title:
borealis - A generalized global update algorithm for Boolean
  optimization problems

abstract:
  Optimization problems with Boolean variables that fall into the
nondeterministic polynomial (NP) class are of fundamental importance in
computer science, mathematics, physics and industrial applications. Most
notably, solving constraint-satisfaction problems, which are related to
spin-glass-like Hamiltonians in physics, remains a difficult numerical task. As
such, there has been great interest in designing efficient heuristics to solve
these computationally difficult problems. Inspired by parallel tempering Monte
Carlo in conjunction with the rejection-free isoenergetic cluster algorithm
developed for Ising spin glasses, we present a generalized global update
optimization heuristic that can be applied to different NP-complete problems
with Boolean variables. The global cluster updates allow for a wide-spread
sampling of phase space, thus considerably speeding up optimization. By
carefully tuning the pseudo-temperature (needed to randomize the
configurations) of the problem, we show that the method can efficiently tackle
optimization problems with over-constraints or on topologies with a large
site-percolation threshold. We illustrate the efficiency of the heuristic on
paradigmatic optimization problems, such as the maximum satisfiability problem
and the vertex cover problem.

categories: physics.comp-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech cs.DS math.OC


title:
The impact of surface temperature inhomogeneities on quiescent neutron
  star radius measurements

abstract:
  Fitting the thermal X-ray spectra of neutron stars (NSs) in quiescent X-ray
binaries can constrain the masses and radii of NSs. The effect of undetected
hot spots on the spectrum, and thus on the inferred NS mass and radius, has not
yet been explored for appropriate atmospheres and spectra. A hot spot would
harden the observed spectrum, so that spectral modeling tends to infer radii
that are too small. However, a hot spot may also produce detectable pulsations.
  We simulated the effects of a hot spot on the pulsed fraction and spectrum of
the quiescent NSs X5 and X7 in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, using
appropriate spectra and beaming for hydrogen atmosphere models, incorporating
special and general relativistic effects, and sampling a range of system
angles. We searched for pulsations in archival Chandra HRC-S observations of X5
and X7, placing 90\% confidence upper limits on their pulsed fractions below
16\%. We use these pulsation limits to constrain the temperature differential
of any hot spots, and to then constrain the effects of possible hot spots on
the X-ray spectrum and the inferred radius from spectral fitting. We find that
hot spots below our pulsation limit could bias the spectroscopically inferred
radius downward by up to 28\%. For Cen X-4 (which has deeper published
pulsation searches), an undetected hot spot could bias its inferred radius
downward by up to 10\%. Improving constraints on pulsations from quiescent
LMXBs may be essential for progress in constraining their radii.


title: Interpreting the 750 GeV digamma excess: a review

abstract:
  We summarise the main experimental, phenomenological and theoretical issues
related to the 750 GeV digamma excess


title: Toward gas exhaustion in the W51 high-mass protoclusters

abstract:
  We present new JVLA observations of the high-mass cluster-forming region W51A
from 2 to 16 GHz with resolution ${\theta}_{fwhm} \approx$ 0.3 - 0.5". The data
reveal a wealth of observational results: (1) Currently-forming, very massive
(proto-O) stars are traced by o-H2CO $2_{1,1}-2_{1,2}$ emission, suggesting
that this line can be used efficiently as a massive protostar tracer. (2) There
is a spatially distributed population of $\sim$mJy continuum sources, including
hypercompact H ii regions and candidate colliding wind binaries, in and around
the W51 proto-clusters. (3) There are two clearly detected protoclusters, W51e
and W51 IRS2, that are gas-rich but may have most of their mass in stars within
their inner $\sim$ 0.05 pc. The majority of the bolometric luminosity in W51
most likely comes from a third population of OB stars between these clusters.
The presence of a substantial population of exposed O-stars coincident with a
population of still-forming massive stars, along with a direct measurement of
the low mass loss rate via ionized gas outflow from W51 IRS2, together imply
that feedback is ineffective at halting star formation in massive
protoclusters. Instead, feedback may shut off the large-scale accretion of
diffuse gas onto the W51 protoclusters, implying that they are evolving towards
a state of gas exhaustion rather than gas expulsion. Recent theoretical models
predict gas exhaustion to be a necessary step in the formation of
gravitationally bound stellar clusters, and our results provide an
observational validation of this process.


title:
Subword Complexity and (non)-automaticity of certain completely
  multiplicative functions

abstract:
  In this article, we prove that for a completely multiplicative function $f$
from $\mathbb{N}^*$ to a field $K$ such that the set $$\{p \;|\; f(p)\neq 1_K
\;\mbox{and }p \mbox{ is prime}\}$$ is finite, the asymptotic subword
complexity of $f$ is $\Theta(n^t)$, where $t$ is the number of primes $p$ that
$f(p)\neq 0_K, 1_K$. This proves in particular that sequences like
$((-1)^{v_2(n)+v_3(n)})_n$ are not $k$-automatic for $k\geq 2$.


title: Quarks and Bosons as Composite Particles

abstract:
  A composite model of quarks and bosons is proposed in which a spin $1/2$
isospin doublet $\psi$ is the basic building block of quarks, $W^\pm$, $Z^0$
and Higgs boson $H^0$ in the standard model. The $\psi$ has two components
$\alpha$ and $\beta$ with charges $Q_\alpha=\frac{2}{3}e$ and
$Q_\beta=-\frac{1}{3}e$, respectively. The two constituent flavors $\alpha$ and
$\beta$ combine to form the three generations of colored standard model quark
flavors. A triplet of massless hypergluons binds the constituents called
geminis. The strong confining non-Abelian $SU(2)_C$ constituent color dynamics
has a confining energy scale $\Lambda_{CD}$. The leptons, the massless photon,
gluons and triplet of hypergluons are treated as point particles. The
non-Abelian $SU(2)_C$ color dynamics satisfies asymptotic freedom, and,
together with the compositeness of the Higgs boson $H^0$, resolve the Higgs
mass and gauge hierarchy fine-tuning problems.


title: More on molecular excitations: Dark matter detection in ice

abstract:
  In this paper we investigate di-atomic molecules embedded in ice crystals
under strain. In this environment coherent vibrations of many OH-bonds may be
generated by one WIMP collision. The detection of such multiple-photon signals
may provide a signature of a 100~GeV/c${^2}$ WIMP. To do a proper lab test of
WIMP-induced multi-photon emission is very difficult. We suggest that Ice Cube
make a search for multi-photon events, and investigate whether the rate of such
events exhibits yearly modulation.


title: Physical characteristics of bright Class I methanol masers

abstract:
  Class I CH$_3$OH masers trace interstellar shocks. They have received little
attention mostly as a consequence of their low luminosities; this situation has
changed recently and Class I masers are now routinely used as signposts of
outflows. The recent detection of polarisation in Class I lines now makes it
possible to obtain information on magnetic fields in shocks. We make use of
newly calculated collisional rates to investigate the excitation of Class I
masers and to reconcile their observed properties with model results. We
performed LVG calculations with a plane-parallel slab geometry to compute the
pump and loss rates which regulate the interactions of the different maser
systems with the maser reservoir. We study the dependence of the pump rate, the
loss rate, and the inversion efficiency of the pumping scheme of Class I masers
on the physics of the gas. Bright Class I masers are mainly high-temperature
high-density structures with maser emission measures corresponding to high
CH$_3$OH abundances close to the limits set by collisional quenching. Our model
reproduces reasonably well most of the observed properties of Class I masers.
The 25 GHz masers are the most sensitive to the density and mase at higher
densities than other lines. Moreover, even at high density and high abundance,
their luminosity is lower than that of the 44 GHz and 36 GHz lines. By
comparison between observed isotropic photon luminosities and our model, we
infer beam solid angles of ~0.001 steradian. Class I masers can be separated
into 3 families: the $(J+1)_{-1}-J_{0}$-E type, the $(J+1)_0-J_1$-A type, and
the $J_2-J_1$-E lines. The 25 GHz lines behave in a different fashion from the
other masers as they are only inverted at densities above $10^6$ cm$^{-3}$ in
contrast to other Class I masers. Therefore, the detection of maser activity in
all 3 families is a clear indication of high densities.


title:
Composition of Early Planetary Atmospheres I: Connecting Disk
  Astrochemistry to the Formation of Planetary Atmospheres

abstract:
  We present a model of the early chemical composition and elemental abundances
of planetary atmospheres based on the cumulative gaseous chemical species that
are accreted onto planets forming by core accretion from evolving
protoplanetary disks. The astrochemistry of the host disk is computed using an
ionization driven, non-equilibrium chemistry network within viscously evolving
disk models. We accrete gas giant planets whose orbital evolution is controlled
by planet traps using the standard core accretion model and track the chemical
composition of the material that is accreted onto the protoplanet. We choose a
fiducial disk model and evolve planets in 3 traps - water ice line, dead zone
and heat transition. For a disk with a lifetime of 4.1 Myr we produce two Hot
Jupiters (M = 1.43, 2.67 M$_{\rm Jupiter}$, r = 0.15, 0.11 AU) in the heat
transition and ice line trap and one failed core (M = 0.003 M$_{\rm Jupiter}$,
r =3.7 AU) in the dead zone. These planets are found with mixing ratios for CO
and H$_2$O of $1.99\times 10^{-4}$, $5.0\times 10^{-4}$ respectively for both
Hot Jupiters. Additionally for these planets we find CO$_2$ and CH$_4$, with
mixing ratios of $1.8\times 10^{-6}\rightarrow 9.8\times 10^{-10}$ and
$1.1\times 10^{-8}\rightarrow 2.3\times 10^{-10}$ respectively. These ranges
correspond well with the mixing ratio ranges that have been inferred through
the detection of emission spectra from Hot Jupiters by multiple authors. We
compute a carbon-to-oxygen ratio of 0.227 for the ice line planet and 0.279 for
the heat transition planet. These planets accreted their gas inside the ice
line, hence the sub-solar C/O.


