title:
Human judgment vs. theoretical models for the management of ecological
  resources

abstract:
  Despite major advances in quantitative approaches to natural resource
management, there has been resistance to using these tools in the actual
practice of managing ecological populations. Given a managed system and a set
of assumptions, translated into a model, optimization methods can be used to
solve for the most cost effective management actions. However, when the
underlying assumptions are not met, such methods can potentially lead to poor
decisions. Managers who develop decisions based on past experience and
judgment, without the aid of mathematical models, can potentially learn about
the system and develop flexible management strategies. However, these
strategies are often based on subjective criteria and equally invalid and often
unstated assumptions. Given the drawbacks of both methods, it is unclear
whether simple quantitative models improve environmental decision making over
expert opinion. In this paper, we explore how well students, using their
experience and judgment, manage simulated fishery populations in an online
computer game and compare their management outcomes to the performance of
model-based decisions. We consider harvest decisions generated using four
different quantitative models: 1. the model used to produce the simulated
population dynamics observed in the game, with all underlying parameter values
known [a control], 2. the same model, but with unknown parameter values that
must be estimated during the game from observed data, 3. models that are
structurally different from those used to simulate the population dynamics and
4. a model that ignores age structure. Humans on average performed much worse
than the models in cases 1 - 3. When the models ignored age structure, they
generated poorly performing management decisions, but still outperformed
students using experience and judgment 66 percent of the time.


title:
The Variational Attitude Estimator in the Presence of Bias in Angular
  Velocity Measurements

abstract:
  Estimation of rigid body attitude motion is a long-standing problem of
interest in several applications. This problem is challenging primarily because
rigid body motion is described by nonlinear dynamics and the state space is
nonlinear. The extended Kalman filter and its several variants have remained
the standard and most commonly used schemes for attitude estimation over the
last several decades. These schemes are obtained as approximate solutions to
the nonlinear optimal filtering problem. However, these approximate or near
optimal solutions may not give stable estimation schemes in general. The
variational attitude estimator was introduced recently to fill this gap in
stable estimation of arbitrary rigid body attitude motion in the presence of
uncertainties in initial state and unknown measurement noise. This estimator is
obtained by applying the Lagrange-d'Alembert principle of variational mechanics
to a Lagrangian constructed from residuals between measurements and state
estimates with a dissipation term that is linear in the angular velocity
measurement residual. In this work, the variational attitude estimator is
generalized to include angular velocity measurements that have a constant bias
in addition to measurement noise. The state estimates converge to true states
almost globally over the state space. Further, the bias estimates converge to
the true bias once the state estimates converge to the true states.


title: Desingularizing special generic maps into 3-dimensional space

abstract:
  A smooth map between smooth manifolds is called a special generic map if it
has only definite fold points as its singularities. In this paper, we give
conditions for a special generic map into the 3-dimensional Euclidean space to
be factored as the composition of an embedding and a projection for certain
dimensions.


title: Optimization of layer composition for ILD ECAL

abstract:
  International Large Detector (ILD) adopts Particle Flow Algorithm (PFA) for
precise measurement of multiple jets. The electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) of
ILD has two candidates sensor technologies for PFA, which are pixelized silicon
sensors and scintillator-strips with silicon photomultipliers. Pixelized
silicon sensors have higher granularity for PFA, however they have an issue of
cost reduction. In contrast, scintillator-strips have an advantage of
relatively low cost and a disadvantage of degradation of position resolution by
ghost hits, which are generated by orthogonal arrangement. Hybrid ECAL using
both candidates is proposed to supplement these disadvantages. In this paper,
we report an optimization study of the hybrid ECAL using detector simulation.


title: Learning Optimal Social Dependency for Recommendation

abstract:
  Social recommender systems exploit users' social relationships to improve the
recommendation accuracy. Intuitively, a user tends to trust different subsets
of her social friends, regarding with different scenarios. Therefore, the main
challenge of social recommendation is to exploit the optimal social dependency
between users for a specific recommendation task. In this paper, we propose a
novel recommendation method, named probabilistic relational matrix
factorization (PRMF), which aims to learn the optimal social dependency between
users to improve the recommendation accuracy, with or without users' social
relationships. Specifically, in PRMF, the latent features of users are assumed
to follow a matrix variate normal (MVN) distribution. The positive and negative
dependency between users are modeled by the row precision matrix of the MVN
distribution. Moreover, we have also proposed an efficient alternating
algorithm to solve the optimization problem of PRMF. The experimental results
on real datasets demonstrate that the proposed PRMF method outperforms
state-of-the-art social recommendation approaches, in terms of root mean square
error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE).


title:
Toward Precision Black Hole Masses with ALMA: NGC 1332 as a Case Study
  in Molecular Disk Dynamics

abstract:
  We present first results from a program of Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) CO(2-1) observations of circumnuclear gas
disks in early-type galaxies. The program was designed with the goal of
detecting gas within the gravitational sphere of influence of the central black
holes. In NGC 1332, the 0.3"-resolution ALMA data reveal CO emission from the
highly inclined (i~ 83 degrees) circumnuclear disk, spatially coincident with
the dust disk seen in Hubble Space Telescope images. The disk exhibits a
central upturn in maximum line-of-sight velocity reaching +-500 km/s relative
to the systemic velocity, consistent with the expected signature of rapid
rotation around a supermassive black hole. Rotational broadening and beam
smearing produce complex and asymmetric line profiles near the disk center. We
constructed dynamical models for the rotating disk and fitted the modeled CO
line profiles directly to the ALMA data cube. Degeneracy between rotation and
turbulent velocity dispersion in the inner disk precludes the derivation of
strong constraints on the black hole mass, but model fits allowing for a
plausible range in the magnitude of the turbulent dispersion imply a central
mass in the range ~(4-8)x10^8 Msun. We argue that gas-kinematic observations
resolving the black hole's projected radius of influence along the disk's minor
axis will have the capability to yield black hole mass measurements that are
largely insensitive to systematic uncertainties in turbulence or in the stellar
mass profile. For highly inclined disks, this is a much more stringent
requirement than the usual sphere-of-influence criterion.


title: Searching for $\Xi_{cc}^+$ in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

abstract:
  We study the doubly charmed baryon $\Xi_{cc}^+$ in high energy nuclear
collisions. We solve the three-body Schroedinger equation with relativistic
correction and calculate the $\Xi_{cc}^+$ yield and transverse momentum
distribution via coalescence mechanism. For $\Xi_{cc}^+$ production in central
Pb+Pb collisions at LHC energy, the yield is extremely enhanced, and the
production cross section per binary collision is one order of magnitude larger
than that in p+p collisions. This indicates that, it is most probable to
discover $\Xi_{cc}^+$ in heavy ion collisions and its discovery can be
considered as a probe of the quark-luon plasma formation.


title: Pushing the Limits of Deep CNNs for Pedestrian Detection

abstract:
  Compared to other applications in computer vision, convolutional neural
networks have under-performed on pedestrian detection. A breakthrough was made
very recently by using sophisticated deep CNN models, with a number of
hand-crafted features, or explicit occlusion handling mechanism. In this work,
we show that by re-using the convolutional feature maps (CFMs) of a deep
convolutional neural network (DCNN) model as image features to train an
ensemble of boosted decision models, we are able to achieve the best reported
accuracy without using specially designed learning algorithms. We empirically
identify and disclose important implementation details. We also show that pixel
labelling may be simply combined with a detector to boost the detection
performance. By adding complementary hand-crafted features such as optical
flow, the DCNN based detector can be further improved. We set a new record on
the Caltech pedestrian dataset, lowering the log-average miss rate from
$11.7\%$ to $8.9\%$, a relative improvement of $24\%$. We also achieve a
comparable result to the state-of-the-art approaches on the KITTI dataset.


title:
Covariant Quantization of BFNC Super Yang-Mills Theories and Supergauge
  Invariance

abstract:
  To construct renormalizable gauge model in Bosonic-Fermionic noncommutative
(BFNC) superspace, we replace the ordinary products of super Yang-Mills model
by BFNC star products. To study the renormalization property of the deformed
action, we obtain the one-loop 1PI effective action by using background field
method at the first order of BFNC parameters. We also verify the BFNC
supergauge invariance of the effective action. Because there are new terms in
effective action, the deformed action is not renormalizable. This imply that
additional terms should be added to the deformed action.


title: The Fubini product and its applications

abstract:
  The Fubini product of operator spaces provide a powerful tool for analysing
properties of tensor products. In this paper we review the the theory of Fubini
products and apply it to the problem of computing invariant parts of dynamical
systems. In particular, we study the invariant translation approximation
property of discrete groups.


title: Algebraic independence results for values of Theta-constants, II

abstract:
  Let $\theta_3(\tau)=1+2\sum_{\nu=1}^{\infty} q^{\nu^2}$ with $q=e^{i\pi
\tau}$ denote the Thetanullwert of the Jacobi theta function \[\theta(z|\tau)
\,=\,\sum_{\nu=-\infty}^{\infty} e^{\pi i\nu^2\tau + 2\pi i\nu z} \,.\]
Moreover, let $\theta_2(\tau)=2\sum_{\nu=0}^{\infty} q^{{(\nu+1/2)}^2}$ and
$\theta_4(\tau)=1+2\sum_{\nu=1}^{\infty} {(-1)}^{\nu}q^{\nu^2}$. For algebraic
numbers $q$ with $0<|q|<1$ and for any $j\in \{ 2,3,4\}$ we prove the algebraic
independence over $\mathbb{Q}$ of the numbers $\theta_j(n\tau)$ and
$\theta_j(\tau)$ for all odd integers $n\geq 3$. Assuming the same conditions
on $q$ and $\tau$ as above, we obtain sufficient conditions by use of a
criterion involving resultants in order to decide on the algebraic independence
over $\mathbb{Q}$ of $\theta_j(2m\tau)$ and $\theta_j(\tau)$ $(j=2,3,4)$ and of
$\theta_3(4m\tau)$ and $\theta_3(\tau)$ with odd positive integers $m$. In
particular, we prove the algebraic independence of $\theta_3(n\tau)$ and
$\theta_3(\tau)$ for even integers $n$ with $2\leq n\leq 22$. The paper
continues the work of the first-mentioned author, who already proved the
algebraic independence of $\theta_3(2^m\tau)$ and $\theta_3(\tau)$ for
$m=1,2,\dots$.


