title:
Privacy-preserving Average Consensus: Privacy Analysis and Optimal
  Algorithm Design

abstract:
  Privacy-preserving average consensus aims to guarantee the privacy of initial
states and asymptotic consensus on the exact average of the initial value. In
existing work, it is achieved by adding and subtracting variance decaying and
zero-sum random noises to the consensus process. However, there is lack of
theoretical analysis to quantify the degree of the privacy protection. In this
paper, we introduce the maximum disclosure probability that the other nodes can
infer one node's initial state within a given small interval to quantify the
privacy. We develop a novel privacy definition, named $(\epsilon,
\delta)$-data-privacy, to depict the relationship between maximum disclosure
probability and estimation accuracy. Then, we prove that the general
privacy-preserving average consensus (GPAC) provides $(\epsilon,
\delta)$-data-privacy, and provide the closed-form expression of the
relationship between $\epsilon$ and $\delta$. Meanwhile, it is shown that the
added noise with uniform distribution is optimal in terms of achieving the
highest $(\epsilon, \delta)$-data-privacy. We also prove that when all
information used in the consensus process is available, the privacy will be
compromised. Finally, an optimal privacy-preserving average consensus (OPAC)
algorithm is proposed to achieve the highest $(\epsilon, \delta)$-data-privacy
and avoid the privacy compromission. Simulations are conducted to verify the
results.


title: Generalized Kalman Smoothing: Modeling and Algorithms

abstract:
  State-space smoothing has found many applications in science and engineering.
Under linear and Gaussian assumptions, smoothed estimates can be obtained using
efficient recursions, for example Rauch-Tung-Striebel and Mayne-Fraser
algorithms. Such schemes are equivalent to linear algebraic techniques that
minimize a convex quadratic objective function with structure induced by the
dynamic model.
  These classical formulations fall short in many important circumstances. For
instance, smoothers obtained using quadratic penalties can fail when outliers
are present in the data, and cannot track impulsive inputs and abrupt state
changes. Motivated by these shortcomings, generalized Kalman smoothing
formulations have been proposed in the last few years, replacing quadratic
models with more suitable, often nonsmooth, convex functions. In contrast to
classical models, these general estimators require use of iterated algorithms,
and these have received increased attention from control, signal processing,
machine learning, and optimization communities.
  In this survey we show that the optimization viewpoint provides the control
and signal processing community great freedom in the development of novel
modeling and inference frameworks for dynamical systems. We discuss general
statistical models for dynamic systems, making full use of nonsmooth convex
penalties and constraints, and providing links to important models in signal
processing and machine learning. We also survey optimization techniques for
these formulations, paying close attention to dynamic problem structure.
Modeling concepts and algorithms are illustrated with numerical examples.


title: Automorphic cohomology, motivic cohomology, and the adjoint $L$-function

abstract:
  We propose a relationship between the cohomology of arithmetic groups, and
the motivic cohomology of certain (Langlands-)attached motives. The motivic
cohomology group in question is that related, by Beilinson's conjecture, to the
adjoint $L$-function at $s=1$. We present evidence for the conjecture using the
theory of periods of automorphic forms, and using analytic torsion.


title: Robust Estimation of Multiple Inlier Structures

abstract:
  The robust estimator presented in this paper processes each structure
independently. The scales of the structures are estimated adaptively and no
threshold is involved in spite of different objective functions. The user has
to specify only the number of elemental subsets for random sampling. After
classifying all the input data, the segmented structures are sorted by their
strengths and the strongest inlier structures come out at the top. Like any
robust estimators, this algorithm also has limitations which are described in
detail. Several synthetic and real examples are presented to illustrate every
aspect of the algorithm.


title: On top dimensional Lyubeznik numbers in mixed characteristic

abstract:
  We prove that the top mixed characteristic Lyubeznik number of a ring $S$
that is a quotient of a complete unramified regular local ring of mixed
characteristc with algebraically closed residue field is $1$ provided that
depth $S \geq 2$ and dim $S \geq 3$ using a second vanishing theorem in mixed
characteristic proved in arXiv:1609.05846


title: Optimal Circuit-Level Decoding for Surface Codes

abstract:
  Surface codes exploit topological protection to increase error resilience in
quantum computing devices and can in principle be implemented in existing
hardware. They are one of the most promising candidates for active error
correction, not least due to a polynomial-time decoding algorithm which admits
one of the highest predicted error thresholds. We consider the dependence of
this threshold on underlying assumptions including different noise models, and
analyze the performance of a minimum weight perfect matching (MWPM) decoding
compared to a mathematically optimal maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. Our ML
algorithm tracks the success probabilities for all possible corrections over
time and accounts for individual gate failure probabilities and error
propagation due to the syndrome measurement circuit. We present the very first
evidence for the true error threshold of an optimal circuit level decoder,
allowing us to draw conclusions about what kind of improvements are possible
over standard MWPM.


title:
A Consumer BCI for Automated Music Evaluation Within a Popular On-Demand
  Music Streaming Service - Taking Listener's Brainwaves to Extremes

abstract:
  We investigated the possibility of using a machine-learning scheme in
conjunction with commercial wearable EEG-devices for translating listener's
subjective experience of music into scores that can be used for the automated
annotation of music in popular on-demand streaming services. Based on the
established -neuroscientifically sound- concepts of brainwave frequency bands,
activation asymmetry index and cross-frequency-coupling (CFC), we introduce a
Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system that automatically assigns a rating score
to the listened song. Our research operated in two distinct stages: i) a
generic feature engineering stage, in which features from signal-analytics were
ranked and selected based on their ability to associate music induced
perturbations in brainwaves with listener's appraisal of music. ii) a
personalization stage, during which the efficiency of ex- treme learning
machines (ELMs) is exploited so as to translate the derived pat- terns into a
listener's score. Encouraging experimental results, from a pragmatic use of the
system, are presented.


title: A Theory of Interactive Debugging of Knowledge Bases in Monotonic Logics

abstract:
  A broad variety of knowledge-based applications such as recommender, expert,
planning or configuration systems usually operate on the basis of knowledge
represented by means of some logical language. Such a logical knowledge base
(KB) enables intelligent behavior of such systems by allowing them to
automatically reason, answer queries of interest or solve complex real-world
problems. Nowadays, where information acquisition comes at low costs and often
happens automatically, the applied KBs are continuously growing in terms of
size, information content and complexity. These developments foster the
emergence of errors in these KBs and thus pose a significant challenge on all
people and tools involved in KB evolution, maintenance and application.
  If some minimal quality criteria such as logical consistency are not met by
some KB, it becomes useless for knowledge-based applications. To guarantee the
compliance of KBs with given requirements, (non-interactive) KB debuggers have
been proposed. These however often cannot localize all potential faults,
suggest too large or incorrect modifications of the faulty KB or suffer from
poor scalability due to the inherent complexity of the KB debugging problem.
  As a remedy to these issues, based on a well-founded theoretical basis this
work proposes complete, sound and optimal methods for the interactive debugging
of KBs that suggest the one (minimally invasive) error correction of the faulty
KB that yields a repaired KB with exactly the intended semantics. Users, e.g.
domain experts, are involved in the debugging process by answering
automatically generated queries whether some given statements must or must not
hold in the domain that should be modeled by the problematic KB at hand.


title: Tidally Induced Pulsations in Kepler Eclipsing Binary KIC 3230227

abstract:
  KIC 3230227 is a short period ($P\approx 7.0$ days) eclipsing binary with a
very eccentric orbit ($e=0.6$). From combined analysis of radial velocities and
{\it Kepler} light curves, this system is found to be composed of two A-type
stars, with masses of $M_1=1.84\pm 0.18M_{\odot}$, $M_2=1.73\pm 0.17M_{\odot}$
and radii of $R_1=2.01\pm 0.09R_{\odot}$, $R_2=1.68\pm 0.08 R_{\odot}$ for the
primary and secondary, respectively. In addition to an eclipse, the binary
light curve shows a brightening and dimming near periastron, making this a
somewhat rare eclipsing heartbeat star system. After removing the binary light
curve model, more than ten pulsational frequencies are present in the Fourier
spectrum of the residuals, and most of them are integer multiples of the
orbital frequency. These pulsations are tidally driven, and both the amplitudes
and phases are in agreement with predictions from linear tidal theory for $l=2,
m=-2$ prograde modes.


title: Geometry-Based Next Frame Prediction from Monocular Video

abstract:
  We consider the problem of next frame prediction from video input. A
recurrent convolutional neural network is trained to predict depth from
monocular video input, which, along with the current video image and the camera
trajectory, can then be used to compute the next frame. Unlike prior next-frame
prediction approaches, we take advantage of the scene geometry and use the
predicted depth for generating the next frame prediction. Our approach can
produce rich next frame predictions which include depth information attached to
each pixel. Another novel aspect of our approach is that it predicts depth from
a sequence of images (e.g. in a video), rather than from a single still image.
We evaluate the proposed approach on the KITTI dataset, a standard dataset for
benchmarking tasks relevant to autonomous driving. The proposed method produces
results which are visually and numerically superior to existing methods that
directly predict the next frame. We show that the accuracy of depth prediction
improves as more prior frames are considered.


title: Linear-time string indexing and analysis in small space

abstract:
  The field of succinct data structures has flourished over the last 16 years.
Starting from the compressed suffix array (CSA) by Grossi and Vitter (STOC
2000) and the FM-index by Ferragina and Manzini (FOCS 2000), a number of
generalizations and applications of string indexes based on the Burrows-Wheeler
transform (BWT) have been developed, all taking an amount of space that is
close to the input size in bits. In many large-scale applications, the
construction of the index and its usage need to be considered as one unit of
computation. Efficient string indexing and analysis in small space lies also at
the core of a number of primitives in the data-intensive field of
high-throughput DNA sequencing. We report the following advances in string
indexing and analysis. We show that the BWT of a string $T\in
\{1,\ldots,\sigma\}^n$ can be built in deterministic $O(n)$ time using just
$O(n\log{\sigma})$ bits of space, where $\sigma \leq n$. Within the same time
and space budget, we can build an index based on the BWT that allows one to
enumerate all the internal nodes of the suffix tree of $T$. Many fundamental
string analysis problems can be mapped to such enumeration, and can thus be
solved in deterministic $O(n)$ time and in $O(n\log{\sigma})$ bits of space
from the input string. We also show how to build many of the existing indexes
based on the BWT, such as the CSA, the compressed suffix tree (CST), and the
bidirectional BWT index, in randomized $O(n)$ time and in $O(n\log{\sigma})$
bits of space. The previously fastest construction algorithms for BWT, CSA and
CST, which used $O(n\log{\sigma})$ bits of space, took $O(n\log{\log{\sigma}})$
time for the first two structures, and $O(n\log^{\epsilon}n)$ time for the
third, where $\epsilon$ is any positive constant. Contrary to the state of the
art, our bidirectional BWT index supports every operation in constant time per
element in its output.


