title:
Project Icarus: Preliminary Thoughts on the Selection of Probes and
  Instruments for an Icarus-style Interstellar Mission

abstract:
  In this paper we outline the range of probes and scientific instruments that
will be required in order for Icarus to fulfill its scientific mission of
exploring a nearby star, its attendant planetary system, and the intervening
interstellar medium. Based on this preliminary analysis, we estimate that the
minimum total Icarus scientific payload mass (i.e. the mass of probes and
instruments which must be decelerated to rest in the target system to enable a
meaningful programme of scientific investigation) will be in the region of 100
tonnes. Of this, approximately 10 tonnes would be allocated for cruise-phase
science instruments, and about 35 tonnes (i.e. the average of estimated lower
and upper limits of 28 and 41 tonnes) would be contributed by the intra-system
science payload itself (i.e. the dry mass of the stellar and planetary probes
and their instruments). The remaining ~55 tonnes is allocated for the sub-probe
intra-system propulsion requirements (crudely estimated from current Solar
System missions; detailed modelling of sub-probe propulsion systems will be
needed to refine this figure). The overall mass contributed by the science
payload to the total that must be decelerated from the interstellar cruise
velocity will be considerably more than 100 tonnes, however, as allowance must
be made for the payload structural and infrastructural elements required to
support, deploy, and communicate with the science probes and instruments. Based
on the earlier Daedalus study, we estimate another factor of two to allow for
these components. Pending the outcome of more detailed studies, it therefore
appears that an overall science-related payload mass of ~200 tonnes will be
required. This paper is a submission of the Project Icarus Study Group.


title:
Design of Robust Adaptive Beamforming Algorithms Based on Low-Rank and
  Cross-Correlation Techniques

abstract:
  This work presents cost-effective low-rank techniques for designing robust
adaptive beamforming (RAB) algorithms. The proposed algorithms are based on the
exploitation of the cross-correlation between the array observation data and
the output of the beamformer. Firstly, we construct a general linear equation
considered in large dimensions whose solution yields the steering vector
mismatch. Then, we employ the idea of the full orthogonalization method (FOM),
an orthogonal Krylov subspace based method, to iteratively estimate the
steering vector mismatch in a reduced-dimensional subspace, resulting in the
proposed orthogonal Krylov subspace projection mismatch estimation (OKSPME)
method. We also devise adaptive algorithms based on stochastic gradient (SG)
and conjugate gradient (CG) techniques to update the beamforming weights with
low complexity and avoid any costly matrix inversion. The main advantages of
the proposed low-rank and mismatch estimation techniques are their
cost-effectiveness when dealing with high dimension subspaces or large sensor
arrays. Simulations results show excellent performance in terms of the output
signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the beamformer among all the
compared RAB methods.


title:
Optimal Storage Allocation for Wireless Cloud Caching Systems with a
  Limited Sum Storage Capacity

abstract:
  In wireless cloud storage systems, the recovery failure probability depends
on not only wireless channel conditions but also storage size of each
distributed storage node. For an efficient utilization of limited storage
capacity and the performance characterization of allocation strategies, we
asymptotically analyze the recovery failure probability of a wireless cloud
storage system with a sum storage capacity constraint for both high SNR regime
and low SNR regime. Then, we find the optimal storage allocation strategy
across distributed storage nodes in terms of the asymptotic recovery failure
probability. Our analysis reveals that the maximal symmetric allocation is
optimal for high SNR regime and the minimal allocation (with $\lfloor T\rfloor$
complete storage nodes and an incomplete storage node) is optimal for low SNR
regime, where $T$ is the sum storage capacity. Based on the numerical
investigation, we also show that in intermediate SNR regime, a balance
allocation between the minimal allocation and the maximal symmetric allocation
would not be required if we select one between them according to SNR.


title:
Theoretical Modeling Expressions for Networked Enzymatic Signal
  Processing Steps as Logic Gates Optimized by Filtering

abstract:
  We describe modeling approaches to a "network" of connected enzyme-catalyzed
reactions, with added (bio)chemical processes that introduce biochemical
filtering steps into the functioning of such a biocatalytic cascade.
Theoretical expressions are derived that allow simple, few-parameter modeling
of processes concatenated in such cascades, both with and without filtering.
The modeling approach captures and explains features identified in earlier
studies of enzymatic processes considered as potential "network components" for
multi-step information/signal processing systems.


title:
Provable Burer-Monteiro factorization for a class of norm-constrained
  matrix problems

abstract:
  We study the projected gradient descent method on low-rank matrix problems
with a strongly convex objective. We use the Burer-Monteiro factorization
approach to implicitly enforce low-rankness; such factorization introduces
non-convexity in the objective. We focus on constraint sets that include both
positive semi-definite (PSD) constraints and specific matrix norm-constraints.
Such criteria appear in quantum state tomography and phase retrieval
applications.
  We show that non-convex projected gradient descent favors local linear
convergence in the factored space. We build our theory on a novel descent
lemma, that non-trivially extends recent results on the unconstrained problem.
The resulting algorithm is Projected Factored Gradient Descent, abbreviated as
ProjFGD, and shows superior performance compared to state of the art on quantum
state tomography and sparse phase retrieval applications.

categories: stat.ML cs.DS cs.IT cs.NA math.IT math.OC


title: Allowed patterns of symmetric tent maps via commuter functions

abstract:
  We introduce a new technique to study pattern avoidance in dynamical systems,
namely the use of a commuter function between non-conjugate dynamical systems.
We investigate the properties of such a commuter function, specifically $h :
[0,1] \to [0,1]$ satisfying $T_1 \circ h = h \circ T_\mu$, where $T_\mu$
denotes a symmetric tent map of height $\mu$. We make use of this commuter
function to prove strict inclusion of the set of allowed patterns of $T_\mu$ in
the set of allowed patterns of $T_1$.


