  Planetary-mass objects and brown dwarfs at the transition
($\rm{T}_{eff}\sim1300$\,K) from relatively red L dwarfs to bluer mid-T dwarfs
show enhanced spectrophotometric variability. Multi-epoch observations support
atmospheric planetary-scale (Kelvin or Rossby) waves as the primary source of
this variability; however, large spots associated with the precipitation of
silicate and metal clouds have also been theorized and suggested by Doppler
imaging. We applied both wave and spotted models to fit near-infrared (NIR),
multi-band ($Y$/$J$/$H$/$K$) photometry of SIMP\,J013656.5+093347 (hereafter
SIMP0136), collected at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope using the Wide-field
InfraRed Camera. SIMP0136 is a planetary-mass object (12.7$\pm1.0 \ \rm{M_J}$)
at the L/T transition (T2$\pm0.5$) known to exhibit light curve evolution over
multiple rotational periods. We measure the maximum peak-to-peak variability of
$6.17\pm0.46\%$, $6.45\pm0.33\%$, $6.51\pm0.42\%$, and $4.33\pm0.38\%$ in the
$Y$, $J$, $H$, and $K$ bands respectively, and find evidence that wave models
are preferred for all four NIR bands. Furthermore, we determine the spot size
necessary to reproduce the observed variations is larger than the Rossby
deformation radius and Rhines scale, which is unphysical. Through the
correlation between light curves produced by the waves and associated color
variability, we find evidence of planetary-scale, wave-induced cloud modulation
and breakup, similar to Jupiter's atmosphere and supported by general
circulation models. We also detect a $93.8^{\circ}\pm7.4^{\circ}$
($12.7\sigma$) phase shift between the $H-K$ and $J-H$ color time series,
providing evidence for complex vertical cloud structure in SIMP0136's
atmosphere.


  Carbon emissions are currently attributed to producers although a
consumption-aware accounting is advocated. After constructing the Carbon Trade
Network, we trace the flow of emissions over the past two decades. Our analysis
reveals the presence of an unexpected, positive feedback: despite individual
exchanges have become less carbon-intensive, the increase in trading activity
has ultimately risen the amount of emissions directed from `net exporters'
towards `net importers'. Adopting a consumption-aware accounting would
re-distribute responsibility between the two groups, possibly reducing
disparities.


  We establish, by elementary means, the existence of a cofibrantly generated
monoidal model structure on the category of operads. By slicing over a suitable
operad the classical Rezk model structure on the category of small categories
is recovered.


  We study option pricing and hedging with uncertainty about a Black-Scholes
reference model which is dynamically recalibrated to the market price of a
liquidly traded vanilla option. For dynamic trading in the underlying asset and
this vanilla option, delta-vega hedging is asymptotically optimal in the limit
for small uncertainty aversion. The corresponding indifference price
corrections are determined by the disparity between the vegas, gammas, vannas,
and volgas of the non-traded and the liquidly traded options.


  The advantages of pre-trained large language models (LLMs) are apparent in a
variety of language processing tasks. But can a language model's knowledge be
further harnessed to effectively disambiguate objects and navigate
decision-making challenges within the realm of robotics? Our study reveals the
LLM's aptitude for solving complex decision making challenges that are often
previously modeled by Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs).
A pivotal focus of our research is the object disambiguation capability of
LLMs. We detail the integration of an LLM into a tabletop environment
disambiguation task, a decision making problem where the robot's task is to
discern and retrieve a user's desired object from an arbitrarily large and
complex cluster of objects. Despite multiple query attempts with zero-shot
prompt engineering (details can be found in the Appendix), the LLM struggled to
inquire about features not explicitly provided in the scene description. In
response, we have developed a few-shot prompt engineering system to improve the
LLM's ability to pose disambiguating queries. The result is a model capable of
both using given features when they are available and inferring new relevant
features when necessary, to successfully generate and navigate down a precise
decision tree to the correct object--even when faced with identical options.


  We tackle the task of scene flow estimation from point clouds. Given a source
and a target point cloud, the objective is to estimate a translation from each
point in the source point cloud to the target, resulting in a 3D motion vector
field. Previous dominant scene flow estimation methods require complicated
coarse-to-fine or recurrent architectures as a multi-stage refinement. In
contrast, we propose a significantly simpler single-scale one-shot global
matching to address the problem. Our key finding is that reliable feature
similarity between point pairs is essential and sufficient to estimate accurate
scene flow. We thus propose to decompose the feature extraction step via a
hybrid local-global-cross transformer architecture which is crucial to accurate
and robust feature representations. Extensive experiments show that the
proposed Global Matching Scene Flow (GMSF) sets a new state-of-the-art on
multiple scene flow estimation benchmarks. On FlyingThings3D, with the presence
of occlusion points, GMSF reduces the outlier percentage from the previous best
performance of 27.4% to 5.6%. On KITTI Scene Flow, without any fine-tuning, our
proposed method shows state-of-the-art performance. On the Waymo-Open dataset,
the proposed method outperforms previous methods by a large margin. The code is
available at https://github.com/ZhangYushan3/GMSF.


  Mechanical ventilators sustain life of patients that are unable to breathe
(sufficiently) on their own. The aim of this paper is to improve pressure
tracking performance of mechanical ventilators for a wide variety of sedated
patients. This is achieved by utilizing the repetitive nature of sedated
ventilation through repetitive control. A systematic design procedure of a
repetitive controller for mechanical ventilation is presented. Thereafter, the
controller is implemented in an experimental setup showing superior tracking
performance for a variety of patients.


  Two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials provide the possibility of
realizing heterostructures with coveted properties. Here, we report a
theoretical investigation of the vdW magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) based on
VSe2/MoS2 heterojunction, where the VSe2 monolayer acts as the ferromagnet with
the room-temperature ferromagnetism. We propose the concept of spin-orbit
torque (SOT) vdW MTJ with reliable reading and efficient writing operations.
The non-equilibrium study reveals a large tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of
846 % at 300 Kelvin, identifying significantly its parallel and anti-parallel
states. Thanks to the strong spin Hall conductivity of MoS2, SOT is promising
for the magnetization switching of VSe2 free layer. Quantum-well states come
into being and resonances appear in MTJ, suggesting that the voltage control
can adjust transport properties effectively. The SOT vdW MTJ based on VSe2/MoS2
provides desirable performance and experimental feasibility, offering new
opportunities for 2D spintronics.


  We report the best figure-of-merit achieved for an internal nuclear polarized
hydrogen gas target and a Monte Carlo simulation of spin-exchange optical
pumping. The dimensions of the apparatus were optimized using the simulation
and the experimental results were in good agreement with the simulation. The
best result achieved for this target was 50.5% polarization with 58.2% degree
of dissociation of the sample beam exiting the storage cell at a hydrogen flow
rate of $1.1\times 10^{18}$ atoms/s.


  We explore models and phenomenology of a photophobic axion-like particle
(ALP), an axion whose coupling to photons is maximally suppressed without
fine-tuning of the underlying parameters. We demonstrate that photophobia can
be a natural UV property of ALP models and determine the irreducible coupling
of photophobic ALPs to photons induced by violations of the axion shift
symmetry. The signatures of photophobic axions are radically different from
those of typical ALPs and are of particular interest for collider-based
experiments, for which Standard Model triboson measurements provide a
significant probe at higher masses. A variety of terrestrial and astrophysical
measurements constrain the parameter space of photophobic ALPs, though bounds
are typically much weaker compared to typical ALPs. We discuss implications for
particle production relaxion models based on photophobic ALPs, finding that
they are in mild tension with existing experimental constraints.


  In two-dimensional (2D) systems, the melting from a solid to an isotropic
liquid can occur via an intermediate phase that retains orientational order.
However, in 2D superconducting vortex lattices, the effect of orientational
correlations on transport, and their interplay with disorder remain open
questions. Here we study a 2D weakly pinned vortex system in amorphous MoGe
films over an extensive range of temperatures ($\bm{T}$) and perpendicular
magnetic fields ($\bm{H}$) using linear and nonlinear transport measurements.
We find that, at low fields, the resistivity obeys the Vogel-Fulcher-Tamman
(VFT) form, $\bm{\rho(T)\propto\exp[-{W}(H)/(T-T_0(H))]}$, characteristic of
fragile glasses. As $\bm{H}$ increases, $\bm{T_0(H)}$ is suppressed to zero,
and a standard vortex liquid behavior consistent with a $\bm{T=0}$
superconducting transition is observed. Our findings, supported also by
simulations, suggest that the presence of orientational correlations gives rise
to a heterogeneous dynamics responsible for the VFT behavior. The effects of
quenched disorder become dominant at high $\bm{H}$, where a crossover to a
strong-glass behavior is observed. This is a new insight into the dynamics of
melting in 2D systems with competing orders.


  Rapid advances in genetics, genomics, and imaging have given insight into the
molecular and cellular basis of behaviour in a variety of model organisms with
unprecedented detail and scope. It is increasingly routine to isolate
behavioural mutants, clone and characterise mutant genes, and discern the
molecular and neural basis for a behavioural phenotype. Conversely, reverse
genetic approaches have made it possible to straightforwardly identify genes of
interest in whole-genome sequences and generate mutants that can be subjected
to phenotypic analysis. In this latter approach, it is the phenotyping that
presents the major bottleneck; when it comes to connecting phenotype to
genotype in freely behaving animals, analysis of behaviour itself remains
superficial and time consuming. However, many proof-of-principle studies of
automated behavioural analysis over the last decade have poised the field on
the verge of exciting developments that promise to begin closing this gap.
  In the broadest sense, our goal in this chapter is to explore what we can
learn about the genes involved in neural function by carefully observing
behaviour. This approach is rooted in model organism genetics but shares ideas
with ethology and neuroscience, as well as computer vision and bioinformatics.
After introducing C. elegans as a model, we will survey the research that has
led to the current state of the art in worm behavioural phenotyping and present
current research that is transforming our approach to behavioural genetics.


