title: Finite-dimensional algebras are (m>2)-Calabi-Yau-tilted

abstract:
  We observe that over an algebraically closed field, any finite-dimensional
algebra is the endomorphism algebra of an m-cluster-tilting object in a
triangulated m-Calabi-Yau category, where m is any integer greater than 2.


title: Purely imaginary quasinormal modes of the Kerr geometry

abstract:
  We present a method for determining the purely imaginary quasinormal modes of
the Kerr geometry. Such modes have previously been explored, but we show that
prior results are incorrect. The method we present, based on the theory of Heun
polynomials, is very general and can be applied to a broad class of problems,
making it potentially useful to all branches of physics. Furthermore, our
application provides an example where the method of matched asymptotic
expansions seems to have failed. A deeper understanding of why it fails in this
case may provide useful insights for other situations.


title: Power-law relations in random networks with communities

abstract:
  Most random graph models are locally tree-like - do not contain short cycles
- rendering them unfit for modeling networks with a community structure. We
introduce the hierarchical configuration model (HCM), a generalization of the
configuration model that includes community structures, while properties such
as the size of the giant component, and the size of the giant percolating
cluster under bond percolation can still be derived analytically. Viewing
real-world networks as realizations of the HCM, we observe two previously
unobserved power-law relations: between the number of edges inside a community
and the community sizes, and between the number of edges going out of a
community and the community sizes. We also relate the power-law exponent $\tau$
of the degree distribution with the power-law exponent of the community size
distribution $\gamma$. In the special case of extremely dense communities
(e.g., complete graphs), this relation takes the simple form $\tau=\gamma-1$.


title: Analog Signal Processing Approach for Coarse and Fine Depth Estimation

abstract:
  Imaging and Image sensors is a field that is continuously evolving. There are
new products coming into the market every day. Some of these have very severe
Size, Weight and Power constraints whereas other devices have to handle very
high computational loads. Some require both these conditions to be met
simultaneously. Current imaging architectures and digital image processing
solutions will not be able to meet these ever increasing demands. There is a
need to develop novel imaging architectures and image processing solutions to
address these requirements. In this work we propose analog signal processing as
a solution to this problem. The analog processor is not suggested as a
replacement to a digital processor but it will be used as an augmentation
device which works in parallel with the digital processor, making the system
faster and more efficient. In order to show the merits of analog processing two
stereo correspondence algorithms are implemented. We propose novel
modifications to the algorithms and new imaging architectures which,
significantly reduces the computation time.


title: Excluded minors are almost fragile

abstract:
  Let $M$ be an excluded minor for the class of $\mathbb{P}$-representable
matroids for some partial field $\mathbb P$, and let $N$ be a $3$-connected
strong $\mathbb{P}$-stabilizer that is non-binary. We prove that either $M$ is
bounded relative to $N$, or, up to replacing $M$ by a $\Delta$-$Y$-equivalent
excluded minor, we can choose a pair of elements $\{a,b\}$ such that either
$M\backslash \{a,b\}$ is $N$-fragile, or $M^* \backslash \{a,b\}$ is
$N^*$-fragile.


title:
Non-uniqueness and h-principle for H\"older-continuous weak solutions of
  the Euler equations

abstract:
  In this paper we address the Cauchy problem for the incompressible Euler
equations in the periodic setting. Based on estimates developed in
[Buckmaster-De Lellis-Isett-Sz\'ekelyhidi], we prove that the set of H\"older
$1\slash 5-\eps$ wild initial data is dense in $L^2$, where we call an initial
datum wild if it admits infinitely many admissible H\"older $1\slash 5-\eps$
weak solutions. We also introduce a new set of stationary flows which we use as
a perturbation profile instead of Beltrami flows to recover arbitrary Reynolds
stresses.


title:
Selective game versions of countable tightness with bounded finite
  selections

abstract:
  For a topological space $X$ and a point $x \in X$, consider the following
game -- related to the property of $X$ being countably tight at $x$. In each
inning $n\in\omega$, the first player chooses a set $A_n$ that clusters at $x$,
and then the second player picks a point $a_n\in A_n$; the second player is the
winner if and only if $x\in\overline{\{a_n:n\in\omega\}}$.
  In this work, we study variations of this game in which the second player is
allowed to choose finitely many points per inning rather than one, but in which
the number of points they are allowed to choose in each inning has been fixed
in advance. Surprisingly, if the number of points allowed per inning is the
same throughout the play, then all of the games obtained in this fashion are
distinct. We also show that a new game is obtained if the number of points the
second player is allowed to pick increases at each inning.


title:
Effects of missing observations on predictive capability of central
  composite designs

abstract:
  Quite often in experimental work, many situations arise where some
observations are lost or become unavailable due to some accidents or cost
constraints. When there are missing observations, some desirable design
properties like orthogonality, rotatability and optimality can be adversely
affected. Some attention has been given, in literature, to investigating the
prediction capability of response surface designs; however, little or no effort
has been devoted to investigating same for such designs when some observations
are missing. This work therefore investigates the impact of a single missing
observation of the various design points: factorial, axial and center points,
on the estimation and predictive capability of Central Composite Designs
(CCDs). It was observed that for each of the designs considered, precision of
model parameter estimates and the design prediction properties were adversely
affected by the missing observations and that the largest loss in precision of
parameters corresponds to a missing factorial point.


title: Quantum homomorphic encryption for polynomial-sized circuits

abstract:
  We present a new scheme for quantum homomorphic encryption which is compact
and allows for efficient evaluation of arbitrary polynomial-sized quantum
circuits. Building on the framework of Broadbent and Jeffery and recent results
in the area of instantaneous non-local quantum computation, we show how to
construct quantum gadgets that allow perfect correction of the errors which
occur during the homomorphic evaluation of T gates on encrypted quantum data.
Our scheme can be based on any classical (leveled) fully homomorphic encryption
(FHE) scheme and requires no computational assumptions besides those already
used by the classical scheme. The size of our quantum gadget depends on the
space complexity of the classical decryption function -- which aligns well with
the current efforts to minimize the complexity of the decryption function.
  Our scheme (or slight variants of it) offers a number of additional
advantages such as ideal compactness, the ability to supply gadgets "on
demand", circuit privacy for the evaluator against passive adversaries, and a
three-round scheme for blind delegated quantum computation which puts only very
limited demands on the quantum abilities of the client.


title: Dirac cones, Floquet side bands and theory of time resolved ARPES

abstract:
  Pump-probe techniques with high temporal resolution allow one to drive a
system of interest out of equilibrium and at the same time, probe its
properties. Recent advances in these techniques open the door to studying new,
non-equilibrium phenomena such as Floquet topological insulators and
superconductors. These advances also necessitate the development of theoretical
tools for understanding the experimental findings and predicting new ones. In
the present work, we provide a theoretical foundation to understand the
non-equilibrium behavior of a Dirac system. We present detailed numerical
calculations and simple analytic results for the evolution of a Dirac system
irradiated by light. These results are framed intuitively by appealing to the
recently revitalized notion of side-bands. We find that, under the application
of circularly polarized light, a Dirac point only ever splits into two copies
of sidebands. Meanwhile, the application of linearly polarized light leaves the
Dirac point intact while producing side bands. Our immediate interest in this
work is in connection to time and angle resolved photoemission experiments,
where we find excellent qualitative agreement between our results and those in
the literature. However, our results are general and may prove useful beyond
this particular application and should be relevant to other pump-probe
experiments.


title:
Close-in planets around giant stars. Lack of hot-Jupiters and prevalence
  of multi-planetary systems

abstract:
  Extrasolar planets abound in almost any possible configuration. However,
until five years ago, there was a lack of planets orbiting closer than 0.5 au
to giant or subgiant stars. Since then, recent detections have started to
populated this regime by confirming 13 planetary systems. We discuss the
properties of these systems in terms of their formation and evolution off the
main sequence. Interestingly, we find that $70.0\pm6.6$ % of the planets in
this regime are inner components of multiplanetary systems. This value is
4.2$\sigma$ higher than for main-sequence hosts, which we find to be
$42.4\pm0.1$ %. The properties of the known planets seem to indicate that the
closest-in planets (a < 0.06 au) to main-sequence stars are massive (i.e., hot
Jupiters) and isolated and that they are subsequently engulfed by their host as
it evolves to the red giant branch, leaving only the predominant population of
multiplanetary systems in orbits 0.06 < a < 0.5 au. We discuss the implications
of this emerging observational trend in the context of formation and evolution
of hot Jupiters.


title:
Experimental signature of the attractive Coulomb force between positive
  and negative magnetic monopoles in spin ice

abstract:
  A non-Ohmic current that grows exponentially with the square root of applied
electric field is well known from thermionic field emission (the Schottky
effect), electrolytes (the second Wien effect) and semiconductors (the
Poole-Frenkel effect). It is a universal signature of the attractive Coulomb
force between positive and negative electrical charges, which is revealed as
the charges are driven in opposite directions by the force of an applied
electric field. Here we apply thermal quenches to spin ice to prepare
metastable populations of bound pairs of positive and negative emergent
magnetic monopoles at millikelvin temperatures. We find that the application of
a magnetic field results in a universal exponential-root field growth of
magnetic current, thus confirming the microscopic Coulomb force between the
magnetic monopole quasiparticles and establishing a magnetic analogue of the
Poole-Frenkel effect. At temperatures above 300 mK, gradual restoration of
kinetic monopole equilibria causes the non-Ohmic current to smoothly evolve
into the high field Wien effect for magnetic monopoles, as confirmed by
comparison to a recent and rigorous theory of the Wien effect in spin ice. Our
results extend the universality of the exponential-root field form into
magnetism and illustrate the power of emergent particle kinetics to describe
far-from equilibrium response in complex systems.


title:
$K \rightarrow \pi \ell^+ \ell^-$ form factor in the Large-N$_c$ and
  cut-off regularization method

abstract:
  Bardeen-Buras-G\'{e}rard have proposed a large N$_c$ method to evaluate
hadronic weak matrix elements to attack for instance the determination of the
$\Delta I= \frac{1}{2}$-rule and $\mathrm{Re}(\frac{\epsilon'}{\epsilon})$.
Here we test this method to the determination of the form factor parameters
$a_+$ and $b_+$ in the decays $K^+ \rightarrow \pi^+ \ell^+ \ell^- $ and $K_S
\rightarrow \pi ^0 \ell^+ \ell^-$. The results are encouraging: in particular
after a complete treatment of Vector Meson Dominance (VMD).


