title:
Maximum Entropy, Word-Frequency, Chinese Characters, and Multiple
  Meanings

abstract:
  The word-frequency distribution of a text written by an author is well
accounted for by a maximum entropy distribution, the RGF (random group
formation)-prediction. The RGF-distribution is completely determined by the a
priori values of the total number of words in the text (M), the number of
distinct words (N) and the number of repetitions of the most common word
(k_max). It is here shown that this maximum entropy prediction also describes a
text written in Chinese characters. In particular it is shown that although the
same Chinese text written in words and Chinese characters have quite
differently shaped distributions, they are nevertheless both well predicted by
their respective three a priori characteristic values. It is pointed out that
this is analogous to the change in the shape of the distribution when
translating a given text to another language. Another consequence of the
RGF-prediction is that taking a part of a long text will change the input
parameters (M, N, k_max) and consequently also the shape of the frequency
distribution. This is explicitly confirmed for texts written in Chinese
characters. Since the RGF-prediction has no system-specific information beyond
the three a priori values (M, N, k_max), any specific language characteristic
has to be sought in systematic deviations from the RGF-prediction and the
measured frequencies. One such systematic deviation is identified and, through
a statistical information theoretical argument and an extended RGF-model, it is
proposed that this deviation is caused by multiple meanings of Chinese
characters. The effect is stronger for Chinese characters than for Chinese
words. The relation between Zipf's law, the Simon-model for texts and the
present results are discussed.


title:
No NAT'd User left Behind: Fingerprinting Users behind NAT from NetFlow
  Records alone

abstract:
  It is generally recognized that the traffic generated by an individual
connected to a network acts as his biometric signature. Several tools exploit
this fact to fingerprint and monitor users. Often, though, these tools assume
to access the entire traffic, including IP addresses and payloads. This is not
feasible on the grounds that both performance and privacy would be negatively
affected. In reality, most ISPs convert user traffic into NetFlow records for a
concise representation that does not include, for instance, any payloads. More
importantly, large and distributed networks are usually NAT'd, thus a few IP
addresses may be associated to thousands of users. We devised a new
fingerprinting framework that overcomes these hurdles. Our system is able to
analyze a huge amount of network traffic represented as NetFlows, with the
intent to track people. It does so by accurately inferring when users are
connected to the network and which IP addresses they are using, even though
thousands of users are hidden behind NAT. Our prototype implementation was
deployed and tested within an existing large metropolitan WiFi network serving
about 200,000 users, with an average load of more than 1,000 users
simultaneously connected behind 2 NAT'd IP addresses only. Our solution turned
out to be very effective, with an accuracy greater than 90%. We also devised
new tools and refined existing ones that may be applied to other contexts
related to NetFlow analysis.


title: Lie symmetries of a generalized Kuznetsov-Zabolotskaya-Khoklov equation

abstract:
  We consider a class of generalized Kuznetsov--Zabolotskaya--Khokhlov (gKZK)
equations and determine its equivalence group, which is then used to give a
complete symmetry classification of this class. The infinite-dimensional
symmetry is used to reduce such equations to (1+1)-dimensional PDEs. Special
attention is paid to group-theoretical properties of a class of generalized
dispersionless KP (gdKP) or Zabolotskaya--Khokhlov equations as a subclass of
gKZK equations. The conditions are determined under which a gdKP equation is
invariant under a Lie algebra containing the Virasoro algebra as a subalgebra.
This occurs if and only if this equation is completely integrable. A similar
connection is shown to hold for generalized KP equations.


title:
Absence of the 1/8 -anomaly in oxygen isotope effect on
  YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{y}$

abstract:
  We have prepared oxygen isotope exchanged crystals of impurity-free YBCO with
various oxygen concentents, and examined pure doping ($p$) dependance of
isotope effect on superconducting transition temperature. With decreasing
oxygen contents, the isotope exponent $\alpha$ monotonously increases without
any anomaly around $p = 1/8$. The monotonous increase in $\alpha$ indicates
that phonons are involved in the mechanism which causes the monotonous $T_c$
suppression with underdoping.


title: Proactive Web Server Protocol for Complaint Assessment

abstract:
  Vulnerability Discovery with attack Injection security threats are increasing
for the server software, when software is developed, the software tested for
the functionality. Due to unawareness of software vulnerabilities most of the
software before pre-Release the software should be thoroughly tested for not
only functionality reliability, but should be tested for the security flows
(or) vulnerabilities. The approaches such as fuzzers, Fault injection,
vulnerabilities scanners, static vulnerabilities analyzers, Run time prevention
mechanisms and software Rejuvenation are identifying the un-patched software
which is open for security threats address to solve the problem "security
testing". These techniques are useful for generating attacks but cannot be
extendable for the new land of attacks. The system called proactive
vulnerability attack injection tool is suitable for adding new attacks
injection vectors, methods to define new protocol states (or) Specification
using the interface of tool includes Network server protocol specification
using GUI, Attacks generator, Attack injector, monitoring module at the victim
injector, monitoring module at the victim machine and the attacks injection
report generation. This tool can address most of the vulnerabilities (or)
security flows.


title:
Quantum quench from a thermal tensor state: boundary effects and
  generalized Gibbs ensemble

abstract:
  We consider a quantum quench in a non-interacting fermionic one-dimensional
field-theory. The system of size $L$ is initially prepared into two halves
$\mathcal{L}$ ($[-L/2,0]$) and $\mathcal{R}$ ($[0,L/2]$), each of them
thermalized at two different temperatures, ${T_{L}}$ and ${T_{R}}$
respectively. At a given time the two halves are joined together by a local
coupling and the whole system is left to evolve unitarily. For an infinitely
extended system ($L\rightarrow \infty$), we show that the time evolution of the
particle and energy densities is well described via a hydrodynamic approach
which allows us to evaluate the correspondent stationary currents. We show, in
such a case, that the two-point correlation functions are deduced, at large
times, from a simple non-equilibrium steady state. Otherwise, whenever the
boundary conditions are retained (in a properly defined thermodynamic limit),
any current is suppressed at large times, and the stationary state is described
by a generalized Gibbs ensemble, which is diagonal and depends only on the
post-quench mode occupation.


title:
An international campaign of the 19th century to determine the solar
  parallax - The US Naval expedition to the southern hemisphere 1849 - 1852

abstract:
  In 1847 Christian Ludwig Gerling, Marburg (Germany), suggested the solar
parallax to be determined by measuring the position of Venus close to its
inferior conjunction, especially at the stationary points, from observatories
on nearly the same meridian but widely differing in latitude. James M.
Gilliss,astronomer at the newly founded U.S. Naval Observatory,
enthusiastically adopted this idea and procured a grant for the young
astronomical community of the United States for an expedition to Chile. There
they were to observe several conjunctions of Venus and oppositions of Mars,
while the accompanying measurements were to be taken at the US Naval
Observatory in Washington D.C. and the Harvard College Observatory at
Cambridge, USA. This expedition was supported by A. v. Humboldt, C.F. Gau{\ss},
J.F. Encke, S.C. Walker, A.D. Bache, B. Peirce and others. From 1849 to 1852
not only were astronomical, but also meteorological and magnetic observations
and measurements recorded, mainly in Santa Lucia close to Santiago, Chile. By
comparing these measurements with those taken simultaneously at other
observatories around the world the solar parallax could be calculated, although
incomplete data from the corresponding northern observatories threatened the
project's success. In retrospect this expedition can be recognized as the
foundation of the Chilean astronomy. The first director of the new National
Astronomical Observatory of Chile was Dr. C.W. Moesta, a Hessian student of
Christian Ludwig Gerling's. The exchange of data between German, American and
other astronomers during this expedition was well mediated by J.G. Fl\"ugel,
consul of the United States of America and representative of the Smithsonian
Institution in Europe, who altogether played a major role in nurturing the
relationship between the growing scientific community in the U.S. and the well
established one in Europe at that time.


title: Anomaly Detection Based on Access Behavior and Document Rank Algorithm

abstract:
  Distributed denial of service(DDos) attack is ongoing dangerous threat to the
Internet. Commonly, DDos attacks are carried out at the network layer, e.g. SYN
flooding, ICMP flooding and UDP flooding, which are called Distributed denial
of service attacks. The intention of these DDos attacks is to utilize the
network bandwidth and deny service to authorize users of the victim systems.
Obtain from the low layers, new application-layer-based DDos attacks utilizing
authorize HTTP requests to overload victim resources are more undetectable.
When these are taking place during crowd events of any popular website, this is
the case is very serious. The state-of-art approaches cannot handle the
situation where there is no considerable deviation between the normal and the
attackers activity. The page rank and proximity graph representation of online
web accesses takes much time in practice. There should be less computational
complexity, than of proximity graph search. Hence proposing Web Access Table
mechanism to hold the data such as "who accessed what and how many times, and
their rank on average" to find the anomalous web access behavior. The system
takes less computational complexity and may produce considerable time
complexity.


title: Classification Tree Diagrams in Health Informatics Applications

abstract:
  Health informatics deal with the methods used to optimize the acquisition,
storage and retrieval of medical data, and classify information in healthcare
applications. Healthcare analysts are particularly interested in various
computer informatics areas such as; knowledge representation from data, anomaly
detection, outbreak detection methods and syndromic surveillance applications.
Although various parametric and non-parametric approaches are being proposed to
classify information from data, classification tree diagrams provide an
interactive visualization to analysts as compared to other methods. In this
work we discuss application of classification tree diagrams to classify
information from medical data in healthcare applications.


title:
Hidden entanglement, system-environment information flow and
  non-Markovianity

abstract:
  It is known that entanglement dynamics of two noninteracting qubits, locally
subjected to classical environments, may exhibit revivals. A simple explanation
of this phenomenon may be provided by using the concept of hidden entanglement,
which signals the presence of entanglement that may be recovered without the
help of nonlocal operations. Here we discuss the link between hidden
entanglement and the (non-Markovian) flow of classical information between the
system and the environment.


