title:
Patterns of cooperation during collective emergencies in the
  help-or-escape social dilemma

abstract:
  Although cooperation is central to the organisation of many social systems,
relatively little is known about cooperation in situations of collective
emergency. When groups of people flee from a danger such as a burning building
or a terrorist attack, the collective benefit of cooperation is important, but
the cost of helping is high and the temptation to defect is strong. To explore
the degree of cooperation in emergencies, we develop a new social game, the
help-or-escape social dilemma. Under time and monetary pressure, players decide
how much risk they are willing to take in order to help others. Results
indicated that players took as much risk to help others during emergencies as
they did under normal conditions. In both conditions, most players applied an
egalitarian heuristic and helped others until their chance of success equalled
that of the group. This strategy is less efficient during emergencies, however,
because the increased time pressure results in fewer people helped.
Furthermore, emergencies tend to amplify participants initial tendency to
cooperate, with prosocials becoming even more cooperative and individualists
becoming even more selfish. Our framework offers new opportunities to study
human cooperation and could help authorities to better manage crowd behaviours
during mass emergencies.


title:
Energy transfer in strained graphene assisted by discrete breathers
  excited by external ac driving

abstract:
  In the present molecular dynamics study, external ac driving is used at
frequencies outside the phonon spectrum to excite gap DBs in uniformly strained
graphene nanoribbon. Harmonic displacement or harmonic force is applied to a
zigzag atomic chain of graphene. In the former case non-propagating DBs are
excited on the atoms next to the driven atoms, while in the latter case the
excited DBs propagate along the nanoribbon. The energy transfer along the
nanoribbon assisted by the DBs is investigated in detail and the differences
between harmonic displacement driving and harmonic force driving are discussed.
It is concluded that the amplitude of external driving at out of phonon
spectrum frequencies should not necessarily be large to obtain a noticeable
energy transfer to the system. Overall, our results suggest that external
harmonic driving even at relatively small driving amplitudes can be used to
control excitation of DBs and consequently the energy transfer to the system.


title: Constraints on small-field axion inflation

abstract:
  We study general class of small-field axion inflations which are the mixture
of polynomial and sinusoidal functions suggested by the natural and axion
monodromy inflations. The axion decay constants leading to the successful axion
inflations are severely constrained in order not to spoil the Big-Bang
nucleosynthesis and overproduce the isocurvature perturbation originating from
the QCD axion. We in turn find that the cosmologically favorable axion decay
constants are typically of order the grand unification scale or the string
scale which is consistent with the prediction of closed string axions.


title: The MGB-2 Challenge: Arabic Multi-Dialect Broadcast Media Recognition

abstract:
  This paper describes the Arabic Multi-Genre Broadcast (MGB-2) Challenge for
SLT-2016. Unlike last year's English MGB Challenge, which focused on
recognition of diverse TV genres, this year, the challenge has an emphasis on
handling the diversity in dialect in Arabic speech. Audio data comes from 19
distinct programmes from the Aljazeera Arabic TV channel between March 2005 and
December 2015. Programmes are split into three groups: conversations,
interviews, and reports. A total of 1,200 hours have been released with lightly
supervised transcriptions for the acoustic modelling. For language modelling,
we made available over 110M words crawled from Aljazeera Arabic website
Aljazeera.net for a 10 year duration 2000-2011. Two lexicons have been
provided, one phoneme based and one grapheme based. Finally, two tasks were
proposed for this year's challenge: standard speech transcription, and word
alignment. This paper describes the task data and evaluation process used in
the MGB challenge, and summarises the results obtained.


title: Kmerlight: fast and accurate k-mer abundance estimation

abstract:
  k-mers (nucleotide strings of length k) form the basis of several algorithms
in computational genomics. In particular, k-mer abundance information in
sequence data is useful in read error correction, parameter estimation for
genome assembly, digital normalization etc. We give a streaming algorithm
Kmerlight for computing the k-mer abundance histogram from sequence data. Our
algorithm is fast and uses very small memory footprint. We provide analytical
bounds on the error guarantees of our algorithm. Kmerlight can efficiently
process genome scale and metagenome scale data using standard desktop machines.
Few applications of abundance histograms computed by Kmerlight are also shown.
We use abundance histogram for de novo estimation of repetitiveness in the
genome based on a simple probabilistic model that we propose. We also show
estimation of k-mer error rate in the sampling using abundance histogram. Our
algorithm can also be used for abundance estimation in a general streaming
setting. The Kmerlight tool is written in C++ and is available for download and
use from https://github.com/nsivad/kmerlight.


title: Algebraic cycles on the Fano variety of lines of a cubic fourfold

abstract:
  In this text we prove that if a smooth cubic in $\PR^5$ has its Fano variety
of lines birational to the Hilbert scheme of two points on a K3 surface, then
there exists a smooth projective curve or a smooth projective surface embedded
in the Fano variety, such that the kernel of the push-forward (at the level of
zero cycles ) induced by the closed embedding is torsion.


title: Photoproduction of $\pi^0$-Mesons on the Nucleon and Deuteron

abstract:
  The photoproduction of $\pi^0$-mesons from the nucleon and deuteron has been
studied for incidents of photon energies up to 1.5 GeV. By using the MAID-2007
model for the process on the nucleon, we predict results for the unpolarized
and helicity-dependent total cross sections of the semi-exclusive reaction
$\gamma d\rightarrow\pi^0X$ ($X=np+d$) with the inclusion of rescattering
effects. We find that rescattering effects yield a substantially large
contribution. The extracted results are compared with the available
experimental data and a satisfactory agreement is obtained. In addition, the
contribution of $\gamma d\rightarrow\pi^0X$ ($X=np+d$) to the finite GDH
integral has been evaluated by explicit integration up to 1.5 GeV and a total
value of 256.96 $\mu$b has been obtained. Convergence of the GDH integral has
been reached.


title: Bousso's Covariant Entropy Bound and Padmanabhan's Emergent Universe

abstract:
  We study the Padmanabhan's emergent Universe in the context of Bousso's
covariant entropy conjecture. We find that for a flat Universe, this conjecture
can be applied for the system of Padmanabhan's emergent Universe. It turns out
that the maximum "bulk entropy" of Padmanabhan's emergent Universe coincides
with the upper bound of Bousso's covariant entropy on the null surface defined
by Hubble horizon, provided that the Universe is just filled by the
cosmological constant or radiation field which represent maximal entropy during
inflation and subsequent radiation dominant era. This maximal entropy is lost
by the appearance of matter system in the Universe at matter dominant era.
Applying D-bound on the matter system in the Padmanabhan's emergent Universe,
we find that the apparent cosmological horizon of a flat Universe in matter
dominant era has less area and entropy than those (maximal) of apparent
cosmological horizon of an empty de-Sitter space, in complete agreement with
our conclusion. The maximal area and entropy in the Padmanabhan's emergent
Universe are recovered "as soon as possible" by transition from matter dominant
to cosmological constant eras, provided that the matter inside the Universe is
moved completely outward the apparent cosmological horizon in "an accelerating
way" at late times.


title: Some results on the topology of real Bott towers

abstract:
  The main aim of this article is to study the topology of real Bott towers as
special and interesting examples of real toric varieties. We first give a
presentation of the fundamental group of a real Bott tower and show that the
fundamental group is abelian if and only if the real Bott tower is a product of
circles. We further prove that the fundamental group of a real Bott tower is
always solvable and it is nilpotent if and only if it is abelian. We then
describe the cohomology ring of a real Bott tower and also give recursive
formulae for the Steifel Whitney classes. We derive combinatorial
characterization for orientability of these manifolds and further give a
combinatorial formula for the $(n-1)$th Steifel Whitney class. In particular,
we show that if a Bott tower is orientable then the $(n-1)$th Steifel Whitney
class must also vanish. Moreover, by deriving a combinatorial formula for the
second Steifel-Whitney class we give a necessary and sufficient condition for
the Bott tower to admit a spin structure. We finally prove the vanishing of all
the Steifel-Whitney numbers and hence establish that these manifolds are
null-cobordant.


title:
Quadratic algebra structure in the 5D Kepler system with non-central
  potentials and Yang-Coulomb monopole interaction

abstract:
  We construct the integrals of motion for the 5D deformed Kepler system with
non-central potentials in $su(2)$ Yang-Coulomb monopole field. We show that
these integrals form a higher rank quadratic algebra $Q(3; L^{so(4)},
T^{su(2)})\oplus so(4)$, with structure constants involving the Casimir
operators of $so(4)$ and $su(2)$ Lie algebras. We realize the quadratic algebra
in terms of the deformed oscillator and construct its finite-dimensional
unitary representations. This enable us to derive the energy spectrum of the
system algebraically. Furthermore we show that the model is multiseparable and
allows separation of variables in the hyperspherical and parabolic coordinates.
We also show the separability of its 8D dual system (i.e. the 8D singular
harmonic oscillator) in the Euler and cylindrical coordinates.


title: On the adoption of abductive reasoning for time series interpretation

abstract:
  Time series interpretation aims to provide an explanation of what is observed
in terms of its underlying processes. The present work is based on the
assumption that the common classification-based approaches to time series
interpretation suffer from a set of inherent weaknesses, whose ultimate cause
lies in the monotonic nature of the deductive reasoning paradigm. In this
document we propose a new approach to this problem, based on the initial
hypothesis that abductive reasoning properly accounts for the human ability to
identify and characterize the patterns appearing in a time series. The result
of this interpretation is a set of conjectures in the form of observations,
organized into an abstraction hierarchy and explaining what has been observed.
A knowledge-based framework and a set of algorithms for the interpretation task
are provided, implementing a hypothesize-and-test cycle guided by an
attentional mechanism. As a representative application domain, interpretation
of the electrocardiogram allows us to highlight the strengths of the proposed
approach in comparison with traditional classification-based approaches.