title: The Origin of Weak Lensing Convergence Peaks

abstract:
  Weak lensing convergence peaks are a promising tool to probe nonlinear
structure evolution at late times, providing additional cosmological
information beyond second-order statistics. Previous theoretical and
observational studies have shown that the cosmological constraints on
$\Omega_m$ and $\sigma_8$ are improved by a factor of up to ~ 2 when peak
counts and second-order statistics are combined, compared to using the latter
alone. We study the origin of lensing peaks using observational data from the
154 deg$^2$ Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey. We found that while
high peaks (with height $\kappa$ >3.5 $\sigma_\kappa$, where $\sigma_\kappa$ is
the r.m.s. of the convergence $\kappa$) are typically due to one single massive
halo of ~$10^{15}M_\odot$, low peaks ($\kappa$ <~ $\sigma_\kappa$) are
associated with constellations of 2-8 smaller halos (<~$10^{13}M_\odot$). In
addition, halos responsible for forming low peaks are found to be significantly
offset from the line-of-sight towards the peak center (impact parameter >~
their virial radii), compared with ~0.25 virial radii for halos linked with
high peaks, hinting that low peaks are more immune to baryonic processes whose
impact is confined to the inner regions of the dark matter halos. Our findings
are in good agreement with results from the simulation work by Yang el al.
(2011).


title:
Modeling and Modifying Response of Biochemical Processes for
  Biocomputing and Biosensing Signal Processing

abstract:
  Processes involving multi-input multi-step reaction cascades are used in
developing novel biosensing, biocomputing, and decision making systems. In
various applications different changes in responses of the constituent
processing steps (reactions) in a cascade are desirable in order to allow
control of the system's response. Here we consider conversion of convex
response to sigmoid by "intensity filtering," as well as "threshold filtering,"
and we offer a general overview of this field of research. Specifically, we
survey rate equation modelling that has been used for enzymatic reactions. This
allows us to design modified biochemical processes as "network components" with
responses desirable in applications.


title:
GMC Collisions as Triggers of Star Formation. II. 3D Turbulent,
  Magnetized Simulations

abstract:
  We investigate giant molecular cloud (GMCs) collisions and their ability to
induce gravitational instability and thus star formation. This mechanism may be
a major driver of star formation activity in galactic disks. We carry out a
series of three dimensional, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), adaptive mesh
refinement (AMR) simulations to study how cloud collisions trigger formation of
dense filaments and clumps. Heating and cooling functions are implemented based
on photo-dissociation region (PDR) models that span the atomic to molecular
transition and can return detailed diagnostic information. The clouds are
initialized with supersonic turbulence and a range of magnetic field strengths
and orientations. Collisions at various velocities and impact parameters are
investigated. Comparing and contrasting colliding and non-colliding cases, we
characterize morphologies of dense gas, magnetic field structure, cloud
kinematic signatures, and cloud dynamics. We present key observational
diagnostics of cloud collisions, especially: relative orientations between
magnetic fields and density structures, like filaments; $^{13}$CO($J$=2-1),
$^{13}$CO($J$=3-2), and $^{12}$CO($J$=8-7) integrated intensity maps and
spectra; and cloud virial parameters. We compare these results to observed
Galactic clouds.


title: Notes on isocrystals

abstract:
  For varieties over a perfect field of characteristic p, etale cohomology with
Q_l-coefficients is a Weil cohomology theory only when l is not equal to p; the
corresponding role for l = p is played by Berthelot's rigid cohomology. In that
theory, the coefficient objects analogous to lisse l-adic sheaves are the
overconvergent F-isocrystals. This expository article is a brief user's guide
for these objects, including some features shared with l-adic cohomology
(purity, weights) and some features exclusive to the p-adic case (Newton
polygons, convergence and overconvergence). The relationship between the two
cases, via the theory of companions, will be treated in a sequel paper.


title:
Ferroelectric Domain Patterning Controlled Schottky Junction State in
  Monolayer MoS$_2$

abstract:
  We exploit scanning probe controlled domain patterning in a ferroelectric top
layer to induce nonvolatile modulation of the conduction characteristic of
monolayer MoS$_2$ between a transistor and a junction state. In the presence of
a domain wall, MoS$_2$ exhibits rectified I-V that is well described by the
thermionic emission model. The induced Schottky barrier height varies from 0.38
eV to 0.57 eV and is tunabe by a SiO$_2$ global back-gate, while the tuning
range of depends sensitively on the conduction band tail trapping states. Our
work points to a new route to achieving programmable functionalities in van der
Waals materials and sheds light on the critical performance limiting factors in
these hybrid systems.


title:
Improving Coreference Resolution by Learning Entity-Level Distributed
  Representations

abstract:
  A long-standing challenge in coreference resolution has been the
incorporation of entity-level information - features defined over clusters of
mentions instead of mention pairs. We present a neural network based
coreference system that produces high-dimensional vector representations for
pairs of coreference clusters. Using these representations, our system learns
when combining clusters is desirable. We train the system with a
learning-to-search algorithm that teaches it which local decisions (cluster
merges) will lead to a high-scoring final coreference partition. The system
substantially outperforms the current state-of-the-art on the English and
Chinese portions of the CoNLL 2012 Shared Task dataset despite using few
hand-engineered features.


title:
Bayesian index of superiority and the p-value of the conditional test
  for Poisson parameters

abstract:
  We consider the problem of comparing two Poisson parameters from the Bayesian
perspective. Kawasaki and Miyaoka (2012b) proposed the Bayesian index
$P(\lambda_1 < \lambda_2 | X_1,X_2)$ and expressed it using the hypergeometric
series. In this paper, under some conditions, we give four other expressions of
the Bayesian index in terms of the cumulative distribution functions of beta,
$F$, binomial, and negative binomial distribution. Next, we investigate the
relationship between the Bayesian index and the $p$-value of the conditional
test with the null hypothesis $H_0: \lambda_1 \geq \lambda_2 $ versus an
alternative hypothesis $H_1: \lambda_1<\lambda_2 $. Additionally, we
investigate the generalized relationship between $P(\lambda_1/\lambda_2 <c |
X_1, X_2)$ and the $p$-value of the conditional test with the null hypothesis
$H_0: \lambda_1/\lambda_2 \geq c$ versus the alternative $H_1:
\lambda_1/\lambda_2 < c$. We illustrate the utility of the Bayesian index using
analyses of real data. Our finding suggests that the Bayesian index can
potentially be useful in an epidemiology and in a clinical trial.