  We report on the crystal structure, physical properties, and electronic
structure calculations for the ternary pnictide compound EuCr2As2. X-ray
diffraction studies confirmed that EuCr2As2 crystalizes in the ThCr2Si2-type
tetragonal structure (space group I4/mmm). The Eu ions are in a stable divalent
state in this compound. Eu moments in EuCr2As2 order magnetically below Tm = 21
K. A sharp increase in the magnetic susceptibility below Tm and the positive
value of the paramagnetic Curie temperature obtained from the Curie-Weiss fit
suggest dominant ferromagnetic interactions. The heat capacity exhibits a sharp
{\lambda}-shape anomaly at Tm, confirming the bulk nature of the magnetic
transition. The extracted magnetic entropy at the magnetic transition
temperature is consistent with the theoretical value Rln(2S+1) for S = 7/2 of
the Eu2+ ion. The temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity
\r{ho}(T) shows metallic behavior along with an anomaly at 21 K. In addition,
we observe a reasonably large negative magneto-resistance (~ -24%) at lower
temperature. Electronic structure calculations for EuCr2As2 reveal a moderately
high density of states of Cr-3d orbitals at the Fermi energy, indicating that
the nonmagnetic state of Cr is unstable against magnetic order. Our density
functional calculations for EuCr2As2 predict a G-type AFM order in the Cr
sublattice. The electronic structure calculations suggest a weak interlayer
coupling of the Eu moments.


  We define and study certain integrable lattice models with non-compact
quantum group symmetry (the modular double of U_q(sl_2)) including an
integrable lattice regularization of the sinh-Gordon model and a non-compact
version of the XXZ model. Their fundamental R-matrices are constructed in terms
of the non-compact quantum dilogarithm. Our choice of the quantum group
representations naturally ensures self-adjointness of the Hamiltonian and the
higher integrals of motion. These models are studied with the help of the
separation of variables method. We show that the spectral problem for the
integrals of motion can be reformulated as the problem to determine a subset
among the solutions to certain finite difference equations (Baxter equation and
quantum Wronskian equation) which is characterized by suitable analytic and
asymptotic properties. A key technical tool is the so-called Q-operator, for
which we give an explicit construction. Our results allow us to establish some
connections to related results and conjectures on the sinh-Gordon theory in
continuous space-time. Our approach also sheds some light on the relations
between massive and massless models (in particular, the sinh-Gordon and
Liouville theories) from the point of view of their integrable structures.


  We present Perceiver-VL, a vision-and-language framework that efficiently
handles high-dimensional multimodal inputs such as long videos and text.
Powered by the iterative latent cross-attention of Perceiver, our framework
scales with linear complexity, in contrast to the quadratic complexity of
self-attention used in many state-of-the-art transformer-based models. To
further improve the efficiency of our framework, we also study applying
LayerDrop on cross-attention layers and introduce a mixed-stream architecture
for cross-modal retrieval. We evaluate Perceiver-VL on diverse video-text and
image-text benchmarks, where Perceiver-VL achieves the lowest GFLOPs and
latency while maintaining competitive performance. In addition, we also provide
comprehensive analyses of various aspects of our framework, including
pretraining data, scalability of latent size and input size, dropping
cross-attention layers at inference to reduce latency, modality aggregation
strategy, positional encoding, and weight initialization strategy. Our code and
checkpoints are available at: https://github.com/zinengtang/Perceiver_VL


  Conservative mechanism is a desirable property in decision-making problems
which balance the tradeoff between the exploration and exploitation. We propose
the novel \emph{conservative contextual combinatorial cascading bandit
($C^4$-bandit)}, a cascading online learning game which incorporates the
conservative mechanism. At each time step, the learning agent is given some
contexts and has to recommend a list of items but not worse than the base
strategy and then observes the reward by some stopping rules. We design the
$C^4$-UCB algorithm to solve the problem and prove its n-step upper regret
bound for two situations: known baseline reward and unknown baseline reward.
The regret in both situations can be decomposed into two terms: (a) the upper
bound for the general contextual combinatorial cascading bandit; and (b) a
constant term for the regret from the conservative mechanism. We also improve
the bound of the conservative contextual combinatorial bandit as a by-product.
Experiments on synthetic data demonstrate its advantages and validate our
theoretical analysis.


  Background Survival extrapolation is essential in the cost-effectiveness
analysis to quantify the lifetime survival benefit associated with a new
intervention, due to the restricted duration of randomized controlled trials
(RCTs). Current approaches of extrapolation often assume that the treatment
effect observed in the trial can continue indefinitely, which is unrealistic
and may have a huge impact on decisions for resource allocation. Objective We
introduce a novel methodology as a possible solution to alleviate the problem
of performing survival extrapolation with heavily censored data from clinical
trials. Method The main idea is to mix a flexible model (e.g., Cox
semi-parametric) to fit as well as possible the observed data and a parametric
model encoding assumptions on the expected behaviour of underlying long-term
survival. The two are "blended" into a single survival curve that is identical
with the Cox model over the range of observed times and gradually approaching
the parametric model over the extrapolation period based on a weight function.
The weight function regulates the way two survival curves are blended,
determining how the internal and external sources contribute to the estimated
survival over time. Results A 4-year follow-up RCT of rituximab in combination
with fludarabine and cyclophosphamide v. fludarabine and cyclophosphamide alone
for the first-line treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia is used to
illustrate the method. Conclusion Long-term extrapolation from immature trial
data may lead to significantly different estimates with various modelling
assumptions. The blending approach provides sufficient flexibility, allowing a
wide range of plausible scenarios to be considered as well as the inclusion of
genuine external information, based e.g. on hard data or expert opinion. Both
internal and external validity can be carefully examined.


  The most luminous galaxies in the present Universe are found at the centers
of the most massive dark matter haloes, rich galaxy clusters. In the LCDM
cosmology, such massive halo cores are present at redshift z=6 with a comoving
number density (as a function of mass interior to ~10 kpc) that is comparable
to today's value. The identity of the matter in these central regions is,
however, predicted to change as major mergers bring together stars and dark
matter from initially well separated sub-units. We use N-body simulations to
investigate how these mergers push pre-existing matter outwards in the dominant
galaxy while preserving the inner density profile of collisionless matter. It
appears that the central regions of large galaxies end up dominated by stars
formed in a number of dense cores, well before the last major mergers. The
density profile of collisionless matter (stars and dark matter combined) in
these central regions appears to be stable and to have attractor-like behavior
under merging. This suggests that the baryon loading associated with
dissipative contraction and star formation may be erased as subsequent mergers
drive the mass distribution back to a universal profile. Such suppression of
the effects of baryon loading, along with the early assembly of mass
concentrations, may help resolve some apparent challenges to the CDM model for
structure formation.


  The strange quark content of the proton is probed through the measurement of
the production cross section for a W boson and a charm (c) quark in
proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analysis
uses a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138
fb$^{-1}$ collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The W bosons are
identified through their leptonic decays to an electron or a muon, and a
neutrino. Charm jets are tagged using the presence of a muon or a secondary
vertex inside the jet. The W+c production cross section and the cross section
ratio $R^\pm_\text{c}$ = $\sigma$(W$^+$+$\bar{\text{c}}$) /
$\sigma$(W$^-$+$\text{c}$) are measured inclusively and differentially as
functions of the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the lepton
originating from the W boson decay. The precision of the measurements is
improved with respect to previous studies, reaching 1% in $R^\pm_\text{c}$. The
precision of the measurements is improved with respect to previous studies,
reaching 1% in $R^\pm_\text{c}$ = 0.950 $\pm$ 0.005 (stat) $\pm$ 0.010 (syst).
The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions up to
next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.


  In this paper we give a generalisation of the Radius Rigidity theorem of
F.Wilhelm. This is done by showing that if a Riemannian submersion of $S^{15}$
with 7-dimensional fibres has at least one fibre which is a great sphere then
all the fibres are so. Some weaker than known conditions which force the
existence of such a fibre are also discussed.


  We show that the variational energy principle of multi-region relaxed
magnetohydrodynamic (MRxMHD) model can be used to predict finite-pressure
linear tearing instabilities. In this model, the plasma volume is sliced into
sub-volumes separated by "ideal interfaces", and in each volume the magnetic
field relaxes to a Taylor state where the pressure gradient $\nabla p = 0$. The
MRxMHD model is implemented in the SPEC code so that the equilibrium solution
in each region is computed while the preserving force balance across the
interfaces. As SPEC computes the Hessian matrix (a discretized stability
matrix), the stability of an MRxMHD equilibrium can also be computed with SPEC.
In this article, using SPEC, we investigate the effect of local pressure
gradients and the $\nabla p = 0$ in the vicinity of the resonant surface of a
tearing mode. For low beta plasma, we have been able to illustrate a
relationship between the resistive singular layer theory [Coppi et al. (1966)
Nucl. Fusion 6 101, Glasser et al. The Physics of Fluids 18, 875-888 (1975)],
and the MRxMHD model. Within the singular layer, the volume-averaged magnetic
helicity and the flux-averaged toroidal flux are shown to be the invariants for
the linear tearing modes in SPEC simulations. Our technique to compute MRxMHD
stability is first tested numerically in cylindrical tokamak and its
application in toroidal geometry is demonstrated. We demonstrate an agreement
between the stability boundary obtained with SPEC simulation and the resistive
inner layer theories.


  We give conditions which imply that a complete noncompact manifold with
quadratic curvature decay has finite topological type. In particular, we find
links between the topology of a manifold with quadractic curvature decay and
some properties of the asymptotic cones of such a manifold.


  Impurity ions with orbitally degenerate ground electronic configuration
embedded in metals are subjects to both the Kondo effect and the Jahn-Teller
instability. While increasing the Jahn-Teller coupling, one passes, from the
region of parameters where the perturbation theory is applicable, through a
complicated intermediate region, to a region where phonons, localized electrons
and conduction electrons form a coherent state.


  A geometric graph is a combinatorial graph, endowed with a geometry that is
inherited from its embedding in a Euclidean space. Formulation of a meaningful
measure of (dis-)similarity in both the combinatorial and geometric structures
of two such geometric graphs is a challenging problem in pattern recognition.
We study two notions of distance measures for geometric graphs, called the
geometric edit distance (GED) and geometric graph distance (GGD). While the
former is based on the idea of editing one graph to transform it into the other
graph, the latter is inspired by inexact matching of the graphs. For decades,
both notions have been lending themselves well as measures of similarity
between attributed graphs. If used without any modification, however, they fail
to provide a meaningful distance measure for geometric graphs -- even cease to
be a metric. We have curated their associated cost functions for the context of
geometric graphs. Alongside studying the metric properties of GED and GGD, we
investigate how the two notions compare. We further our understanding of the
computational aspects of GGD by showing that the distance is
$\mathcal{NP}$-hard to compute, even if the graphs are planar and arbitrary
cost coefficients are allowed.