title:
Investigating the Conditions of the Formation of a Type II Radio Burst
  on 2014 January 8

abstract:
  It is believed that type II radio bursts are generated by shock waves. In
order to understand the generation conditions of type II radio bursts, in this
paper, we analyze the physical parameters of a shock front. The type II radio
burst we selected was observed by Siberian Solar Radio Telescope (SSRT) and
Learmonth radio station and was associated with a limb CME occurring on 2014
January 8 observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar
Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The evolution of the CME in the inner corona
presents a double-layered structure that propagates outward. We fit the outer
layer of the structure with a partial circle and divide it into 7 directions
from -45$^\circ$ to 45$^\circ$ with an angular separation of 15$^\circ$. We
measure the outer layer speed along the 7 directions, and find that the speed
in the direction of -15$^\circ$ with respect to the central direction is the
fastest. We use the differential emission measure (DEM) method to calculate the
physical parameters at the outer layer at the moment when the type II radio
burst was initiated, including the temperature ($T$), emission measure ($EM$),
temperature ratio ($T_{d}/T_{u}$), compression ratio ($X$), and Alfv\'en Mach
number ($M_{A}$). We compare the quantities $X$ and $M_{A}$ to that obtained
from band-splitting in the radio spectrum, and find that this type II radio
burst is generated at a small region of the outer layer that is located at the
sector in 45$^\circ$ direction. The results suggest that the generation of type
II radio bursts (shock) requires larger values of $X$ and $M_{A}$ rather than
simply a higher speed of the disturbance.


title: Exciton, trion and localized exciton in monolayer Tungsten Disulfide

abstract:
  The ultrathin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as
promising materials for various applications using two dimensional (2D)
semiconductors. They have attracted increasing attention due to their unique
optical properties originate from neutral and charged excitons. Here, we report
negatively charged exciton formation in monolayer TMDs, notably tungsten
disulfide WS2. Our theory is based on an effective mass model of neutral and
charged excitons, parameterized by ab-initio calculations. Taking into the
account the strong correlation between the monolayer WS2 and the surrounding
dielectric environment, our theoretical results are in good agreement with
one-photon photoluminescence (PL) and reflectivity measurements. We also show
that the exciton state with p-symmetry, experimentally observed by two-photon
PL emission, is energetically below the 2s-state. We use the equilibrium mass
action law, to quantify the relative weight of exciton and trion PL. We show
that exciton and trion emission can be tuned and controlled by external
parameters like temperature, pumping and injection electrons. Finally, in
comparison with experimental measurements, we show that exciton emission in
monolayer tungsten dichalcogenides is substantially reduced. This feature
suggests that free exciton can be trapped in disordered potential wells to form
a localized exciton and therefore offers a route toward novel optical
properties.


title:
Finite groups with coprime fixed-point-free automorphisms and
  applications

abstract:
  We study a class of finite groups $G$ which behave similarly to elementary
abelian $p$-groups with $p$ prime, that is, there exists a subgroup $N$ such
that all elements of $G\setminus N$ are conjugate or inverse-conjugate under
$\Aut(G)$. In this paper, we show that such groups are solvable. As an
application, we characterise a class of normal edge-transitive Cayley graphs of
$G$, which are complete multipartite graphs.


title:
Jacobi stability analysis of scalar field models with minimal coupling
  to gravity in a cosmological background

abstract:
  We perform the study of the stability of the cosmological scalar field
models, by using the Jacobi stability analysis, or the Kosambi-Cartan-Chern
(KCC) theory. In the KCC approach we describe the time evolution of the scalar
field cosmologies in geometric terms, by performing a "second geometrization",
by considering them as paths of a semispray. By introducing a non-linear
connection and a Berwald type connection associated to the Friedmann and
Klein-Gordon equations, five geometrical invariants can be constructed, with
the second invariant giving the Jacobi stability of the cosmological model. We
obtain all the relevant geometric quantities, and we formulate the condition of
the Jacobi stability for scalar field cosmologies in the second order
formalism. As an application of the developed methods we consider the Jacobi
stability properties of the scalar fields with exponential and Higgs type
potential. We find that the Universe dominated by a scalar field exponential
potential is in Jacobi unstable state, while the cosmological evolution in the
presence of Higgs fields has alternating stable and unstable phases. By using
the standard first order formulation of the cosmological models as dynamical
systems we have investigated the stability of the phantom quintessence and
tachyonic scalar fields, by lifting the first order system to the tangent
bundle. It turns out that in the presence of a power law potential both these
models are Jacobi unstable during the entire cosmological evolution.

categories: gr-qc astro-ph.CO hep-th math-ph math.MP


title:
Power series proofs for local stabilities of K\"ahler and balanced
  structures with mild $\partial\bar\partial$-lemma

abstract:
  By use of a natural map introduced recently by the first and third authors
from the space of pure-type complex differential forms on a complex manifold to
the corresponding one on the small differentiable deformation of this manifold,
we will give a power series proof for Kodaira-Spencer's local stability theorem
of K\"ahler structures. We also obtain two new local stability theorems, one of
balanced structures on an $n$-dimensional balanced manifold with the
$(n-1,n)$-th mild $\partial\bar\partial$-lemma by power series method and the
other one on $p$-K\"ahler structures with the deformation invariance of
$(p,p)$-Bott-Chern numbers.


title: Belt(s) of debris resolved around the Sco-Cen star HIP 67497

abstract:
  In 2015, we initiated a survey of Scorpius-Centaurus A-F stars that are
predicted to host warm-inner and cold-outer belts of debris similar to the case
of the system HR~8799. The survey aims to resolve the disks and detect planets
responsible for the disk morphology. In this paper, we study the F-type star
HIP~67497 and present a first-order modelisation of the disk in order to derive
its main properties. We used the near-infrared integral field spectrograph
(IFS) and dual-band imager IRDIS of VLT/SPHERE to obtain angular-differential
imaging observations of the circumstellar environnement of HIP~67497. We
removed the stellar halo with PCA and TLOCI algorithms. We modeled the disk
emission with the GRaTeR code. We resolve a ring-like structure that extends up
to $\sim$450 mas ($\sim$50 au) from the star in the IRDIS and IFS data. It is
best reproduced by models of a non-eccentric ring with an inclination of
$80\pm1^{\circ}$, a position angle of $-93\pm1^{\circ}$, and a semi-major axis
of $59\pm3$ au. We also detect an additional, but fainter, arc-like structure
with a larger extension (0.65 arcsec) South of the ring that we model as a
second belt of debris at $\sim$130 au. We detect 10 candidate companions at
separations $\geq$1''. We estimate the mass of putative perturbers responsible
for the disk morphology and compare it to our detection limits. Additional data
are needed to find those perturbers, and to relate our images to large-scale
structures seen with HST/STIS.


title:
Geometry-Based Stochastic Channel Models for 5G: Extending Key Features
  for Massive MIMO

abstract:
  This paper introduces three key features in geometry-based stochastic channel
models in order to include massive MIMO channels. Those key features consists
of multi-user (MU) consistency, non-stationarities across the base station
array and inclusion of spherical wave modelling. To ensure MU consistency, we
introduce the concept of "user aura", which is a circle around the user with
radius defined according to the stationarity interval. The overlap between
auras determines the share of common clusters among users. To model
non-stationarities across a massive array, sub-arrays are defined for which
clusters are independently generated. At last, we describe a procedure to
incorporate spherical wave modelling, where a cluster focal point is defined to
account for distance between user and cluster.


title:
The Critical Role of Substrate in Stabilizing Phosphorene Nanoflake: A
  Theoretical Exploration

abstract:
  Phosphorene, a new two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor, has received much
interest due to its robust direct band gap and high charge mobility. Currently,
however, phosphorene can only be produced by mechanical or liquid exfoliation,
and it is still a significant challenge to directly epitaxially grow
phosphorene, which greatly hinders its mass production and, thus, applications.
In epitaxial growth, the stability of nanoscale cluster or flake on a substrate
is crucial. Here, we perform ab initio energy optimizations and molecular
dynamics simulations to explore the critical role of substrate on the stability
of a representative phosphorene flake. Our calculations show that the stability
of the phosphorene nanoflake is strongly dependent on the interaction strength
between the nanoflake and substrate. Specifically, the strong interaction (0.75
eV/P atom) with Cu(111) substrate breaks up the phosphorene nanoflake, while
the weak interaction (0.063 eV/P atom) with h-BN substrate fails to stabilize
its 2D structure. Remarkably, we find that a substrate with a moderate
interaction (about 0.35 eV/P atom) is able to stabilize the 2D characteristics
of the nanoflake on a realistic time scale. Our findings here provide useful
guidelines for searching suitable substrates for the directly epitaxial growth
of phosphorene.


title:
From Data to Visualisations and Back: Selecting Visualisations Based on
  Data and System Design Considerations

abstract:
  Graphical interfaces and interactive visualisations are typical mediators
between human users and data analytics systems. HCI researchers and developers
have to be able to understand both human needs and back-end data analytics.
Participants of our tutorial will learn how visualisation and interface design
can be combined with data analytics to provide better visualisations. In the
first of three parts, the participants will learn about visualisations and how
to appropriately select them. In the second part, restrictions and
opportunities associated with different data analytics systems will be
discussed. In the final part, the participants will have the opportunity to
develop visualisations and interface designs under given scenarios of data and
system settings.


title: $\infty$-categorical monadicity and descent

abstract:
  Riehl and Verity have introduced an "$\infty$-cosmic" framework in which they
redevelop the category theory of $\infty$-categories using 2-categorical
arguments. In this paper, we begin with a self-contained review of the parts of
their theory needed to discuss adjunctions and monadicity. This is applied in
order to extend to the $\infty$-categorical context the classical criterion for
fully faithfulness of the comparison functor induced by an adjunction. We
discuss the relation with previous work in the literature---which primarily
uses model-categorical techniques---and indicate applications to descent
theory.


title:
Perfectly capturing traveling single photons of arbitrary temporal
  wavepackets with a single tunable device

abstract:
  We derive the explicit analytical form of the time-dependent coupling
parameter to an external field for perfect absorption of traveling single
photon fields with arbitrary temporal profiles by a tunable single input-output
open quantum system, which can be realized as either a single qubit or single
resonator system. However, the time-dependent coupling parameter for perfect
absorption has a singularity at $t=0$ and constraints on real systems prohibit
a faithful physical realization of the perfect absorber. A numerical example is
included to illustrate the absorber's performance under practical limitations
on the coupling strength.


title: Cohomogeneity one actions on anti de Sitter spacetimes

abstract:
  In this paper we classify, up to orbit equivalence, cohomogeneity one actions
of connected closed Lie subgroups of $U(1,n)$ on the $(2n+1)$-dimensional anti
de Sitter spacetime $AdS^{2n+1}$. We also give some new examples of nonproper
cohomogeneity one actions on $AdS^{n+1}$ and determine parabolic Lie subgroups
of $SO(2,n)$ and their orbits in $AdS^{n+1}$


title: Symmetry-breaking oscillations in membrane optomechanics

abstract:
  We study the classical dynamics of a membrane inside a cavity in the
situation where this optomechanical system possesses a reflection symmetry.
Symmetry breaking occurs through supercritical and subcritical pitchfork
bifurcations of the static fixed point solutions. Both bifurcations can be
observed through variation of the laser-cavity detuning, which gives rise to a
boomerang-like fixed point pattern with hysteresis. The symmetry-breaking fixed
points evolve into self-sustained oscillations when the laser intensity is
increased. In addition to the analysis of the accompanying Hopf bifurcations we
describe these oscillations at finite amplitudes with an ansatz that fully
accounts for the frequency shift relative to the natural membrane frequency. We
complete our study by following the route to chaos for the membrane dynamics.