title: Global Caching for the Alternation-free $\mu$-Calculus

abstract:
  We present a sound, complete, and optimal single-pass tableau algorithm for
the alternation-free $\mu$-calculus. The algorithm supports global caching with
intermediate propagation and runs in time $2^{\mathcal{O}(n)}$. In
game-theoretic terms, our algorithm integrates the steps for constructing and
solving the B\"uchi game arising from the input tableau into a single
procedure; this is done on-the-fly, i.e. may terminate before the game has been
fully constructed. This suggests a slogan to the effect that global caching =
game solving on-the-fly. A prototypical implementation shows promising initial
results.


title:
Recognizing Implicit Discourse Relations via Repeated Reading: Neural
  Networks with Multi-Level Attention

abstract:
  Recognizing implicit discourse relations is a challenging but important task
in the field of Natural Language Processing. For such a complex text processing
task, different from previous studies, we argue that it is necessary to
repeatedly read the arguments and dynamically exploit the efficient features
useful for recognizing discourse relations. To mimic the repeated reading
strategy, we propose the neural networks with multi-level attention (NNMA),
combining the attention mechanism and external memories to gradually fix the
attention on some specific words helpful to judging the discourse relations.
Experiments on the PDTB dataset show that our proposed method achieves the
state-of-art results. The visualization of the attention weights also
illustrates the progress that our model observes the arguments on each level
and progressively locates the important words.


title: Consensus-based Privacy-preserving Data Aggregation

abstract:
  Privacy-preserving data aggregation in ad hoc networks is a challenging
problem, considering the distributed communication and control requirement,
dynamic network topology, unreliable communication links, etc. Different from
the widely used cryptographic approaches, in this paper, we address this
challenging problem by exploiting the distributed consensus technique. We first
propose a secure consensus-based data aggregation (SCDA) algorithm that
guarantees an accurate sum aggregation while preserving the privacy of
sensitive data. Then, we prove that the proposed algorithm converges accurately
and is $(\epsilon, \sigma)$-data-privacy, and the mathematical relationship
between $\epsilon$ and $\sigma$ is provided. Extensive simulations have shown
that the proposed algorithm has high accuracy and low complexity, and they are
robust against network dynamics.


title:
Finding Model-Checkable Needles in Large Source Code Haystacks: Modular
  Bug-Finding via Static Analysis and Dynamic Invariant Discovery

abstract:
  In this paper, we present a novel marriage of static and dynamic analysis.
Given a large code base with many functions and a mature test suite, we propose
using static analysis to find functions 1) with assertions or other evident
correctness properties (e.g., array bounds requirements or pointer access) and
2) with simple enough control flow and data use to be amenable to
predicate-abstraction based or bounded model checking without human
intervention. Because most such functions in realistic software systems in fact
rely on many input preconditions not specified by the language's type system
(or annotated in any way), we propose using dynamically discovered invariants
based on a program's test suite to characterize likely preconditions, in order
to reduce the problem of false positives. While providing little in the way of
verification, this approach may provide an additional quick and highly scalable
bug-finding method for programs that are usually considered "too large to model
check." We present a simple example showing that the technique can be useful
for a more typically "model-checkable" code base, even in the presence of a
poorly designed test suite and bad invariants.


title:
Omnidirectional Gravitational Wave Detector with a Laser-Interferometric
  Gravitational Compass

abstract:
  Based on the Szekeres-Pirani gravitational compass we suggest the addition of
a fourth, non-coplanar mass/mirror to the presently existing laser based
gravitational wave observatories, enabling them to operate omnidirectionally,
to filter out ambiguous interpretations and to point out the direction of the
gravitational wave source.


title: Yarkovsky V-shape identification of asteroid families

abstract:
  There are only a few known main belt (MB) asteroid families with ages greater
than 2 Gyr (Bro\v{z} et al. 2013, Spoto et al. 2015). Estimates based on the
family producing collision rate suggest that the lack of >2 Gyr-old families
may be due to a selection bias in current techniques used to identify families.
Family fragments disperse in their orbital elements, semi-major axis, $a$,
eccentricity, $e$, and inclination, $i$, due to secular resonances, close
encounters with massive asteroids and the non-gravitational Yarkovsky force.
This causes the family fragments to be indistinguishable from the background of
the main belt making them more difficult to identify with the hierarchical
clustering method (HCM) with increasing family age. The discovery of the
Eulalia and new Polana families in the inner belt relied on new techniques
because Yarkovsky spreading made them too disperse to be identified using the
classical HCM. The technique used to discover the new Polana and Eulalia
families is modified to identify asteroid families by searching for
correlations between $a$ and asteroid diameter, $D$, or absolute magnitude,
$H$. A group of asteroids is identified as a collisional family if its boundary
in the $a$ vs. 1/$D$ or $a$ vs. $H$ planes has a characteristic V-shape which
is due to the size dependent Yarkovsky spreading. The V-shape boundary is
identified with two separate techniques. The first identifies a border by
measuring the drop between the number of objects inside and outside of the
border. The second identifies the V-shape border by measuring the number
density of objects in $a$ vs. 1/$D$,$H$ space. The V-shape techniques are
demonstrated on known families Erigone, Vesta, Koronis, and families difficult
to identify by HCM such as Flora, Baptistina, new Polana, Eulalia and Karin.
Application of the technique in a search for >2 Gyr-old families throughout the
MB is discussed.


title: Multiclass Classification Calibration Functions

abstract:
  In this paper we refine the process of computing calibration functions for a
number of multiclass classification surrogate losses. Calibration functions are
a powerful tool for easily converting bounds for the surrogate risk (which can
be computed through well-known methods) into bounds for the true risk, the
probability of making a mistake. They are particularly suitable in
non-parametric settings, where the approximation error can be controlled, and
provide tighter bounds than the common technique of upper-bounding the 0-1 loss
by the surrogate loss.
  The abstract nature of the more sophisticated existing calibration function
results requires calibration functions to be explicitly derived on a
case-by-case basis, requiring repeated efforts whenever bounds for a new
surrogate loss are required. We devise a streamlined analysis that simplifies
the process of deriving calibration functions for a large number of surrogate
losses that have been proposed in the literature. The effort of deriving
calibration functions is then surmised in verifying, for a chosen surrogate
loss, a small number of conditions that we introduce.
  As case studies, we recover existing calibration functions for the well-known
loss of Lee et al. (2004), and also provide novel calibration functions for
well-known losses, including the one-versus-all loss and the logistic
regression loss, plus a number of other losses that have been shown to be
classification-calibrated in the past, but for which no calibration function
had been derived.


title:
Cat codes with optimal decoherence suppression for a lossy bosonic
  channel

abstract:
  We investigate cat codes that can correct multiple excitation losses and
identify two types of logical errors: bit-flip errors due to excessive
excitation loss and dephasing errors due to quantum back-action from the
environment. We show that selected choices of logical subspace and coherent
amplitude can efficiently reduce dephasing errors. The trade-off between the
two major errors enables optimized performance of cat codes in terms of
minimized decoherence. With high coupling efficiency, we show that one-way
quantum repeaters with cat codes feature drastically boosted secure
communication rate per mode compared with conventional encoding schemes, and
thus showcase the promising potential of quantum information processing with
continuous variable quantum codes.


title: $\gamma$ Doradus Pulsations in the Eclipsing Binary Star KIC 6048106

abstract:
  We present the ${\it Kepler}$ photometry of KIC 6048106 exhibiting O'Connell
effect and multiperiodic pulsations. Including a starspot on either of the
components, light-curve synthesis indicates that this system is a semi-detached
Algol with a mass ratio of 0.211, an orbital inclination of 73.9 deg, and a
large temperature difference of 2,534 K. To examine in detail both spot
variations and pulsations, we separately analyzed the {\it Kepler} time-series
data at the interval of an orbital period by an iterative way. The results
reveal that the variable asymmetries of the light maxima can be interpreted as
the changes of a magnetic cool spot on the secondary component with time.
Multiple frequency analyses were performed in the outside-eclipse light
residuals after removal of the binarity effects from the observed {\it Kepler}
data. We detected 30 frequencies with signal to noise amplitude ratios larger
than 4.0, of which six ($f_2$--$f_6$ and $f_{10}$) can be identified as
high-order (17 $\le n \le$ 25) low-degree ($\ell$ = 2) gravity-mode pulsations
that were stable during the observing run of 200 d. In contrast, the other
frequencies may be harmonic and combination terms. For the six frequencies, the
pulsation periods and pulsation constants are in the ranges of 0.352$-$0.506 d
and 0.232$-$0.333 d, respectively. These values and the position on the HR
diagram demonstrate that the primary star is a $\gamma$ Dor variable. The
evolutionary status and the pulsation nature of KIC 6048106 are discussed.