  We provide a complete characterization of the astrophysical properties of the
$\sigma$ Ori Aa,Ab,B hierarchical triple system, and an improved set of orbital
parameters for the highly eccentric $\sigma$ Ori Aa,Ab spectroscopic binary.
  We compiled a spectroscopic dataset comprising 90 high-resolution spectra
covering a total time span of 1963 days. We applied the Lehman-Filh\'es method
for a detailed orbital analysis of the radial velocity curves and performed a
combined quantitative spectroscopic analysis of the {$\sigma$ Ori Aa,Ab,B}
system by means of the stellar atmosphere code FASTWIND. We used our own plus
other available information on photometry and distance to the system for
measuring the radii, luminosities, and spectroscopic masses of the three
components. We also inferred evolutionary masses and stellar ages using the
Bayesian code BONNSAI.
  The orbital analysis of the new radial velocity curves led to a very accurate
orbital solution of the $\sigma$ Ori Aa,Ab pair. We provided indirect arguments
indicating that $\sigma$ Ori B is a fast rotating early-B dwarf. The
FASTWIND+BONNSAI analysis showed that the Aa,Ab pair contains the hottest and
most massive components of the triple system while $\sigma$ Ori B is a bit
cooler and less massive. The derived stellar ages of the inner pair are
intriguingly younger than the one widely accepted for the $\sigma$ Orionis
cluster, at 3$\pm$1 Ma.
  The outcome of this study will be of key importance for a precise
determination of the distance to the $\sigma$ Orionis cluster, the
interpretation of the strong X-ray emission detected for $\sigma$ Ori Aa,Ab,B,
and the investigation of the formation and evolution of multiple massive
stellar systems and substellar objects.


  We propose a new optimization algorithm for Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL)
called SpicyMKL, which is applicable to general convex loss functions and
general types of regularization. The proposed SpicyMKL iteratively solves
smooth minimization problems. Thus, there is no need of solving SVM, LP, or QP
internally. SpicyMKL can be viewed as a proximal minimization method and
converges super-linearly. The cost of inner minimization is roughly
proportional to the number of active kernels. Therefore, when we aim for a
sparse kernel combination, our algorithm scales well against increasing number
of kernels. Moreover, we give a general block-norm formulation of MKL that
includes non-sparse regularizations, such as elastic-net and \ellp -norm
regularizations. Extending SpicyMKL, we propose an efficient optimization
method for the general regularization framework. Experimental results show that
our algorithm is faster than existing methods especially when the number of
kernels is large (> 1000).


  At high energy physics experiments, processing billions of records of
structured numerical data from collider events to a few statistical summaries
is a common task. The data processing is typically more complex than standard
query languages allow, such that custom numerical codes are used. At present,
these codes mostly operate on individual event records and are parallelized in
multi-step data reduction workflows using batch jobs across CPU farms. Based on
a simplified top quark pair analysis with CMS Open Data, we demonstrate that it
is possible to carry out significant parts of a collider analysis at a rate of
around a million events per second on a single multicore server with optional
GPU acceleration. This is achieved by representing HEP event data as
memory-mappable sparse arrays of columns, and by expressing common analysis
operations as kernels that can be used to process the event data in parallel.
We find that only a small number of relatively simple functional kernels are
needed for a generic HEP analysis. The approach based on columnar processing of
data could speed up and simplify the cycle for delivering physics results at
HEP experiments. We release the \texttt{hepaccelerate} prototype library as a
demonstrator of such methods.


  We used exact diagonalization of small clusters and exact results in various
limits to determine the phase diagram and the critical exponents of the one
dimensional (1D) $U-V$ model at quarter-filling. We found an instability of the
Luttinger liquid to a charge-density wave (CDW) insulator across a boundary
going from ($U$,$V$) =($+\infty$,$2t$) to ($4t$,$+\infty$). In the metallic
phase, the dominant fluctuations are superconducting if $V$ is large enough and
spin-density wave (SDW) otherwise. In the latter case, the critical exponent
$\alpha$ of the momentum distribution does not exceed 9/16. The relevance of
these results to 1D organic conductors is discussed.


  Web usability is continuing to be a pressing problem. For number of years
researchers have been developed tools for doing automatic web usability
testing. This study uses our own PHP, and MySQL based tool AWebHUT: Automated
Web Homepage Usability Tester to evaluate web usability of full Dmoz
(www.dmoz.org) Asia web sites (45126 on time stamp 2011-12-03 04:12:46 GMT).
The tool uses an extensive automated quantitative analysis of XHTML source code
of homepages against seventeen organised web usability guidelines. The
automated quantitative approach is effective on large scale to achieve better
usability. The AWebHUT uses four web usability levels such as N: Neutral, V:
Violate, R: Respect, and E: Error to evaluate web usability. The main objective
of the study is to produce data which is used to answer research questions, (1)
Are there any categories of web sites which have usability problems? Which
ones? and (2) Are there any categories in which the usability is typically
higher? Why? The findings were indicated that all Asia categories have
usability problems. Furthermore, there are four web sites which have highest
web usability problem with violation percentage 71. One step further, the Asia
category: Weather has highest usability problems with 42.2819 as the average of
the violation percentage. The category Weather uses tables and images,
considerable amount of those were not satisfying web usability guidelines which
relates to tables and images. One step further, the Asia wants to get the same
level of usability as North America, Europe, and Australia therefore it is
essential to have an automated web usability evaluation in Asia web sites to
identify web usability problems which are important for improving Asia web
sites.


  We sketch a relation between two crucial, yet independent, fields in quantum
information research, viz. quantum decoherence and quantum cryptography. We
investigate here how the standard cryptographic assumption of shielded
laboratory, stating that data generated by a secure quantum device remain
private unless explicitly published, is disturbed by the einselection mechanism
of quantum Darwinism explaining the measurement process by interaction with the
external environment. We illustrate the idea with a paradigmatic example of a
quantum random number generator compromised by an analog of the Van Eck
phreaking. In particular, we derive a trade-off relation between eavesdropper's
guessing probability $P_{guess}$ and the collective decoherence factor $\Gamma$
of the simple form $P_{guess} + \Gamma \geq 1$.


  (Abridged) We derive the structure of the Galactic stellar Warp and Flare
using 2MASS RC and RGB stars, selected at mean heliocentric distances of 3, 7
and 17 kpc.
  Our results are: (i) a clear stellar warp signature is derived for the 3
selected rings; (ii) the derived stellar warp is consistent (both in amplitude
and phase-angle) with that for the Galactic interstellar dust and HI gas; (iii)
the Sun seems not to fall on the line of nodes. The stellar warp phase-angle
orientation (+15 degrees) is close to the orientation angle of the Galactic bar
and this produces an asymmetric warp for the inner rings; (iv) a
Northern/Southern warp symmetry is observed only for the ring at 17 kpc; (v)
treating a mixture of thin and thick disk populations we trace the disk flaring
and derive a constant scale-height (~0.65 kpc) within R(GC)~15 kpc. Further
out, the disk flaring increase gradually reaching a mean scale-height of ~1.5
kpc at R(GC)~23 kpc; and (vi) these results provide further robust evidence
that there is no disk radial truncation at R(GC)~14 kpc.
  In the particular case of the Canis Major over-density we confirm its
coincidence with the Southern stellar maximum warp occurring near l=240. We
present evidence to conclude that all observed parameters (e.g. number density,
radial velocities, proper motion etc) of CMa are consistent with it being a
normal Milky Way outer-disk population, thereby leaving no justification for a
more complex interpretations of its origin. The present analysis does not
provide a conclusive test of the structure or origin of the Monoceros Ring.
Nevertheless, we show that a warped flared Milky Way contributes significantly
at the locations of the Monoceros Ring.


  Images and low-resolution spectra of the near-Earth Jupiter family comet
(JFC) 249P/LINEAR in the visible range obtained with the instrument OSIRIS in
the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias on January 3, 4, 6 and February 6, 2016 are
presented, together with a series of images obtained with the 0.4m telescope of
the Great Shefford Observatory. The reflectance spectrum of 249P is similar to
that of a B-type asteroid. The comet has an absolute (visual) nuclear magnitude
$H_V=17.0\pm 0.4$, which corresponds to a radius of about 1-1.3 km for a
geometric albedo $\sim 0.04-0.07$. From the analysis of GTC images using a
Monte Carlo dust tail code we find that the time of maximum dust ejection rate
was around 1.6 days before perihelion. We may be in front of a new class of
near-Earth JFC whose source region is not the distant trans-neptunian
population, but much closer in the asteroid belt. Therefore, 249P/LINEAR may be
a near-Earth counterpart of the so-called main-belt comets or active asteroids.


  We propose a model to account for the bursts from soft gamma repeaters (SGRs)
and anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) in which quantum electrodynamics (QED) plays
a vital role. In our theory, that we term ``fast-mode breakdown,''
magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves that are generated near the surface of a
neutron star and propagate outward through the magnetosphere will be modified
by the polarization of the vacuum. For neutron star magnetic fields
$B_\rmscr{NS} \gtrsim B_\rmscr{QED} \approx 4.4 \times 10^{13}$ G, the
interaction of the wave fields with the vacuum produces non-linearities in fast
MHD waves that can steepen in a manner akin to the growth of hydrodynamic
shocks. Under certain conditions, fast modes can develop field discontinuities
on scales comparable to an electron Compton wavelength, at which point the wave
energy will be dissipated through electron-positron pair production. We show
that this process operates if the magnetic field of the neutron star is
sufficiently strong and the ratio of the wavelength of the fast mode to its
amplitude is sufficiently small, in which case the wave energy will be
efficiently converted into an extended pair-plasma fireball. The radiative
output from this fireball will consist of hard X-rays and soft $\gamma$-rays,
with a spectrum similar to those seen in bursts from SGRs and AXPs (abridged).