title:
High-throughput in-volume processing in glass with isotropic spatial
  resolutions in three dimensions

abstract:
  We report on fabrication of three dimensional (3D) microstructures in glass
with isotropic spatial resolutions. To achieve high throughput fabrication, we
expand the focal spot size with a low-numerical-aperture lens, which naturally
results in a degraded axial resolution. We solve the problem with simultaneous
spatial temporal focusing which leads to an isotropic laser-affected volume
with a spatial resolution of ~100 micron.


title: Universal Minimal Flow in the Theory of Topological Groupoids

abstract:
  In this paper we investigate some connections between Topological Dynamics,
the theory of G-Principal Bundles, and the theory of Locally Trivial Groupoids.


title: Nuclear structure calculations for two-neutrino double-beta decay

abstract:
  We study the two-neutrino double-beta decay in 76Ge, 116Cd, 128Te, 130Te, and
150Nd, as well as the two Gamow-Teller branches that connect the double-beta
decay partners with the states in the intermediate nuclei. We use a theoretical
microscopic approach based on a deformed selfconsistent mean field with Skyrme
interactions including pairing and spin-isospin residual forces, which are
treated in a proton-neutron quasiparticle random-phase approximation. We
compare our results for Gamow-Teller strength distributions with experimental
information obtained from charge-exchange reactions. We also compare our
results for the two-neutrino double-beta decay nuclear matrix elements with
those extracted from the measured half-lives. Both single-state and
low-lying-state dominance hypotheses are analyzed theoretically and
experimentally making use of recent data from charge-exchange reactions and
beta decay of the intermediate nuclei.


title: Complementary Dual Algebraic Geometry Codes

abstract:
  Linear complementary dual (LCD) codes is a class of linear codes introduced
by Massey in 1964. LCD codes have been extensively studied in literature
recently. In addition to their applications in data storage, communications
systems, and consumer electronics, LCD codes have been employed in
cryptography. More specifically, it has been shown that LCD codes can also help
improve the security of the information processed by sensitive devices,
especially against so-called side-channel attacks (SCA) and fault non-invasive
attacks. In this paper, we are interested in the construction of particular
algebraic geometry (AG) LCD codes which could be good candidates to be
resistant against SCA. We firstly provide a construction scheme for obtaining
LCD codes from elliptic curves. Then, some explicit LCD codes from elliptic
curve are presented. MDS codes are of the most importance in coding theory due
to their theoretical significance and practical interests. In this paper, all
the constructed LCD codes from elliptic curves are MDS or almost MDS. Some
infinite classes of LCD codes from elliptic curves are optimal due to the
Griesmer bound. Finally, we introduce a construction mechanism for obtaining
LCD codes from any algebraic curve and derive some explicit LCD codes from
hyperelliptic curves and Hermitian curves.


title:
Multi-view Dimensionality Reduction for Dialect Identification of Arabic
  Broadcast Speech

abstract:
  In this work, we present a new Vector Space Model (VSM) of speech utterances
for the task of spoken dialect identification. Generally, DID systems are built
using two sets of features that are extracted from speech utterances; acoustic
and phonetic. The acoustic and phonetic features are used to form vector
representations of speech utterances in an attempt to encode information about
the spoken dialects. The Phonotactic and Acoustic VSMs, thus formed, are used
for the task of DID. The aim of this paper is to construct a single VSM that
encodes information about spoken dialects from both the Phonotactic and
Acoustic VSMs. Given the two views of the data, we make use of a well known
multi-view dimensionality reduction technique known as Canonical Correlation
Analysis (CCA), to form a single vector representation for each speech
utterance that encodes dialect specific discriminative information from both
the phonetic and acoustic representations. We refer to this approach as feature
space combination approach and show that our CCA based feature vector
representation performs better on the Arabic DID task than the phonetic and
acoustic feature representations used alone. We also present the feature space
combination approach as a viable alternative to the model based combination
approach, where two DID systems are built using the two VSMs (Phonotactic and
Acoustic) and the final prediction score is the output score combination from
the two systems.


title:
Mini-Proceedings, 18th meeting of the Working Group on Radiative
  Corrections and MC Generators for Low Energies

abstract:
  The mini-proceedings of the 18$^{\mathrm{th}}$ Meeting of the "Working Group
on Radiative Corrections and MonteCarlo Generators for Low Energies" held in
Frascati, 19$^{\mathrm{th}}$ - 20$^{\mathrm{st}}$ May, are presented. These
meetings, started in 2006, have as aim to bring together experimentalists and
theoreticians working in the fields of meson transition form factors, hadronic
contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment of the leptons, and the
effective fine structure constant. The development of MonteCarlo generators and
Radiative Corrections for precision $e^+e^-$ and $\tau$-lepton physics are also
covered, with emphasis on meson production. At this workshop, a documentary
entitled {\it Bruno Touschek with AdA in Orsay} commemorating the first
observation of electron-positron collisions in a laboratory was also presented.
With this edition, the working group reaches 10 years of continuous activities.


title:
Search for $Z'$, vacuum (in)stability and hints of high-energy
  structures

abstract:
  We study the high-energy behaviour of a class of anomaly-free abelian
extensions of the Standard Model. We focus on the interplay among the
phenomenological characterisation of the model and the use of precise
renormalisation group methods. Using as boundary conditions regions of the
parameter space at the verge of current LHC probe, interesting unification
patterns emerge linked to thresholds belonging to a SO(10) grand unification
theory (GUT). We stress how the evolution of the mixing between the two abelian
factors may provide a valuable tool to address the candidate high-energy
embedding. The emerging unification scenarios are then challenged to be
perturbative and to allow for a stable vacuum.


title:
Carbon cluster diagnostics-II: ExB velocity filter for large carbon
  clusters

abstract:
  An ExB velocity filter is described that has been used for the detection and
diagnostics of large carbon clusters Cm (where m is up to ten thousand). The
velocity and momentum analyses are compared for our special experimental
arrangement. We describe the variability of the resolving power of our compact
velocity filter as the main advantage over other comparable mass analysis
techniques.


title:
Micro-orbits in a many-branes model and deviations from $1/r^2$ Newton's
  law

abstract:
  We consider a 5-dimensional model with geometry ${\cal M} = {\cal M}_4 \times
{\cal S}_1$, with compactification radius $R$. The Standard Model particles are
localized onto a brane located at y=0, with identical branes localized at
different points in the extra dimension. Objects located on our brane can orbit
around objects located on a brane at a distance $d=y/R$, with an orbit and a
period significantly different from the standard Newtonian ones. We study the
kinematical properties of the orbits, finding that it is possible to
distinguish one motion from the other in a large region of the initial
conditions parameter space. This is a warm-up to study if a SM-like mass
distribution on one (or more) distant brane(s) may represent a possible dark
matter candidate. After using the same technique to the study of orbits of
objects lying on the same brane ($d=0$), we apply this method to detect generic
deviations from the inverse-square Newton's law. We propose a possible
experimental setup to look for departures from Newtonian motion in the
micro-world, finding that an order of magnitude improvement on present bounds
can be attained at the 95% CL under reasonable assumptions.


title: Welschinger invariants of Blow-ups of symplectic 4-manifolds

abstract:
  Using the degeneration technique, one studies the behavior of Welschinger
invariants under the blow-up, and obtains some blow-up formulae of Welschinger
invariants. One also analyses the variation of Welschinger invariants when
replacing a pair of real points in the real configuration by a pair of
conjugated points, and reproves Welschinger's wall crossing formula.


title:
Coverage Analysis of Two-Tier HetNets for Co-Channel, Orthogonal, and
  Partial Spectrum Sharing under Fractional Load Conditions

abstract:
  In heterogeneous networks, the random deployment of femto access points
(FAPs) and macro base stations (MBSs) with uncoordinated channel access impose
huge inter-tier interferences. In real-life networks, the process of MBSs
deployment exhibits the homogeneity, however the FAPs have the behavioral
characteristic of clusters formation like in malls, apartments, offices, etc.
Therefore, the composite modeling of the MBSs and the FAPs using Poisson point
process and Poisson cluster process is employed for the evaluation of coverage
probability. The scenario of the real-time traffic for macro-tier and the
best-effort traffic for femto-tier is considered. Cognition is introduced in
the clustered FAPs to control the inter-tier interference. Furthermore, the
impact of macro-tier load is analyzed by exploiting the inherent coupling
between coverage probability and activity factor of an MBS. Further, we study
the effect of co-channel, orthogonal, and partial spectrum sharing modes on the
coverage for given parameters like load condition, FAPs/MBSs density, etc. We
provide simulation validation for the derived expressions of coverage and
present an comparative analysis for the mentioned spectrum sharing modes.


title:
On Almost Complete Subsets of a Conic in $\mathrm{PG}(2,q)$,
  Completeness of Normal Rational Curves and Extendability of Reed-Solomon
  Codes

abstract:
  A subset $\mathcal{S}$ of a conic $\mathcal{C}$ in the projective plane
$\mathrm{PG}(2,q)$ is called almost complete (AC-subset for short) if it can be
extended to a larger arc in $\mathrm{PG}(2,q)$ only by the points of
$\mathcal{C}\setminus \mathcal{S}$ and by the nucleus of $\mathcal{C}$ when $q$
is even. New upper bounds on the smallest size $t(q)$ of an AC-subset are
obtained, in particular, \begin{align*} &t(q)<\sqrt{q(3\ln q+\ln\ln q
+\ln3)}+\sqrt{\frac{q}{3\ln q}}+4\thicksim\sqrt{3q\ln q};&t(q)<1.835\sqrt{q\ln
q}.\end{align*} The new bounds are used to increase regions of pairs $(N,q)$
for which it is proved that every normal rational curve in $\mathrm{PG}(N,q)$
is a complete $(q+1)$-arc or, equivalently, that no $[q+1,N+1,q-N+1]_q$
generalized doubly-extended Reed-Solomon code can be extended to a
$[q+2,N+1,q-N+2]_q$ MDS code.


