  This report documents the implementation of several related 1D heat flow
problems in the verification package ExactPack. In particular, the planar
sandwich class defined by Dawes et al., as well as the classes
PlanarSandwichHot, PlanarSandwichHalf, and other generalizations of the planar
sandwich problem, are defined and documented here. A rather general treatment
of 1D heat flow is presented, whose main results have been implemented in the
class Rod1D. All planar sandwich classes are derived from the parent class
Rod1D.


  In this paper, we introduce the notion of the complete joint Jacobi
polynomial of two linear codes of length $n$ over $\mathbb{F}_q$ and
$\mathbb{Z}_k$. We give the MacWilliams type identity for the complete joint
Jacobi polynomials of codes. We also introduce the concepts of the average
Jacobi polynomial and the average complete joint Jacobi polynomial over
$\mathbb{F}_q$ and $\mathbb{Z}_k$. We give a representation of the average of
the complete joint Jacobi polynomials of two linear codes of length $n$ over
$\mathbb{F}_q$ and $\mathbb{Z}_k$ in terms of the compositions of $n$ and its
distribution in the codes. Further we present a generalization of the
representation for the average of the $(g+1)$-fold complete joint Jacobi
polynomials of codes over $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ and $\mathbb{Z}_{k}$. Finally, we
give the notion of the average Jacobi intersection number of two codes.


  We carry out a detailed calculation of the cross section of pion diffraction
dissociation into two jets with large transverse momenta, originating from a
hard gluon exchange between the pion constituents. Both the quark and the gluon
contribution are considered and in the latter case we present calculations both
in covariant and in axial gauges. We find that the standard collinear
factorization does not hold in this reaction. The structure of non-factorizable
contributions is discussed and the results are compared with the experimental
data. Our conclusion is that the existing theoretical uncertainties do not
allow, for the time being, for a quantitative extraction of the pion
distribution amplitude.


  One of the fundamental postulates of the special relativity theory is
existence of a single system of universal coordinate transforms for inertial
reference frames, that is coordinate transforms, which are uniquely determined
by space-time coordinates of a material point. In this paper the abstract
mathematical theory of coordinate transforms in kinematic changeable sets is
developed. In particular it is proved the formal possibility of existence of
kinematics, which do not allow universal coordinate transforms. Such kinematics
may be applied for simulation the evolution of physical systems under the
condition of hypothesis on existence of particle-dependent velocity of light.


  Controlled remote implementation of operation (CRIO) enables to implement
operations on a remote state with strong security. We transmit implementations
by entangling qubits in photon-cavity-atom system. The photons transferring in
fibre and the atoms embedded in optical cavity construct CZ gates. The gates
transfer implementations between participants with the permission of
controller. We also construct nonadiabatic holonomic controlled gate between
alkali metal atoms. Decoherence and dissipation decrease the fidelity of the
implementation operators. We apply anti-blockade effect and dynamical scheme to
improve the robustness of the gate.


  We study the lattice N=1 Wess-Zumino model in two dimensions and we construct
a sequence $\rho^{(L)}$ of exact lower bounds on its ground state energy
density $\rho$, converging to $\rho$ in the limit $L\to\infty$. The bounds
$\rho^{(L)}$ can be computed numerically on a finite lattice with $L$ sites and
can be exploited to discuss dynamical symmetry breaking. The transition point
is determined and compared with recent results based on large-scale Green
Function Monte Carlo simulations with good agreement.


  Although face recognition (FR) has achieved great success in recent years, it
is still challenging to accurately recognize faces in low-quality images due to
the obscured facial details. Nevertheless, it is often feasible to make
predictions about specific soft biometric (SB) attributes, such as gender, and
baldness even in dealing with low-quality images. In this paper, we propose a
novel multi-branch neural network that leverages SB attribute information to
boost the performance of FR. To this end, we propose a cross-attribute-guided
transformer fusion (CATF) module that effectively captures the long-range
dependencies and relationships between FR and SB feature representations. The
synergy created by the reciprocal flow of information in the dual
cross-attention operations of the proposed CATF module enhances the performance
of FR. Furthermore, we introduce a novel self-attention distillation framework
that effectively highlights crucial facial regions, such as landmarks by
aligning low-quality images with those of their high-quality counterparts in
the feature space. The proposed self-attention distillation regularizes our
network to learn a unified quality-invariant feature representation in
unconstrained environments. We conduct extensive experiments on various FR
benchmarks varying in quality. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority
of our FR method compared to state-of-the-art FR studies.


  We consider two-player non-zero-sum linear-quadratic Gaussian games in which
both players aim to minimize a quadratic cost function while controlling a
linear and stochastic state process {using linear policies}. The system is
partially observable with asymmetric information available to the players. In
particular, each player has a private and noisy measurement of the state
process but can see the history of their opponent's actions. The challenge of
this asymmetry is that it introduces correlations into the players' belief
processes for the state and leads to circularity in their beliefs about their
opponents beliefs. We show that by leveraging the information available through
their opponent's actions, both players can enhance their state estimates and
improve their overall outcomes. In addition, we provide a closed-form solution
for the Bayesian updating rule of their belief process. We show that there is a
Nash equilibrium which is linear in the estimation of the state and with a
value function incorporating terms that arise due to errors in the state
estimation. We illustrate the results through an application to bargaining
which demonstrates the value of these information corrections.


  Spin-active quantum emitters have emerged as a leading platform for quantum
technologies. However, one of their major limitations is the large spread in
optical emission frequencies, which typically extends over tens of GHz. Here,
we investigate single V4+ vanadium centres in 4H-SiC, which feature
telecom-wavelength emission and a coherent S=1/2 spin state. We perform
spectroscopy on single emitters and report the observation of spin-dependent
optical transitions, a key requirement for spin-photon interfaces. By
engineering the isotopic composition of the SiC matrix, we reduce the
inhomogeneous spectral distribution of different emitters down to 100 MHz,
significantly smaller than any other single quantum emitter. Additionally, we
tailor the dopant concentration to stabilise the telecom-wavelength V4+ charge
state, thereby extending its lifetime by at least two orders of magnitude.
These results bolster the prospects for single V emitters in SiC as material
nodes in scalable telecom quantum networks.


  The meaning of a slang term can vary in different communities. However, slang
semantic variation is not well understood and under-explored in the natural
language processing of slang. One existing view argues that slang semantic
variation is driven by culture-dependent communicative needs. An alternative
view focuses on slang's social functions suggesting that the desire to foster
semantic distinction may have led to the historical emergence of
community-specific slang senses. We explore these theories using computational
models and test them against historical slang dictionary entries, with a focus
on characterizing regularity in the geographical variation of slang usages
attested in the US and the UK over the past two centuries. We show that our
models are able to predict the regional identity of emerging slang word
meanings from historical slang records. We offer empirical evidence that both
communicative need and semantic distinction play a role in the variation of
slang meaning yet their relative importance fluctuates over the course of
history. Our work offers an opportunity for incorporating historical cultural
elements into the natural language processing of slang.


  In charmed $D$ and $D_s$ mesons sector, the matrix of a Hamiltonian in a
quark potential model is computed in the $2^3S_1$ and $1^3D_1$ subspace. The
masses of four mixed states of $2^3S_1$ and $1^3D_1$ denoted with
$D^*_1(2635)$, $D^*_1(2739)$, $D^*_{s1}(2715)$ and $D^*_{s1}(2805)$ are
obtained. It is an off-diagonal part of the spin-orbit tensor interaction that
causes the mixing between the $2^3S_1$ and $1^3D_1$ states. The mixing angles
between the $2^3S_1$ and $1^3D_1$ states are tiny. Under the mixing, a $^3P_0$
model is employed to compute the hadronic decay widths of all OZI-allowed decay
channels of the four mixed states. The two light mixed states $D^*_1(2635)$ and
$D^*_{s1}(2715)$ are close in mass to $D^*_J(2600)$ and $D^*_{s1}(2700)$, while
the two heavy mixed states $D^*_1(2739)$ and $D^*_{s1}(2805)$ are lighter in
mass than $D(2750)$ and $D^*_{s1}(2860)$. The mixing angles obtained from
dynamical interaction are inconsistent with the mixing angles obtained from
hadronic decay. Based on mass spectra and hadronic decay analyses,
$D^*_J(2600)$, $D(2750)$, $D^*_{s1}(2700)$ and $D^*_{s1}(2860)$ are impossibly
the mixed states of $2^3S_1$ and $1^3D_1$ at the small mixing angles. The
inconsistence implies that $D^*_1(2760)$ and $D^*_{s1}(2860)$ have not been
properly resolved from present experimental data, or there exist large unknown
off-diagonal interactions that result in large mixing angles.


  We briefly describe the construction of a renormalizable gauge model based on
the nonlocal gauge invariant mass operator F1/D^2F. We also take a look at the
unitarity of the resulting model.


  In this paper, we study the Arens regularity properties of module actions and
we extend some proposition from Baker, Dales, Lau and others into general
situations. For Banach $A-bimodule$ $B$, let $Z_1(A^{**})$,
${Z}^\ell_{B^{**}}(A^{**})$ and ${Z}^\ell_{A^{**}}(B^{**})$ be the topological
centers of second dual of Banach algebra $A$, left module action
$\pi_\ell:~A\times B\rightarrow B$ and right module action $\pi_r:~B\times
A\rightarrow B$, respectively. We establish some relationships between them and
factorization properties of $A^*$ and $B^*$. We search some necessary and
sufficient conditions for factorization of $A^*$, $B$ and $B^*$ with some
results in group algebras. We extend the definitions of the left and right
multiplier for module actions.


  The classical stochastic model of cosmology recently developed by us is
reconsidered. In that approach the parameter $w$ defined by the equation of
state $p=w{\rho}$ was taken to be fluctuating with mean zero and we compared
the theoretical probability distribution function(PDF) for the Hubble parameter
with observational data corresponding to a universe with matter and vacuum
energy. Eventhough qualitative agreement between the two was obtained, an
attempt is herein made to introduce a more realistic assumption for the mean of
$w$ and use it for the calculations. In the present theory the mean values of
both $p$ and $w$ are taken to be nonzero. The theoretical and observational
PDFs are compared for different epochs and values of the Hubble parameter. The
corresponding values of the diffusion constant $D$ obtained are approximately
constant. We use the scatter in the observed redshift-magnitude data of Type Ia
supernova to place limits on the stochastic variation in expansion rate and
consequently, on the stochastic variation of the equation of state.