title:
Active spanning trees with bending energy on planar maps and
  SLE-decorated Liouville quantum gravity for $\kappa > 8$

abstract:
  We introduce a two-parameter family of probability measures on spanning trees
of a planar map. One of the parameters controls the activity of the spanning
tree and the other is a measure of its bending energy. When the bending
parameter is 1, we recover the active spanning tree model, which is closely
related to the critical Fortuin--Kasteleyn model. A random planar map decorated
by a spanning tree sampled from our model can be encoded by means of a
generalized version of Sheffield's hamburger-cheeseburger bijection. Using this
encoding, we prove that for a range of parameter values (including the ones
corresponding to maps decorated by an active spanning tree), the
infinite-volume limit of spanning-tree-decorated planar maps sampled from our
model converges in the peanosphere sense, upon rescaling, to an
SLE$_\kappa$-decorated $\gamma$-Liouville quantum cone with $\kappa > 8$ and
$\gamma = 4/\sqrt\kappa \in (0,\sqrt 2)$.


title: Pipe-cleaner Model of Neuronal Network Dynamics

abstract:
  We present a functional model of neuronal network connectivity in which the
single architectural element is the object commonly known in handicraft circles
as a pipe cleaner. We argue that the dual nature of a neuronal circuit - that
it be at times highly robust to external manipulation and yet sufficiently
flexible to allow for learning and adaptation - is embodied in the pipe
cleaner, and thus that a pipe cleaner framework serves as an instructive
scaffold in which to examine network dynamics. Regarding the dynamics
themselves: as pipe cleaners possess no intrinsic dynamics, in our model we
attribute the emergent circuit dynamics to magic. Magic is a strategy that has
been largely neglected in the neuroscience community, and may serve as an
illuminating comparison to the common physics-based approaches. This model
makes predictions that it would be really awesome to test experimentally.
Moreover, the relative simplicity of the pipe cleaner - setting aside the fact
that it comes in an overwhelming variety of colors - renders it an excellent
theoretical building block with which to create simple network models. Also,
they are incredibly cheap when bought wholesale on Amazon.


title: Preconditioning orbital minimization method for planewave discretization

abstract:
  We present an efficient preconditioner for the orbital minimization method
when the Hamiltonian is discretized using planewaves (i.e., pseudospectral
method). This novel preconditioner is based on an approximate Fermi operator
projection by pole expansion, combined with the sparsifying preconditioner to
efficiently evaluate the pole expansion for a wide range of Hamiltonian
operators. Numerical results validate the performance of the new preconditioner
for the orbital minimization method, in particular, the iteration number is
reduced to $O(1)$ and often only a few iterations are enough for convergence.


title: Audio-Visual Speaker Diarization Based on Spatiotemporal Bayesian Fusion

abstract:
  Speaker diarization consists of assigning speech signals to people engaged in
a dialogue. An audio-visual spatiotemporal diarization model is proposed. The
model is well suited for challenging scenarios that consist of several
participants engaged in multi-party interaction while they move around and turn
their heads towards the other participants rather than facing the cameras and
the microphones. Multiple-person visual tracking is combined with multiple
speech-source localization in order to tackle the speech-to-person association
problem. The latter is solved within a novel audio-visual fusion method on the
following grounds: binaural spectral features are first extracted from a
microphone pair, then a supervised audio-visual alignment technique maps these
features onto an image, and finally a semi-supervised clustering method assigns
binaural spectral features to visible persons. The main advantage of this
method over previous work is that it processes in a principled way speech
signals uttered simultaneously by multiple persons. The diarization itself is
cast into a latent-variable temporal graphical model that infers speaker
identities and speech turns, based on the output of an audio-visual association
process, executed at each time slice, and on the dynamics of the diarization
variable itself. The proposed formulation yields an efficient exact inference
procedure. A novel dataset, that contains audio-visual training data as well as
a number of scenarios involving several participants engaged in formal and
informal dialogue, is introduced. The proposed method is thoroughly tested and
benchmarked with respect to several state-of-the art diarization algorithms.


title: Geometric representation of the infimax S-adic family

abstract:
  We construct geometric realizations for the infimax family of substitutions
by generalizing the Rauzy-Canterini-Siegel method for a single substitution to
the S-adic case. The composition of each countably infinite subcollection of
substitutions from the family has an asymptotic fixed sequence whose shift
orbit closure is an infimax minimal set $\Delta^+$. The subcollection of
substitutions also generates an infinite Bratteli-Vershik diagram with
prefix-suffix labeled edges. Paths in the diagram give the Dumont-Thomas
expansion of sequences in $\Delta^+$ which in turn gives a projection onto the
asymptotic stable direction of the infinite product of the Abelianization
matrices. The projections of all sequences from $\Delta^+$ is the generalized
Rauzy fractal which has subpieces corresponding to the images of symbolic
cylinder sets. The intervals containing these subpieces are shown to be
disjoint except at endpoints, and thus the induced map derived from the
symbolic shift translates them. Therefore the process yields an Interval
Translation Map, and the Rauzy fractal is proved to be its attractor.


title: Neural Language Correction with Character-Based Attention

abstract:
  Natural language correction has the potential to help language learners
improve their writing skills. While approaches with separate classifiers for
different error types have high precision, they do not flexibly handle errors
such as redundancy or non-idiomatic phrasing. On the other hand, word and
phrase-based machine translation methods are not designed to cope with
orthographic errors, and have recently been outpaced by neural models.
Motivated by these issues, we present a neural network-based approach to
language correction. The core component of our method is an encoder-decoder
recurrent neural network with an attention mechanism. By operating at the
character level, the network avoids the problem of out-of-vocabulary words. We
illustrate the flexibility of our approach on dataset of noisy, user-generated
text collected from an English learner forum. When combined with a language
model, our method achieves a state-of-the-art $F_{0.5}$-score on the CoNLL 2014
Shared Task. We further demonstrate that training the network on additional
data with synthesized errors can improve performance.


title: A Survey of League Championship Algorithm: Prospects and Challenges

abstract:
  The League Championship Algorithm (LCA) is sport-inspired optimization
algorithm that was introduced by Ali Husseinzadeh Kashan in the year 2009. It
has since drawn enormous interest among the researchers because of its
potential efficiency in solving many optimization problems and real-world
applications. The LCA has also shown great potentials in solving
non-deterministic polynomial time (NP-complete) problems. This survey presents
a brief synopsis of the LCA literatures in peer-reviewed journals, conferences
and book chapters. These research articles are then categorized according to
indexing in the major academic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore
and the Google Scholar). The analysis was also done to explore the prospects
and the challenges of the algorithm and its acceptability among researchers.
This systematic categorization can be used as a basis for future studies.


title: Bound states of spinning black holes in five dimensions

abstract:
  We find and study supergravity BPS bound states of five-dimensional spinning
black holes in asymptotically flat spacetime. These solutions follow from
multi-string solutions in six-dimensional minimal supergravity and can be
uplifted to F-theory or M-theory. We analyze the regularity conditions and work
out the example of a bound state of two black holes in detail. The bound state
is supported by fluxes through nontrivial topologies exterior to the horizons
and KK momentum. Furthermore, we determine the entropy and compare with other
macroscopic BPS solutions.


title: Differential Algebra for Model Comparison

abstract:
  We present a method for rejecting competing models from noisy time-course
data that does not rely on parameter inference. First we characterize ordinary
differential equation models in only measurable variables using differential
algebra elimination. Next we extract additional information from the given data
using Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) and then transform the differential
invariants. We develop a test using linear algebra and statistics to reject
transformed models with the given data in a parameter-free manner. This
algorithm exploits the information about transients that is encoded in the
model's structure. We demonstrate the power of this approach by discriminating
between different models from mathematical biology.


title: Berends-Giele recursion for double-color-ordered amplitudes

abstract:
  Tree-level double-color-ordered amplitudes are computed using Berends--Giele
recursion relations applied to the bi-adjoint cubic scalar theory. The standard
notion of Berends--Giele currents is generalized to double-currents and their
recursions are derived from a perturbiner expansion of linearized fields that
solve the non-linear field equations. Two applications are given. Firstly, we
prove that the entries of the inverse KLT matrix are equal to Berends--Giele
double-currents (and are therefore easy to compute). And secondly, a simple
formula to generate tree-level BCJ-satisfying numerators for arbitrary
multiplicity is proposed by evaluating the field-theory limit of tree-level
string amplitudes for various color orderings using double-color-ordered
amplitudes.


title:
Robust Head-Pose Estimation Based on Partially-Latent Mixture of Linear
  Regressions

abstract:
  Head-pose estimation has many applications, such as social event analysis,
human-robot and human-computer interaction, driving assistance, and so forth.
Head-pose estimation is challenging because it must cope with changing
illumination conditions, variabilities in face orientation and in appearance,
partial occlusions of facial landmarks, as well as bounding-box-to-face
alignment errors. We propose tu use a mixture of linear regressions with
partially-latent output. This regression method learns to map high-dimensional
feature vectors (extracted from bounding boxes of faces) onto the joint space
of head-pose angles and bounding-box shifts, such that they are robustly
predicted in the presence of unobservable phenomena. We describe in detail the
mapping method that combines the merits of unsupervised manifold learning
techniques and of mixtures of regressions. We validate our method with three
publicly available datasets and we thoroughly benchmark four variants of the
proposed algorithm with several state-of-the-art head-pose estimation methods.


title: Stimulated Black Hole Evaporation

abstract:
  Black holes are extreme expressions of gravity. Their existence is predicted
by Einstein's theory of general relativity and is supported by observations.
Black holes obey quantum mechanics and evaporate spontaneously. Here it is
shown that a mass rate $R_f\sim 3\times 10^{-8} (M_0/M)^{1/2}$ $M_0$ yr$^{-1}$
onto the horizon of a black hole with mass $M$ (in units of solar mass $M_0$)
stimulates a black hole into rapid evaporation. Specifically, $\sim 3 M_0$
black holes can emit a large fraction of their mass, and explode, in $M/R_f
\sim 3\times 10^7 (M/M_0)^{3/2}$ yr. These stimulated black holes radiate a
spectral line power $P \sim 2\times 10^{39} (M_0/M)^{1/2}$ erg s$^{-1}$, at a
wavelength $\lambda \sim 3\times 10^5 (M/M_0)$ cm. This prediction can be
observationally verified.