title:
Integrals of products of Hurwitz zeta functions via Feynman
  parametrization and two double sums of Riemann zeta functions

abstract:
  We consider two integrals over $x\in [0,1]$ involving products of the
function $\zeta_1(a,x)\equiv \zeta(a,x)-x^{-a}$, where $\zeta(a,x)$ is the
Hurwitz zeta function, given by
$$\int_0^1\zeta_1(a,x)\zeta_1(b,x)\,dx\quad\mbox{and}\quad
\int_0^1\zeta_1(a,x)\zeta_1(b,1-x)\,dx$$ when $\Re (a,b)>1$. These integrals
have been investigated recently in \cite{SCP}; here we provide an alternative
derivation by application of Feynman parametrization. We also discuss a moment
integral and the evaluation of two doubly infinite sums containing the Riemann
zeta function $\zeta(x)$ and two free parameters $a$ and $b$. The limiting
forms of these sums when $a+b$ takes on integer values are considered.


title: Radiative cooling of H3O+ and its deuterated isotopologues

abstract:
  In conjunction with ab initio potential energy and dipole moment surfaces for
the electronic ground state, we have made a theoretical study of the radiative
lifetimes for the hydronium ion H$_3$O$^{+}$ and its deuterated isotopologues.
We compute the ro-vibrational energy levels and their associated wavefunctions
together with Einstein coefficients for the electric dipole transitions. A
detailed analysis of the stability of the ro-vibrational states have been
carried out and the longest-living states of the hydronium ions have been
identified. We report estimated radiative lifetimes and cooling functions for
temperatures $<$ 200 K. A number of long-living meta-stable states are
identified, capable of population trapping.


title: The Riemann minimal examples

abstract:
  Near the end of his life, Bernhard Riemann made the marvelous discovery of a
1-parameter family $R_{\lambda}$, $\lambda\in (0,\infty)$, of periodic properly
embedded minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ with the property that every
horizontal plane intersects each of his examples in either a circle or a
straight line. Furthermore, as the parameter $\lambda\to 0$ his surfaces
converge to a vertical catenoid and as $\lambda\to \infty$ his surfaces
converge to a vertical helicoid. Since Riemann's minimal examples are
topologically planar domains that are periodic with the fundamental domains for
the associated $\mathbb{Z}$-action being diffeomorphic to a compact annulus
punctured in a single point, then topologically each of these surfaces is
diffeomorphic to the unique genus zero surface with two limit ends. Also he
described his surfaces analytically in terms of elliptic functions on
rectangular elliptic curves. This article exams Riemann's original proof of the
classification of minimal surfaces foliated by circles and lines in parallel
planes and presents a complete outline of the recent proof that every properly
embedded minimal planar domain in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is either a Riemann minimal
example, a catenoid, a helicoid or a plane.


title:
Errors bounds for finite approximations of coherent lower previsions on
  finite probability spaces

abstract:
  Coherent lower previsions are general probabilistic models allowing
incompletely specified probability distributions. However, for complete
description of a coherent lower prevision -- even on finite underlying sample
spaces -- an infinite number of assessments is needed in general. Therefore,
they are often only described approximately by some less general models, such
as coherent lower probabilities or in terms of some other finite set of
constraints. The magnitude of error induced by the approximations has often
been neglected in the literature, despite the fact that it can be significant,
with substantial impact on consequent decisions. An apparent reason is that no
widely used general method for estimating the error seems to be available at
the moment.
  This paper provides a practically applicable method that allows calculating
an upper bound for the maximal error induced by approximating a coherent lower
probability with its values on a finite set of gambles. An algorithm is also
provided with an estimation of its computational complexity.


title: A GRASP approach for solving the 2-connected m-dominating set problem

abstract:
  In this paper, we present a constructive heuristic algorithm for the
$2$-connected $m$-dominating set problem. It is based on a greedy heuristic in
which a 2-connected subgraph is iteratively extended with suitable open ears.
The growth procedure is an adaptation of the breadth-first-search which
efficiently manages to find open ears. Further, a heuristic function is defined
for selecting the best ear out of a list of candidates. The performance of the
basic approach is improved by adding a correction procedure which removes
unnecessary nodes from a generated solution. Finally, randomization is included
and the method is extended towards the GRASP metaheuristic. In our
computational experiments, we compare the performance of the proposed algorithm
to recently published results and show that the method is highly competitive
and especially suitable for dense graphs.


title:
Geometrical complexity of the antidots unit cell effect on the spin wave
  excitations spectra

abstract:
  We have investigated theoretically (with micromagnetic simulations and plane
wave method) and experimentally (with ferromagnetic resonance and Brillouin
light scattering) three types of antidot lattices (ADLs) based on permalloy
thin films with increased complexity of the unit cell: simple square,
bi-component square and wave-like ADL. We have found that placing a small
additional antidot in the center of the unit cell of the square ADL modify
significantly the spin wave spectrum and its dependence on the orientation of
the in-plane magnetic field. We also check the further changes of spin wave
spectrum resulting from the introduction of air-gaps connecting small and large
antidots. In particular, the presence of small antidots change the dependence
of the frequency of the fundamental mode on the angle of the in-plane applied
magnetic field. The air-gaps strongly discriminates the propagation of spin
waves in two principal direction of ADL lattice, orthogonal to each other. In
spite of these spectral changes, the spatial distribution of the spin wave
amplitude generally preserves some similarities for all three structures. We
also highlighted out the role of defects in the ADL in the observed spectra.
The obtained results can be interesting for the magnonics applications of the
magnonic crystals.


title: Moving Magnetic Features around a Pore

abstract:
  Spectropolarimetric observations from Sunrise II/IMaX obtained in June 2013
are used for a statistical analysis to determine the physical properties of
moving magnetic features (MMFs) observed near a pore. MMFs of the same and
opposite polarity with respect to the pore are found to stream from its border
at an average speed of 1.3 km s$^{-1}$ and 1.2 km s$^{-1}$ respectively, with
mainly same-polarity MMFs found further away from the pore. MMFs of both
polarities are found to harbor rather weak, inclined magnetic fields.
Opposite-polarity MMFs are blue-shifted, while same-polarity MMFs do not show
any preference for up- or downflows. Most of the MMFs are found to be of
sub-arcsecond size and carry a mean flux of $\sim$ 1.2$\times 10^{17}$ Mx.


title:
Nuclear modification factor of charged particles and light-flavour
  hadrons in p--Pb collisions measured by ALICE

abstract:
  The hot and dense strongly interacting Quark-Gluon Plasma (sQGP) created in
ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions can be probed by studying high-$p_{\rm
T}$ particle production and parton energy loss. Similar measurements performed
in p-Pb collisions may help in determining whether initial or final state
nuclear effects play a role in the observed suppression of hadron production at
high-$p_{\rm T}$ in Pb--Pb collisions. By examining the nuclear modification
factors through the comparison of identified hadron yields in different
collision systems one can gain insight into particle production mechanisms and
nuclear effects.


title: Scaling limits of stochastic processes associated with resistance forms

abstract:
  We establish that if a sequence of spaces equipped with resistance metrics
and measures converge with respect to the Gromov-Hausdorff-vague topology, and
a certain non-explosion condition is satisfied, then the associated stochastic
processes also converge. This result generalises previous work on trees,
fractals, and various models of random graphs. We further conjecture that it
will be applicable to the random walk on the incipient infinite cluster of
critical bond percolation on the high-dimensional integer lattice.


title: The disappearing act: A dusty wind eclipsing RW Aur

abstract:
  RW Aur is a young binary star that experienced a deep dimming in 2010-11 in
component A and a second even deeper dimming from summer 2014 to summer 2016.
We present new unresolved multi-band photometry during the 2014-16 eclipse, new
emission line spectroscopy before and during the dimming, archive infrared
photometry between 2014-15, as well as an overview of literature data.
  Spectral observations were carried out with the Fibre-fed RObotic Dual-beam
Optical Spectrograph on the Liverpool Telescope. Photometric monitoring was
done with the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network and James
Gregory Telescope. Our photometry shows that RW Aur dropped in brightness to R
= 12.5 in March 2016. In addition to the long-term dimming trend, RW Aur is
variable on time scales as short as hours. The short-term variation is most
likely due to an unstable accretion flow. This, combined with the presence of
accretion-related emission lines in the spectra suggest that accretion flows in
the binary system are at least partially visible during the eclipse.
  The equivalent width of [O I] increases by a factor of ten in 2014,
coinciding with the dimming event, confirming previous reports. The
blue-shifted part of the $H\alpha$ profile is suppressed during the eclipse. In
combination with the increase in mid-infrared brightness during the eclipse
reported in the literature and seen in WISE archival data, and constraints on
the geometry of the disk around RW Aur A we arrive at the conclusion that the
obscuring screen is part of a wind emanating from the inner disk.


title:
Energy spectra of a spin-$\tfrac12$ XY spin molecule interacting with a
  single mode field cavity: Numerical study

abstract:
  In a previous paper [J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 682 (2016) 012032},
arXiv:1605.05593] we studied analytically the energy spectra of a finite-size
spin $\tfrac12$ XY chain (molecule) coupled at an arbitrary spin site to a
single mode of an electromagnetic field via the Jaynes-Cummings model. We
considered spin rings and open spin molecules with up to 4 spins and an
interaction restricted to nearest-neighbours. Here we extend our investigation,
addressing numerically the energy spectra of molecules of up to 10 spins with
nearest-neighbour or long-range interaction. Furthermore we analyze the
behaviour of an invariant operator, constructed by combining the magnetization
of the spin-chain and the total number of photons in the system. We found a
strong dependence on the number (even or odd) of sites in the molecules. This
study is aimed at finding the appropriate combination of the physical
parameters that could make the system suitable for use in quantum computations.


title:
A High-Performance, Low-Cost Laser Shutter using a Piezoelectric
  Cantilever Actuator

abstract:
  We report the design and characterization of an optical shutter based on a
piezoelectric cantilever. Compared to conventional electro-magnetic shutters,
the device is intrinsically low power and acoustically quiet. The cantilever
position is controlled by a high-voltage op-amp circuit for easy tuning of the
range of travel, and mechanical slew rate, which enables a factor of 30
reduction in mechanical noise compared to a rapidly switched device. We achieve
shuttering rise and fall times of 11 $\mu$s, corresponding to mechanical slew
rates of 1.3 $\textrm{ ms}^{-1}$, with an timing jitter of less than 1 $\mu$s.
When used to create optical pulses, we achieve minimum pulse durations of 250
$\mu$s. The reliability of the shutter was investigated by operating
continuously for one week at 10 Hz switching rate. After this period, neither
the shutter delay or actuation speed had changed by a notable amount. We also
show that the high-voltage electronics can be easily configured as a versatile
low-noise, high-bandwidth piezo driver, well-suited to applications in laser
frequency control.