title:
Effect of strong $\bar{\rm p}$-p nuclear forces on the rate of the
  low-energy three-body protonium formation reaction: $\bar{p} + H_{\mu}(1s)
  \rightarrow (\bar{p} p)_{\alpha} + \mu^-$

abstract:
  The effect of the strong $\bar{\rm p}$-p nuclear interaction in a
three-charge-particle system with arbitrary masses is investigated.
Specifically, the ($\bar{\rm p},\ \mu^-$,\ p) system is considered, where
$\bar{p}$ is an antiproton, $\mu^-$ is a muon and p is a proton. A numerical
computation in the framework of a detailed few-body approach is carried out for
the following protonium (antiprotonic hydrogen) formation three-body reaction:
$\bar{p} + H_{\mu}(1s) \rightarrow (\bar{p} p)_{\alpha} + \mu^-$. Here,
$H_{\mu}(1s)$ is a ground state muonic hydrogen, i.e. a bound state of p and
$\mu^-$. A bound state of $p$ and its counterpart $\bar{p}$ is a protonium atom
in a quantum atomic state $\alpha$, i.e. $Pn = (\bar{p}p)_{\alpha}$. The
low-energy cross sections and rates of the $Pn$ formation reaction are computed
in the framework of a Faddeev-like equation. The strong $\bar{\rm p}$-p
interaction is included in these calculations within a first order
approximation. It was found, that even in the framework of this approximation
the inclusion of the strong interaction results in a quite significant
correction to the rate of the three-body reaction. Therefore, the title
three-body antiprotonic process with participation of muons should be useful,
especially at low-energy collisions, in studying the $\bar{\rm p}$-p nuclear
forces and the annihilation channels in $Pn$.


title: Calculations for electron-impact excitation and ionization of beryllium

abstract:
  The B-spline R-matrix and the convergent close-coupling methods are used to
study electron collisions with neutral beryllium over an energy range from
threshold to 100 eV. Coupling to the target continuum significantly affects the
results for transitions from the ground state, but to a lesser extent the
strong transitions between excited states. Cross sections are presented for
selected transitions between low-lying physical bound states of beryllium, as
well as for elastic scattering, momentum transfer, and ionization. The present
cross sections for transitions from the ground state from the two methods are
in excellent agreement with each other, and also with other available results
based on nonperturbative convergent pseudo-state and time-dependent
close-coupling models. The elastic cross section at low energies is dominated
by a prominent shape resonance. The ionization from the $(2s2p)^3P$ and
$(2s2p)^1P$ states strongly depends on the respective term. The current
predictions represent an extensive set of electron scattering data for neutral
beryllium, which should be sufficient for most modeling applications.


title: Envelope Functions: Unifications and Further Properties

abstract:
  Recently, the forward-backward and Douglas-Rachford envelope functions were
proposed in the literature. The stationary points of these envelope functions
have a close relationship with the solutions of the possibly nonsmooth
optimization problem to be solved. The envelopes were shown to be smooth and
convex under some additional assumptions. Therefore, these envelope functions
create powerful bridges between nonsmooth and smooth optimization.
  In this paper, we present a general envelope function that unifies and
generalizes these envelope functions. We provide properties of the general
envelope function that sharpen corresponding known results for the special
cases. We also present an envelope function for the generalized alternating
projections method (GAP), named the GAP envelope. It enables for convex
feasibility problems with two sets, of which one is affine, to be solved by
finding any stationary point of the smooth and under some assumptions convex
GAP envelope.


title: Improved approximative multicoloring of hexagonal graphs

abstract:
  In 1999, McDiarmid and Reed conjectued that the approximation ratio $9/8$ of
multichromatic number to weighted clique number asymptotically is the best
possible for general weighted hexagonal graphs. We prove that there is a proper
multicoloring of $G$ that uses at most $15 \lfloor\frac{\omega(G)}{12}\rfloor+
18 $ colors improving the best previously known asimptotic ratio from 4/3 to
5/4.


title:
Transient nutations of an electron spin 1/2 with dipolar coupling to
  neighbouring nuclear spins

abstract:
  A model cluster, with a resonant electron spin surrounded with identical
nuclear spins occupying the sites of a cubic lattice, and with dipolar coupling
between the spins, is used for a theoretical investigation of the transient
nutations induced by a strong oscillating field but disturbed by these local
dipolar fields. An effective Hamiltonian valid at the time scale of the
nutations is first established. An analytical expression for the Dipolar
Coherence time tDC is derived by adapting Van Vleck's perturbative approach to
the present situation, with weak rather than intermediate dipolar coupling. It
is found that the dipolar coupling does not affect tDC at exact ESR resonance
(Delta=0), a result reminiscent of a behaviour found in transient NMR in
liquids, in an inhomogeneous static field. The expression for tDC also presents
a qualitative similarity with a time introduced in that liquid-state NMR
context. Introducing a collection of independent clusters, a bridge is built
between tDC and the half-width delta of the usual steady state unsaturated ESR
line. Assuming a simple cubic lattice, numerical values for (tDC)Delta=delta
are given, for both undiluted and dilute samples. It is shown that the TN do
not obey the Bloch equations. Precautions to be taken when trying a qualitative
comparison between the present results and existing experimental data, and some
thermodynamic aspects, are discussed.


abstract:
  We obtain the Buchdahl compactness limit for a pure Lovelock static fluid
star and verify that the limit following from the uniform density
Schwarzschild's interior solution, which is universal irrespective of the
gravitational theory (Einstein or Lovelock), is true in general. In terms of
surface potential $\Phi(r)$, it means at the surface of the star $r=r_{0}$,
$\Phi(r_{0}) < 2N(d-N-1)/(d-1)^2$ where $d$, $N$ respectively indicate
spacetime dimensions and Lovelock order. For a given $N$, $\Phi(r_{0})$ is
maximum for $d=2N+2$ while it is always $4/9$, Buchdahl's limit, for $d=3N+1$.
It is also remarkable that for $N=1$ Einstein gravity, or for pure Lovelock in
$d=3N+1$, Buchdahl's limit is equivalent to the criteria that gravitational
field energy exterior to the star is less than half its gravitational mass,
having no reference to the interior at all.


title:
Solar Physics Research in the Russian Subcontinent - Current Status and
  Future

abstract:
  Modern research in solar physics in Russia is a multifaceted endeavor, which
includes multi-wavelength observations from the ground- and space-based
instruments, extensive theoretical and numerical modeling studies, new
instrument development, and cross-disciplinary and international research. The
research is conducted at the research organizations under the auspices of the
Russian Academy of Sciences and to a lesser extent, by the research groups at
Universities. Here, we review the history of solar physics research in Russia,
and provide an update on recent developments.