  In practice, data often contain discrete variables. But most of the popular
nonparametric estimation methods have been developed in a purely continuous
framework. A common trick among practitioners is to make discrete variables
continuous by adding a small amount of noise. We show that this approach is
justified if the noise distribution belongs to a certain class. In this case,
any estimator developed in a purely continuous framework extends naturally to
the mixed data setting. Estimators defined that way will be called continuous
convolution estimators. They are extremely easy to implement and their
asymptotic properties transfer directly from the continuous to the mixed data
setting.


  We report on the experimental observation of a simultaneous threefold
wavelength and spatial conversion process at telecommunication wavelengths
taking place in a 6-LP-mode graded-index few-mode fiber. The physical mechanism
is based on parallel and phase-matched frequency-degenerated intermodal
four-wave mixing (FD-IFWM) phenomena occurring between the fundamental mode and
higher-order spatial modes. More precisely, a single high-power
frequency-degenerated pump wave is simultaneously injected in the four spatial
modes LP01, LP11, LP02 and LP31 of a 1.8-km long graded-index few-mode fiber
together with three independent signals in the fundamental mode. By means of
three parallel phase-matched FD-IFWM interactions, these initial signals are
then simultaneously spatially and frequency converted from the fundamental mode
to specific high-order modes. The influence of the differential modal group
delay is also investigated and shows that the walk-off between the spatially
multiplexed signals significantly limits the bandwidth of the conversion
process for telecom applications.


  The $U(1)$ extensions of the Standard Model contain a heavy neutral gauge
boson $Z^\prime$. If leptophobic, the boson can evade the stringent bounds from
the dilepton resonance searches. We consider two theoretically well-motivated
examples of leptophobic $U(1)$ extensions in which the $Z'$ decays to
right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) with substantial branchings. The coexistence of a
leptophobic $Z^\prime$ and the RHNs opens up a new possibility of searching for
these particles simultaneously through the production of a $Z^\prime$ at the
LHC and its decay to a RHN pair. For this decay to occur, the RHNs need to be
lighter than the $Z^\prime$. Hence, we study this process in an inverse seesaw
setup where the RHNs can be in the TeV range. However, in this case, they have
a pseudo-Dirac nature, i.e., a RHN pair would produce only opposite-sign lepton
pairs, as opposed to the Majorana-type neutrinos, which can produce both same-
and opposite-sign lepton pairs. Hence, the final state we study has a
same-flavour opposite-sign lepton pair plus hadronically-decaying boosted $W$
bosons. Our analysis shows that the high luminosity LHC can discover a
TeV-scale leptophobic $Z^\prime$ decaying via a RHN pair in a wide range of
available parameters. Interestingly, large parameter regions beyond the reach
of future dijet-resonance searches can be probed exclusively through our
channel.


  In this article, we investigate the wave equation in spiral geometry and
study the modes of vibrations of a one-dimensional (1-D) string in spiral
shape. Here we show that the problem of wave propagation along a spiral can be
reduced to Bessel differential equation and hence, very closely related to the
problem of radial waves of two-dimensional (2-D) vibrating membrane in circular
geometry.


  We report on the first detection of linearly polarized x-ray emission from an
ultra-magnetized neutron star with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer
(IXPE). The IXPE 35 observations of the anomalous x-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61
reveal a linear polarization degree of $(12\pm 1)\%$ throughout the IXPE 2--8
keV band. We detect a substantial variation of the polarization with energy:
the degree is $(14\pm 1)\%$ at 2--4 keV and $(41\pm 7)\%$ at 5.5--8 keV, while
it drops below the instrumental sensitivity around 4--5 keV, where the
polarization angle swings by $\sim 90^\circ$. The IXPE observations give us
completely new information about the properties of the neutron star surface and
magnetosphere and lend further support to the presence of the quantum
mechanical effect of vacuum birefringence.


  The paper consider regulous functions on the real affine space
$\mathbb{R}^N$. We shall study some algebraic properties of the ring of those
functions. It is presented a proof of the regulous version of Nullstellensatz
based on the substitution property and the Artin-Lang property for the
considered function ring. We prove that every maximal ideal in the ring of
regulous functions on $\mathbb{R}^N$ when $N\geq 2$ is not finitely generated.
Finally, we extend the latter result to an arbitrary, smooth, real affine
algebraic variety of dimension $d\geq 2$.


  We evaluate all two-body decay modes of the gluino, in the Minimal
Supersymmetric Standard Model with complex parameters (cMSSM). This constitutes
an important step in the cascade decays of SUSY particles at the LHC. The
evaluation is based on a full one-loop calculation of all two-body decay
channels, also including hard QED and QCD radiation. The dependence of the
gluino decay to a scalar quark and a quark on the relevant cMSSM parameters is
analyzed numerically. We find sizable contributions to the decay widths and
branching ratios. They are, roughly of O(5%), but can go up to +-10% or higher,
where the pure SUSY QCD contributions alone can give an insufficient
approximation to the full one-loop result. Therefore the full corrections are
important for the correct interpretation of gluino decays at the LHC. The
results will be implemented into the Fortran code FeynHiggs.


  Interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy is a powerful tool for
label-free sensitive detection and imaging of nanoparticles to high
spatio-temporal resolution. As it was born out of detection principles central
to conventional microscopy, we begin by surveying the historical development of
the microscope to examine how the exciting possibility for interferometric
scattering microscopy with sensitivities sufficient to observe single molecules
has become a reality. We discuss the theory of interferometric detection and
also issues relevant to achieving a high detection sensitivity and speed. A
showcase of numerous applications and avenues of novel research across various
disciplines that iSCAT microscopy has opened up is also presented.


  Auger electrons emitted after nuclear decay have potential application in
targeted cancer therapy. For this purpose it is important to know the Auger
electron yield per nuclear decay. In this work we describe a measurement of the
ratio of the number of conversion electrons (emitted as part of the nuclear
decay process) to the number of Auger electrons (emitted as part of the atomic
relaxation process after the nuclear decay) for the case of $^{125}$I. Results
are compared with Monte-Carlo type simulations of the relaxation cascade using
the BrIccEmis code. Our results indicate that for $^{125}$I the calculations
based on rates from the Evaluated Atomic Data Library (EADL) underestimate the
K Auger yields by 20\%.


  The study of competing ground states is a central issue in condensed matter
physic. In this article we will discuss the interplay of antiferromagnetic
order and unconventional superconductivity in Ce based heavy-fermion compounds.
In all discussed examples superconductivity appears at the border of magnetic
order. Special focus is given on the pressure-temperature-magnetic field phase
diagram of CeRhIn5 and CeCoIn5 which allows to discuss microscopic coexistence
of magnetic order and superconductivity in detail. A striking point is the
similarity of the phase diagram of different classes of strongly correlated
systems which is discussed briefly. The recently discovered non-centrosymmetric
superconductors will open a new access with the possible mixing of odd and even
parity pairing.


  In order to prevent velocity, pressure, and temperature spikes at material
discontinuities occurring when the interface-capturing schemes inconsistently
simulate compressible multi-material flows(when the specific heats ratio is
variable),various non-conservative or quasi-conservative numerical models have
been proposed. However, designing a consistent numerical algorithm, especially
using the high-order characteristic flux-split based finite-difference method
(CFS-FDM) is still an open question. In this study, a systematical analysis of
previous algorithms of the consistent implementing the high-order CFS-FDM for
such flows is performed, and the reasons of special treatments in these
algorithms are revealed. Based on this analysis, a new general numerical
methodology that successfully avoids any special treatments as those required
in previously reported algorithms, is derived. In this new algorithm, we
rewrite the non-conservative term as a conservative term with a source term
containing velocity divergence. By consistently treating the advection velocity
in the conservative term and velocity divergence in the source term by imposing
a new additional criterion, specifically, that a multi-fluid algorithm should
have the ability of maintaining a pure single-fluid, we finally derive a new
general algorithm that does not need any special treatment, and is very
convenient to implement. The results of some benchmark tests show that the
final algorithm not only maintains the velocity, pressure, and temperature
equlibria, but is also suitable for problems regarding the interaction of
interfaces and strong shock and rarefaction waves.


  Charged clusters in liquid helium in an external electric field form a
two-dimensional system below the helium surface. This 2D system undergoes a
phase transition from a liquid to a Wigner crystal at rather high temperatures.
Contrary to the electron Wigner crystal, the Wigner lattice of charged clusters
can be detected directly.


  We develop a theoretical model to calculate the quantum efficiency (QE) of
photoelectron emission from materials with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC)
effect. In the low temperature limit, an analytical scaling between QE and the
RSOC strength is obtained as QE $\propto (\hbar\omega-W)^2+2E_R(\hbar \omega-W)
-E_R^2/3$, where $\hbar\omega$, $W$ and $E_R$ are the incident photon energy,
work function and the RSOC parameter respectively. Intriguingly, the RSOC
effect substantially improves the QE for strong RSOC materials. For example,
the QE of Bi$_2$Se$_3$ and Bi/Si(111) increases, by 149\% and 122\%,
respectively due to the presence of strong RSOC. By fitting to the
photoelectron emission characteristics, the analytical scaling law can be
employed to extract the RSOC strength, thus offering a useful tool to
characterize the RSOC effect in materials. Importantly, when the traditional
Fowler-Dubridge model is used, the extracted results may substantially deviate
from the actual values by $\sim90\%$, thus highlighting the importance of
employing our model to analyse the photoelectron emission especially for
materials with strong RSOC. These findings provide a theoretical foundation for
the design of photoemitters using Rashba spintronic materials.


  A theorem of Donsker asserts that the empirical process converges in
distribution to the Brownian bridge. The aim of this paper is to provide a new
and simple proof of this fact.


