(2). We do not
consider RCII in the present article. Work on RCII is ongoing and will be
presented elsewhere.


  This thesis presents the theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects
that support the modeling of dynamical systems (DS) by using several agents.
The modeling approach permits the assessment of properties representing order,
change, equilibrium, adaptability, and autonomy, in DS. The modeling processes
were supported by a conceptual corpus regarding systems dynamics, multi-agent
systems, graph theory, and, particularly, the information theory. Besides to
the specification of the dynamical systems as a computational network of
agents, metrics that allow characterizing and assessing the inherent complexity
of such systems were defined. As a result, properties associated with
emergence, self-organization, complexity, homeostasis and autopoiesis were
defined, formalized and measured. The validation of the underlying DS model was
carried out on discrete systems (boolean networks and cellular automata) and
ecological systems. The central contribution of this thesis was the development
of a methodological approach for DS modeling. This approach includes a larger
set of properties than in traditional studies, what allows us to deepen in
questioning essential issues associated with the DS field. All this was
achieved from a simple base of calculation and interpretation, which does not
require advanced mathematical knowledge, and facilitates their application in
different fields of science.


  Magnetic and transport properties of the perovskite-type $3d$
transition-metal oxide (La,Sr)MnO$_3$ are theoretically studied using the
double-exchange model in infinite dimension. Magnetoresistance properties as
well as the magnetic transition temperatures are in good agreement with the
experimental data.