title:
Mild solutions are weak solutions in a class of (non)linear
  measure-valued evolution equations on a bounded domain

abstract:
  We study the connection between mild and weak solutions for a class of
measure-valued evolution equations on the bounded domain $[0,1]$. Mass moves,
driven by a velocity field that is either a function of the spatial variable
only, $v=v(x)$, or depends on the solution $\mu$ itself: $v=v[\mu](x)$. The
flow is stopped at the boundaries of $[0,1]$, while mass is gated away by a
certain right-hand side. In previous works [J. Differential Equations, 259
(2015), pp. 1068-1097] and [SIAM J. Math. Anal., 48 (2016), pp. 1929-1953], we
showed the existence and uniqueness of appropriately defined mild solutions for
$v=v(x)$ and $v=v[\mu](x)$, respectively. In the current paper we define weak
solutions (by specifying the weak formulation and the space of test functions).
The main result is that the aforementioned mild solutions are weak solutions,
both when $v=v(x)$ and when $v=v[\mu](x)$.


title: Analysis of the multiple system with CP component phi Draconis

abstract:
  The star phi Dra comprises a spectroscopic binary and a third star that
together form a visual triple system. It is one of the brightest chemically
peculiar (CP) stars of the upper main sequence. Despite these facts, no
comprehensive study of its multiplicity has been performed yet. In this work,
we present a detailed analysis of the triple system based on available
measurements. We use radial velocities taken from four sources in the
literature in a re-analysis of the inner spectroscopic binary (Aab). An
incorrect value of the orbital period of the inner system Aab about 27 days was
accepted in literature more than forty years. A new solution of orbit with the
128-day period was determined. Relative position measurements of the outer
visual binary system (AB) from Washington Double Star Catalog were compared
with known orbital models. Furthermore, it was shown that astrometric motion in
system AB is well described by the model of Andrade (2005) with a 308-year
orbital period. Parameters of A and B components were utilized to estimate
individual brightness for all components and their masses from evolutionary
tracks. Although we found several facts which support the gravitational bond
between them, unbound solution cannot be fully excluded yet.


title:
Charmonium dissociation cross sections and charmonium dissociation rates
  in hadronic matter

abstract:
  K*-charmonium dissociation reactions in hadronic matter are studied in the
Born approximation, in the quark-interchange mechanism, and with a
temperature-dependent quark potential. We obtain the temperature dependence of
unpolarized cross sections for K*-charmonium dissociation reactions which
produce charmed mesons and charmed strange mesons. We use the cross sections
for charmonium dissociation in collisions with pion, rho meson, kaon, vector
kaon, and eta meson to calculate dissociation rates of charmonium with the five
types of mesons. Because of the temperature dependence of the meson masses,
dissociation cross sections, and meson distribution functions, the charmonium
dissociation rates generally increase with the increase of temperature and
decrease with the increase of charmonium momentum from 2.2 GeV/c. We find that
the first derivative of the dissociation rate with respect to the charmonium
momentum is zero when the charmonium is at rest. While the eta + psi' and eta +
chi_c dissociation reactions can be neglected, the J/psi, psi', and chi_c
dissociation are caused by the collisions with pion, rho meson, kaon, vector
kaon, and eta meson.


title: Estimate of the squeezing function for a class of bounded domains

abstract:
  We construct a class of bounded domains, on which the squeezing function is
not uniformly bounded from below near a smooth and pseudoconvex boundary point.


title:
Space-based Microlens Parallax Observation As a Way to Resolve the
  Severe Degeneracy between Microlens-parallax and Lens-orbital Effect

abstract:
  In this paper, we demonstrate the severity of the degeneracy between the
microlens-parallax and lens-orbital effects by presenting the analysis of the
gravitational binary-lens event OGLE-2015-BLG-0768. Despite the obvious
deviation from the model based on the the linear observer motion and the static
binary, it is found that the residual can be almost equally well explained by
either the parallactic motion of the Earth or the rotation of the binary lens
axis, resulting in the severe degeneracy between the two effects. We show that
the degeneracy can be readily resolved with the additional data provided by
space-based microlens parallax observations. Enabling to distinguish between
the two higher-order effects, space-based microlens parallax observations will
make it possible not only to accurately determine the physical lens parameters
but also to further constrain the orbital parameters of binary lenses.


title: Simple fractal calculus from fractal arithmetic

abstract:
  Non-Newtonian calculus that starts with elementary non-Diophantine arithmetic
operations of a Burgin type is applicable to all fractals whose cardinality is
continuum. The resulting definitions of derivatives and integrals are simpler
from what one finds in the more traditional literature of the subject, and they
often work in the cases where the standard methods fail. As an illustration, we
perform a Fourier transform of a real-valued function with Sierpi\'nski-set
domain. The resulting formalism is as simple as the usual undergraduate
calculus.


title:
Maximum norm analysis of implicit-explicit backward difference formulas
  for nonlinear parabolic equations

abstract:
  We establish optimal order a priori error estimates for implicit-explicit BDF
methods for abstract semilinear parabolic equations with time-dependent
operators in a complex Banach space settings, under a sharp condition on the
non-self-adjointness of the linear operator. Our approach relies on the
discrete maximal parabolic regularity of implicit BDF schemes for autonomous
linear parabolic equations, recently established in [20], and on ideas from
[7]. We illustrate the applicability of our results to four initial and
boundary value problems, namely two for second order, one for fractional order,
and one for fourth order, namely the Cahn-Hilliard, parabolic equations.


title: A no-go theorem for the $n$-twistor description of a massive particle

abstract:
  It is proved that the $n$-twistor expression of a particle's four-momentum
vector reduces, by a unitary transformation, to the two-twistor expression for
a massive particle or the one-twistor expression for a massless particle.
Therefore the {\em genuine} $n$-twistor description of a massive particle in
four-dimensional Minkowski space fails for the case $n\ge3$.


title: Finding Multiple New Optimal Locations in a Road Network

abstract:
  We study the problem of optimal location querying for location based services
in road networks, which aims to find locations for new servers or facilities.
The existing optimal solutions on this problem consider only the cases with one
new server. When two or more new servers are to be set up, the problem with
minmax cost criteria, MinMax, becomes NP-hard. In this work we identify some
useful properties about the potential locations for the new servers, from which
we derive a novel algorithm for MinMax, and show that it is efficient when the
number of new servers is small. When the number of new servers is large, we
propose an efficient 3-approximate algorithm. We verify with experiments on
real road networks that our solutions are effective and attains significantly
better result quality compared to the existing greedy algorithms.