title:
Enhancing stellar spectroscopy with extreme adaptive optics and
  photonics

abstract:
  Extreme adaptive optics systems are now in operation across the globe. These
systems, capable of high order wavefront correction, deliver Strehl ratios of
90% in the near-infrared. Originally intended for the direct imaging of
exoplanets, these systems are often equipped with advanced coronagraphs that
suppress the on-axis-star, interferometers to calibrate wavefront errors, and
low order wavefront sensors to stabilize any tip/tilt residuals to a degree
never seen before. Such systems are well positioned to facilitate the detailed
spectroscopic characterization of faint substellar companions at small angular
separations from the host star. Additionally, the increased light concentration
of the point-spread function and the unprecedented stability create
opportunities in other fields of astronomy as well, including spectroscopy.
With such Strehl ratios, efficient injection into single-mode fibers or
photonic lanterns becomes possible. With diffraction-limited components feeding
the instrument, calibrating a spectrograph's line profile becomes considerably
easier, as modal noise or imperfect scrambling of the fiber output are no
longer an issue. It also opens up the possibility of exploiting photonic
technologies for their advanced functionalities, inherent replicability, and
small, lightweight footprint to design and build future instrumentation. In
this work, we outline how extreme adaptive optics systems will enable advanced
photonic and diffraction-limited technologies to be exploited in spectrograph
design and the impact it will have on spectroscopy. We illustrate that the
precision of an instrument based on these technologies, would be limited by the
spectral content and stellar noise on cool stars and capable of achieving a
radial velocity precision of several m/s; the level required for detecting an
exo-Earth in the HZ of a nearby M-dwarf.


title: Quantum Locality in Game Strategy

abstract:
  Game theory is a well established branch of mathematics whose formalism has a
vast range of applications from the social sciences, biology, to economics.
Motivated by quantum information science, there has been a leap in the
formulation of novel game strategies that lead to new (quantum Nash)
equilibrium points whereby players in some classical games are always
outperformed if sharing and processing joint information ruled by the laws of
quantum physics is allowed. We show that, for a bipartite non zero-sum game,
input local quantum correlations, and separable states in particular, suffice
to achieve an advantage over any strategy that uses classical resources, thus
dispensing with quantum nonlocality, entanglement, or even discord between the
players' input states. This highlights the remarkable key role played by pure
quantum coherence at powering some protocols. Finally, we propose an experiment
that uses separable states and basic photon interferometry to demonstrate the
locally-correlated quantum advantage.


title:
Learning HMMs with Nonparametric Emissions via Spectral Decompositions
  of Continuous Matrices

abstract:
  Recently, there has been a surge of interest in using spectral methods for
estimating latent variable models. However, it is usually assumed that the
distribution of the observations conditioned on the latent variables is either
discrete or belongs to a parametric family. In this paper, we study the
estimation of an $m$-state hidden Markov model (HMM) with only smoothness
assumptions, such as H\"olderian conditions, on the emission densities. By
leveraging some recent advances in continuous linear algebra and numerical
analysis, we develop a computationally efficient spectral algorithm for
learning nonparametric HMMs. Our technique is based on computing an SVD on
nonparametric estimates of density functions by viewing them as
\emph{continuous matrices}. We derive sample complexity bounds via
concentration results for nonparametric density estimation and novel
perturbation theory results for continuous matrices. We implement our method
using Chebyshev polynomial approximations. Our method is competitive with other
baselines on synthetic and real problems and is also very computationally
efficient.


title:
A projective variety with discrete, non-finitely generated automorphism
  group

abstract:
  We construct a projective variety with discrete, non-finitely generated
automorphism group. As an application, we show that there exists a complex
projective variety with infinitely many non-isomorphic real forms.


title: Ultrafast Magnetization Reversal by Picosecond Electrical Pulses

abstract:
  The field of spintronics involves the study of both spin and charge transport
in solid state devices with a view toward increasing their functionality and
efficiency. Alternatively, the field of ultrafast magnetism focuses on the use
of femtosecond laser pulses to excite electrons in magnetic materials, which
allows the magnetic order to be dramatically changed on unprecedented
sub-picosecond time-scales. Here, we unite these two distinct research
activities by using picosecond electrical pulses to rapidly excite electrons in
a magnetic metal. We are able to deterministically and repetitively reverse the
magnetization of a GdFeCo film with sub-10 picosecond electrical pulses. The
magnetization reverses in ~10ps, which is more than an order of magnitude
faster than any other electrically controlled magnetic switching. We attribute
the deterministic switching of the magnetization to ultrafast excitation of the
electrons, a fundamentally different mechanism from other current driven
switching mechanisms such as spin-transfer-torque (STT) or spin-orbit-torque
(SOT). The energy density required for switching is measured and the process is
found to be efficient, projecting to only 4 fJ needed to switch a (20 nm)^3
cell, which is comparable to other state-of-the-art STT-MRAM memory devices.
This discovery will launch a new field of research into picosecond spintronic
phenomena and devices.


title:
Measurement of $CP$ asymmetry in the $D^{0} \to K^0_S K^0_S$ decay at
  Belle

abstract:
  We report a measurement of the time-integrated $CP$ asymmetry in the neutral
charm meson decay $D^0 \to K^0_S K^0_S$ using 921~fb$^{-1}$ data collected at
the $\Upsilon(4S)$ and $\Upsilon(5S)$ resonances with the Belle detector at the
KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^+e^-$ collider. The observed asymmetry is $$
A_{CP}(D^0 \to K^0_S K^0_S) = (-0.02 \pm 1.53 \pm 0.17) \%, $$ where the first
uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. This latter uncertainty
is dominated by the error of the normalisation channel. The result is
consistent with Standard Model expectations and improves the uncertainty with
respect to previous measurement of this quantity by more than a factor of
three.


title:
Existence and nonexistence of solutions for the heat equation with a
  superlinear source term

abstract:
  Classification theory on the existence and non-existence of local in time
solutions for initial value problems of nonlinear heat equations are
investigated. Without assuming a concrete growth rate on a nonlinear term, we
reveal the threshold integrability of initial data which classify existence and
nonexistence of solutions via a quasi-scaling and its invariant integral.
Typical nonlinear terms, for instance polynomial type, exponential type and its
sum, product and composition, can be treated as applications.


title:
Analyzing Dependent Placements of Small Cells in a Two-Layer
  Heterogeneous Network with a Rate Coverage Constraint

abstract:
  We consider the downlink of a two-layer heterogeneous network, comprising
macro cells (MCs) and small cells (SCs). The existing literature generally
assumes independent placements of the access points (APs) in different layers;
in contrast, we analyze a dependent placement where SC APs are placed at
locations with poor service from the MC layer. Our goal is to obtain an
estimate of the number of SCs required to maintain a target outage rate. Such
an analysis is trivial if the MCs are located according to a Poisson point
process (PPP), which provides a lower bound on performance. Here, we consider
MCs placed on a hexagonal grid, which complements the PPP model by providing an
upper bound on performance. We first provide accurate bounds for the average
interference within a MC when SCs are not used. Then, by obtaining the outage
areas, we estimate the number of SCs required within an MC to overcome outage.
If resource allocation amongst SCs is not used, we show that the problem of
outage is not solved completely, and the residual outage area depends on
whether co-channel or orthogonal SCs are used. Simulations show that a much
smaller residual outage area is obtained with orthogonal SCs.


title: On the ideal generated by all squarefree monomials of a given degree

abstract:
  An explicit construction is given of a minimal free resolution of the ideal
generated by all squarefree monomials of a given degree. The construction
relies upon and exhibits the natural action of the symmetric group on the
syzygy modules. The resolution is obtained over an arbitrary coefficient ring;
in particular, it is characteristic free. Two applications are given: an
equivariant resolution of De Concini-Procesi rings indexed by hook partitions,
and a resolution of FI-modules.


title: Universal self-field critical current for thin-film superconductors

abstract:
  For any practical superconductor the magnitude of the critical current
density, $J_\textrm{c}$, is crucially important. It sets the upper limit for
current in the conductor. Usually $J_\textrm{c}$ falls rapidly with increasing
external magnetic field but even in zero external field the current flowing in
the conductor generates a self-field which limits $J_\textrm{c}$. Here we show
for thin films of thickness less than the London penetration depth, $\lambda$,
this limiting $J_\textrm{c}$ adopts a universal value for all superconductors -
metals, oxides, cuprates, pnictides, borocarbides and heavy Fermions. For type
I superconductors, it is $H_{\textrm{c}}/\lambda$ where $H_\textrm{c}$ is the
thermodynamic critical field. But surprisingly for type II superconductors we
find the self-field $J_\textrm{c}$ is $H_{\textrm{c}1}/\lambda$ where
$H_{\textrm{c}1}$ is the lower critical field. $J_\textrm{c}$ is thus
fundamentally determined and this provides a simple means to extract absolute
values of $\lambda(T)$ and, from its temperature dependence, the symmetry and
magnitude of the superconducting gap.


title: Accretion of Supersonic Winds on Boson Stars

abstract:
  We present the evolution of a supersonic wind interacting with a Boson Star
(BS) and compare the resulting wind density profile with that of the shock cone
formed when the wind is accreted by a non-rotating Black Hole (BH) of the same
mass. The physical differences between these accretors are that a BS, unlike a
BH has no horizon, it does not have a mechanical surface either and thus the
wind is expected to trespass the BS. Despite these conditions, on the BS
space-time the gas achieves a stationary flux with the gas accumulating in a
high density elongated structure comparable to the shock cone formed behind a
BH. The highest density resides in the center of the BS whereas in the case of
the BH it is found on the downstream part of the BH near the event horizon. The
maximum density of the gas is smaller in the BS than in the BH case. Our
results indicate that the highest density of the wind is more similar on the BS
to that on the BH when the BS has high self-interaction, when it is more
compact and when the wind velocity is higher. We expect this and similar
analyses help to know whether BSs can still be Black Hole mimickers or can be
ruled out.


title: Stochastic dynamics and the predictability of big hits in online videos

abstract:
  The competition for the attention of users is a central element of the
Internet. Crucial issues are the origin and predictability of big hits, the few
items that capture a big portion of the total attention. We address these
issues analyzing 10 million time series of videos' views from YouTube. We find
that the average gain of views is linearly proportional to the number of views
a video already has, in agreement with usual rich-get-richer mechanisms and
Gibrat's law, but this fails to explain the prevalence of big hits. The reason
is that the fluctuations around the average views are themselves heavy tailed.
Based on these empirical observations, we propose a stochastic differential
equation with L\'evy noise as a model of the dynamics of videos. We show how
this model is substantially better in estimating the probability of an ordinary
item becoming a big hit, which is considerably underestimated in the
traditional proportional-growth models.