  This article is a sequel to the book `Ricci Flow and the Poincare Conjecture'
by the same authors. Using the main results of that book we establish the
Geometrization Conjecture for all compact, orientable three-manifolds following
the approach indicated by Perelman in his preprints on the subject. This
approach is to study the collapsed part of the manifold as time goes to
infinity in a Ricci flow with surgery. The main technique for this study is the
theory of Alexandrov spaces. This theory gives local models for the collapsed
part of the manifold. These local models can be glued together to prove that
the collapsed part of the manifold is a graph manifold with incompressible
boundary. From this and previous results, geometrization follows easily.


  We study the isoperimetric problem in H-type groups and Grushin spaces,
emphasizing a relation between them. We prove existence, symmetry and
regularity properties of isoperimetric sets, under a symmetry assumption that
depends on the dimension.


  A linear and lagged relationship between inflation and labor force change
rate, p(t)= A1dLF(t-t1)/LF(t-t1)+A2 was found for developed economies. For the
USA, A1=4.0, A2=-0.03075, and t1=2 years. It provides a RMS forecasting error
(RMFSE) of 0.8% at a two-year horizon for the period between 1965 and 2002 (the
best among other inflation forecasting models). This relationship is tested for
cointegration. Both variables are integrated of order one according to the
presence of a unit root in the series and its absence in their first
differences. Two methods of cointegration testing are applied: the
Engle-Granger one based on the unit root test of the residuals including a
variety of specification tests and the Johansen cointegration rank test based
on the VAR representation. Both approaches demonstrate that the variables are
cointegrated and the long-run equilibrium relation revealed in previous study
holds. According to the Granger causality test, the labor force change is
proved to be a weakly exogenous variable - a natural result considering the
time lead and the existence of a cointegrating relation. VAR and VECM
representations do not provide any significant improvement in RMSFE. There are
numerous applications of the equation: from purely theoretical - a robust
fundamental relation between macroeconomic and population variables, to a
practical one - an accurate out-of-sample inflation forecasting at a two-year
horizon and a long-term prediction based on labor force projections. The
predictive power of the relationship is inversely proportional to the
uncertainty of labor force estimates. Therefore, future inflation research
programs should start from a significant improvement in the accuracy of labor
force estimations.


  In this Paper we report on our analysis of three Chandra observations of the
accretion-powered millisecond X-ray pulsar IGR J00291+5934 obtained during the
late stages of the 2004 outburst. We also report the serendipitous detection of
the source in quiescence by ROSAT during MJD 48830-48839. The detected 0.3-10
keV source count rates varied significantly between the Chandra observations
from (7.2+-1.2)x10^-3, (6.8+-0.9)x10^-3, and (1.4+-0.1)x10^-2 counts per second
for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Chandra observation, on MJD 53371.88, 53383.99, and
53407.57, respectively. The count rate for the 3rd observation is 2.0+-0.4
times as high as that of the average of the first two observations. The
unabsorbed 0.5-10 keV source flux for the best-fit power-law model to the
source spectrum was (7.9+-2.5)x10^-14, (7.3+-2.0)x10^-14, and
(1.17+-0.22)x10^-13 erg cm^-2 s^-1 for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Chandra
observation, respectively. We find that this source flux is consistent with
that found by ROSAT [~(5.4+-2.4)x10^-14 erg cm^-2 s^-1]. Under the assumption
that the interstellar extinction, N_H, does not vary between the observations,
we find that the blackbody temperature during the 2nd Chandra observation is
significantly higher than that during the 1st and 3rd observation. Furthermore,
the effective temperature of the neutron star derived from fitting an absorbed
blackbody or neutron star atmosphere model to the data is rather high in
comparison with many other neutron star soft X-ray transients in quiescence,
even during the 1st and 3rd observation. If we assume that the source quiescent
luminosity is similar to that measured for two other accretion powered
millisecond pulsars in quiescence, the distance to IGR J00291+5934 is 2.6-3.6
kpc.


  We have employed time-dependent local-spin density theory to analyze the
far-infrared transmission spectrum of InAs self-assembled nano-rings recently
reported [A. Lorke et al, cond-mat/9908263 (1999)]. The overall agreement
between theory and experiment is good, which on the one hand confirms that the
experimental peaks indeed reflect the ring-like structure of the sample, and on
the other hand, asseses the suitability of the theoretical method to describe
such small nanostructures. The addition energies of one- and two-electron rings
are also reported and compared with the corresponding capacitance spectra.


  Rich spontaneous symmetry-breaking phenomena with nontrivial quantum
geometric properties in metals represent central issues in condensed matter
physics. The emergence of chiral loop-current order, accompanied by
time-reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking in various kagome metals, has garnered
significant attention as a novel quantum topological state. Particularly
noteworthy is the giant electrical magnetochiral anisotropy (eMChA) in CsV3Sb5
[Guo et al, Nature 611, 461 (2022)], which provides compelling evidence of TRS
and inversion-symmetry breaking. However, the underlying essence of this
observation has remained obscured due to the lack of theoretical understanding.
Here, we identify that the chiral loop-current induces substantial and
switchable eMChA in kagome metals by taking account of the experimentally
observed stripe charge-density-wave. The obtained eMChA coefficient is
$\gamma_{eM}\propto M_{orb} \tau$, where $M_{orb}$ is the loop-current-induced
orbital magnetization and $\tau$ is the lifetime of conduction electrons.
Importantly, giant eMChA arises from the quantum metric (QM), which defines
essential quantum phases of matter and their unique functionalities, including
nonlinear effects. This effect is resonantly amplified in the loop-current
phase, and the derived eMChA is switched by minute magnetic fields. This
research elucidates the fundamental symmetry breaking in kagome metals and also
sets the stage for investigating the QM-induced phenomena arising from
electronic correlations.


  Next-generation wireless systems are rapidly evolving from communication-only
systems to multi-modal systems with integrated sensing and communications. In
this paper a novel joint sensing and communication framework is proposed for
enabling wireless extended reality (XR) at terahertz (THz) bands. To gather
rich sensing information and a higher line-of-sight (LoS) availability,
THz-operated reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) acting as base stations
are deployed. The sensing parameters are extracted by leveraging THz's
quasi-opticality and opportunistically utilizing uplink communication
waveforms. This enables the use of the same waveform, spectrum, and hardware
for both sensing and communication purposes. The environmental sensing
parameters are then derived by exploiting the sparsity of THz channels via
tensor decomposition. Hence, a high-resolution indoor mapping is derived so as
to characterize the spatial availability of communications and the mobility of
users. Simulation results show that in the proposed framework, the resolution
and data rate of the overall system are positively correlated, thus allowing a
joint optimization between these metrics with no tradeoffs. Results also show
that the proposed framework improves the system reliability in static and
mobile systems. In particular, the highest reliability gains of 10% in
reliability are achieved in a walking speed mobile environment compared to
communication only systems with beam tracking.


  Optimizing various wireless user tasks poses a significant challenge for
networking systems because of the expanding range of user requirements. Despite
advancements in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), the need for customized
optimization tasks for individual users complicates developing and applying
numerous DRL models, leading to substantial computation resource and energy
consumption and can lead to inconsistent outcomes. To address this issue, we
propose a novel approach utilizing a Mixture of Experts (MoE) framework,
augmented with Large Language Models (LLMs), to analyze user objectives and
constraints effectively, select specialized DRL experts, and weigh each
decision from the participating experts. Specifically, we develop a gate
network to oversee the expert models, allowing a collective of experts to
tackle a wide array of new tasks. Furthermore, we innovatively substitute the
traditional gate network with an LLM, leveraging its advanced reasoning
capabilities to manage expert model selection for joint decisions. Our proposed
method reduces the need to train new DRL models for each unique optimization
problem, decreasing energy consumption and AI model implementation costs. The
LLM-enabled MoE approach is validated through a general maze navigation task
and a specific network service provider utility maximization task,
demonstrating its effectiveness and practical applicability in optimizing
complex networking systems.


  While the ZX and ZW calculi have been effective as graphical reasoning tools
for finite-dimensional quantum computation, the possibilities for
continuous-variable quantum computation (CVQC) in infinite-dimensional Hilbert
space are only beginning to be explored. In this work, we formulate a graphical
language for CVQC. Each diagram is an undirected graph made of two types of
spiders: the Z spider from the ZX calculus defined on the reals, and the newly
introduced Fock spider defined on the natural numbers. The Z and X spiders
represent functions in position and momentum space respectively, while the Fock
spider represents functions in the discrete Fock basis. In addition to the
Fourier transform between Z and X, and the Hermite transform between Z and
Fock, we present exciting new graphical rules capturing heftier CVQC
interactions.
  We ensure this calculus is complete for all of Gaussian CVQC interpreted in
infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, by translating the completeness in affine
Lagrangian relations by Booth, Carette, and Comfort. Applying our calculus for
quantum error correction, we derive graphical representations of the
Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code encoder, syndrome measurement, and magic
state distillation of Hadamard eigenstates. Finally, we elucidate Gaussian
boson sampling by providing a fully graphical proof that its circuit samples
submatrix hafnians.


  According to Shapley's game-theoretical result, there exists a unique game
value of finite cooperative games that satisfies axioms on additivity,
efficiency, null-player property and symmetry. The original setting requires
symmetry with respect to arbitrary permutations of players. We analyze the
consequences of weakening the symmetry axioms and study quasi-values that are
symmetric with respect to permutations from a group $G\leq S_n$. We classify
all the permutation groups $G$ that are large enough to assure a unique
$G$-symmetric quasi-value, as well as the structure and dimension of the space
of all such quasi-values for a general permutation group $G$.
  We show how to construct $G$-symmetric quasi-values algorithmically by
averaging certain basic quasi-values (marginal operators).