title: Tracer dynamics in a single-file system with absorbing boundary

abstract:
  The paper addresses the single-file diffusion in the presence of an absorbing
boundary. The emphasis is on an interplay between the hard-core interparticle
interaction and the absorption process. The resulting dynamics exhibits several
qualitatively new features. First, starting with the exact probability density
function for a given particle (a tracer), we study the long-time asymptotics of
its moments. Both the mean position and the mean square displacement are
controlled by dynamical exponents which depend on the initial order of the
particle in the file. Secondly, conditioning on non-absorption, we study the
distribution of long-living particles. In the conditioned framework, the
dynamical exponents are the same for all particles, however, a given particle
possesses an effective diffusion coefficient which depends on its initial
order. After performing the thermodynamic limit, the conditioned dynamics of
the tracer is subdiffusive, the generalized diffusion coefficient $D_{1/2}$
being different from that reported for the system without absorbing boundary.


title:
Synthesis of Fe3O4@CoFe2O4@MnFe2O4 trimagnetic core/shell/shell
  nanoparticles

abstract:
  We report the synthesis and characterization of original 'multishell'
magnetic nanoparticles made of a soft core (magnetite) covered with two
successive shells: a hard one (cobalt ferrite) and then a soft one (manganese
ferrite). Our results show that contrary to expectations from simple models in
which the coercivity of a bimagnetic core/shell nanoparticle depends simply on
the proportion of soft and hard phases within that particle, the addition of a
second shell made of a soft ferrite material enhances the coercivity. Taking
into account the interactions between the shells themselves and the core may
thus be necessary to understand the magnetic properties of such nanoparticles.


title: Ax-Schanuel condition in arbitrary characteristic

abstract:
  We prove a positive characteristic version of Ax's theorem on the
intersection of an algebraic subvariety and an analytic subgroup of an
algebraic group. Our result is stated in a more general context of a formal map
between an algebraic variety and an algebraic group. We derive transcendence
results of Ax-Schanuel type.


title: Women in Italian astronomy

abstract:
  This document gives some quantitative facts about the role of women in
Italian astronomy. More than 26% of Italian IAU members are women: this is the
largest fraction among the world leading countries in astronomy. Most of this
high fraction is due to their presence in INAF, where women make up 32% of the
research staff (289 out of 908) and 40% of the technical/administrative staff
(173 out of 433); the percentage is slightly lower among permanent research
staff (180 out of 599, about 30%). The presence of women is lower in the
Universities (27 out of 161, about 17%, among staff). In spite of these
(mildly) positive facts, we notice that similarly to other countries (e.g. USA
and Germany) career prospects for Italian astronomers are clearly worse for
women than for men. Within INAF, the fraction of women is about 35-40% among
non-permanent position, 36% for Investigators, 17% for Associato/Primo
Ricercatore, and only 13% among Ordinario/Dirigente di Ricerca. The situation
is even worse at University (only 6% of Professore Ordinario are women). We
found that similar trends are also present if researchers are ordered according
to citation rather than position: for instance, women make up only 15% among
the 100 most cited astronomers working in Italy, a percentage which is however
twice that over all Europe. A similar fraction is found among first authors of
most influential papers, which cannot be explained as a residual of a lower
female presence in the past. We conclude that implicit sex discrimination
factors probably dominate over explicit ones and are still strongly at work.
Finally, we discuss the possible connection between the typical career pattern
and these factors.


title: Pricing Currency Derivatives with Markov-modulated Levy Dynamics

abstract:
  Using a Levy process we generalize formulas in Bo et al.(2010) for the
Esscher transform parameters for the log-normal distribution which ensure the
martingale condition holds for the discounted foreign exchange rate. Using
these values of the parameters we find a risk-neural measure and provide new
formulas for the distribution of jumps, the mean jump size, and the Poisson
process intensity with respect to to this measure. The formulas for a European
call foreign exchange option are also derived. We apply these formulas to the
case of the log-double exponential distribution of jumps. We provide numerical
simulations for the European call foreign exchange option prices with different
parameters.


title: On the $\partial\overline{\partial}$-Lemma and Bott-Chern cohomology

abstract:
  On a compact complex manifold $X$, we prove a Fr\"olicher-type inequality for
Bott-Chern cohomology and we show that the equality holds if and only if $X$
satisfies the $\partial\overline{\partial}$-Lemma.


title:
Analysis of a model coupling volume and surface processes in
  thermoviscoelasticity

abstract:
  We focus on a highly nonlinear evolutionary abstract PDE system describing
volume processes coupled with surfaces processes in thermoviscoelasticity,
featuring the quasi-static momentum balance, the equation for the
unidirectional evolution of an internal variable on the surface, and the
equations for the temperature in the bulk domain and the temperature on the
surface. A significant example of our system occurs in the modeling for the
unidirectional evolution of the adhesion between a body and a rigid support,
subject to thermal fluctuations and in contact with friction. We investigate
the related initial-boundary value problem, and in particular the issue of
existence of global-in-time solutions, on an abstract level. This allows us to
highlight the analytical features of the problem and, at the same time, to
exploit the tight coupling between the various equations in order to deduce
suitable estimates on (an approximation) of the problem. Our existence result
is proved by passing to the limit in a carefully tailored approximate problem,
and by extending the obtained local-in-time solution by means of a refined
prolongation argument.


title: Revisiting the Learned Clauses Database Reduction Strategies

abstract:
  In this paper, we revisit an important issue of CDCL-based SAT solvers,
namely the learned clauses database management policies. Our motivation takes
its source from a simple observation on the remarkable performances of both
random and size-bounded reduction strategies. We first derive a simple
reduction strategy, called Size-Bounded Randomized strategy (in short SBR),
that combines maintaing short clauses (of size bounded by k), while deleting
randomly clauses of size greater than k. The resulting strategy outperform the
state-of-the-art, namely the LBD based one, on SAT instances taken from the
last SAT competition. Reinforced by the interest of keeping short clauses, we
propose several new dynamic variants, and we discuss their performances.


title:
Stable geometric properties of pluriharmonic and biholomorphic mappings,
  and Landau-Bloch's theorem

abstract:
  In this paper, we investigate some properties of pluriharmonic mappings
defined in the unit ball. First, we discuss some geometric univalence criteria
on pluriharmonic mappings, and then establish a Landau-Bloch theorem for a
class of pluriharmonic mappings.


title: Better Optimism By Bayes: Adaptive Planning with Rich Models

abstract:
  The computational costs of inference and planning have confined Bayesian
model-based reinforcement learning to one of two dismal fates: powerful
Bayes-adaptive planning but only for simplistic models, or powerful, Bayesian
non-parametric models but using simple, myopic planning strategies such as
Thompson sampling. We ask whether it is feasible and truly beneficial to
combine rich probabilistic models with a closer approximation to fully Bayesian
planning. First, we use a collection of counterexamples to show formal problems
with the over-optimism inherent in Thompson sampling. Then we leverage
state-of-the-art techniques in efficient Bayes-adaptive planning and
non-parametric Bayesian methods to perform qualitatively better than both
existing conventional algorithms and Thompson sampling on two contextual
bandit-like problems.


title:
Reconstruction of network structures from repeating spike patterns in
  simulated bursting dynamics

abstract:
  Repeating patterns of spike sequences from a neuronal network have been
proposed to be useful in the reconstruction of the network topology.
Reverberations in a physiologically realistic model with various physical
connection topologies (from random to scale-free) have been simulated to study
the effectiveness of the pattern-matching method in the reconstruction of
network topology from network dynamics. Simulation results show that functional
networks reconstructed from repeating spike patterns can be quite different
from the original physical networks; even global properties, such as the degree
distribution, cannot always be recovered. However, the pattern-matching method
can be effective in identifying hubs in the network. Since the form of
reverberations are quite different for networks with and without hubs, the form
of reverberations together with the reconstruction by repeating spike patterns
might provide a reliable method to detect hubs in neuronal cultures.


title: Variation of Bergman kernels of pseudoconvex domains

abstract:
  We shall give a variational formula of the full Bergman kernels associated to
a family of smoothly bounded strongly pseudoconvex domains. An equivalent
criterion for the triviality of holomorphic motions of planar domains in terms
of the Bergman kernel is given as an application.


title: Continuous loading of an atom beam into an optical lattice

abstract:
  I propose a method of deceleration and continuous loading of an atom beam
into a far-off-resonance optical lattice. The loading of moving atoms into a
conservative far-off-resonance potential requires the removal of the atom's
excess kinetic energy. Here this is achieved by the Sisyphus cooling method,
where a differential lattice-induced ac Stark shift is utilized. The proposed
method is described for the case of ytterbium atoms. Numerical simulations
demonstrate the possibility of reaching cold and dense samples in a continuous
manner on the example of ytterbium atoms.


title: On Zero Forcing Number of Graphs and Their Complements

abstract:
  The \emph{zero forcing number}, $Z(G)$, of a graph $G$ is the minimum
cardinality of a set $S$ of black vertices (whereas vertices in $V(G) \setminus
S$ are colored white) such that $V(G)$ is turned black after finitely many
applications of "the color-change rule": a white vertex is converted to a black
vertex if it is the only white neighbor of a black vertex. Zero forcing number
was introduced and used to bound the minimum rank of graphs by the "AIM Minimum
Rank -- Special Graphs Work Group". It's known that $Z(G)\geq \delta(G)$, where
$\delta(G)$ is the minimum degree of $G$. We show that $Z(G)\leq n-3$ if a
connected graph $G$ of order $n$ has a connected complement graph
$\overline{G}$. Further, we characterize a tree or a unicyclic graph $G$ which
satisfies either $Z(G)+Z(\overline{G})=\delta(G)+\delta(\overline{G})$ or
$Z(G)+Z(\overline{G})=2(n-3)$.


title:
Using k-alpha emission to determine fast electron spectra using the
  Hybrid code ZEPHYROS

abstract:
  A high intensity laser-solid interaction invariably drives a non-thermal fast
electron current through the target, however characterizing these fast electron
distributions can prove difficult. An understanding of how these electrons
propagate through dense materials is of fundamental interest and has
applications relevant to fast ignition schemes and ion acceleration. Here, we
utilize an upgraded version of the Hybrid code ZEPHYROS to demonstrate how the
resulting k-alpha emission from such an interaction can be used as a diagnostic
to obtain the characteristic temperature, divergence and total energy of the
fast electron population.