title: Efficient silicon metasurfaces for visible light

abstract:
  Dielectric metasurfaces require high refractive index contrast materials for
optimum performance. This requirement imposes a severe restraint; devices have
either been demonstrated at wavelengths of 700nm and above using high-index
semiconductors such as silicon, or they use lower index dielectric materials
such as TiO$_{2}$ or Si$_{3}$N$_{4}$ and operate in the visible wavelength
regime. Here, we show that the high refractive index of silicon can be
exploited at wavelengths as short as 532 nm by demonstrating a silicon
metasurface with a transmission efficiency of 47% at this wavelength. The
metasurface consists of a graded array of silicon posts arranged in a square
lattice on a quartz substrate. We show full 2{\pi} phase control and we
experimentally demonstrate polarization-independent beam deflection at 532nm
wavelength. The crystalline silicon is placed on a quartz substrate by a
bespoke layer transfer technique and we note that an efficiency >70% may be
achieved for a further optimized structure in the same material. Our results
open a new way for realizing efficient metasurfaces based on silicon in the
visible wavelength regime.


title: Data-driven discovery of partial differential equations

abstract:
  We propose a sparse regression method capable of discovering the governing
partial differential equation(s) of a given system by time series measurements
in the spatial domain. The regression framework relies on sparsity promoting
techniques to select the nonlinear and partial derivative terms terms of the
governing equations that most accurately represent the data, bypassing a
combinatorially large search through all possible candidate models. The method
balances model complexity and regression accuracy by selecting a parsimonious
model via Pareto analysis. Time series measurements can be made in an Eulerian
framework where the sensors are fixed spatially, or in a Lagrangian framework
where the sensors move with the dynamics. The method is computationally
efficient, robust, and demonstrated to work on a variety of canonical problems
of mathematical physics including Navier-Stokes, the quantum harmonic
oscillator, and the diffusion equation. Moreover, the method is capable of
disambiguating between potentially non-unique dynamical terms by using multiple
time series taken with different initial data. Thus for a traveling wave, the
method can distinguish between a linear wave equation or the Korteweg-deVries
equation, for instance. The method provides a promising new technique for
discovering governing equations and physical laws in parametrized
spatio-temporal systems where first-principles derivations are intractable.


title:
Exact Sampling of the Infinite Horizon Maximum of a Random Walk Over a
  Non-linear Boundary

abstract:
  We present the first algorithm that samples
$\max_{n\geq0}\{S_{n}-n^{\alpha}\},$ where $S_n$ is a mean zero random walk,
and $n^{\alpha}$ with $\alpha\in(1/2,1)$ defines a nonliner boundary. We show
that our algorithm has finite expected running time. We also apply the
algorithm to construct the first exact simulation method for the steady-state
departure process of a $GI/GI/\infty$ queue where the service time distribution
has infinite mean.


title:
Exact rule-based stochastic simulations for systems with unlimited
  number of molecular species

abstract:
  We introduce expandable partial propensity direct method (EPDM) - a new exact
stochastic simulation algorithm suitable for systems involving many interacting
molecular species. The algorithm is especially efficient for sparsely populated
systems, where the number of species that may potentially be generated is much
greater than the number of species actually present in the system at any given
time. The number of operations per reaction scales linearly with the number of
species, but only those which have one or more molecules. To achieve this kind
of performance we are employing a data structure which allows to add and remove
species and their interactions on the fly. When a new specie is added, its
interactions with every other specie are generated dynamically by a set of
user-defined rules. By removing the records involving the species with zero
molecules, we keep the number of species as low as possible. This enables
simulations of systems for which listing all species is not practical. The
algorithm is based on partial propensities direct method (PDM) by Ramaswamy et
al. for sampling trajectories of the chemical master equation.


title:
KU-ISPL Language Recognition System for NIST 2015 i-Vector Machine
  Learning Challenge

abstract:
  In language recognition, the task of rejecting/differentiating closely spaced
versus acoustically far spaced languages remains a major challenge. For
confusable closely spaced languages, the system needs longer input test
duration material to obtain sufficient information to distinguish between
languages. Alternatively, if languages are distinct and not
acoustically/linguistically similar to others, duration is not a sufficient
remedy. The solution proposed here is to explore duration distribution analysis
for near/far languages based on the Language Recognition i-Vector Machine
Learning Challenge 2015 (LRiMLC15) database. Using this knowledge, we propose a
likelihood ratio based fusion approach that leveraged both score and duration
information. The experimental results show that the use of duration and score
fusion improves language recognition performance by 5% relative in LRiMLC15
cost.


title: A Logic of Knowing Why

abstract:
  When we say "I know why he was late", we know not only the fact that he was
late, but also an explanation of this fact. We propose a logical framework of
"knowing why" inspired by the existing formal studies on why-questions,
scientific explanation, and justification logic. We introduce the Ky_i operator
into the language of epistemic logic to express "agent i knows why phi" and
propose a Kripke-style semantics of such expressions in terms of knowing an
explanation of phi. We obtain two sound and complete axiomatizations w.r.t. two
different model classes depending on different assumptions about introspection.


title: New views of the distant stellar halo

abstract:
  Currently only a small number of Milky Way (MW) stars are known to exist
beyond 100 kpc from the Galactic center. Though the distribution of these stars
in the outer halo is believed to be sparse, they can provide evidence of more
recent accretion events than in the inner halo and help map out the MW's dark
matter halo to its virial radius. We have re-examined the outermost regions of
11 existing stellar halo models with two synthetic surveys: one mimicking
present-day searches for distant M giants and another mimicking RR Lyrae (RRLe)
projections for LSST. Our models suggest that color and proper motion cuts
currently used to select M giant candidates for follow-up successfully remove
nearly all halo dwarf self-contamination and are useful for focusing
observations on distant M giants, of which there are thousands to tens of
thousands beyond 100 kpc in our models. We likewise expect that LSST will
identify comparable numbers of RRLe at these distances. We demonstrate that
several observable properties of both tracers, such as proximity of neighboring
stars, proper motions, and distances (for RRLe) could help us separate
different accreted structures from one another. We also discuss prospects for
using ratios of M giants to RRLe as a proxy for accretion time, which in the
future could provide new constraints on the recent accretion history of our
Galaxy.


title: Majorana modes in solid state systems and its dynamics

abstract:
  We review the properties of Majorana fermions in particle physics and point
out that Majorana modes in solid state systems are significantly different. The
key reason is the concept of anti-particle in solid state systems is different
from its counterpart in particle physics. We define Majorana modes as the
eigenstates of Majorana operators and find that they can exist both at edges
and in the bulk. According to our definition, only one single Majorana mode can
exist in a system no matter at edges or in the bulk. Kitaev's spinless $p$-wave
superconductor is used to illustrate our results and the dynamical behavior of
the Majorana modes.


title:
Control Barrier Function Based Quadratic Programs for Safety Critical
  Systems

abstract:
  Safety critical systems involve the tight coupling between potentially
conflicting control objectives and safety constraints. As a means of creating a
formal framework for controlling systems of this form, and with a view toward
automotive applications, this paper develops a methodology that allows safety
conditions -- expressed as control barrier functions -- to be unified with
performance objectives -- expressed as control Lyapunov functions -- in the
context of real-time optimization-based controllers. Safety conditions are
specified in terms of forward invariance of a set, and are verified via two
novel generalizations of barrier functions; in each case, the existence of a
barrier function satisfying Lyapunov-like conditions implies forward invariance
of the set, and the relationship between these two classes of barrier functions
is characterized. In addition, each of these formulations yields a notion of
control barrier function (CBF), providing inequality constraints in the control
input that, when satisfied, again imply forward invariance of the set. Through
these constructions, CBFs can naturally be unified with control Lyapunov
functions (CLFs) in the context of a quadratic program (QP); this allows for
the achievement of control objectives (represented by CLFs) subject to
conditions on the admissible states of the system (represented by CBFs). The
mediation of safety and performance through a QP is demonstrated on adaptive
cruise control and lane keeping, two automotive control problems that present
both safety and performance considerations coupled with actuator bounds.


title: Why are pulsar planets rare?

abstract:
  Pulsar timing observations have revealed planets around only a few pulsars.
We suggest that the rarity of these planets is due mainly to two effects.
First, we show that the most likely formation mechanism requires the
destruction of a companion star. Only pulsars with a suitable companion (with
an extreme mass ratio) are able to form planets. Second, while a dead zone (a
region of low turbulence) in the disk is generally thought to be essential for
planet formation, it is most probably rare in disks around pulsars because of
the irradiation from the pulsar. The irradiation strongly heats the inner parts
of the disk pushing the inner boundary of the dead zone out. We suggest that
the rarity of pulsar planets can be explained by the low probability for these
two requirements - a very low-mass companion and a dead zone - to be satisfied.


title: Observation of spin current in quantum spin liquid

abstract:
  Spin liquid is a state of electron spins in which quantum fluctuation breaks
magnetic ordering while maintaining spin correlation. It has been a central
topic in magnetism because of its relevance to high-Tc superconductivity and
topological states. However, utilizing spin liquid has been quite difficult.
Typical spin liquid states are realized in one-dimensional spin systems, called
quantum spin chains. Here, we show that a spin liquid in a spin-1/2 quantum
chain generates and carries spin current via its long-range spin fluctuation.
This is demonstrated by observing an anisotropic negative spin Seebeck effect
along the spin chains in Sr2CuO3. The results show that spin current can flow
even in an atomic channel owing the spin liquid state, which can be used for
atomic spin-current wiring.


title:
Paramagnetic resonance in spin-polarized disordered Bose-Einstein
  condensates

abstract:
  We study the pseudo-spin density response of a disordered two-dimensional
spin-polarized Bose gas of exciton polaritons to weak alternating magnetic
field, assuming that one of the spin states of the doublet is macroscopically
occupied and Bose-condensed while the occupation of the other state remains
much smaller. We calculate spatial and temporal dispersions of spin
susceptibility of the gas taking into account spin-flip processes due to the
transverse-longitudinal splitting. Further, we use the Bogoliubov theory of
weakly-interacting gases and show that the time-dependent magnetic field power
absorption exhibits double resonance structure corresponding to two particle
spin states (contrast to paramagnetic resonance in regular spin-polarized
electron gas). We analyze the widths of these resonances caused by scattering
on the disorder and show that, in contrast with the ballistic regime, in the
presence of impurities, the polariton scattering on them is twofold: scattering
on the impurity potential directly and scattering on the spatially fluctuating
condensate density caused by the disorder. As a result, the width of the
resonance associated with the Bose-condensed spin state can be surprizingly
narrow in comparison with the width of the resonance associated with the
non-condensed state.