title:
Engineering the quantum states of light in a Kerr-nonlinear resonator by
  two-photon driving

abstract:
  Cat states of the microwave field stored in high-Q resonators show great
promise for robust encoding and manipulation of quantum information. Here we
propose an approach to efficiently prepare such cat states in a Kerr-nonlinear
resonator by the use of a two-photon drive. We show that this preparation is
robust against single-photon loss. We moreover find that it is possible to
remove undesirable phase evolution induced by a Kerr nonlinearity using a
two-photon drive of appropriate amplitude and phase. Finally, we present a
universal set of quantum logical gates that can be performed on the engineered
eigenspace of the two-photon driven Kerr-nonlinear resonator.


title:
Outage Probability and Capacity for Two-Tier Femtocell Networks by
  Approximating Ratio of Rayleigh and Log Normal Random Variables

abstract:
  This paper presents the derivation for per-tier outage probability of a
randomly deployed femtocell network over an existing macrocell network. The
channel characteristics of macro user and femto user are addressed by
considering different propagation modeling for outdoor and indoor links.
Location based outage probability analysis and capacity of the system with
outage constraints are used to analyze the system performance. To obtain the
simplified expressions, approximations of ratios of Rayleigh random variables
(RVs), Rayleigh to log normal RVs and their weighted summations, are derived
with the verifications using simulations.


title: End-to-End Instance Segmentation with Recurrent Attention

abstract:
  While convolutional neural networks have gained impressive success recently
in solving structured prediction problems such as semantic segmentation, it
remains a challenge to differentiate individual object instances in the scene.
Instance segmentation is very important in a variety of applications, such as
autonomous driving, image captioning, and visual question answering. Techniques
that combine large graphical models with low-level vision have been proposed to
address this problem; however, we propose an end-to-end recurrent neural
network (RNN) architecture with an attention mechanism to model a human-like
counting process, and produce detailed instance segmentations. The network is
jointly trained to sequentially produce regions of interest as well as a
dominant object segmentation within each region. The proposed model achieves
competitive results on the CVPPP, KITTI, and Cityscapes datasets.


title: Anatomy of double heavy-quark initiated processes

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


title:
Existence and multiplicity results for boundary value problems connected
  with the discrete p(.)-Laplacian on weighted finite graphs

abstract:
  We use the direct variational method, the Ekeland variational principle, the
mountain pass geometry and Karush-Kuhn-Tucker theorem in order to investigate
existence and multiplicity results for boundary value problems connected with
the discrete p(.)-Laplacian on weighted finite graphs. Several auxiliary
inequalities for the discrete p(.)-Laplacian on finite graphs are also derived.
Positive solutions are considered.


title: Reversible Pore Gating in Aqueous Mixtures via External Potential

abstract:
  We examine theoretically porous membranes in aqueous mixtures. We show that
large membrane pores can be reversibly gated from `off' (co-solvent-rich, poor
conductor of ions and other solutes) to 'on' (water-rich, good conductor)
states by an external potential. The transition voltage or charge for switching
depends on the membrane hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, the salt content, the
preferential solvation of the salt ions, and the temperature. These parameters
also determine whether the filling transition is abrupt or gradual.


title: Rotating stellar populations in the Fornax dSph galaxy

abstract:
  We present a novel analysis of the internal kinematics of the Fornax dwarf
spheroidal galaxy. Our results are based on the largest sample of spectroscopic
data for Fornax stars presently available ($> 2500$ stars), for which we have
chemical and kinematic information. We introduce new software, Beacon, designed
to detect chemo-kinematic patterns among stars of different stellar populations
using their metallicity and velocity along the line of sight. Applying Beacon
to Fornax we have detected non-negligible rotation signals around main optical
axes of the galaxy, characteristic for a triaxial system partially supported by
rotation. The dominant rotation pattern is relatively strong ($\sim 12$ km
s$^{-1}$), but the galaxy also shows additional weaker albeit complex rotation
patterns. Using the information available from the star formation history of
Fornax we have also derived the average age of the different chemo-kinematic
components found by Beacon, which has allowed us to obtain its kinematic
history. Our results point to a possible major merger suffered by Fornax at
redshift $z\sim1$, in agreement with previous works.


title:
The robustness of angular diameter distances to the lens in the
  B1608+656 and RXJ1131-1231 systems

abstract:
  The angular diameter distance of lens, $D_{Aol}$, of strong gravitational
lensing systems has been claimed as a cosmic standard ruler. The first
measurements for this distance were recently obtained to two well-known
systems: B1608+656 and RXJ1131-1231. However, there is a range of possible
systematic uncertainties which must be addressed in order to turn these systems
into useful cosmic probes. In this paper, we confront $D_{Aol}$ with luminosity
distances of type Ia supernovae and angular diameter distances of galaxy
clusters to search for tensions between these cosmological measurements using
the cosmic distance duality relation. No tension was verified with the present
data, showing the robustness of the assumptions used to describe the lens
systems.


title:
Distributed feedback terahertz frequency quantum cascade lasers with
  dual periodicity gratings

abstract:
  We have developed terahertz frequency quantum cascade lasers that exploit a
double-periodicity distributed feedback grating to control the emission
frequency and the output beam direction independently. The spatial refractive
index modulation of the gratings necessary to provide optical feedback at a
fixed frequency and, simultaneously, a far-field emission pattern centered at
controlled angles, was designed through use of an appropriate wavevector
scattering model. Single mode THz emission at angles tuned by design between
0{\deg} and 50{\deg} was realized, leading to an original phase-matching
approach, lithographically independent, for highly collimated THz QCLs.


title:
Massive neutrinos in nonlinear large scale structure: A consistent
  perturbation theory

abstract:
  A consistent formulation to incorporate massive neutrinos in the perturbation
theory of the effective CDM+baryons fluid is introduced. In this formulation
all linear k dependence in the growth functions of CDM+baryons perturbations,
as well as all consequent additional mode coupling at higher orders, are taken
into account to any desirable accuracy. Our formulation regards the neutrino
fraction, which is constant in time after the non-relativistic transition of
neutrinos, and much smaller than unity, as the coupling constant of the theory.
Then the "bare" perturbations are those in the massless neutrino case when the
neutrino fraction vanishes, and we consider the backreaction corrections due to
the gravitational coupling of neutrinos. We derive the general equations for
the "bare" perturbations, and backrecation corrections. Then, by employing
exact time evolution with the proper analytic Green's function we explicitly
derive the leading backreaction effect, and find precise agreement at the
linear level. We proceed to compute the second order beackreaction correction,
and derive the leading order matter bispectrum in the presence of massive
neutrinos, suggesting the squeezed limit of the matter bispectrum as a
sensitive probe of neutrino mass. Notably, the generic neutrino fraction
formulation in this work may be similarly applied for the consistent inclusion
of massive neutrinos within any perturbative approach.


title: Initial state fluctuations in collisions between light and heavy ions

abstract:
  In high energy collisions involving small nuclei (p+p or x+Au collisions
where x=p, d, or $^3$He) the fluctuating size, shape and internal gluonic
structure of the nucleon is shown to have a strong effect on the initial size
and shape of the fireball of new matter created in the collision. A systematic
study of the eccentricity coefficients describing this initial fireball state
for several semi-realistic models of nucleon substructure and for several
practically relevant collision systems involving small nuclei is presented. The
key importance of multiplicity fluctuations in such systems is pointed out. Our
results show large differences from expectations based on conventional Glauber
model simulations of the initial state created in such collisions.


title:
Energy and time resolution for a LYSO matrix prototype of the Mu2e
  experiment

abstract:
  We have measured the performances of a LYSO crystal matrix prototype tested
with electron and photon beams in the energy range 60$-$450 MeV. This study has
been carried out to determine the achievable energy and time resolutions for
the calorimeter of the Mu2e experiment.


title:
New Volume Comparison results and Applications to degeneration of
  Riemannian metrics

abstract:
  We consider a condition on the Ricci curvature involving vector fields, which
is broader than the Bakry-\'Emery Ricci condition. Under this condition volume
comparison, Laplacian comparison, isoperimetric inequality and gradient bounds
are proven on the manifold.
  Specializing to the Bakry-\'Emery Ricci curvature condition, we initiate an
approach to work on the original manifold, which yields, under a weaker than
usual assumption, the results mentioned above for the {\it original manifold}.
These results are different from most well known ones in the literature where
the conclusions are made on the weighted manifold instead.
  Applications on convergence and degeneration of Riemannian metrics under this
curvature condition are given. To this effect, in particular for the
Bakry-\'Emery Ricci curvature condition, the gradient of the potential function
is allowed to have singularity of order close to $1$ while the traditional
method of weighted manifolds allows bounded gradient. This approach enables us
to extend some of the results in the papers \cite{Co}, \cite{ChCo2},
\cite{zZh}, \cite{TZ} and \cite{WZ}. The condition also covers general Ricci
solitons instead of just gradient Ricci solitons.


title:
Benchmark study of the two-dimensional Hubbard model with
  auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo method

abstract:
  Ground state properties of the Hubbard model on a two-dimensional square
lattice are studied by the auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo method. Accurate
results for energy, double occupancy, effective hopping, magnetization, and
momentum distribution are calculated for interaction strengths of U/t from 2 to
8, for a range of densities including half-filling and n = 0.3, 0.5, 0.6, 0.75,
and 0.875. At half-filling, the results are numerically exact. Away from
half-filling, the constrained path Monte Carlo method is employed to control
the sign problem. Our results are obtained with several advances in the
computational algorithm, which are described in detail. We discuss the
advantages of generalized Hartree-Fock trial wave functions and its connection
to pairing wave functions, as well as the interplay with different forms of
Hubbard-Stratonovich decompositions. We study the use of different twist angle
sets when applying the twist averaged boundary conditions. We propose the use
of quasi-random sequences, which improves the convergence to the thermodynamic
limit over pseudo-random and other sequences. With it and a careful finite size
scaling analysis, we are able to obtain accurate values of ground state
properties in the thermodynamic limit. Detailed results for finite-sized
systems up to 16 \times 16 are also provided for benchmark purposes.