title:
Double integrals on a weighted projective plane and the Hilbert modular
  functions for $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$

abstract:
  The aim of this paper is to give an explicit extension of the classical
elliptic integrals to the Hilbert modular case for $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$. We
study a family of Kummer surfaces corresponding to the Humbert surface of
invariant $5$ with two complex parameters. Our Kummer surface is given by a
double covering of the weighted projective space $\mathbb{P}(1:1:2)$ branched
along a parabola and a quintic curve. The period mapping for our family is
given by double integrals of an algebraic function on chambers coming from an
arrangement of a parabola and a quintic curve in $\mathbb{C}^2$.


title:
Period differential equations for the families of $K3$ surfaces with $2$
  parameters derived from the reflexive polytopes

abstract:
  In this paper, we study the period mappings for the families of $K3$ surfaces
derived from the $3$-dimensional $5$-verticed reflexive polytopes. We determine
the lattice structures, the period differential equations and the projective
monodromy groups.
  Moreover, we show that one of our period differential equations coincides
with the unifomizing differential equation of the Hilbert modular orbifold for
the field $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$.


title: Eigenvalue bounds for the fractional Laplacian: A review

abstract:
  We review some recent results on eigenvalues of fractional Laplacians and
fractional Schr\"odinger operators. We discuss, in particular, Lieb-Thirring
inequalities and their generalizations, as well as semi-classical asymptotics.


abstract:
  In this note we prove some structural properties of all the A1-homotopy
invariants of corner skew Laurent polynomial algebras. As an application, we
compute de mod-l algebraic K-theory of Leavitt path algebras using solely the
kernel/cokernel of the incidence matrix. This leads naturally to some vanishing
and divisibility properties of the algebraic K-theory of these algebras.


title: Pessimistic Uplift Modeling

abstract:
  Uplift modeling is a machine learning technique that aims to model treatment
effects heterogeneity. It has been used in business and health sectors to
predict the effect of a specific action on a given individual. Despite its
advantages, uplift models show high sensitivity to noise and disturbance, which
leads to unreliable results. In this paper we show different approaches to
address the problem of uplift modeling, we demonstrate how disturbance in data
can affect uplift measurement. We propose a new approach, we call it
Pessimistic Uplift Modeling, that minimizes disturbance effects. We compared
our approach with the existing uplift methods, on simulated and real data-sets.
The experiments show that our approach outperforms the existing approaches,
especially in the case of high noise data environment.


title: Hierarchical Quickest Change Detection via Surrogates

abstract:
  Change detection (CD) in time series data is a critical problem as it reveal
changes in the underlying generative processes driving the time series. Despite
having received significant attention, one important unexplored aspect is how
to efficiently utilize additional correlated information to improve the
detection and the understanding of changepoints. We propose hierarchical
quickest change detection (HQCD), a framework that formalizes the process of
incorporating additional correlated sources for early changepoint detection.
The core ideas behind HQCD are rooted in the theory of quickest detection and
HQCD can be regarded as its novel generalization to a hierarchical setting. The
sources are classified into targets and surrogates, and HQCD leverages this
structure to systematically assimilate observed data to update changepoint
statistics across layers. The decision on actual changepoints are provided by
minimizing the delay while still maintaining reliability bounds. In addition,
HQCD also uncovers interesting relations between changes at targets from
changes across surrogates. We validate HQCD for reliability and performance
against several state-of-the-art methods for both synthetic dataset (known
changepoints) and several real-life examples (unknown changepoints). Our
experiments indicate that we gain significant robustness without loss of
detection delay through HQCD. Our real-life experiments also showcase the
usefulness of the hierarchical setting by connecting the surrogate sources
(such as Twitter chatter) to target sources (such as Employment related
protests that ultimately lead to major uprisings).


title: Dimers and Imaginary geometry

abstract:
  We present a general result which shows that the winding of the branches in a
uniform spanning tree on a planar graph converge in the limit of fine mesh size
to a Gaussian free field. The result holds true assuming only convergence of
simple random walk to Brownian motion and a Russo-Seymour-Welsh type crossing
estimate. As an application, we prove universality of the fluctuations of the
height function associated to the dimer model, in several situations. This
includes the case of lozenge tilings with boundary conditions lying in a plane,
and Temperleyan domains in isoradial graphs (recovering a recent result of Li).
The robustness of our approach, which is a key novelty of this paper, comes
from the fact that the exactly solvable nature of the model plays only a minor
role in the analysis. Instead, we rely on a connection to imaginary geometry,
where the limit of a uniform spanning tree is viewed as a set of flow lines
associated to a Gaussian free field.


title: Demystifying the Holographic Mystique

abstract:
  Thus far, in spite of many interesting developments, the overall progress
towards a systematic study and classification of various 'strange' metallic
states of matter has been rather limited. To that end, it was argued that a
recent proliferation of the ideas of holographic correspondence originating
from string theory might offer a possible way out of the stalemate. However,
after almost a decade of intensive studies into the proposed extensions of the
holographic conjecture to a variety of condensed matter problems, the validity
of this intriguing approach remains largely unknown. This discussion aims at
ascertaining its true status and elucidating the conditions under which some of
its predictions may indeed be right (albeit, possibly, for a wrong reason).


title: Object Boundary Guided Semantic Segmentation

abstract:
  Semantic segmentation is critical to image content understanding and object
localization. Recent development in fully-convolutional neural network (FCN)
has enabled accurate pixel-level labeling. One issue in previous works is that
the FCN based method does not exploit the object boundary information to
delineate segmentation details since the object boundary label is ignored in
the network training. To tackle this problem, we introduce a double branch
fully convolutional neural network, which separates the learning of the
desirable semantic class labeling with mask-level object proposals guided by
relabeled boundaries. This network, called object boundary guided FCN
(OBG-FCN), is able to integrate the distinct properties of object shape and
class features elegantly in a fully convolutional way with a designed masking
architecture. We conduct experiments on the PASCAL VOC segmentation benchmark,
and show that the end-to-end trainable OBG-FCN system offers great improvement
in optimizing the target semantic segmentation quality.


title:
On the de Rham homology and cohomology of a complete local ring in
  equicharacteristic zero

abstract:
  Let $A$ be a complete local ring with a coefficient field $k$ of
characteristic zero, and let $Y$ be its spectrum. The de Rham homology and
cohomology of $Y$ have been defined by R. Hartshorne using a choice of
surjection $R \rightarrow A$ where $R$ is a complete regular local $k$-algebra:
the resulting objects are independent of the chosen surjection. We prove that
the Hodge-de Rham spectral sequences abutting to the de Rham homology and
cohomology of $Y$, beginning with their $E_2$-terms, are independent of the
chosen surjection (up to a degree shift in the homology case) and consist of
finite-dimensional $k$-spaces. These $E_2$-terms therefore provide invariants
of $A$ analogous to the Lyubeznik numbers. As part of our proofs we develop a
theory of Matlis duality in relation to $\mathcal{D}$-modules that is of
independent interest. Some of the highlights of this theory are that if $R$ is
a complete regular local ring containing $k$ and $\mathcal{D}$ is the ring of
$k$-linear differential operators on $R$, then the Matlis dual $D(M)$ of any
left $\mathcal{D}$-module $M$ can again be given a structure of left
$\mathcal{D}$-module, and if $M$ is a holonomic $\mathcal{D}$-module, then the
de Rham cohomology spaces of $D(M)$ are $k$-dual to those of $M$.


title:
Schubert polynomials, slide polynomials, Stanley symmetric functions and
  quasi-Yamanouchi pipe dreams

abstract:
  We introduce two new bases for polynomials that lift monomial and fundamental
quasisymmetric functions to the full polynomial ring. By defining a new
condition on pipe dreams, called quasi-Yamanouchi, we give a positive
combinatorial rule for expanding Schubert polynomials into these new bases that
parallels the expansion of Schur functions into fundamental quasisymmetric
functions. As a result, we obtain a refinement of the stable limits of Schubert
polynomials to Stanley symmetric functions. We also give combinatorial rules
for the positive structure constants of these bases that generalize the
quasi-shuffle product and shuffle product, respectively. We use this to give a
Littlewood--Richardson rule for expanding a product of Schubert polynomials
into fundamental slide polynomials and to give formulas for products of Stanley
symmetric functions in terms of Schubert structure constants.


title: Universal Bounds on Charged States in 2d CFT and 3d Gravity

abstract:
  We derive an explicit bound on the dimension of the lightest charged state in
two dimensional conformal field theories with a global abelian symmetry. We
find that the bound scales with $c$ and provide examples that parametrically
saturate this bound. We also prove than any such theory must contain a state
with charge-to-mass ratio above a minimal lower bound. We comment on the
implications for charged states in three dimensional theories of gravity.


title: The Diversity of Growth Histories of Milky Way-mass Galaxies

abstract:
  We use the semi-analytic model developed by Henriques et al. (2015) to
explore the origin of star formation history diversity for galaxies that lie at
the centre of their dark matter haloes and have present-day stellar masses in
the range 5-8 $\times$ 10$^{10}$ M$_{\odot}$, similar to that of the Milky Way.
In this model, quenching is the dominant physical mechanism for introducing
scatter in the growth histories of these galaxies. We find that present-day
quiescent galaxies have a larger variety of growth histories than star-formers
since they underwent 'staggered quenching' - a term describing the correlation
between the time of quenching and present-day halo mass. While halo mass
correlates broadly with quiescence, we find that quiescence is primarily a
function of black hole mass, where galaxies quench when heating from their
active galactic nuclei becomes sufficient to offset the redshift-dependent
cooling rate. In this model, the emergence of a prominent quiescent population
is the main process that flattens the stellar mass-halo mass relation at mass
scales at or above that of the Milky Way.


title:
Intriguing symmetry in statistical structures of Siberian larch
  transcriptome

abstract:
  The paper presents a novel approach to infer a structuredness in a set of
symbol sequences such as transcriptome nucleotide sequences. A distribution
pattern of triplet frequencies in the Siberian larch (\textit{Larix
sibirica}~Ledeb.) transcriptome sequences was investigated in the presented
study. It was found that the larch transcriptome demonstrates a number of
unexpected symmetries in the statistical and combinatorial properties.