title:
Probing Non-unitary $CP$ Violation effects in Neutrino Oscillation
  Experiments

abstract:
  In the present work, we have considered minimal unitarity violation(MUV)
scheme, to obtain the general expression for $\nu_{\mu}\rightarrow\nu_{\tau}$
oscillation probability, in vacuum. For this channel, we have investigated the
sensitivities to non-unitary parameters $|\rho_{\mu\tau}|$ and
$\omega_{\mu\tau}$ with short baseline(SBL) experiments for normal as well as
inverted hierarchical neutrino masses. We also check how the sensitivity to
non-unitary parameters get modified for $\theta_{23}$ above and below
maximality. We find that the $3\sigma$ sensitivity towards $|\rho_{\mu\tau}|$
is maximum for non-unitary phase $\omega_{\mu\tau}=0$, whereas it is minimum
for $\omega_{\mu\tau}=\pm\pi$ in case of normal hierarchy(NH). However, the
sensitivity is minimum at $\omega_{\mu\tau}=0$ and maximum for
$\omega_{\mu\tau}=\pm\pi$ for inverted hierarchy(IH). We observe that for
unitary $CP$ phase $\delta=0$ and $\delta=\pi/2$, the sensitivity to measure
non-unitarity remains same in both the cases. We, also, explore wide range of
$L/E$ to forecast, in principle, the possibilities to observe $CP$-violation
due to unitary($\delta$) and non-unitary($\omega_{\mu\tau}$) phases. We find
that the both phases can be disentangled, in principle, from each other, for
the $L/E$ range less than 200 km/GeV for $\nu_{\mu}\rightarrow\nu_{\tau}$
channel.


title:
Second order optical nonlinearity of graphene due to electric quadrupole
  and magnetic dipole effects

abstract:
  We present a practical scheme to separate the contributions of the electric
quadrupole-like and the magnetic dipole-like effects to the forbidden second
order optical nonlinear response of graphene, and give analytic expressions for
the second order op- tical conductivities, calculated from the independent
particle approximation, with relaxation described in a phenomenological way. We
predict strong second order nonlinear effects, including second harmonic
generation, photon drag, and difference fre- quency generation. We discuss in
detail the controllability of these effects by tuning the chemical potential,
taking advantage of the dominant role played by interband optical transitions
in the response.


title:
Potentially $\text{GL}_2$-type Galois representations associated to
  noncongruence modular forms

abstract:
  In this paper, we consider Galois representations of the absolute Galois
group $\text{Gal}(\overline {\mathbb Q}/\mathbb Q)$ attached to modular forms
for noncongruence subgroups of $\text{SL}_2(\mathbb Z)$. When the underlying
modular curves have a model over $\mathbb Q$, these representations are
constructed by Scholl and are referred to as Scholl representations, which form
a large class of motivic Galois representations. In particular, by a result of
Belyi, Scholl representations include the Galois actions on the Jacobian
varieties of algebraic curves defined over $\mathbb Q$. As Scholl
representations are motivic, they are expected to correspond to automorphic
representations according to the Langlands philosophy. Using recent
developments in the automorphy lifting theorem, we obtain various automphy and
potential automorphy results for potentially $\text{GL}_2$-type Galois
representations associated to noncongruence modular forms. Our results are
applied to various kinds of examples. Especially, we obtain potential
automorphy results for Galois representations attached to an infinite family of
spaces of weight 3 noncongruence cusp forms of arbitrarily large dimensions.


title:
Programmable actuation of porous poly(ionic liquid) membranes by aligned
  carbon nanotubes

abstract:
  A composite porous polymer membrane with aligned CNTs in its matrix is
developed which exhibits programmable, anisotropic actuation towards organic
vapors. The alignment of CNTs in multiple directions and the gradient porous
structure of the membrane are critical for the actuation, and the actuating
direction can be well controlled at a direction perpendicular to the
longitudinal orientation of CNTs. The reversible actuation may be repeated for
300 cycles without obvious fatigue. These polymer composites are promising
building blocks for a wide variety of applications such as sensors and
actuators. The concept of programmable actuation succeeded here in a porous
polymer mateial via complex orientation of CNTs reflects a new high level of
control over physical motions that is applicable to a broad range of soft
actuators.


title: Mobility anisotropy of two-dimensional semiconductors

abstract:
  The carrier mobility of anisotropic two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors under
longitudinal acoustic (LA) phonon scattering was theoretically studied with the
deformation potential theory. Based on Boltzmann equation with relaxation time
approximation, an analytic formula of intrinsic anisotropic mobility was
deduced, which shows that the influence of effective mass to the mobility
anisotropy is larger than that of deformation potential constant and elastic
modulus. Parameters were collected for various anisotropic 2D materials (black
phosphorus, Hittorf's phosphorus, BC$_2$N, MXene, TiS$_3$, GeCH$_3$) to
calculate their mobility anisotropy. It was revealed that the anisotropic ratio
was overestimated in the past.


title: Matrix Variate RBM Model with Gaussian Distributions

abstract:
  Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) is a particular type of random neural
network models modeling vector data based on the assumption of Bernoulli
distribution. For multi-dimensional and non-binary data, it is necessary to
vectorize and discretize the information in order to apply the conventional
RBM. It is well-known that vectorization would destroy internal structure of
data, and the binary units will limit the applying performance due to fickle
real data. To address the issue, this paper proposes a Matrix variate Gaussian
Restricted Boltzmann Machine (MVGRBM) model for matrix data whose entries
follow Gaussian distributions. Compared with some other RBM algorithm, MVGRBM
can model real value data better and it has good performance in image
classification.


title: Multiple testing via relative belief ratios

abstract:
  Some large scale inference problems are considered based on using the
relative belief ratio as a measure of statistical evidence. This approach is
applied to the multiple testing problem. A particular application of this is
concerned with assessing sparsity. The approach taken to sparsity has several
advantages as it is based on a measure of evidence and does not require that
the prior be restricted in any way.


title:
Magnetic Susceptibility of Dirac Fermions, Bi-Sb Alloys, Interacting
  Bloch Fermions, Dilute Nonmagnetic Alloys, and Kondo Alloys

abstract:
  Wide ranging interest in Dirac Hamiltomian is due to the emergence of novel
materials, namely, graphene, topological insulators and superconductors, the
newly-discovered Weyl semimetals, and still actively-sought after Majorana
fermions in real materials. We give a brief review of the relativistic Dirac
quantum mechanics and its impact in the developments of modern physics. The
quantum band dynamics of Dirac Hamiltonian is crucial in resolving the giant
diamagnetism of bismuth and Bi-Sb alloys. Quantitative agreement of the theory
with the experiments on Bi-Sb alloys has been achieved, and physically
meaningful contributions to the diamagnetism has been identified. We also treat
relativistic Dirac fermion as an interband dynamics in uniform magnetic fields.
For the interacting Bloch electrons, the role of translation symmetry for
calculating the magnetic susceptibility avoids any approximation to second
order in the field. The magnetic susceptibility of Hubbard model and those of
Fermi liquids are readily obtained as limiting cases. The expressions for
magnetic susceptibility of dilute nonmagnetic alloys give a firm theoretical
foundation of the empirical formulas used in fitting experimental results. For
completeness, the magnetic susceptibility of dilute magnetic or Kondo alloys is
also given for high and low temperature regimes.


title: Asymptotically Optimal Regenerating Codes Over Any Field

abstract:
  The study of regenerating codes has advanced tremendously in recent years.
However, most known constructions require large field size, and hence may be
hard to implement in practice. By using notions from the theory of extension
fields, we obtain two explicit constructions of regenerating codes. These codes
approach the cut-set bound as the reconstruction degree increases, and may be
realized over any given field if the file size is large enough. Since
distributed storage systems are the main purpose of regenerating codes, this
file size restriction is trivially satisfied in most conceivable scenarios. The
first construction attains the cut-set bound at the MBR point asymptotically
for all parameters, whereas the second one attains the cut-set bound at the MSR
point asymptotically for low-rate parameters.


title: Semiparametric Identification and Fisher Information

abstract:
  This paper provides a systematic approach to semiparametric identification
that is based on statistical information as a measure of its "quality".
Identification can be regular or irregular, depending on whether the Fisher
information for the parameter is positive or zero, respectively. I first
characterize these cases in models with densities linear in a nonparametric
parameter. I then introduce a novel "generalized Fisher information". If
positive, it implies (possibly irregular) identification when other conditions
hold. If zero, it implies impossibility results on rates of estimation. Three
examples illustrate the applicability of the general results. First, I find
necessary conditions for semiparametric regular identification in a structural
model for unemployment duration with two spells and nonparametric
heterogeneity. Second, I show irregular identification of the median
willingness to pay in contingent valuation studies. Finally, I study
identification of the discount factor and average measures of risk aversion in
a nonparametric Euler Equation with nonparametric measurement error in
consumption.


title:
Combined effects of f(R) gravity and conformally invariant Maxwell field
  on the extended phase space thermodynamics of higher-dimensional black holes

abstract:
  In this paper, we investigate the thermodynamics of higher-dimensional $f(R)$
black holes in the extended phase space. Both the analytic expressions and
numerical results for the possible critical physical quantities are obtained.
It is proved that meaningful critical specific volume only exists when $p$ is
odd. This unique phenomenon may be attributed to the combined effect of $f(R)$
gravity and conformally invariant Maxwell field. It is also shown that the
ratio $P_cv_c/T_c$ differs from that of higher dimensional charged AdS black
holes in Einstein gravity. However, the ratio for four-dimensional $f(R)$ black
holes is the same as that of four-dimensional RN-AdS black holes, implying that
$f(R)$ gravity does not influence the ratio. So the ratio may be related to
conformally invariant Maxwell field. To probe the phase transition, we derive
the explicit expression of the Gibbs free energy with its graph plotted. Phase
transition analogous to the van der Waals liquid-gas system take place between
the small black hole and the large black hole. Classical swallow tail behavior,
characteristic of first order phase transition, can also be observed in the
Gibbs free energy graph. Critical exponents are also calculated. It is shown
that these exponents are exactly the same as those of other AdS black holes,
implying that neither $f(R)$ gravity nor conformally invariant Maxwell field
influence the critical exponents. Since the investigated black hole solution
depends on the form of the function $f(R)$, we discuss in detail how our
results put constraint on the form of the function $f(R)$ and we also present a
simple example.