title:
Highly Sensitive On-Chip Magnetometer with Saturable Absorbers in
  Two-Color Microcavities

abstract:
  Interacting resonators can lead to strong non-linearities but the details can
be complicated to predict. In this work, we study the non-linearities
introduced by two nested microcavities that interact with nitrogen vacancy
centers in a diamond waveguide. Each cavity has differently designed resonance;
one in the green and one in the infrared. The magnetic-field dependence of the
nitrogen vacancy center absorption rates on the green and the recently observed
infrared transitions allows us to propose a scalable on-chip magnetometer that
combines high magnetic-field sensitivity and micrometer spatial resolution. By
investigating the system behaviors over several intrinsic and extrinsic
parameters, we explain the main non-linearities induced by the NV centers and
enhanced by the cavities. We finally show that the cavities can improve the
magnetic-field sensitivity by up to two orders of magnitudes.


title:
Object Contour Detection with a Fully Convolutional Encoder-Decoder
  Network

abstract:
  We develop a deep learning algorithm for contour detection with a fully
convolutional encoder-decoder network. Different from previous low-level edge
detection, our algorithm focuses on detecting higher-level object contours. Our
network is trained end-to-end on PASCAL VOC with refined ground truth from
inaccurate polygon annotations, yielding much higher precision in object
contour detection than previous methods. We find that the learned model
generalizes well to unseen object classes from the same super-categories on MS
COCO and can match state-of-the-art edge detection on BSDS500 with fine-tuning.
By combining with the multiscale combinatorial grouping algorithm, our method
can generate high-quality segmented object proposals, which significantly
advance the state-of-the-art on PASCAL VOC (improving average recall from 0.62
to 0.67) with a relatively small amount of candidates ($\sim$1660 per image).


title:
Revealing the Hidden Patterns of News Photos: Analysis of Millions of
  News Photos Using GDELT and Deep Learning-based Vision APIs

abstract:
  In this work, we analyze more than two million news photos published in
January 2016. We demonstrate i) which objects appear the most in news photos;
ii) what the sentiments of news photos are; iii) whether the sentiment of news
photos is aligned with the tone of the text; iv) how gender is treated; and v)
how differently political candidates are portrayed. To our best knowledge, this
is the first large-scale study of news photo contents using deep learning-based
vision APIs.


title: Zero loci of skew-growth functions for dual Artin monoids

abstract:
  We show that the skew-growth function of a dual Artin monoid of finite type P
has exactly rank(P) =: l simple real zeros on the interval (0, 1]. The proofs
for types A_l and B_l are based on an unexpected fact that the skew-growth
functions, up to a trivial factor, are expressed by Jacobi polynomials due to a
Rodrigues type formula in the theory of orthogonal polynomials. The skew-growth
functions for type D_l also satisfy Rodrigues type formulae, but the relation
with Jacobi polynomials is not straightforward, and the proof is intricate. We
show that the smallest root converges to zero as the rank l of all the above
types tend to infinity.


title:
High star formation rates in turbulent atomic-dominated gas in the
  interacting galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207

abstract:
  CO observations of the interacting galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207 are combined
with HI, Halpha and 24 microns to study the star formation rate (SFR) surface
density as a function of the gas surface density. More than half of the high
SFR regions are HI dominated. When compared to other galaxies, these
HI-dominated regions have excess SFRs relative to their molecular gas surface
densities but normal SFRs relative to their total gas surface densities. The
HI-dominated regions are mostly located in the outer part of NGC 2207, where
the HI velocity dispersion is high, 40 - 50 km/s. We suggest that the
star-forming clouds in these regions have envelopes at lower densities than
normal, making them predominantly atomic, and cores at higher densities than
normal because of the high turbulent Mach numbers. This is consistent with
theoretical predictions of a flattening in the density probability distribution
function for compressive, high Mach number turbulence.


title:
A systematic search for the spectra with features of crystalline
  silicates in the Spitzer IRS Enhanced Products

abstract:
  The crystalline silicates features are mainly reflected in infrared bands.
The Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) collected numerous spectra of various
objects and provided a big database to investigate crystalline silicates in a
wide range of astronomical environments. We apply the manifold ranking
algorithm to perform a systematic search for the spectra with crystalline
silicates features in the Spitzer IRS Enhanced Products available. In total,
868 spectra of 790 sources are found to show the features of crystalline
silicate. These objects are cross-matched with the SIMBAD database as well as
with the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope
(LAMOST)/DR2. The average spectrum of young stellar objects show a variety of
features dominated either by forsterite or enstatite or neither, while the
average spectrum of evolved objects consistently present dominant features of
forsterite in AGB, OH/IR, post-AGB and planetary nebulae. They are identified
optically as early-type stars, evolved stars, galaxies and so on. In addition,
the strength of spectral features in typical silicate complexes is calculated.
The results are available through CDS for the astronomical community to further
study crystalline silicate.


title:
Learning Domain-Invariant Subspace using Domain Features and
  Independence Maximization

abstract:
  Domain adaptation algorithms are useful when the distributions of the
training and the test data are different. In this paper, we focus on the
problem of instrumental variation and time-varying drift in the field of
sensors and measurement, which can be viewed as discrete and continuous
distributional change in the feature space. We propose maximum independence
domain adaptation (MIDA) and semi-supervised MIDA (SMIDA) to address this
problem. Domain features are first defined to describe the background
information of a sample, such as the device label and acquisition time. Then,
MIDA learns a subspace which has maximum independence with the domain features,
so as to reduce the inter-domain discrepancy in distributions. A feature
augmentation strategy is also designed to project samples according to their
backgrounds so as to improve the adaptation. The proposed algorithms are
flexible and fast. Their effectiveness is verified by experiments on synthetic
datasets and four real-world ones on sensors, measurement, and computer vision.
They can greatly enhance the practicability of sensor systems, as well as
extend the application scope of existing domain adaptation algorithms by
uniformly handling different kinds of distributional change.


title:
Oxygen isotopic evidence for vigorous mixing during the Moon-forming
  Giant Impact

abstract:
  Earth and Moon are shown here to be composed of oxygen isotope reservoirs
that are indistinguishable, with a difference in {\Delta}"17O of -1 +/- 5ppm
(2se). Based on these data and our new planet formation simulations that
include a realistic model for oxygen isotopic reservoirs, our results favor
vigorous mixing during the giant impact and therefore a high-energy high-
angular-momentum impact. The results indicate that the late veneer impactors
had an average {\Delta}"17O within approximately 1 per mil of the terrestrial
value, suggesting that these impactors were water rich.


title: A pathwise interpretation of the Gorin-Shkolnikov identity

abstract:
  In a recent paper by Gorin and Shkolnikov (2016), they have found, as a
corollary to their result relevant to random matrix theory, that the area below
a normalized Brownian excursion minus one half of the integral of the square of
its total local time, is identical in law with a centered Gaussian random
variable with variance $1/12$. In this note, we give a pathwise interpretation
to their identity; Jeulin's identity connecting normalized Brownian excursion
and its local time plays an essential role in the exposition.


title:
Anisotropic, multi-carrier transport at the (111) LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$
  interface

abstract:
  The conducting gas that forms at the interface between LaAlO$_3$ and
SrTiO$_3$ has proven to be a fertile playground for a wide variety of physical
phenomena. The bulk of previous research has focused on the (001) and (110)
crystal orientations. Here we report detailed measurements of the
low-temperature electrical properties of (111) LAO/STO interface samples. We
find that the low-temperature electrical transport properties are highly
anisotropic, in that they differ significantly along two mutually orthogonal
crystal orientations at the interface. While anisotropy in the resistivity has
been reported in some (001) samples and in (110) samples, the anisotropy in the
(111) samples reported here is much stronger, and also manifests itself in the
Hall coefficient as well as the capacitance. In addition, the anisotropy is not
present at room temperature and at liquid nitrogen temperatures, but only at
liquid helium temperatures and below. The anisotropy is accentuated by exposure
to ultraviolet light, which disproportionately affects transport along one
surface crystal direction. Furthermore, analysis of the low-temperature Hall
coefficient and the capacitance as a function of back gate voltage indicates
that in addition to electrons, holes contribute to the electrical transport.


title:
A short and simple proof of the Jurkat--Waterman theorem on conjugate
  functions

abstract:
  It is well--known that certain properties of continuous functions on the
circle $\mathbb T$, related to the Fourier expansion, can be improved by a
change of variable, i.e., by a homeomorphism of the circle onto itself. One of
the results in this area is the Jurkat--Waterman theorem on conjugate
functions, which improves the classical Bohr--P\'al theorem. In the present
work we provide a short and technically very simple proof of the
Jurkat--Waterman theorem. Our approach yields a stronger result.


title:
Protected gap closing in Josephson junctions constructed on Bi$_2$Te$_3$
  surface

abstract:
  On the road of searching for Majorana zero modes (MZMs) in topological
insulator-based Josephson junctions, a highly-sought signature is the protected
full transparency of electron transport through the junctions due to the
existence of the MZMs, associated with complete gap closing between the
electron-like and hole-like Andreev bound states (ABSs). Here, we present
direct experimental evidence of gap closing and full transparency in single
Josephson junctions constructed on the surface of three-dimensional topological
insulator (3D TI) Bi$_2$Te$_3$. Our results demonstrate that the 2D surface of
3D TIs provides a promising platform for hosting and manipulating MZMs.


title:
Fuzzy alternating $\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ automata over distributive
  lattices

abstract:
  We give a new version of fuzzy alternating $\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ automata
over distributive lattices: weights are putting in every leaf node of run trees
rather than along with edges from every node to its children. Such settings are
great benefit to obtain complement just by taking dual operation and replacing
each final weight with its complement. We prove that $L$-fuzzy nondeterministic
$\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ automata have the same expressive power as $L$-fuzzy
alternating $\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ ones. A direct construction (without
related knowledge about $L$-fuzzy nondeterministic $\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ ones
such as: above equivalence relation and their closure properties) is given to
show that the languages recognized by $L$-fuzzy alternating
co-$\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ automata are also $L$-fuzzy $\omega$-regular.
Furthermore, the closure properties and the discussion about decision problems
for fuzzy alternating $\mathrm{B\ddot{u}chi}$ automata are illustrated in our
paper.


title: Optimal rates for parameter estimation of stationary Gaussian processes

abstract:
  We study rates of convergence in central limit theorems for partial sum of
functionals of general stationary and non-stationary Gaussian sequences, using
optimal tools from analysis on Wiener space. We apply our result to study drift
parameter estimation problems for some stochastic differential equations driven
by fractional Brownian motion with fixed-time-step observations.