title:
Characterization of Large Scale Functional Brain Networks During
  Ketamine-Medetomidine Anesthetic Induction

abstract:
  Several experiments evidence that specialized brain regions functionally
interact and reveal that the brain processes and integrates information in a
specific and structured manner. Networks can be used to model brain functional
activities constituting a way to characterize and quantify this structured form
of organization. Reports state that different physiological states or even
diseases that affect the central nervous system may be associated to
alterations on those networks, that might reflect in graphs of different
architectures. However, the relation of their structure to different states or
conditions of the organism is not well comprehended. Thus, experiments that
involve the estimation of functional neural networks of subjects exposed to
different controlled conditions are of great relevance. Within this context,
this research has sought to model large scale functional brain networks during
an anesthetic induction process. The experiment was based on intra-cranial
recordings of neural activities of an old world macaque of the species Macaca
fuscata. Neural activity was recorded during a Ketamine-Medetomidine anesthetic
induction process. Networks were serially estimated in time intervals of five
seconds. Changes were observed in various networks properties within about one
and a half minutes after the administration of the anesthetics. These changes
reveal the occurrence of a transition on the networks architecture. During
general anesthesia a reduction in the functional connectivity and network
integration capabilities were verified in both local and global levels. It was
also observed that the brain shifted to a highly specific and dynamic state.
The results bring empirical evidence and report the relation of the induced
state of anesthesia to properties of functional networks, thus, they contribute
for the elucidation of some new aspects of neural correlates of consciousness.


title: Sagittarius A* as an Origin of the Galactic PeV Cosmic Rays?

abstract:
  Supernova remnants (SNRs) have commonly been considered as a source of the
observed PeV cosmic rays (CRs) or a Galactic PeV particle accelerator
("Pevatron"). In this work, we study Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which is the
low-luminosity active galactic nucleus of the Milky Way Galaxy, as another
possible canditate of the Pevatron, because it sometimes became very active in
the past. We assume that a large number of PeV CRs were injected by Sgr A* at
the outburst about 10^7 yr ago when the Fermi bubbles were created. We
constrain the diffusion coefficient for the CRs in the Galactic halo on the
condition that the CRs have arrived on the Earth by now, while a fairly large
fraction of them have escaped from the halo. Based on a diffusion-halo model,
we solve a diffusion equation for the CRs and compare the results with the CR
spectrum on the Earth. The observed small anisotropy of the arrival directions
of CRs may be explained if the diffusion coefficient in the Galactic disk is
smaller than that in the halo. Our model predicts that a boron-to-carbon ratio
should be energy-independent around the knee, where the CRs from Sgr A* become
dominant. It is unlikely that the spectrum of the CRs accelerated at the
outburst is represented by a power-law similar to the one for those responsible
for the gamma-ray emission from the central molecular zone (CMZ) around the
Galactic center.


title: Pulsed Accretion onto Eccentric and Circular Binaries

abstract:
  We present numerical simulations of circumbinary accretion onto eccentric and
circular binaries using the moving-mesh code AREPO. This is the first set of
simulations to tackle the problem of binary accretion using a finite-volume
scheme on a freely moving mesh, which allows for accurate measurements of
accretion onto individual stars for arbitrary binary eccentricity. While
accretion onto a circular binary shows bursts with period of ~5 times the
binary period P_b,accretion onto an eccentric binary is predominantly modulated
at the period ~1P_b. For an equal-mass circular binary, the accretion rates
onto individual stars are quite similar to each other, following the same
variable pattern in time. By contrast, for eccentric binaries, one of the stars
can accrete at a rate 10-20 times larger than its companion. This "symmetry
breaking" between the stars, however, alternates over timescales of order 200
P_b, and can be attributed to a slowly precessing, eccentric circumbinary disk.
Over longer timescales, the net accretion rates onto individual stars are the
same, reaching a quasi-steady state with the circumbinary disk. These results
have important implications for the accretion behavior of binary T-Tauri stars
and supermassive binary black holes.


title:
The Distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background Spectrum Due to
  Intergalactic Dust

abstract:
  Infrared emission from intergalactic dust might compromise the ability of
future experiments to detect subtle spectral distortions in the Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB) from the early Universe. We provide the first
estimate of foreground contamination of the CMB signal due to diffuse dust
emission in the intergalactic medium. We use models of the extragalactic
background light to calculate the intensity of intergalactic dust emission and
find that emission by intergalactic dust at redshifts z<0.5 exceeds the
sensitivity of the planned Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) to CMB
spectral distortions by 1-3 orders of magnitude. We place an upper limit of
0.23% on the contribution to the far-infrared background from intergalactic
dust emission.


title:
Dynamical ejections of massive stars from young star clusters under
  diverse initial conditions

abstract:
  We study the effects of initial conditions of star clusters and their massive
star population on dynamical ejections of massive stars from star clusters up
to an age of 3 Myr. We use a large set of direct N-body calculations for
moderately massive star clusters (Mecl=$10^{3.5}$ Msun). We vary the initial
conditions of the calculations such as the initial half-mass radius of the
clusters, initial binary populations for massive stars and initial mass
segregation. We find that the initial density is the most influential parameter
for the ejection fraction of the massive systems. The clusters with an initial
half-mass radius of 0.1 (0.3) pc can eject up to 50% (30%) of their O-star
systems on average. Most of the models show that the average ejection fraction
decreases with decreasing stellar mass. For clusters efficient at ejecting O
stars, the mass function of the ejected stars is top-heavy compared to the
given initial mass function (IMF), while the mass function of stars that remain
in the cluster becomes slightly steeper (top-light) than the IMF. The top-light
mass functions of stars in 3 Myr old clusters in our N-body models agree well
with the mean mass function of young intermediate-mass clusters in M31, as
reported previously. We show that the multiplicity fraction of the ejected
massive stars can be as high as 60%, that massive high-order multiple systems
can be dynamically ejected, and that high-order multiples become common
especially in the cluster. We also discuss binary populations of the ejected
massive systems. When a large kinematic survey of massive field stars becomes
available, for instance through Gaia, our results may be used to constrain the
birth configuration of massive stars in star clusters. (Abridged)


title: Stop Search in the Compressed Region via Semileptonic Decays

abstract:
  In supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, the superpartners of the
top quark (stops) play the crucial role in addressing the naturalness problem.
For direct pair-production of stops with each stop decaying into a top quark
plus the lightest neutralino, the standard stop searches have difficulty
finding the stop for a compressed spectrum where the mass difference between
the stop and the lightest neutralino is close to the top quark mass, because
the events look too similar to the large $t\bar{t}$ background. With an
additional hard ISR jet, the two neutralinos from the stop decays are boosted
in the opposite direction and they can give rise to some missing transverse
energy. This may be used to distinguish the stop decays from the backgrounds.
In this paper we study the semileptonic decay of such signal events for the
compressed mass spectrum. Although the neutrino from the $W$ decay also
produces some missing transverse energy, its momentum can be reconstructed from
the kinematic assumptions and mass-shell conditions. It can then be subtracted
from the total missing transverse momentum to obtain the neutralino
contribution. Because it suffers from less backgrounds, we show that the
semileptonic decay channel has a better discovery reach than the fully hadronic
decay channel along the compressed line $m_{\tilde{t}} -
m_{\tilde{\chi}}\approx m_t$. With 300 $\text{fb}^{-1}$, the 13 TeV LHC can
discover the stop up to 500 GeV, covering the most natural parameter space
region.


title:
Stellar mass functions: methods, systematics and results for the local
  Universe

abstract:
  We present a comprehensive method for determining stellar mass functions, and
apply it to samples in the local Universe. We combine the classical 1/Vmax
approach with STY, a parametric maximum likelihood method and SWML, a
non-parametric maximum likelihood technique. In the parametric approach, we are
assuming that the stellar mass function can be modelled by either a single or a
double Schechter function and we use a likelihood ratio test to determine which
model provides a better fit to the data. We discuss how the stellar mass
completeness as a function of z biases the three estimators and how it can
affect, especially the low mass end of the stellar mass function. We apply our
method to SDSS DR7 data in the redshift range from 0.02 to 0.06. We find that
the entire galaxy sample is best described by a double Schechter function with
the following parameters: $\log (M^{*}/M_\odot) = 10.79 \pm 0.01$, $\log
(\Phi^{*}_1/\mathrm{h^3\ Mpc^{-3}}) = -3.31 \pm 0.20$, $\alpha_1 = -1.69 \pm
0.10$, $\log (\Phi^{*}_2/\mathrm{h^3\ Mpc^{-3}}) = -2.01 \pm 0.28$ and
$\alpha_2 = -0.79 \pm 0.04$. We also use morphological classifications from
Galaxy Zoo and halo mass, overdensity, central/satellite, colour and sSFR
measurements to split the galaxy sample into over 130 subsamples. We determine
and present the stellar mass functions and the best fit Schechter function
parameters for each of these subsamples.


title: Baryogenesis via Particle-Antiparticle Oscillations

abstract:
  CP violation, which is crucial for producing the baryon asymmetry of the
Universe, is enhanced in particle-antiparticle oscillations. We study
particle-antiparticle oscillations (of a particle with mass O(100 GeV)) with CP
violation in the early Universe in the presence of interactions with O(ab-fb)
cross-sections. We show that, if baryon-number-violating interactions exist, a
baryon asymmetry can be produced via out-of-equilibrium decays of oscillating
particles. As a concrete example we study a $U(1)_R$-symmetric,
R-parity-violating SUSY model with pseudo-Dirac gauginos, which undergo
particle-antiparticle oscillations. Taking bino to be the lightest
$U(1)_R$-symmetric particle, and assuming it decays via baryon-number-violating
interactions, we show that bino-antibino oscillations can produce the baryon
asymmetry of the Universe.