title:
OCR++: A Robust Framework For Information Extraction from Scholarly
  Articles

abstract:
  This paper proposes OCR++, an open-source framework designed for a variety of
information extraction tasks from scholarly articles including metadata (title,
author names, affiliation and e-mail), structure (section headings and body
text, table and figure headings, URLs and footnotes) and bibliography (citation
instances and references). We analyze a diverse set of scientific articles
written in English language to understand generic writing patterns and
formulate rules to develop this hybrid framework. Extensive evaluations show
that the proposed framework outperforms the existing state-of-the-art tools
with huge margin in structural information extraction along with improved
performance in metadata and bibliography extraction tasks, both in terms of
accuracy (around 50% improvement) and processing time (around 52% improvement).
A user experience study conducted with the help of 30 researchers reveals that
the researchers found this system to be very helpful. As an additional
objective, we discuss two novel use cases including automatically extracting
links to public datasets from the proceedings, which would further accelerate
the advancement in digital libraries. The result of the framework can be
exported as a whole into structured TEI-encoded documents. Our framework is
accessible online at http://cnergres.iitkgp.ac.in/OCR++/home/.


title: Do Japanese and Italian women live longer than women in Scandinavia?

abstract:
  Life expectancies at birth are routinely computed from period life tables.
Such period life expectancies may be distorted by selection when comparing
countries where the living conditions improved earlier (like Norway and Sweden)
with countries where they improved later (like Italy and Japan). One way to get
a fair comparison between the countries, is to use cohort data and consider the
expected number of years lost before a given age a. Contrary to the results
based on period data, one then finds that Italian women may expect to lose more
years than women in Norway and Sweden, while there are no indications that
Japanese women will lose fewer years than Scandinavian women.


title: Asypmtotics of enumerative invariants in $\CC P^2$

abstract: In this paper, we give the asymptotic expansion of $n_{0,d}$ and $n_{1,d}$.


title: From Facial Expression Recognition to Interpersonal Relation Prediction

abstract:
  Interpersonal relation defines the association, e.g., warm, friendliness, and
dominance, between two or more people. Motivated by psychological studies, we
investigate if such fine-grained and high-level relation traits can be
characterized and quantified from face images in the wild. We address this
challenging problem by first studying a deep network architecture for robust
recognition of facial expressions. Unlike existing models that typically learn
from facial expression labels alone, we devise an effective multitask network
that is capable of learning from rich auxiliary attributes such as gender, age,
and head pose, beyond just facial expression data. While conventional
supervised training requires datasets with complete labels (e.g., all samples
must be labeled with gender, age, and expression), we show that this
requirement can be relaxed via a novel attribute propagation method. The
approach further allows us to leverage the inherent correspondences between
heterogeneous attribute sources despite the disparate distributions of
different datasets. With the network we demonstrate state-of-the-art results on
existing facial expression recognition benchmarks. To predict inter-personal
relation, we use the expression recognition network as branches for a Siamese
model. Extensive experiments show that our model is capable of mining mutual
context of faces for accurate fine-grained interpersonal prediction.


title:
Differential equations of electrodiffusion: constant field solutions,
  uniqueness, and new formulas of Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz type

abstract:
  The equations governing one-dimensional, steady-state electrodiffusion are
considered when there are arbitrarily many mobile ionic species present, in any
number of valence classes, possibly also with a uniform distribution of fixed
charges. Exact constant field solutions and new formulas of
Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz type are found. All of these formulas are exact, unlike
the usual approximate ones. Corresponding boundary conditions on the ionic
concentrations are identified. The question of uniqueness of constant field
solutions with such boundary conditions is considered, and is re-posed in terms
of an autonomous ordinary differential equation of order $n+1$ for the electric
field, where $n$ is the number of valence classes. When there are no fixed
charges, the equation can be integrated once to give the non-autonomous
equation of order $n$ considered previously in the literature including, in the
case $n=2$, the form of Painlev\'e's second equation considered first in the
context of electrodiffusion by one of us. When $n=1$, the new equation is a
form of Li\'enard's equation. Uniqueness of the constant field solution is
established in this case.


title:
Coupled-channels description of the 40Ca+58,64Ni transfer and fusion
  reactions

abstract:
  Preliminary experimental data for nucleon transfer reactions of the 40Ca+58Ni
and 40Ca+64Ni systems are analyzed with the coupled- channels approach. It is
shown that a simple treatment for the transfer in the coupled-channels method
cannot reproduce simultaneously the transfer probabilities and the sub-barrier
enhancement of fusion cross sections.


title: Long lifetimes in optical ion traps

abstract:
  We report on single Barium ions confined in a near-infrared optical dipole
trap for up to three seconds in absence of any radio-frequency fields.
Additionally, the lifetime in a visible optical dipole trap is increased by two
orders of magnitude as compared to the state-of-the-art using an efficient
repumping method. We characterize the state-dependent potentials and measure an
upper bound for the heating rate in the near-infrared trap. These findings are
beneficial for entering the regime of ultracold interaction in atom-ion
ensembles exploiting bichromatic optical dipole traps. Long lifetimes and low
scattering rates are essential to reach long coherence times for quantum
simulations in optical lattices employing many ions, or ions and atoms.


title: Energy-Efficient Scheduling: Classification, Bounds, and Algorithms

abstract:
  The problem of attaining energy efficiency in distributed systems is of
importance, but a general, non-domain-specific theory of energy-minimal
scheduling is far from developed. In this paper, we classify the problems of
energy-minimal scheduling and present theoretical foundations of the same. We
derive results concerning energy-minimal scheduling of independent jobs in a
distributed system with functionally similar machines with different working
and idle power ratings. The machines considered in our system can have
identical as well as different speeds. If the jobs can be divided into
arbitrary parts, we show that the minimum-energy schedule can be generated in
linear time and give exact scheduling algorithms. For the cases where jobs are
non-divisible, we prove that the scheduling problems are NP-hard and also give
approximation algorithms for the same along with their bounds.


title:
Optimal and scalable methods to approximate the solutions of large-scale
  Bayesian problems: Theory and application to atmospheric inversions and data
  assimilation

abstract:
  This paper provides a detailed theoretical analysis of methods to approximate
the solutions of high-dimensional (>10^6) linear Bayesian problems. An optimal
low-rank projection that maximizes the information content of the Bayesian
inversion is proposed and efficiently constructed using a scalable randomized
SVD algorithm. Useful optimality results are established for the associated
posterior error covariance matrix and posterior mean approximations, which are
further investigated in a numerical experiment consisting of a large-scale
atmospheric tracer transport source-inversion problem. This method proves to be
a robust and efficient approach to dimension reduction, as well as a natural
framework to analyze the information content of the inversion. Possible
extensions of this approach to the non-linear framework in the context of
operational numerical weather forecast data assimilation systems based on the
incremental 4D-Var technique are also discussed, and a detailed implementation
of a new Randomized Incremental Optimal Technique (RIOT) for 4D-Var algorithms
leveraging our theoretical results is proposed.

categories: physics.data-an cs.NA math.NA physics.ao-ph


title:
Polar Coding for Empirical Coordination of Signals and Actions over
  Noisy Channels

abstract:
  -We develop a polar coding scheme for empirical coordination in a two-node
network with a noisy link in which the input and output signals have to be
coordinated with the source and the reconstruction. In the case of non-causal
encoding and decoding, we show that polar codes achieve the best known inner
bound for the empirical coordination region, provided that a vanishing rate of
common randomness is available. This scheme provides a constructive alternative
to random binning and coding proofs.


title: Counting Finite Index Subrings of $\mathbb{Z}^n$

abstract:
  We count subrings of small index of $\mathbb{Z}^n$, where the addition and
multiplication are defined componentwise. Let $f_n(k)$ denote the number of
subrings of index $k$. For any $n$, we give a formula for this quantity for all
integers $k$ that are not divisible by a 9th power of a prime, extending a
result of Liu.


title:
Partial Least Squares Regression on Riemannian Manifolds and Its
  Application in Classifications

abstract:
  Partial least squares regression (PLSR) has been a popular technique to
explore the linear relationship between two datasets. However, most of
algorithm implementations of PLSR may only achieve a suboptimal solution
through an optimization on the Euclidean space. In this paper, we propose
several novel PLSR models on Riemannian manifolds and develop optimization
algorithms based on Riemannian geometry of manifolds. This algorithm can
calculate all the factors of PLSR globally to avoid suboptimal solutions. In a
number of experiments, we have demonstrated the benefits of applying the
proposed model and algorithm to a variety of learning tasks in pattern
recognition and object classification.


title:
Controlling rigid formations of mobile agents under inconsistent
  measurements

abstract:
  Despite the great success of using gradient-based controllers to stabilize
rigid formations of autonomous agents in the past years, surprising yet
intriguing undesirable collective motions have been reported recently when
inconsistent measurements are used in the agents' local controllers. To make
the existing gradient control robust against such measurement inconsistency, we
exploit local estimators following the well known internal model principle for
robust output regulation control. The new estimator-based gradient control is
still distributed in nature and can be constructed systematically even when the
number of agents in a rigid formation grows. We prove rigorously that the
proposed control is able to guarantee exponential convergence and then
demonstrate through robotic experiments and computer simulations that the
reported inconsistency-induced orbits of collective movements are effectively
eliminated.


title: Fundamental group of moduli of principal bundles on curves

abstract:
  Let $X$ be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus at least two, and let
${G}$ be a connected semisimple affine algebraic group defined over $\mathbb
C$. For any $\delta \in \pi_1({G})$, we prove that the moduli space of
semistable principal ${G}$--bundles over $X$ of topological type $\delta$ is
simply connected. In contrast, the fundamental group of the moduli stack of
principal ${G}$--bundles over $X$ of topological type $\delta$ is shown to be
isomorphic to $H^1(X, \pi_1({G}))$.