title:
On the derivation of several second order partial differential equations
  from a generalization of the Einstein equation

abstract:
  A generalization of the Einstein equation is considered for complex line
elements. Several second order semilinear partial differential equations are
derived from it as semilinear field equations in uniform and isotropic spaces.
The nonrelativistic limits of the field equations are also considered. The
roles of spatial variance are studied based on energy estimates,and several
dissipative or antidissipative properties are remarked.


title: An Efficient Method for Rare Spectra Retrieval in Astronomical Databases

abstract:
  One of important aims of astronomical data mining is to systematically search
for specific rare objects in a massive spectral dataset, given a small fraction
of identified samples with the same type. Most existing methods are mainly
based on binary classification, which usually suffer from uncompleteness when
the known samples are too few. While, rank-based methods would provide good
solutions for such case. After investigating several algorithms, a method
combining bipartite ranking model with bootstrap aggregating techniques was
developed in this paper. The method was applied in searching for carbon stars
in the spectral data of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR10, and compared with
several other popular methods used in data mining. Experimental results
validate that the proposed method is not only the most effective but also less
time consuming among these competitors automatically searching for rare spectra
in a large but unlabelled dataset.128


title: Evidence for unidirectional nematic bond ordering in FeSe

abstract:
  The lifting of $d_{xz}$-$d_{yz}$ orbital degeneracy is often considered a
hallmark of the nematic phase of Fe-based superconductors, including FeSe, but
its origin is not yet understood. Here we report a high resolution
Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy study of single crystals of FeSe,
accounting for the photon-energy dependence and making a detailed analysis of
the temperature dependence. We find that the hole pocket undergoes a
fourfold-symmetry-breaking distortion in the nematic phase below 90~K, but in
contrast the changes to the electron pockets do not require fourfold
symmetry-breaking. Instead, there is an additional separation of the existing
$d_{xy}$ and $d_{xz/yz}$ bands - which themselves are not split within
resolution. These observations lead us to propose a new scenario of
"unidirectional nematic bond ordering" to describe the low-temperature
electronic structure of FeSe, supported by a good agreement with 10-orbital
tight binding model calculations.


title:
Anomalous behavior of 1/f noise in graphene near the charge neutrality
  point

abstract:
  We investigate the noise in single layer graphene devices from equilibrium to
far from equilibrium and found that the 1/f noise shows an anomalous dependence
on the source-drain bias voltage (VSD). While the Hooge relation is not the
case around the charge neutrality point, we found that it is recovered at very
low VSD region. We propose that the depinning of the electron-hole puddles is
induced at finite VSD, which may explain this anomalous noise behavior.


title:
Stochastic quasi-Newton methods for non-strongly convex problems:
  convergence and rate analysis

abstract:
  Motivated by applications in optimization and machine learning, we consider
stochastic quasi-Newton (SQN) methods for solving stochastic optimization
problems. In the literature, the convergence analysis of these algorithms
relies on strong convexity of the objective function. To our knowledge, no
theoretical analysis is provided for the rate statements in the absence of this
assumption. Motivated by this gap, we allow the objective function to be merely
convex and we develop a cyclic regularized SQN method where the gradient
mapping and the Hessian approximation matrix are both regularized at each
iteration and are updated in a cyclic manner. We show that, under suitable
assumptions on the stepsize and regularization parameters, the objective
function value converges to the optimal objective function of the original
problem in both almost sure and the expected senses. For each case, a class of
feasible sequences that guarantees the convergence is provided. Moreover, the
rate of convergence in terms of the objective function value is derived. Our
empirical analysis on a binary classification problem shows that the proposed
scheme performs well compared to both classic regularization SQN schemes and
stochastic approximation method.


title:
Rising temperatures increased recruitment of brown tiger prawn (Penaeus
  esculentus) in Moreton Bay (Australia)

abstract:
  Abiotic factors are fundamental drivers of the dynamics of wild marine fish
populations. Identifying and quantifying their influence on species targeted by
the fishing industry is difficult and very important for managing fisheries in
a changing climate. Using multiple regression, we investigated the influence of
both temperature and rainfall on the variability of recruitment of a tropical
species, the brown tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus), in Moreton Bay which is
located near the southern limit of its distribution on the east coast of
Australia. A step-wise selection between environmental variables identified
that variations in recruitment from 1990 to 2014 were best explained by a
combination of temperature and spawning stock biomass. Temperature explains 35%
of recruitment variability and spawning stock biomass 33%. This analysis
suggests that increasing temperatures have increased recruitment of brown tiger
prawn in Moreton Bay.


title: Matching while Learning

abstract:
  We consider the problem faced by a service platform that needs to match
limited supply with demand but also to learn the attributes of new users in
order to match them better in the future. We introduce a benchmark model with
heterogeneous "workers" (demand) and a limited supply of "jobs" that arrive
over time. Job types are known to the platform, but worker types are unknown
and must be learned by observing match outcomes. Workers depart after
performing a certain number of jobs. The expected payoff from a match depends
on the pair of types and the goal is to maximize the steady-state rate of
accumulation of payoff. Though we use terminology inspired by labor markets,
our framework applies more broadly to platforms where a limited supply of
heterogeneous products is matched to users over time.
  Our main contribution is a complete characterization of the structure of the
optimal policy in the limit that each worker performs many jobs. The platform
faces a trade-off for each worker between myopically maximizing payoffs
(exploitation) and learning the type of the worker (exploration). This creates
a multitude of multi-armed bandit problems, one for each worker, coupled
together by the constraint on availability of jobs of different types (capacity
constraints). We find that the platform should estimate a shadow price for each
job type, and use the payoffs adjusted by these prices, first, to determine its
learning goals and then, for each worker, (i) to balance learning with payoffs
during the "exploration phase," and (ii) to myopically match after it has
achieved its learning goals during the "exploitation phase."


title: Effective Computer Model For Recognizing Nationality From Frontal Image

abstract:
  We are introducing new effective computer model for extracting nationality
from frontal image candidate using face part color, size and distances based on
deep research. Determining face part size, color, and distances is depending on
a variety of factors including image quality, lighting condition, rotation
angle, occlusion and facial emotion. Therefore, first we need to detect a face
on the image then convert an image into the real input. After that, we can
determine image candidate gender, face shape, key points and face parts.
Finally, we will return the result, based on the comparison of sizes and
distances with the sample measurement table database. While we were measuring
samples, there were big differences between images by their gender and face
shapes. Input images must be the frontal face image that has smooth lighting
and does not have any rotation angle. The model can be used in military,
police, defense, healthcare, and technology sectors. Finally, Computer can
distinguish nationality from the face image.


title:
Up-Hill Diffusion Creating Density Gradient - What is the Proper
  Entropy?

abstract:
  It is always some constraint that yields any nontrivial structure from
statistical averages. As epitomized by the Boltzmann distribution, the energy
conservation is often the principal constraint acting on mechanical systems.
Here, we investigate a different type: the topological constraint imposed on
`space'. Such constraint emerges from the null space of the Poisson operator
linking energy gradient to phase space velocity, and appears as an adiabatic
invariant altering the preserved phase space volume at the core of statistical
mechanics. The correct measure of entropy, built on the distorted invariant
measure, behaves consistently with the second law of thermodynamics. The
opposite behavior (decreasing entropy and negative entropy production) arises
in arbitrary coordinates. An ensamble of rotating rigid bodies is worked out.
The theory is then applied to up-hill diffusion in a magnetosphere.

categories: math.ST nlin.AO physics.plasm-ph stat.TH


title: Two homological proofs of the Noetherianity of $FI_G$

abstract:
  We give two homological proofs of the Noetherianity of the category $FI$, a
fundamental result discovered by Church, Ellenberg, Farb, and Nagpal.


title: Unsupervised Ranking Model for Entity Coreference Resolution

abstract:
  Coreference resolution is one of the first stages in deep language
understanding and its importance has been well recognized in the natural
language processing community. In this paper, we propose a generative,
unsupervised ranking model for entity coreference resolution by introducing
resolution mode variables. Our unsupervised system achieves 58.44% F1 score of
the CoNLL metric on the English data from the CoNLL-2012 shared task (Pradhan
et al., 2012), outperforming the Stanford deterministic system (Lee et al.,
2013) by 3.01%.


title:
Symmetric and asymmetric optical multi-peak solitons on a continuous
  wave background in the femtosecond regime

abstract:
  We study symmetric and asymmetric optical multi-peak solitons on a continuous
wave background in the femtosecond regime of a single-mode fiber. Key
characteristics of such multi-peak solitons, as the formation mechanism,
propagation stability, and shape-changing collisions, are revealed in detail.
Our results show that this multi-peak (symmetric or asymmetric) mode could be
regarded as a single pulse formed by a nonlinear superposition of a periodic
wave and a single-peak (W-shaped or antidark) soliton. In particular, a phase
diagram for different types of nonlinear excitations on a continuous wave
background including breather, rogue wave, W-shaped soliton, antidark soliton,
periodic wave, and multi-peak soliton is established based on the explicit link
between exact nonlinear wave solution and modulation instability analysis.
Numerical simulations are performed to confirm the propagation stability of the
multi-peak solitons with symmetric and asymmetric structures. Further, we
unveil a remarkable shape-changing feature of asymmetric multi-peak solitons.
It is interesting that these shape-changing interactions occur not only in the
intraspecific collision (soliton mutual collision) but also in the
interspecific interaction (soliton-breather interaction). Our results
demonstrate that each multi-peak soliton exhibits the coexistence of shape
change and conservation of the localized energy of light pulse against the
continuous wave background.


title:
Intense Flare-CME Event of the Year 2015: Propagation and Interaction
  Effects between Sun and Earth's Orbit

abstract:
  In this paper, We report the interplanetary effects of a fast coronal mass
ejection (CME) associated with the intense X2.7 flare that occurred on 05 May
2015. The near-Sun signatures of the CME at low-coronal heights $<$2
{R$_{\odot}$} are obtained from the EUV images at 171 {\AA} and metric radio
observations. The intensity and duration of the CME-driven radio bursts in the
near-Sun and interplanetary medium indicate this CME event to be an energetic
one. The interplanetary scintillation data, along with the low-frequency radio
spectrum, played a crucial role in understanding the radial evolution of the
speed and expansion of the CME in the inner heliosphere as well as its
interaction with a preceding slow CME. The estimation of the speed of the CME
at several points along the Sun to 1 AU shows shows that i) the CME went
through a rapid acceleration as well as expansion up to a height of $\approx$6
{R$_{\odot}$}, and ii) the CME continued to propagate at speed $\geq$800
kms$^{-1}$ between the Sun and 1 AU. These results show that the CME likely
overcame the drag exerted by the ambient/background solar-wind with the support
of its internal magnetic energy. When the CME interacted with a slow preceding
CME, the turbulence level associated with the CME-driven disturbance increased
significantly.