title: Neural Architectures for Fine-grained Entity Type Classification

abstract:
  In this work, we investigate several neural network architectures for
fine-grained entity type classification. Particularly, we consider extensions
to a recently proposed attentive neural architecture and make three key
contributions. Previous work on attentive neural architectures do not consider
hand-crafted features, we combine learnt and hand-crafted features and observe
that they complement each other. Additionally, through quantitative analysis we
establish that the attention mechanism is capable of learning to attend over
syntactic heads and the phrase containing the mention, where both are known
strong hand-crafted features for our task. We enable parameter sharing through
a hierarchical label encoding method, that in low-dimensional projections show
clear clusters for each type hierarchy. Lastly, despite using the same
evaluation dataset, the literature frequently compare models trained using
different data. We establish that the choice of training data has a drastic
impact on performance, with decreases by as much as 9.85% loose micro F1 score
for a previously proposed method. Despite this, our best model achieves
state-of-the-art results with 75.36% loose micro F1 score on the well-
established FIGER (GOLD) dataset.


title:
Recoverable robust spanning tree problem under interval uncertainty
  representations

abstract:
  This paper deals with the recoverable robust spanning tree problem under
interval uncertainty representations. A polynomial time, combinatorial
algorithm for the recoverable spanning tree problem is first constructed. This
problem generalizes the incremental spanning tree problem, previously discussed
in literature. The algorithm built is then applied to solve the recoverable
robust spanning tree problem, under the traditional interval uncertainty
representation, in polynomial time. Moreover, the algorithm allows to obtain,
under some mild assumptions about the uncertainty intervals,several
approximation results for the recoverable robust spanning tree problem under
the Bertsimas and Sim interval uncertainty representation and the interval
uncertainty representation with a budget constraint.


title: The Zero-Coupon Rate Model for Derivatives Pricing

abstract:
  The aim of this paper is to present a dual-term structure model of interest
rate derivatives in order to solve the two hardest problems in financial
modeling: the exact volatility calibration of the entire swaption matrix, and
the calculation of bucket vegas for structured products. The model takes a
series of long-term zero-coupon rates as basic state variables that are driven
directly by one or more Brownian motion. The model volatility is assigned in a
matrix form with two terms. A numerical scheme for implementing the model has
been developed in the paper. At the end, several examples have been given for
the model calibration, the structured products pricing and the calculation of
bucket vegas.


title: Proceedings 17th International Workshop on Refinement

abstract:
  We are proud to present the papers from the 17th Refinement Workshop,
co-located with FM 2015 held in Oslo, Norway on June 22nd, 2015.
  Refinement is one of the cornerstones of a formal approach to software
engineering: the process of developing a more detailed design or implementation
from an abstract specification through a sequence of mathematically-based steps
that maintain correctness with respect to the original specification.
  This 17th workshop continued a 20+ year tradition under the auspices of the
British Computer Society (BCS) FACS special interest group.
  This is the third volume that has appeared as an EPTCS proceedings, and we
would like to thank the editorial board (and in particular Rob van Glabbeek)
for their help and cooperation in making this happen.
  The organisers would like to thank everyone: the authors, BCS-FACS, EPTCS,
and the organisers of FM 2015 for their help in organising this workshop, the
participants of the workshop, and the reviewers involved in selecting the
papers.


title:
Building blocks of polarized endomorphisms of normal projective
  varieties

abstract:
  An endomorphism $f$ of a projective variety X is polarized (resp.
quasi-polarized) if $f^*H$ is linearly equivalent to $qH$ for some ample (resp.
nef and big) Cartier divisor $H$ and integer $q > 1$. First, we use cone
analysis to show that a quasi-polarized endomorphism is always polarized, and
the polarized property descends via any equivariant dominant rational map.
Next, we show that a suitable maximal rationally connected fibration (MRC) can
be made $f$-equivariant using a construction of N. Nakayama, that $f$ descends
to a polarized endomorphism of the base Y of this MRC and that this Y is a
Q-abelian variety (quasi-\'etale quotient of an abelian variety). Finally, we
show that we can run the minimal model program (MMP) $f$-equivariantly for
mildly singular X and reach either a Q-abelian variety or a Fano variety of
Picard number one.
  As a consequence, the building blocks of polarized endomorphisms are those of
Q-abelian varieties and those of Fano varieties of Picard number one.
  Along the way, we show that $f$ always descends to a polarized endomorphism
of the Albanese variety Alb(X) of X, and that the pullback of a power of $f$
acts as a scalar multiplication on the Neron-Severi group of X (modulo torsion)
when X is smooth and rationally connected.
  Partial answers about X being of Calabi-Yau type, or Fano type are also given
with an extra primitivity assumption on $f$ which seems necessary by an
example.


title:
On commuting ordinary differential operators with polynomial
  coefficients corresponding to spectral curves of genus two

abstract:
  The group of automorphisms of the first Weyl algebra acts on commuting
ordinary differential operators with polynomial coefficient. In this paper we
prove that for fixed generic spectral curve of genus two the set of orbits is
infinite.


title:
Rotational control of asymmetric molecules: dipole- vs. polarizability-
  driven rotational dynamics

abstract:
  We experimentally study the optical- and terahertz- induced rotational
dynamics of asymmetric molecules in the gas phase. Terahertz and optical fields
are identified as two distinct control handles over asymmetric molecules, as
they couple to the rotational degrees of freedom via the molecular- dipole and
polarizability selectively. The distinction between those two rotational
handles is highlighted by different types of quantum revivals observed in long
duration (>100ps) field-free rotational evolution. The experimental results are
in excellent agreement with Random Phase Wave Function simulations [Phys. Rev.
A 91, 063420 (2015)] and provide verification of the RPWF as an efficient
method for calculating asymmetric molecular dynamics at ambient temperatures,
where exact calculation methods are practically not feasible. Our observations
and analysis pave the way for orchestrated excitations by both optical and THz
fields as complementary rotational handles, that enable a plethora of new
possibilities in three-dimensional rotational control of asymmetric molecules.


title: A Conceptual Framework to Assess the Effectiveness of Rubric Tool

abstract:
  Rubrics are being used in a wide variety of disciplines in higher education
to evaluate assessments and provide feedback to students. Rubrics are
traditionally implemented as paper-based table format to grade assessments and
provide feedback. The advancement of technology has integrated Rubric Tool into
Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard to facilitate online marking.
In this study, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness of Rubric Tool. We propose
an integrated conceptual framework using various theories from extant
literature to assess the effectiveness of Rubric Tool. Further, this framework
has been applied in an undergraduate course at the Asian campus of an
Australian International University. This is a research in progress paper which
adds to the literature on integrating information systems theory, learning
theory, political philosophy and communication theory to examine the
effectiveness of Rubric Tool in student learning.