title: Warm Jupiters from secular planet-planet interactions

abstract:
  Most warm Jupiters (gas-giant planets with $0.1~{\rm AU}\lesssim a \lesssim1$
AU) have pericenter distances that are too large for significant orbital
migration by tidal friction. We study the possibility that the warm Jupiters
are undergoing secular eccentricity oscillations excited by an outer companion
(a planet or star) in an eccentric and/or mutually inclined orbit. In this
model the warm Jupiters migrate periodically, in the high-eccentricity phase of
the oscillation when the pericenter distance is small, but are typically
observed at much lower eccentricities. We show that the steady-state
eccentricity distribution of the warm Jupiters migrating by this mechanism is
approximately flat, which is consistent with the observed distribution if and
only if we restrict the sample to warm Jupiters that have outer companions
detected by radial-velocity surveys. The eccentricity distribution of warm
Jupiters without companions exhibits a peak at low eccentricities ($e\lesssim
0.2$) that must be explained by a different formation mechanism. Based on a
population-synthesis study we find that high-eccentricity migration excited by
an outer planetary companion (i) can account for $\sim20\%$ of the warm
Jupiters and most of the warm Jupiters with $e\gtrsim 0.4$, a fraction that is
consistent with the observed population of warm Jupiters with outer companions;
(ii) can produce most of the observed population of hot Jupiters, with a
semimajor axis distribution that matches the observations, but fails to account
adequately for $\sim 60\%$ of hot Jupiters with projected obliquities $\lesssim
20^\circ$. Thus $\sim 20\%$ of the warm Jupiters and $\sim 60\%$ of the hot
Jupiters can be produced by high-eccentricity migration. We also provide
predictions for the expected mutual inclinations and spin-orbit angles of the
planetary systems with hot and warm Jupiters produced by high-eccentricity
migration.


title: Mordell-Weil Torsion in the Mirror of Multi-Sections

abstract:
  We give further evidence that genus-one fibers with multi-sections are mirror
dual to fibers with Mordell-Weil torsion. In the physics of F-theory
compactifications this implies a relation between models with a non-simply
connected gauge group and those with discrete symmetries. We provide a
combinatorial explanation of this phenomenon for toric hypersurfaces. In
particular this leads to a criterion to deduce Mordell-Weil torsion directly
from the polytope. For all 3134 complete intersection genus-one curves in
three-dimensional toric ambient spaces we confirm the conjecture by explicit
calculation. We comment on several new features of these models: The
Weierstrass forms of many models can be identified by relabeling the
coefficient sections. This reduces the number of models to 1024 inequivalent
ones. We give an example of a fiber which contains only non-toric sections one
of which becomes toric when the fiber is realized in a different ambient space.
Similarly a singularity in codimension one can have a toric resolution in one
representation while it is non-toric in another. Finally we give a list of 24
inequivalent genus-one fibers that simultaneously exhibit multi-sections and
Mordell-Weil torsion in the Jacobian. We discuss a self-mirror example from
this list in detail.


title:
All Tree-Level MHV Form Factors in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM from Twistor
  Space

abstract:
  We incorporate all gauge-invariant local composite operators into the
twistor-space formulation of N=4 SYM theory, detailing and expanding on ideas
we presented recently in arXiv:1603.04471. The vertices for these operators
contain infinitely many terms and we show how they can be constructed by taking
suitable derivatives of a light-like Wilson loop in twistor space and shrinking
it down to a point. In particular, these vertices directly yield the tree-level
MHV super form factors of all composite operators in N=4 SYM theory.


title:
Interacting supernovae and supernova impostors. LSQ13zm: an outburst
  heralds the death of a massive star

abstract:
  We report photometric and spectroscopic observations of the optical transient
LSQ13zm. Historical data reveal the presence of an eruptive episode (that we
label as `2013a') followed by a much brighter outburst (`2013b') three weeks
later, that we argue to be the genuine supernova explosion. This sequence of
events closely resemble those observed for SN2010mc and (in 2012) SN2009ip. The
absolute magnitude reached by LSQ13zm during 2013a
($M_R=-14.87\pm0.25\,\rm{mag}$) is comparable with those of supernova
impostors, while that of the 2013b event ($M_R=-18.46\pm0.21\,\rm{mag}$) is
consistent with those of interacting supernovae. Our spectra reveal the
presence of a dense and structured circumstellar medium, probably produced
through numerous pre-supernova mass-loss events. In addition, we find evidence
for high-velocity ejecta, with a fraction of gas expelled at more than
20000\kms. The spectra of LSQ13zm show remarkable similarity with those of
well-studied core-collapse supernovae. From the analysis of the available
photometric and spectroscopic data, we conclude that we first observed the last
event of an eruptive sequence from a massive star, likely a Luminous Blue
Variable, which a short time later exploded as a core-collapse supernova. The
detailed analysis of archival images suggest that the host galaxy is a
star-forming Blue Dwarf Compact Galaxy.


title: A review of indirect searches for particle dark matter

abstract:
  The indirect detection of dark matter annihilation and decay using
observations of photons, charged cosmic rays, and neutrinos offers a promising
means of identifying the particle nature of this elusive component of the
universe. The last decade has seen substantial advances in observational data
sets, complemented by new insights from numerical simulations, which together
have enabled for the first time strong constraints on dark matter particle
models, and have revealed several intriguing hints of possible signals. This
review provides an introduction to indirect detection methods and an overview
of recent results in the field.


title:
Swift coalescence of supermassive black holes in cosmological mergers of
  massive galaxies

abstract:
  Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous in galaxies with a sizable
mass. It is expected that a pair of SMBHs originally in the nuclei of two
merging galaxies would form a binary and eventually coalesce via a burst of
gravitational waves. So far theoretical models and simulations have been unable
to predict directly the SMBH merger timescale from ab-initio galaxy formation
theory, focusing only on limited phases of the orbital decay of SMBHs under
idealized conditions of the galaxy hosts. The predicted SMBH merger timescales
are long, of order Gyrs, which could be problematic for future gravitational
wave searches. Here we present the first multi-scale $\Lambda$CDM cosmological
simulation that follows the orbital decay of a pair of SMBHs in a merger of two
typical massive galaxies at $z\sim3$, all the way to the final coalescence
driven by gravitational wave emission. The two SMBHs, with masses $\sim10^{8}$
M$_{\odot}$, settle quickly in the nucleus of the merger remnant. The remnant
is triaxial and extremely dense due to the dissipative nature of the merger and
the intrinsic compactness of galaxies at high redshift. Such properties
naturally allow a very efficient hardening of the SMBH binary. The SMBH merger
occurs in only $\sim10$ Myr after the galactic cores have merged, which is two
orders of magnitude smaller than the Hubble time.


title:
Return to [Log-]Normalcy: Rethinking Quenching, The Star Formation Main
  Sequence, and Perhaps Much More

abstract:
  Knowledge of galaxy evolution rests on cross-sectional observations of
different objects at different times. Understanding of galaxy evolution rests
on longitudinal interpretations of how these data relate to individual objects
moving through time. The connection between the two is often assumed to be
clear, but we use a simple "physics-free" model to show that it is not, and
that exploring its nuances can yield new insights. Comprising nothing more than
$2094$ loosely constrained lognormal star formation histories (SFHs), the model
faithfully reproduces the following data it was not designed to match: stellar
mass functions at $z\leq8$; the slope of the star formation rate/stellar mass
relation (the SF "Main Sequence") at $z\leq6$; the mean ${\rm sSFR}(\equiv{\rm
SFR}/M_*)$ of low-mass galaxies at $z\leq7$; "fast-" and "slow-track"
quenching; downsizing; and a correlation between formation timescale and ${\rm
sSFR}(M_*; t)$ similar to results from simulations that provides a natural
connection to bulge growth. We take these findings---which suggest that
quenching is the natural downturn of all SFHs affecting galaxies at rates/times
correlated with their densities---to mean that: (1) models in which galaxies
are diversified on Hubble timescales by something like initial conditions rival
the dominant grow-and-quench framework as good descriptions of the data; or (2)
absent spatial information, many metrics of galaxy evolution are too
undiscriminating---if not inherently misleading---to confirm a unique
explanation. We outline future tests of our model but stress that, even if
ultimately incorrect, it illustrates how exploring different paradigms can aid
learning and, we hope, more detailed modeling efforts.


title: Radio SNRs in the Magellanic Clouds as probes of shock microphysics

abstract:
  A large number of supernova remnants (SNRs) in our Galaxy and galaxies nearby
have been resolved in various radio bands. This radio emission is thought to be
produced via synchrotron emission from electrons accelerated by the shock that
the supernova ejecta drives into the external medium. Here we consider the
sample of radio SNRs in the Magellanic Clouds. Given the size and radio flux of
a SNR, we seek to constrain the fraction of shocked fluid energy in non-thermal
electrons ($\epsilon_e$) and magnetic field ($\epsilon_B$), and find
$\epsilon_e \epsilon_B \sim 10^{-3}$. These estimates do not depend on the
largely uncertain values of the external density and the age of the SNR. We
develop a Monte Carlo scheme that reproduces the observed distribution of radio
fluxes and sizes of the population of radio SNRs in the Magellanic Clouds. This
simple model provides a framework that could potentially be applied to other
galaxies with complete radio SNRs samples.


title:
The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: The clustering of submillimetre
  galaxies in the UKIDSS UDS field

abstract:
  Submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) are among the most luminous dusty galaxies in
the Universe, but their true nature remains unclear; are SMGs the progenitors
of the massive elliptical galaxies we see in the local Universe, or are they
just a short-lived phase among more typical star-forming galaxies? To explore
this problem further, we investigate the clustering of SMGs identified in the
SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey. We use a catalogue of submillimetre
($850\mu$m) source identifications derived using a combination of radio
counterparts and colour/IR selection to analyse a sample of 914 SMGs in the
UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS), making this the largest high redshift sample of
these galaxies to date. Using angular cross-correlation techniques, we estimate
the halo masses for this large sample of SMGs and compare them with passive and
star-forming galaxies selected in the same field. We find that SMGs, on
average, occupy high-mass dark matter halos (M$_{\text{halo}}
>10^{13}$M$_{\odot}$) at redshifts $z > 2.5$, consistent with being the
progenitors of massive quiescent galaxies in present-day galaxy clusters. We
also find evidence of downsizing, in which SMG activity shifts to lower mass
halos at lower redshifts. In terms of their clustering and halo masses, SMGs
appear to be consistent with other star-forming galaxies at a given redshift.