title: Eliminating light shifts in single-atom optical traps

abstract:
  Microscopically controlled neutral atoms in optical tweezers and lattices
have led to exciting advances in the study of quantum information and quantum
many-body systems. The light shifts of atomic levels from the trapping
potential in these systems can result in detrimental effects such as
fluctuating dipole force heating, inhomogeneous detunings, and inhibition of
laser cooling, which limits the atomic species that can be manipulated. In
particular, these light shifts can be large enough to prevent loading into
optical tweezers directly from a magneto-optical trap. We present a general
solution to these limitations by loading, cooling, and imaging single atoms
with temporally alternating beams. Because this technique does not depend on
any specific spectral properties, we expect it to enable the optical tweezer
method to control nearly any atomic or molecular species that can be laser
cooled and optically trapped. Furthermore, we present an analysis of the role
of heating and required cooling for single atom tweezer loading.


title:
Superconducting quantum criticality of topological surface states at
  three loops

abstract:
  The semimetal-superconductor quantum phase transition on the two-dimensional
(2D) surface of a 3D topological insulator is conjectured to exhibit an
emergent $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetry, based on a renormalization group (RG)
analysis at one-loop order in the $\epsilon$ expansion. We provide additional
support for this conjecture by performing a three-loop RG analysis and showing
that the supersymmetric fixed point found at this order survives the
extrapolation to 2D. We compute critical exponents to order $\epsilon^3$,
obtaining the more accurate value $\nu\approx 0.985$ for the correlation length
exponent and confirming that the fermion and boson anomalous dimensions remain
unchanged beyond one loop, as expected from non-renormalization theorems in
supersymmetric theories. We further couple the system to a dynamical $U(1)$
gauge field, and argue that the transition becomes fluctuation-induced first
order. We discuss implications of this result for quantum phase transitions
between certain symmetry-preserving correlated surface states of 3D topological
insulators.


title: Detecting microvariability in type 2 quasars using enhanced F-test

abstract:
  Microvariability (intra-night variability) is a low amplitude flux change at
short time scales (i.e. hours). It has been detected in unobscured type 1 AGNs
and blazars. However in type 2 AGNs, the detection is hampered by the low
contrast between the presumably variable nucleus and the host galaxy. In this
paper, we present a search for microvariability in a sample of four type 2
quasars as an astrostatistical problem. We are exploring the use of a newly
introduced enhanced F-test, proposed by de Diego 2014. The presented results
show that out of our four observed targets, we were able to apply this
statistical method to three of them. Evidence of microvariations is clear in
the case of quasar J0802+2552 in all used filters (g',r' and i') during both
observing nights, the microvariations are present in one of the nights of
observations of J1258+5239 in one filter (i'), while for the J1316+4452, there
is evidence for microvariability within our detection levels during one night
and two filters (r' and i'). We demonstrate the feasibility of the enhanced
F-test to detect microvariability in obscured type 2 quasars. At the end of
this paper, we discuss possible causes of microvariability. One of the options
is the misclassification of the targets. A likely scenario for explanation of
the phenomenon involves optically thin gaps in a clumpy obscuring medium, in
accordance with the present view of the circumnuclear region. There is a
possible interesting connection between the merging state of the targets and
detection of microvariability.


title: Models and Algorithms for Graph Watermarking

abstract:
  We introduce models and algorithmic foundations for graph watermarking. Our
frameworks include security definitions and proofs, as well as
characterizations when graph watermarking is algorithmically feasible, in spite
of the fact that the general problem is NP-complete by simple reductions from
the subgraph isomorphism or graph edit distance problems. In the digital
watermarking of many types of files, an implicit step in the recovery of a
watermark is the mapping of individual pieces of data, such as image pixels or
movie frames, from one object to another. In graphs, this step corresponds to
approximately matching vertices of one graph to another based on graph
invariants such as vertex degree. Our approach is based on characterizing the
feasibility of graph watermarking in terms of keygen, marking, and
identification functions defined over graph families with known distributions.
We demonstrate the strength of this approach with exemplary watermarking
schemes for two random graph models, the classic Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi model and
a random power-law graph model, both of which are used to model real-world
networks.


title: Algebraic treatment of the Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator and its PT-variant

abstract:
  The algebraic method enables one to study the properties of the spectrum of a
quadratic Hamiltonian through the mathematical properties of a matrix
representation called regular or adjoint. This matrix exhibits exceptional
points where it becomes defective and can be written in canonical Jordan form.
It is shown that any quadratic function of $K$ coordinates and $K$ momenta
leads to a $2K$ differential equation for those dynamical variables. We
illustrate all these features of the algebraic method by means of the
Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator and its PT-variant. We also consider a trivial
quantization of the fourth-order differential equation for the
quantum-mechanical dynamical variables.


title: Spin Josephson effects in Exchange coupled Anti-ferromagnets

abstract:
  The energy of exchange coupled antiferromagnetic insulators (AFMIs) is a
periodic function of the relative in-plane orientation of the N\'{e}el vector
fields. We show that this leads to oscillations in the relative magnetization
of exchange coupled AFMIs separated by a thin metallic barrier. These
oscillations pump a spin current ($I_{S}$) through the metallic spacer that is
proportional to the rate of change of the relative in-plane orientation of the
N\'{e}el vector fields. By considering spin-transfer torque induced by a spin
chemical potential ($V_{S}$) at one of the interfaces, we predict non-Ohmic
$I_{S}$-$V_{S}$ characteristics of AFMI exchange coupled hetero-structures,
which leads to a non-local voltage across a spin-orbit coupled metallic spacer.


title: Palindromes and periodic continued fractions

abstract:
  This paper is devoted to a detailed exposition of geometry of continued
fractions. We pay particular interest to the case of quadratic irrationalities
and use the technique described to prove a criterion for the continued fraction
of a quadratic surd to have a symmetric period.


title: Construction of k-angle tight frames

abstract:
  Frames have become standard tools in signal processing due to their
robustness to transmission errors and their resilience to noise. Equiangular
tight frames (ETFs) are particularly useful and have been shown to be optimal
for transmission under a certain number of erasures. Unfortunately, ETFs do not
exist in many cases and are hard to construct when they do exist. However, it
is known that an ETF of d+1 vectors in a d dimensional space always exists.
This paper gives an explicit construction of ETFs of d+1 vectors in a d
dimensional space. This construction works for both real and complex cases and
is simpler than existing methods. The absence of ETFs of arbitrary sizes in a
given space leads to generalizations of ETFs. One way to do so is to consider
tight frames where the set of (acute) angles between pairs of vectors has k
distinct values. This paper presents a construction of tight frames such that
for a given value of k, the angles between pairs of vectors take at most k
distinct values. These tight frames can be related to regular graphs and
association schemes.


title:
The two-dimensional Jacobian conjecture and the lower side of the Newton
  polygon

abstract:
  We prove that if the Jacobian Conjecture in two variables is false and (P,Q)
is a standard minimal pair, then the Newton polygon HH(P) of P must satisfy
several restrictions that had not been found previously. This allows us to
discard some of the corners found in [GGV, Remark 7.14] for HH(P), together
with some of the infinite families found in [H, Theorem~2.25]


title: Diophantine exponents of lattices

abstract:
  In this paper we define Diophantine exponents of lattices and investigate
some of their properties. We prove transference inequalities and construct some
examples with the help of Schmidt's subspace theorem.


title: Evaluating Crowdsourcing Participants in the Absence of Ground-Truth

abstract:
  Given a supervised/semi-supervised learning scenario where multiple
annotators are available, we consider the problem of identification of
adversarial or unreliable annotators.


title: From Hopf fibrations to exotic causal replacements

abstract:
  Topological solitons are relevant in several areas of physics [1]. Recently,
these configurations have been investigated in contexts as diverse as
hydrodynamics [2], Bose-Einstein condensates [3], ferromagnetism [4], knotted
light [5] and non-abelian gauge theories [6]. In this paper we address the
issue of wave propagation about a static Hopf soliton in the context of the
Nicole model. Working within the geometrical optics limit we show that several
nontrivial lensing effects emerge due to nonlinear interactions as long as the
theory remains hyperbolic. We conclude that similar effects are very likely to
occur in effective field theories characterized by a topological invariant such
as the Skyrme model of pions.


title:
Motivic obstruction to rationality of a very general cubic hypersurface
  in $\mathbb P^5$

abstract:
  Let $S$ be a smooth projective surface over a field. We introduce the notion
of integral decomposability and, respectively, the opposite notion of integral
indecomposability, of the transcendental motive $M^2_{\rm tr}(S)$. If the
transcendental motive is indecomposable rationally, then it is indecomposable
integrally. For example, $M^2_{\rm tr}(S)$ is rationally, and hence integrally
indecomposable if $S$ is an algebraic $K3$-surface whose motive is known to be
finite-dimensional. In the paper we prove that $M^2_{\rm tr}(S)$ is integrally
indecomposable when $S$ is the self-product of a smooth projective curve having
enough morphisms onto an elliptic curve with complex multiplication. This
applies, for example, when $S$ is the self-product of the Fermat sextic in
$\mathbb P^2$. Some refinement of the same technique yields that $M^2_{\rm
tr}(S_6)$ is integrally indecomposable, where $S_6$ is the Fermat sextic in
$\mathbb P^3$. This suggests a conjecture saying that the transcendental motive
of any smooth projective surface is integrally indecomposable. We prove in the
paper that if this motivic integral indecomposability conjecture is true, and
if the motive of any smooth projective surface is finite-dimensional, then a
very general cubic hypersurface in $\mathbb P^5$ is not rational.


title:
Self-testing high dimensional states using the generalized magic square
  game

abstract:
  To date all self-tests for high dimensional systems are confined to
many-qubit states. This is due to two restrictions in the literature: the
standard techniques for proving self-testing results apply only to qubits, and
there are few suitable non-local games that are known to require high
dimensional non-qubit states to achieve their optimal quantum value. In this
paper we address these two problems. Specifically, we generalize the usual
self-testing framework to q$d$its and then apply it to a generalization of the
magic square game, giving a self-test for two maximally entangled pairs of
q$d$its. This self-test has two parties, perfect completeness for honest
quantum players, and requires only a constant number of measurement settings,
regardless of the dimension $d$.