title: On Estimation in Tournaments and Graphs under Monotonicity Constraints

abstract:
  We consider the problem of estimating the probability matrix governing a
tournament or linkage in graphs from incomplete observations, under the
assumption that the probability matrix satisfies natural monotonicity
constraints after being permuted in both rows and columns by some latent
permutation. This condition is classical in the social sciences literature (see
Fishburn(1973)) and has been studied in the statistics literature in recent
work (see Chatterjee (2015) and Shah et al. (2016)). In this paper, we
investigate in detail a natural estimator which bypasses the need to search
over all possible latent permutations and hence is computationally tractable,
and derive asymptotic risk bounds for our estimator. In addition, we prove an
automatic adaptation property of our estimator for several sub classes of our
parameter space which are of natural interest. These sub classes include
generalizations of the popular Bradley Terry Model in the Tournament case, the
Beta model and Stochastic Block Model in the Graph case, and Holder smooth
matrices in the tournament and graph settings.


title:
What Physics Determines the Peak of the IMF? Insights from the Structure
  of Cores in Radiation-Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations

abstract:
  As star-forming clouds collapse, the gas within them fragments to
ever-smaller masses. Naively one might expect this process to continue down to
the smallest mass that is able to radiate away its binding energy on a
dynamical timescale, the opacity limit for fragmentation, at $\sim 0.01$
$M_\odot$. However, the observed peak of the initial mass function (IMF) lies a
factor of $20-30$ higher in mass, suggesting that some other mechanism halts
fragmentation before the opacity limit is reached. In this paper we analyse
radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of star cluster formation in typical
Milky Way environments in order to determine what physical process limits
fragmentation in them. We examine the regions in the vicinity of stars that
form in the simulations to determine the amounts of mass that are prevented
from fragmenting by thermal and magnetic pressure. We show that, on small
scales, thermal pressure enhanced by stellar radiation heating is the dominant
mechanism limiting the ability of the gas to further fragment. In the brown
dwarf mass regime, $\sim 0.01$ $M_\odot$, the typical object that forms in the
simulations is surrounded by gas whose mass is several times its own that is
unable to escape or fragment, and instead is likely to accrete. This mechanism
explains why $\sim 0.01$ $M_\odot$ objects are rare: unless an outside agent
intervenes (e.g., a shock strips away the gas around them), they will grow by
accreting the warmed gas around them. In contrast, by the time stars grow to
masses of $\sim 0.2$ $M_\odot$, the mass of heated gas is only tens of percent
of the central star mass, too small to alter its final mass by a large factor.
This naturally explains why the IMF peak is at $\sim 0.2$ $M_\odot$.


title:
An algebro-geometric study of special values of hypergeometric functions
  ${}_3F_2$

abstract:
  For certain class of hypergeometric functions ${}_3F_2$ with rational
parameters, we give a sufficient condition for the special value at $1$ to be
expressed in terms of logarithms of algebraic numbers. We give two proofs, both
of which are algebro-geometric and related to higher regulators.


title:
Minimum Size of Feedback Vertex Sets of Planar Graphs of Girth at least
  Five

abstract:
  A feedback vertex set of a graph is a subset of vertices intersecting all
cycles. We provide tight upper bounds on the size of a minimum feedback vertex
set in planar graphs of girth at least five. We prove that if $G$ is a
connected planar graph of girth at least five on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges,
then $G$ has a feedback vertex set of size at most $\frac{2m-n+2}{7}$. By
Euler's formula, this implies that $G$ has a feedback vertex set of size at
most $\frac{m}{5}$ and $\frac{n-2}{3}$. These results not only improve a result
of Dross, Montassier and Pinlou and confirm the girth-5 case of one of their
conjectures, but also make the best known progress towards a conjecture of
Kowalik, Lu\v{z}ar and \v{S}krekovski and solves the subcubic case of their
conjecture. An important step of our proof is providing an upper bound on the
size of minimum feedback vertex sets of subcubic graphs with girth at least
five with no induced subdivision of members of a finite family of non-planar
graphs.


title:
Analysis of two- and three-dimensional fractional-order Hindmarsh-Rose
  type neuronal models

abstract:
  A theoretical analysis of two- and three-dimensional fractional-order
Hindmarsh-Rose neuronal models is presented, focusing on stability properties
and occurrence of Hopf bifurcations, with respect to the fractional order of
the system chosen as bifurcation parameter. With the aim of exemplifying and
validating the theoretical results, numerical simulations are also undertaken,
which reveal rich bursting behavior in the three-dimensional fractional-order
slow-fast system.


title: A New Binary BBP-type Formula for $\sqrt 5\,\log\phi$

abstract:
  Hitherto only a base 5 BBP-type formula is known for $\sqrt 5\log\phi$, where
\mbox{$\phi=(\sqrt 5+1)/2$}, the golden ratio, ( i.e. Formula 83 of the April
2013 edition of Bailey's Compendium of \mbox{BBP-type} formulas). In this paper
we derive a new binary BBP-type formula for this constant. The formula is
obtained as a particular case of a BBP-type formula for a family of logarithms.


title:
A Gradient-based Kernel Optimization Approach for Parabolic Distributed
  Parameter Control Systems

abstract:
  This paper proposes a new gradient-based optimization approach for designing
optimal feedback kernels for parabolic distributed parameter systems with
boundary control. Unlike traditional kernel optimization methods for parabolic
systems, our new method does not require solving non-standard Riccati-type or
Klein-Gorden-type partial differential equations (PDEs). Instead, the feedback
kernel is parameterized as a second-order polynomial whose coefficients are
decision variables to be tuned via gradient-based dynamic optimization, where
the gradient of the system cost functional (which penalizes both kernel and
output magnitude) is computed by solving a so-called costate PDE instandard
form. Special constraints are imposed on the kernel coefficients to ensure
that, under mild conditions, the optimized kernel yields closed-loop stability.
Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


title: Non-emptiness of Newton strata of Shimura varieties of Hodge type

abstract:
  For a Shimura variety of Hodge type with hyperspecial level at a prime $p$,
the Newton stratification on its special fiber at $p$ is a stratification
defined in terms of the isomorphism class of the Dieudonne module of
parameterized abelian varieties endowed with a certain fixed set of
Frobenius-invariant crystalline cycles ("$F$-isocrystal with
$G_{\mathbb{Q}_p}$-structure"). There has been a conjectural group-theoretic
description of the F-isocrystals that are expected to show up in the special
fiber. We confirm this conjecture by two different methods. More precisely, for
any $F$-isocrystal with $G_{\mathbb{Q}_p}$-structure that is expected to appear
(in a precise sense), first we construct a special point which has good
reduction and whose reduction has associated $F$-isocrystal equal to given one.
Secondly, we produce a Kottwtiz triple (with trivial Kottwitz invariant) with
the $F$-isocrystal component being the given one. According to a recent result
of Kisin which establishes the Langlands-Rapoport conjecture, such Kottwitz
triple arises from a point in the reduction.


title:
On Reliability Function Of BSC: Expanding The Region, Where It Is Known
  Exactly

abstract:
  The region of rates ("straight-line"), where the BSC reliability function is
known exactly, is expanded.


title: A Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Filter for Maneuvering Targets

abstract:
  A multiple maneuvering target system can be viewed as a Jump Markov System
(JMS) in the sense that the target movement can be modeled using different
motion models where the transition between the motion models by a particular
target follows a Markov chain probability rule. This paper describes a
Generalized Labelled Multi-Bernoulli (GLMB) filter for tracking maneuvering
targets whose movement can be modeled via such a JMS. The proposed filter is
validated with two linear and nonlinear maneuvering target tracking examples.


title: On a relative form of Verdier Specialization

abstract:
  We prove a relative form of Verdier's specialization formula, and apply it to
derive a Chern class identity predicted by string dualities.


title:
OGLE-2014-BLG-0257L: A Microlensing Brown Dwarf Orbiting a Low-mass M
  Dwarf

abstract:
  In this paper, we report the discovery of a binary composed of a brown dwarf
and a low-mass M dwarf from the observation of the microlensing event
OGLE-2014-BLG-0257. Resolution of the very short-lasting caustic crossing
combined with the detection of subtle continuous deviation in the lensing light
curve induced by the Earth's orbital motion enable us to precisely measure both
the Einstein radius \theta_E and the lens parallax pi_E, which are the two
quantities needed to unambiguously determine the mass and distance to the lens.
It is found that the companion is a substellar brown dwarf with a mass 0.036
+/- 0.005 Msun (37.7 +/- 5.2\ M_J) and it is orbiting an M dwarf with a mass
0.19 +/- 0.02 Msun. The binary is located at a distance 1.25 +/- 0.13 kpc
toward the Galactic bulge and the projected separation between the binary
components is 0.61 +/- 0.07 AU. The separation scaled by the mass of the host
is 3.2 AU/Msun. Under the assumption that separations scale with masses, then,
the discovered brown dwarf is located in the zone of the brown dwarf desert.
With the increasing sample of brown dwarfs existing in various environments,
microlensing will provide a powerful probe of brown dwarfs in the Galaxy.


title: Renormalization of the quark mass matrix

abstract:
  Using a set of rephasing-invariant variables, it is shown that the
renormalization group equations for quark mixing parameters can be written in a
form that is compact, in addition to having simple properties under flavor
permutation. We also found approximate solutions to these equations if the
quark masses are hierarchical or nearly degenerate.


title:
Projective cofactor decompositions of Boolean functions and the
  satisfiability problem

abstract:
  Given a CNF formula $F$, we present a new algorithm for deciding the
satisfiability (SAT) of $F$ and computing all solutions of assignments. The
algorithm is based on the concept of \emph{cofactors} known in the literature.
This paper is a fallout of the previous work by authors on Boolean
satisfiability \cite{sul1, sul2,sude}, however the algorithm is essentially
independent of the orthogonal expansion concept over which previous papers were
based. The algorithm selects a single concrete cofactor recursively by
projecting the search space to the set which satisfies a CNF in the formula.
This cofactor is called \emph{projective cofactor}. The advantage of such a
computation is that it recursively decomposes the satisfiability problem into
independent sub-problems at every selection of a projective cofactor. This
leads to a parallel algorithm for deciding satisfiability and computing all
solutions of a satisfiable formula.