  Dynamic helicity switching by utilizing metasurfaces is challenging because
it requires deep modulation of polarization states. To realize such helicity
switching, this paper proposes a dynamic metasurface functioning as a
switchable quarter-wave plate, the fast axis of which can be dynamically
rotated by $90^\circ$. The device is based on the critical transition of an
anisotropic metallic checkerboard, which realizes the deep modulation and
simultaneous design of the switchable states. After verifying the functionality
of the ideally designed device in a simulation, we tune its structural
parameters to realize practical experiments in the terahertz frequency range.
By evaluating the fabricated sample with vanadium dioxide, the conductivity of
which can be controlled by temperature, its dynamic helicity switching function
is demonstrated.


  The secure transfer of information is an important problem in modern
telecommunications. Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides a solution to this
problem by using individual quantum systems to generate correlated bits between
remote parties, that can be used to extract a secret key. QKD with
D-dimensional quantum channels provides security advantages that grow with
increasing D. However, the vast majority of QKD implementations has been
restricted to two dimensions. Here we demonstrate the feasibility of using
higher dimensions for real-world quantum cryptography by performing, for the
first time, a fully automated QKD session based on the BB84 protocol with
16-dimensional quantum states. Information is encoded in the single-photon
transverse momentum and the required states are dynamically generated with
programmable spatial light modulators. Our setup paves the way for future
developments in the field of experimental high-dimensional QKD.


  This paper addresses the issue of lemma generation in a k-induction-based
formal analysis of transition systems, in the linear real/integer arithmetic
fragment. A backward analysis, powered by quantifier elimination, is used to
output preimages of the negation of the proof objective, viewed as unauthorized
states, or gray states. Two heuristics are proposed to take advantage of this
source of information. First, a thorough exploration of the possible
partitionings of the gray state space discovers new relations between state
variables, representing potential invariants. Second, an inexact exploration
regroups and over-approximates disjoint areas of the gray state space, also to
discover new relations between state variables. k-induction is used to isolate
the invariants and check if they strengthen the proof objective. These
heuristics can be used on the first preimage of the backward exploration, and
each time a new one is output, refining the information on the gray states. In
our context of critical avionics embedded systems, we show that our approach is
able to outperform other academic or commercial tools on examples of interest
in our application field. The method is introduced and motivated through two
main examples, one of which was provided by Rockwell Collins, in a
collaborative formal verification framework.


  The Hilbert space of states of the relativistic Majorana particle consists of
normalizable bispinors with real components, and the usual momentum operator $-
i \nabla$ can not be defined in this space. For this reason, we introduce the
axial momentum operator, $ - i \gamma_5 \nabla$ as a new observable for this
particle. In the Heisenberg picture, the axial momentum contains a component
which oscillates with the amplitude proportional to $m/E$, where $E$ is the
energy and $m$ the mass of the particle. The presence of the oscillations
discriminates between the massive and massless Majorana particle. We show how
the eigenvectors of the axial momentum, called the axial plane waves, can be
used as a basis for obtaining the general solution of the evolution equation,
also in the case of free Majorana field. Here a novel feature is a coupling of
modes with the opposite momenta, again present only in the case of massive
particle or field.


  We propose a duality theory for multi-marginal repulsive cost that appear in
optimal transport problems arising in Density Functional Theory. The related
optimization problems involve probabilities on the entire space and, as
minimizing sequences may lose mass at infinity, it is natural to expect relaxed
solutions which are sub-probabilities. We first characterize the $N$-marginals
relaxed cost in terms of a stratification formula which takes into account all
$k$ interactions with $k\le N$. We then develop a duality framework involving
continuous functions vanishing at infinity and deduce primal-dual necessary and
sufficient optimality conditions Next we prove the existence and the regularity
of an optimal dual potential under very mild assumptions. In the last part of
the paper, we apply our results to a minimization problem involving a given
continuous potential and we give evidence of a mass quantization effect for
optimal solutions.


  We are highly vulnerable to either natural or artificial catastrophes and
therefore, Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) operators need reliable
wireless communications for successful operations especially in critical rescue
missions. PPDR dedicated or commercial terrestrial networks have always been
used which at most times lead to unsuccessful operations. This is due to the
fact these networks are all infrastructure-based which can be destroyed, fail
to deliver the required service or the networks are not able to support and
sustain the sudden traffic surge. Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is earmarked as the
future candidate technology for PPDR purpose and so much have been put into it
in terms of research, perhaps suitable architecture that will meet
mission-critical requirements can be developed. This can only work if
terrestrial networks will always be available. Unfortunately, in worst case
scenarios, infrastructures might get damaged totally or might be destroyed by
subsequent disasters. As a result, adequate guarantees can only be possible in
the hypothesis of very high financial involvement. Fortunately, considering
availability, coverage ubiquity and reliability, satellite technologies have
lately proven good. So, to maximize the high channel performance of terrestrial
networks and the availability and reliability of non-terrestrial networks, the
solution lies in a hybrid system. It is on this ground that this work deals
with the integration of LTE and satellite networks in both infrastructure-based
and infrastructure-less topologies for PPDR purpose. It is aim at providing
people trapped in disaster and field operators with a transparent accessibility
and guaranteed coverage even when infrastructures are damaged. The requirements
are defined and the model simulated. The network is able to provide network
coverage, enhanced capacity and promised greater resilience.


  Using numerical simulations of a simple sea-coast mechanical erosion model,
we investigate the effect of spatial long-range correlations in the lithology
of coastal landscapes on the fractal behavior of the corresponding coastlines.
In the model, the resistance of a coast section to erosion depends on the local
lithology configuration as well as on the number of neighboring sea sides. For
weak sea forces, the sea is trapped by the coastline and the eroding process
stops after some time. For strong sea forces erosion is perpetual. The
transition between these two regimes takes place at a critical sea force,
characterized by a fractal coastline front. For uncorrelated landscapes, we
obtain, at the critical value, a fractal dimension D=1.33, which is consistent
with the dimension of the accessible external perimeter of the spanning cluster
in two-dimensional percolation. For sea forces above the critical value, our
results indicate that the coastline is self-affine and belongs to the
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. In the case of landscapes generated
with power-law spatial long-range correlations, the coastline fractal dimension
changes continuously with the Hurst exponent H, decreasing from D=1.34 to 1.04,
for H=0 and 1, respectively. This nonuniversal behavior is compatible with the
multitude of fractal dimensions found for real coastlines.


  This paper is devoted to the estimation of the common marginal density
function of weakly dependent processes. The accuracy of estimation is measured
using pointwise risks. We propose a datadriven procedure using kernel rules.
The bandwidth is selected using the approach of Goldenshluger and Lepski and we
prove that the resulting estimator satisfies an oracle type inequality. The
procedure is also proved to be adaptive (in a minimax framework) over a scale
of H\"older balls for several types of dependence: stong mixing processes,
$\lambda$-dependent processes or i.i.d. sequences can be considered using a
single procedure of estimation. Some simulations illustrate the performance of
the proposed method.


  A model involving competing short-range isotropic Heisenberg interactions is
developed to explain the "double-q" magnetic structure of CeAl$_2$. For
suitably chosen interactions, terms in the Landau expansion quadratic in the
order parameters explain the condensation of incommensurate order at
wavevectors in the star of (1/2 $-\delta$, 1/2 $+\delta$, 1/2)$(2\pi/a)$, where
$a$ is the cubic lattice constant. We show that the fourth order terms in the
Landau expansion lead to the formation of the so-called "double-q" magnetic
structure in which long-range order develops simultaneously at two
symmetry-related wavevectors, in striking agreement with the magnetic structure
determinations. Based on the value of the ordering temperature and of the
Curie-Weiss $\Theta$ of the susceptibility, we estimate that the nearest
neighbor interaction $K_0$ is ferromagnetic, with $K_0/k=-11\pm 1$K and the
next-nearest neighbor interaction $J$ is antiferromagnetic with $J/k=6 \pm 1$K.
We also briefly comment on the analogous phenomenon seen in the similar system
TmS.


  Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) inevitably suffers from streaking
artifacts caused by zeros on the conical surface of the dipole kernel in
k-space. This work proposes a novel and accurate QSM reconstruction method
based on a direct k-space interpolation approach, avoiding problems of over
smoothing and streaking artifacts. Inspired by the recent theory of
annihilating filter-based low-rank Hankel matrix approach (ALOHA), QSM
reconstruction problem is formulated as deconvolution problem under low-rank
Hankel matrix constraint in the k-space. To reduce the computational complexity
and the memory requirement, the problem is formulated as successive
reconstruction of 2-D planes along three independent axes of the 3-D phase
image in Fourier domain. Extensive experiments were performed to verify and
compare the proposed method with existing QSM reconstruction methods. The
proposed ALOHA-QSM effectively reduced streaking artifacts and accurately
estimated susceptibility values in deep gray matter structures, compared to the
existing QSM methods. Our suggested ALOHA-QSM algorithm successfully solves the
three-dimensional QSM dipole inversion problem without additional anatomical
information or prior assumption and provides good image quality and
quantitative accuracy.


  Over the last decade, several groups of young (mainly low-mass) stars have
been discovered in the solar neighbourhood (closer than ~100 pc), thanks to
cross-correlation between X-ray, optical spectroscopy and kinematic data. These
young local associations offer insights into the star formation process in
low-density environments, shed light on the substellar domain, and could have
played an important role in the recent history of the local interstellar
medium. Ages estimates for these associations have been derived in the
literature by several ways. In this work we have studied the kinematic
evolution of young local associations and their relation to other young stellar
groups and structures in the local interstellar medium, thus casting new light
on recent star formation processes in the solar neighbourhood. We compiled the
data published in the literature for young local associations, including the
astrometric data from the new Hipparcos reduction. Using a realistic Galactic
potential we integrated the orbits for these associations and the Sco-Cen
complex back in time. Combining these data with the spatial structure of the
Local Bubble and the spiral structure of the Galaxy, we propose a recent
history of star formation in the solar neighbourhood. We suggest that both the
Sco-Cen complex and young local associations originated as a result of the
impact of the inner spiral arm shock wave against a giant molecular cloud. The
core of the giant molecular cloud formed the Sco-Cen complex, and some small
cloudlets in a halo around the giant molecular cloud formed young local
associations several million years later. We also propose a supernova in young
local associations a few million years ago as the most likely candidate to have
reheated the Local Bubble to its present temperature.