title:
Against the Wind: Radio Light Curves of Type Ia Supernovae Interacting
  with Low-Density Circumstellar Shells

abstract:
  For decades, a wide variety of observations spanning the radio through
optical and on to the x-ray have attempted to uncover signs of type Ia
supernovae (SNe Ia) interacting with a circumstellar medium (CSM). The goal of
these studies is to constrain the nature of the hypothesized SN Ia mass-donor
companion. A continuous CSM is typically assumed when interpreting observations
of interaction. However, while such models have been successfully applied to
core-collapse SNe, the assumption of continuity may not be accurate for SNe Ia,
as shells of CSM could be formed by pre-supernova eruptions (novae). In this
work, we model the interaction of SNe with a spherical, low density,
finite-extent CSM and create a suite of synthetic radio synchrotron light
curves. We find that CSM shells produce sharply peaked light curves, and
identify a fiducial set of models that all obey a common evolution and can be
used to generate radio light curves for interaction with an arbitrary shell.
The relations obeyed by the fiducial models can be used to deduce CSM
properties from radio observations; we demonstrate this by applying them to the
non-detections of SN 2011fe and SN 2014J. Finally, we explore a multiple shell
CSM configuration and describe its more complicated dynamics and resultant
radio light curves.


title:
Supermassive black holes in the EAGLE Universe. Revealing the
  observables of their growth

abstract:
  We investigate the evolution of supermassive black holes in the `Evolution
and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments' (EAGLE) cosmological
hydrodynamic simulations. The largest of the EAGLE volumes covers a $(100 \,\rm
cMpc)^3$ and includes state-of-the-art physical models for star formation and
black hole growth that depend only on local gas properties. We focus on the
black hole mass function, Eddington ratio distribution and the implied duty
cycle of nuclear activity. The simulation is broadly consistent with
observational constraints on these quantities. In order to make a more direct
comparison with observational data, we calculate the soft and hard X-ray
luminosity functions of the active galactic nuclei (AGN). Between redshifts $0$
and $1$, the simulation is in agreement with data. At higher redshifts, the
simulation tends to underpredict the luminosities of the brightest observed
AGN. This may be due to the limited volume of the simulation, or a fundamental
deficiency of the underlying model. It seems unlikely that additional
unresolved variability can account for this difference. The simulation shows a
similar `downsizing' of the AGN population as seen in observational surveys.


title: Fabrication of all diamond scanning probes for nanoscale magnetometry

abstract:
  The electronic spin of the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond forms an
atomically sized, highly sensitive sensor for magnetic fields. To harness the
full potential of individual NV centers for sensing with high sensitivity and
nanoscale spatial resolution, NV centers have to be incorporated into scanning
probe structures enabling controlled scanning in close proximity to the sample
surface. Here, we present an optimized procedure to fabricate single-crystal,
all-diamond scanning probes starting from commercially available diamond and
show a highly efficient and robust approach for integrating these devices in a
generic atomic force microscope. Our scanning probes consisting of a scanning
nanopillar (200 nm diameter, $1-2\,\mu$m length) on a thin ($< 1\mu$m)
cantilever structure, enable efficient light extraction from diamond in
combination with a high magnetic field sensitivity
($\mathrm{\eta_{AC}}\approx50\pm20\,\mathrm{nT}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$). As a
first application of our scanning probes, we image the magnetic stray field of
a single Ni nanorod. We show that this stray field can be approximated by a
single dipole and estimate the NV-to-sample distance to a few tens of
nanometer, which sets the achievable resolution of our scanning probes.


title: Chiral matrix model of the semi-Quark Gluon Plasma in QCD

abstract:
  A chiral matrix model applicable to QCD with 2+1 flavors is developed. This
requires adding a SU(3)_L x SU(3)_R x Z(3)_A nonet of scalar fields, with both
parities, and coupling these to quarks through a Yukawa coupling, y. Treating
the scalar fields in mean field approximation, the effective Lagrangian is
computed by integrating out quarks to one loop order. In addition to the usual
symmetry breaking term, linear in the current quark mass m_qk, at a nonzero
temperature T it is necessary to add a new term, ~ m_qk T^2. The parameters of
the gluon part of the matrix model are identical to that for the pure glue
theory without quarks. The parameters in the chiral matrix model are fixed by
the values, at zero temperature, of the pion decay constant and the masses of
the pions, kaons, eta, and eta'. The temperature for the chiral crossover at
T_chi = 155 MeV is determined by adjusting the Yukawa coupling y. We find
reasonable agreement with the results of numerical simulations on the lattice
for the pressure and related quantities. In the chiral limit, besides the
divergence in the chiral susceptibility there is also a milder divergence in
the susceptibility between the Polyakov loop and the chiral order parameter,
with critical exponent beta - 1. We compute derivatives with respect to a quark
chemical potential to determine the susceptibilities for baryon number, the
chi_2n. Especially sensitive tests are provided by chi_4 - chi_2 and by chi_6,
which changes in sign about T_chi. The behavior of the susceptibilities in the
chiral matrix model strongly suggests that as the temperature increases from
T_chi, that the transition to deconfinement is significantly quicker than
indicated by the measurements of the (renormalized) Polyakov loop on the
lattice.


title: Correlations and fluctuations of pions at the LHC

abstract:
  The intriguing possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation of pions at the LHC
is examined with the use of higher order moments of the multiplicity
distribution. The scaled variance, skewness and kurtosis are calculated for the
pion system. The obtained results show that the normalized kurtosis has a
significant increase for the case of the pion condensation.


title: The asymptotic behaviour of parton distributions at small and large $x$

abstract:
  It has been argued from the earliest days of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)
that at asymptotically small values of $x$ the parton distribution functions
(PDFs) of the proton behave as $x^\alpha$, where the values of $\alpha$ can be
deduced from Regge theory, while at asymptotically large values of $x$ the PDFs
behave as $(1-x)^\beta$, where the values of $\beta$ can be deduced from the
Brodsky-Farrar quark counting rules. We critically examine these claims by
extracting the exponents $\alpha$ and $\beta$ from various global fits of
parton distributions, analysing their scale dependence, and comparing their
values to the naive expectations. We find that for valence distributions both
Regge theory and counting rules are confirmed, at least within uncertainties,
while for sea quarks and gluons the results are less conclusive. We also
compare results from various PDF fits for the structure function ratio
$F_2^n/F_2^p$ at large $x$, and caution against unrealistic uncertainty
estimates due to overconstrained parametrisations.


title: A Java Data Security Framework (JDSF) and its Case Studies

abstract:
  We present the design of something we call Confidentiality, Integrity and
Authentication Sub-Frameworks, which are a part of a more general Java Data
Security Framework (JDSF) designed to support various aspects related to data
security (confidentiality, origin authentication, integrity, and SQL
randomization). The JDSF was originally designed in 2007 for use in the two
use-cases, MARF and HSQLDB, to allow a plug-in-like implementation of and
verification of various security aspects and their generalization. The JDSF
project explores secure data storage related issues from the point of view of
data security in the two projects. A variety of common security aspects and
tasks were considered in order to extract a spectrum of possible parameters
these aspects require for the design an extensible frameworked API and its
implementation. A particular challenge being tackled is an aggregation of
diverse approaches and algorithms into a common set of Java APIs to cover all
or at least most common aspects, and, at the same time keeping the framework as
simple as possible. As a part of the framework, we provide the mentioned
sub-frameworks' APIs to allow for the common algorithm implementations of the
confidentiality, integrity, and authentication aspects for MARF's and HSQLDB's
database(s). At the same time we perform a detailed overview of the related
work and literature on data and database security that we considered as a
possible input to design the JDSF.


title:
Spherical Calogero model with oscillator/Coulomb potential: classical
  case

abstract:
  We construct the Hamiltonians and symmetry generators of Calogero-oscillator
and Calogero-Coulomb models on the N-dimensional sphere within the matrix-model
reduction approach. Our method also produces the integrable
Calogero-Coulomb-Stark model on the sphere and proves the integrability of the
spin extensions of all these systems.


title: Spherical Calogero model with oscillator/Coulomb potential: quantum case

abstract:
  We consider the quantum mechanics of Calogero models in an oscillator or
Coulomb potential on the N-dimensional sphere. Their Hamiltonians are obtained
by an appropriate Dunkl deformation of the oscillator/Coulomb system on the
sphere and its restriction to (Coxeter reflection) symmetric wave functions. By
the same method we also find the symmetry generators and compute their
algebras.


title:
Faraday Rotation Measure Synthesis of intermediate redshift quasars as a
  probe of intervening matter

abstract:
  There is evidence that magnetized material along the line of sight to distant
quasars is detectable in the polarization properties of the background sources.
The polarization properties appear to be correlated with the presence of
intervening MgII absorption, which is thought to arise in outflowing material
from star forming galaxies. In order to investigate this further, we have
obtained high spectral resolution polarization measurements, with the VLA and
ATCA, of a set of 49 unresolved quasars for which we have high quality optical
spectra. These enable us to produce a Faraday Depth spectrum for each source,
using Rotation Measure Synthesis. Our new independent radio data confirms that
interveners are strongly associated with depolarization. We characterize the
complexity of the Faraday Depth spectrum using a number of parameters and show
how these are related, or not, to the depolarization and to the presence of
MgII absorption along the line of sight. We argue that complexity and structure
in the Faraday Depth distribution likely arise from both intervening material
and intrinsically to the background source and attempt to separate these. We
find that the strong radio depolarization effects associated with intervening
material at redshifts out to $z \approx 1$ arise from inhomogeneous Faraday
screens producing a dispersion in Rotation Measure across individual sources of
around 10~rad/m$^2$. This is likely produced by disordered fields with
strengths of at least $3\;\mu$G.


title: Preparing topologically ordered states by Hamiltonian interpolation

abstract:
  We study the preparation of topologically ordered states by interpolating
between an initial Hamiltonian with a unique product ground state and a
Hamiltonian with a topologically degenerate ground state space. By simulating
the dynamics for small systems, we numerically observe a certain stability of
the prepared state as a function of the initial Hamiltonian. For small systems
or long interpolation times, we argue that the resulting state can be
identified by computing suitable effective Hamiltonians. For effective anyon
models, this analysis singles out the relevant physical processes and extends
the study of the splitting of the topological degeneracy by Bonderson. We
illustrate our findings using Kitaev's Majorana chain, effective anyon chains,
the toric code and Levin-Wen string-net models.