title: A preconditioner for the Ohta--Kawasaki equation

abstract:
  We propose a new preconditioner for the Ohta--Kawasaki equation, a nonlocal
Cahn--Hilliard equation that describes the evolution of diblock copolymer
melts. We devise a computable approximation to the inverse of the Schur
complement of the coupled second-order formulation via a matching strategy. The
preconditioner achieves mesh independence: as the mesh is refined, the number
of Krylov iterations required for its solution remains approximately constant.
In addition, the preconditioner is robust with respect to the interfacial
thickness parameter if a timestep criterion is satisfied. This enables the
highly resolved finite element simulation of three-dimensional diblock
copolymer melts with over one billion degrees of freedom.


title: Edge exchangeable models for network data

abstract:
  Exchangeable models for countable vertex-labeled graphs cannot replicate the
large sample behaviors of sparsity and power law degree distribution observed
in many network datasets. Out of this mathematical impossibility emerges the
question of how network data can be modeled in a way that reflects known
empirical behaviors and respects basic statistical principles. We address this
question by observing that edges, not vertices, act as the statistical units in
networks constructed from interaction data, making a theory of edge-labeled
networks more natural for many applications. In this context we introduce the
concept of {\em edge exchangeability}, which unlike its vertex exchangeable
counterpart admits models for networks with sparse and/or power law structure.
Our characterization of edge exchangeable networks gives rise to a class of
nonparametric models, akin to graphon models in the vertex exchangeable
setting. Within this class, we identify a tractable family of distributions
with a clear interpretation and suitable theoretical properties, whose
significance in estimation, prediction, and testing we demonstrate.


title: On the exact recovery of sparse signals via conic relaxations

abstract:
  In this note we compare two recently proposed semidefinite relaxations for
the sparse linear regression problem by Pilanci, Wainwright and El Ghaoui
(Sparse learning via boolean relaxations, 2015) and Dong, Chen and Linderoth
(Relaxation vs. Regularization A conic optimization perspective of statistical
variable selection, 2015). We focus on the cardinality constrained formulation,
and prove that the relaxation proposed by Dong, etc. is theoretically no weaker
than the one proposed by Pilanci, etc. Therefore any sufficient condition of
exact recovery derived by Pilanci can be readily applied to the other
relaxation, including their results on high probability recovery for Gaussian
ensemble. Finally we provide empirical evidence that the relaxation by Dong,
etc. requires much fewer observations to guarantee the recovery of true
support.


title: Groups acting on spaces of non-positive curvature

abstract:
  In this survey article, we present some panorama of groups acting on metric
spaces of non-positive curvature. We introduce the main examples and their
rigidity properties , we show the links between algebraic or analytic
properties of the group and geometric properties of the space. Finally, we
conclude with a few conjectures in the subject.


title: Caching in Wireless Small Cell Networks: A Storage-Bandwidth Tradeoff

abstract:
  Caching contents at the network edge is an efficient mean for offloading
traffic, reducing latency and improving users' quality-of-experience. In this
letter, we focus on aspects of storage-bandwidth tradeoffs in which small cell
base stations are distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process
and cache contents according to a given content popularity distribution,
subject to storage constraints. We provide a closed-form expression of the
cache-miss probability, defined as the probability of not satisfying users'
requests over a given coverage area, as a function of signal-to-interference
ratio, cache size, base stations density and content popularity. In particular,
it is shown that for a given minimum cache size, the popularity based caching
strategy achieves lower outage probability for a given base station density
compared to uniform caching. Furthermore, we show that popularity based caching
attains better performance in terms of cache-miss probability for the same
amount of spectrum.


title: Low-energy effective action for pions and a dilatonic meson

abstract:
  Numerical simulations of QCD-like theories in which the number of flavors is
adjusted so that the beta function is very small, but confinement and chiral
symmetry breaking nevertheless take place, appear to reveal the presence of a
flavor-singlet scalar meson which can be as light as the pions. Because the
breaking of dilatation symmetry, quantified by the beta function, is small
relative to QCD, a possible explanation is that the scalar meson is a pseudo
Nambu-Goldstone boson associated with the approximate dilatation symmetry. We
use this observation to systematically develop a low-energy effective action
that accounts for both the pions and the "dilatonic" scalar meson. In order to
justify the power counting that controls the couplings of the dilatonic meson
we invoke the Veneziano limit, in which the number of
fundamental-representation flavors $N_f$ grows in proportion with the number of
colors $N_c$, while the ratio $N_f/N_c$ is kept close to, but below, the
critical value where the conformal window is entered.


title: Stimulated emission and Hawking radiation in black hole analogues

abstract:
  Stimulated emission by black holes is discussed in light of the analogue
gravity program. We first consider initial quantum states containing a definite
number of particles, and then we take into account the case where the initial
state is a coherent state. The latter case is particularly significant in the
case where Hawking radiation is studied in dielectric black holes, and the
emission is stimulated by a laser probe. We are particularly interested in the
case of the electromagnetic field, for which stimulated radiation is calculated
too.


title:
An Ensemble 4D Seismic History Matching Framework with Sparse
  Representation Based on Wavelet Multiresolution Analysis

abstract:
  In this work we propose an ensemble 4D seismic history matching framework for
reservoir characterization. Compared to similar existing frameworks in
reservoir engineering community, the proposed one consists of some relatively
new ingredients, in terms of the type of seismic data in choice, wavelet
multiresolution analysis for the chosen seismic data and related data noise
estimation, and the use of recently developed iterative ensemble history
matching algorithms.
  Typical seismic data used for history matching, such as acoustic impedance,
are inverted quantities, whereas extra uncertainties may arise during the
inversion processes. In the proposed framework we avoid such intermediate
inversion processes. In addition, we also adopt wavelet-based sparse
representation to reduce data size. Concretely, we use intercept and gradient
attributes derived from amplitude versus angle (AVA) data, apply multilevel
discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) to attribute data, and estimate noise level
of resulting wavelet coefficients. We then select the wavelet coefficients
above a certain threshold value, and history-match these leading wavelet
coefficients using an iterative ensemble smoother.
  (The rest of the abstract is omitted for exceeding the limit of length)

categories: physics.data-an math.NA math.OC physics.geo-ph stat.CO


title:
Probabilistic and average linear widths of weighted Sobolev spaces on
  the ball equipped with a Gaussian measure

abstract:
  Let $L_{q,\mu}$, $1\leq q\leq\infty$, denotes the weighted $L_q$ space of
functions on the unit ball $\Bbb B^d$ with respect to weight
$(1-\|x\|_2^2)^{\mu-\frac12},\,\mu\ge 0$, and let $W_{2,\mu}^r$ be the weighted
Sobolev space on $\Bbb B^d$ with a Gaussian measure $\nu$. We investigate the
probabilistic linear $(n,\delta)$-widths
$\lambda_{n,\delta}(W_{2,\mu}^r,\nu,L_{q,\mu})$ and the $p$-average linear
$n$-widths
  $\lambda_n^{(a)}(W_{2,\mu}^r,\mu,L_{q,\mu})_p$, and obtain their asymptotic
orders for all $1\le q\le \infty$ and $0<p<\infty$.


title:
Impurity scattering and Friedel oscillations in mono-layer black
  phosphorus

abstract:
  We study the effect of impurity scattering effect in black phosphorurene (BP)
in this work. For single impurity, we calculate impurity induced local density
of states (LDOS) in momentum space numerically based on tight-binding
Hamiltonian. In real space, we calculate LDOS and Friedel oscillation
analytically. LDOS shows strong anisotropy in BP. Many impurities in BP are
investigated using $T$-matrix approximation when the density is low. Midgap
states appear in band gap with peaks in DOS. The peaks of midgap states are
dependent on impurity potential. For finite positive potential, the impurity
tends to bind negative charge carriers and vise versa. The infinite impurity
potential problem is related to chiral symmetry in BP.


title:
A sound nebula: the origin of the Solar System in the field of a
  standing sound wave

abstract:
  According to the planetary origin conceptual model proposed in this paper,
the protosun centre of the pre-solar nebula exploded, resulting in a shock wave
that passed through it and then returned to the centre, generating a new
explosion and shock wave. Recurrent explosions in the nebula resulted in a
spherical standing sound wave, whose antinodes concentrated dust into rotating
rings that transformed into planets. The extremely small angular momentum of
the Sun and the tilt of its equatorial plane were caused by the asymmetry of
the first, most powerful explosion. Differences between inner and outer planets
are explained by the migration of solid matter, while the Oort cloud is
explained by the division of the pre-solar nebula into a spherical internal
nebula and an expanding spherical shell of gas. The proposed conceptual model
can also explain the origin and evolution of exoplanetary systems and may be of
use in searching for new planets.


title: Introspectibles: Tangible Interaction to Foster Introspection

abstract:
  Digital devices are now ubiquitous and have the potential to be used to
support positive changes in human lives and promote psychological well-being.
This paper presents three interactive systems that we created focusing on
introspection activities, leveraging tangible interaction and spatial augmented
reality. More specifically, we describe anthropomorphic augmented avatars that
display the users' inner states using physiological sensors. We also present a
first prototype of an augmented sandbox specifically dedicated to promoting
mindfulness activities.


title: Extraction of cylinders and cones from minimal point sets

abstract:
  We propose new algebraic methods for extracting cylinders and cones from
minimal point sets, including oriented points. More precisely, we are
interested in computing efficiently cylinders through a set of three points,
one of them being oriented, or through a set of five simple points. We are also
interested in computing efficiently cones through a set of two oriented points,
through a set of four points, one of them being oriented, or through a set of
six points. For these different interpolation problems, we give optimal bounds
on the number of solutions. Moreover, we describe algebraic methods targeted to
solve these problems efficiently.


title: Observing The Observer

abstract:
  I present a simple variant of the Schr\"odinger cat meets Wigner's friend
thought experiment. If you are shocked by it, you have not understood quantum
physics (no words are missing from this sentence).