  Quipper is a recently developed programming language for expressing quantum
computations. This paper gives a brief tutorial introduction to the language,
through a demonstration of how to make use of some of its key features. We
illustrate many of Quipper's language features by developing a few well known
examples of Quantum computation, including quantum teleportation, the quantum
Fourier transform, and a quantum circuit for addition.


  Given a normed cone $(X,p)$ and a subcone $Y,$ we construct and study the
quotient normed cone $(X/Y,\tilde{p})$ generated by $Y$. In particular we
characterize the bicompleteness of $(X/Y,\tilde{p})$ in terms of the
bicompleteness of $(X,p),$ and prove that the dual quotient cone
$((X/Y)^{*},\|\cdot \|_{\tilde{p},u})$ can be identified as a distinguished
subcone of the dual cone $(X^{*},\|\cdot \|_{p,u})$. Furthermore, some parts of
the theory are presented in the general setting of the space $CL(X,Y)$ of all
continuous linear mappings from a normed cone $(X,p)$ to a normed cone $(Y,q),$
extending several well-known results related to open continuous linear mappings
between normed linear spaces.


  The use of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasmas has become a practical
way to carry out surface treatment and one seeks to do it in a more efficient
way, which requires to have control of the plasma parameters like rotational
and vibrational temperatures (T_rot and T_vib). Since the T_vib of an
atmospheric pressure plasma jet is an important parameter related to
improvement of surface treatments, in this work it was analyzed two methods to
increase the values of T_vib in the DBD plasma. One of the methods is to reduce
the exit size of the DBD reactor, and the other is to change the gas flow rate.
Explanations for the reasons that lead to the increment of the vibrational
temperature are proposed in both cases.


  The career of an employee can be described (under certain circumstances) by a
random walk, where the states of the random walk are determined by the level
and position of an employee. At each decision moment the state of the employee
is changed by four stochastic transformations: upgrading one position at the
same level, upgrading one level, staying until the next decision moment in the
current state and absorption in the current state. We obtain explicit formula
for the long term behavior of the distribution of all employees using
generating functions.


  While experimental studies on jet quenching have achieved a large
sophistication, the theoretical description of this phenomenon still misses
some important points. One of them is the interplay of vacuum-like emissions,
usually formulated in momentum space, with the medium induced ones that demand
an interplay with a space-time picture of the medium and thus must be
formulated in position space. A unified description of both vacuum and
medium-induced emissions is lacking. In this work, we compute the tree-level
probability of a double gluon emission in vacuum, and identify the enhanced
phase-space regions for each diagram, corresponding to different configurations
of the parton cascade. This calculation provides a parametric form for the
formation times associated with each diagram, highlighting the equivalence of
various ordering variables at double logarithmic accuracy. This equivalence is
further explored by building a toy Monte-Carlo parton shower ordered in
formation time, virtuality, transverse momentum, and angle. Aiming at a link
with jet substructure, we compute the Lund Plane distributions and trajectories
for each ordering prescription. We also compute the distributions in number of
splittings and final partons, with the goal of clarifying the differences to be
expected from the different ordering variables and the vetoes that must be
implemented at Monte Carlo level to conserve energy-momentum, which turn out to
have a sizeable influence on the shower's evolution.


  We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex
smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is
allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and
receives noisy evaluations of function values at the queried points (i.e. the
algorithm has access to zeroth-order information). Optimization performance is
evaluated by the expected difference of function values at the estimated
optimum and the true optimum. In contrast to the classical optimization setup,
first-order information like gradients are not directly accessible to the
optimization algorithm. We show that the classical minimax framework of
analysis, which roughly characterizes the worst-case query complexity of an
optimization algorithm in this setting, leads to excessively pessimistic
results. We propose a local minimax framework to study the fundamental
difficulty of optimizing smooth functions with adaptive function evaluations,
which provides a refined picture of the intrinsic difficulty of zeroth-order
optimization. We show that for functions with fast level set growth around the
global minimum, carefully designed optimization algorithms can identify a near
global minimizer with many fewer queries. For the special case of strongly
convex and smooth functions, our implied convergence rates match the ones
developed for zeroth-order convex optimization problems. At the other end of
the spectrum, for worst-case smooth functions no algorithm can converge faster
than the minimax rate of estimating the entire unknown function in the
$\ell_\infty$-norm. We provide an intuitive and efficient algorithm that
attains the derived upper error bounds.


  We adopt a component model based on object-oriented systems, introducing the
concepts of components and their structure. A component consists of a
dynamically changing set of connected objects. Only some of these objects are
interface objects, and are thus accessible from the environment. During the
component lifetime not only the number of objects, but also that of interface
objects, and their connections change. To describe this situation, we introduce
component interface diagrams (CIDs)-an adaption of UML diagrams-as a notation
to characterize interfaces of components, their structure, and their
navigability. We show how CIDs can be used to describe the in-house developed
Open Editor Framework (OEF). Finally, we give guidelines that allow to map
components described with CIDs directly to several component technologies, like
ActiveX, CORBA, or Java Beans


  The star gamma Cep is known as a single-lined spectroscopic triple system at
a distance of 13.8 pc, composed of a K1 III-IV primary star with V = 3.2 mag, a
stellar-mass companion in a 66--67 year orbit (Torres 2006), and a substellar
companion with M_p sin i = 1.7 M_Jup that is most likely a planet (Hatzes et
al. 2003). We aim to obtain a first direct detection of the stellar companion,
to determine its current orbital position (for comparison with the
spectroscopic and astrometric data), its infrared magnitude and, hence, mass.
We use the Adaptive Optics camera CIAO at the Japanese 8m telescope Subaru on
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, with the semi-transparent coronograph to block most of the
light from the bright primary gamma Cep A, and to detect at the same time the
faint companion B. In addition, we also used the IR camera Omega-Cass at the
Calar Alto 3.5m telescope, Spain, to image gamma Cep A and B by adding up many
very short integrations (without AO). gamma Cep B is clearly detected on our
CIAO and Omega-Cass images. We use a photometric standard star to determine the
magnitude of B after PSF subtraction in the Subaru image, and the magnitude
difference between A and B in the Calar Alto images, and find an average value
of K = 7.3 \pm 0.2 mag. The separations and position angles between A and B are
measured on 15 July 2006 and 11 and 12 Sept 2006, B is slightly south of west
of A. By combining the radial velocity, astrometric, and imaging data, we have
refined the binary orbit and determined the dynamical masses of the two stars
in the gamma Cep system, namely 1.40 \pm 0.12 M_sun for the primary and 0.409
\pm 0.018 M_sun for the secondary (consistent with being a M4 dwarf). We also
determine the minimum mass of the sub-stellar companion to be M_p sin i = 1.60
\pm 0.13 M_Jup.


  This paper proposes LCFL, a novel clustering metric for evaluating clients'
data distributions in federated learning. LCFL aligns with federated learning
requirements, accurately assessing client-to-client variations in data
distribution. It offers advantages over existing clustered federated learning
methods, addressing privacy concerns, improving applicability to non-convex
models, and providing more accurate classification results. LCFL does not
require prior knowledge of clients' data distributions. We provide a rigorous
mathematical analysis, demonstrating the correctness and feasibility of our
framework. Numerical experiments with neural network instances highlight the
superior performance of LCFL over baselines on several clustered federated
learning benchmarks.


  We investigated the effects of Schmidt number on passive scalar transport in
forced compressible turbulence. In the inertial-convective range the scalar
spectrum followed the k^{-5/3} power law. For Sc >> 1, there appeared a k^{-1}
power law in the viscous-convective range, while for Sc << 1, a k^{-17/3} power
law was identified in the inertial-diffusive range. The scaling constant for
the mixed third-order structure function of velocity-scalar increment grew over
Sc, and the effect of compressibility made it smaller than the classical 4/3
value. At small amplitudes, the PDF of scalar fluctuations collapsed to the
Gaussian distribution, whereas at large amplitudes it decayed more quickly than
Gaussian. At large scales, the PDF of scalar increment behaved similarly to
that of scalar fluctuation, while at small scales it resembled the PDF of
scalar gradient. The scalar dissipation occurring at large magnitudes was found
to grow with Sc. Due to low molecular diffusivity, for Sc >> 1, the scalar
field rolled up and got mixed sufficiently. However, for Sc << 1, the scalar
field lost the small-scale structures by high molecular diffusivity, and
retained only the large-scale, cloudlike structures. The spectral densities of
scalar advection and dissipation in both Sc >> 1 and Sc << 1 flows followed the
k^{-5/3} scaling. This indicated that in compressible turbulence the processes
of advection and dissipation except that of scalar-dilatation coupling might
defer to the Kolmogorov picture. It then showed that at high wavenumbers, the
magnitudes of spectral coherency in both Sc >> 1 and Sc << 1 flows decayed
faster than the theoretical prediction of k^{-2/3} for incompressible flows.
Finally, the comparison with incompressible results showed that the scalar in
compressible turbulence with Sc=1 lacked a conspicuous bump structure in its
spectrum, but was more intermittent in the dissipative range.


  This talk presents recent calculations in full QCD of the lowest three
moments of generalized parton distributions and the insight they provide into
the behavior of nucleon electromagnetic form factors, the origin of the nucleon
spin, and the transverse structure of the nucleon. In addition, new exploratory
calculations in the chiral regime of full QCD are discussed.


  The Symmetries of Feynman Integrals (SFI) is a method for evaluating Feynman
Integrals which exposes a novel continuous group associated with the diagram
which depends only on its topology and acts on its parameters. Using this
method we study the kite diagram, a two-loop diagram with two external legs,
with arbitrary masses and spacetime dimension. Generically, this method reduces
a Feynman integral into a line integral over simpler diagrams. We identify a
locus in parameter space where the integral further reduces to a mere linear
combination of simpler diagrams, thereby maximally generalizing the known
massless case.