title:
Study on the tunneling spectroscopy of $N-pS$ junction and $N-hS$
  junction

abstract:
  We study the complete tunneling spectroscopy of a normal metal/$p$-wave
superconductor junction ($N-pS$) and normal metal/heterostructure
superconductor junction ($N-hS$) by Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) method. We
find that, for $p$-wave superconductor with non-trivial topology, there exists
a quantized zero-bias conductance peak stably, for heterostructure
superconductor with non-trivial topology, the emerging zero-bias conductance
peak is non-quantized and usually has a considerable gap to the quantized
value. Furthermore, it is sensitive to parameters, especially to spin-orbit
coupling and the $s$-wave pairing potential. Results obtained suggest that the
observation of a small zero-bias conductance peak, instead of a quantized
zero-bias conductance peak, in current tunneling experiments can be a natural
result if the spin-orbit coupling turns out to be several times smaller than
the reported one. Results obtained also suggest that both a stronger spin-orbit
coupling and proximity $s$-wave superconductor with relative weaker pairing
potential can produce a much more striking zero-bias conductance peak (compared
to the experiments), even an almost quantized one. As $s$-wave superconductors
are common in nature, the prediction can be verified within current experiment
ability.


title: L'espace de Drinfeld et correspondance de Langlands locale II

abstract:
  We study the geometry and the cohomology of the tamely ramified cover of
Drinfeld's $p$-adic symmetric space. For this tame level, we prove, in a purely
local way, most of a conjecture of Harris on the form of the $\ell$-adic
cohomologies, as well as the torsion freeness of the integral cohomology.
During the study, we obtain some results of independent interest on the
coefficient systems over the Bruhat-Tits building associated to $GL_d(K).$


title: Dispersion-like phenomena in Jovian decametric S-bursts: Tabooed Facts

abstract:
  The dominant viewpoint on Jovian decametric S-burst emission neglects the
time delay of the radiation, although its base theory of electron cyclotron
maser instability allows a significant decreasing of X-mode group velocity near
the cutoff frequency at the bottom of source region. We searched for effects of
the frequency-related delay of radiation in broadband Jovian radio storms
consisting of periodic S-bursts (S-burst trains) at 16 to 30 MHz. It was found
that up to 1% of bursts in a train are of distorted meandering shape in dynamic
spectrum, where the emission from one radio source was observed at several
frequencies simultaneously. It is difficult to explain such spectra in terms of
radio waves beaming or causality without significant frequency-related delay of
radio emission. We found experimentally that the frequency drift rate of middle
lines of such events coincides with the drift rate of disturbances in common
S-bursts. This indicates a general distortion of the dynamic spectrum of
S-bursts. As a result, the correlation method for the measurement of the
spectral distortion is proposed. Using this method, we found the approximation
coefficients for the distortion in 32 spectra of 8 Io-B storms. The corrected
spectra formally show that S-burst trains do not move mainly outward from
Jupiter, as it is usually assumed, but fly in the opposite direction. Our
simulation confirms that the dispersion is capable in principle to reproduce
the found spectral distortion. Hence, the dispersion-like phenomena in Jovian
S-bursts deserve discussion because they have no satisfactory explanations in
terms of traditional approach.


title: The Dynamics of a Two-Fluid Bianchi Type I Universe

abstract:
  We use a dynamical systems approach based on the method of orthonormal frames
to study the dynamics of a two-fluid, non-tilted Bianchi Type I cosmological
model. In our model, one of the fluids is a fluid with bulk viscosity, while
the other fluid assumes the role of a cosmological constant and represents
nonnegative vacuum energy. We begin by completing a detailed fixed-points
analysis of the system which gives information about the local sinks, sources
and saddles. We then proceeded to analyze the global features of the dynamical
system by using topological methods by finding the $\alpha$- and $\omega$-limit
sets. The fixed points found are a flat FLRW universe, an Einstein-de Sitter
universe, a de Sitter universe, a mixed FLRW universe with both vacuum and
non-vacuum energy, and a Kasner universe. We then find conditions for which
each equilibrium point was a saddle, sink, or source, and attempt to describe
the global and past asymptotic behaviour of the model with respect to each
fixed point. The flat FLRW universe solution we found with both vacuum and
non-vacuum energy is clearly of primary importance with respect to modelling
the present-day universe. In particular, we show that this equilibrium point is
a local sink and a saddle of the dynamical system, so there are orbits that
approach this equilibrium point in the future. Therefore, there exists a time
period for which our cosmological model will isotropize and be compatible with
present-day observations of a high degree of isotropy of the cosmic microwave
background in addition to the existence of both vacuum and non-vacuum energy.

categories: gr-qc astro-ph.CO math-ph math.CA math.DS math.MP


title: Dynamical Evolution of Viscous Disks around Be Stars. II : polarimetry

abstract:
  Be stars exhibit variability for a great number of observables. Putting the
pieces together of the disk dynamics is not an easy task and requires arduous
modeling before achieving a good fit of the observational data. In order to
guide the modeling process and make it more efficient, it is very instructive
to investigate reference dynamical cases. This paper focuses on continuum
polarimetric quantities and is the second of a series that aims to demonstrate
the capacity of deriving the dynamical history and fundamental parameters of a
classical Be star through the follow-up of various observables. After a
detailed study of the different opacities at play in the formation of polarized
spectra, we investigate predictions of polarimetric observables in the
continuum for different dynamical scenarios. Our models are based on a coupling
of a hydrodynamic viscous decretion simulations in a disk and a 3-D non-LTE
radiative transfer code. Introducing the polarization color diagram (PCD), we
show that certain combinations of polarimetric observables exhibit features
that are characteristic of a mass loss history. This diagram also enables to
estimate fundamental parameters such as the inclination angle, the disk density
scale and the $\alpha$ viscous diffusion parameter. We present the PCD as a
powerful diagnosis tool to track the dynamical phases of a Be star such as disk
building-up, dissipation, periodic and episodic outbursts. Finally we confront
our models with observations of 4 Be stars that exhibited long-term
polarimetric activity.


title: Graphene Plasmonics: Challenges and Opportunities

abstract:
  Graphene plasmons are rapidly emerging as a viable tool for fast electrical
manipulation of light. The prospects for applications to electro-optical
modulation, optical sensing, quantum plasmonics, light harvesting, spectral
photometry, and tunable lighting at the nanoscale are further stimulated by the
relatively low level of losses and high degree of spatial confinement that
characterize these excitations compared with conventional plasmonic materials.
We start with a general description of the plasmons in extended graphene,
followed by analytical methods that lead to reasonably accurate estimates of
both the plasmon energies and the strengths of coupling to external light in
graphene nanostructures, including graphene ribbons. We discuss several
possible strategies to extend these plasmons towards the visible and near
infrared, including a reduction in the size of the graphene structures and an
increase in the level of doping. Specifically, we discuss plasmons in narrow
ribbons and molecular-size graphene structures. We further formulate
prescriptions based on geometry to increase the level of electrostatic doping
without causing electrical breakdown. Results are also presented for plasmons
in highly-doped single-wall carbon nanotubes, which exhibit similar
characteristics as narrow ribbons and show a relatively small dependence on the
chirality of the tubes. We further discuss perfect light absorption by a
single-atom carbon layer, which we illustrate by investigating arrays of
ribbons using fully analytical expressions. Finally, we explore the possibility
of exploiting optically pumped transient plasmons in graphene, whereby the
optically heated graphene valence band can sustain collective plasmon
oscillations similar to those of highly doped graphene, and well-defined during
the picosecond time window over which the electron is at an elevated
temperature.

categories: cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.mtrl-sci physics.atm-clus physics.optics


title: On Polignac's Conjecture

abstract:
  A few years ago we identified a recursion that works directly with the gaps
among the generators in each stage of Eratosthenes sieve. This recursion
provides explicit enumerations of sequences of gaps among the generators, which
are known as constellations.
  As the recursion proceeds, adjacent gaps within longer constellations are
added together to produce shorter constellations of the same sum. These
additions or closures correspond to removing composite numbers that are
divisible by the prime for that stage of Eratosthenes sieve. Although we don't
know where in the cycle of gaps a closure will occur, we can enumerate exactly
how many copies of various constellations will survive each stage.
  In this paper, we broaden our study of these systems of constellations of a
fixed sum. By generalizing our methods, we are able to demonstrate that for
every even number $2n$ the gap $g=2n$ occurs infinitely often through the
stages of Eratosthenes sieve. Moreover, we show that asymptotically the ratio
of the number of gaps $g=2n$ to the number of gaps $g=2$ at each stage of
Eratosthenes sieve converges to the estimates made for gaps among primes by
Hardy and Littlewood in Conjecture B of their 1923 paper.


title:
Direct Processing of Run Length Compressed Document Image for
  Segmentation and Characterization of a Specified Block

abstract:
  Extracting a block of interest referred to as segmenting a specified block in
an image and studying its characteristics is of general research interest, and
could be a challenging if such a segmentation task has to be carried out
directly in a compressed image. This is the objective of the present research
work. The proposal is to evolve a method which would segment and extract a
specified block, and carry out its characterization without decompressing a
compressed image, for two major reasons that most of the image archives contain
images in compressed format and decompressing an image indents additional
computing time and space. Specifically in this research work, the proposal is
to work on run-length compressed document images.


title: Constraints on determinism: Bell versus Conway-Kochen

abstract:
  Bell's Theorem from 1964 and the (Strong) Free Will Theorem of Conway and
Kochen from 2009 both exclude deterministic hidden variable theories (or, in
modern parlance, `ontological models') that are compatible with some small
fragment of quantum mechanics, admit `free' settings of the archetypal Alice &
Bob experiment, and satisfy a locality condition called Parameter Independence.
We clarify the relationship between these theorems by giving reformulations of
both that exactly pinpoint their resemblance and their differences. Our
reformulation imposes determinism in what we see as the only consistent way, in
which the `ontological state' initially determines both the settings and the
outcome of the experiment. The usual status of the settings as `free'
parameters is subsequently recovered from independence assumptions on the
pertinent (random) variables. Our reformulation also clarifies the role of the
settings in Bell's later generalization of his theorem to stochastic hidden
variable theories.