title: Computational multiheterodyne spectroscopy

abstract:
  Dual comb spectroscopy allows for high-resolution spectra to be measured over
broad bandwidths, but an essential requirement for coherent integration is the
availability of a phase reference. Usually, this means that the combs' phase
and timing errors must be measured and either minimized by stabilization or
removed by correction, limiting the technique's applicability. In this work, we
demonstrate that it is possible to extract the phase and timing signals of a
multiheterodyne spectrum completely computationally, without any extra
measurements or optical elements. These techniques are viable even when the
relative linewidth exceeds the repetition rate difference, and can tremendously
simplify any dual comb system. By reconceptualizing frequency combs in terms of
the temporal structure of their phase noise, not their frequency stability, we
are able to greatly expand the scope of multiheterodyne techniques.


title: Fog Data: Enhancing Telehealth Big Data Through Fog Computing

abstract:
  The size of multi-modal, heterogeneous data collected through various sensors
is growing exponentially. It demands intelligent data reduction, data mining
and analytics at edge devices. Data compression can reduce the network
bandwidth and transmission power consumed by edge devices. This paper proposes,
validates and evaluates Fog Data, a service-oriented architecture for Fog
computing. The center piece of the proposed architecture is a low power
embedded computer that carries out data mining and data analytics on raw data
collected from various wearable sensors used for telehealth applications. The
embedded computer collects the sensed data as time series, analyzes it, and
finds similar patterns present. Patterns are stored, and unique patterns are
transmited. Also, the embedded computer extracts clinically relevant
information that is sent to the cloud. A working prototype of the proposed
architecture was built and used to carry out case studies on telehealth big
data applications. Specifically, our case studies used the data from the
sensors worn by patients with either speech motor disorders or cardiovascular
problems. We implemented and evaluated both generic and application specific
data mining techniques to show orders of magnitude data reduction and hence
transmission power savings. Quantitative evaluations were conducted for
comparing various data mining techniques and standard data compression
techniques. The obtained results showed substantial improvement in system
efficiency using the Fog Data architecture.


title: Variation After Response in Quantum Monte Carlo

abstract:
  We present a new method for modeling electronically excited states that
overcomes a key failing of linear response theory by allowing the underlying
ground state ansatz to relax in the presence of an excitation. The method is
variational, has a cost similar to ground state variational Monte Carlo, and
admits both open and periodic boundary conditions. We present preliminary
numerical results showing that, when paired with the Jastrow antisymmetric
geminal power ansatz, the variation-after-response formalism delivers
accuracies for valence and charge transfer single excitations on par with
equation of motion coupled cluster, while surpassing even this very high-level
method's accuracy for excitations with significant doubly excited character.


title:
Abrupt Change Detection of Fault in Power System Using Independent
  Component Analysis

abstract:
  This paper proposes a novel fault detector for digital relaying based on
independent component analysis (leA). The index for effective detection is
derived from independent components of fault current. The proposed fault
detector reduces the computational burden for real time applications and is
therefore more accurate and robust as compared to other approaches. Further, a
comparative assessment is carried out to establish the effectiveness of the
proposed method as compared to the existing methods. This approach can be
applied for fault classification and localization of a distance relay
reflecting its consistency in all system changing conditions and thus validates
its efficacy in the real time applications. The method is tested under a
variety of fault and other disturbance conditions of typical power system.


title:
A laser diode based system for calibration of fast time-of-flight
  detectors

abstract:
  A system based on commercially available items, such as a laser diode,
emitting in the visible range $\sim 400$ nm,and multimode fiber patches, fused
fiber splitters and optical switches may be assembled,for time calibration of
multi-channels time-of-flight (TOF) detectors with photomultipliers' (PMTs')
readout. As available laser diode sources have unfortunately limited peak
power, the main experimental problem is the tight light power budget of such a
system. In addition, while the technology for fused fiber splitters is common
in the Telecom wavelength range ($\lambda \sim 850, 1300-1500$ nm), it is not
easily available in the visible one. Therefore, extensive laboratory tests had
to be done on purpose, to qualify the used optical components, and a full scale
timing calibration prototype was built. Obtained results show that with such a
system, a calibration resolution ($\sigma$) in the range 20-30 ps may be within
reach. Therefore, fast multi-channels TOF detectors, with timing resolutions in
the range 50-100 ps, may be easily calibrated in time. Results on tested
optical components may be of interest also for time calibration of different
light detection systems based on PMTs, as the ones used for detection of the
vacuum ultraviolet scintillation light emitted by ionizing particles in large
LAr TPCs.


title: Blind Modulation Classification based on MLP and PNN

abstract:
  In this work, a pattern recognition system is investigated for blind
automatic classification of digitally modulated communication signals. The
proposed technique is able to discriminate the type of modulation scheme which
is eventually used for demodulation followed by information extraction. The
proposed system is composed of two subsystems namely feature extraction
sub-system (FESS) and classifier sub-system (CSS). The FESS consists of
continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for feature generation and principal
component analysis (PCA) for selection of the feature subset which is rich in
discriminatory information. The CSS uses the selected features to accurately
classify the modulation class of the received signal. The proposed technique
uses probabilistic neural network (PNN) and multilayer perceptron forward
neural network (MLPFN) for comparative study of their recognition ability. PNN
have been found to perform better in terms of classification accuracy as well
as testing and training time than MLPFN. The proposed approach is robust to
presence of phase offset and additive Gaussian noise.


title:
Undecidability of a Theory of Strings, Linear Arithmetic over Length,
  and String-Number Conversion

abstract:
  In recent years there has been considerable interest in theories over string
equations, length function, and string-number conversion predicate within the
formal verification, software engineering, and security communities. SMT
solvers for these theories, such as Z3str2, CVC4, and S3, are of immense
practical value in exposing security vulnerabilities in string-intensive
programs. Additionally, there are many open decidability and
complexity-theoretic questions in the context of theories over strings that are
of great interest to mathematicians. Motivated by the above-mentioned
applications and open questions, we study a first-order, many-sorted,
quantifier-free theory $T_{s,n}$ of string equations, linear arithmetic over
string length, and string-number conversion predicate and prove three theorems.
First, we prove that the satisfiability problem for the theory $T_{s,n}$ is
undecidable via a reduction from a theory of linear arithmetic over natural
numbers with power predicate, we call power arithmetic. Second, we show that
the string-numeric conversion predicate is expressible in terms of the power
predicate, string equations, and length function. This second theorem, in
conjunction with the reduction we propose for the undecidability theorem,
suggests that the power predicate is expressible in terms of word equations and
length function if and only if the string-numeric conversion predicate is also
expressible in the same fragment. Such results are very useful tools in
comparing the expressive power of different theories, and for establishing
decidability and complexity results. Third, we provide a consistent
axiomatization ${\Gamma}$ for the functions and predicates of $T_{s,n}$.
Additionally, we prove that the theory $T_{\Gamma}$ , obtained via logical
closure of ${\Gamma}$, is not a complete theory.


title:
Transformation Optics Approach to Plasmon-Exciton Strong Coupling in
  Nanocavities

abstract:
  We investigate the conditions yielding plasmon-exciton strong coupling at the
single emitter level in the gap between two metal nanoparticles. A
quasi-analytical transformation optics approach is developed that makes
possible a thorough exploration of this hybrid system incorporating the full
richness of its plasmonic spectrum. This allows us to reveal that by placing
the emitter away from the cavity center, its coupling to multipolar dark modes
of both even and odd parity increases remarkably. This way, reversible dynamics
in the population of the quantum emitter takes place in feasible
implementations of this archetypal nanocavity.


title: A Novel Fault Classification Scheme Based on Least Square SVM

abstract:
  This paper presents a novel approach for fault classification and section
identification in a series compensated transmission line based on least square
support vector machine. The current signal corresponding to one-fourth of the
post fault cycle is used as input to proposed modular LS-SVM classifier. The
proposed scheme uses four binary classifier; three for selection of three
phases and fourth for ground detection. The proposed classification scheme is
found to be accurate and reliable in presence of noise as well. The simulation
results validate the efficacy of proposed scheme for accurate classification of
fault in a series compensated transmission line.


title:
An estimator for Poisson means whose relative error distribution is
  known

abstract:
  Suppose that $X_1,X_2,\ldots$ are a stream of independent, identically
distributed Poisson random variables with mean $\mu$. This work presents a new
estimate $\mu_k$ for $\mu$ with the property that the distribution of the
relative error in the estimate ($(\hat \mu_k/\mu) - 1$) is known, and does not
depend on $\mu$ in any way. This enables the construction of simple exact
confidence intervals for the estimate, as well as a means of obtaining fast
approximation algorithms for high dimensional integration using TPA. The new
estimate requires a random number of Poisson draws, and so is best suited to
Monte Carlo applications. As an example of such an application, the method is
applied to obtain an exact confidence interval for the normalizing constant of
the Ising model.


title: A Solver for a Theory of Strings and Bit-vectors

abstract:
  We present a solver for a many-sorted first-order quantifier-free theory
$T_{w,bv}$ of string equations, string length represented as bit-vectors, and
bit-vector arithmetic aimed at formal verification, automated testing, and
security analysis of C/C++ applications. Our key motivation for building such a
solver is the observation that existing string solvers are not efficient at
modeling the string/bit-vector combination. Current approaches either reduce
strings to bit-vectors and use a bit-vector solver as a backend, or model
bit-vectors as natural numbers and use a solver for the combined theory of
strings and natural numbers. Both these approaches are inefficient for
different reasons. Modeling strings as bit-vectors destroys structure inherent
in string equations thus missing opportunities for efficiently deciding such
formulas, and modeling bit-vectors as natural numbers is known to be
inefficient. Hence, there is a clear need for a solver that models strings and
bit-vectors natively.
  Our solver Z3strBV is a decision procedure for the theory $T_{w,bv}$
combining solvers for bit-vector and string equations. We demonstrate
experimentally that Z3strBV is significantly more efficient than reduction of
string/bit-vector constraints to strings/natural numbers. Additionally, we
prove decidability for the theory $T_{w,bv}$. We also propose two optimizations
which can be adapted to other contexts. The first accelerates convergence on a
consistent assignment of string lengths, and the second, dubbed library-aware
SMT solving, fixes summaries for built-in string functions (e.g., {\tt strlen}
in C/C++), which Z3strBV uses directly instead of analyzing the functions from
scratch each time. Finally, we demonstrate experimentally that Z3strBV is able
to detect nontrivial overflows in real-world system-level code, as confirmed
against 7 security vulnerabilities from CVE and Mozilla database.