  The self-correlation level contours at the 1010 cm scale reveal a 3D
isotropic feature in the slow solar wind and a quasi-anisotropic feature in the
fast solar wind. However, the 1010 cm scale is approximately near the
lowfrequency break (outer scale of turbulence cascade), especially in the fast
wind. How the self-correlation level contours behave with dependence on the
scales in the inertial range of solar wind turbulence remains unknown. Here we
present the 3D self-correlation function level contours and their dependence on
the scales in the inertial range for the first time. We use data at 1 au from
instruments on the Wind spacecraft in the period 2005-2018. We show the 3D
isotropic self-correlation level contours of the magnetic field in the inertial
range of both slow and fast solar wind turbulence. We also find that the
self-correlation level contours of the velocity in the inertial range present
2D anisotropy with an elongation in the perpendicular direction and 2D isotropy
in the plane perpendicular to the mean magnetic field. These results indicate
differences between the magnetic field and the velocity, providing new clues to
interpret the solar wind turbulence on the inertial scale.


  Attention mechanisms have been widely applied in the Visual Question
Answering (VQA) task, as they help to focus on the area-of-interest of both
visual and textual information. To answer the questions correctly, the model
needs to selectively target different areas of an image, which suggests that an
attention-based model may benefit from an explicit attention supervision. In
this work, we aim to address the problem of adding attention supervision to VQA
models. Since there is a lack of human attention data, we first propose a Human
Attention Network (HAN) to generate human-like attention maps, training on a
recently released dataset called Human ATtention Dataset (VQA-HAT). Then, we
apply the pre-trained HAN on the VQA v2.0 dataset to automatically produce the
human-like attention maps for all image-question pairs. The generated
human-like attention map dataset for the VQA v2.0 dataset is named as
Human-Like ATtention (HLAT) dataset. Finally, we apply human-like attention
supervision to an attention-based VQA model. The experiments show that adding
human-like supervision yields a more accurate attention together with a better
performance, showing a promising future for human-like attention supervision in
VQA.


  We provide an exposition of the proofs of Bourgain's polynomial ergodic
theorems. The focus is on the motivation and intuition behind his arguments.


  This paper introduces hybrid LU-QR al- gorithms for solving dense linear
systems of the form Ax = b. Throughout a matrix factorization, these al-
gorithms dynamically alternate LU with local pivoting and QR elimination steps,
based upon some robustness criterion. LU elimination steps can be very
efficiently parallelized, and are twice as cheap in terms of floating- point
operations, as QR steps. However, LU steps are not necessarily stable, while QR
steps are always stable. The hybrid algorithms execute a QR step when a
robustness criterion detects some risk for instability, and they execute an LU
step otherwise. Ideally, the choice between LU and QR steps must have a small
computational overhead and must provide a satisfactory level of stability with
as few QR steps as possible. In this paper, we introduce several robustness
criteria and we establish upper bounds on the growth factor of the norm of the
updated matrix incurred by each of these criteria. In addition, we describe the
implementation of the hybrid algorithms through an exten- sion of the PaRSEC
software to allow for dynamic choices during execution. Finally, we analyze
both stability and performance results compared to state-of-the-art linear
solvers on parallel distributed multicore platforms.


  Sensor-based remote health monitoring is used in industrial, urban and
healthcare settings to monitor ongoing operation of equipment and human health.
An important aim is to intervene early if anomalous events or adverse health is
detected. In the wild, these anomaly detection approaches are challenged by
noise, label scarcity, high dimensionality, explainability and wide variability
in operating environments. The Contextual Matrix Profile (CMP) is a
configurable 2-dimensional version of the Matrix Profile (MP) that uses the
distance matrix of all subsequences of a time series to discover patterns and
anomalies. The CMP is shown to enhance the effectiveness of the MP and other
SOTA methods at detecting, visualising and interpreting true anomalies in noisy
real world data from different domains. It excels at zooming out and
identifying temporal patterns at configurable time scales. However, the CMP
does not address cross-sensor information, and cannot scale to high dimensional
data. We propose a novel, self-supervised graph-based approach for temporal
anomaly detection that works on context graphs generated from the CMP distance
matrix. The learned graph embeddings encode the anomalous nature of a time
context. In addition, we evaluate other graph outlier algorithms for the same
task. Given our pipeline is modular, graph construction, generation of graph
embeddings, and pattern recognition logic can all be chosen based on the
specific pattern detection application. We verified the effectiveness of
graph-based anomaly detection and compared it with the CMP and 3 state-of-the
art methods on two real-world healthcare datasets with different anomalies. Our
proposed method demonstrated better recall, alert rate and generalisability.


  For a simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ and an irreducible faithful
representation $\pi$ of $\mathfrak{g}$, we introduce the Schur polynomials of
$(\mathfrak{g},\pi)$-type. We then derive the Sato-Zhou type formula for tau
functions of the Drinfeld-Sokolov (DS) hierarchy of $\mathfrak{g}$-type.
Namely, we show that the tau functions are linear combinations of the Schur
polynomials of $(\mathfrak{g},\pi)$-type with the coefficients being the
Pl\"ucker coordinates. As an application, we provide a way of computing
polynomial tau functions for the DS hierarchy. For $\mathfrak{g}$ of low rank,
we give several examples of polynomial tau functions, and use them to detect
bilinear equations for the DS hierarchy.


  We present high spectral resolution ($R\approx108,000$) Stokes $V$
polarimetry of the Classical T Tauri stars (CTTSs) GQ Lup and TW Hya obtained
with the polarimetric upgrade to the HARPS spectrometer on the ESO 3.6 m
telescope. We present data on both photospheric lines and emission lines,
concentrating our discussion on the polarization properties of the \ion{He}{1}
emission lines at 5876 \AA\ and 6678 \AA. The \ion{He}{1} lines in these CTTSs
contain both narrow emission cores, believed to come from near the accretion
shock region on these stars, and broad emission components which may come from
either a wind or the large scale magnetospheric accretion flow. We detect
strong polarization in the narrow component of the two \ion{He}{1} emission
lines in both stars. We observe a maximum implied field strength of $6.05 \pm
0.24$ kG in the 5876 \AA\ line of GQ Lup, making it the star with the highest
field strength measured in this line for a CTTS. We find field strengths in the
two \ion{He}{1} lines that are consistent with each other, in contrast to what
has been reported in the literature on at least one star. We do not detect any
polarization in the broad component of the \ion{He}{1} lines on these stars,
strengthening the conclusion that they form over a substantially different
volume relative the formation region of the narrow component of the \ion{He}{1}
lines.


  Recent deep learning models have shown improving results to natural language
generation (NLG) irrespective of providing sufficient annotated data. However,
a modest training data may harm such models performance. Thus, how to build a
generator that can utilize as much of knowledge from a low-resource setting
data is a crucial issue in NLG. This paper presents a variational neural-based
generation model to tackle the NLG problem of having limited labeled dataset,
in which we integrate a variational inference into an encoder-decoder generator
and introduce a novel auxiliary autoencoding with an effective training
procedure. Experiments showed that the proposed methods not only outperform the
previous models when having sufficient training dataset but also show strong
ability to work acceptably well when the training data is scarce.


  White matter tract integrity (WMTI) can characterize brain microstructure in
areas with highly aligned fiber bundles. Several WMTI biomarkers have now been
validated against microscopy and provided promising results in studies of brain
development and aging, and in a number of brain disorders. Currently, WMTI is
mostly used in dedicated animal studies and clinical studies of slowly
progressing diseases but has not yet emerged as a routine clinical tool. To
this end, a less data intensive experimental method would be beneficial by
enabling high resolution validation studies, and ease clinical applications by
speeding up data acquisition compared to typical diffusion kurtosis imaging
(DKI) protocols utilized as part of WMTI imaging. Here, we evaluate WMTI based
on recently introduced axially symmetric DKI which has lower data demand than
conventional DKI. We compare WMTI parameters derived from conventional DKI to
those calculated analytically from axially symmetric DKI. We employ numerical
simulations, as well as data from fixed rat spinal cord (1) and in vivo human
(3) and rat brain (4). Our analysis shows that analytical WMTI based on axially
symmetric DKI with sparse data sets (19 images) produces WMTI metrics that
correlate strongly with estimates based on traditional DKI data sets (60 images
or more). We demonstrate the preclinical potential of the proposed WMTI
technique in in vivo rat brain (300 {\mu}m isotropic resolution with whole
brain coverage). WMTI parameter estimates are subject to a duality leading to
two solution branches dependent on a sign choice which is currently debated.
Results from both of these branches are presented and discussed throughout our
analysis. The proposed fast WMTI approach may be useful for preclinical
research and e.g. clinical evaluation of patients with traumatic white matter
injuries or symptoms of neurovascular or neuroinflammatory disorders.


  Charge density wave (CDW) and their interplay with correlated and topological
quantum states are forefront of condensed matter research. The 4$H_{b}$-TaS$_2$
is a CDW ordered quantum heterostructure that is formed by alternative stacking
of Mott insulating 1T-TaS$_2$ and Ising superconducting 1H-TaS$_2$. While the
$\sqrt{13}\times\sqrt{13}$ and 3$\times$3 CDWs have been respectively observed
in the bulk 1T-TaS$_2$ and 2H-TaS$_2$, the CDWs and their pivotal role for
unconventional superconductivity in the 4$H_{b}$-TaS$_2$ remain unsolved. In
this letter, we reveal the 2-dimensional (2D) $\sqrt{13}\times\sqrt{13}$ chiral
CDW in the 1T-layers and intra-unit cell coupled 2D 2$\times$2 CDW in the 1H
and 1H' layers of 4$H_{b}$-TaS$_2$. Our results establish 4$H_{b}$-TaS$_2$ a
novel 2.5D quantum heterostructure, where 2D quantum states emerge from 3D
crystalline structure.


  Effective Field Theory (EFT) provides a powerful framework that exploits a
separation of scales in physical systems to perform systematically improvable,
model-independent calculations. Particularly interesting are few-body systems
with short-range interactions and large two-body scattering length. Such
systems display remarkable universal features. In systems with more than two
particles, a three-body force with limit cycle behavior is required for
consistent renormalization already at leading order. We will review this EFT
and some of its applications in the physics of cold atoms and nuclear physics.
In particular, we will discuss the possibility of an infrared limit cycle in
QCD. Recent extensions of the EFT approach to the four-body system and N-boson
droplets in two spatial dimensions will also be addressed.