title:
Load-aware Performance Analysis of Cell Center/Edge Users in Random
  HetNets

abstract:
  For real-time traffic, the link quality and call blocking probability (both
derived from coverage probability) are realized to be poor for cell edge users
(CEUs) compared to cell center users (CCUs) as the signal reception in the cell
center region is better compared to the cell edge region. In heterogeneous
networks (HetNets), the uncoordinated channel access by different types of base
stations determine the interference statistics that further arbitrates the
coverage probability. Thus, the spectrum allocation techniques have major
impact on the performance of CCU and CEU. In this paper, the performance of
CCUs and CEUs in a random two-tier network is studied for two spectrum
allocation techniques namely: 1) co-channel (CSA), and 2) shared (SSA). For
performance analysis, the widely accepted conception of modeling the tiers of
HetNet using independent homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP) is considered
to accommodate the spatial randomness in location of BSs. To incorporate the
spatial randomness in the arrival of service and to aid the load-aware
analysis, the cellular traffic is modeled using spatio-temporal PPP. Under this
scenario, we have developed an analytical framework to evaluate the load-aware
performance, including coverage and blocking probabilities, of CCUs and CEUs
under both spectrum allocation techniques. Further, we provide insight into
achievable area energy efficiency for SSA and CSA. The developed analytical
framework is validated through extensive simulations. Next, we demonstrate the
impact of traffic load and femto access points density on the performance of
CCUs/CEUs under CSA and SSA.


title:
Homogenization of equi-coercive nonlinear energies defined on
  vector-valued functions, with non-uniformly bounded coefficients

abstract:
  The present paper deals with the asymptotic behavior of equi-coercive
sequences $\{\mathcal{F}_n\}$ of nonlinear functionals defined over
vector-valued functions in $W_)^{1,p}(\Omega)^M$ , where $p>1$, $M\ge1$, and
$\Omega$ is a bounded open set of $\mathbb{R}^N$, $N\ge2$. The strongly local
energy density $F_n({\cdot}, Du)$ of the functional $\{\mathcal{F}_n\}$
satisfies a Lipschitz condition with respect to the second variable, which is
controlled by a positive sequence $\{a_n\}$ which is only bounded in some
suitable space $L^r(\Omega)$. We prove that the sequence $\{\mathcal{F}_n\}$
$\Gamma$-converges for the strong topology of $L^p(\Omega)^M$ to a functional
$\mathcal{F}$ which has a strongly local density $F({\cdot}, Du)$ for
sufficiently regular functions $u$. This compactness result extends former
results on the topic, which are based either on maximum principle arguments in
the nonlinear scalar case, or adapted div-curl lemmas in the linear case. Here,
the vectorial character and the nonlinearity of the problem need a new approach
based on a careful analysis of the asymptotic minimizers associated with the
functional $\mathcal{F}_n$. The relevance of the conditions which are imposed
to the energy density $F_n({\cdot}, Du)$, is illustrated by several examples
including some classical hyper-elastic energies.


title:
Multi-Residual Networks: Improving the Speed and Accuracy of Residual
  Networks

abstract:
  In this article, we take one step toward understanding the learning behavior
of deep residual networks, and supporting the observation that deep residual
networks behave like ensembles. We propose a new convolutional neural network
architecture which builds upon the success of residual networks by explicitly
exploiting the interpretation of very deep networks as an ensemble. The
proposed multi-residual network increases the number of residual functions in
the residual blocks. Our architecture generates models that are wider, rather
than deeper, which significantly improves accuracy. We show that our model
achieves an error rate of 3.73% and 19.45% on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100
respectively, that outperforms almost all of the existing models. We also
demonstrate that our model outperforms very deep residual networks by 0.22%
(top-1 error) on the full ImageNet 2012 classification dataset. Additionally,
inspired by the parallel structure of multi-residual networks, a model
parallelism technique has been investigated. The model parallelism method
distributes the computation of residual blocks among the processors, yielding
up to 15% computational complexity improvement.


title: Congruence subgroups of braid groups

abstract:
  In this paper we give a description of the generators of the prime level
congruence subgroups of braid groups. Also, we give a new presentation of the
symplectic group over a finite field, and we calculate symmetric quotients of
the prime level congruence subgroups of braid groups. Finally, we find a finite
generating set for the level-3 congruence subgroup of the braid group on 3
strands.


title:
Exploring accretion disc physics and black hole growth with regular
  monitoring of ultrafast AGN winds

abstract:
  15 years of XMM-Newton observations have established that ultra-fast, highly
ionized winds are common in radio-quiet AGN. A simple theory of
Eddington-limited accretion correctly predicts the typical velocity (~0.1c) and
high ionization of such winds, with observed flow energy capable of ejecting
star-forming gas. With a recent extended XMM-Newton observation of the
archetypal UFO, PG1211+143, revealing a more complex flow pattern, we suggest
that targetted observations over the next decade offer unique potential for
probing the inner accretion disc structure and SMBH growth.


title: General bounds on limited broadcast domination

abstract:
  Dominating broadcasting is a domination-type structure that models a
transmission antenna network. In this paper, we study a limited version of this
structure, that was proposed as a common framework for both broadcast and
classical domination. In this limited version, the broadcast function is upper
bounded by an integer $k$ and the minimum cost of such function is the
dominating $k$-broadcast number. Our main result is a unified upper bound on
this parameter for any value of $k$ in general graphs, in terms of both $k$ and
the order of the graph. We also study the computational complexity of the
associated decision problem.


title:
A Deterministic Mathematical Model for Bidirectional Excluded Flow with
  Langmuir Kinetics

abstract:
  In many important cellular processes, including mRNA translation, gene
transcription, phosphotransfer, and intracellular transport, biological
"particles" move along some kind of "tracks". The motion of these particles can
be modeled as a one-dimensional movement along an ordered sequence of sites.
The biological particles (e.g., ribosomes, RNAPs, phosphate groups, motor
proteins) have volume and cannot surpass one another. In some cases, there is a
preferred direction of movement along the track, but in general the movement
may be two-directional, and furthermore the particles may attach or detach from
various regions along the tracks (e.g. ribosomes may drop off the mRNA molecule
before reaching a stop codon). We derive a new deterministic mathematical model
for such transport phenomena that may be interpreted as the dynamic mean-field
approximation of an important model from mechanical statistics called the
asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) with Langmuir kinetics. Using tools
from the theory of monotone dynamical systems and contraction theory we show
that the model admits a unique globally asymptotically stable equilibrium. This
means that the occupancy in all the sites along the lattice converges to a
steady-state value that depends on the parameters but not on the initial
conditions. We also show that the model entrains (or phase locks) to periodic
excitations in any of its forward, backward, attachment, or detachment rates.
We demonstrate an application of this phenomenological transport model for
analyzing the effect of ribosome drop off in mRNA translation. One may perhaps
expect that drop off from a jammed site may increase the total flow by reducing
congestion. Our results show that this is not true. Drop off has a substantial
effect on the flow, yet always leads to a reduction in the steady-state protein
production rate.


title:
Analysis of classical phase space and energy transfer for two rotating
  dipoles in an electric field

abstract:
  We explore the classical dynamics of two interacting rotating dipoles that
are fixed in the space and exposed to an external homogeneous electric field.
Kinetic energy transfer mechanisms between the dipoles are investigated varying
both the amount of initial excess kinetic energy of one of them and the
strength of the electric field. In the field-free case, and depending on the
initial excess energy an abrupt transition between equipartition and
non-equipartition regimes is encountered. The study of the phase space
structure of the system as well as the formulation of the Hamiltonian in an
appropriate coordinate frame provide a thorough understanding of this sharp
transition. When the electric field is turned on, the kinetic energy transfer
mechanism is significantly more complex and the system goes through different
regimes of equipartition and non-equipartition of the energy including chaotic
behavior.


title: Uniform sampling in a structured branching population

abstract:
  We are interested in the dynamic of a structured branching population where
the trait of each individual moves according to a Markov process. The rate of
division of each individual is a function of its trait and when a branching
event occurs, the trait of the descendants at birth depends on the trait of the
mother and on the number of descendants. In this article, we explicitly
describe the penalized Markov process, named auxiliary process, corresponding
to the dynamic of the trait along the spine by giving its associated
infinitesimal generator. We prove a Many-to-One formula and a Many-to-One
formula for forks. Furthermore, we prove that this auxiliary process
characterizes exactly the process of the trait of a uniformly sampled
individual in the large population approximation. We detail three examples of
growth-fragmentation models: the linear growth model, the exponential growth
model and the parasite infection model.


title:
Keldysh functional renormalization group for electronic properties of
  graphene

abstract:
  We construct a nonperturbative nonequilibrium theory for graphene electrons
interacting via the instantaneous Coulomb interaction by combining the
functional renormalization group method with the nonequilibrium Keldysh
formalism. The Coulomb interaction is partially bosonized in the forward
scattering channel resulting in a coupled Fermi-Bose theory. Quantum kinetic
equations for the Dirac fermions and the Hubbard-Stratonovich boson are derived
in Keldysh basis, together with the exact flow equation for the effective
action and the hierarchy of one-particle irreducible vertex functions, taking
into account a possible non-zero expectation value of the bosonic field.
Eventually, the system of equations is solved approximately under thermal
equilibrium conditions at finite temperature, providing results for the
renormalized Fermi velocity and the static dielectric function, which extends
the zero-temperature results of Bauer~\textit{et~al.}, Phys.\ Rev.\ B {\bf 92},
121409 (2015).


title: Low-energy spectrum of Toeplitz operators: the case of wells

abstract:
  In the 1980s, Helffer and Sj\"ostrand examined in a series of articles the
concentration of the ground state of a Schr\"odinger operator in the
semiclassical limit. In a similar spirit, and using the asymptotics for the
Szeg\"o kernel, we show a theorem about the localization properties of the
ground state of a Toeplitz operator, when the minimal set of the symbol is a
finite set of non-degenerate critical points. Under the same condition on the
symbol, for any integer K we describe the first K eigenvalues of the operator.