title: Elastically driven, intermittent microscopic dynamics in soft solids

abstract:
  Soft solids with tunable mechanical response are at the core of new material
technologies, but a crucial limit for applications is their progressive aging
over time, which dramatically affects their functionalities. The generally
accepted paradigm is that such aging is gradual and its origin is in slower
than exponential microscopic dynamics, akin to the ones in supercooled liquids
or glasses. Nevertheless, time- and space-resolved measurements have provided
contrasting evidence: dynamics faster than exponential, intermittency, and
abrupt structural changes. Here we use 3D computer simulations of a microscopic
model to reveal that the timescales governing stress relaxation respectively
through thermal fluctuations and elastic recovery are key for the aging
dynamics. When thermal fluctuations are too weak, stress heterogeneities
frozen-in upon solidification can still partially relax through elastically
driven fluctuations. Such fluctuations are intermittent, because of strong
correlations that persist over the timescale of experiments or simulations,
leading to faster than exponential dynamics.


title:
Bifurcations of phase portraits of pendulum with vibrating suspension
  point

abstract:
  We consider a simple pendulum whose suspension point undergoes fast
vibrations in the plane of motion of the pendulum. The averaged over the fast
vibrations system is a Hamiltonian system with one degree of freedom depending
on two parameters. We give complete description of bifurcations of phase
portraits of this averaged system.


title: Tunable Shear Thickening in Suspensions

abstract:
  Shear thickening, an increase of viscosity with shear rate, is a ubiquitous
phenomena in suspended materials that has implications for broad technological
applications. Controlling this thickening behavior remains a major challenge
and has led to empirical strategies ranging from altering the particle surfaces
and shape to modifying the solvent properties. However, none of these methods
allow for tuning of flow properties during shear itself. Here, we demonstrate
that by strategic imposition of a high-frequency and low-amplitude shear
perturbation orthogonal to the primary shearing flow, we can largely eradicate
shear thickening. The orthogonal shear effectively becomes a regulator for
controlling thickening in the suspension, allowing the viscosity to be reduced
by up to two decades on demand. In a separate setup, we show that such effects
can be induced by simply agitating the sample transversely to the primary shear
direction. Overall, the ability of in situ manipulation of shear thickening
paves a route towards creating materials whose mechanical properties can be
controlled.


title:
Strong Attractors in Stochastic Adaptive Networks: Emergence and
  Characterization

abstract:
  We propose a family of models to study the evolution of ties in a network of
interacting agents by reinforcement and penalization of their connections
according to certain local laws of interaction. The family of stochastic
dynamical systems, on the edges of a graph, exhibits \emph{good} convergence
properties, in particular, we prove a strong-stability result: a subset of
binary matrices or graphs -- characterized by certain compatibility properties
-- is a global almost sure attractor of the family of stochastic dynamical
systems. To illustrate finer properties of the corresponding strong attractor,
we present some simulation results that capture, e.g., the conspicuous
phenomenon of emergence and downfall of leaders in social networks.


title: Quantitative Analysis of Saliency Models

abstract:
  Previous saliency detection research required the reader to evaluate
performance qualitatively, based on renderings of saliency maps on a few
shapes. This qualitative approach meant it was unclear which saliency models
were better, or how well they compared to human perception. This paper provides
a quantitative evaluation framework that addresses this issue. In the first
quantitative analysis of 3D computational saliency models, we evaluate four
computational saliency models and two baseline models against ground-truth
saliency collected in previous work.


title: Latent Bi-constraint SVM for Video-based Object Recognition

abstract:
  We address the task of recognizing objects from video input. This important
problem is relatively unexplored, compared with image-based object recognition.
To this end, we make the following contributions. First, we introduce two
comprehensive datasets for video-based object recognition. Second, we propose
Latent Bi-constraint SVM (LBSVM), a maximum-margin framework for video-based
object recognition. LBSVM is based on Structured-Output SVM, but extends it to
handle noisy video data and ensure consistency of the output decision
throughout time. We apply LBSVM to recognize office objects and museum
sculptures, and we demonstrate its benefits over image-based, set-based, and
other video-based object recognition.


title: The Nonrelativistic Limit of Relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell System

abstract:
  We consider the one and one-half dimensional multi-species relativistic
Vlasov-Maxwell system with non-decaying(in space) initial data. We prove its
well-posedness and nonrelativistic limit as the speed of light
$c\rightarrow\infty$. These results mainly rely on a delicate analysis of
energy structure and application of estimates along the characteristic lines.


title: Parallel Markov Chain Monte Carlo via Spectral Clustering

abstract:
  As it has become common to use many computer cores in routine applications,
finding good ways to parallelize popular algorithms has become increasingly
important. In this paper, we present a parallelization scheme for Markov chain
Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods based on spectral clustering of the underlying state
space, generalizing earlier work on parallelization of MCMC methods by state
space partitioning. We show empirically that this approach speeds up MCMC
sampling for multimodal distributions and that it can be usefully applied in
greater generality than several related algorithms. Our algorithm converges
under reasonable conditions to an `optimal' MCMC algorithm. We also show that
our approach can be asymptotically far more efficient than naive
parallelization, even in situations such as completely flat target
distributions where no unique optimal algorithm exists. Finally, we combine
theoretical and empirical bounds to provide practical guidance on the choice of
tuning parameters.


title:
Fractional Sobolev Space and Spectral Structure of Fractional Dirichlet
  Boundary Value Problem

abstract:
  Based on the need of studying the fractional boundary value problems by using
variational methods, in this paper, we introduce a fundamental theory framework
of fractional Sobolev space in one dimension, study the regularity of weak
solutions for a fractional boundary value problem with variational structure,
give out the spectral structure of operator ${_t}D_T^\alpha {_0}D_t^\alpha$
with Dirichlet boundary value conditions. Especially, when $\alpha=1$, the
operator ${_t}D_T^\alpha {_0}D_t^\alpha=-D^2$. So, the results of this paper
are the generalization of corresponding conclusions for integer differential
operator to some extent.


title: Concentration of the empirical level sets of Tukey's halfspace depth

abstract:
  Tukey depth, aka halfspace depth, has attracted much interest in data
analysis, because it is a natural way of measuring the notion of depth relative
to a cloud of points or, more generally, to a probability measure. Given an
i.i.d. sample, we investigate the concentration of upper level sets of the
Tukey depth relative to that sample around their population version. We also
study the concentration of the upper level sets of a discretized version of
Tukey depth.


title:
Asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimator for nonlinear
  AR processes with markov-switching

abstract:
  In this note, we propose a new approach for the proof of the consistency and
normality of the maximum likelihood estimator for nonlinear AR processes with
markov-switching under the assumptions of uniform exponential forgetting of the
prediction filter and $\alpha$-mixing property. We show that in the linear and
Gaussian case our assumptions are fully satisfied.


title:
Training Auto-encoders Effectively via Eliminating Task-irrelevant Input
  Variables

abstract:
  Auto-encoders are often used as building blocks of deep network classifier to
learn feature extractors, but task-irrelevant information in the input data may
lead to bad extractors and result in poor generalization performance of the
network. In this paper,via dropping the task-irrelevant input variables the
performance of auto-encoders can be obviously improved .Specifically, an
importance-based variable selection method is proposed to aim at finding the
task-irrelevant input variables and dropping them.It firstly estimates
importance of each variable,and then drops the variables with importance value
lower than a threshold. In order to obtain better performance, the method can
be employed for each layer of stacked auto-encoders. Experimental results show
that when combined with our method the stacked denoising auto-encoders achieves
significantly improved performance on three challenging datasets.


title: Scalable and Flexible Multiview MAX-VAR Canonical Correlation Analysis

abstract:
  Generalized canonical correlation analysis (GCCA) aims at finding latent
low-dimensional common structure from multiple views (feature vectors in
different domains) of the same entities. Unlike principal component analysis
(PCA) that handles a single view, (G)CCA is able to integrate information from
different feature spaces. Here we focus on MAX-VAR GCCA, a popular formulation
which has recently gained renewed interest in multilingual processing and
speech modeling. The classic MAX-VAR GCCA problem can be solved optimally via
eigen-decomposition of a matrix that compounds the (whitened) correlation
matrices of the views; but this solution has serious scalability issues, and is
not directly amenable to incorporating pertinent structural constraints such as
non-negativity and sparsity on the canonical components. We posit regularized
MAX-VAR GCCA as a non-convex optimization problem and propose an alternating
optimization (AO)-based algorithm to handle it. Our algorithm alternates
between {\em inexact} solutions of a regularized least squares subproblem and a
manifold-constrained non-convex subproblem, thereby achieving substantial
memory and computational savings. An important benefit of our design is that it
can easily handle structure-promoting regularization. We show that the
algorithm globally converges to a critical point at a sublinear rate, and
approaches a global optimal solution at a linear rate when no regularization is
considered. Judiciously designed simulations and large-scale word embedding
tasks are employed to showcase the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.


title: From Ann Arbor to Sheffield: Around the World in 80 Years. I

abstract:
  Childhood and graduate school at Ann Arbor Michigan prepared Bill for an
interesting and rewarding career in physics. Along the way came Carol and many
joint discoveries with our many colleagues to whom we both owe this good life.
This summary of Bill's early work prior to their marriage and sabbatical in
Japan is Part I, prepared for Bill's 80th Birthday celebration at the
University of Sheffield in July 2016.