title:
Global dust attenuation in disc galaxies: strong variation with specific
  star formation and stellar mass, and the importance of sample selection

abstract:
  We study the relative dust attenuation-inclination relation in 78,721 nearby
galaxies using the axis ratio dependence of optical-NIR colour, as measured by
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), and
the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). In order to avoid to the
greatest extent possible attenuation-driven biases, we carefully select
galaxies using dust attenuation-independent near- and mid-IR luminosities and
colours. Relative u-band attenuation between face-on and edge-on disc galaxies
along the star forming main sequence varies from ~0.55 mag up to ~1.55 mag. The
strength of the relative attenuation varies strongly with both specific star
formation rate and galaxy luminosity (or stellar mass). The dependence of
relative attenuation on luminosity is not monotonic, but rather peaks at
$M_{3.4\mu m} \approx -21.5$, corresponding to $M_* \approx 3\times
10^{10}M_{Sun}$. This behavior stands seemingly in contrast to some older
studies; we show that older works failed to reliably probe to higher
luminosities, and were insensitive to the decrease in attenuation with
increasing luminosity for the brightest star-forming discs.
Back-of-the-envelope scaling relations predict the strong variation of dust
optical depth with specific star formation rate and stellar mass. More in-depth
comparisons using the scaling relations to model the relative attenuation
require the inclusion of star-dust geometry to reproduce the details of these
variations (especially at high luminosities), highlighting the importance of
these geometrical effects.


title: TRIPPy: Trailed Image Photometry in Python

abstract:
  Photometry of moving sources typically suffers from reduced signal-to-noise
(SNR) or flux measurements biased to incorrect low values through the use of
circular apertures. To address this issue we present the software package,
TRIPPy: TRailed Image Photometry in Python. TRIPPy introduces the pill
aperture, which is the natural extension of the circular aperture appropriate
for linearly trailed sources. The pill shape is a rectangle with two
semicircular end-caps, and is described by three parameters, the trail length
and angle, and the radius. The TRIPPy software package also includes a new
technique to generate accurate model point-spread functions (PSF) and trailed
point-spread functions (TSF) from stationary background sources in sidereally
tracked images. The TSF is merely the convolution of the model PSF, which
consists of a moffat profile, and super sampled lookup table. From the TSF,
accurate pill aperture corrections can be estimated as a function of pill
radius with a accuracy of 10 millimags for highly trailed sources. Analogous to
the use of small circular apertures and associated aperture corrections, small
radius pill apertures can be used to preserve signal-to-noise of low flux
sources, with appropriate aperture correction applied to provide an accurate,
unbiased flux measurement at all SNR.


title: High-Fidelity Universal Gate Set for $^9$Be$^+$ Ion Qubits

abstract:
  We report high-fidelity laser-beam-induced quantum logic gates on
magnetic-field-insensitive qubits comprised of hyperfine states in $^{9}$Be$^+$
ions with a memory coherence time of more than 1 s. We demonstrate single-qubit
gates with error per gate of $3.8(1)\times 10^{-5}$. By creating a Bell state
with a deterministic two-qubit gate, we deduce a gate error of
$8(4)\times10^{-4}$. We characterize the errors in our implementation and
discuss methods to further reduce imperfections towards values that are
compatible with fault-tolerant processing at realistic overhead.


title:
EMBERS at 4 years: Experiences operating an Open Source Indicators
  Forecasting System

abstract:
  EMBERS is an anticipatory intelligence system forecasting population-level
events in multiple countries of Latin America. A deployed system from 2012,
EMBERS has been generating alerts 24x7 by ingesting a broad range of data
sources including news, blogs, tweets, machine coded events, currency rates,
and food prices. In this paper, we describe our experiences operating EMBERS
continuously for nearly 4 years, with specific attention to the discoveries it
has enabled, correct as well as missed forecasts, and lessons learnt from
participating in a forecasting tournament including our perspectives on the
limits of forecasting and ethical considerations.


title:
The role of quenching time in the evolution of the mass-size relation of
  passive galaxies from the WISP survey

abstract:
  We analyze how passive galaxies at z $\sim$ 1.5 populate the mass-size plane
as a function of their stellar age, to understand if the observed size growth
with time can be explained with the appearance of larger quenched galaxies at
lower redshift. We use a sample of 32 passive galaxies extracted from the Wide
Field Camera 3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel (WISP) survey with spectroscopic
redshift 1.3 $\lesssim$ z $\lesssim$ 2.05, specific star-formation rates lower
than 0.01 Gyr$^{-1}$, and stellar masses above 4.5 $\times$ 10$^{10}$
M$_\odot$. All galaxies have spectrally determined stellar ages from fitting of
their rest-frame optical spectra and photometry with stellar population models.
When dividing our sample into young (age $\leq$ 2.1 Gyr) and old (age $>$ 2.1
Gyr) galaxies we do not find a significant trend in the distributions of the
difference between the observed radius and the one predicted by the mass-size
relation. This result indicates that the relation between the galaxy age and
its distance from the mass-size relation, if it exists, is rather shallow, with
a slope alpha $\gtrsim$ -0.6. At face value, this finding suggests that
multiple dry and/or wet minor mergers, rather than the appearance of newly
quenched galaxies, are mainly responsible for the observed time evolution of
the mass-size relation in passive galaxies.


title: Inductive heating of conductive nanoparticles

abstract:
  This paper presents an analysis and some interesting observations regarding
the classical electromagnetic background to the heating of gold nanoparticles
(GNPs) in the radio frequency spectrum. Here, it is assumed that the related
dipole effects are based solely on homogeneous conducting nanospheres that are
immersed in an lossy medium. From this point of view it is concluded that the
effect of using a capacitive coupling i.e., a strong electric field to induce
electric dipoles can be disregarded unless the volume fraction of the GNPs is
unrealistically high, or if there are some other electric dipole mechanisms
present which are not taken into account here, such as e.g., with nanospheres
coated with ligands providing an electrophoretic movement and associated
resonances. On the other hand, a simplified quasi-magnetostatic analysis
indicates that an inductive heating (induced eddy currents inside the metal
particles) based on magnetic coupling may have the potential to significantly
increase the heating locally provided that the supplied magnetic field can be
made sufficiently strong at radio frequency. This paper presents a near field
optimization approach to study the electromagnetic heating of conductive
nanoparticles. An optimization problem is formulated where the power absorption
inside the nanoparticles is maximized subjected to power constraints related to
the skin effect in the surrounding medium. The analysis shows that when the
exterior medium is modelled as salty water the skin effect in the bulk material
will render the simple principle of inductive heating of GNPs practically
useless at 13.56 MHz.


title: Modeling Visual Compatibility through Hierarchical Mid-level Elements

abstract:
  In this paper we present a hierarchical method to discover mid-level elements
with the objective of modeling visual compatibility between objects. At the
base-level, our method identifies patterns of CNN activations with the aim of
modeling different variations/styles in which objects of the classes of
interest may occur. At the top-level, the proposed method discovers patterns of
co-occurring activations of base-level elements that define visual
compatibility between pairs of object classes. Experiments on the massive
Amazon dataset show the strength of our method at describing object classes and
the characteristics that drive the compatibility between them.


title:
Detection of gapped phases of a 1D spin chain with onsite and spatial
  symmetries

abstract:
  We investigate the phase diagram of a quantum spin-1 chain whose Hamiltonian
is invariant under a global onsite $A_4$, translation and lattice inversion
symmetries. We detect different gapped phases characterized by SPT order and
symmetry breaking using matrix product state order parameters. We observe a
rich variety of phases of matter characterized by a combination of symmetry
breaking and symmetry fractionalization and also the interplay between the
onsite and spatial symmetries. Examples of continuous phase transitions
directly between topologically nontrivial SPT phases are also observed.


title: Magneto-optical signature of massless Kane electrons in Cd3As2

abstract:
  We report on optical reflectivity experiments performed on Cd3As2 over a
broad range of photon energies and magnetic fields. The observed response
clearly indicates the presence of 3D massless charge carriers. The specific
cyclotron resonance absorption in the quantum limit implies that we are probing
massless Kane electrons rather than symmetry-protected 3D Dirac particles. The
latter may appear at a smaller energy scale and are not directly observed in
our infrared experiments.


title:
Pointwise Adaptive Estimation of the MarginalDensity of a Weakly
  Dependent Process

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


title: A note on the Bohnenblust--Hille inequality for multilinear forms

abstract:
  The general versions of the Bohnenblust--Hille inequality for $m$-linear
forms are valid for exponents $q_{1},...,q_{m}\in \lbrack 1,2].$ In this show
that a slightly different characterization is valid for $q_{1},...,q_{m}\in
(0,\infty ).$


title:
Structural and excited-state properties of oligoacene crystals from
  first principles

abstract:
  Molecular crystals are a prototypical class of van der Waals (vdW) bound
organic materials with excited state properties relevant for optoelectronics
applications. Predicting the structure and excited state properties of
molecular crystals presents a challenge for electronic structure theory, as
standard approximations to density functional theory (DFT) do not capture long
range vdW dispersion interactions and do not yield excited state properties. In
this work, we use a combination of DFT including vdW forces) using both non
local correlation functionals and pair wise correction methods (together with
many body perturbation theory (MBPT) to study the geometry and excited states,
respectively, of the entire series of oligoacene crystals, from benzene to
hexacene. We find that vdW methods can predict lattice constants within 1
percent of the experimental measurements, on par with the previously reported
accuracy of pairwise approximations for the same systems. We further find that
excitation energies are sensitive to geometry, but if optimized geometries are
used MBPT can yield excited state properties within a few tenths of an eV from
experiment. We elucidate trends in MBPT computed charged and neutral excitation
energies across the acene series and discuss the role of common approximations
used in MBPT.


title:
Derived equivalence, Albanese varieties, and the zeta functions of
  3-dimensional varieties

abstract:
  We show that any derived equivalent smooth, projective varieties of dimension
3 over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ have equal zeta functions. This result is
an application of the extension to smooth, projective varieties over any field
of Popa and Schnell's proof that derived equivalent smooth, projective
varieties over $\mathbb{C}$ have isogenous Albanese torsors; this result is
proven in an appendix by Achter, Casalaina-Martin, Honigs and Vial.