title: H-distribution via Sobolev spaces

abstract:
  H-distributions associated to weakly convergent sequences in Sobolev spaces
are determined. It is shown that a weakly convergent sequence $(u_n)$ in
$W^{-k,p}( \R^d)$ has the property that $\theta u_n$ converges strongly in
$W^{-k,p}(\R^d)$ for every $\theta\in\mathcal S(\R^d)$ if and only if all
H-distributions related to this sequence are equal to zero. Results are applied
on a weakly convergent sequence of solutions to a family of linear first order
PDEs.


title:
The "exterior approach" applied to the inverse obstacle problem for the
  heat equation

abstract:
  In this paper we consider the " exterior approach " to solve the inverse
obstacle problem for the heat equation. This iterated approach is based on a
quasi-reversibility method to compute the solution from the Cauchy data while a
simple level set method is used to characterize the obstacle. We present
several mixed formulations of quasi-reversibility that enable us to use some
classical conforming finite elements. Among these, an iterated formulation that
takes the noisy Cauchy data into account in a weak way is selected to serve in
some numerical experiments and show the feasibility of our strategy of
identification.


title: A single-walker approach for studying quasi-ergodic systems

abstract:
  The jump-walking Monte-Carlo algorithm is revisited and updated to study the
equilibrium properties of systems exhibiting quasi-ergodicity. It is designed
for a single processing thread as opposed to currently predominant algorithms
for large parallel processing systems. The updated algorithm is tested on the
Ising model and applied to the lattice-gas model for sorption in aerogel at low
temperatures, when dynamics of the system is critically slowed down. It is
demonstrated that the updated jump-walking simulations are able to produce
equilibrium isotherms which are typically hidden by the hysteresis effect
characteristic of the standard single-flip simulations.


title:
Flexible linear mixed models with improper priors for longitudinal and
  survival data

abstract:
  We propose a Bayesian approach using improper priors for hierarchical linear
mixed models with flexible random effects and residual error distributions. The
error distribution is modelled using scale mixtures of normals, which can
capture tails heavier than those of the normal distribution. This
generalisation is useful to produce models that are robust to the presence of
outliers. The case of asymmetric residual errors is also studied. We present
general results for the propriety of the posterior that also cover cases with
censored observations, allowing for the use of these models in the contexts of
popular longitudinal and survival analyses. We consider the use of copulas with
flexible marginals for modelling the dependence between the random effects, but
our results cover the use of any random effects distribution. Thus, our paper
provides a formal justification for Bayesian inference in a very wide class of
models (covering virtually all of the literature) under attractive prior
structures that limit the amount of required user elicitation.


title:
A method for mechanical generation of radio frequency fields in nuclear
  magnetic resonance force microscopy

abstract:
  We present an innovative method for magnetic resonance force microscopy
(MRFM) with ultra-low dissipation, by using the higher modes of the mechanical
detector as radio frequency (rf) source. This method allows MRFM on samples
without the need to be close to an rf source. Furthermore, since rf sources
require currents that give dissipation, our method enables nuclear magnetic
resonance experiments at ultra-low temperatures. Removing the need for an
on-chip rf source is an important step towards a MRFM which can be widely used
in condensed matter physics.


title: The Undecidability of Arbitrary Arrow Update Logic

abstract:
  Arbitrary Arrow Update Logic is a dynamic modal logic that uses an arbitrary
arrow update modality to quantify over all arrow updates. Some properties of
this logic have already been established, but until now it remained an open
question whether the logic's satisfiability problem is decidable. Here, we show
that the satisfiability problem of Arbitrary Arrow Update Logic is co-RE hard,
and therefore undecidable, by a reduction of the tiling problem.


title: Multiparty Session Actors

abstract:
  Actor coordination armoured with a suitable protocol description language has
been a pressing problem in the actors community. We study the applicability of
multiparty session type (MPST) protocols for verification of actor programs. We
incorporate sessions to actors by introducing minimum additions to the model
such as the notion of actor roles and protocol mailboxes. The framework uses
Scribble, which is a protocol description language based on multiparty session
types. Our programming model supports actor-like syntax and runtime
verification mechanism guaranteeing communication safety of the participating
entities. An actor can implement multiple roles in a similar way as an object
can implement multiple interfaces. Multiple roles allow for cooperative
inter-concurrency in a single actor. We demonstrate our framework by designing
and implementing a session actor library in Python and its runtime verification
mechanism. Benchmark results demonstrate that the runtime checks induce
negligible overhead. We evaluate the applicability of our verification
framework to specify actor interactions by implementing twelve examples from an
actor benchmark suit.


title: Statistical tests of galactic dynamo theory

abstract:
  Mean-field galactic dynamo theory is the leading theory to explain the
prevalence of regular magnetic fields in spiral galaxies, but its systematic
comparison with observations is still incomplete and fragmentary. Here we
compare predictions of mean-field dynamo models to observational data on
magnetic pitch angle and the strength of the mean magnetic field. We
demonstrate that a standard $\alpha^2\Omega$ dynamo model produces pitch angles
of the regular magnetic fields of nearby galaxies that are reasonably
consistent with available data. The dynamo estimates of the magnetic field
strength are generally within a factor of a few of the observational values.
Reasonable agreement between theoretical and observed pitch angles generally
requires the turbulent correlation time $\tau$ to be in the range 10-20 Myr, in
agreement with standard estimates. Moreover, good agreement also requires that
the ratio of the ionized gas scale height to root-mean-square turbulent
velocity increases with radius. Our results thus widen the possibilities to
constrain interstellar medium (ISM) parameters using observations of magnetic
fields. This work is a step toward systematic statistical tests of galactic
dynamo theory. Such studies are becoming more and more feasible as larger
datasets are acquired using current and up-and-coming instruments.


title:
Cherenkov and parametric (quasi-Cherenkov) radiation from relativistic
  charged particles moving in crystals formed by metallic wires

abstract:
  Until recently, the interaction of electromagnetic waves with crystals built
from parallel metallic wires (wire media) was analyzed in the approximation of
isotropic scattering of the electromagnetic wave by a single wire. However, if
the wires are thick (kR~1), electromagnetic wave scattering by a wire is
anisotropic, i.e., the scattering amplitude depends on the scattering angle. In
this work, we derive the equations that describe diffraction of electromagnetic
waves and spontaneous emission of charged particles in wire media, and take
into account the angular dependence of scattering amplitude. Numerical
solutions of these equations show that the radiation intensity increases as the
wire radius is increased and achieves its maximal value in the range kR~1. The
case when the condition kR~1 is fulfilled in the THz frequency range is
considered in detail. The calculations show that the instantaneous power of
Cherenkov and parametric (quasi-Cherenkov) radiations from electron bunches in
the crystal can be tens--hundreds megawatts, i.e., high enough to allow
experimental observation as well as possible practical applications.


title:
Emergence of the Isotropic Kitaev Honeycomb Lattice with Two-dimensional
  Ising Universality in {\alpha}-RuCl$_3$

abstract:
  Anderson proposed structural topology in frustrated magnets hosting novel
quantum spin liquids (QSLs). The QSL state is indeed exactly derived by
fractionalizing the spin excitation into spinless Majorana fermions in a
perfect two dimensional (2D) honeycomb lattice, the so-called Kitaev lattice,
and its experimental realisation is eagerly being pursued. Here we, for the
first time, report the Kitaev lattice stacking with van der Waals (vdW) bonding
in a high quality {\alpha}-RuCl$_3$ crystal using x-ray and neutron
diffractions. Even in absence of apparent monoclinic distortion, the system
exhibits antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering below 6.5 K, likely due to minute
magnetic interaction from trigonal distortion and/or interlayer coupling
additionally to the Kitaev Hamiltonian. We also demonstrate 2D Ising-like
critical behaviors near the N\'eel temperature in the order parameter and
specific heat, capturing the characteristics of short-range spin-spin
correlations underlying the Kitaev model. Our findings hold promise for
unveiling enigmatic physics emerging from the Kitaev QSL.


title:
The Covering Factor of Warm Dust in Weak Emission-Line Active Galactic
  Nuclei

abstract:
  Weak emission-line active galactic nuclei (WLAGNs) are radio-quiet active
galactic nuclei (AGNs) that have nearly featureless optical spectra. We
investigate the ultraviolet to mid-infrared spectral energy distributions of 73
WLAGNs (0.4<z<3) and find that most of them are similar to normal AGNs. We also
calculate the covering factor of warm dust of these 73 WLAGNs. No significant
difference is indicated by a KS test between the covering factor of WLAGNs and
normal AGNs in the common range of bolometric luminosity. The implication for
several models of WLAGNs is discussed. The super-Eddington accretion is
unlikely the dominant reason for the featureless spectrum of a WLAGN. The
present results favor the evolution scenario, i.e., WLAGNs are in a special
stage of AGNs.


title:
Improving landscape inference by integrating heterogeneous data in the
  inverse Ising problem

abstract:
  The inverse Ising problem and its generalizations to Potts and continuous
spin models have recently attracted much attention thanks to their successful
applications in the statistical modeling of biological data. In the standard
setting, the parameters of an Ising model (couplings and fields) are inferred
using a sample of equilibrium configurations drawn from the Boltzmann
distribution. However, in the context of biological applications, quantitative
information for a limited number of microscopic spins configurations has
recently become available. In this paper, we extend the usual setting of the
inverse Ising model by developing an integrative approach combining the
equilibrium sample with (possibly noisy) measurements of the energy performed
for a number of arbitrary configurations. Using simulated data, we show that
our integrative approach outperforms standard inference based only on the
equilibrium sample or the energy measurements, including error correction of
noisy energy measurements. As a biological proof-of-concept application, we
show that mutational fitness landscapes in proteins can be better described
when combining evolutionary sequence data with complementary structural
information about mutant sequences.


title:
Low-Complexity and Basis-Free Channel Estimation for Switch-Based mmWave
  MIMO Systems via Matrix Completion

abstract:
  Recently, a switch-based hybrid massive MIMO structure that aims to reduce
the hardware complexity and power consumption has been proposed as a potential
candidate for millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. Exploiting the sparse
nature of the mmWave channel, compressive sensing (CS)-based channel estimators
have been proposed. When applied to real mmWave channels, the CS-based channel
estimators may encounter heavy computational burden due to the high
dimensionality of the basis. Meanwhile, knowledge about the response of the
antenna array, which is needed for constructing the basis of the CS estimators,
may not be perfect due to array uncertainties such as phase mismatch among
array elements. This can result in the loss of sparse representation and hence
the degraded performance of the CS estimator. In this paper, we propose a novel
matrix completion (MC)-based low-complexity channel estimator. The proposed
scheme is compatible with switch-based hybrid structures, does not need to
specify a basis, and can avoid the basis mismatch issue. Compared with the
existing CS-based estimator, the proposed basis-free scheme is immune to array
response mismatch and exhibits a significantly lower complexity.