title: Dictionary learning for fast classification based on soft-thresholding

abstract:
  Classifiers based on sparse representations have recently been shown to
provide excellent results in many visual recognition and classification tasks.
However, the high cost of computing sparse representations at test time is a
major obstacle that limits the applicability of these methods in large-scale
problems, or in scenarios where computational power is restricted. We consider
in this paper a simple yet efficient alternative to sparse coding for feature
extraction. We study a classification scheme that applies the soft-thresholding
nonlinear mapping in a dictionary, followed by a linear classifier. A novel
supervised dictionary learning algorithm tailored for this low complexity
classification architecture is proposed. The dictionary learning problem, which
jointly learns the dictionary and linear classifier, is cast as a difference of
convex (DC) program and solved efficiently with an iterative DC solver. We
conduct experiments on several datasets, and show that our learning algorithm
that leverages the structure of the classification problem outperforms generic
learning procedures. Our simple classifier based on soft-thresholding also
competes with the recent sparse coding classifiers, when the dictionary is
learned appropriately. The adopted classification scheme further requires less
computational time at the testing stage, compared to other classifiers. The
proposed scheme shows the potential of the adequately trained soft-thresholding
mapping for classification and paves the way towards the development of very
efficient classification methods for vision problems.


title:
A Novel Approach to Detect Spam Worms Propagation with Monitoring the
  Footprinting

abstract:
  One of the key security threats on the Internet are the compromised machines
that can be used to launch various security attacks such as spamming and
spreading malware, accessing useful information and DDoS. Attackers for
spamming activity are volunteer by large number of compromised machines. Our
main focus is on detection of the compromised machines in a network that may be
or are involved in the spamming activities; these machines are commonly known
as spam zombies. Activities such as port scan, DB scan and so on are treated as
malicious activity within the network. So to overcome that we develop one of
the most effective spam zombie detection system within the network based on the
behavior of other systems as if performing the above activities are treated as
zombies machines. If any system within the network try's to gather some
information about any other system then this is treated as a malicious activity
and should be not allowed to do so. SYN packets are used in order to initiate
communication within the network so as to establish connection. If any system
try's to flood the network with these packets we can make an assumption that
the system is trying to gather the information about other system. This is what
called footprinting. So we will try to detect any system involved in
footprinting and report to the administrator.


title: A note on general sliding window processes

abstract:
  Let $f:\mathbb{R}^k\to \mathbb{R}$ be a measurable function, and let
$\{U_i\}_{i\in\mathbb{N}}$ be a sequence of i.i.d. random variables. Consider
the random process $Z_i=f(U_{i},...,U_{i+k-1})$. We show that for all $\ell$,
there is a positive probability, uniform in $f$, for $Z_1,...,Z_\ell$ to be
monotone. We give upper and lower bounds for this probability, and draw
corollaries for $k$-block factor processes with a finite range.
  The proof is based on an application of combinatorial results from Ramsey
theory to the realm of continuous probability.


title: Decision Making via AHP

abstract:
  The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a procedure for establishing
priorities in multi-criteria decision making problems. Here we discuss the
Logarithmic Least Squares (LLS) method for the AHP and group-AHP, which
provides an exact and unique solution for the priority vector. Also, we show
that for the group-AHP, the LLS method is equivalent with the minimization of
the weighted sum of generalized Kullback-Leibler divergences, between the
group-priority vector and the priority vector of each expert.


title:
On the Decades-Long Stability of the Interstellar Wind through the Solar
  System

abstract:
  We have revisited the series of observations recently used to infer a
temporal variation of the interstellar helium flow over the last forty years.
Concerning the recent IBEX-Lo direct detection of Helium neutrals, there are
two types of precise and unambiguous measurements which do not rely on the
exact response of the instrument: the count rate maxima as a function of the
spin angle, which determines the ecliptic latitude of the flow, and the count
rate maxima as a function of IBEX longitude, which determines a tight
relationship between the ecliptic longitude of the flow and its velocity far
from the Sun. These measurements provide parameters (and couples of parameters
in the second case) remarkably similar to the canonical, old values. In
contrast, the preferential choice of a lower velocity and higher longitude
reported before from IBEX data is based only on the count rate variation (at
each spin phase maximum) as a function of the satellite longitude, when
drifting across the region of high fluxes. We have examined the consequences of
dead time counting effects, and conclude that their inclusion at a realistic
level is sufficient to reconcile the data with the old parameters, calling for
further investigations. We discuss the analyses of the STEREO pickup ion (PUI)
data and argue that the statistical method that has been preferred to infer the
neutral flow longitude (instead of the more direct method based on the PUI
maximum flux directions), is not appropriate. Moreover, transport effects may
have been significant at the very weak solar activity level of 2007-2009, in
which case the longitudes of the PUI maxima are only upper limits on the flow
longitude. Finally, we found that the use of some flow longitude determinations
based on UV glow data are not adequate. At variance with recent conclusions we
find no evidence for a temporal variability of the interstellar helium flow.


title:
A System for Deduction-based Formal Verification of Workflow-oriented
  Software Models

abstract:
  The work concerns formal verification of workflow-oriented software models
using deductive approach. The formal correctness of a model's behaviour is
considered. Manually building logical specifications, which are considered as a
set of temporal logic formulas, seems to be the significant obstacle for an
inexperienced user when applying the deductive approach. A system, and its
architecture, for the deduction-based verification of workflow-oriented models
is proposed. The process of inference is based on the semantic tableaux method
which has some advantages when compared to traditional deduction strategies.
The algorithm for an automatic generation of logical specifications is
proposed. The generation procedure is based on the predefined workflow patterns
for BPMN, which is a standard and dominant notation for the modeling of
business processes. The main idea for the approach is to consider patterns,
defined in terms of temporal logic,as a kind of (logical) primitives which
enable the transformation of models to temporal logic formulas constituting a
logical specification. Automation of the generation process is crucial for
bridging the gap between intuitiveness of the deductive reasoning and the
difficulty of its practical application in the case when logical specifications
are built manually. This approach has gone some way towards supporting,
hopefully enhancing our understanding of, the deduction-based formal
verification of workflow-oriented models.


title: Dynamique du probl\`eme $3x+1$ sur la droite r\'eelle

abstract:
  The 3x+1 problem is a difficult conjecture dealing with quite a simple
algorithm on the positive integers. A possible approach is to go beyond the
discrete nature of the problem, following M. Chamberland who used an analytic
extension to the half-line $\mathbb{R}^{+}$. We complete his results on the
dynamic of the critical points and obtain a new formulation the 3x+1 problem.
We clarify the links with the question of the existence of wandering intervals.
Then, we extend the study of the dynamic to the half-line $\mathbb{R}^{-}$, in
connection with the 3x-1 problem. Finally, we analyze the mean behaviour of
real iterations near infinity and present a method based on a heuristic
argument by R. E. Crandall in the discrete case. It follows that the average
growth rate of the iterates is close to $(2+\sqrt{3})/4$ under a condition of
uniform distribution modulo 2.


title: Determinant Rank of C*-algebras

abstract:
  Let $A$ be a unital $C^*$-algebra and let $U_0(A)$ be the group of unitaries
of $A$ which are path connected to the identity. Denote by $CU(A)$ the closure
of the commutator subgroup of $U_0(A).$ Let $i_A^{(1, n)}\colon
U_0(A)/CU(A)\rightarrow U_0(\mathrm M_n(A))/CU(\mathrm M_n(A))$ be the \hm\,
defined by sending $u$ to ${\rm diag}(u,1_n).$ We study the problem when the
map $i_A^{(1,n)}$ is an isomorphism for all $n.$ We show that it is always
surjective and is injective when $A$ has stable rank one. It is also injective
when $A$ is a unital $C^*$-algebra of real rank zero, or $A$ has no tracial
state. We prove that the map is an isomorphism when $A$ is the Villadsen's
simple AH--algebra of stable rank $k>1.$ We also prove that the map is an
isomorphism for all Blackadar's unital projectionless separable simple
$C^*$-algebras. Let $A=\mathrm M_n(C(X)),$ where $X$ is any compact metric
space. It is noted that the map $i_A^{(1, n)}$ is an isomorphism for all $n.$
As a consequence, the map $i_A^{(1, n)}$ is always an isomorphism for any
unital $C^*$-algebra $A$ that is an inductive limit of finite direct sum of
$C^*$-algebras of the form $\mathrm M_n(C(X))$ as above. Nevertheless we show
that there are unital $C^*$-algebras $A$ such that $i_A^{(1,2)}$ is not an
isomorphism.


title:
Band offset and negative compressibility in graphene-MoS2
  heterostructures

abstract:
  We use electron transport to characterize monolayer graphene - multilayer
MoS2 heterostructures. Our samples show ambipolar characteristics and
conductivity saturation on the electron branch which signals the onset of MoS2
conduction band population. Surprisingly, the carrier density in graphene
decreases with gate bias once MoS2 is populated, demonstrating negative
compressibility in MoS2. We are able to interpret our measurements
quantitatively by accounting for disorder and using the random phase
approximation (RPA) for the exchange and correlation energies of both Dirac and
parabolic-band two-dimensional electron gases. This interpretation allows us to
extract the energetic offset between the conduction band edge of MoS2 and the
Dirac point of graphene.


title: Constructing Entanglers in 2-Players--N-Strategies Quantum Game

abstract:
  In quantum games based on 2-player--$N$-strategies classical games, each
player has a quNit (a normalized vector in an $N$-dimensional Hilbert space
${\cal H}_N$) upon which he applies his strategy (a matrix $U \in$ SU(N)). The
players draw their payoffs from a state $|\Psi \ra=J^\dagger U_1 \otimes U_2
J|\Psi_0 \ra \in {\cal H}_N \otimes {\cal H}_N $. Here $|\Psi_0 \ra$ and $J$
(both determined by the game's referee) are respectively an {\it unentangled}
2-quNit (pure) state and a unitary operator such that $|\Psi_1 \ra \equiv
J|\Psi_0 \ra \in {\cal H}_N \otimes {\cal H}_N$ is {\it partially entangled}.
The existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium in the quantum game is
intimately related to the degree of entanglement of $|\Psi_1 \ra$. Hence, it is
practical to design the entangler $J=J(\beta)$ to be dependent on a {\it
single} real parameter $\beta$ that controls the degree of entanglement of
$|\Psi_1 \ra$, such that its von-Neumann entropy $ {\cal S}_N(\beta)$ is
continuous and obtains {\it any value} in $[0, \log N]$. Moreover, an efficient
control of $ {\cal S}_N(\beta)$ is possible only if $|\Psi_1 \ra$ appears in a
Schmidt decomposed form. Designing $J(\beta)$ for $N=2$ is quite standard.
Extension to $N>2$ is not obvious, and here we suggest an algorithm to achieve
it.