  Forecasting fault failure is a fundamental but elusive goal in earthquake
science. Here we show that by listening to the acoustic signal emitted by a
laboratory fault, machine learning can predict the time remaining before it
fails with great accuracy. These predictions are based solely on the
instantaneous physical characteristics of the acoustical signal, and do not
make use of its history. Surprisingly, machine learning identifies a signal
emitted from the fault zone previously thought to be low-amplitude noise that
enables failure forecasting throughout the laboratory quake cycle. We
hypothesize that applying this approach to continuous seismic data may lead to
significant advances in identifying currently unknown signals, in providing new
insights into fault physics, and in placing bounds on fault failure times.


  For $k \ge 2$ even, and $ \alpha \ge -(2k+1)/4 $, we provide a uniform
approximation of the ultraspherical polynomials $ P_k^{(\alpha,\, \alpha)}(x) $
in the oscillatory region with a very explicit error term. In fact, our result
covers all $\alpha$ for which the expression "oscillatory region" makes sense.
We show that there the function $g(x)={c \sqrt{b(x)} \, (1-x^2)^{(\alpha+1)/2}
P_k^{(\alpha, \alpha)}(x)=\cos \mathcal{B}(x)+ r(x)}$, where $c=c(k, \alpha)$
is defined by the normalization, $\mathcal{B}(x)=\int_{0}^ x b(x) dx$, and the
functions $c,\, b(x), \, \mathcal{B}(x)$, as well as bounds on the error term
$r(x)$ are given by some rather simple elementary functions.


  Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a promising new technology for
achieving spectrum and energy efficient wireless communication systems in the
future. By adaptively varying the incident signals' phases/amplitudes and
thereby establishing favorable channel responses through a large number of
reconfigurable passive reflecting elements, IRS is able to enhance the
communication performance of mobile users in its vicinity cost-effectively. In
this paper, we study an IRS-enhanced orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) system in which an IRS is deployed to assist the communication between a
nearby user and its associated base station (BS). We aim to maximize the
downlink achievable rate for the user by jointly optimizing the transmit power
allocation at the BS and the passive array reflection coefficients at the IRS.
Although the formulated problem is non-convex and thus difficult to solve, we
propose an efficient algorithm to obtain a high-quality suboptimal solution for
it, by alternately optimizing the BS's power allocation and the IRS's passive
array coefficients in an iterative manner, along with a customized method for
the initialization. Simulation results show that the proposed design
significantly improves the OFDM link rate performance as compared to the cases
without the IRS or with other heuristic IRS designs.


  Resonances of cylindrical symmetric microwave cavities are analyzed in
R-matrix theory which transforms the input channel conditions to the output
channels. Single and interfering double resonances are studied and compared
with experimental results, obtained with superconducting microwave cavities.
Because of the equivalence of the two-dimensional Helmholtz and the stationary
Schroedinger equations, the results present insight into the resonance
structure of regular and chaotic quantum billiards.


  The current understanding of the quantum origin of cosmic structure is
discussed critically. We point out that in the existing treatments a transition
from a symmetric quantum state to an (essentially classical) non-symmetric
state is implicitly assumed, but not specified or analyzed in any detail. In
facing the issue we are led to conclude that new physics is required to explain
the apparent predictive power of the usual schemes. Furthermore we show that
the novel way of looking at the relevant issues opens new windows from where
relevant information might be extracted regarding cosmological issues and
perhaps even clues about aspects of quantum gravity.


  Formation of binary black holes (BBHs) detected by gravitational-wave (GW)
observations could be broadly divided into two categories: those formed through
field binary evolution and those assembled dynamically in dense stellar
systems. The branching ratio of the BBHs refers to the contribution of each
channel. The dynamical assembly channel would predict a symmetric distribution
in the effective spins of the BBHs while field formation predicts BBHs to have
positive effective spins. By modeling these two populations based on their
effective spin distribution we show that in the 10 BBHs detected by LIGO/Virgo
the contribution of the dynamically assembled BBHs to be more than about 50\%
with 90\% confidence. This result is based on the assumption that the field
binaries are born with positive effective spins not restricted to have small
values.


  In a recent study, we have reported that there are many novel cuts of quartz
crystal exhibiting the highly treasured cubic frequency-temperature relations
which are currently shown only with the AT- and SC-cut. Through setting the
first- and second-order derivatives of the frequency respect to temperature to
zeroes, a family of quartz crystal cuts with different temperatures of zero
frequency (turnover temperatures) has been found and examined. It is now
possible to fabricate quartz crystal resonators with turnover temperature near
its operating temperature to keep the resonator functioning in a lean and more
natural state. By selecting a few cuts based on orientations from our study, we
analyzed the thickness-shear vibrations of quartz crystal plates to confirm the
superior frequency-temperature relations with the theory of incremental thermal
field and Mindlin plate equations and presenting comparisons with known AT- and
SC-cut to demonstrate that resonators with newly found cuts can also achieve
exceptional frequency stability as demanded.


  This article-based doctoral thesis explores the stakeholder perspectives and
experiences of crowdsourced creative work on two of the leading crowdsourcing
platforms. The thesis has two parts. In the first part, we explore creative
work from the perspective of the crowd worker. In the second part, we explore
and study the requester's perspective in different contexts and several case
studies. The research is exploratory and we contribute empirical insights using
survey-based and artefact-based approaches common in the field of
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). In the former approach, we explore the key
issues that may limit creative work on paid crowdsourcing platforms. In the
latter approach, we create computational artefacts to elicit authentic
experiences from both crowd workers and requesters of crowdsourced creative
work. The thesis contributes a classification of crowd workers into five
archetypal profiles, based on the crowd workers' demographics, disposition, and
preferences for creative work. We propose a three-part classification of
creative work on crowdsourcing platforms: creative tasks, creativity tests, and
creativity judgements (also referred to as creative feedback). The thesis
further investigates the emerging research topic of how requesters can be
supported in interpreting and evaluating complex creative work. Last, we
discuss the design implications for research and practice and contribute a
vision of creative work on future crowdsourcing platforms with the aim of
empowering crowd workers and fostering an ecosystem around tailored platforms
for creative microwork.
  Keywords: creative work, creativity, creativity support tools, crowdsourcing


  When releasing data to the public, data stewards are ethically and often
legally obligated to protect the confidentiality of data subjects' identities
and sensitive attributes. They also strive to release data that are informative
for a wide range of secondary analyses. Achieving both objectives is
particularly challenging when data stewards seek to release highly resolved
geographical information. We present an approach for protecting the
confidentiality of data with geographic identifiers based on multiple
imputation. The basic idea is to convert geography to latitude and longitude,
estimate a bivariate response model conditional on attributes, and simulate new
latitude and longitude values from these models. We illustrate the proposed
methods using data describing causes of death in Durham, North Carolina. In the
context of the application, we present a straightforward tool for generating
simulated geographies and attributes based on regression trees, and we present
methods for assessing disclosure risks with such simulated data.


  With XML becoming a standard for business information representation and
exchange, stor-ing, indexing, and querying XML documents have rapidly become
major issues in database research. In this context, query processing and
optimization are primordial, native-XML data-bases not being mature yet. Data
structures such as indices, which help enhance performances substantially, are
extensively researched, especially since XML data bear numerous specifici-ties
with respect to relational data. In this paper, we survey state-of-the-art XML
indices and discuss the main issues, tradeoffs and future trends in XML
indexing. We also present an in-dex that we specifically designed for the
particular architecture of XML data warehouses.


  We study generalizations of Demuth's Theorem, which states that the image of
a Martin-L\"of random real under a tt-reduction is either computable or Turing
equivalent to a Martin-L\"of random real. We show that Demuth's Theorem holds
for Schnorr randomness and computable randomness (answering a question of
Franklin), but that it cannot be strengthened by replacing the Turing
equivalence in the statement of the theorem with wtt-equivalence. We also
provide some additional results about the Turing and tt-degrees of reals that
are random with respect to some computable measure.


  The edge expansion of a graph is the minimum quotient of the number of edges
in a cut and the size of the smaller one among the two node sets separated by
the cut. Bounding the edge expansion from below is important for bounding the
``mixing time'' of a random walk on the graph from above. It has been
conjectured by Mihail and Vazirani that the graph of every 0/1-polytope has
edge expansion at least one. A proof of this (or even a weaker) conjecture
would imply solutions of several long-standing open problems in the theory of
randomized approximate counting. We present different techniques for bounding
the edge expansion of a 0/1-polytope from below. By means of these tools we
show that several classes of 0/1-polytopes indeed have graphs with edge
expansion at least one. These classes include all 0/1-polytopes of dimension at
most five, all simple 0/1-polytopes, all hypersimplices, all stable set
polytopes, and all (perfect) matching polytopes.


  We propose a fully operational framework to study the non-equilibrium
thermodynamics of a quantum system $S$ that is coupled to a detector $D$ whose
state is continuously monitored, allowing to single out individual quantum
trajectories of $S$. We focus on detailed fluctuation theorems and characterize
the entropy production of the system. We establish fundamental differences with
respect to the thermodynamic of unmonitored, unitarily evolved systems. We
consider the paradigmatic example of circuit-QED, where superconducting qubits
can be coupled to a continuously monitored resonator and show numerical
simulations using state of the art experimental parameters.


  We present four-dimensional gauge theories in Minkowski spacetime which
effectively generate in certain energy regimes five-dimensional warped
geometries whereas, in general, the fifth dimension is latticized. After
discussing in detail several general aspects in such theories we present a
number of exactly solvable examples. We also point out how a particular case,
defined in an N-sided polygon and having a Z_N symmetry, has a similar
realization in an appropriate supersymmetric setting with D3-branes.


  We call a (q-1)-th Kummer extension of a cyclotomic function field a
quasi-cyclotomic function field if it is Galois, but non-abelian, over the
rational function field with the constant field of q elements. In this paper,
we determine the structure of the Galois groups of a kind of quasi-cyclotomic
function fields over the base field. We also give the genus formulae of them.


  In this paper we study a new family of black hole initial data sets
corresponding to distorted ``Kerr'' black holes with moderate rotation
parameters, and distorted Schwarzschild black holes with even- and odd-parity
radiation. These data sets build on the earlier rotating black holes of Bowen
and York and the distorted Brill wave plus black hole data sets. We describe
the construction of this large family of rotating black holes. We present a
systematic study of important properties of these data sets, such as the size
and shape of their apparent horizons, and the maximum amount of radiation that
can leave the system during evolution. These data sets should be a very useful
starting point for studying the evolution of highly dynamical black holes and
can easily be extended to 3D.