title: Automorphism groups of edge-transitive maps

abstract:
  For each of the 14 classes of edge-transitive maps described by Graver and
Watkins, necessary and sufficient conditions are given for a group to be the
automorphism group of a map, or of an orientable map without boundary, in that
class. Extending earlier results of Siran, Tucker and Watkins, these are used
to determine which symmetric groups $S_n$ can arise in this way for each class.
Similar results are obtained for all finite simple groups, building on work of
Leemans and Liebeck, Nuzhin and others on generating sets for such groups. It
is also shown that each edge-transitive class realises finite groups of every
sufficiently large nilpotence class or derived length, and also realises
uncountably many non-isomorphic infinite groups. Edge-transitive embeddings of
complete graphs are classified, and there is a detailed discussion of
edge-transitive maps with boundary.


title:
A Subgradient Approach for Constrained Binary Optimization via Quantum
  Adiabatic Evolution

abstract:
  An earlier work [18] proposes a method for solving the Lagrangian dual of a
constrained binary quadratic programming problem via quantum adiabatic
evolution using an outer approximation method. This should be an efficient
prescription for solving the Lagrangian dual problem in the presence of an
ideally noise-free quantum adiabatic system. However, current implementations
of quantum annealing systems demand methods that are efficient at handling
possible sources of noise. In this paper, we consider a subgradient method for
finding an optimal primal-dual pair for the Lagrangian dual of a constrained
binary polynomial programming problem. We then study the quadratic stable set
(QSS) problem as a case study. We see that this method applied to the QSS
problem can be viewed as an instance-dependent penalty-term approach that
avoids large penalty coefficients. Finally, we report our experimental results
of using the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer and conclude that our approach helps
this quantum processor to succeed more often in solving these problems compared
to the usual penalty-term approaches.


title:
A semi-smooth Newton method for projection equations and linear
  complementarity problems with respect to the second order cone

abstract:
  In this paper a special semi-smooth equation associated to the second order
cone is studied. It is shown that, under mild assumptions, the semi-smooth
Newton method applied to this equation is well-defined and the generated
sequence is globally and Q-linearly convergent to a solution. As an
application, the obtained results are used to study the linear second order
cone complementarity problem, with special emphasis on the particular case of
positive definite matrices. Moreover, some computational experiments designed
to investigate the practical viability of the method are presented.


title:
Ion acoustic solitary structures in a collisionless unmagnetized plasma
  consisting of nonthermal electrons and isothermal positrons

abstract:
  Employing the Sagdeev pseudo-potential technique the ion acoustic solitary
structures have been investigated in an unmagnetized collisionless plasma
consisting of adiabatic warm ions, nonthermal electrons and isothermal
positrons. The qualitatively different compositional parameter spaces clearly
indicate the existence domains of solitons and double layers with respect to
any parameter of the present plasma system. The present system supports the
negative potential double layer which always restricts the occurrence of
negative potential solitons. The system also supports positive potential double
layers when the ratio of the average thermal velocity of positrons to that of
electrons is less than a critical value. However, there exists a parameter
regime for which the positive potential double layer is unable to restrict the
occurrence of positive potential solitary waves and in this region of the
parameter space, there exist positive potential solitary waves after the
formation of a positive potential double layer. Consequently, positive
potential supersolitons have been observed. The nonthermality of electrons
plays an important role in the formation of positive potential double layers as
well as positive potential supersolitons. The formation of positive potential
supersoliton is analysed with the help of phase portraits of the dynamical
system corresponding to the ion acoustic solitary structures of the present
plasma system.


title: Submodularity in Input Node Selection for Networked Systems

abstract:
  Networked systems are systems of interconnected components, in which the
dynamics of each component are influenced by the behavior of neighboring
components. Examples of networked systems include biological networks, critical
infrastructures such as power grids, transportation systems, and the Internet,
and social networks. The growing importance of such systems has led to an
interest in control of networks to ensure performance, stability, robustness,
and resilience. A widely-studied method for controlling networked systems is to
directly control a subset of input nodes, which then steer the remaining nodes
to their desired states. This article presents submodular optimization
approaches for input node selection in networked systems. Submodularity is a
property of set functions that enables the development of computationally
tractable algorithms with provable optimality bounds. For a variety of
physically relevant systems, the physical dynamics have submodular structures
that can be exploited to develop efficient input selection algorithms. This
article will describe these structures and the resulting algorithms, as well as
discuss open problems.


title:
Bayesian optimization under mixed constraints with a slack-variable
  augmented Lagrangian

abstract:
  An augmented Lagrangian (AL) can convert a constrained optimization problem
into a sequence of simpler (e.g., unconstrained) problems, which are then
usually solved with local solvers. Recently, surrogate-based Bayesian
optimization (BO) sub-solvers have been successfully deployed in the AL
framework for a more global search in the presence of inequality constraints;
however, a drawback was that expected improvement (EI) evaluations relied on
Monte Carlo. Here we introduce an alternative slack variable AL, and show that
in this formulation the EI may be evaluated with library routines. The slack
variables furthermore facilitate equality as well as inequality constraints,
and mixtures thereof. We show how our new slack "ALBO" compares favorably to
the original. Its superiority over conventional alternatives is reinforced on
several mixed constraint examples.


title: The diamagnetic phase transition in Magnetars

abstract:
  Neutron stars are ideal astrophysical laboratories for testing theories of
the de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) effect and diamagnetic phase transition which is
associated with magnetic domain formation. The "magnetic interaction" between
delocalized magnetic moments of electrons (the Shoenberg effect), can result in
an effect of the diamagnetic phase transition into domains of alternating
magnetization (Condon's domains). Associated with the domain formation are
prominent magnetic field oscillation and anisotropic magnetic stress which may
be large enough to fracture the crust of magnetar with a super-strong field.
Even if the fracture is impossible as in "low-field" magnetar, the depinning
phase transition of domain wall motion driven by low field rate (mainly due to
the Hall effect) in the randomly perturbed crust can result in a
catastrophically variation of magnetic field. This intermittent motion, similar
to the avalanche process, makes the Hall effect be dissipative. These
qualitative consequences about magnetized electron gas are consistent with
observations of magnetar emission, and especially the threshold critical
dynamics of driven domain wall can partially overcome the difficulties of
"low-field" magnetar bursts and the heating mechanism of transient, or
"outbursting" magnetar.


title:
The Contribution of Chemical Abundances in Nova Ejecta to the
  Interstellar Medium

abstract:
  According to the nova model from \citet{Yaron2005} and \citet{Jose1998} and
using Monte Carlo simulation method, we investigate the contribution of
chemical abundances in nova ejecta to the interstellar medium (ISM) of the
Galaxy. We find that the ejected mass by classical novae (CNe) is about
$2.7\times10^{-3}$ $ \rm M_\odot\ {\rm yr^{-1}}$. In the nova ejecta, the
isotopic ratios of C, N and O, that is, $^{13}$C/$^{12}$C, $^{15}$N/$^{14}$N
and $^{17}$O/$^{16}$O, are higher about one order of magnitude than those in
red giants. We estimate that about 10$\%$, 5$\%$ and 20$\%$ of $^{13}$C,
$^{15}$N and $^{17}$O in the ISM of the Galaxy come from nova ejecta,
respectively. However, the chemical abundances of C, N and O calculated by our
model can not cover all of observational values. This means that there is still
a long way to go for understanding novae.


title: What is the speed of the supercurrent in superconductors?

abstract:
  Within the conventional theory of superconductivity superfluid carriers
respond to an applied magnetic field and acquire a speed according to their
effective (band) mass. On the other hand it can be shown theoretically and is
confirmed experimentally that the mechanical momentum of the supercurrent
carriers is given by the product of the supercurrent speed and the $bare$
electron mass. By combining these two well-established facts we show that the
conventional BCS-London theory of superconductivity applied to Bloch electrons
is $internally$ $inconsistent$. Furthermore, we argue that BCS-London theory
with Bloch electrons does not describe the phase rigidity and macroscopic
quantum behavior exhibited by superconductors. Experimentally the speed of the
supercurrent in superconductors has never been measured and has been argued to
be non-measurable, however we point out that it is in principle measurable by a
Compton scattering experiment. We predict that such experiments will show that
superfluid carriers respond to an applied magnetic field according to their
bare mass, in other words, that they respond as $free$ $electrons$, undressed
from the electron-ion interaction, rather than as Bloch electrons. This is
inconsistent with the conventional theory of superconductivity and consistent
with the alternative theory of hole superconductivity. Furthermore we point out
that in principle Compton scattering experiments can also detect the presence
of a spin current in the ground state of superconductors predicted by the
theory of hole superconductivity.


title: Noncommutative topological $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant

abstract:
  We generalize the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant of topological insulators using
noncommutative differential geometry in two different ways. First, we model
Majorana zero modes by KQ-cycles in the framework of analytic K-homology, and
we define the noncommutative $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant as a topological index in
noncommutative topology. Second, we look at the geometric picture of the
Pfaffian formalism of the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant, i.e., the Kane--Mele
invariant, and we define the noncommutative Kane--Mele invariant over the fixed
point algebra of the time reversal symmetry in the noncommutative 2-torus.
Finally, we are able to prove the equivalence between the noncommutative
topological $\mathbb{Z}_2$ index and the noncommutative Kane--Mele invariant.


title: Staggercast: Demand-Side Management for ISPs

abstract:
  The continuing expansion of Internet media consumption has increased traffic
volumes, and hence congestion, on access links. In response, both mobile and
wireline ISPs must either increase capacity or perform traffic engineering over
existing resources. Unfortunately, provisioning timescales are long, the
process is costly, and single-homing means operators cannot balance across the
last mile. Inspired by energy and transport networks, we propose demand-side
management of users to reduce the impact caused by consumption patterns
out-pacing that of edge network provision. By directly affecting user behaviour
through a range of incentives, our techniques enable resource management over
shorter timescales than is possible in conventional networks. Using survey data
from 100 participants we explore the feasibility of introducing the principles
of demand-side management in today's networks.