  Unsupervised reinforcement learning (URL) poses a promising paradigm to learn
useful behaviors in a task-agnostic environment without the guidance of
extrinsic rewards to facilitate the fast adaptation of various downstream
tasks. Previous works focused on the pre-training in a model-free manner while
lacking the study of transition dynamics modeling that leaves a large space for
the improvement of sample efficiency in downstream tasks. To this end, we
propose an Efficient Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning Framework with
Multi-choice Dynamics model (EUCLID), which introduces a novel model-fused
paradigm to jointly pre-train the dynamics model and unsupervised exploration
policy in the pre-training phase, thus better leveraging the environmental
samples and improving the downstream task sampling efficiency. However,
constructing a generalizable model which captures the local dynamics under
different behaviors remains a challenging problem. We introduce the
multi-choice dynamics model that covers different local dynamics under
different behaviors concurrently, which uses different heads to learn the state
transition under different behaviors during unsupervised pre-training and
selects the most appropriate head for prediction in the downstream task.
Experimental results in the manipulation and locomotion domains demonstrate
that EUCLID achieves state-of-the-art performance with high sample efficiency,
basically solving the state-based URLB benchmark and reaching a mean normalized
score of 104.0$\pm$1.2$\%$ in downstream tasks with 100k fine-tuning steps,
which is equivalent to DDPG's performance at 2M interactive steps with 20x more
data.


  Let G be a simple undirected graph and let A be an additive Abelian group
with identity 0. In this paper, we introduce the concept of group magic
spectrum of a graph G with respect to a given Abelian group A and is defined as
spec(G, A):= {{\lambda} : {\lambda} is a magic constant of some A-vertex magic
labeling f }. In their recent work, K. M. Sabeel et al. in Australas. J.
Combin. 85(1) (2023), 49-60 proved a forbidden subgraph characterization for
the group vertex magic graph. In this work, we present a new method which uses
minimum number of vertices required for this graph. We obtain a necessary and
sufficient condition for the spectrum of a graph G to be a subgroup when A = V4
or Zp, where p is a prime number. Also we introduce the notion of reduced
spectrum redspec(G, A) and study the relation between spec(G, A) and redspec(G,
A).


  We present an X-ray spectro-polarimetric analysis of the bright Seyfert
galaxy IC 4329A. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) observed the
source for ~500 ks, supported by XMM-Newton (~60 ks) and NuSTAR (~80 ks)
exposures. We detect polarisation in the 2-8 keV band with 2.97 sigma
confidence. We report a polarisation degree of $3.3\pm1.1$ per cent and a
polarisation angle of $78\pm10$ degrees (errors are 1 sigma confidence). The
X-ray polarisation is consistent with being aligned with the radio jet, albeit
partially due to large uncertainties on the radio position angle. We jointly
fit the spectra from the three observatories to constrain the presence of a
relativistic reflection component. From this, we obtain constraints on the
inclination angle to the inner disc (< 39 degrees at 99 per cent confidence)
and the disc inner radius (< 11 gravitational radii at 99 per cent confidence),
although we note that modelling systematics in practice add to the quoted
statistical error. Our spectro-polarimetric modelling indicates that the 2-8
keV polarisation is consistent with being dominated by emission directly
observed from the X-ray corona, but the polarisation of the reflection
component is completely unconstrained. Our constraints on viewer inclination
and polarisation degree tentatively favour more asymmetric, possibly
out-flowing, coronal geometries that produce more highly polarised emission,
but the coronal geometry is unconstrained at the 3 sigma level.


  In this chapter we first briefly review the existing approaches to hedging in
rough volatility models. Next, we present a simple but general result which
shows that in a one-factor rough stochastic volatility model, any option may be
perfectly hedged with a dynamic portfolio containing the underlying and one
other asset such as a variance swap. In the final section we report the results
of a back-test experiment using real data, where VIX options are hedged with a
forward variance swap. In this experiment, using a rough volatility model
allows to almost completely remove the bias and reduce the overall hedging
error by a factor of 27% compared to traditional diffusion-based models.


  We study the kinematics of the M87 jet using the first year data of the KVN
and VERA Array (KaVA) large program, which has densely monitored the jet at 22
and 43 GHz since 2016. We find that the apparent jet speeds generally increase
from $\approx0.3c$ at $\approx0.5$ mas from the jet base to $\approx2.7c$ at
$\approx20$ mas, indicating that the jet is accelerated from subluminal to
superluminal speeds on these scales. We perform a complementary jet kinematic
analysis by using archival Very Long Baseline Array monitoring data observed in
$2005-2009$ at 1.7 GHz and find that the jet is moving at relativistic speeds
up to $\approx5.8c$ at distances of $200-410$ mas. We combine the two kinematic
results and find that the jet is gradually accelerated over a broad distance
range that coincides with the jet collimation zone, implying that conversion of
Poynting flux to kinetic energy flux takes place. If the jet emission consists
of a single streamline, the observed trend of jet acceleration ($\Gamma\propto
z^{0.16\pm0.01}$) is relatively slow compared to models of a highly magnetized
jet. This indicates that Poynting flux conversion through the differential
collimation of poloidal magnetic fields may be less efficient than expected.
However, we find a non-negligible dispersion in the observed speeds for a given
jet distance, making it difficult to describe the jet velocity field with a
single power-law acceleration function. We discuss the possibility that the jet
emission consists of multiple streamlines following different acceleration
profiles, resulting in jet velocity stratification.


  A growing priority in the study of Baltic-Finnic languages of the Republic of
Karelia has been the methods and tools of corpus linguistics. Since 2016,
linguists, mathematicians, and programmers at the Karelian Research Centre have
been working with the Open Corpus of the Veps and Karelian Languages (VepKar),
which is an extension of the Veps Corpus created in 2009. The VepKar corpus
comprises texts in Karelian and Veps, multifunctional dictionaries linked to
them, and software with an advanced system of search using various criteria of
the texts (language, genre, etc.) and numerous linguistic categories (lexical
and grammatical search in texts was implemented thanks to the generator of word
forms that we created earlier). A corpus of 3000 texts was compiled, texts were
uploaded and marked up, the system for classifying texts into languages,
dialects, types and genres was introduced, and the word-form generator was
created. Future plans include developing a speech module for working with audio
recordings and a syntactic tagging module using morphological analysis outputs.
Owing to continuous functional advancements in the corpus manager and ongoing
VepKar enrichment with new material and text markup, users can handle a wide
range of scientific and applied tasks. In creating the universal national
VepKar corpus, its developers and managers strive to preserve and exhibit as
fully as possible the state of the Veps and Karelian languages in the 19th-21st
centuries.


  Human reasoning in visual analytics of data networks relies mainly on the
quality of visual perception and the capability of interactively exploring the
data from different facets. Visual quality strongly depends on networks' size
and dimensional complexity while network exploration capability on the
intuitiveness and expressiveness of user frontends. The approach taken in this
paper aims at addressing the above by decomposing data networks into multiple
networks of smaller dimensions and building an interactive graph query language
that supports full navigation across the sub-networks. Within sub-networks of
reduced dimensionality, structural abstraction and semantic techniques can then
be used to enhance visual perception further.


  We interpret the PeV shower events observed by the IceCube collaboration as
an s-channel enhancement of neutrino-quark scattering by a leptoquark that
couples to the tau-flavor and light quarks. With a leptoquark mass of ~ 0.6 TeV
and a steep 1/E^{2.3} neutrino flux, charged-current scattering gives shower
events at ~ 1 PeV and neutral-current scattering gives shower events at ~ 0.5
PeV. This mechanism is also consistent with the paucity of muon-track events
above 100 TeV.


  The GERmanium Detector Array, GERDA, will search for neutrinoless double beta
decay in 76Ge at the National Gran Sasso Laboratory of the INFN. Bare
high-purity germanium detectors enriched in 76Ge will be submerged in liquid
argon serving simultaneously as a shield against external radioactivity and as
a cooling medium. In GERDA Phase-I, reprocessed enriched-Ge detectors, which
were previously operated by the Heidelberg-Moscow and IGEX collaborations, will
be redeployed. Before operating the enriched detectors, tests are performed
with non-enriched bare HPGe detectors in the GERDA underground Detector
Laboratory to test the Phase-I detector assembly, the detector handling
protocols, the refurbishment technology and to study the long-term stability in
liquid argon. The leakage currents in liquid argon and liquid nitrogen have
been extensively studied under varying gamma irradiation conditions. In total
three non-enriched high-purity p-type prototype germanium detectors have been
operated successfully. The detector performance is stable over the long-term
measurements. For the first time, performance of bare high-purity germanium
detectors in liquid argon is reported.


  Tetracyclines are an old class of molecules that constitute a broad-spectrum
antibiotics. Since the first member of tetracycline family were isolated, the
clinical importance of these compounds as therapeutic and prophylactic agents
against a wide range of infections has stimulated efforts to define their mode
of action as inhibitors of bacterial reproduction. We used three SAR
methodologies for the analysis of biological activity of a set of 104
tetracycline compounds. Our calculation were carried out using the
semi-empirical Austin Method One (AM1) and Parametric Method 3 (PM3).
Electronic Indices Methodology (EIM), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were applied to the classification of 14 old
and 90 new proposed derivatives of tetracyclines. Our results make evident the
importance of EIM descriptors in pattern recognition and also show that the EIM
can be effectively used to predict the biological activity of Tetracyclines.


  The local tree-width of a graph G=(V,E) is the function ltw^G: N -> N that
associates with every natural number r the maximal tree-width of an
r-neighborhood in G. Our main graph theoretic result is a decomposition theorem
for graphs with excluded minors that essentially says that such graphs can be
decomposed into trees of graphs of bounded local tree-width.
  As an application of this theorem, we show that a number of combinatorial
optimization problems, such as Minimum Vertex Cover, Minimum Dominating Set,
and Maximum Independent Set have a polynomial time approximation scheme when
restricted to a class of graphs with an excluded minor.


  Current and upcoming surveys will measure the cosmological parameters with an
extremely high accuracy. The primary goal of these observations is to eliminate
some of the currently viable cosmological models created to explain the late
time accelerated expansion (either real or only inferred). However, most of the
statistical tests used in cosmology have a strong requirement: the use of a
model to fit the data. Recently there has been an increased interest on finding
tests that are model independent, i.e. to have a function that depends entirely
on observed quantities and not on the model, see for instance [1]. In this
letter we present an alternative consistency check at the perturbative level
for a homogeneous and isotropic Universe filled with a dark energy component.
This test makes use of the growth of matter perturbations data and it is able
to not only test the homogeneous and isotropic Universe but also, within the
framework of a Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker Universe, if the dark
energy component is able to cluster, if there is a tension in the data or if we
are dealing with a modification of gravity.