  We study the Dirac spectrum on compact Riemannian spin manifolds $M$ equipped
with a metric connection $\nabla$ with skew torsion $T\in\Lambda^3 M$ in the
situation where the tangent bundle splits under the holonomy of $\nabla$ and
the torsion of $\nabla$ is of `split' type. We prove an optimal lower bound for
the first eigenvalue of the Dirac operator with torsion that generalizes
Friedrich's classical Riemannian estimate.


  We report on the discovery of an instability in low mass stars just above the
threshold ($\sim 0.35 \textrm{M}_{\odot}$) where they are expected to be fully
convective on the main sequence. Non-equilibrium He3 burning creates a
convective core, which is separated from a deep convective envelope by a small
radiative zone. The steady increase in central He3 causes the core to grow
until it touches the surface convection zone, which triggers fully convective
episodes in what we call the "convective kissing instability". These episodes
lower the central abundance and cause the star to return to a state in which is
has a separate convective core and envelope. These periodic events eventually
cease when the He3 abundance throughout the star is sufficiently high that the
star is fully convective, and remains so for the rest of its main sequence
lifetime. The episodes correspond to few percent changes in radius and
luminosity, over Myr to Gyr timescales. We discuss the physics of the
instability, as well as prospects for detecting its signatures in open clusters
and wide binaries. Secondary stars in cataclysmic variables (CVs) will pass
through this mass range, and this instability could be related to the observed
paucity of such systems for periods between two and three hours. We demonstrate
that the instability can be generated for CV secondaries with mass-loss rates
of interest for such systems, and discuss potential implications.


  Periodic origami patterns made with repeating unit cells of creases and
panels bend and twist in complex ways. In principle, such soft modes of
deformation admit a simplified asymptotic description in the limit of a large
number of cells. Starting from a bar and hinge model for the elastic energy of
a generic four parallelogram panel origami pattern, we derive a complete set of
geometric compatibility conditions identifying the pattern's soft modes in this
limit. The compatibility equations form a system of partial differential
equations constraining the actuation of the origami's creases (a scalar angle
field) and the relative rotations of its unit cells (a pair of skew tensor
fields). We show that every solution of the compatibility equations is the
limit of a sequence of soft modes -- origami deformations with finite bending
energy and negligible stretching. Using these sequences, we derive a plate-like
theory for parallelogram origami patterns with an explicit coarse-grained
quadratic energy depending on the gradient of the crease-actuation and the
relative rotations of the cells. Finally, we illustrate our theory in the
context of two well-known origami designs: the Miura and Eggbox patterns.
Though these patterns are distinguished in their anticlastic and synclastic
bending responses, they show a universal twisting response. General soft modes
captured by our theory involve a rich nonlinear interplay between actuation,
bending and twisting, determined by the underlying crease geometry.


  In this paper, fermions are minimally coupled to 3D-gravity where a dynamical
torsion is introduced. A Kalb-Ramond field is non-minimally coupled to these
fermions in a gauge-invariant way. We show that a 1-loop mass generation
mechanism takes place for both the 2-form gauge field and the torsion. As for
the fermions, no mass is dynamically generated: at 1-loop, there is only a mass
shift proportional to the Yukawa coupling whenever the fermions have a
non-vanishing tree-level mass.


  The pandemic has shattered the traditional enclosures of learning. The
post-pandemic university (PPU) will no longer be contained within the 4 walls
of a lecture theatre, and finish once students have left the premises. The use
of online services has now blended home and university life, and the PPU needs
to reflect this. Our proposal of a continuous learning model will take
advantage of the newfound omnipresence of learning, while being dynamic enough
to continually adapt to the ever-evolving virus situation. Universities
restricting themselves to fixed subject themes that are then forgotten once
completed, will miss out on the "fresh start" presented by the virus.


  Kreck's modified surgery gives an approach to classifying smooth
$2n$-manifolds up to stable diffeomorphism, i.e. up to connected sum with
copies of $S^n \times S^n$. In dimension 4, we use a combination of modified
and classical surgery to study various stable equivalence relations which we
compare to stable diffeomorphism. Most importantly, we consider homotopy
equivalence up to stabilisation with copies of $S^2 \times S^2$.
  As an application, we show that closed oriented homotopy equivalent
4-manifolds with abelian fundamental group are stably diffeomorphic. We give
analogues of the cancellation theorems of Hambleton--Kreck for stable
homeomorphism for homotopy up to stabilisations. Finally, we give a complete
algebraic obstruction to the existence of closed smooth 4-manifolds which are
homotopy equivalent but not simple homotopy equivalent up to connected sum with
$S^2 \times S^2$.


  One-on-one help from a teacher is highly impactful for students, yet
extremely challenging to support in massive online courses (MOOCs). In this
work, we present TeachNow: a novel system that lets volunteer teachers from
anywhere in the world instantly provide 1:1 help sessions to students in MOOCs,
without any scheduling or coordination overhead. TeachNow works by quickly
finding an online student to help and putting them in a collaborative working
session with the teacher. The spontaneous, on-demand nature of TeachNow gives
teachers the flexibility to help whenever their schedule allows.
  We share our experiences deploying TeachNow as an experimental feature in a
six week online CS1 course with 9,000 students and 600 volunteer teachers. Even
as an optional activity, TeachNow was used by teachers to provide over 12,300
minutes of 1:1 help to 375 unique students. Through a carefully designed
randomised control trial, we show that TeachNow sessions increased student
course retention rate by almost 15%. Moreover, the flexibility of our system
captured valuable volunteer time that would otherwise go to waste. Lastly,
TeachNow was rated by teachers as one of the most enjoyable and impactful
aspects of their involvement in the course. We believe TeachNow is an important
step towards providing more human-centered support in massive online courses.


  We initiate a thorough study of \emph{distributed property testing} --
producing algorithms for the approximation problems of property testing in the
CONGEST model. In particular, for the so-called \emph{dense} testing model we
emulate sequential tests for nearly all graph properties having $1$-sided
tests, while in the \emph{sparse} and \emph{general} models we obtain faster
tests for triangle-freeness and bipartiteness respectively.
  In most cases, aided by parallelism, the distributed algorithms have a much
shorter running time as compared to their counterparts from the sequential
querying model of traditional property testing. The simplest property testing
algorithms allow a relatively smooth transitioning to the distributed model.
For the more complex tasks we develop new machinery that is of independent
interest. This includes a method for distributed maintenance of multiple random
walks.


  Ferroelectrics under suitable electric boundary conditions can present a
negative capacitance response, whereby the total voltage drop across the
ferroelectric opposes the externally applied bias. When the ferroelectric is in
a heterostructure, this behavior yields a voltage amplification in the other
elements, an effect that could be leveraged in low-power electronic devices.
Interestingly, the mentioned voltage amplification should have an accompanying
elastic effect. Specifically, in the typical case that the materials in contact
with the ferroelectric are non-polar dielectrics, those should present an
enhanced electrostrictive response. Here we use atomistic simulations - of
model PbTiO$_{3}$/SrTiO$_{3}$ ferroelectric/dielectric superlattices displaying
negative capacitance - to show that this is indeed the case: we reveal the
enhanced elastic response of the dielectric layer and show that it is clearly
linked to the voltage amplification. We argue that this "elastic amplification"
could serve as a convenient experimental fingerprint for negative capacitance.
Further, we propose that it may have interest on its own, e.g. for the
development of low-power electromechanical actuators.


  We have carried out multi-epoch VLBI observations with VERA (VLBI Exploration
of Radio Astrometry) of the 22~GHz H$_{2}$O masers associated with a Class 0
protostar L1448C in the Perseus molecular cloud. The maser features trace the
base of collimated bipolar jet driven by one of the infrared counter parts of
L1448C named as L1448C(N) or L1448-mm A. We detected possible evidences for
apparent acceleration and precession of the jet according to the
three-dimensional velocity structure. Based on the phase-referencing VLBI
astrometry, we have successfully detected an annual parallax of the H$_{2}$O
maser in L1448C to be 4.31$\pm$0.33~milliarcseconds (mas) which corresponds to
a distance of 232$\pm$18~pc from the Sun. The present result is in good
agreement with that of another H$_{2}$O maser source NGC~1333 SVS13A in the
Perseus molecular cloud, 235~pc. It is also consistent with the photometric
distance, 220~pc. Thus, the distance to the western part of the Perseus
molecular cloud complex would be constrained to be about 235~pc rather than the
larger value, 300~pc, previously reported.


  We study a self-dual N=1 super vertex operator algebra and prove that the
full symmetry group is Conway's largest sporadic simple group. We verify a
uniqueness result which is analogous to that conjectured to characterize the
Moonshine vertex operator algebra. The action of the automorphism group is
sufficiently transparent that one can derive explicit expressions for all the
McKay-Thompson series. A corollary of the construction is that the perfect
double cover of the Conway group may be characterized as a point-stabilizer in
a spin module for the Spin group associated to a 24 dimensional Euclidean
space.


  We present a frequency-renormalized multipolaron expansion method to explore
the ground state of quantum Rabi model (QRM). The main idea is to take polaron
as starting point to expand the ground state of QRM. The polarons are deformed
and displaced oscillator states with variationally determined
frequency-renormalization and displacement parameters. This method is an
extension of the previously proposed polaron concept and the coherent state
expansion used in the literature, which shows high efficiency in describing the
physics of the QRM. The proposed method is expected to be useful for solving
other more complicated light-matter interaction models.


  We derive the macroscopic laws that govern the evolution of the density of
particles in the exclusion process on the Sierpinski gasket in the presence of
a variable speed boundary. We obtain, at the hydrodynamics level, the heat
equation evolving on the Sierpinski gasket with either Dirichlet or Neumann
boundary conditions, depending on whether the reservoirs are fast or slow. For
a particular strength of the boundary dynamics we obtain linear Robin boundary
conditions. As for the fluctuations, we prove that, when starting from the
stationary measure, namely the product Bernoulli measure in the equilibrium
setting, they are governed by Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes with the respective
boundary conditions.