title:
Relaxation time for monitoring the quantumness of an intense cavity
  field

abstract:
  Recently it was shown that the quantum behavior of an intense cavity field
can be revealed by measuring the steady atomic correlations between two ideal
atoms, which interact with the same leaking cavity mode. Considering a weak
atom-field coupling regime and large average number of photons in the cavity
mode ($\bar{n}$), one expects that a semiclassical theory could explain the
whole dynamics of the system. However, this system presents the generation of
correlations between the atoms, which is a signature of the quantumness of the
cavity field even in the limit of $\bar{n} \gg 1$ [Phys. Rev. Lett.
\textbf{107}, 153601 (2011)]. Here, we extend this result by investigating the
relaxation time for such a system. We have shown that the relaxation time of
the system varies proportionally to $\bar{n}$ for a coherent driving, but it is
inversely proportional to $\bar{n}$ for an incoherent pumping. Thus, the time
required to observe the manifestation of the quantum aspects of a cavity field
on the atomic correlations diverges as $\bar{n}$ tends to macroscopic values
due to a coherent driving, while it goes to zero for incoherent pumping. For a
coherent driving, we can also see that this system presents metastability,
i.e., firstly the atomic system reaches a quasi-stationary state which last for
a long time interval, but eventually it reaches the real steady state. We have
also discussed the effects of small atomic decay. In this case, the steady
correlations between the atoms disappear for long times, but the intense cavity
field is still able to generate atomic correlations at intermediate times.
Then, considering a real scenario, we would be able to monitor the quantumness
of a cavity field in a certain time interval.


title:
Will Sanders Supporters Jump Ship for Trump? Fine-grained Analysis of
  Twitter Followers

abstract:
  In this paper, we study the likelihood of Bernie Sanders supporters voting
for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. Building from a unique time-series
dataset of the three candidates' Twitter followers, which we make public here,
we first study the proportion of Sanders followers who simultaneously follow
Trump (but not Clinton) and how this evolves over time. Then we train a
convolutional neural network to classify the gender of Sanders followers, and
study whether men are more likely to jump ship for Trump than women. Our study
shows that between March and May an increasing proportion of Sanders followers
are following Trump (but not Clinton). The proportion of Sanders followers who
follow Clinton but not Trump has actually decreased. Equally important, our
study suggests that the jumping ship behavior will be affected by gender and
that men are more likely to switch to Trump than women.


title: SMIET: Simultaneous Molecular Information and Energy Transfer

abstract:
  The performance of communication systems is fundamentally limited by the loss
of energy through propagation and circuit inefficiencies. In this article, we
show that it is possible to achieve ultra low energy communications at the
nano-scale, if diffusive molecules are used for carrying data. Whilst the
energy of electromagnetic waves will inevitably decay as a function of
transmission distance and time, the energy in individual molecules does not.
Over time, the receiver has an opportunity to recover some, if not all of the
molecular energy transmitted. The article demonstrates the potential of
ultra-low energy simultaneous molecular information and energy transfer (SMIET)
through the design of two different nano-relay systems, and the discusses how
molecular communications can benefit more from crowd energy harvesting than
traditional wave-based systems.


title:
The mechanical back-action of a spin-wave resonance in a magnetoelastic
  thin film on a surface acoustic wave

abstract:
  Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) traveling on the surface of a piezoelectric
crystal can, through the magnetoelastic interaction, excite traveling spin-wave
resonance in a magnetic film deposited on the substrate. This spin-wave
resonance in the magnetic film creates a time dynamic surface stress of
magnetoelastic origin that acts back on the surface of the piezoelectric and
modifies the SAW propagation. Unlike previous analyses that treat the
excitation as a magnon-phonon polariton, here the magnetoelastic film is
treated as a perturbation modifying boundary conditions on the SAW. We use
acoustical perturbation theory to find closed form expressions for the
back-action surface stress and strain fields and the resultant SAW velocity
shifts and attenuation. We demonstrate that the shear stress fields associated
with this spin-wave back-action also generate effective surface currents on the
piezoelectric both in-phase and out-of-phase with the driving SAW potential.
Characterization of these surface currents and their applications in
determination of the magnetoelastic coupling are discussed. The perturbative
calculation is carried out explicitly to first order (a regime corresponding to
many experimental situations of current interest) and we provide a sketch of
the implications of the theory at higher order.


title: Correlation transfer in large-spin chains

abstract:
  It is shown that transient spin-spin correlations in one-dimensional spin
S>>1 chain can be enhanced for initially factorized and individually squeezed
spin states. Such correlation transfer form "internal" to "external" degrees of
freedom can be well described by using a semiclassical phase-space approach.


title: A Neural Autoregressive Approach to Collaborative Filtering

abstract:
  This paper proposes CF-NADE, a neural autoregressive architecture for
collaborative filtering (CF) tasks, which is inspired by the Restricted
Boltzmann Machine (RBM) based CF model and the Neural Autoregressive
Distribution Estimator (NADE). We first describe the basic CF-NADE model for CF
tasks. Then we propose to improve the model by sharing parameters between
different ratings. A factored version of CF-NADE is also proposed for better
scalability. Furthermore, we take the ordinal nature of the preferences into
consideration and propose an ordinal cost to optimize CF-NADE, which shows
superior performance. Finally, CF-NADE can be extended to a deep model, with
only moderately increased computational complexity. Experimental results show
that CF-NADE with a single hidden layer beats all previous state-of-the-art
methods on MovieLens 1M, MovieLens 10M, and Netflix datasets, and adding more
hidden layers can further improve the performance.


title: Jamming on curved surfaces

abstract:
  Colloidal and other granular media experience a transition to rigidity known
as jamming if the fill fraction is increased beyond a critical value. The
resulting jammed structures are locally disordered, bear applied loads
inhomogenously, possess the minimal number of contacts required for stability
and elastic properties that scale differently with volume fraction to
crystalline media. Here the jamming transition is studied on a curved
ellipsoidal surface by computer simulation, where shape evolution leads to a
reduction in area, crowding the particles and preventing further evolution of
the surface. The arrested structures can be unjammed and the surface further
evolved iteratively, eventually leading to a rigid metric-jammed state that is
stable with respect to motion of the particles and some specified space of
deformations of the manifold. The structures obtained are compared with those
obtained in flat space; it is found that jammed states in curved geometries
require fewer contacts per particle due to the nonlinearity of the surface
constraints. In addition, structures composed of soft particles are compressed
above the jamming point. It is observed that relatively well-ordered but
geometrically frustrated monodisperse packings share many signatures of
disordered bidisperse packings.


title:
Predictions for $p+$Pb Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5$ TeV: Comparison
  with Data

abstract:
  Predictions made in Albacete {\it et al} prior to the LHC $p+$Pb run at
$\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5$ TeV are compared to currently available data. Some
predictions shown here have been updated by including the same experimental
cuts as the data. Some additional predictions are also presented, especially
for quarkonia, that were provided to the experiments before the data were made
public but were too late for the original publication are also shown here.


title:
The heralded amplification for the single-photon entanglement of the
  time-bin qubit

abstract:
  We put forward an effective amplification protocol for protecting the
single-photon entangled state of the time-bin qubit. The protocol only requires
one pair of the single-photon entangled state and some auxiliary single
photons. With the help of the 50:50 beam splitters, variable beam splitters
with the transmission of $t$ and the polarizing beam splitters, we can increase
the fidelity of the single-photon entangled state under $t<\frac{1}{2}$.
Moreover, the encoded time-bin information can be perfectly contained. Our
protocol is quite simple and economical. More importantly, it can be realized
under current experimental condition. Based on the above features, our protocol
may be useful in current and future quantum information processing.


title:
The effective protection protocol of single photon state from photon
  loss and decoherence

abstract:
  We design an effect protocol for protecting the single-photon entanglement
from photon loss and decoherence. The protocol only requires some auxiliary
single photons and the linear optical elements. By operating the protocol, the
photon loss can be effectively decreased and the less entangled single photon
state can be recovered to the maximally entangled state with some probability.
Moreover, the polarization information encoded in the single photon state can
be perfectly contained. The protocol can be realized under current experimental
condition. As the single photon entanglement is quite important in quantum
communication, this protocol may be useful in current and future quantum
information processing.


title:
Chiral symmetry breaking in three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics as
  fixed point annihilation

abstract:
  Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in three dimensional ($d=3$) quantum
electrodynamics is understood as annihilation of an infrared-stable fixed point
that describes the large-N conformal phase by another unstable fixed point at a
critical number of fermions $N=N_c$. We discuss the root of universality of
$N_c$ in this picture, together with some features of the phase boundary in the
$(d,N)$ plane. In particular, it is shown that as $d\rightarrow 4$,
$N_c\rightarrow 0$ with a constant slope, our best estimate of which suggests
that $N_c = 2.89$ in $d=3$.


title: Scanning SQUID susceptometers with sub-micron spatial resolution

abstract:
  Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) microscopy has excellent
magnetic field sensitivity, but suffers from modest spatial resolution when
compared with other scanning probes. This spatial resolution is determined by
both the size of the field sensitive area and the spacing between this area and
the sample surface. In this paper we describe scanning SQUID susceptometers
that achieve sub-micron spatial resolution while retaining a white noise floor
flux sensitivity of $\approx 2\mu\Phi_0/Hz^{1/2}$. This high spatial resolution
is accomplished by deep sub-micron feature sizes, well shielded pickup loops
fabricated using a planarized process, and a deep etch step that minimizes the
spacing between the sample surface and the SQUID pickup loop. We describe the
design, modeling, fabrication, and testing of these sensors. Although
sub-micron spatial resolution has been achieved previously in scanning SQUID
sensors, our sensors not only achieve high spatial resolution, but also have
integrated modulation coils for flux feedback, integrated field coils for
susceptibility measurements, and batch processing. They are therefore a
generally applicable tool for imaging sample magnetization, currents, and
susceptibilities with higher spatial resolution than previous susceptometers.