  We present a photometric catalog for Spitzer Space Telescope warm mission
observations of the North Ecliptic Pole (NEP; centered at $\rm
R.A.=18^h00^m00^s$, $\rm Decl.=66^d33^m38^s.552$). The observations are
conducted with IRAC in 3.6 $\mu$m and 4.5 $\mu$m bands over an area of 7.04
deg$^2$ reaching 1$\sigma$ depths of 1.29 $\mu$Jy and 0.79 $\mu$Jy in the 3.6
$\mu$m and 4.5 $\mu$m bands respectively. The photometric catalog contains
380,858 sources with 3.6 $\mu$m and 4.5 $\mu$m band photometry over the
full-depth NEP mosaic. Point source completeness simulations show that the
catalog is 80% complete down to 19.7 AB. The accompanying catalog can be
utilized in constraining the physical properties of extra-galactic objects,
studying the AGN population, measuring the infrared colors of stellar objects,
and studying the extra-galactic infrared background light.


  In this paper, we study the (anti-)self-duality equations $\ast F\wedge F=\pm
F\wedge F$ in the eight-dimensional Euclidean space. Using properties of the
Clifford algebra $Cl_{0,8}(\mathbb{R})$, we find a new solution to these
equations.


  Two new symmetry tests, of integral and Kolmogorov type, based on the
characterization by squares of linear statistics are proposed.
  The test statistics are related to the family of degenerate U-statistics.
Their asymptotic properties are explored. The maximal eigenvalue, needed for
the derivation of their logarithmic tail behavior, was calculated or
approximated using techniques from the theory of linear operators and the
perturbation theory.
  The quality of the tests is assessed using the approximate Bahadur efficiency
as well as the simulated powers. The tests are shown to be comparable with some
recent and classical tests of symmetry.


  It is well known that the behaviour of a branching process is completely
described by the generating function of the offspring law and its fixed points.
Branching random walks are a natural generalization of branching processes: a
branching process can be seen as a one-dimensional branching random walk. We
define a multidimensional generating function associated to a given branching
random walk. The present paper investigates the similarities and the
differences of the generating functions, their fixed points and the
implications on the underlying stochastic process, between the one-dimensional
(branching process) and the multidimensional case (branching random walk). In
particular, we show that the generating function of a branching random walk can
have uncountably many fixed points and a fixed point may not be an extinction
probability, even in the irreducible case (extinction probabilities are always
fixed points). Moreover, the generating function might not be a convex
function. We also study how the behaviour of a branching random walk is
affected by local modifications of the process. As a corollary, we describe a
general procedure with which we can modify a continuous-time branching random
walk which has a weak phase and turn it into a continuous-time branching random
walk which has strong local survival for large or small values of the parameter
and non-strong local survival for intermediate values of the parameter.


  Ionic models, the set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) describing
the time evolution of the state of excitable cells, are the cornerstone of
modeling in neuro- and cardiac electrophysiology. Modern ionic models can have
tens of state variables and hundreds of tunable parameters. Fitting ionic
models to experimental data, which usually covers only a limited subset of
state variables, remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we describe a
recurrent neural network architecture designed specifically to encode ionic
models. The core of the model is a Gating Neural Network (GNN) layer, capturing
the dynamics of classic (Hodgkin-Huxley) gating variables. The network is
trained in two steps: first, it learns the theoretical model coded in a set of
ODEs, and second, it is retrained on experimental data. The retrained network
is interpretable, such that its results can be incorporated back into the model
ODEs. We tested the GNN networks using simulated ventricular action potential
signals and showed that it could deduce physiologically-feasible alterations of
ionic currents. Such domain-specific neural networks can be employed in the
exploratory phase of data assimilation before further fine-tuning using
standard optimization techniques.


  We construct a H\"older continuous function on the unit interval which
coincides in uncountably (in fact continuum) many points with every function of
total variation smaller than 1 passing through the origin.
  We say that a function with this property has impermeable graph, and we
present further examples of functions both with permeable and impermeable
graphs.
  The first example function is subsequently used to construct an example of a
continuous function on the plane which is intrinsically Lipschitz continuous on
the complement of the graph of a H\"older continuous function with impermeable
graph, but which is not Lipschitz continuous on the plane.
  As another main result we construct a continuous function on the unit
interval which coincides in a set of Hausdorff dimension 1 with every function
of total variation smaller than 1 which passes through the origin.


  We summarize the unique capabilities of UV coronagraphic spectroscopy for
determining the detailed plasma properties (e.g., density, temperature, outflow
speed, composition) of the source regions of both transient phenomena such as
CMEs, flares, and solar energetic particles (SEPs) and more time-steady solar
wind streams. UVCS/SOHO observations have provided the first detailed
diagnostics of the physical conditions of CME plasma in the extended corona. It
provided new insights into the roles of shock waves, reconnection, and magnetic
helicity in CME eruptions. We summarize past observations and discuss the
diagnostic potential of UV coronagraphic spectroscopy for characterizing two
possible sites of SEP production: CME shocks and reconnection current sheets.
UVCS/SOHO has also led to fundamentally new views of the acceleration region of
the solar wind. Understanding the physical processes in this region, which
ranges from the low corona (1.1 to 1.5 Rsun) past the sonic points (greater
than 5 Rsun), is key to linking the results of solar imaging to in situ
particle and field detection. Despite the advances that have resulted from
UVCS/SOHO, more advanced instrumentation could determine properties of
additional ions with a wider sampling of charge/mass combinations. This would
provide much better constraints on the specific kinds of waves that are present
as well as the specific collisionless damping modes. Electron temperatures and
departures from Maxwellian velocity distributions could also be measured. The
instrumentation capable of making the above observations will be described.


  Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been anticipated to be a novel
cost-effective technology to improve the performance of future wireless
systems. In this paper, we investigate a practical RIS-aided
multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system in the presence of transceiver
hardware impairments, RIS phase noise and imperfect channel state information
(CSI). Joint design of the MIMO transceiver and RIS reflection matrix to
minimize the total average mean-square-error (MSE) of all data streams is
particularly considered. This joint design problem is non-convex and
challenging to solve due to the newly considered practical imperfections. To
tackle the issue, we first analyze the total average MSE by incorporating the
impacts of the above system imperfections. Then, in order to handle the tightly
coupled optimization variables and non-convex NP-hard constraints, an efficient
iterative algorithm based on alternating optimization (AO) framework is
proposed with guaranteed convergence, where each subproblem admits a
closed-form optimal solution by leveraging the majorization-minimization (MM)
technique. Moreover, via exploiting the special structure of the unit-modulus
constraints, we propose a modified Riemannian gradient ascent (RGA) algorithm
for the discrete RIS phase shift optimization. Furthermore, the optimality of
the proposed algorithm is validated under line-of-sight (LoS) channel
conditions, and the irreducible MSE floor effect induced by imperfections of
both hardware and CSI is also revealed in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
regime. Numerical results show the superior MSE performance of our proposed
algorithm over the adopted benchmark schemes, and demonstrate that increasing
the number of RIS elements is not always beneficial under the above system
imperfections.


  We investigate the influence of quantum effects on the dielectric and
piezoelectric properties of barium titanate in its (low-temperature)
rhombohedral phase, and show the strongly anharmonic character of this system
even at low temperature. For this purpose, we perform path-integral
molecular-dynamics simulations under fixed pressure and fixed temperature,
using an efficient Langevin thermostat-barostat, and an effective hamiltonian
derived from first-principles calculations. The quantum fluctuations are shown
to significantly enhance the static dielectric susceptibility (~ by a factor 2)
and the piezoelectric constants, reflecting the strong anharmonicity of this
ferroelectric system even at very low temperature. The slow
temperature-evolution of the dielectric properties observed below ~ 100 K is
attributed (i) to zero-point energy contributions and (ii) to harmonic behavior
if quantum effects are turned off.


  Search engine companies collect the "database of intentions", the histories
of their users' search queries. These search logs are a gold mine for
researchers. Search engine companies, however, are wary of publishing search
logs in order not to disclose sensitive information. In this paper we analyze
algorithms for publishing frequent keywords, queries and clicks of a search
log. We first show how methods that achieve variants of $k$-anonymity are
vulnerable to active attacks. We then demonstrate that the stronger guarantee
ensured by $\epsilon$-differential privacy unfortunately does not provide any
utility for this problem. We then propose an algorithm ZEALOUS and show how to
set its parameters to achieve $(\epsilon,\delta)$-probabilistic privacy. We
also contrast our analysis of ZEALOUS with an analysis by Korolova et al. [17]
that achieves $(\epsilon',\delta')$-indistinguishability. Our paper concludes
with a large experimental study using real applications where we compare
ZEALOUS and previous work that achieves $k$-anonymity in search log publishing.
Our results show that ZEALOUS yields comparable utility to $k-$anonymity while
at the same time achieving much stronger privacy guarantees.


  The paper deals with two fundamental types of trigonometric polynomials and
splines on uniform grids, which allow us to construct interpolation
approximations that depend linearly on the values of the interpolated function.
Fundamental on the same grids are trigonometric LS polynomials and LS splines,
which allow us to construct the approximation of functions by the least squares
method and also depend linearly on the values of the approximate function.
Trigonometric splines were considered as splines with polynomial analogues in
some cases. The material is illustrated in graphs. The considered fundamental
trigonometric polynomials and splines can be recommended for use in many
problems related to approximation of functions, in particular, mathematical
modeling of signals and processes.


  We prove concentration inequalities of the form $P(Y \ge t) \le \exp(-B(t))$
for a random variable $Y$ with mean zero and variance $\sigma^2$ using a
coupling technique from Stein's method that is so-called approximate zero bias
couplings. Applications to the Hoeffding's statistic where the random
permutation has the Ewens distribution with parameter $\theta>0$ are also
presented. A few simulation experiments are then provided to visualize the tail
probability of the Hoeffding's statistic and our bounds. Based on the
simulation results, our bounds work well especially when $\theta \le 1$.


  Applying the Hamilton-Jacobi method beyond the semiclassical approximation
prescribed in \cite{Majhi3} for the scalar particle, Hawking radiation as
tunneling of Dirac particle through an event horizon is analysed. We show that,
as before, all quantum corrections in the single particle action are
proportional to the usual semiclassical contribution. We also compute the
modifications to the Hawking temperature and Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for the
Schwarzschild black hole. Finally, the coefficient of the logarithmic
correction to entropy is shown to be related with the trace anomaly.