  We improve the steady-state ab initio laser theory (SALT) of Tureci et al. by
expressing its fundamental self-consistent equation in a basis set of threshold
constant flux states that contains the exact threshold lasing mode. For
cavities with non-uniform index and/or non-uniform gain, the new basis set
allows the steady-state lasing properties to be computed with much greater
efficiency. This formulation of the SALT can be solved in the single-pole
approximation, which gives the intensities and thresholds, including the
effects of nonlinear hole-burning interactions to all orders, with negligible
computational effort. The approximation yields a number of analytic
predictions, including a "gain-clamping" transition at which strong modal
interactions suppress all higher modes. We show that the single-pole
approximation agrees well with exact SALT calculations, particularly for high-Q
cavities. Within this range of validity, it provides an extraordinarily
efficient technique for modeling realistic and complex lasers.


  During hybrid inflation, the slowly-rolling inflaton field has a significant
coupling to the trigger field which is responsible for most of the potential.
Barring a fine-tuned accidental cancellation, this coupling induces a minimal
one-loop contribution to the inflaton potential. The requirement that this
contribution be not too large constrains a wide class of hybrid inflation
models. Assuming that the inflaton perturbation generates structure in the
Universe, the inflaton field and/or the trigger field after inflation have to
be bigger than $10^9\GeV$. This and other results make hybrid inflation at or
below the TeV scale problematical. (There is no problem with hybrid inflation
at the high energy scales normally considered.) `New' and thermal inflation
seem to be viable alternatives for inflation at or below the TeV scale,
including the case that quantum gravity is at the TeV scale. In any case,
supersymmetry is needed required during inflation, in order to protect a scalar
mass.


  This paper treats the problem of screening a p-variate sample for strongly
and multiply connected vertices in the partial correlation graph associated
with the the partial correlation matrix of the sample. This problem, called hub
screening, is important in many applications ranging from network security to
computational biology to finance to social networks. In the area of network
security, a node that becomes a hub of high correlation with neighboring nodes
might signal anomalous activity such as a coordinated flooding attack. In the
area of computational biology the set of hubs of a gene expression correlation
graph can serve as potential targets for drug treatment to block a pathway or
modulate host response. In the area of finance a hub might indicate a
vulnerable financial instrument or sector whose collapse might have major
repercussions on the market. In the area of social networks a hub of observed
interactions between criminal suspects could be an influential ringleader. The
techniques and theory presented in this paper permit scalable and reliable
screening for such hubs. This paper extends our previous work on correlation
screening [arXiv:1102.1204] to the more challenging problem of partial
correlation screening for variables with a high degree of connectivity. In
particular we consider 1) extension to the more difficult problem of screening
for partial correlations exceeding a specified magnitude; 2) extension to
screening variables whose vertex degree in the associated partial correlation
graph, often called the concentration graph, exceeds a specified degree.


  Anisotropic thermal conduction plays an important role in various
astrophysical systems. One of the most stringent tests of thermal conduction
can be found in supernova remnants. In this paper we study anisotropic thermal
conduction and examine the physical nature of the flux of thermal conduction in
the classical and saturated limits. We also present a temporally second-order
accurate implicit-explicit scheme for the time-update of thermal conduction
terms within a numerical MHD scheme.
  Several simulations of supernova remnants are presented for a range of ISM
parameters. The role of thermal conduction in such remnants has been studied.
We find that thermal conduction produces cooler temperatures and higher
densities in the hot gas bubbles that form in the remnants. The effect of
thermal conduction in changing the thermal characteristics of the hot gas
bubble increases as the remnant propagates through denser ISMs. Remnants
evolving in denser ISMs are shown to make a faster transition to a
centre-bright x-ray morphology, with the trend emerging earlier in hard x-rays
than in the soft x-rays.


  A set of boundary conditions called the Transpiration-Resistance Model (TRM)
are investigated in altering near-wall turbulence. The TRM has been previously
proposed by \citet{Lacis2020} as a means of representing the net effect of
surface micro-textures on their overlying bulk flows. It encompasses
conventional Navier-slip boundary conditions relating the streamwise and
spanwise velocities to their respective shears through the slip lengths
$\ell_x$ and $\ell_z$. In addition, it features a transpiration condition
accounting for the changes induced in the wall-normal velocity by expressing it
in terms of variations of the wall-parallel velocity shears through the
transpiration lengths $m_x$ and $m_z$. Greater levels of drag increase occur
when more transpiration takes place at the boundary plane, with turbulent
transpiration being predominately coupled to the spanwise shear component for
canonical near-wall turbulence. The TRM can reproduce the effect of a
homogeneous and structured roughness up to ${k^+}\,{\approx18}$. In this
transitionally rough flow regime, the transpiration lengths of the TRM must be
empirically determined. The \emph{transpiration factor} is defined as the
product between the slip and transpiration lengths, i.e. $(m\ell)_{x,z}$. This
factor contains the compound effect of the wall-parallel velocity occurring at
the boundary plane and increased permeability, both of which lead to the
transport of momentum in the wall-normal direction. A linear relation between
the transpiration factor and the roughness function is observed for regularly
textured surfaces in the transitionally rough regime of turbulence. The
relations obtained between the transpiration factor and the roughness function
show that such effective flow quantities can be suitable measures for
characterizing rough surfaces in this flow regime.


  We study a generalization of the classical Riemannian Tonnetz to N-tone
equally tempered scales (for all N) and arbitrary triads. We classify all the
spaces that result. The torus turns out to be the most common possibility,
especially as N grows. Other spaces include 2-simplices, tetrahedra boundaries,
and the harmonic strip (in both its cylinder and Mobius band variants). The
final and most exotic space we find is something we call a `circle of
tetrahedra boundaries'. These are the Tonnetze for spaces of triads which
contain a tritone. They are closely related to Peck's Klein bottle Tonnetz.


  The membrane paradigm of black hole is studied in the Chern-Simons modified
gravity. Derived with the action principle a la Parikh-Wilczek, the stress
tensor of membrane manifests a rich structure arising from the Chern-Simons
term. The membrane stress tensor, if related to the bulk stress tensor in a
special form, obeys the low-dimensional fluid continuity equation and the
Navier-Stokes equation. This paradigm is applied to spherically symmetric
static geometries, and in particular, the Schwarzschild black hole, which is a
solution of a large class of dynamical Chern-Simons gravity.


  The new class of Mg-B superconducting conductors was prepared using the
standard in-situ powder-in-tube, PIT, method where Mg+2B mixture was used to
fill the copper and silver tubes. Study of the intergranular current, grain
connectivity and superconducting phases in wires were conducted by AC
susceptibility measurements and direct four point transport measurements. Using
SQUID magnetometer, magnetisation versus magnetic field (M-H) curves of the
round wires after reactive diffusion were measured at temperatures 5K and
magnetic field up to 5T to define the Jcmag . The direct current density
measurements of the in-situ Cu-MgB2 performed at 4.2K gave the value of 10^9
Am-2 .


  We propose an infrared cut-off for the holographic density which incorporates
among others a constant term, that produces the effect of the cosmological
constant, improving the results of previously considered holographic models
based on local quantities. The inclusion of constant term is interpreted as a
natural first approximation for the infrared cutoff which is associated with
the vacuum energy, and the additional terms guarantee an appropriate
evolutionary scenario that fits the astrophysical observations. Cosmological
constraints on the model have been studied using the observational data.


  The purpose of this paper is to study harmonic spinors defined on a
1-parameter family of Einstein manifolds which includes Taub-NUT, Eguchi-Hanson
and $P^2(C)$ with the Fubini-Study metric as particular cases. We discuss the
existence of and explicitly solve for spinors harmonic with respect to the
Dirac operator twisted by a geometrically preferred connection. The metrics
examined are defined, for generic values of the parameter, on a non-compact
manifold with the topology of $C^2$ and extend to $P^2(C)$ as edge-cone
metrics. As a consequence, the subtle boundary conditions of the
Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem need to be carefully considered in order to
show agreement between the index of the twisted Dirac operator and the result
obtained by counting the explicit solutions.


  Debris discs are typically revealed through excess emission at infrared
wavelengths. Most discs exhibit excess at mid- and far-infrared wavelengths,
analogous to the solar system's Asteroid and Edgeworth-Kuiper belts. Recently,
stars with strong (1 per cent) excess at near-infrared wavelengths were
identified through interferometric measurements. Using the HIgh Precision
Polarimetric Instrument (HIPPI), we examined a sub-sample of these hot dust
stars (and appropriate controls) at parts-per-million sensitivity in SDSS g'
(green) and r' (red) filters for evidence of scattered light. No detection of
strongly polarized emission from the hot dust stars is seen. We therefore rule
out scattered light from a normal debris disk as the origin of this emission. A
wavelength dependent contribution from multiple dust components for hot dust
stars is inferred from the dispersion (difference in polarization angle in red
and green) of southern stars. Contributions of 17 ppm (green) and 30 ppm (red)
are calculated, with strict 3 sigma upper limits of 76 and 68 ppm,
respectively. This suggests weak hot dust excesses consistent with thermal
emission, although we cannot rule out contrived scenarios, e.g. dust in a
spherical shell or face on discs. We also report on the nature of the local
interstellar medium, obtained as a byproduct of the control measurements.
Highlights include the first measurements of the polarimetric colour of the
local interstellar medium and discovery of a southern sky region with a
polarization per distance thrice the previous maximum. The data suggest the
wavelength of maximum polarization is bluer than typical.


  Service-based systems are software systems composed of autonomous components
or services provided by different vendors, deployed on remote machines and
accessible through the web. One of the challenges of modern software
engineering is to ensure that such a system behaves as intended by its
designer. The Reo coordination language is an extensible notation for formal
modeling and execution of service compositions. Services that have no prior
knowledge about each other communicate through advanced channel connectors
which guarantee that each participant, service or client, receives the right
data at the right time. Each channel is a binary relation that imposes
synchronization and data constraints on input and output messages. Furthermore,
channels are composed together to realize arbitrarily complex behavioral
protocols. During this process, a designer may introduce errors into the
connector model or the code for their execution, and thus affect the behavior
of a composed service. In this paper, we present an approach for model-based
testing of coordination protocols designed in Reo. Our approach is based on the
input-output conformance (ioco) testing theory and exploits the mapping of
automata-based semantic models for Reo to equivalent process algebra
specifications.