title: QCD thermodynamics and magnetization in nonzero magnetic field

abstract:
  In nonzero magnetic field, the magnetic properties and thermodynamics of the
quantum-chromodynamic (QCD) matter is studied in the hadron resonance gas and
the Polyakov linear-sigma models and compared with recent lattice calculations.
Both models are fairly suited to describe the degrees of freedom in the
hadronic phase. The partonic ones are only accessible by the second model. It
is found that the QCD matter has paramagnetic properties, which monotonically
depend on the temperature and are not affected by the hadron-quark
phase-transition. Furthermore, raising the magnetic field strength increases
the thermodynamic quantities, especially in the hadronic phase but reduces the
critical temperature, i.e. inverse magnetic catalysis.


title: Dark Gauge Bosons: LHC Signatures of Non-Abelian Kinetic Mixing

abstract:
  We consider non-abelian kinetic mixing between the Standard Model SU(2$)_L$
and a dark sector U(1$)^\prime$ gauge group associated with the presence of a
scalar SU(2$)_L$ triplet. The magnitude of the resulting dark photon coupling
$\epsilon$ is determined by the ratio of the triplet vacuum expectation value,
constrained to by $\lsim 4$ GeV by electroweak precision tests, to the scale
$\Lambda$ of the effective theory. The corresponding effective operator Wilson
coefficient can be $\mathcal{O}(1)$ while accommodating null results for dark
photon searches, allowing for a distinctive LHC dark photon phenomenology.
After outlining the possible LHC signatures, we illustrate by recasting current
ATLAS dark photon results into the non-abelian mixing context.


title: PGR: A Graph Repository of Protein 3D-Structures

abstract:
  Graph theory and graph mining constitute rich fields of computational
techniques to study the structures, topologies and properties of graphs. These
techniques constitute a good asset in bioinformatics if there exist efficient
methods for transforming biological data into graphs. In this paper, we present
Protein Graph Repository (PGR), a novel database of protein 3D-structures
transformed into graphs allowing the use of the large repertoire of graph
theory techniques in protein mining. This repository contains graph
representations of all currently known protein 3D-structures described in the
Protein Data Bank (PDB). PGR also provides an efficient online converter of
protein 3D-structures into graphs, biological and graph-based description,
pre-computed protein graph attributes and statistics, visualization of each
protein graph, as well as graph-based protein similarity search tool. Such
repository presents an enrichment of existing online databases that will help
bridging the gap between graph mining and protein structure analysis. PGR data
and features are unique and not included in any other protein database. The
repository is available at http://wjdi.bioinfo.uqam.ca/.


title:
Noncommutative geometry and the BV formalism: application to a matrix
  model

abstract:
  We analyze a U(2)-matrix model derived from a finite spectral triple. By
applying the BV formalism, we find a general solution to the classical master
equation. To describe the BV formalism in the context of noncommutative
geometry, we define two finite spectral triples: the BV spectral triple and the
BV auxiliary spectral triple. These are constructed from the gauge fields,
ghost fields and anti-fields that enter the BV construction. We show that their
fermionic actions add up precisely to the BV action. This approach allows for a
geometric description of the ghost fields and their properties in terms of the
BV spectral triple.


title: Towards Zero-Waste Furniture Design

abstract:
  In traditional design, shapes are first conceived, and then fabricated. While
this decoupling simplifies the design process, it can result in inefficient
material usage, especially where off-cut pieces are hard to reuse. The
designer, in absence of explicit feedback on material usage remains helpless to
effectively adapt the design -- even though design variabilities exist. In this
paper, we investigate {\em waste minimizing furniture design} wherein based on
the current design, the user is presented with design variations that result in
more effective usage of materials. Technically, we dynamically analyze material
space layout to determine {\em which} parts to change and {\em how}, while
maintaining original design intent specified in the form of design constraints.
We evaluate the approach on simple and complex furniture design scenarios, and
demonstrate effective material usage that is difficult, if not impossible, to
achieve without computational support.


title:
Constraining the Mass-Richness Relationship of redMaPPer Clusters with
  Angular Clustering

abstract:
  The potential of using cluster clustering for calibrating the mass-observable
relation of galaxy clusters has been recognized theoretically for over a
decade. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of this technique to achieve high
precision mass calibration using redMaPPer clusters in the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey North Galactic Cap. By including cross-correlations between several
richness bins in our analysis we significantly improve the statistical
precision of our mass constraints. The amplitude of the mass-richness relation
is constrained to 7% statistical precision. However, the error budget is
systematics dominated, reaching an 18% total error that is dominated by
theoretical uncertainty in the bias-mass relation for dark matter halos. We
perform a detailed treatment of the effects of assembly bias on our analysis,
finding that the contribution of such effects to our parameter uncertainties is
somewhat greater than that of measurement noise. We confirm the results from
Miyatake et al. (2015) that the clustering amplitude of redMaPPer clusters
depends on galaxy concentration, and provide additional evidence in support of
this effect being due to some form of assembly bias. The results presented here
demonstrate the power of cluster clustering for mass calibration and cosmology
provided the current theoretical systematics can be ameliorated.


title:
Physical modeling of real-world slingshots for accurate speed
  predictions

abstract:
  We discuss the physics and modeling of latex-rubber slingshots. The goal is
to get accurate speed predictions inspite of the significant real world
difficulties of force drift, force hysteresis, rubber ageing, and the very non-
linear, non-ideal, force vs. pull distance curves of slingshot rubber bands.
Slingshots are known to shoot faster under some circumstances when the bands
are tapered rather than having constant width and stiffness. We give both
qualitative understanding and numerical predictions of this effect. We consider
two models. The first is based on conservation of energy and is easier to
implement, but cannot determine the speeds along the rubber bands without
making assumptions. The second, treats the bands as a series of mass points
subject to being pulled by immediately adjacent mass points according to how
much the rubber has been stretched on the two adjacent sides. This is a classic
many-body F=ma problem but convergence requires using a particular numerical
technique. It gives accurate predictions (average error +2%, standard deviation
3%). The basis for these models involves measurements of pull-force vs.
pull-distance. We will show how such measurements can be scaled for increased
width or length, so that minimal calibration measurements are needed to support
the models. With a good physical model of a slingshot one is easily able to
test a wide range of parameters to determine how to get the fastest shots for a
given pull force and draw length. We include examples of such calculations for
popular slingshot rubber bands and tubes.


title: Toward a conjecture of Tan and Tu on fibered general type surfaces

abstract:
  Given a semistable non-isotrivial fibered surface $f:X\to \mathbb{P}^1$ it
was conjectured by Tan and Tu that if $X$ is of general type, then $f$ admits
at least $7$ singular fibers. In this paper we prove this conjecture in several
particular cases, i.e. assuming $f$ is obtained from blowing-up the base locus
of a transversal pencil on an exceptional minimal surface $S$ or assuming that
$f$ is obtained as the blow-up of the base locus of a transversal and adjoint
pencil on a minimal surface.


title: A marked renewal process model for the size of a honey bee colony

abstract:
  Many areas of agriculture rely on honey bees to provide pollination services
and any decline in honey bee numbers can impact on global food security. In
order to understand the dynamics of honey bee colonies we present a discrete
time marked renewal process model for the size of a colony. We demonstrate that
under mild conditions this attains a stationary distribution that depends on
the distribution of the numbers of eggs per batch, the probability an egg
hatches and the distributions of the times between batches and bee lifetime.
This allows an analytic examination of the effect of changing these quantities.
We then extend this model to cyclic annual effects where for example the
numbers of eggs per batch and {the probability an egg hatches} may vary over
the year.


title: A condition number for the tensor rank decomposition

abstract:
  The tensor rank decomposition problem consists of recovering the unique set
of parameters representing a robustly identifiable low-rank tensor when the
coordinate representation of the tensor is presented as input. A condition
number for this problem measuring the sensitivity of the parameters to an
infinitesimal change to the tensor is introduced and analyzed. It is
demonstrated that the absolute condition number coincides with the inverse of
the least singular value of Terracini's matrix. Several basic properties of
this condition number are investigated.


title:
On a reducedness conjecture for spherical Schubert varieties and slices
  in the affine Grassmannian

abstract:
  We study spherical Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannian. These
Schubert varieties have a natural conjectural modular description due to
Finkelberg-Mirkovi\'c. This modular description is easily seen to be
set-theoretically correct, but it is not obviously scheme-theoretically
correct. We prove that this modular description is correct in many cases. We
also link this modular description to the reducedness conjecture from
Kamnitzer-Webster-Weekes-Yacobi for tranverse slices in the affine
Grassmannian.


title: Detecting One-variable Patterns

abstract:
  Given a pattern $p = s_1x_1s_2x_2\cdots s_{r-1}x_{r-1}s_r$ such that
$x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_{r-1}\in\{x,\overset{{}_{\leftarrow}}{x}\}$, where $x$ is a
variable and $\overset{{}_{\leftarrow}}{x}$ its reversal, and
$s_1,s_2,\ldots,s_r$ are strings that contain no variables, we describe an
algorithm that constructs in $O(rn)$ time a compact representation of all $P$
instances of $p$ in an input string of length $n$ over a polynomially bounded
integer alphabet, so that one can report those instances in $O(P)$ time.


title:
Competition and extinction explain the evolution of diversity in
  American automobiles

abstract:
  One of the most remarkable aspects of our species is that while we show
surprisingly little genetic diversity, we demonstrate astonishing amounts of
cultural diversity. Perhaps most impressive is the diversity of our
technologies, broadly defined as all the physical objects we produce and the
skills we use to produce them. Despite considerable focus on the evolution of
technology by social scientists and philosophers, there have been few attempts
to systematically quantify technological diversity and therefore the dynamics
of technological change remain poorly understood. Here we show a novel Bayesian
model for examining technological diversification adopted from paleontological
analysis of occurrence data. We use this framework to estimate the tempo of
diversification in American car and truck models produced between 1896 and 2014
and to test the relative importance of competition and extrinsic factors in
shaping changes in macroevolutionary rates. Our results identify a four-fold
decrease in the origination and extinction rates of car models and a negative
net diversification rate over the last thirty years. We also demonstrate that
competition played a more significant role in car model diversification than
either changes in oil prices or gross domestic product. Together our analyses
provide a set of tools that can enhance current research on technological and
cultural evolution by providing a flexible and quantitative framework for
exploring the dynamics of diversification.