title:
Investigating the Impacts of Recommendation Agents on Impulsive Purchase
  Behaviour

abstract:
  The usage of recommendation agents (RAs) in the online marketplace can help
consumers to locate their desired products. RAs can help consumers effectively
obtain comprehensive product information and compare their candidate target
products. As a result, RAs have affected consumers shopping behaviour. In this
study, we investigate the usage and the influence of RAs in the online
marketplace. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model, we propose
that the stimulus of using RAs (informativeness, product search effectiveness
and the lack of sociality stress) can affect consumers attitude (perceived
control and satisfaction), which further affects their behavioural outcomes
like impulsive purchase. We validate this research model with survey data from
157 users of RAs. The data largely support the proposed model and indicate that
the RAs can significantly contribute to impulsive purchase behaviour in online
marketplaces. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.


title:
A fresh look at factorization breaking in diffractive photoproduction of
  dijets at HERA at next-to-leading order QCD

abstract:
  We calculate the cross section of diffractive dijet photoproduction in $ep$
scattering at next-to-leading order (NLO) of perturbative QCD (pQCD), which we
supplement by a model of factorization breaking for the resolved-photon
contribution. In this model, the suppression depends on the flavor and momentum
fraction of the partons in the photon. We show that within experimental and
theoretical uncertainties, the resulting approach provides a good description
of the available HERA data in most of the bins. Hence, taken together with the
observation that NLO pQCD explains well the data on diffractive photoproduction
of open charm in $ep$ scattering, our model of factorization breaking presents
a viable alternative to the scheme based on the global suppression factor.


title:
Gamify Employee Collaboration - A Critical Review of Gamification
  Elements in Social Software

abstract:
  Social software solutions in enterprises such as IBM Connections are said to
have the potential to support communication and collaboration among employees.
However, companies are faced to manage the adoption of such collaborative tools
and therefore need to raise the employees' acceptance and motivation. To solve
these problems, developers started to implement Gamification elements in social
software tools, which aim to increase users' motivation. In this paper, we
critically examine the status quo of the current market of leading social
software solutions and seek to find out which Gamification approaches are
implementated in these collaborative tools. Our findings show, that most of the
major social collaboration solutions do not offer Gamification features by
default, but leave the integration to a various number of third party plug-in
vendors. Furthermore we identify a trend in which Gamification solutions
majorly focus on rewarding quantitative improvement of work activities,
neglecting qualitative performance. Subsequently, current solutions do not
match recent findings in research and ignore risks that can lower the
employees' motivation and work performance in the long run.


title:
Implementation of real-time moving horizon estimation for robust air
  data sensor fault diagnosis in the RECONFIGURE benchmark

abstract:
  This paper presents robust fault diagnosis and estimation for the calibrated
airspeed and angle-of-attack sensor faults in the RECONFIGURE benchmark. We
adopt a low-order longitudinal model augmented with wind dynamics. In order to
enhance sensitivity to faults in the presence of winds, we propose a
constrained residual generator by formulating a constrained moving horizon
estimation problem and exploiting the bounds of winds. The moving horizon
estimation problem requires solving a nonlinear program in real time, which is
challenging for flight control computers. This challenge is addressed by
adopting an efficient structure-exploiting algorithm within a real-time
iteration scheme. Specific approximations and simplifications are performed to
enable the implementation of the algorithm using the Airbus graphical symbol
library for industrial validation and verification. The simulation tests on the
RECONFIGURE benchmark over different flight points and maneuvers show the
efficacy of the proposed approach.


title:
GRBs from Magnetic Reconnection: Variability and Robustness of
  Lightcurves

abstract:
  The dissipation mechanism that powers gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) remains
uncertain almost half a century after their discovery. The two main competing
mechanisms are the extensively studied internal shocks and the less studied
magnetic reconnection. Here we consider GRB emission from magnetic reconnection
accounting for the relativistic bulk motions that it produces in the jet's bulk
rest frame. Far from the source the magnetic field is almost exactly normal to
the radial direction, suggesting locally quasi-spherical thin reconnection
layers between regions of oppositely directed magnetic field. We show that if
the relativistic motions in the jet's frame are confined to such a
quasi-spherical uniform layer, then the resulting GRB lightcurves are
independent of their direction distribution within this layer. This renders
previous results for a delta-function velocity-direction distribution
(Beniamini & Granot 2016) applicable to a much more general class of
reconnection models, which are suggested by numerical simulations. Such models
that vary in their velocity-direction distribution differ mainly in the size of
the bright region that contributes most of the observed flux at a given
emission radius or observed time. The more sharply peaked this distribution,
the smaller this bright region, and the stronger the lightcurve variability
that may be induced by deviations from a uniform emission over the thin
reconnection layer, which may be expected in a realistic GRB outflow. This is
reflected both in the observed image at a given observed time and in the
observer-frame emissivity map at a given emission radius, which are calculated
here for three simple velocity-direction distributions.


title: Analysis of Research in Healthcare Data Analytics

abstract:
  The main aim of this paper is to provide a deep analysis on the research
field of healthcare data analytics. This paper is analyzing the previous
studies and works in this research area, as well as highlighting some of
guidelines and gaps. This study has used seven popular databases and selected
most relevant papers, in order to conduct this paper. The paper has listed some
data analytics tools and techniques that have been used to improve healthcare
performance in many areas such as: medical operations, reports, decision
making, and prediction and prevention system. Moreover, the systematic review
has showed an interesting demographic of fields of publication, research
approaches, as well as outlined some of the possible reasons and issues
associated with healthcare data analytics, based on geographical distribution
theme.


title:
Towards knowledge sharing in disaster management: An agent oriented
  knowledge analysis framework

abstract:
  Disaster Management (DM) is a complex set of interrelated activities. The
activities are often knowledge intensive and time sensitive. Sharing the
required knowledge timely is critical for DM. In developed countries, for
recurring disasters (e.g. floods), there are dedicated document repositories of
Disaster Management Plans (DMP) that can be accessed as needs arise. However,
accessing the appropriate plan in a timely manner and sharing activities
between plans often requires domain knowledge and intimate knowledge of the
plans in the first place. In this paper, we introduce an agent-based knowledge
analysis method to convert DMPs into a collection of knowledge units that can
be stored into a unified repository. The repository of DM actions then enables
the mixing and matching knowledge between different plans. The repository is
structured as a layered abstraction according to Meta Object Facility (MOF). We
use the flood management plans used by SES in NSW to illustrate and give a
preliminary validation of the approach. It is illustrated using DMPs along the
flood prone Murrumbidgee River in central NSW.