title:
Experimental realization of robust dynamical decoupling with bounded
  controls in a solid-state spin system

abstract:
  We experimentally demonstrate a robust dynamical decoupling protocol with
bounded controls using long soft pulses, eliminating a challenging requirement
of strong control pulses in conventional implementations. This protocol is
accomplished by designing the decoupling propagators to go through a Eulerian
cycle of the coupler group [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 037901(2003)]. We demonstrate
that this Eulerian decoupling scheme increases the coherence time by two orders
of magnitude in our experiment under either dephasing or a universal noise
environment.


title: Large-Scale Strategic Games and Adversarial Machine Learning

abstract:
  Decision making in modern large-scale and complex systems such as
communication networks, smart electricity grids, and cyber-physical systems
motivate novel game-theoretic approaches. This paper investigates big strategic
(non-cooperative) games where a finite number of individual players each have a
large number of continuous decision variables and input data points. Such
high-dimensional decision spaces and big data sets lead to computational
challenges, relating to efforts in non-linear optimization scaling up to large
systems of variables. In addition to these computational challenges, real-world
players often have limited information about their preference parameters due to
the prohibitive cost of identifying them or due to operating in dynamic online
settings. The challenge of limited information is exacerbated in high
dimensions and big data sets. Motivated by both computational and information
limitations that constrain the direct solution of big strategic games, our
investigation centers around reductions using linear transformations such as
random projection methods and their effect on Nash equilibrium solutions.
Specific analytical results are presented for quadratic games and
approximations. In addition, an adversarial learning game is presented where
random projection and sampling schemes are investigated.


title: Invitation to Random Tensors

abstract:
  This article is preface to the SIGMA special issue "Tensor Models, Formalism
and Applications", http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/Tensor_Models.html. The
issue is a collection of eight excellent, up to date reviews on random tensor
models. The reviews combine pedagogical introductions meant for a general
audience with presentations of the most recent developments in the field. This
preface aims to give a condensed panoramic overview of random tensors as the
natural generalization of random matrices to higher dimensions.


title:
Star formation around mid-infrared bubble N37: Evidence of cloud-cloud
  collision

abstract:
  We have performed a multi-wavelength analysis of a mid-infrared (MIR) bubble
N37 and its surrounding environment. The selected 15$' \times$15$'$ area around
the bubble contains two molecular clouds (N37 cloud; V$_{lsr}\sim$37-43 km
s$^{-1}$, and C25.29+0.31; V$_{lsr}\sim$43-48 km s$^{-1}$) along the line of
sight. A total of seven OB stars are identified towards the bubble N37 using
photometric criteria, and two of them are spectroscopically confirmed as O9V
and B0V stars. Spectro-photometric distances of these two sources confirm their
physical association with the bubble. The O9V star is appeared to be the
primary ionizing source of the region, which is also in agreement with the
desired Lyman continuum flux analysis estimated from the 20 cm data. The
presence of the expanding HII region is revealed in the N37 cloud which could
be responsible for the MIR bubble. Using the $^{13}$CO line data and
photometric data, several cold molecular condensations as well as clusters of
young stellar objects (YSOs) are identified in the N37 cloud, revealing ongoing
star formation (SF) activities. However, the analysis of ages of YSOs and the
dynamical age of the HII region do not support the origin of SF due to the
influence of OB stars. The position-velocity analysis of $^{13}$CO data reveals
that two molecular clouds are inter-connected by a bridge-like structure,
favoring the onset of a cloud-cloud collision process. The SF activities (i.e.
the formation of YSOs clusters and OB stars) in the N37 cloud are possibly
influenced by the cloud-cloud collision.


title: Detecting facial landmarks in the video based on a hybrid framework

abstract:
  To dynamically detect the facial landmarks in the video, we propose a novel
hybrid framework termed as detection-tracking-detection (DTD). First, the face
bounding box is achieved from the first frame of the video sequence based on a
traditional face detection method. Then, a landmark detector detects the facial
landmarks, which is based on a cascaded deep convolution neural network (DCNN).
Next, the face bounding box in the current frame is estimated and validated
after the facial landmarks in the previous frame are tracked based on the
median flow. Finally, the facial landmarks in the current frame are exactly
detected from the validated face bounding box via the landmark detector.
Experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can detect the facial
landmarks in the video sequence more effectively and with lower consuming time
compared to the frame-by-frame method via the DCNN.


title:
Minimizing Compression Artifacts for High Resolutions with Adaptive
  Quantization Matrices for HEVC

abstract:
  Visual Display Units (VDUs), capable of displaying video data at High
Definition (HD) and Ultra HD (UHD) resolutions, are frequently employed in a
variety of technological domains. Quantization-induced video compression
artifacts, which are usually unnoticeable in low resolution environments, are
typically conspicuous on high resolution VDUs and video data. The default
quantization matrices (QMs) in HEVC do not take into account specific display
resolutions of VDUs or video data to determine the appropriate levels of
quantization required to reduce unwanted compression artifacts. Therefore, we
propose a novel, adaptive quantization matrix technique for the HEVC standard
including Scalable HEVC (SHVC). Our technique, which is based on a refinement
of the current QM technique in HEVC, takes into consideration specific display
resolutions of the target VDUs in order to minimize compression artifacts. We
undertake a thorough evaluation of the proposed technique by utilizing SHVC SHM
9.0 (two-layered bit-stream) and the BD-Rate and SSIM metrics. For the BD-Rate
evaluation, the proposed method achieves maximum BD-Rate reductions of 56.5% in
the enhancement layer. For the SSIM evaluation, our technique achieves a
maximum structural improvement of 0.8660 vs. 0.8538.


title:
Signal line shapes of Fourier transform cavity-enhanced frequency
  modulation spectroscopy with optical frequency combs

abstract:
  We present a thorough analysis of the signal line shapes of Fourier
transform-based noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical frequency comb
spectroscopy (NICE-OFCS). We discuss the signal dependence on the ratio of the
modulation frequency, f${_m}$, to the molecular line width, {\Gamma}. We
compare a full model of the signals and a simplified absorption-like analytical
model that has high accuracy for low f${_m}$/{\Gamma} ratios and is much faster
to compute. We verify the theory experimentally by measuring and fitting
NICE-OFCS spectra of CO${_2}$ at 1575 nm using a system based on an Er:fiber
femtosecond laser and a cavity with a finesse of ~11000.


title: Two-body charmed B(Bs) decays involving a light scalar meson

abstract:
  Based on the assumption of two-quark structure for the light scalar mesons,
within the framework of perturbative QCD approach, we investigate the $B_{q}\to
D_{(s)}^{(*)} S(q=u,d,s)$ decays induced by $b\to u $ transition, where $S$
denotes a light scalar meson. Under two different scenarios, we calculate the
branching ratios of 96 decay modes totally, which are in the range of $10^{-5}$
to $10^{-8}$. The comparison between our predictions and the experimental data
will allow us to probe the inner structure of the scalar mesons. In the
standard model, since all decays can only occur through tree operators, there
are no $CP$ asymmetries. From our calculations, it has been shown that the
annihilation type diagrams, especially the nonfactorizable annihilation
diagrams, play important roles in the decay amplitudes, especially for these
color-suppressed and pure annihilation type decay modes. We also find that the
branching ratios of color-allowed type decays are sensitive to the different
scenarios, so the measurements of them will be ideal places to differentiate
the different scenarios. It can be found that the ratios between $Br(B^0\to
D^{(*)0}\sigma)$ and $Br(B^0\to D^{(*)0}f_0)$, and between $Br(B^+\to
D^{(*)+}\sigma)$ and $Br(B^{+}\to D^{(*)+}f_0)$ can be used to determine the
mixing angle of $\sigma$ and $f_0$.


title: The Zadko Telescope: Exploring the transient Universe

abstract:
  The Zadko Telescope is a 1 m f/4 Cassegrain telescope, situated in the state
of Western Australia about 80 km north of Perth. The facility plays a niche
role in Australian astronomy, as it is the only meter class facility in
Australia dedicated to automated follow-up imaging of alerts or triggers
received from different external instruments/detectors spanning the entire
electromagnetic spectrum. Furthermore the location of the facility at a
longitude not covered by other meter class facilities provides an important
resource for time critical projects. This paper reviews the status of the Zadko
facility and science projects since it began robotic operations in March 2010.
We report on major upgrades to the infrastructure and equipment (2012-2014)
that has resulted in significantly improved robotic operations. Secondly, we
review the core science projects, which include automated rapid follow-up of
gamma ray burst (GRB) optical afterglows, imaging of neutrino counterpart
candidates from the ANTARES neutrino observatory, photometry of rare
(Barbarian) asteroids, supernovae searches in nearby galaxies. Finally, we
discuss participation in newly commencing international projects, including the
optical follow-up of gravitational wave candidates from the U.S. and European
gravitational wave observatory network, and present first tests for very low
latency follow-up of fast radio bursts. In the context of these projects, we
outline plans for a future upgrade that will optimise the facility for alert
triggered imaging from the radio, optical, high-energy, neutrino and
gravitational wave bands.


title:
Stellar kinematics across the Hubble sequence in the CALIFA survey:
  General properties and aperture corrections

abstract:
  We present the stellar kinematic maps of a large sample of galaxies from the
integral-field spectroscopic survey CALIFA. The sample comprises 300 galaxies
displaying a wide range of morphologies across the Hubble sequence, from
ellipticals to late-type spirals. This dataset allows us to homogeneously
extract stellar kinematics up to several effective radii. In this paper, we
describe the level of completeness of this subset of galaxies with respect to
the full CALIFA sample, as well as the virtues and limitations of the kinematic
extraction compared to other well-known integral-field surveys. In addition, we
provide averaged integrated velocity dispersion radial profiles for different
galaxy types, which are particularly useful to apply aperture corrections for
single aperture measurements or poorly resolved stellar kinematics of
high-redshift sources. The work presented in this paper sets the basis for the
study of more general properties of galaxies that will be explored in
subsequent papers of the survey.