title:
A unified approach to mortality modelling using state-space framework:
  characterisation, identification, estimation and forecasting

abstract:
  This paper explores and develops alternative statistical representations and
estimation approaches for dynamic mortality models. The framework we adopt is
to reinterpret popular mortality models such as the Lee-Carter class of models
in a general state-space modelling methodology, which allows modelling,
estimation and forecasting of mortality under a unified framework. Furthermore,
we propose an alternative class of model identification constraints which is
more suited to statistical inference in filtering and parameter estimation
settings based on maximization of the marginalized likelihood or in Bayesian
inference. We then develop a novel class of Bayesian state-space models which
incorporate apriori beliefs about the mortality model characteristics as well
as for more flexible and appropriate assumptions relating to heteroscedasticity
that present in observed mortality data. We show that multiple period and
cohort effect can be cast under a state-space structure. To study long term
mortality dynamics, we introduce stochastic volatility to the period effect.
The estimation of the resulting stochastic volatility model of mortality is
performed using a recent class of Monte Carlo procedure specifically designed
for state and parameter estimation in Bayesian state-space models, known as the
class of particle Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. We illustrate the framework
we have developed using Danish male mortality data, and show that incorporating
heteroscedasticity and stochastic volatility markedly improves model fit
despite an increase of model complexity. Forecasting properties of the enhanced
models are examined with long term and short term calibration periods on the
reconstruction of life tables.


title:
Band Structure and Topological Properties of Graphene in a Superlattice
  Spin Exchange Field

abstract:
  We analyze the energy spectrum of graphene in the presence of spin-orbit
coupling and a unidirectionally periodic Zeeman field, focusing on the
stability and location of Dirac points it may support. It is found that the
Dirac points at the $K$ and $K'$ points are generically moved to other
locations in the Brillouin zone, but that they remain present when the Zeeman
field $\vec{\Delta}(x)$ integrates to zero within a unit cell. A large variety
of locations for the Dirac points is shown to be possible: when $\vec\Delta
\parallel \hat{z}$ they are shifted from their original locations along the
direction perpendicular to the superlattice axis, while realizations of
$\vec\Delta(x)$ that rotate periodically move the Dirac points to locations
that can reflect the orbit of the rotating electron spin as it moves through a
unit cell. When a uniform Zeeman field is applied in addition to a periodic
$\vec\Delta \parallel \hat{z}$ integrating to zero, the system can be brought
into a metallic, Dirac semimetal, or insulating state, depending on the
direction of the uniform field. The latter is shown to be an anomalous quantum
Hall insulator.


title: Drone Streaming with Wi-Fi Grid Aggregation for Virtual Tour

abstract:
  To provide a live, active and high-quality virtual touring streaming
experience, we propose an unmanned drone stereoscopic streaming paradigm using
a control and streaming infrastructure of a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi grid. Our system
allows users to actively control the streaming captured by a drone, receive and
watch the streaming using a head mount display (HMD); a Wi-Fi grid is deployed
across the remote scene with multi-channel support to enable high-bitrate
stream- ing broadcast from the drones. The system adopt a joint view adaptation
and drone control scheme to enable fast viewer movement including both head
rotation and touring. We implement the prototype on Dji M100 quadcopter and HTC
Vive in a demo scene.


title: Hybrid subconvexity bounds for twisted $L$-functions on $GL(3)$

abstract:
  Let $q$ be a large prime, and $\chi$ the quadratic character modulo $q$. Let
$\phi$ be a self-dual Hecke--Maass cusp form for $SL(3,\mathbb{Z})$, and $u_j$
a Hecke--Maass cusp form for $\Gamma_0(q)\subseteq SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ with
spectral parameter $t_j$. We prove the hybrid subconvexity bounds for the
twisted $L$-functions \[ L(1/2,\phi\times u_j\times\chi)\ll_{\phi,\varepsilon}
(qt_j)^{3/2-\theta+\varepsilon},\quad
L(1/2+it,\phi\times\chi)\ll_{\phi,\varepsilon} (qt)^{3/4-\theta/2+\varepsilon},
\] for any $\varepsilon>0$, where $\theta=1/23$ is admissible.


title:
Mean-field SDE driven by a fractional Brownian motion and related
  stochastic control problem

abstract:
  We study a class of mean-field stochastic differential equations driven by a
fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter $H\in(1/2,1)$ and a related
stochastic control problem. We derive a Pontryagin type maximum principle and
the associated adjoint mean-field backward stochastic differential equation
driven by a classical Brownian motion, and we prove that under certain
assumptions, which generalise the classical ones, the necessary condition for
the optimality of an admissible control is also sufficient.


title:
Theory on the mechanism of site-specific DNA-protein interactions in the
  presence of traps

abstract:
  The speed of site-specific binding of transcription factor (TFs) proteins
with genomic DNA seems to be strongly retarded by the randomly occurring
sequence traps. Traps are those DNA sequences sharing significant similarity
with the original specific binding sites. It is an intriguing question how the
naturally occurring TFs and their specific binding sites are designed to manage
the retarding effects of such randomly occurring traps. We develop a simple
random walk model on the site-specific binding of TFs with genomic DNA in the
presence of sequence traps. Our dynamical model predicts that (a) the retarding
effects of traps will be minimum when the traps are arranged around the
specific binding site such that there is a negative correlation between the
binding strength of TFs with traps and the distance of traps from the specific
binding site and (b) the retarding effects of sequence traps can be appeased by
the condensed conformational state of DNA. Our computational analysis results
on the distribution of sequence traps around the putative binding sites of
various TFs in mouse and human genome clearly agree well the theoretical
predictions. We propose that the distribution of traps can be used as an
additional metric to efficiently identify the specific binding sites of TFs on
genomic DNA.


title:
Relative species abundance of replicator dynamics with sparse
  interactions

abstract:
  A theory of relative species abundance on sparsely-connected networks is
presented by investigating the replicator dynamics with symmetric interactions.
Sparseness of a network involves difficulty in analyzing the fixed points of
the equation, and we avoid this problem by treating large self interaction $u$,
which allows us to construct a perturbative expansion. Based on this
perturbation, we find that the nature of the interactions is directly connected
to the abundance distribution, and some characteristic behaviors, such as
multiple peaks in the abundance distribution and all species coexistence at
moderate values of $u$, are discovered in a wide class of the distribution of
the interactions. The all species coexistence collapses at a critical value of
$u$, $u_c$, and this collapsing is regarded as a phase transition. To get more
quantitative information, we also construct a non-perturbative theory on random
graphs based on techniques of statistical mechanics. The result shows those
characteristic behaviors are sustained well even for not large $u$. For even
smaller values of $u$, extinct species start to appear and the abundance
distribution becomes rounded and closer to a standard functional form. Another
interesting finding is the non-monotonic behavior of diversity, which
quantifies the number of coexisting species, when changing the ratio of
mutualistic relations $\Delta$. These results are examined by numerical
simulations, and the multiple peaks in the abundance distribution are confirmed
to be robust against a certain level of modifications of the problem. The
numerical results also show that our theory is exact for the case without
extinct species, but becomes less and less precise as the proportion of extinct
species grows.


title:
Isometric Immersion of Complete Surfaces with Slowly Decaying Negative
  Gauss Curvature

abstract:
  The isometric immersion of two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds or surfaces
in the three-dimensional Euclidean space is a fundamental problem in
differential geometry. When the Gauss curvature is negative, the isometric
immersion problem is considered in this paper through the Gauss-Codazzi system
for the second fundamental forms. It is shown that if the Gauss curvature
satisfies an integrability condition, the surface has a global smooth isometric
immersion in the three-dimensional Euclidean space even if the Gauss curvature
decays very slowly at infinity. The new idea of the proof is based on the novel
observations on the decay properties of the Riemann invariants of the
Gauss-Codazzi system. The weighted Riemann invariants are introduced and a
comparison principle is applied with properly chosen control functions.


title: Stabilization of the cohomology of thickenings

abstract:
  For a local complete intersection subvariety $X=V({\mathcal I})$ in ${\mathbb
P}^n$ over a field of characteristic zero, we show that, in cohomological
degrees smaller than the codimension of the singular locus of $X$, the
cohomology of vector bundles on the formal completion of ${\mathbb P}^n$ along
$X$ can be effectively computed as the cohomology on any sufficiently high
thickening $X_t=V({\mathcal I^t})$; the main ingredient here is a positivity
result for the normal bundle of $X$. Furthermore, we show that the Kodaira
vanishing theorem holds for all thickenings $X_t$ in the same range of
cohomological degrees; this extends the known version of Kodaira vanishing on
$X$, and the main new ingredient is a version of the Kodaira-Akizuki-Nakano
vanishing theorem for $X$, formulated in terms of the cotangent complex.


title: A Multiway Relay Channel with Balanced Sources

abstract:
  We consider a joint source-channel coding problem on a finite-field multiway
relay channel, and we give closed-form lower and upper bounds on the optimal
source-channel rate. These bounds are shown to be tight for all discrete
memoryless sources in a certain class $\mathcal{P}^*$, and we demonstrate that
strict source-channel separation is optimal within this class. We show how to
test whether a given source belongs to $\mathcal{P}^*$, we give a
balanced-information regularity condition for $\mathcal{P}^*$, and we express
$\mathcal{P}^*$ in terms of conditional multiple-mutual informations. Finally,
we show that $\mathcal{P}^*$ is useful for a centralised storage problem.


title: Advanced geometrical constructs in a Pueblo ceremonial site, c 1200 CE

abstract:
  Summer 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the excavation by J.W. Fewkes of
the Sun Temple in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, an ancient complex
prominently located atop a mesa, constructed by the ancestral Pueblo peoples
approximately 800 years ago. While the D-shaped structure is generally
recognized by modern Pueblo peoples as a ceremonial complex, the exact uses of
the site are unknown, although the site has been shown to have key solar and
lunar alignments. In this study, we examined the potential that the site was
laid out using advanced knowledge of geometrical constructs. Using aerial
imagery in conjunction with ground measurements, we performed a survey of key
features of the site. We found apparent evidence that the ancestral Pueblo
peoples laid out the site using the Golden rectangle, Pythagorean 3:4:5
triangles, equilateral triangles, and 45 degree right triangles. The survey
also revealed that a single unit of measurement, L = 30.5+/-0.5 cm, or one
third of that, appeared to be associated with many key features of the site.
Further study is needed to determine if this unit of measurement is common to
other ancestral Pueblo sites, and also if geometric constructs are apparent at
other sites. These findings represent the first potential quantitative evidence
of knowledge of advanced geometrical constructs in a prehistoric North American
society, which is particularly remarkable given that the ancestral Pueblo
peoples had no written language or number system.