title:
Virtualization Technology: Cross-VM Cache Side Channel Attacks make it
  Vulnerable

abstract:
  Cloud computing provides an effective business model for the deployment of IT
infrastructure, platform, and software services. Often, facilities are
outsourced to cloud providers and this offers the service consumer
virtualization technologies without the added cost burden of development.
However, virtualization introduces serious threats to service delivery such as
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Cross-VM Cache Side Channel attacks,
Hypervisor Escape and Hyper-jacking. One of the most sophisticated forms of
attack is the cross-VM cache side channel attack that exploits shared cache
memory between VMs. A cache side channel attack results in side channel data
leakage, such as cryptographic keys. Various techniques used by the attackers
to launch cache side channel attack are presented, as is a critical analysis of
countermeasures against cache side channel attacks.


title: J-factors of short DNA molecules

abstract:
  The propensity of short DNA sequences to convert to the circular form is
studied by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian method which incorporates both the bending
of the molecule axis and the intrinsic twist of the DNA strands. The base pair
fluctuations with respect to the helix diameter are treated as path
trajectories in the imaginary time path integral formalism. The partition
function for the sub-ensemble of closed molecules is computed by imposing chain
ends boundary conditions both on the radial fluctuations and on the angular
degrees of freedom. The cyclization probability, the J-factor, proves to be
highly sensitive to the stacking potential, mostly to its nonlinear parameters.
We find that the J-factor generally decreases by reducing the sequence length (
N ) and, more significantly, below N = 100 base pairs. However, even for very
small molecules, the J-factors remain sizeable in line with recent experimental
indications. Large bending angles between adjacent base pairs and anharmonic
stacking appear as the causes of the helix flexibility at short length scales.


title: Firing regulation of fast-spiking interneurons by autaptic inhibition

abstract:
  Fast-spiking (FS) interneurons in the brain are self-innervated by powerful
inhibitory GABAergic autaptic connections. By computational modelling, we
investigate how autaptic inhibition regulates the firing response of such
interneurons. Our results indicate that autaptic inhibition both boosts the
current threshold for action potential generation as well as modulates the
input-output gain of FS interneurons. The autaptic transmission delay is
identified as a key parameter that controls the firing patterns and determines
multistability regions of FS interneurons. Furthermore, we observe that
neuronal noise influences the firing regulation of FS interneurons by autaptic
inhibition and extends their dynamic range for encoding inputs. Importantly,
autaptic inhibition modulates noise-induced irregular firing of FS
interneurons, such that coherent firing appears at an optimal autaptic
inhibition level. Our result reveal the functional roles of autaptic inhibition
in taming the firing dynamics of FS interneurons.


title: Rough norms in spaces of operators

abstract:
  We investigate sufficient and necessary conditions for the space of bounded
linear operators between two Banach spaces to be rough or average rough. Our
main result is that $\mathcal L(X,Y)$ is $\delta$-average rough whenever
$X^\ast$ is $\delta$-average rough and $Y$ is alternatively octahedral. This
allows us to give a unified improvement of two theorems by Becerra Guerrero,
L\'opez-P\'erez, and Rueda Zoca [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 427 (2015)].


title: Towards an Understanding of Valence in E-Government Services

abstract:
  The Australian government, to remind job seekers of appointments with
employment services providers in order to cut costs and free up human
resources, is using technologies such as Short Messaging Services (SMS).
However, the technologies in-use are but one side of this equation the
specifics of how these technologies are used is the other side, and these
specifics are highly under-theorized, particularly in regard to the views of
the people to which these technologies are directed. The purpose of this paper
is to provide a theoretical framing for this phenomenon as well as to introduce
an emerging methodological direction that may allow for a better understanding
of demographic-specific values and thereby better valence framing. The paper
also theorizes reactions to information that could be applicable elsewhere, not
just in e-government or with SMS, thereby contributing to discussions
surrounding the Big Data debate.


title: On semibounded Wiener-Hopf operators

abstract:
  We show that a semibounded Wiener-Hopf quadratic form is closable in the
space $L^2({\Bbb R}_{+})$ if and only if its integral kernel is the Fourier
transform of an absolutely continuous measure. This allows us to define
semibounded Wiener-Hopf operators and their symbols under minimal assumptions
on their integral kernels. Our proof relies on a continuous analogue of the
Riesz Brothers theorem obtained in the paper.


title:
Knowledge Retention through Low-Tech Knowledge Sharing Channels in
  Loosely-Coupled Networks: A Human-Based Approach

abstract:
  This study examines a human-based approach for knowledge retention that is
evolving through various knowledge sharing channels in a low-technology
environment with a strong emphasis on social networks in a loosely-coupled
inter-organisational government-industry collaboration focused on regional
sustainability. Using social network analysis combined with interview and
observational analysis, our results show that a combination of close-knit
community ties and group interaction promote the development of strong personal
networks that provide continued access to group memory to retain the groups
knowledge.


title:
The Lived User Experience of Virtual Environments: Initial Steps of a
  Phenomenological Analysis in a Safety Training Setting

abstract:
  Virtual environments (VEs) are making their way into various sectors of life
to enhance and support human activity, including learning. VEs have been used
in various contexts for training, and in many cases they are designed to model
or simulate - as accurately and authentically as possible - a specific work
context. In striving for authenticity, visual and representative realism tends
to receive most of the development input, despite of several studies that
challenge its importance. New training avenues have raised the importance of
rigorous phenomenological descriptions for a deeper understanding of user
experience in the actual context of use. This paper reports the preliminary
steps in a phenomenological analysis of how employees working in actual
hazardous settings experience virtual safety training environments. Such
open-ended research project can reveal new aspects of user experience that can
advice the development and evaluation of human-computer interaction in digital
technology-enhanced training contexts.