title:
High-Dimensional Disorder-Driven Phenomena in Weyl Semimetals,
  Semiconductors and Related Systems

abstract:
  It is commonly believed that a non-interacting disordered electronic system
can undergo only the Anderson metal-insulator transition. It has been
suggested, however, that a broad class of systems can display disorder-driven
transitions distinct from Anderson localisation that have manifestations in the
disorder-averaged density of states, conductivity and other observables. Such
transitions have received particular attention in the context of recently
discovered 3D Weyl and Dirac materials but have also been predicted in
cold-atom systems with long-range interactions, quantum kicked rotors and all
sufficiently high-dimensional systems. Moreover, such systems exhibit
unconventional behaviour of Lifshitz tails, energy-level statistics and
ballistic-transport properties. Here we review recent progress and the status
of results on non-Anderson disorder-driven transitions and related phenomena.

categories: cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.str-el hep-th


title:
A scalable convolutional neural network for task-specified scenarios via
  knowledge distillation

abstract:
  In this paper, we explore the redundancy in convolutional neural network,
which scales with the complexity of vision tasks. Considering that many
front-end visual systems are interested in only a limited range of visual
targets, the removing of task-specified network redundancy can promote a wide
range of potential applications. We propose a task-specified knowledge
distillation algorithm to derive a simplified model with pre-set computation
cost and minimized accuracy loss, which suits the resource constraint front-end
systems well. Experiments on the MNIST and CIFAR10 datasets demonstrate the
feasibility of the proposed approach as well as the existence of task-specified
redundancy.


title: k-Hilfer-Prabhakar Fractional Derivatives and Applications

abstract:
  In this paper we define the regularized version of k-Prabhakar fractional
derivative, k-Hilfer-Prabhakar fractional derivative, regularized version of
k-Hilfer-Prabhakar fractional derivative and find their Laplace and Sumudu
transforms. Using these results, the relation between k-Prabhakar fractional
derivative and its regularized ver- sion involving k-Mittag-Leffler function is
obtained. Similarly the relation between k-Hilfer-Prabhakar fractional
derivative and its regularized version is also obtained. Further, we find the
solutions of some problems in physics in which k-Hilfer-Prabhakar fractional
derivative and its regularized version are involved.


title:
Curvature of the spectral energy distribution, the dominant process for
  inverse Compton component and other jet properties in Fermi 2LAC blazars

abstract:
  We fit the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of members of a large sample
of Fermi 2LAC blazars to synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) models. Our main
results are as follows. (i) As suggested by previous works, the correlation
between peak frequency and curvature can be explained by statistical or
stochastic particle acceleration mechanisms. For BL Lacs, we find a linear
correlation between synchrotron peak frequency and its curvature. The slope of
the correlation is consistent with the stochastic acceleration mechanisms and
confirm previous studies. For FSRQs, we also find a linear correlation, but its
slope cannot be explained by previous theoretical models. (ii) We find a
significant correlation between IC luminosity and synchrotron luminosity. The
slope of the correlation of FSRQs is consistent with the EC process. And the
slope of the correlation of BL Lac is consistent with the SSC process. (iii) We
find several significant correlations between IC curvature and several basic
parameters of blazars (black hole mass, broad line luminosity, the Lorentz
factor of jet). We also find significant correlations between bolometric
luminosity and these basic parameters of blazars which suggest that the origin
of jet is a mixture of the mechanisms proposed by Blandford $\&$ Znajek and by
Blandford $\&$ Payne.


title:
Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry for fast detection of
  dynamic strain incorporating double-edge technique

abstract:
  For the first time, a direct detection BOTDR is demonstrated for distributed
dynamic strain sensing incorporating double-edge technique, time-division
multiplexing technique and upconversion technique. The double edges are
realized by using the transmission curve and reflection curve of an all-fiber
Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI). Benefiting from the low loss of the fiber at,
the time-division multiplexing technique is performed to realize the
double-edge technique by using only a single-channel FPI and only one piece of
a detector. In order to detect the weak spontaneous Brillouin backscattering
signal efficiently, a fiber-coupled upconversion detector is adopted to
upconvert the backscattering signal at 1548.1 nm to 863 nm, which is detected
by a Si-APD finally. In the experiment, dynamic strain disturbance up to
1.9m{\epsilon} over 1.5 km of polarization maintaining fiber is detected at a
sampling rate of 30 Hz. An accuracy of 30{\mu}{\epsilon} and spatial resolution
of 0.6 m is realized.


title: Survival exponents for fractional Brownian motion with multivariate time

abstract:
  Fractional Brownian motion, H-FBM , of index with d-dimensional time is
considered in a spherical domain that contains 0 at its boundary. The main
result : the log-asymptotics of probability that H-FBM does not exceed a fixed
positive level is (H-d)logT(1+o(1)), where T>>1 is radius of the domain.


title:
Assigning Creative Commons Licenses to Research Metadata: Issues and
  Cases

abstract:
  This paper discusses the problem of lack of clear licensing and transparency
of usage terms and conditions for research metadata. Making research data
connected, discoverable and reusable are the key enablers of the new data
revolution in research. We discuss how the lack of transparency hinders
discovery of research data and make it disconnected from the publication and
other trusted research outcomes. In addition, we discuss the application of
Creative Commons licenses for research metadata, and provide some examples of
the applicability of this approach to internationally known data
infrastructures.


title: Mixing Oscillators for Phase Noise Reduction

abstract:
  The output of oscillators is usually not stable over time. In particular,
phase variations---or \emph{phase noise}---corrupts the oscillations. In this
letter, we describe a circuit that designed to average the phase noise
processes and frequency offsets in frequency-matched oscillators. The basic
circuit uses the independence of 2 phase noise processes to provide a cleaner
oscillating output with lower phase noise variance. We describe extensions of
the circuit designed to average out more than 2 oscillators, as well as a
single one through delay elements. In all the examples covered, we provide a
theoretical analysis of the resulting phase noise process when the input phase
noise processes follow a Wiener model.


title:
Monitor, Detect, Mitigate: Combating BGP Prefix Hijacking in Real-Time
  with ARTEMIS

abstract:
  The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is globally used by Autonomous Systems
(ASes) to establish route paths for IP prefixes in the Internet. Due to the
lack of authentication in BGP, an AS can hijack IP prefixes owned by other ASes
(i.e., announce illegitimate route paths), impacting thus the Internet routing
system and economy. To this end, a number of hijacking detection systems have
been proposed. However, existing systems are usually third party services that
-inherently- introduce a significant delay between the hijacking detection (by
the service) and its mitigation (by the network administrators). To overcome
this shortcoming, in this paper, we propose ARTEMIS, a tool that enables an AS
to timely detect hijacks on its own prefixes, and automatically proceed to
mitigation actions. To evaluate the performance of ARTEMIS, we conduct real
hijacking experiments. To our best knowledge, it is the first time that a
hijacking detection/mitigation system is evaluated through extensive
experiments in the real Internet. Our results (a) show that ARTEMIS can detect
(mitigate) a hijack within a few seconds (minutes) after it has been launched,
and (b) demonstrate the efficiency of the different control-plane sources used
by ARTEMIS, towards monitoring routing changes.


title: The Kunz-Souillard approach to localization for Jacobi operators

abstract:
  In this paper we study spectral properties of Jacobi operators. In
particular, we prove two main results: (1) that perturbing the diagonal
coefficients of Jacobi operator, in an appropriate sense, results in
exponential localization, and purely pure point spectrum with exponentially
decaying eigenfunctions; and (2) we present examples of decaying potentials
$b_n$ such that the corresponding Jacobi operators have purely pure point
spectrum.


title: The physical properties of \textit{Fermi} TeV BL Lac objects jets

abstract:
  We investigate the physical properties of \textit{Fermi} TeV BL Lac objects
jets by modeling the quasi-simultaneous spectral energy distribution of 29
\textit{Fermi} TeV BL Lacs in the frame of a one-zone leptonic synchrotron
self-Compton model. Our main results are the following: (i) There is a negative
correlation between $B$ and $\delta$ in our sample, which suggests that $B$ and
$\delta$ are dependent on each other mainly in Thomson regime. (ii) There are
negative correlations between $\nu_{\text{sy}}$ and $r$, the $\nu_{\text{IC}}$
and $r$, which is a signature of the energy-dependence statistical acceleration
or the stochastic acceleration. There is a significant correlation between $r$
and $s$, which suggests that the curvature of the electron energy distribution
is attributed to the energy-dependence statistical acceleration mechanism.
(iii) By assuming one proton per relativistic electron, we estimate the jet
power and radiative power. A size relation $P_{\text{e}} \sim P_{\text{p}} >
P_{\text{r}} \gtrsim P_{\text{B}}$ is found in our sample. The
$P_{\text{e}}>P_{\text{B}}$ suggests that the jets are particle dominated, and
the $P_{\text{e}}\sim P_{\text{p}}$ means that the mean energy of relativistic
electrons approaches $m_{\text{p}}/m_{\text{e}}$. There are not significant
correlations between $P_{\text{jet}}$ and black hole mass in high or low state
with a sub-sample of 18 sources, which suggests that the jet power weakly
depends on the black hole mass. (iv) There is a correlation between the changes
in the flux density at 1 TeV and the changes in the $\gamma_{\text{peak}}$,
which suggests the change/evolution of electron energy distribution may be
mainly responsible for the flux variation.


title: TODIM and TOPSIS with Z-numbers

abstract:
  In this paper, we present an approach that is able to handle with Z-numbers
in the context of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems. Z-numbers are
composed of two parts, the first one is a restriction on the values that can be
assumed, and the second part is the reliability of the information. As human
beings we communicate with other people by means of natural language using
sentences like: the journey time from home to university takes about half hour,
very likely. Firstly, Z-numbers are converted to fuzzy numbers using a standard
procedure. Next, the Z-TODIM and Z-TOPSIS are presented as a direct extension
of the fuzzy TODIM and fuzzy TOPSIS, respectively. The proposed methods are
applied to two case studies and compared with the standard approach using crisp
values. Results obtained show the feasibility of the approach. In addition, a
graphical interface was built to handle with both methods Z- TODIM and Z-TOPSIS
allowing ease of use for user in other areas of knowledge.