title: Insider Threats in Emerging Mobility-as-a-Service Scenarios

abstract:
  Mobility as a Service (MaaS) applies the everything-as-a-service paradigm of
Cloud Computing to transportation: a MaaS provider offers to its users the
dynamic composition of solutions of different travel agencies into a single,
consistent interface. Traditionally, transits and data on mobility belong to a
scattered plethora of operators. Thus, we argue that the economic model of MaaS
is that of federations of providers, each trading its resources to coordinate
multi-modal solutions for mobility. Such flexibility comes with many security
and privacy concerns, of which insider threat is one of the most prominent. In
this paper, we follow a tiered structure --- from individual operators to
markets of federated MaaS providers --- to classify the potential threats of
each tier and propose the appropriate countermeasures, in an effort to mitigate
the problems.


title: Galactic Bar/Spiral Arm Interactions in NGC3627

abstract:
  Aims: To gain insight into the expected gas dynamics at the interface of the
Galactic bar and spiral arms in our own Milky Way galaxy, we examine as an
extragalactic counterpart the evidence for multiple distinct velocity
components in the cold, dense molecular gas populating a comparable region at
the end of the bar in the nearby galaxy NGC3627.
  Methods: We assemble a high resolution view of molecular gas kinematics
traced by CO(2-1) emission and extract line-of-sight velocity profiles from
regions of high and low gas velocity dispersion.
  Results: The high velocity dispersions arise with often double-peaked or
multiple line-profiles. We compare the centroids of the different velocity
components to expectations based on orbital dynamics in the presence of bar and
spiral potential perturbations. A model of the region as the interface of two
gas-populated orbits families supporting the bar and the independently rotating
spiral arms provides an overall good match to the data. An extent of the bar to
the corotation radius of the galaxy is favored.
  Conclusions: Using NGC3627 as an extragalactic example, we expect situations
like this to favor strong star formation events such as observed in our own
Milky Way since gas can pile up at the crossings between the orbit families.
The relative motions of the material following these orbits is likely even more
important for the build up of high density in the region. The surface densities
in NGC3627 are also so high that shear at the bar end is unlikely to
significantly weaken the star formation activity. We speculate that scenarios
in which the bar and spiral rotate at two different pattern speeds may be the
most favorable for intense star formation at such interfaces.


title:
Medium effects on heavy-flavour observables in high-energy nuclear
  collisions

abstract:
  The peculiar role of heavy-flavour observables in relativistic heavy-ion
collisions is discussed. Produced in the early stage, $c$ and $b$ quarks cross
the hot medium arising from the collision, interacting strongly with the
latter, until they hadronize. Depending on the strength of the interaction
heavy quarks may or not approach kinetic equilibrium with the plasma, tending
in the first case to follow the collective flow of the expanding fireball. The
presence of a hot deconfined medium may also affect heavy-quark hadronization,
being possible for them to recombine with the surrounding light thermal
partons, so that the final heavy-flavour hadrons inherit part of the flow of
the medium. Here we show how it is possible to develop a complete transport
setup allowing one to describe heavy-flavour production in high-energy nuclear
collisions, displaying some major results one can obtain. Finally, the
possibility that the formation of a hot deconfined medium even in small systems
(high-multiplicity p-Au and d-Au collisions, so far) may affect also
heavy-flavour observables is investigated.


title: The axisymmetric envelopes of RS Cnc and EP Aqr

abstract:
  We report on observations obtained at IRAM on two semi-regular variable
Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars, RS Cnc and EP Aqr, undergoing mass loss at
an intermediate rate of ~ 10^-7 solar mass per year. Interferometric data
obtained with the Plateau-de-Bure interferometer (NOEMA) have been combined
with On-The-Fly maps obtained with the 30-m telescope in the CO(1-0) and (2-1)
rotational lines. The spectral maps of spatially resolved sources reveal an
axisymmetric morphology in which matter is flowing out at a low velocity (~ 2
km/s) in the equatorial planes, and at a larger velocity (~ 8 km/s) along the
polar axes. There are indications that this kind of morpho-kinematics is
relatively frequent among stars at the beginning of their evolution on the
Thermally-Pulsing AGB, in particular among those that show composite CO line
profiles, and that it might be caused by the presence of a companion. We
discuss the progress that could be expected for our understanding of the mass
loss mechanisms in this kind of sources by increasing the spatial resolution of
the observations with ALMA or NOEMA.


title: Optical thermometry based on level anticrossing in silicon carbide

abstract:
  We report a giant thermal shift of $2.1 \,$MHz/K related to the excited-state
zero-field splitting in the silicon vacancy centers in 4H silicon carbide. It
is obtained from the indirect observation of the optically detected magnetic
resonance in the excited state using the ground state as an ancilla.
Alternatively, relative variations of the zero-field splitting for small
temperature differences can be detected without application of radiofrequency
fields, by simply monitoring the photoluminescence intensity in the vicinity of
the level anticrossing. This effect results in an all-optical thermometry
technique with temperature sensitivity of $100 \,$mK/Hz$^{1/2}$ for a detection
volume of approximately $10^{-6} \,$mm$^{3}$. In contrast, the zero-field
splitting in the ground state does not reveal detectable temperature shift.
Using these properties, an integrated magnetic field and temperature sensor can
be implemented on the same center.


title: Locally elusive classical groups

abstract:
  Let $G$ be a transitive permutation group of degree $n$ with point stabiliser
$H$ and let $r$ be a prime divisor of $n$. We say that $G$ is $r$-elusive if it
does not contain a derangement of order $r$. The problem of determining the
$r$-elusive primitive groups can be reduced to the almost simple case, and the
purpose of this paper is to complete the study of $r$-elusivity for almost
simple classical groups. Building on our earlier work for geometric actions of
classical groups, in this paper we handle the remaining non-geometric actions
where $H$ is almost simple and irreducible. This requires a completely
different approach, using tools from the representation theory of quasisimple
groups.


title: Tumbling of a Brownian particle in an extensional flow

abstract:
  The phenomenon of tumbling of microscopic objects is commonly associated with
shear flows. We address the question of whether tumbling can also occur in
stretching-dominated flows. To answer this, we study the dynamics of a
semi-flexible trumbbell in a planar extensional velocity field. We show that
the trumbbell undergoes a random tumbling-through-folding motion. The
probability distribution of long tumbling times is exponential with a time
scale exponentially increasing with the Weissenberg number.


title: How To Build A Quantum Coherent Observer

abstract:
  We give an explicit construction for a quantum observer coherently mimicking
the dynamics of a cavity mode system and without any disturbance of the
system's dynamics. This gives the exact analogue of the Luenberger observer
used in controller design in engineering


title:
ALMA high spatial resolution observations of the dense molecular region
  of NGC 6302

abstract:
  The mechanism behind the shaping of bipolar planetary nebulae is still poorly
understood. Accurately tracing the molecule-rich equatorial regions of post-AGB
stars can give valuable insight into the ejection mechanisms at work. We
investigate the physical conditions, structure and velocity field of the dense
molecular region of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 by means of ALMA band 7
interferometric maps. The high spatial resolution of the $^{12}$CO and
$^{13}$CO J=3-2 ALMA data allows for an analysis of the geometry of the ejecta
in unprecedented detail. We built a spatio-kinematical model of the molecular
region with the software SHAPE and performed detailed non-LTE calculations of
excitation and radiative transfer with the SHAPEMOL plug-in. We find that the
molecular region consists of a massive ring out of which a system of fragments
of lobe walls emerge and enclose the base of the lobes visible in the optical.
The general properties of this region are in agreement with previous works,
although the much greater spatial resolution of the data allows for a very
detailed description. We confirm that the mass of the molecular region is 0.1
M$_{\odot}$. Additionally, we report a previously undetected component at the
nebular equator, an inner, younger ring inclined $\sim$60$^\circ$ with respect
to the main ring, showing a characteristic radius of 7.5$\times$10$^{16}$ cm, a
mass of 2.7$\times$10$^{-3}$ M$_{\odot}$, and a counterpart in optical images
of the nebula. This inner ring has the same kinematical age as the northwest
optical lobes, implying it was ejected approximately at the same time, hundreds
of years after the ejection of the bulk of the molecular ring-like region. We
discuss a sequence of events leading to the formation of the molecular and
optical nebulae, and briefly speculate on the origin of this intriguing inner
ring.


title: Multi-View Constraint Propagation with Consensus Prior Knowledge

abstract:
  In many applications, the pairwise constraint is a kind of weaker supervisory
information which can be collected easily. The constraint propagation has been
proved to be a success of exploiting such side-information. In recent years,
some methods of multi-view constraint propagation have been proposed. However,
the problem of reasonably fusing different views remains unaddressed. In this
paper, we present a method dubbed Consensus Prior Constraint Propagation
(CPCP), which can provide the prior knowledge of the robustness of each data
instance and its neighborhood. With the robustness generated from the consensus
information of each view, we build a unified affinity matrix as a result of the
propagation. Specifically, we fuse the affinity of different views at a data
instance level instead of a view level. This paper also introduces an approach
to deal with the imbalance between the positive and negative constraints. The
proposed method has been tested in clustering tasks on two publicly available
multi-view data sets to show the superior performance.


title:
AMOS: An Automated Model Order Selection Algorithm for Spectral Graph
  Clustering

abstract:
  One of the longstanding problems in spectral graph clustering (SGC) is the
so-called model order selection problem: automated selection of the correct
number of clusters. This is equivalent to the problem of finding the number of
connected components or communities in an undirected graph. In this paper, we
propose AMOS, an automated model order selection algorithm for SGC. Based on a
recent analysis of clustering reliability for SGC under the random
interconnection model, AMOS works by incrementally increasing the number of
clusters, estimating the quality of identified clusters, and providing a series
of clustering reliability tests. Consequently, AMOS outputs clusters of minimal
model order with statistical clustering reliability guarantees. Comparing to
three other automated graph clustering methods on real-world datasets, AMOS
shows superior performance in terms of multiple external and internal
clustering metrics.


title: The a-function for N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories in three dimensions

abstract:
  Recently, the existence of a candidate a-function for renormalisable theories
in three dimensions was demonstrated for a general theory at leading order and
for a scalar-fermion theory at next-to-leading order. Here we extend this work
by constructing the a-function at next-to-leading order for an N=2
supersymmetric Chern-Simons theory. This increase in precision for the
a-function necessitated the evaluation of the underlying renormalization-group
functions at four loops.