title: Semi-Supervised Verified Feedback Generation

abstract:
  Students have enthusiastically taken to online programming lessons and
contests. Unfortunately, they tend to struggle due to lack of personalized
feedback when they make mistakes. The overwhelming number of submissions
precludes manual evaluation. There is an urgent need of program analysis and
repair techniques capable of handling both the scale and variations in student
submissions, while ensuring quality of feedback.
  Towards this goal, we present a novel methodology called semi-supervised
verified feedback generation. We cluster submissions by solution strategy and
ask the instructor to identify or add a correct submission in each cluster. We
then verify every submission in a cluster against the instructor-validated
submission in the same cluster. If faults are detected in the submission then
feedback suggesting fixes to them is generated. Clustering reduces the burden
on the instructor and also the variations that have to be handled during
feedback generation. The verified feedback generation ensures that only correct
feedback is generated.
  We have applied this methodology to iterative dynamic programming (DP)
assignments. Our clustering technique uses features of DP solutions. We have
designed a novel counter-example guided feedback generation algorithm capable
of suggesting fixes to all faults in a submission. In an evaluation on 2226
submissions to 4 problems, we could generate verified feedback for 1911 (85%)
submissions in 1.6s each on an average. Our technique does a good job of
reducing the burden on the instructor. Only one submission had to be manually
validated or added for every 16 submissions.


title:
Transition Form Factors of $\chi_{b2}(1P)\rightarrow B_{c}\bar{l}\nu$ in
  QCD

abstract:
  The form factors of the semileptonic $\chi_{b2}(1P)\rightarrow
B_{c}\bar{l}\nu$ decay are calculated using the QCD sum rule approach. The
results obtained are then used to estimate the decay widths of this transition
in all lepton channels. The orders of decay rates indicate that this transition
is accessible at LHC for all lepton channels.


title:
Optimal Sensing via Multi-armed Bandit Relaxations in Mixed
  Observability Domains

abstract:
  Sequential decision making under uncertainty is studied in a mixed
observability domain. The goal is to maximize the amount of information
obtained on a partially observable stochastic process under constraints imposed
by a fully observable internal state. An upper bound for the optimal value
function is derived by relaxing constraints. We identify conditions under which
the relaxed problem is a multi-armed bandit whose optimal policy is easily
computable. The upper bound is applied to prune the search space in the
original problem, and the effect on solution quality is assessed via simulation
experiments. Empirical results show effective pruning of the search space in a
target monitoring domain.


title: Negative magnetoresistance in viscous flow of two-dimensional electrons

abstract:
  At low temperatures, in very clean two-dimensional (2D) samples the electron
mean free path for collisions with static defects and phonons becomes greater
than the sample width. Under this condition, the electron transport occurs by
formation of a viscous flow of an electron fluid. We study the viscous flow of
2D electrons in a magnetic field perpendicular to the 2D layer. We calculate
the viscosity coefficients as the functions of magnetic field and temperature.
The off-diagonal viscosity coefficient determines the dispersion of the 2D
hydrodynamic waves. The decrease of the diagonal viscosity in magnetic field
leads to negative magnetoresistance which is temperature- and size dependent.
Our analysis demonstrates that the viscous mechanism is responsible for the
giant negative magnetoresistance recently observed in the ultra-high-mobility
GaAs quantum wells. We conclude that 2D electrons in that structures in
moderate magnetic fields should be treated as a viscous fluid.


title: Classification with Repulsion Tensors: A Case Study on Face Recognition

abstract:
  We consider dimensionality reduction methods for face recognition in a
supervised setting, using an image-as-matrix representation. A common procedure
is to project image matrices into a smaller space in which the recognition is
performed. These methods are often called "two-dimensional" in the literature
and there exist counterparts that use an image-as-vector representation. When
two face images are close to each other in the input space they may remain
close after projection - but this is not desirable in the situation when these
two images are from different classes, and this often affects the recognition
performance. We extend a previously developed `repulsion Laplacean' technique
based on adding terms to the objective function with the goal or creation a
repulsion energy between such images in the projected space. This scheme, which
relies on a repulsion graph, is generic and can be incorporated into various
two-dimensional methods. It can be regarded as a multilinear generalization of
the repulsion strategy by Kokiopoulou and Saad [Pattern Recog., 42 (2009), pp.
2392--2402]. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methodology
offers significant recognition improvement relative to the underlying
two-dimensional methods.


title:
Pressure Induced Stripe-order Antiferromagnetism and First-order Phase
  Transition in FeSe

abstract:
  To elucidate the magnetic structure and the origin of the nematicity in FeSe,
we perform a high-pressure $^{77}$Se NMR study on FeSe single crystals. We find
a suppression of the structural transition temperature with pressure up to
about 2 GPa from the anisotropy of the Knight shift. Above 2 GPa, a
stripe-order antiferromagnetism that breaks the spatial four-fold rotational
symmetry is determined by the NMR spectra under different field orientations
and with temperatures down to 50 mK. The magnetic phase transition is revealed
to be first-order type, implying the existence of a concomitant structural
transition via a spin-lattice coupling. Stripe-type spin fluctuations are
observed at high temperatures, and remain strong with pressure. These results
provide clear evidences for strong coupling between nematicity and magnetism in
FeSe, and therefore support a universal scenario of magnetic driven nematicity
in iron-based superconductors.


title:
Local 3d Electronic Structures of Co-Based Complexes with Medicinal
  Molecules Probed by Soft X-Ray Absorption

abstract:
  We have examined the local 3d electronic structures of Co-Au multinuclear
complexes with the medicinal molecules D-penicillaminate (D-pen)
[Co{Au(PPh3)(D-pen)}2]ClO4 and [Co3{Au3(tdme)(D-pen)3}2] by Co L_2,3-edge soft
X-ray absorption (XAS) spectroscopy, where PPh3 denotes triphenylphosphine and
tdme stands for 1,1,1-tris[(diphenylphosphino)methyl]ethane. The Co L_2,3-edge
XAS spectra indicate the localized ionic 3d electronic states in both
materials. The experimental spectra are well explained by spectral simulation
for a localized Co ion under ligand fields with the full multiplet theory,
which verifies that the ions are in the low-spin Co3+ state in the former
compound and in the high-spin Co2+ state in the latter.


title:
Threshold Saturation of Spatially Coupled Sparse Superposition Codes for
  All Memoryless Channels

abstract:
  We recently proved threshold saturation for spatially coupled sparse
superposition codes on the additive white Gaussian noise channel. Here we
generalize our analysis to a much broader setting. We show for any memoryless
channel that spatial coupling allows generalized approximate message-passing
(GAMP) decoding to reach the potential (or Bayes optimal) threshold of the code
ensemble. Moreover in the large input alphabet size limit: i) the GAMP
algorithmic threshold of the underlying (or uncoupled) code ensemble is simply
expressed as a Fisher information; ii) the potential threshold tends to
Shannon's capacity. Although we focus on coding for sake of coherence with our
previous results, the framework and methods are very general and hold for a
wide class of generalized estimation problems with random linear mixing.


title:
On the growth rates of cofinite 3-dimensional hyperbolic Coxeter groups
  whose dihedral angles are of the form $\frac{\pi}{m}$ for $m=2,3,4,5,6$

abstract:
  We study arithmetic properties of the growth rates of cofinite 3-dimensional
hyperbolic Coxeter groups whose dihedral angles are of the form $\frac{\pi}{m}$
for $m=2,3,4,5,6$ and show that the growth rates are always Perron numbers.


title:
A Radio Detection Survey of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies using
  Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry at 22 GHz

abstract:
  We conducted a high-sensitivity radio detection survey for forty narrow-line
Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies using very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) at 22
GHz through phase-referencing long-time integration and using a newly
developing recorder with a data rate of 8 Gbps, which is a candidate of the
next generation VLBI data recording systems for the Japanese VLBI Network. The
baseline sensitivity was typically a few mJy. The observations resulted in a
detection rate of 12/40 for our radio-selected NLS1 sample; 11 out of the
detected 12 NLS1s showed inverted radio spectra between 1.4 and 22 GHz on the
basis of the Very Large Array flux densities and the VLBI detections. These
high fractions suggest that a compact radio core with a high brightness
temperature is frequently associated with NLS1 nuclei. On the other hand, at
least half of the sample indicated apparently steep spectra even with the
limited VLBI sensitivity. Both the inverted and steep spectrum radio sources
are included in the NLS1 population.


title: Bases of Feigin-Stoyanovsky's type subspaces for $C_\ell^{(1)}$

abstract:
  In this paper we construct combinatorial bases of Feigin-Stoyanovsky's type
subspaces of standard modules for level $k$ affine Lie algebra $C_\ell^{(1)}$.
We prove spanning by using annihilating field $x_\theta (z)^{k+1}$ of standard
modules. In the proof of linear independence we use simple currents and
intertwinining operators whose existence is given by fusion rules.


title: Nested Invariance Pooling and RBM Hashing for Image Instance Retrieval

abstract:
  The goal of this work is the computation of very compact binary hashes for
image instance retrieval. Our approach has two novel contributions. The first
one is Nested Invariance Pooling (NIP), a method inspired from i-theory, a
mathematical theory for computing group invariant transformations with
feed-forward neural networks. NIP is able to produce compact and
well-performing descriptors with visual representations extracted from
convolutional neural networks. We specifically incorporate scale, translation
and rotation invariances but the scheme can be extended to any arbitrary sets
of transformations. We also show that using moments of increasing order
throughout nesting is important. The NIP descriptors are then hashed to the
target code size (32-256 bits) with a Restricted Boltzmann Machine with a novel
batch-level regularization scheme specifically designed for the purpose of
hashing (RBMH). A thorough empirical evaluation with state-of-the-art shows
that the results obtained both with the NIP descriptors and the NIP+RBMH hashes
are consistently outstanding across a wide range of datasets.


title: Two-Dimensional Node-Line Semimetals in a Honeycomb-Kagome Lattice

abstract:
  Recently, the concept of topological insulators has been generalized to
topological semimetals, including three-dimensional (3D) Weyl semimetals, 3D
Dirac semimetals, and 3D node-line semimetals. In particular, several compounds
(e.g., certain three-dimensional graphene networks, Cu3PdN, Ca3P2) were
discovered to be 3D node-line semimetals, in which the conduction and the
valence bands cross at closed lines in the Brillouin zone. Except for the
two-dimensional (2D) Dirac semimetal (e.g., in graphene), 2D topological
semimetals are much less investigated. Here, we propose the new concept of a 2D
node-line semimetal and suggest that this state could be realized in a new
mixed lattice (we name it as HK lattice) composed by kagome and honeycomb
lattices. We find that A3B2 (A is a group-IIB cation and B is a group-VA anion)
compounds (such as Hg3As2) with the HK lattice are 2D node-line semimetals due
to the band inversion between cation s orbital and anion pz orbital. In the
presence of buckling or spin-orbit coupling, the 2D node-line semimetal state
may turn into 2D Dirac semimetal state or 2D topological crystalline insulating
state.