  We consider dynamics of a flat anisotropic Universe filled by a perfect fluid
near a cosmological singularity in quadratic gravity. Two possible regimes are
described -- the Kasner anisotropic solution and an isotropic "vacuum
radiation" solution which has three sub cases depending on whether the equation
of state parameter $w$ is bigger, smaller or equals to $1/3$. Initial
conditions for numerical integrations have been chosen near General Relativity
anisotropic solution with matter (Jacobs solution). We have found that for such
initial conditions there is a range of values of coupling constants so that the
resulting cosmological singularity is isotropic.


  We develop a path integral framework for determining most probable paths in a
class of systems of stochastic differential equations with piecewise-smooth
drift and additive noise. This approach extends the Freidlin-Wentzell theory of
large deviations to cases where the system is piecewise-smooth and may be
non-autonomous. In particular, we consider an $n-$dimensional system with a
switching manifold in the drift that forms an $(n-1)-$dimensional hyperplane
and investigate noise-induced transitions between metastable states on either
side of the switching manifold. To do this, we mollify the drift and use
$\Gamma-$convergence to derive an appropriate rate functional for the system in
the piecewise-smooth limit. The resulting functional consists of the standard
Freidlin-Wentzell rate functional, with an additional contribution due to times
when the most probable path slides in a crossing region of the switching
manifold. We explore implications of the derived functional through two case
studies, which exhibit notable phenomena such as non-unique most probable paths
and noise-induced sliding in a crossing region.


  We study holonomy algebras generated by an algebraic element of the Clifford
algebra, or equivalently, the holonomy algebras of certain spin connections in
flat space. We provide series of examples in arbitrary dimensions and establish
general properties of the holonomy algebras under some mild conditions on the
generating element. We show that the first non-standard situation to look at
appears in dimension 8 and concerns self-dual 4-forms. In this case complete
structure results are obtained.


  A fundamental challenge in learning to control an unknown dynamical system is
to reduce model uncertainty by making measurements while maintaining safety. In
this work, we formulate a mathematical definition of what it means to safely
learn a dynamical system by sequentially deciding where to initialize the next
trajectory. In our framework, the state of the system is required to stay
within a given safety region under the (possibly repeated) action of all
dynamical systems that are consistent with the information gathered so far. For
our first two results, we consider the setting of safely learning linear
dynamics. We present a linear programming-based algorithm that either safely
recovers the true dynamics from trajectories of length one, or certifies that
safe learning is impossible. We also give an efficient semidefinite
representation of the set of initial conditions whose resulting trajectories of
length two are guaranteed to stay in the safety region. For our final result,
we study the problem of safely learning a nonlinear dynamical system. We give a
second-order cone programming based representation of the set of initial
conditions that are guaranteed to remain in the safety region after one
application of the system dynamics.


  Let $F$ be a field of characteristic $0$ and let $E$ be the infinite
dimensional Grassmann algebra over $F$. In the first part of this paper we give
an algorithm calculating the generating function of the cocharacter sequence of
the $n\times n$ upper triangular matrix algebra $UT_n(E)$ with entries in $E$,
lying in a strip of a fixed size. In the second part we compute the double
Hilbert series $H(E;\mathrm{T}_k,\mathrm{Y}_l)$ of $E$, then we define the
$(k,l)$-multiplicity series of any PI-algebra. As an application, we derive
from $H(E;\mathrm{T}_k,\mathrm{Y}_l)$ an easy algorithm determining the
$(k,l)$-multiplicity series of $UT_n(E)$.


  While the particle-number-conserving convolution formalism established in the
Drell-Yan-West reference frame is frequently used to compute exclusive
amplitudes in the light-front quantization, this formalism is limited to only
those frames where the light-front helicities are not changed and the good
(plus) component of the current remains unmixed. For an explicit demonstration
of such criteria, we present the relations between the current matrix elements
in the two typical reference frames used for calculations of the exclusive
amplitudes, i.e. the Drell-Yan-West and Breit frames and investigate both
pseudoscalar and vector electromagnetic currents in detail. We find that the
light-front helicities are unchanged and the good component of the current does
not mix with the other components of the current under the transformation
between these two frames. Thus, the pseudoscalar and vector form factors
obtained by the diagonal convolution formalism in both frames must indeed be
identical. However, such coincidence between the Drell-Yan-West and Breit
frames does not hold in general. We give an explicit example in which the
light-front helicities are changed and the plus component of the current is
mixed with other components under the change of reference frame. In such a
case, the relationship between the frames should be carefully analyzed before
the established convolution formalism in the Drell-Yan-West frame is used.


  We review a selected history of anomalous resonance, cloaking due to
anomalous resonance, cloaking due to complementary media, and superlensing.


  We have probed the low temperature magnetic behavior of the ordered spin ice
material Tb2Sn2O7 through ac magnetic susceptibility measurements of both the
pure material and samples with small percentages of Ti substituted on the Sn
sublattice. We observe a clear signature for the previously reported ordering
transition at TC = 850 mK, as well as evidence for dynamic freezing at
temperatures well below TC, confirming the persistence of significant magnetic
fluctuations deep in the spin-ordered regime. The long range ordering
transition was completely suppressed with as little as 5% Ti for Sn
substitution, and 10% Ti substitution resulted in a spin-glass-like spin
freezing transition near 250 mK. The results demonstrate that the long range
magnetic ordering is surprisingly fragile in this system.


  We apply the Quasi Monte Carlo (QMC) and recursive numerical integration
methods to evaluate the Euclidean, discretized time path-integral for the
quantum mechanical anharmonic oscillator and a topological quantum mechanical
rotor model. For the anharmonic oscillator both methods outperform standard
Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods and show a significantly improved error
scaling. For the quantum mechanical rotor we could, however, not find a
successful way employing QMC. On the other hand, the recursive numerical
integration method works extremely well for this model and shows an at least
exponentially fast error scaling.


  The symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$ acts naturally on the poset of injective
words over the alphabet $\{1, 2,\dots,n\}$. The induced representation on the
homology of this poset has been computed by Reiner and Webb. We generalize
their result by computing the representation of $\mathfrak{S}_n$ on the
homology of all rank-selected subposets, in the sense of Stanley. A further
generalization to the poset of $r$-colored injective words is given.


  Nagel and R\"omer introduced the class of weakly vertex decomposable
simplicial complexes, which include matroid, shifted, and Gorenstein complexes
as well as vertex decomposable complexes. They proved that the Stanley-Reisner
ideal of every weakly vertex decomposable simplicial complex is Gorenstein
linked to an ideal of indeterminates via a sequence of basic double G-links. In
this paper, we explore basic double G-links between squarefree monomial ideals
beyond the weakly vertex decomposable setting.
  Our first contribution is a structural result about certain basic double
G-links which involve an edge ideal. Specifically, suppose $I(G)$ is the edge
ideal of a graph $G$. When $I(G)$ is a basic double G-link of a monomial ideal
$B$ on an arbitrary homogeneous ideal $A$, we give a generating set for $B$ in
terms of $G$ and show that this basic double G-link must be of degree $1$. Our
second focus is on examples from the literature of simplicial complexes known
to be Cohen-Macaulay but not weakly vertex decomposable. We show that these
examples are not basic double links of any other squarefree monomial ideals.


  We show that the fundamental group of the $3$-manifold obtained by
$\frac{p}{q}$-surgery along the $(n-2)$-twisted $(3,3m+2)$-torus knot, with
$n,m \ge 1$, is not left-orderable if $\frac{p}{q} \ge 2n + 6m-3$ and is
left-orderable if $\frac{p}{q}$ is sufficiently close to $0$.


  In this article, we establish some new second main theorems for meromorphic
mappings of $\mathbb C^m$ into $\mathbb P^n(\mathbb C)$ and moving
hypersurfaces with truncated counting functions. A uniqueness theorem for these
mappings sharing few moving hypersurfaces without counting multiplicity is also
given. This result is an improvement of the recent result of Dethloff - Tan
[3]. Moreover the meromorphic mappings in our result may be algebraically
degenerate. The last purpose of this article is to study uniqueness problem in
the case where the meromorphic mappings agree on small identical sets.


  It is well-known that combining life annuities and death benefits introduce
opposite effects in payments with respect to the mortality risk on the lifetime
of the insured. In a general multi-state framework with multiple product types,
such joint effects are less trivial. In this paper, we consider a multivariate
payment process in multi-state life insurance, where the components are defined
in terms of the same Markovian state process. The multivariate present value of
future payments is introduced, and we derive differential equations and product
integral representations of its conditional moments and moment generating
function. Special attention is given to pair-wise covariances between two
present values, where results closely connected to Hattendorff type of results
for the variance are derived. The results are illustrated in a numerical
example in a disability model.


  Potential signatures of proto-planets embedded in their natal protoplanetary
disk are radial gaps or cavities in the continuum emission in the IR-mm
wavelength range. ALMA observations are now probing spatially resolved
rotational line emission of CO and other chemical species. These observations
can provide complementary information on the mechanism carving the gaps in dust
and additional constraints on the purported planet mass. We post-process 2D
hydrodynamical simulations of planet-disk models, where the dust densities and
grain size distributions are computed with a dust evolution code. The
simulations explore different planet masses ($1\,M_{\rm J}\leq M_{\rm
p}\leq15\,M_{\rm J}$) and turbulent parameters. The outputs are post-processed
with the thermo-chemical code DALI, accounting for the radially and vertically
varying dust properties as in Facchini et al. (2017). We obtain the gas and
dust temperature structures, chemical abundances, and synthetic emission maps
of both thermal continuum and CO rotational lines. This is the first study
combining hydro simulations, dust evolution and chemistry to predict gas
emission of disks hosting massive planets. All radial intensity profiles of the
CO main isotopologues show a gap at the planet location. The ratio between the
location of the gap as seen in CO and the peak in the mm continuum at the
pressure maximum outside the orbit of the planet shows a clear dependence on
planet mass. Due to the low dust density in the gaps, the dust and gas
components can become thermally decoupled, with the gas being colder than the
dust. The gaps seen in CO are due to a combination of gas temperature dropping
at the location of the planet, and of the underlying surface density profile.
In none of the models is a CO cavity observed, only CO gaps, indicating that
one single massive planet is not able to explain the CO cavities observed in
transition disks.