title:
Constraining the dipolar magnetic field of M82 X-2 by the accretion
  model

abstract:
  Recently, ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) M82 X-2 has been identified to be
an accreting neutron star, which has a $P=1.37$ s spin period, and is spinning
up at a rate $\dot{P}=-2.0\times 10^{-10}~\rm s\,s^{-1}$. Interestingly, its
isotropic X-ray luminosity $L_{\rm iso}=1.8\times 10^{40}~\rm erg\,s^{-1}$
during outbursts is 100 times the Eddington limit for a $1.4~\rm M_{\odot}$
neutron star. In this Letter, based on the standard accretion model we attempt
to constrain the dipolar magnetic field of the pulsar in ULX M82 X-2. Our
calculations indicate that the accretion rate at the magnetospheric radius must
be super-Eddington during outbursts. To support such a super-Eddington
accretion, a relatively high multipole field ($\ga 10^{13}$ G) near the surface
of the accretor is invoked to produce an accreting gas column. However, our
constraint shows that the surface dipolar magnetic field of the pulsar should
be in the range of $1.0-3.5\times 10^{12}$ G. Therefore, our model supports
that the neutron star in ULX M82 X-2 could be a low magnetic field magnetar
(proposed by Tong) with a normal dipolar field ($\sim 10^{12}$ G) and
relatively strong multipole field. For the large luminosity variations of this
source, our scenario can also present a self-consistency interpretation.


title:
Stellar Parameters of Main Sequence Turn-off Star Candidates Observed
  with the LAMOST and Kepler

abstract:
  Main sequence turn-off (MSTO) stars have advantages as indicators of Galactic
evolution since their ages could be robustly estimated from atmospheric
parameters. Hundreds of thousands of MSTO stars have been selected from the
LAMOST Galactic sur- vey to study the evolution of the Galaxy, and it is vital
to derive accurate stellar parameters. In this work, we select 150 MSTO star
candidates from the MSTO stars sample of Xiang that have asteroseismic
parameters and determine accurate stellar parameters for these stars combing
the asteroseismic parameters deduced from the Kepler photometry and atmospheric
parameters deduced from the LAMOST spectra.With this sample, we examine the age
deter- mination as well as the contamination rate of the MSTO stars sample. A
comparison of age between this work and Xiang shows a mean difference of 0.53
Gyr (7%) and a dispersion of 2.71 Gyr (28%). The results show that 79 of the
candidates are MSTO stars, while the others are contaminations from either main
sequence or sub-giant stars. The contamination rate for the oldest stars is
much higher than that for the younger stars. The main cause for the high
contamination rate is found to be the relatively large systematic bias in the
LAMOST surface gravity estimates.


title:
Reducing energy consumption of network infrastructure using spectral
  approach

abstract:
  The energy consumption by ICT (Information and Communication Technology)
equipment is rapidly increasing which causes a significant economic and
environmental problem. At present, the network infrastructure is becoming a
large portion of the energy footprint in ICT. Thus, the concept of energy
efficient or green networking has been introduced. Now one of the main concerns
of network industry is to minimize energy consumption of network infrastructure
because of the potential economic benefits, ethical responsibility, and its
environmental impact. In this paper, the energy management strategies to reduce
the energy consumed by network switches in LAN (Local Area Network) have been
developed. According to the life-cycle assessment of network switches, the
highest amount of energy is consumed during usage phase. The study considers
bandwidth, link load and traffic matrices as input parameters which have the
highest contribution to energy footprints of network switches during usage
phase and energy consumption as output. Then with the objective of reducing
energy usage of network infrastructure, the feasibility of putting Ethernet
switches hibernate or sleep mode was investigated. After that, the network
topology was reorganized using clustering method based on the spectral approach
for putting network switches to hibernate or switched off mode considering the
time and communications among them. Experimental results show the interest in
this approach in terms of energy consumption. .


title: A 3-CNF-SAT descriptor algebra and the solution of the P=NP conjecture

abstract:
  The relationship between the complexity classes P and NP is an unsolved
question in the field of theoretical computer science. In this paper, we
investigate a descriptor approach based on lattice properties. This paper
proposes a new way to decide the satisfiability of any 3-CNF-SAT problem. The
analysis of this exact [non heuristical] algorithm shows a strictly bounded
exponential complexity. The complexity of any 3-CNF-SAT solution is bounded by
O(2^490). This over-estimated bound is reached by an algorithm working on the
smallest description (via descriptor functions) of the evolving set of
solutions in function of the already considered clauses, without exploring
these solutions. Any remark about this paper is warmly welcome.


title:
Monitoring the energy consumed by a network infrastructure to detect and
  isolate faults in communication architecture

abstract:
  In recent years, a number of major improvements were introduced in the area
of computer networks, energy-efficient network protocols and network management
systems. Software Defined Networking (SDN) as a new paradigm for managing
complex networks brings a significant opportunity to reduce the energy
consumption among ICT. In this paper, we are tackling improvements in the
process of monitoring the states of the networking devices and optimizing the
existing solutions. We are monitoring the energy consumption of a network
architecture and augment the retrieved raw power data to detect changes in the
state of the devices. The goal is to benchmark the difference between the power
data fetched from the real-measures and the data extracted from the power
models, translated as the expected behavior of the devices. An application is
designed to monitor and analyze the retrieved power data of a simulated ICT
infrastructure composed of Cisco switches and routers, Dell Precision stations
and Raritan PDUs. Moreover, smart algorithms are developed which outcome
results with detection of changes in the state of the devices, as well as with
detection and isolation of possible anomalies and their impact on the energy
consumption. The application is envisioned to be an extension to the existing
SDN controllers for monitoring and reporting the changes in the state of the
ICT devices.


title: The Revival of Kaon Flavour Physics

abstract:
  After years of silence we should witness in the rest of this decade and in
the next decade the revival of kaon flavour physics. This is not only because
of the crucial measurements of the branching ratios for the rare decays
$K^+\to\pi^+\nu\bar\nu$ and $K_{L}\to \pi^0\nu\bar\nu$ by NA62 and KOTO that
being theoretically clean and very sensitive to new physics (NP) could hint for
new phenomena even beyond the reach of the LHC without any significant
theoretical uncertainties. Indeed simultaneously the advances in the
calculations of perturbative and in particular non-perturbative QCD effects in
$\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$, $\varepsilon_K$, $\Delta M_K$, $K_L\to\mu^+\mu^-$
and $K_L\to\pi^0\ell^+\ell^-$ will increase the role of these observables in
searching for NP. In fact the hints for NP contributing to
$\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$ have been already signalled last year through
improved estimates of hadronic matrix elements of QCD and electroweak penguin
operators $Q_6$ and $Q_8$ by lattice QCD and large $N$ dual QCD approach. This
talk summarizes in addition to this new flavour anomaly the present highlights
of this field including some results from concrete NP scenarios.


title: On the local density problem for graphs of given odd-girth

abstract:
  Erd\H{o}s conjectured that every $n$-vertex triangle-free graph contains a
subset of $\lfloor n/2\rfloor$ vertices that spans at most $n^2/50$ edges.
Extending a recent result of Norin and Yepremyan, we confirm this conjecture
for graphs homomorphic to so-called Andr\'asfai graphs. As a consequence,
Erd\H{o}s' conjecture holds for every triangle-free graph $G$ with minimum
degree $\delta (G)>10n/29$ and if $\chi (G)\leq 3$ the degree condition can be
relaxed to $\delta (G)> n/3$. In fact, we obtain a more general result for
graphs of higher odd-girth.


title:
Randomized dual proximal gradient for large-scale distributed
  optimization

abstract:
  In this paper we consider distributed optimization problems in which the cost
function is separable (i.e., a sum of possibly non-smooth functions all sharing
a common variable) and can be split into a strongly convex term and a convex
one. The second term is typically used to encode constraints or to regularize
the solution. We propose an asynchronous, distributed optimization algorithm
over an undirected topology, based on a proximal gradient update on the dual
problem. We show that by means of a proper choice of primal variables, the dual
problem is separable and the dual variables can be stacked into separate
blocks. This allows us to show that a distributed gossip update can be obtained
by means of a randomized block-coordinate proximal gradient on the dual
function.


title:
Bounds for the normal approximation of the maximum likelihood estimator
  from m-dependent random variables

abstract:
  The asymptotic normality of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) is a long
established result. Explicit bounds for the distributional distance between the
distribution of the MLE and the normal distribution have recently been obtained
for the case of independent random variables. In this paper, a local dependence
structure is introduced between the random variables and we give upper bounds
which are specified for the Wasserstein metric.


title:
SpectroMeter: Amortized Sublinear Spectral Approximation of Distance on
  Graphs

abstract:
  We present a method to approximate pairwise distance on a graph, having an
amortized sub-linear complexity in its size. The proposed method follows the so
called heat method due to Crane et al. The only additional input are the values
of the eigenfunctions of the graph Laplacian at a subset of the vertices. Using
these values we estimate a random walk from the source points, and normalize
the result into a unit gradient function. The eigenfunctions are then used to
synthesize distance values abiding by these constraints at desired locations.
We show that this method works in practice on different types of inputs ranging
from triangular meshes to general graphs. We also demonstrate that the
resulting approximate distance is accurate enough to be used as the input to a
recent method for intrinsic shape correspondence computation.


title:
Visualisation of Survey Responses using Self-Organising Maps: A Case
  Study on Diabetes Self-care Factors

abstract:
  Due to the chronic nature of diabetes, patient self-care factors play an
important role in any treatment plan. In order to understand the behaviour of
patients in response to medical advice on self-care, clinicians often conduct
cross-sectional surveys. When analysing the survey data, statistical machine
learning methods can potentially provide additional insight into the data
either through deeper understanding of the patterns present or making
information available to clinicians in an intuitive manner. In this study, we
use self-organising maps (SOMs) to visualise the responses of patients who
share similar responses to survey questions, with the goal of helping
clinicians understand how patients are managing their treatment and where
action should be taken. The principle behavioural patterns revealed through
this are that: patients who take the correct dose of insulin also tend to take
their injections at the correct time, patients who eat on time also tend to
correctly manage their food portions and patients who check their blood glucose
with a monitor also tend to adjust their insulin dosage and carry snacks to
counter low blood glucose. The identification of these positive behavioural
patterns can also help to inform treatment by exploiting their negative
corollaries.