title: PRISM: Sparse Recovery of the Primordial Power Spectrum

abstract:
  The primordial power spectrum describes the initial perturbations in the
Universe which eventually grew into the large-scale structure we observe today,
and thereby provides an indirect probe of inflation or other
structure-formation mechanisms. Here, we introduce a new method to estimate
this spectrum from the empirical power spectrum of cosmic microwave background
(CMB) maps.
  A sparsity-based linear inversion method, coined \textbf{PRISM}, is
presented. This technique leverages a sparsity prior on features in the
primordial power spectrum in a wavelet basis to regularise the inverse problem.
This non-parametric approach does not assume a strong prior on the shape of the
primordial power spectrum, yet is able to correctly reconstruct its global
shape as well as localised features. These advantages make this method robust
for detecting deviations from the currently favoured scale-invariant spectrum.
  We investigate the strength of this method on a set of WMAP 9-year simulated
data for three types of primordial power spectra: a nearly scale-invariant
spectrum, a spectrum with a small running of the spectral index, and a spectrum
with a localised feature. This technique proves to easily detect deviations
from a pure scale-invariant power spectrum and is suitable for distinguishing
between simple models of the inflation. We process the WMAP 9-year data and
find no significant departure from a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum with
the spectral index $n_s = 0.972$.
  A high resolution primordial power spectrum can be reconstructed with this
technique, where any strong local deviations or small global deviations from a
pure scale-invariant spectrum can easily be detected.


title:
On the local well-posedness of the Prandtl and the hydrostatic Euler
  equations with multiple monotonicity regions

abstract:
  We find a new class of data for which the Prandtl boundary layer equations
and the hydrostatic Euler equations are locally in time well-posed. In the case
of the Prandtl equations, we assume that the initial datum $u_0$ is monotone on
a number of intervals (on some strictly increasing on some strictly decreasing)
and analytic on the complement and show that the local existence and uniqueness
hold. The same is true for the hydrostatic Euler equations except that we
assume this for the vorticity $\omega_0=\partial_y u_0$.


title:
Generating Logical Specifications from Requirements Models for
  Deduction-based Formal Verification

abstract:
  The work concerns automatic generation of logical specifications from
requirements models. Logical specifications obtained in such a way can be
subjected to formal verification using deductive reasoning. Formal verification
concerns correctness of a model behaviour. Reliability of the requirements
engineering is essential for all phases of software development processes.
Deductive reasoning is an important alternative among other formal methods.
However, logical specifications, considered as sets of temporal logic formulas,
are difficult to specify manually by inexperienced users and this fact can be
regarded as a significant obstacle to practical use of deduction-based
verification tools. A method of building requirements models using some UML
diagrams, including their logical specifications, is presented step by step.
Organizing activity diagrams into predefined workflow patterns enables
automated extraction of logical specifications. The crucial aspect of the
presented approach is integrating the requirements engineering phase and the
automatic generation of logical specifications. A system of the deduction-based
verification is proposed. The reasoning process could be based on the semantic
tableaux method. A simple yet illustrative example of the requirements
elicitation and verification is provided.


title:
Recommandation mobile, sensible au contexte de contenus \'evolutifs:
  Contextuel-E-Greedy

abstract:
  We introduce in this paper an algorithm named Contextuel-E-Greedy that
tackles the dynamicity of the user's content. It is based on dynamic
exploration/exploitation tradeoff and can adaptively balance the two aspects by
deciding which situation is most relevant for exploration or exploitation. The
experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms surveyed
algorithms.


title:
Quantifying Human Mobility Perturbation and Resilience in Natural
  Disasters

abstract:
  Human mobility is influenced by environmental change and natural disasters.
Researchers have used trip distance distribution, radius of gyration of
movements, and individuals' visited locations to understand and capture human
mobility patterns and trajectories. However, our knowledge of human movements
during natural disasters is limited owing to both a lack of empirical data and
the low precision of available data. Here, we studied human mobility using
high-resolution movement data from individuals in New York City during and for
several days after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. We found the human movements
followed truncated power-law distributions during and after Hurricane Sandy,
although the {\beta} value was noticeably larger during the first 24 hours
after the storm struck. Also, we examined two parameters: the center of mass
and the radius of gyration of each individual's movements. We found that their
values during perturbation states and steady states are highly correlated,
suggesting human mobility data obtained in steady states can possibly predict
the perturbation state. Our results demonstrate that human movement
trajectories experienced significant perturbations during hurricanes, but also
exhibited high resilience. We expect the study will stimulate future research
on the perturbation and inherent resilience of human mobility under the
influence of natural disasters. For example, mobility patterns in coastal urban
areas could be examined as tropical cyclones approach, gain or dissipate in
strength, and as the path of the storm changes. Understanding nuances of human
mobility under the influence of disasters will enable more effective
evacuation, emergency response planning and development of strategies and
policies to reduce fatality, injury, and economic loss.


title: Instability in a minimal bimetric gravity model

abstract:
  We discuss in detail a particularly simple example of a bimetric massive
gravity model which seems to offer an alternative to the standard cosmological
model at background level. For small redshifts, its equation of state is
$w(z)\approx-1.22_{-0.02}^{+0.02}-0.64_{-0.04}^{+0.05}z/(1+z)$. Just like
$\Lambda$CDM, it depends on a single parameter, has an analytical background
expansion law and fits the expansion cosmological data well. However,
confirming previous results, we find that the model is unstable at early times
at small scales and speculate over possible ways to cure the instability. In
the regime in which the model is stable, we find that it fits the linear
perturbation observations well and has a growth index of approximately
$\gamma=0.47$.


title: Universal non-equilibrium states at the fractional quantum Hall edge

abstract:
  Integrability of electron dynamics in one dimension is manifested by the
non-equilibrium stationary states. They emerge near a point contact coupling
two quantum Hall edges with different chemical potentials. I use the
non-equilibrium bosonization technique to show that the effective temperature
of such states at the fractional quantum Hall edges has a universal linear
dependence on the current through the contact. In contrast, the temperature at
eventual equilibrium scales as the square root of the power dissipating at the
point contact. I propose to use this distinction to detect these intriguing
non-equilibrium states.


title: Variational Modelling: Energies, gradient flows, and large deviations

abstract:
  These are lecture notes for various Summer and Winter schools that I have
given. The notes describe the methodology called Variational Modelling, and
focus on the application to the modelling of gradient-flow systems. I describe
the methodology itself in great detail, and explain why this is a rational
modelling route.
  A central example is diffusion, in combination with various other processes,
and a large part of the notes are devoted to this phenomenon. In the
Variational Modelling methodology, diffusion is commonly modelled by including
entropic terms in the driving functional and Wasserstein-type terms in the
dissipation. I explain how to understand these objects, motivate them from more
basic models, and how to use them in new situations.


title: The Ising Spin Glass in dimension four; non-universality

abstract:
  Extensive simulations are made on Ising Spin Glasses (ISG) with Gaussian,
Laplacian and bimodal interaction distributions in dimension four. Standard
finite size scaling analyses near and at criticality provide estimates of the
critical inverse temperatures $\beta_c$, critical exponents, and critical
values of a number of dimensionless parameters. Independent estimates are
obtained for $\beta_c$ and the exponent $\nu$ from thermodynamic derivative
peak data. A detailed explanation is given of scaling in the thermodynamic
limit with the ISG scaling variable $\tau = 1-\beta^2/\beta_c^2$ and the
appropriate scaling expressions. Data over the entire paramagnetic range of
temperatures are analysed in order to obtain further estimates of the critical
exponents together with correction to scaling terms. The Privman-Fisher ansatz
then leads to compact scaling expressions for the whole paramagnetic regime and
for all sample sizes L. Comparisons between the 4d ISG models show that the
critical dimensionless parameters characteristic of a universality class, and
the susceptibility and correlation length critical exponents $\gamma$ and
$\nu$, depend on the form of the interaction distribution. From these
observations it can be deduced that critical exponents are not universal in
ISGs, at least in dimension four.


title: Euler/X: A Toolkit for Logic-based Taxonomy Integration

abstract:
  We introduce Euler/X, a toolkit for logic-based taxonomy integration. Given
two taxonomies and a set of alignment constraints between them, Euler/X
provides tools for detecting, explaining, and reconciling inconsistencies;
finding all possible merges between (consistent) taxonomies; and visualizing
merge results. Euler/X employs a number of different underlying reasoning
systems, including first-order reasoners (Prover9 and Mace4), answer set
programming (DLV and Potassco), and RCC reasoners (PyRCC8). We demonstrate the
features of Euler/X and provide experimental results showing its feasibility on
various synthetic and real-world examples.


title: Linear programming over exponent pairs

abstract:
  We consider the problem of the computation of $\inf_p \theta p$ over the set
of exponent pairs $P \ni p$ under linear constraints for a certain class of
objective functions $\theta$. An effective algorithm is presented. The output
of the algorithm leads to the improvement and establishing new estimates in the
various divisor problems in the analytic number theory.


title: An $\omega$ Deformation of Gauged STU Supergravity

abstract:
  Four-dimensional ${\cal N}=2$ gauged STU supergravity is a consistent
truncation of the standard ${\cal N}=8$ gauged $SO(8)$ supergravity in which
just the four $U(1)$ gauge fields in the Cartan subgroup of $SO(8)$ are
retained. One of these is the graviphoton in the ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity
multiplet and the other three lie in three vector multiplets. In this paper we
carry out the analogous consistent truncation of the newly-discovered family of
$\omega$-deformed ${\cal N}=8$ gauged $SO(8)$ supergravities, thereby obtaining
a family of $\omega$-deformed STU gauged supergravities. Unlike in some other
truncations of the deformed ${\cal N}=8$ supergravity that have been
considered, here the scalar potential of the deformed STU theory is independent
of the $\omega$ parameter. However, it enters in the scalar couplings in the
gauge-field kinetic terms, and it is non-trivial because of the minimal
couplings of the fermion fields to the gauge potentials. We discuss the
supersymmetry transformation rules in the $\omega$-deformed supergravities, and
present some examples of black hole solutions.