  Markov networks (MNs) are a powerful way to compactly represent a joint
probability distribution, but most MN structure learning methods are very slow,
due to the high cost of evaluating candidates structures. Dependency networks
(DNs) represent a probability distribution as a set of conditional probability
distributions. DNs are very fast to learn, but the conditional distributions
may be inconsistent with each other and few inference algorithms support DNs.
In this paper, we present a closed-form method for converting a DN into an MN,
allowing us to enjoy both the efficiency of DN learning and the convenience of
the MN representation. When the DN is consistent, this conversion is exact. For
inconsistent DNs, we present averaging methods that significantly improve the
approximation. In experiments on 12 standard datasets, our methods are orders
of magnitude faster than and often more accurate than combining conditional
distributions using weight learning.


  We present spherically symmetric black hole solutions for Einstein gravity
coupled to anisotropic matter. We show that these black holes have arbitrarily
short hair, and argue for stability by showing that they can arise from
dynamical collapse. We also show that a recent `no short hair' theorem does not
apply to these solutions.


  Mergers play important roles in triggering the most active objects in the
universe, including (U)LIRGs and QSOs. However, whether they are also important
for the total stellar mass build-up in galaxies in general is unclear and
controversial. The answer to that question depends on the merger rate and the
average strength of merger induced star formation. In this talk, I will review
studies on spatial density and sSFR enhancement of local mergers found in
NIR/optical selected pair samples. In line with the current literature on
galaxy formation/evolution, special attention will be paid to the dependence of
the local merger rate and of the sSFR enhancement on four fundamental
observables: (1) stellar mass, (2) mass ratio, (3) separation, and (4)
environment.


  In this paper, we study the sharpness of a deep learning (DL) loss landscape
around local minima in order to reveal systematic mechanisms underlying the
generalization abilities of DL models. Our analysis is performed across varying
network and optimizer hyper-parameters, and involves a rich family of different
sharpness measures. We compare these measures and show that the low-pass
filter-based measure exhibits the highest correlation with the generalization
abilities of DL models, has high robustness to both data and label noise, and
furthermore can track the double descent behavior for neural networks. We next
derive the optimization algorithm, relying on the low-pass filter (LPF), that
actively searches the flat regions in the DL optimization landscape using
SGD-like procedure. The update of the proposed algorithm, that we call LPF-SGD,
is determined by the gradient of the convolution of the filter kernel with the
loss function and can be efficiently computed using MC sampling. We empirically
show that our algorithm achieves superior generalization performance compared
to the common DL training strategies. On the theoretical front, we prove that
LPF-SGD converges to a better optimal point with smaller generalization error
than SGD.


  A series of lanthanide, Ln, ion doped lead titanate ceramics, at 2 and 8
at.%, have been prepared with starting compositions Pb1-3x/2LnxTiO3, Ln = La,
Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy, using a standard ceramic method. Structural, and
differential scanning calorimetry, measurements are reported. Doping with La3+
results in a reduction in tetragonality and cell volume; a partial recovery was
then observed for the smaller Ln3+ ions and suggests the onset of partial
substitution of the rare earth on the B-site. The ferroelectric-paraelectric
transition temperature results also consistent with an increased probability
the B-site occupation with decreasing ion size.


  With new frequency bands opening up, emerging wireless IoT devices are
capitalizing on an increasingly divergent range of frequencies. However,
existing coverage provisioning practice is often tied to specific standards and
frequencies. There is little shareable wireless infrastructure for concurrent
links on different frequencies, across networks and standards. This paper
presents Scrolls, a frequency-tunable soft smart surface system to enhance
wideband, multi-network coverage. Scrolls' hardware comprises many rows of
rollable thin plastic film, each attached with flexible copper strips. When
rolled to different lengths, the copper strips act as wire antennas reflecting
signals on the corresponding frequencies. The surface control algorithm
determines the unrolled strip lengths for link enhancement by probing the
search space efficiently. We build a set of distributed, composable Scrolls
prototypes and deploy them in an office. Extensive evaluation shows that
Scrolls can adapt the antenna lengths effectively to provide link enhancement
across diverse standards on sub-6 GHz bands. For concurrent links on 900 MHz
(LoRa), 2.4 GHz (Wi-Fi), 3.7 GHz, and 5 GHz, Scrolls can provide received
signal strength gains to all links simultaneously, by a median of 4 dB and up
to 10 dB


  The use of photographs of the screen of displayed medical images is explored
to circumvent the challenges involved in transferring images between sites. The
photographs can be conveniently taken with a smartphone and analyzed remotely
by either human or AI experts. An autoencoder preprocessor is shown to improve
the performance for human experts. The AI performance provided by photographs
is shown to be statistically equivalent to using the original DICOM images. The
autoencoder preprocessor increases the PSNR by 15 dB or greater and provides an
AUC that is statistically equivalent to using the original DICOM images. The
photo approach is an alternative to IHE-based teleradiology applications while
avoiding the problems inherit in navigating the proprietary and security
barriers that limit DICOM communication between PACS in practice.


  In this paper, we propose a numerical method of computing a Hadamard
finite-part integral with a non-integral power singularity at an endpoint, that
is, a finite part of a divergent integral as a limiting procedure. In the
proposed method, we express the desired finite-part integral using a complex
loop integral, and obtain the finite-part integral by evaluating the complex
integral by the trapezoidal formula. Theoretical error estimate and some
numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


  Formation control deals with the design of decentralized control laws that
stabilize mobile, autonomous agents at prescribed distances from each other. We
call any configuration of the agents a target configuration if it satisfies the
inter-agent distance conditions. It is well known that when the distance
conditions are defined by a rigid graph, there is a finite number of target
configurations modulo rotations and translations of the entire formation. We
can thus recast the objective of formation control as stabilizing one or many
of the target configurations. A major issue is that such control laws will also
have equilibria corresponding to configurations which do not meet the desired
inter-agent distance conditions; we refer to these as undesirable
configurations. The undesirable configurations become problematic if they are
also stable. Designing decentralized control laws whose stable equilibria are
all target configurations in the case of a general rigid graph is still an open
problem. We provide here a new point of view on this problem, and propose a
partial solution by exhibiting a class of rigid graphs and control laws for
which all stable equilibria are target configurations.


  The dark energy models with variable equation of state parameter $\omega$ is
investigated by using law of variation of Hubble's parameter that yields the
constant value of deceleration parameter. The equation of state parameter
$\omega$ is found to be time dependent and its existing range for this model is
consistent with the recent observations of SN Ia data, SN Ia data (with CMBR
anisotropy) and galaxy clustering statistics. The physical significance of the
dark energy models has also been discussed.


  Rotationally coherent Lagrangian vortices are formed by tubes of deforming
fluid elements that complete equal bulk material rotation relative to the mean
rotation of the deforming fluid volume. We show that initial positions of such
tubes coincide with tubular level surfaces of the Lagrangian-Averaged Vorticity
Deviation (LAVD), the trajectory integral of the normed difference of the
vorticity from its spatial mean. LAVD-based vortices are objective, i.e.,
remain unchanged under time-dependent rotations and translations of the
coordinate frame. In the limit of vanishing Rossby numbers in geostrophic
flows, cyclonic LAVD vortex centers are precisely the observed attractors for
light particles. A similar result holds for heavy particles in anticyclonic
LAVD vortices. We also establish a relationship between rotationally coherent
Lagrangian vortices and their instantaneous Eulerian counterparts. The latter
are formed by tubular surfaces of equal material rotation rate, objectively
measured by the Instantaneous Vorticity Deviation (IVD). We illustrate the use
of the LAVD and the IVD to detect rotationally coherent Lagrangian and Eulerian
vortices objectively in several two- and three-dimensional flows.


  The direct observation of gravitational waves (GWs) opens a new window for
exploring new physics from quanta to cosmos and provides a new tool for probing
the evolution of universe. GWs detection in space covers a broad spectrum
ranging over more than four orders of magnitude and enables us to study rich
physical and astronomical phenomena. Taiji is a proposed space-based GW
detection mission that will be launched in the 2030s. Taiji will be exposed to
numerous overlapping and persistent GW signals buried in the foreground and
background, posing various data analysis challenges. In order to empower
potential scientific discoveries, the Mock LISA Data Challenge and the LISA
Data Challenge (LDC) were developed. While LDC provides a baseline framework,
the first LDC needs to be updated with more realistic simulations and adjusted
detector responses for Taiji's constellation. In this paper, we review the
scientific objectives and the roadmap for Taiji, as well as the technical
difficulties in data analysis and the data generation strategy, and present the
associated data challenges. In contrast to LDC, we utilize second-order
Keplerian orbit and second-generation time delay interferometry techniques.
Additionally, we employ a new model for the extreme-mass-ratio inspiral
waveform and stochastic GW background spectrum, which enables us to test
general relativity and measure the non-Gaussianity of curvature perturbations.
Furthermore, we present a comprehensive showcase of parameter estimation using
a toy dataset. This showcase not only demonstrates the scientific potential of
the Taiji Data Challenge but also serves to validate the effectiveness of the
pipeline. As the first data challenge for Taiji, we aim to build an open ground
for data analysis related to Taiji sources and sciences. More details can be
found on the official website at http://taiji-tdc.ictp-ap.org.


  It is well known that non-perturbative $\alpha'$ corrections to the
$SL(2,\IR)/U(1)$ cigar geometry are described via a condensation of a
Sine-Liouville operator that schematically can be written as $W^{+}+W^{-}$,
where $W^{\pm}$ describe a string with winding number $\pm 1$. This
condensation leads to interesting effects in the cigar geometry that take place
already at the classical level in string theory. Condensation of the
analytically continued Sine-Liouville operator in the Lorentzian
$SL(2,\IR)/U(1)$ black hole is problematic. Here, we propose that in the black
hole case, the non-perturbative $\alpha'$ corrections are described in terms of
an operator that can be viewed as the analytic continuation of the fusion of
$W^+$ and $W^-$. We show that this operator does not suffer from the same
problem as the analytically continued Sine-Liouville operator and argue that it
describes folded strings that fill the entire black hole and, in a sense,
replace the black hole interior. We estimate the folded strings radiation, and
show that they radiate at the Hawking temperature.