title: A branch and bound algorithm for a fractional 0-1 programming problem

abstract:
  We consider a fractional 0-1 programming problem arising in manufacturing.
The problem consists in clustering of machines together with parts processed on
these machines into manufacturing cells so that intra-cell processing of parts
is maximized and inter-cell movement is minimized. This problem is called Cell
Formation Problem (CFP) and it is an NP-hard optimization problem with Boolean
variables and constraints and with a fractional objective function. Because of
its high computational complexity there are a lot of heuristics developed for
it. In this paper we suggest a branch and bound algorithm which provides exact
solutions for the CFP with a variable number of cells and grouping efficacy
objective function. This algorithm finds optimal solutions for 21 of the 35
popular benchmark instances from literature and for the remaining 14 instances
it finds good solutions close to the best known.


title:
Pion Generalized Parton Distributions within a fully covariant
  constituent quark model

abstract:
  We extend the investigation of the Generalized Parton Distribution for a
charged pion within a fully covariant constituent quark model, in two respects:
(i) calculating the tensor distribution and (ii) adding the treatment of the
evolution, needed for achieving a meaningful comparison with both the
experimental parton distribution and the lattice evaluation of the so-called
generalized form factors. Distinct features of our phenomenological covariant
quark model are: (i) a 4D Ansatz for the pion Bethe-Salpeter amplitude, to be
used in the Mandelstam formula for matrix elements of the relevant current
operators, and (ii) only two parameters, namely a quark mass assumed to hold
$m_q=~220$ MeV and a free parameter fixed through the value of the pion decay
constant. The possibility of increasing the dynamical content of our covariant
constituent quark model is briefly discussed in the context of the Nakanishi
integral representation of the Bethe-Salpeter amplitude.


title: Infinitely generated Hecke algebras with infinite presentation

abstract:
  For a locally compact group G and a compact subgroup K, the corresponding
Hecke algebra consists of all continuous compactly supported complex functions
on G that are K-bi-invariant. There are many examples of totally disconnected
locally compact groups whose Hecke algebras with respect to the maximal compact
subgroups are not commutative. One of those is the universal group U(F)^+, when
F is primitive but not 2-transitive. For this class of groups we prove that the
Hecke algebra with respect to the maximal compact subgroup K is infinitely
generated and infinitely presented. This may be relevant for constructing
irreducible unitary representations of U(F)^+ whose subspace of K-fixed vectors
has dimension at least two, or answering the question whether U(F)^+ is a type
I group or not. On the contrary, when F is 2-transitive that Hecke algebra of
U(F)^+ is commutative, finitely generated admitting only one generator.


title: Gradient $L^q$ theory for a class of nondiagonal elliptic systems

abstract:
  We show that the new result on H\"older continuity of solutions to a class of
nondiagonal elliptic systems with $p$-growth in [2] can be used to improve the
$L^q$ theory for such systems.


title: Quantum centipedes: collective dynamics of interacting quantum walkers

abstract:
  We consider the quantum centipede made of $N$ fermionic quantum walkers on
the one-dimensional lattice interacting by means of the simplest of all
hard-bound constraints: the distance between two consecutive fermions is either
one or two lattice spacings. This composite quantum walker spreads
ballistically, just as the simple quantum walk. However, because of the
interactions between the internal degrees of freedom, the distribution of its
center-of-mass velocity displays numerous ballistic fronts in the long-time
limit, corresponding to singularities in the empirical velocity distribution.
The spectrum of the centipede and the corresponding group velocities are
analyzed by direct means for the first few values of $N$. Some analytical
results are obtained for arbitrary $N$ by exploiting an exact mapping of the
problem onto a free-fermion system. We thus derive the maximal velocity
describing the ballistic spreading of the two extremal fronts of the centipede
wavefunction, including its non-trivial value in the large-$N$ limit.


title:
A search for water masers associated with class II methanol masers - II.
  Longitude range 341$^{\circ}$ to 6$^{\circ}$

abstract:
  This is the second paper in a series of catalogues of 22-GHz water maser
observations towards the 6.7-GHz methanol masers from the Methanol Multibeam
(MMB) Survey. In this paper we present our water maser observations made with
the Australia Telescope Compact Array towards the masers from the MMB survey
between l = 341$^{\circ}$ through the Galactic centre to l = 6$^{\circ}$. Of
the 204 6.7-GHz methanol masers in this longitude range we found 101 to have
associated water maser emission (~ 50 per cent). We found no difference in the
6.7-GHz methanol maser luminosities of those with and without water masers. In
sources where both maser species are observed, the luminosities of the methanol
and water masers are weakly correlated. Studying the mid-infrared colours from
GLIMPSE we found no differences between the colours of those sources associated
with both methanol and water masers and those associated with just methanol.
Comparing the column density and dust mass calculated from the 870-micron
thermal dust emission observed by ATLASGAL, we found no differences between
those sources associated with both water and methanol masers and those with
methanol only. Since water masers are collisionally pumped and often show
emission further away from their accompanying YSO than the radiatively pumped
6.7-GHz methanol masers, it is likely water masers are not as tightly
correlated to the evolution of the parent YSO and so do not trace such a well
defined evolutionary state as 6.7-GHz methanol masers.


title:
Experimental investigations of the dipolar interactions between single
  Rydberg atoms

abstract:
  This review summarizes experimental works performed over the last decade by
several groups on the manipulation of a few individual interacting Rydberg
atoms. These studies establish arrays of single Rydberg atoms as a promising
platform for quantum state engineering, with potential applications to quantum
metrology, quantum simulation and quantum information.


title: Localization of the interior transmission eigenvalues for a ball

abstract:
  We study the localization of the interior transmission eigenvalues (ITEs) in
the case when the domain is the unit ball $\{x \in {\mathbb R}^d:\: |x| \leq
1\}, \: d\geq 2,$ and the coefficients $c_j(x), \: j =1,2,$ and the indices of
refraction $n_j(x), \: j =1,2,$ are constants near the boundary $|x| = 1$. We
prove that in this case the eigenvalue-free region obtained in [16] for
strictly concave domains can be significantly improved. In particular, if
$c_j(x), n_j(x), j = 1,2$ are constants for $|x| \leq 1$, we show that all
(ITEs) lie in a strip $\{ \lambda \in {\mathbb C}:\:|{\rm Im}\: \lambda| \leq
C\}$.


title:
A stabilizing iteration scheme for model predictive control based on
  relaxed barrier functions

abstract:
  We propose and analyze a stabilizing iteration scheme for the algorithmic
implementation of model predictive control for linear discrete-time systems.
Polytopic input and state constraints are considered and handled by means of
so-called relaxed logarithmic barrier functions. The required on-line
optimization is based on warm starting and performs only a limited, possibly
small, number of optimization algorithm iterations between two consecutive
sampling instants. The optimization algorithm dynamics as well as the resulting
suboptimality of the applied control input are taken into account explicitly in
the stability analysis, and the origin of the resulting overall closed-loop
system, consisting of state and optimization algorithm dynamics, is proven to
be asymptotically stable. The corresponding constraint satisfaction properties
are also analyzed. The theoretical results and a presented numerical example
illustrate the fact that asymptotic stability as well as a satisfactory
closed-loop performance can be achieved by performing only a single
optimization algorithm iteration at each sampling step.


title:
Some Complete and Intermediate Polynomials in Algebraic Complexity
  Theory

abstract:
  We provide a list of new natural $\mathsf{VNP}$-intermediate polynomial
families, based on basic (combinatorial) $\mathsf{NP}$-complete problems that
are complete under parsimonious reductions. Over finite fields, these families
are in $\mathsf{VNP}$, and under the plausible hypothesis
$\mathsf{Mod}_p\mathsf{P} \not\subseteq \mathsf{P/poly}$, are neither
$\mathsf{VNP}$-hard (even under oracle-circuit reductions) nor in
$\mathsf{VP}$. Prior to this, only the Cut Enumerator polynomial was known to
be $\mathsf{VNP}$-intermediate, as shown by B\"{u}rgisser in 2000.
  We next show that over rationals and reals, two of our intermediate
polynomials, based on satisfiability and Hamiltonian cycle, are not monotone
affine polynomial-size projections of the permanent. This augments recent
results along this line due to Grochow.
  Finally, we describe a (somewhat natural) polynomial defined independent of a
computation model, and show that it is $\mathsf{VP}$-complete under
polynomial-size projections. This complements a recent result of Durand et al.
(2014) which established $\mathsf{VP}$-completeness of a related polynomial but
under constant-depth oracle circuit reductions. Both polynomials are based on
graph homomorphisms. A simple restriction yields a family similarly complete
for $\mathsf{VBP}$.


title:
Auditory power-law activation-avalanches exhibit a fundamental
  computational ground-state

abstract:
  The cochlea provides a biological information-processing paradigm that we
only begin to under- stand in its full complexity. Our work reveals an
interacting network of strongly nonlinear dynami- cal nodes, on which even
simple sound input triggers subnetworks of activated elements that follow
power-law size statistics ('avalanches'). From dynamical systems theory,
power-law size distribu- tions relate to a fundamental ground-state of
biological information processing. Learning destroys these power laws. These
results strongly modify the models of mammalian sound processing and provide a
novel methodological perspective for understanding how the brain processes
information.


title: Wide-angle and high-efficiency achromatic metasurfaces for visible light

abstract:
  Recently, an achromatic metasurface was successfully demonstrated to deflect
light of multiple wavelengths in the same direction and it was further applied
to the design of planar lenses without chromatic aberrations [Science, 347,
1342(2015)]. However, such metasurface can only work for normal incidence and
exhibit low conversion efficiency. Here, we present an ultrawide-angle and
high-efficiency metasurface without chromatic aberration for wavefront shaping
in visible range. The metasurface is constructed by multiple metallic
nano-groove gratings, which support enhanced diffractions for an ultrawide
incident angle range from 10o to 80o due to the excitations of localized gap
plasmon modes at different resonance wavelengths. Incident light at these
resonance wavelengths can be efficiently diffracted into the same direction
with complete suppression of the specular reflection. This approach is applied
to the design of an achromatic flat lens for focusing light of different
wavelengths into the same position. Our findings provide a facile way to design
various achromatic flat optical elements for imaging and display applications.