title:
A Note on Lerner Index, Cross-Elasticity and Revenue Optimization
  Invariants

abstract:
  We study common properties of retail pricing models within a general
framework of calculus of variations. In particular, we observe that for any
demand model, optimal de-seasoned revenue rate divided by price elasticity is
time invariant. We also obtain a generalization of a well known inverse
relationship between price elasticity of demand and Lerner index. These
invariance results are illustrated by two contrasting examples of markdown
optimization and optimal continuous replenishment


title:
Collapse of superconductivity in a hybrid tin-graphene Josephson
  junction array

abstract:
  When a Josephson junction array is built with hybrid
superconductor/metal/superconductor junctions, a quantum phase transition from
a superconducting to a two-dimensional (2D) metallic ground state is predicted
to happen upon increasing the junction normal state resistance. Owing to its
surface-exposed 2D electron gas and its gate-tunable charge carrier density,
graphene coupled to superconductors is the ideal platform to study the
above-mentioned transition between ground states. Here we show that decorating
graphene with a sparse and regular array of superconducting nanodisks enables
to continuously gate-tune the quantum superconductor-to-metal transition of the
Josephson junction array into a zero-temperature metallic state. The
suppression of proximity-induced superconductivity is a direct consequence of
the emergence of quantum fluctuations of the superconducting phase of the
disks. Under perpendicular magnetic field, the competition between quantum
fluctuations and disorder is responsible for the resilience at the lowest
temperatures of a superconducting glassy state that persists above the upper
critical field. Our results provide the entire phase diagram of the disorder
and magnetic field-tuned transition and unveil the fundamental impact of
quantum phase fluctuations in 2D superconducting systems.


title:
Experimental study of a terahertz time-domain spectrometer based on
  photoconductive antenna

abstract:
  We construct a terahertz time-domain spectrometer (THz-TDS) system based on
photoconductive antenna (PCA). A 800 nm Ti sapphire femtosecond laser with 80
MHz repetition rate provides the pump and probe laser pulse, which has a 45 fs
pulse width (as short as 15 fs is available) and as much as 400 mW power. Two
commercial PCAs with 34 um and 6 um gap size are used as the emitter and
receiver, respectively. We characterize this system by measuring its absolute
radiated THz power, spectral bandwidth, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), dynamic
range and beam profile at the focal plane. We further analyze the noise sources
of the THz-TDS system and specifically discuss the possibility to improve the
DR and SNR. In addition, using this system, we study the response of the PCA to
various parameters, such as laser power, biased voltage, beam spot's location
and laser's polarization.


title:
Massive charged scalar field in the Kerr-Newman background II: Hawking
  radiation

abstract:
  We perform accurate calculations of the energy-, momentum-, and
charge-emission rates of a charged scalar field in the background of the
Kerr-Newman black hole at the range of parameters for which the effect is not
negligibly small and, at the same time, the semiclassical regime is, at least
marginally, valid. For black holes with charge below or not much higher than
the charge accretion limit $Q \sim \mu M/e$ (where $e$ and $\mu$ are the
electron's mass and charge), the time between the consequent emitting of two
charged particles is very large. For primordial black holes the transition
between the increasing and decreasing of the ratio $Q/M$ occurs around the
charge accretion limit. The rotation increases the intensity of radiation up to
three orders, while the effect of the field's mass strongly suppresses the
radiation.


title: Non-planar extensions of subdivisions of planar graphs

abstract:
  Almost $4$-connectivity is a weakening of $4$-connectivity which allows for
vertices of degree three. In this paper we prove the following theorem. Let $G$
be an almost $4$-connected triangle-free planar graph, and let $H$ be an almost
$4$-connected non-planar graph such that $H$ has a subgraph isomorphic to a
subdivision of $G$. Then there exists a graph $G'$ such that $G'$ is isomorphic
to a minor of $H$, and either
  (i) $G'=G+uv$ for some vertices $u,v\in V(G)$ such that no facial cycle of
$G$ contains both $u$ and $v$, or
  (ii) $G'=G+u_1v_1+u_2v_2$ for some distinct vertices $u_1,u_2,v_1,v_2\in
V(G)$ such that $u_1,u_2,v_1,v_2$ appear on some facial cycle of $G$ in the
order listed.
  This is a lemma to be used in other papers. In fact, we prove a more general
theorem, where we relax the connectivity assumptions, do not assume that $G$ is
planar, and consider subdivisions rather than minors. Instead of face
boundaries we work with a collection of cycles that cover every edge twice and
have pairwise connected intersection. Finally, we prove a version of this
result that applies when $G\backslash X$ is planar for some set $X\subseteq
V(G)$ of size at most $k$, but $H\backslash Y$ is non-planar for every set
$Y\subseteq V(H)$ of size at most $k$.


title:
First passage time law for some L\'evy processes with compound Poisson:
  Existence of a conditional density with incomplete observation

abstract:
  We study the default risk in incomplete information. That means, we model the
value of a firm by one L\'evy process which is the sum of brownian motion with
drift and compound Poisson process. This L\'evy process can not be observed
completely and we let an other process which representes the available
information on the firm. We obtain an equation safisfied by the conditional
density of the default time given the available information and closed form
expression for the density.


title:
Site specific spin dynamics in BaFe2As2: tuning the ground state by
  orbital differentiation

abstract:
  The role of orbital differentiation on the emergence of superconductivity in
the Fe-based superconductors remains an open question to the scientific
community. In this investigation, we employ a suitable microscopic spin probe
technique, namely Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), to investigate this issue on
selected chemically substituted BaFe$_{2}$As$_{2}$ single crystals. As the
spin-density wave (SDW) phase is suppressed, we observe a clear increase of the
Fe 3$d$ bands anisotropy along with their localization at the FeAs plane. Such
an increase of the planar orbital content interestingly occurs independently on
the chemical substitution responsible for suppressing the SDW phase. As a
consequence, the magnetic fluctuations combined with the resultant particular
symmetry of the Fe 3$d$ bands are propitious ingredients to the emergence of
superconductivity in this class of materials.


title: The geometry of non-unit Pisot substitutions

abstract:
  Let $\sigma$ be a non-unit Pisot substitution and let $\alpha$ be the
associated Pisot number. It is known that one can associate certain fractal
tiles, so-called \emph{Rauzy fractals}, with $\sigma$. In our setting, these
fractals are subsets of a certain open subring of the ad\`ele ring
$\mathbb{A}_{\mathbb{Q}(\alpha)}$. We present several approaches on how to
define Rauzy fractals and discuss the relations between them. In particular, we
consider Rauzy fractals as the natural geometric objects of certain numeration
systems, define them in terms of the one-dimensional realization of $\sigma$
and its dual (in the spirit of Arnoux and Ito), and view them as the dual of
multi-component model sets for particular cut and project schemes. We also
define stepped surfaces suited for non-unit Pisot substitutions. We provide
basic topological and geometric properties of Rauzy fractals associated with
non-unit Pisot substitutions, prove some tiling results for them, and provide
relations to subshifts defined in terms of the periodic points of $\sigma$, to
adic transformations, and a domain exchange. We illustrate our results by
examples on two and three letter substitutions.


title:
A New Approach to Reporting Archaeological Surveys: Connecting Rough
  Cilicia, Visible Past and Open Context through loose coupling and 3d codes

abstract:
  The project presents the strategy adopted by the Rough Cilicia Archaeological
Survey team for publishing its primary data and reports via three potentially
transformative strategies for digital humanities: Loose coupling of digital
data curation and publishing platforms. In loosely coupled systems, components
share only a limited set of simple assumptions, which enables systems to evolve
dynamically. Collaborative creation of map based narrative content. Connecting
print scholarship (book, reports, article) to online resources via
two-dimensional barcodes (2D codes) that can be printed on paper and can call
up hyperlinks when scanned with a Smartphone. The three strategies are made
possible by loosely coupling two autonomous services: Visible Past, dedicated
to web collaboration and digital-print publishing and Open Context, which is a
geo-historical data archiving and publishing service. The Rough Cilicia
Archaeological Survey, Visible Past, and Open Context work together to
illustrate a new genre of scholarship, which combine qualitative narratives and
quantitative representations of space and social phenomena. The project
provides tools for collaborative creation of rich scholarly narratives that are
spatially located and for connecting print publications to the digital realm.
The project is a case study for utilizing the three new strategies for creating
and publishing spatial humanities scholarship more broadly for ancient
historians.


title: Asymptotic distribution and symmetric means of algebraic numbers

abstract:
  Schur introduced the problem on the smallest limit point for the arithmetic
means of totally positive conjugate algebraic integers. This area was developed
further by Siegel, Smyth and others. We consider several generalizations of the
problem that include questions on the smallest limit points of symmetric means.
The key tool used in the study is the asymptotic distribution of algebraic
numbers understood via the weak* limits of their counting measures. We
establish interesting properties of the limiting measures, and find the
smallest limit points of symmetric means for totally positive algebraic numbers
of small height.


title: Extremal families of cubic Thue equations

abstract:
  We exactly determine the integral solutions to a previously untreated
infinite family of cubic Thue equations of the form $F(x,y)=1$ with at least
$5$ such solutions. Our approach combines elementary arguments, with lower
bounds for linear forms in logarithms and lattice-basis reduction.


title: New massive conformal gravity

abstract:
  We investigate the new massive conformal gravity which is not invariant under
conformal transformations, in comparison to the massive conformal gravity. We
find five polarization modes of gravitational waves propagating on the
Minkowski spacetimes. The stability of Minkowski spacetimes is guaranteed if
the mass squared is not negative and the linearized Ricci tenor is employed to
describe a massive spin-2 graviton. However, the small Schwarzschild black hole
is unstable against the $s$-mode massive graviton perturbations.


title: Universal enveloping algebras of Poisson Hopf algebras

abstract:
  For a Poisson algebra $A$, by exploring its relation with Lie-Rinehart
algebras, we prove a Poincar\'e-Birkoff-Witt theorem for its universal
enveloping algebra $A^e$. Some general properties of the universal enveloping
algebras of Poisson Hopf algebras are studied. Given a Poisson Hopf algebra
$B$, we give the necessary and sufficient conditions for a Poisson polynomial
algebra $B[x; \alpha, \delta]_p$ to be a Poisson Hopf algebra. We also prove a
structure theorem for $B^e$ when $B$ is a pointed Poisson Hopf algebra. Namely,
$B^e$ is isomorphic to $B#_\sigma \mathcal{H}(B)$, the crossed product of $B$
and $\mathcal{H}(B)$, where $\mathcal{H}(B)$ is the quotient Hopf algebra
$B^e/B^eB^+$.


title: Entropy in Dimension One

abstract:
  This paper completely classifies which numbers arise as the topological
entropy associated to postcritically finite self-maps of the unit interval.
Specifically, a positive real number h is the topological entropy of a
postcritically finite self-map of the unit interval if and only if exp(h) is an
algebraic integer that is at least as large as the absolute value of any of the
conjugates of exp(h); that is, if exp(h) is a weak Perron number. The
postcritically finite map may be chosen to be a polynomial all of whose
critical points are in the interval (0,1). This paper also proves that the weak
Perron numbers are precisely the numbers that arise as exp(h), where h is the
topological entropy associated to ergodic train track representatives of outer
automorphisms of a free group.


title: Analysis of Hashrate-Based Double Spending

abstract:
  Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized digital currency. Its main
technical innovation is the use of a blockchain and hash-based proof of work to
synchronize transactions and prevent double-spending the currency. While the
qualitative nature of this system is well understood, there is widespread
confusion about its quantitative aspects and how they relate to attack vectors
and their countermeasures. In this paper we take a look at the stochastic
processes underlying typical attacks and their resulting probabilities of
success.


title: Electric current in flares ribbons: observations and 3D standard model

abstract:
  We present for the first time the evolution of the photospheric electric
currents during an eruptive X-class flare, accurately predicted by the standard
3D flare model. We analyze this evolution for the February 15, 2011 flare using
HMI/SDO magnetic observations and find that localized currents in \J-shaped
ribbons increase to double their pre-flare intensity. Our 3D flare model,
developed with the OHM code, suggests that these current ribbons, which develop
at the location of EUV brightenings seen with AIA imagery, are driven by the
collapse of the flare's coronal current layer. These findings of increased
currents restricted in localized ribbons are consistent with the overall free
energy decrease during a flare, and the shape of these ribbons also give an
indication on how much twisted the erupting flux rope is. Finally, this study
further enhances the close correspondence obtained between the theoretical
predictions of the standard 3D model and flare observations indicating that the
main key physical elements are incorporated in the model.


title: Locality and Availability in Distributed Storage

abstract:
  This paper studies the problem of code symbol availability: a code symbol is
said to have $(r, t)$-availability if it can be reconstructed from $t$ disjoint
groups of other symbols, each of size at most $r$. For example, $3$-replication
supports $(1, 2)$-availability as each symbol can be read from its $t= 2$ other
(disjoint) replicas, i.e., $r=1$. However, the rate of replication must vanish
like $\frac{1}{t+1}$ as the availability increases.
  This paper shows that it is possible to construct codes that can support a
scaling number of parallel reads while keeping the rate to be an arbitrarily
high constant. It further shows that this is possible with the minimum distance
arbitrarily close to the Singleton bound. This paper also presents a bound
demonstrating a trade-off between minimum distance, availability and locality.
Our codes match the aforementioned bound and their construction relies on
combinatorial objects called resolvable designs.
  From a practical standpoint, our codes seem useful for distributed storage
applications involving hot data, i.e., the information which is frequently
accessed by multiple processes in parallel.


title: Quenching of high-pT hadrons: a non-energy-loss scenario

abstract:
  A parton produced with a high transverse momentum in a hard collision is
regenerating its color field, intensively radiating gluons and losing energy.
This process cannot last long, if it ends up with production of a leading
hadron carrying the main fraction z_h of the initial parton momentum. So energy
conservation imposes severe constraints on the length scale of production of a
single hadron with high pT. As a result, the main reason for hadron quenching
observed in heavy ion collisions, is not energy loss, but attenuation of the
produced colorless dipole in the created dense medium. The latter mechanism,
calculated with the path-integral method, explains well the observed
suppression of light hadrons and the elliptic flow in a wide range of energies,
from the lowest energy of RHIC up to LHC, and in a wide range of transverse
momenta. The values of the transport coefficient extracted from data range
within 1-2 GeV^2/fm, dependent on energy, and agree well with the theoretical
expectations.


title: Foreground segmentation based on multi-resolution and matting

abstract:
  We propose a foreground segmentation algorithm that does foreground
extraction under different scales and refines the result by matting. First, the
input image is filtered and resampled to 5 different resolutions. Then each of
them is segmented by adaptive figure-ground classification and the best
segmentation is automatically selected by an evaluation score that maximizes
the difference between foreground and background. This segmentation is
upsampled to the original size, and a corresponding trimap is built.
Closed-form matting is employed to label the boundary region, and the result is
refined by a final figure-ground classification. Experiments show the success
of our method in treating challenging images with cluttered background and
adapting to loose initial bounding-box.


title: Unitarily invariant norm inequalities for some means

abstract:
  We introduce some symmetric homogeneous means, and then show unitarily
invariant norm inequalities for them, applying the method established by Hiai
and Kosaki. Our new inequalities give the tighter bounds of the logarithmic
mean than the inequalities given by Hiai and Kosaki. Some properties and norm
continuities in parameter for our means are also discussed.


title:
Extreme value statistics of work done in stretching a polymer in a
  gradient flow

abstract:
  We analyze the statistics of work generated by a gradient flow to stretch a
nonlinear polymer. We obtain the Large Deviation Function (LDF) of the work in
the full range of appropriate parameters by combining analytical and numerical
tools. The LDF shows two distinct asymptotes: "near tails" are linear in work
and dominated by coiled polymer configurations, while "far tails" are quadratic
in work and correspond to preferentially fully stretched polymers. We find the
extreme value statistics of work for several singular elastic potentials, as
well as the mean and the dispersion of work near the coil-stretch transition.
The dispersion shows a maximum at the transition.


title:
Leveraging Long-Term Predictions and Online-Learning in Agent-based
  Multiple Person Tracking

abstract:
  We present a multiple-person tracking algorithm, based on combining particle
filters and RVO, an agent-based crowd model that infers collision-free
velocities so as to predict pedestrian's motion. In addition to position and
velocity, our tracking algorithm can estimate the internal goals (desired
destination or desired velocity) of the tracked pedestrian in an online manner,
thus removing the need to specify this information beforehand. Furthermore, we
leverage the longer-term predictions of RVO by deriving a higher-order particle
filter, which aggregates multiple predictions from different prior time steps.
This yields a tracker that can recover from short-term occlusions and spurious
noise in the appearance model. Experimental results show that our tracking
algorithm is suitable for predicting pedestrians' behaviors online without
needing scene priors or hand-annotated goal information, and improves tracking
in real-world crowded scenes under low frame rates.


title: Coalitions of pulse-interacting dynamical units

abstract:
  We prove that large global systems of interacting (non necessarily similar)
dynamical units that are coupled by cooperative impulses, recurrently exhibit
the so called grand coalition, for which all the units arrive to their
respective goals simultaneously. We bound from above the waiting time until the
first grand coalition appears. Finally, we prove that if besides the units are
mutually similar, then the grand coalition is the unique subset of
goal-synchronized units that is recurrently shown by the global dynamics.


title:
Comparison of POD reduced order strategies for the nonlinear 2D Shallow
  Water Equations

abstract:
  This paper introduces tensorial calculus techniques in the framework of
Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) to reduce the computational complexity of
the reduced nonlinear terms. The resulting method, named tensorial POD, can be
applied to polynomial nonlinearities of any degree $p$. Such nonlinear terms
have an on-line complexity of $\mathcal{O}(k^{p+1})$, where $k$ is the
dimension of POD basis, and therefore is independent of full space dimension.
However it is efficient only for quadratic nonlinear terms since for higher
nonlinearities standard POD proves to be less time consuming once the POD basis
dimension $k$ is increased. Numerical experiments are carried out with a two
dimensional shallow water equation (SWE) test problem to compare the
performance of tensorial POD, standard POD, and POD/Discrete Empirical
Interpolation Method (DEIM). Numerical results show that tensorial POD
decreases by $76\times$ times the computational cost of the on-line stage of
standard POD for configurations using more than $300,000$ model variables. The
tensorial POD SWE model was only $2-8\times$ slower than the POD/DEIM SWE model
but the implementation effort is considerably increased. Tensorial calculus was
again employed to construct a new algorithm allowing POD/DEIM shallow water
equation model to compute its off-line stage faster than the standard and
tensorial POD approaches.


title: Authoris: a tool for authority control in the semantic web

abstract:
  Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a tool that generates
authority files to be integrated with linked data by means of learning rules.
AUTHORIS is software developed to enhance authority control and information
exchange among bibliographic and non-bibliographic entities.
  Design / methodology / approach: The article analyzes different methods
previously developed for authority control as well as IFLA and ALA standards
for managing bibliographic records. Semantic Web technologies are also
evaluated. AUTHORIS relies on Drupal and incorporates the protocols of Dublin
Core, SIOC, SKOS and FOAF. The tool has also taken into account the
obsolescence of MARC and its substitution by FRBR and RDA. Its effectiveness
was evaluated applying a learning test proposed by RDA. Over 80 percent of the
actions were carried out correctly.
  Findings: The use of learning rules and the facilities of linked data make it
easier for information organizations to reutilize products for authority
control and distribute them in a fair and efficient manner.
  Research limitations / implications: The ISAD-G records were the ones
presenting most errors. EAD was found to be second in the number of errors
produced. The rest of the formats --MARC 21, Dublin Core, FRAD, RDF, OWL, XBRL
and FOAF-- showed fewer than 20 errors in total.
  Practical implications: AUTHORIS offers institutions the means of sharing
data with a high level of stability, helping to detect records that are
duplicated and contributing to lexical disambiguation and data enrichment.
  Originality / value: The software combines the facilities of linked data, the
potency of the algorithms for converting bibliographic data, and the precision
of learning rules.