title: Performance Improvement of Graphenic Carbon X-ray Transmission Windows

abstract:
  Graphenic carbon (GC) x-ray transmission windows for EDX and XRF applications
with a high transparency for x-rays below 2.5 keV have been fabricated on 6
inch wafers with a CMOS-compatible CVD process. GC windows with an open
diameter of 7.4 mm and a thickness of 770 nm withstand up to 6.5 bars of
differential pressure. A high transmissivity of 40 % for fluorine K{\alpha}
(0.677 keV) radiation is demonstrated for a GC thickness of 650 nm. The GC
membranes outperform beryllium (Be) windows, in terms of higher x-ray
transmission and better mechanical stability while avoiding the toxicity of Be.
Optical profilometry has been employed to visualize a large deformation of the
GC layer during the window fabrication. This seems to limit the thickness of
the GC windows that can currently be fabricated. A two-step growth process can
overcome these limitations and windows with a thickness of up to 6 {\mu}m have
been realized.


title: Time-optimal Coordination of Mobile Robots along Specified Paths

abstract:
  In this paper, we address the problem of time-optimal coordination of mobile
robots under kinodynamic constraints along specified paths. We propose a novel
approach based on time discretization that leads to a mixed-integer linear
programming (MILP) formulation. This problem can be solved using
general-purpose MILP solvers in a reasonable time, resulting in a
resolution-optimal solution. Moreover, unlike previous work found in the
literature, our formulation allows an exact linear modeling (up to the
discretization resolution) of second-order dynamic constraints. Extensive
simulations are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.


title: Stein Type Characterization for $G$-normal Distributions

abstract:
  In this article, we provide a Stein type characterization for $G$-normal
distributions: Let $\mathcal{N}[\varphi]=\max_{\mu\in\Theta}\mu[\varphi],\
\varphi\in C_{b,Lip}(\mathbb{R}),$ be a sublinear expectation. $\mathcal{N}$ is
$G$-normal if and only if for any $\varphi\in C_b^2(\mathbb{R})$, we have
\[\int_\mathbb{R}[\frac{x}{2}\varphi'(x)-G(\varphi"(x))]\mu^\varphi(dx)=0,\]
where $\mu^\varphi$ is a realization of $\varphi$ associated with
$\mathcal{N}$, i.e., $\mu^\varphi\in \Theta$ and
$\mu^\varphi[\varphi]=\mathcal{N}[\varphi]$.


title:
Microcavity with saturable nonlinearity under simultaneous resonant and
  nonresonant pumping: multistability, Hopf bifurcations and chaotic behaviour

abstract:
  We studied optical response of microcavity non-equilibrium exciton-polariton
Bose-Einstein condensate with saturable nonlinearity under simultaneous
resonant and non-resonant pumping. We demonstrated the emergence of
multistabile behavior due to the satutration of the excitonic absorbtion.
Stable periodic Rabi- type oscillations of the excitonic and photonic
condensate components in the regime of the stationary pump and their transition
to the chaotic dynamics through the cascade of Hopf bifurcations by tuning of
the electrical pump are revealed.


title:
A Block Minorization--Maximization Algorithm for Heteroscedastic
  Regression

abstract:
  The computation of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for heteroscedastic
regression models is considered. The traditional Newton algorithms for the
problem require matrix multiplications and inversions, which are bottlenecks in
modern Big Data contexts. A new Big Data-appropriate minorization--maximization
(MM) algorithm is considered for the computation of the ML estimator. The MM
algorithm is proved to generate monotonically increasing sequences of
likelihood values and to be convergent to a stationary point of the
log-likelihood function. A distributed and parallel implementation of the MM
algorithm is presented and the MM algorithm is shown to have differing time
complexity to the Newton algorithm. Simulation studies demonstrate that the MM
algorithm improves upon the computation time of the Newton algorithm in some
practical scenarios where the number of observations is large.


title: Scalable Image Retrieval by Sparse Product Quantization

abstract:
  Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) search technique for high-dimensional
feature indexing and retrieval is the crux of large-scale image retrieval. A
recent promising technique is Product Quantization, which attempts to index
high-dimensional image features by decomposing the feature space into a
Cartesian product of low dimensional subspaces and quantizing each of them
separately. Despite the promising results reported, their quantization approach
follows the typical hard assignment of traditional quantization methods, which
may result in large quantization errors and thus inferior search performance.
Unlike the existing approaches, in this paper, we propose a novel approach
called Sparse Product Quantization (SPQ) to encoding the high-dimensional
feature vectors into sparse representation. We optimize the sparse
representations of the feature vectors by minimizing their quantization errors,
making the resulting representation is essentially close to the original data
in practice. Experiments show that the proposed SPQ technique is not only able
to compress data, but also an effective encoding technique. We obtain
state-of-the-art results for ANN search on four public image datasets and the
promising results of content-based image retrieval further validate the
efficacy of our proposed method.


title: Recent techniques and results on the Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa property

abstract:
  Several min-max relations in graph theory can be expressed in the framework
of the Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa property. Typically, this property reveals a connection
between packing and covering problems on graphs. We describe some recent
techniques for proving this property that are related to tree-like
decompositions. We also provide an unified presentation of the current state of
the art on this topic.


title:
A coronagraphic search for wide sub-stellar companions among members of
  the Ursa Major moving group

abstract:
  We present the results of a survey to detect low-mass companions of UMa group
members, carried out in 2003-2006 with NACO at the ESO VLT. While many
extra-solar planets and planetary candidates have been found in close orbits
around stars by the radial velocity and the transit method, direct detections
at wider orbits are rare. The Ursa Major (UMa) group, a young stellar
association at an age of about 200-600 Myr and an average distance of 25 pc,
has not yet been addressed as a whole although its members represent a very
interesting sample to search for and characterize sub-stellar companions by
direct imaging. Our goal was to find or to provide detection limits on wide
sub-stellar companions around nearby UMa group members using high-resolution
imaging. We searched for faint companions around 20 UMa group members within 30
pc. The primaries were placed below a semi-transparent coronagraph, a rather
rarely used mode of NACO, to increase the dynamic range of the images. In most
cases, second epoch images of companion candidates were taken to check whether
they share common proper motion with the primary. Our coronagraphic images rule
out sub-stellar companions around the stars of the sample. A dynamical range of
typically 13-15 mag in the Ks band was achieved at separations beyond 3" from
the star. Candidates as faint as Ks ~ 20 were securely identified and measured.
The survey is most sensitive between separations of 100 and 200 au but only on
average because of the very different target distance. Field coverage reaches
about 650 au for the most distant targets. Most of the 200 candidates are
visible in two epochs. All of those were rejected being distant background
objects.


title: Stoke's efficiency and its stochastic properties

abstract:
  We study the Stoke's efficiency and its fluctuating properties in the case of
a spatial asymmetric ratchet potential with a temporal asymmetric driving force
from adiabatic to nonadiabatic regime. Our numerical investigations show that
the average Stoke's efficiency and the average current decrease with the
frequency of driving. For low frequency of driving, i.e., in the case of an
adiabatic regime, we reproduced the analytical results supporting our numerical
simulations. By evaluating the probability distribution, $p(\eta_{s})$ for
Stoke's efficiency, $\eta_{s}$ we focus on the stochastic properties of Stokes
efficiency. We find that in most of the parameter space, fluctuations in
$\eta_{s}$ are comparable to or larger than the mean values. In such a
situation one has to study the full probability distribution of $\eta_{s}$.
With increase in frequency of driving, the distribution becomes multipeaked. At
the same time the average Stoke's efficiency decreases with increase in
frequency of drive. For high frequency of driving, the distribution develops a
peak across zero. Further increase in frequency this peak gets sharper. And
finally at sufficiently high frequency we get a strong peak across zero
indicating that there is no effective transport in this regime.


title:
Asynchronous transfer of individually addressable optical channels
  through a multimode fiber using phase conjugation

abstract:
  Multimode fibers are attractive for a variety of applications such as
internet data transfer, data center hubs, micromanipulation, optogenetics and
other biomedical applications. A major hurdle for imaging through multimode
fibers is the occurring scrambling, resulting in a randomization of light.
Recently, clear imaging has been successfully accomplished using wavefront
shaping, but the spatial information was transferred synchronously only. We
demonstrate asynchronous information transmission using individual phase
conjugations by employing only one spatial light modulator with multiple
windows. Our findings pave the way towards individual signal transfer inside
strongly scattering media.


title:
Image Co-localization by Mimicking a Good Detector's Confidence Score
  Distribution

abstract:
  Given a set of images containing objects from the same category, the task of
image co-localization is to identify and localize each instance. This paper
shows that this problem can be solved by a simple but intriguing idea, that is,
a common object detector can be learnt by making its detection confidence
scores distributed like those of a strongly supervised detector. More
specifically, we observe that given a set of object proposals extracted from an
image that contains the object of interest, an accurate strongly supervised
object detector should give high scores to only a small minority of proposals,
and low scores to most of them. Thus, we devise an entropy-based objective
function to enforce the above property when learning the common object
detector. Once the detector is learnt, we resort to a segmentation approach to
refine the localization. We show that despite its simplicity, our approach
outperforms state-of-the-art methods.


title:
Effects of human factor on the success of Information technology
  outsourcing

abstract:
  Information technology outsourcing is one of the factors affecting the
improvement of flexibility and dynamics of enterprises in the competitive
environment. Also the study of the factors affecting its success has been
always considered by business owners and the area of research. Professional
experiences and research results consider that the success of IT "Information
technology" outsourcing projects relates to the effective knowledge transfer
and human factors. The human factors are influenced by the cultural and
environmental context of the inside and outside of the organization. Hence, it
is necessary to study the effectiveness of these variables in different
cultural environments. This study investigates the effect of human factors
including the customer motivation and vendor willingness on the success of IT
outsourcing projects. For this purpose, the research hypotheses were developed
and analyzed by the structural equation method. The result of a field study
among 94 companies and organizations show the difference of the findings of
this study with earlier findings in other countries. Based on the findings, the
client motivation does not affect the knowledge transfer but the vendor
willingness affects the customer motivation to knowledge transfer. This result
can help the business owners to take appropriate approaches for achieving
success in IT outsourcing projects.


title: The generalized lifting property of Bruhat intervlas

abstract:
  In [E. Tsukerman and L. Williams, {\em Bruhat Interval Polytopes}, Advances
in Mathematics, 285 (2015), 766-810] it is shown that every Bruhat interval of
the symmetric group satisfies the so-called generalized lifting property. In
this paper we show that a Coxeter group satisfies this property if and only if
it is finite and simply-laced.