title: Binary Stereo Matching

abstract:
  In this paper, we propose a novel binary-based cost computation and
aggregation approach for stereo matching problem. The cost volume is
constructed through bitwise operations on a series of binary strings. Then this
approach is combined with traditional winner-take-all strategy, resulting in a
new local stereo matching algorithm called binary stereo matching (BSM). Since
core algorithm of BSM is based on binary and integer computations, it has a
higher computational efficiency than previous methods. Experimental results on
Middlebury benchmark show that BSM has comparable performance with
state-of-the-art local stereo methods in terms of both quality and speed.
Furthermore, experiments on images with radiometric differences demonstrate
that BSM is more robust than previous methods under these changes, which is
common under real illumination.


title:
Probing the glass transition from structural and vibrational properties
  of zero-temperature glasses

abstract:
  We find that the density dependence of the glass transition temperature of
Lennard-Jones (LJ) and Weeks-Chandler-Andersen (WCA) systems can be predicted
from properties of the zero-temperature ($T=0$) glasses. Below a crossover
density $\rho_s$, LJ and WCA glasses show different structures, leading to
different vibrational properties and consequently making LJ glasses more stable
with higher glass transition temperatures than WCA ones. Above $\rho_s$,
structural and vibrational quantities of the $T=0$ glasses show scaling
collapse. From scaling relations and dimensional analysis, we predict a density
scaling of the glass transition temperature, in excellent agreement with
simulation results. We also propose an empirical expression of the glass
transition temperature using structural and vibrational properties of the $T=0$
glasses, which works well over a wide range of densities.


title:
Reduction of Maximum Flow Network Interdiction Problem from The Clique
  Problem

abstract:
  Maximum Flow Network Interdiction Problem (MFNIP) is known to be strongly
NP-hard problem. We solve a simple form of MFNIP in polynomial time. We review
the reduction of MFNIP from the clique problem. We propose a polynomial time
solution to the Clique Problem.


title: Measurement of $\chi_{cJ}$ decaying into $\eta^{\prime}K^+K^-$

abstract:
  Using $(106.41\pm 0.86) \times 10^{6}$ $\psi(3686)$ events collected with the
BESIII detector at BEPCII, we study for the first time the decay
$\chi_{cJ}\to\eta'K^+K^-$, where $\eta'\to\gamma\rho^{0}$ and
$\eta'\to\eta\pi^+\pi^-$. A partial wave analysis in the covariant tensor
amplitude formalism is performed for the decay $\chi_{c1}\to\eta'K^+K^-$.
Intermediate processes $\chi_{c1}\to\eta' f_0(980)$, $\chi_{c1}\to\eta'
f_0(1710)$, $\chi_{c1}\to\eta' f_2'(1525)$ and $\chi_{c1}\to
K^*_0(1430)^{\pm}K^{\mp}$ ($K^*_0(1430)^{\pm}\to\eta' K^{\pm}$) are observed
with statistical significances larger than 5$\sigma$, and their branching
fractions are measured.


title: Self-adjointness of semi-relativistic Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian

abstract:
  The spinless semi-relativistic Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian $H$ in quantum
electrodynamics is considered. The self-adjointness and essential
self-adjointness of $H$ are shown. It is emphasized that it includes the
massless case. Furthermore, the self-adjointness and the essential
self-adjointness of the semi-relativistic Pauli-Fierz model with a fixed total
momentum is also proven.


title:
Nonlinear Kalman filter based on duality relations between continuous
  and discrete-state stochastic processes

abstract:
  A new application of duality relations of stochastic processes is
demonstrated. Although conventional usages of the duality relations need
analytical solutions for the dual processes, we here employ numerical solutions
of the dual processes and investigate the usefulness. As a demonstration,
estimation problems of hidden variables in stochastic differential equations
are discussed. Employing algebraic probability theory, a little complicated
birth-death process is derived from the stochastic differential equations, and
an estimation method based on the ensemble Kalman filter is proposed. As a
result, the possibility for making faster computational algorithms based on the
duality concepts is shown.


title:
Genomic Prediction of Quantitative Traits using Sparse and Locally
  Epistatic Models

abstract:
  In plant and animal breeding studies a distinction is made between the
genetic value (additive + epistatic genetic effects) and the breeding value
(additive genetic effects) of an individual since it is expected that some of
the epistatic genetic effects will be lost due to recombination. In this paper,
we argue that the breeder can take advantage of some of the epistatic marker
effects in regions of low recombination. The models introduced here aim to
estimate local epistatic line heritability by using the genetic map information
and combine the local additive and epistatic effects. To this end, we have used
semi-parametric mixed models with multiple local genomic relationship matrices
with hierarchical designs and lasso post-processing for sparsity in the final
model. Our models produce good predictive performance along with good
explanatory information.


title: An Oort cloud origin of the Halley-type comets

abstract:
  The origin of the Halley-type comets (HTCs) is one of the last mysteries of
the dynamical evolution of the Solar System. Prior investigation into their
origin has focused on two source regions: the Oort cloud and the Scattered
Disc. From the former it has been difficult to reproduce the non-isotropic,
prograde skew in the inclination distribution of the observed HTCs without
invoking a multi-component Oort cloud model and specific fading of the comets.
The Scattered Disc origin fares better but suffers from needing an order of
magnitude more mass than is currently advocated by theory and observations.
Here we revisit the Oort cloud origin and include cometary fading. Our
observational sample stems from the JPL catalogue. We only keep comets
discovered and observed after 1950 but place no a priori restriction on the
maximum perihelion distance of observational completeness. We then numerically
evolve half a million comets from the Oort cloud through the realm of the giant
planets and keep track of their number of perihelion passages with perihelion
distance q<2.5AU, below which the activity is supposed to increase
considerably. We can simultaneously fit the HTC inclination and semi-major axis
distribution very well with a power law fading function of the form m^-k, where
m is the number of perihelion passages with q<2.5 AU and k is the fading index.
We match both the inclination and semi-major axis distributions when k~1 and
the maximum imposed perihelion distance of the observed sample is q~1.8AU. The
value of k is higher than the one obtained for the Long-Period Comets (LPCs),
with k~0.7. This increase in k is most likely the result of cometary surface
processes. We argue the HTC sample is now most likely complete for q<1.8AU. We
calculate that the steady-state number of active HTCs with diameter D>2.3km and
q<1.8AU is of the order of 100.


title:
A kernel of a braid group representation yields a knot with trivial knot
  polynomials

abstract:
  We show that a non-trivial, non-central normal subgroup of the braid groups
contains a braid whose closure is a hyperbolic knot with arbitrary large genus.
This shows that non-faithfulness of a quantum representation implies that the
corresponding quantum invariant fails to detect the unknot. The proof utilizes
the Dehornoy ordering of the braid groups.


title: Classical mathematical structures within topological graph theory

abstract:
  Finite simple graphs are a playground for classical areas of mathematics. We
illustrate this by looking at some theorems. These are slightly enhanced
preparation notes for a talk given at the joint AMS meeting of January 16, 2014
in Baltimore.


title: Rough metrics on manifolds and quadratic estimates

abstract:
  We study the persistence of quadratic estimates related to the Kato square
root problem across a change of metric on smooth manifolds by defining a class
of Riemannian-like metrics that are permitted to be of low regularity and
degenerate on sets of measure zero. We also demonstrate how to transmit
quadratic estimates between manifolds which are homeomorphic and locally
bi-Lipschitz. As a consequence, we demonstrate the invariance of the Kato
square root problem under Lipschitz transformations of the space and obtain
solutions to this problem on functions and forms on compact manifolds with a
continuous metric. Furthermore, we show that a lower bound on the injectivity
radius is not a necessary condition to solve the Kato square root problem.


title: Deeply Coupled Auto-encoder Networks for Cross-view Classification

abstract:
  The comparison of heterogeneous samples extensively exists in many
applications, especially in the task of image classification. In this paper, we
propose a simple but effective coupled neural network, called Deeply Coupled
Autoencoder Networks (DCAN), which seeks to build two deep neural networks,
coupled with each other in every corresponding layers. In DCAN, each deep
structure is developed via stacking multiple discriminative coupled
auto-encoders, a denoising auto-encoder trained with maximum margin criterion
consisting of intra-class compactness and inter-class penalty. This single
layer component makes our model simultaneously preserve the local consistency
and enhance its discriminative capability. With increasing number of layers,
the coupled networks can gradually narrow the gap between the two views.
Extensive experiments on cross-view image classification tasks demonstrate the
superiority of our method over state-of-the-art methods.


title:
An Achievable Rate-Distortion Region for the Multiple Descriptions
  Problem

abstract:
  A multiple-descriptions (MD) coding strategy is proposed and an inner bound
to the achievable rate-distortion region is derived. The scheme utilizes linear
codes. It is shown in two different MD set-ups that the linear coding scheme
achieves a larger rate-distortion region than previously known random coding
strategies. Furthermore, it is shown via an example that the best known random
coding scheme for the set-up can be improved by including additional randomly
generated codebooks.


title: A note on the model (co-)slice categories

abstract:
  There are various adjunctions between model (co-)slice and slice categories.
We characterize when these adjunctions are Quillen equivalences. As an
application, a triangle equivalence between the stable category of a Frobenius
category and the homotopy category of a non-pointed model category is given.


title: Operators of equivalent sorting power and related Wilf-equivalences

abstract:
  We study sorting operators $\mathbf{A}$ on permutations that are obtained
composing Knuth's stack sorting operator $\mathbf{S}$ and the reversal operator
$\mathbf{R}$, as many times as desired. For any such operator $\mathbf{A}$, we
provide a size-preserving bijection between the set of permutations sorted by
$\mathbf{S} \circ \mathbf{A}$ and the set of those sorted by $\mathbf{S} \circ
\mathbf{R} \circ \mathbf{A}$, proving that these sets are enumerated by the
same sequence, but also that many classical permutation statistics are
equidistributed across these two sets. The description of this family of
bijections is based on a bijection between the set of permutations avoiding the
pattern $231$ and the set of those avoiding $132$ which preserves many
permutation statistics. We also present other properties of this bijection, in
particular for finding pairs of Wilf-equivalent permutation classes.


title: Six proofs for an identity of the Lah numbers

abstract:
  In the paper, utilizing respectively the induction, a generating function of
the Lah numbers, the Chu-Vandermonde summation formula, an inversion formula,
the Gauss hypergeometric series, and two generating functions of the Stirling
numbers of the first kind, the authors collect and provide six proofs for an
identity of the Lah numbers.