title: ICE Buckets: Improved Counter Estimation for Network Measurement

abstract:
  Measurement capabilities are essential for a variety of network applications,
such as load balancing, routing, fairness and intrusion detection. These
capabilities require large counter arrays in order to monitor the traffic of
all network flows. While commodity SRAM memories are capable of operating at
line speed, they are too small to accommodate large counter arrays. Previous
works suggested estimators, which trade precision for reduced space. However,
in order to accurately estimate the largest counter, these methods compromise
the accuracy of the smaller counters. In this work, we present a closed form
representation of the optimal estimation function. We then introduce
Independent Counter Estimation Buckets (ICE-Buckets), a novel algorithm that
improves estimation accuracy for all counters. This is achieved by separating
the flows to buckets and configuring the optimal estimation function according
to each bucket's counter scale. We prove a tighter upper bound on the relative
error and demonstrate an accuracy improvement of up to 57 times on real
Internet packet traces.


title:
A Theoretical Approach to initiate Mobile Assisted Language Learning
  among school leavers and University Students of Sri Lanka

abstract:
  Mobile devices have proven to be an appropriate tool in the area of mobile
language learning by expanding the horizons of learning beyond the classroom.
The power of mobile devices and advanced technologies have created ease of
access to educational resources and material to learners. This study is a part
of an ongoing research focusing on enhancing English language among school
leavers and undergraduates. The objective of this paper is to present the
results of a study conducted to identify the prospects of m-learning among the
target study community, who were school leavers and undergraduates of Sri
Lanka. A design based research methodology will be used in this study along
with activity theory as a framework in order to analyse the situation and find
out the prospects in introducing m-learning among the target community.


title:
Investigation of Audience Interaction Tools from the Perspective of
  Activity Theory

abstract:
  Maintaining engagement of large audiences is not easy. Traditionally,
lectures and presentations rely on one-way communication from the presenter to
the listening audience. Without receiving ongoing feedback, speakers cannot be
sure that their delivery is at an appropriate pace, or that their message is
being received and understood by their audience. This study suggests using a
real-time audience engagement solution (Xorro-Q) to facilitate synchronous
interaction between lecturers and their student audiences. Using activity
theory as a theoretical framework we conducted a study to investigate student
participation and engagement with an audience interaction tool in two
undergraduate computing courses. In one classroom setting, discussion questions
are raised during the class and instant feedback provided to students. In the
second setting, subject related questions were asked near the end of the
lecture to gauge students knowledge of concepts just taught in the class. In
this study quantitative data such as attendance, response rates, and assessment
outcomes were collected to explore how participant engagement varies across
different lecturing techniques. Findings from the study show that continuous
use of audience interaction tools through activity theory based settings is
preferred than merely using tools for assessment purpose in traditional
classroom settings. Although these findings are at a very initial stage, they
give some indication on how real-time audience engagement tools can be
developed within classroom settings for assisting in teaching and learning
practices.


title:
Effect of polarization on the structure of electromagnetic field and
  spatiotemporal distribution of $e^+e^-$ pairs by colliding laser pulses

abstract:
  Electron-positron pair production by means of vacuum polarization in the
presence of strong electromagnetic (EM) field of two counterpropagating laser
pulses is studied. A 3-dimensional model of the focused laser pulses based on
the solution of the Maxwell's equations proposed by Narozhny and Fofanov is
used to find the structure of EM field of the circularly polarized
counterpropagating pulses. Analytical calculations show that the electric and
magnetic fields are almost parallel to each other in the focal region when
pulses are completely transverse either in electric (e-wave) or magnetic
(h-wave) field. On the other hand the electric and magnetic fields are almost
orthogonal when the counterpropagating pulses are made up of equal mixture of
e- and h- polarized waves. It is found that while the latter configuration of
the colliding pulses has much larger threshold for pair production it can
provide much shorter electron/positron pulses compared to the former case. The
dependence of pair production and its spatiotemporal distribution on
polarization of the laser pulses is analyzed using the structure of the EM
field.


title: Modelling Symbolic Music: Beyond the Piano Roll

abstract:
  In this paper, we consider the problem of probabilistically modelling
symbolic music data. We introduce a representation which reduces polyphonic
music to a univariate categorical sequence. In this way, we are able to apply
state of the art natural language processing techniques, namely the long
short-term memory sequence model. The representation we employ permits
arbitrary rhythmic structure, which we assume to be given. We show that our
model is effective on four out of four piano roll based benchmark datasets. We
further improve our model by augmenting our training data set with
transpositions of the original pieces through all musical keys, thereby
convincingly advancing the state of the art on these benchmark problems. We
also fit models to music which is unconstrained in its rhythmic structure,
discuss the properties of this model, and provide musical samples which are
more sophisticated than previously possible with this class of recurrent neural
network sequence models. We also provide our newly preprocessed data set of non
piano-roll music data.


title: Novel symmetries in Weyl-invariant gravity with massive gauge field

abstract:
  The background field method is used to linearize the Weyl invariant
scalar-tensor gravity, coupled with a Stueckelberg field. For a generic
background metric, this action is found to be not invariant, under both
diffeomorphism and generalized Weyl symmetry, the latter being a combination of
gauge and Weyl transformations. Interestingly, the quadratic Lagrangian,
emerging from a background of Minkowski metric, respects both the
transformations, independently. Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) symmetry of
scalar-tensor gravity coupled with a Stueckelberg-like massive gauge particle,
possessing diffeomorphism and generalized Weyl symmetry, reveals that in both
the cases, negative norm states with unphysical degrees of freedom do exist. We
then show that, by combining diffeomorphism and generalized Weyl symmetries,
all the ghost states decouple, thereby removing the unphysical redundancies of
the theory. During this process, the scalar field does not represent any
dynamic mode, yet modifies the usual harmonic gauge condition through
non-minimal coupling with gravity.


title:
Elliptic Problems in $\mathbb{R}^N$ with Critical and Singular
  Discontinuous Nonlinearities

abstract:
  Let $\Omega$ be a bounded domain in $\mathbb R^{N}$, $N\geq3$ with smooth
boundary,
  $a>0, \lambda>0$ and $0<\delta<3$ be real numbers. Define
$2^*:=\displaystyle\frac{2N}{N-2}$ and the characteristic function of a set $A$
by $\chi_A$.
  We consider the following critical problem with singular and discontinuous
nonlinearity: \begin{eqnarray*}
  (P_\la^a)~~~~ \qquad \Biggl\{\begin{array}{rl} -\Delta u &= \lambda
\left(u^{2^*-1}+ \displaystyle \chi_{\{u<a\}}u^{-\de} \right), u > 0~~\text{in}
~~\Omega, \\ u & = 0 ~\text{on}~
  \partial \Omega. \end{array} \end{eqnarray*}
  \noindent We study the existence and the global multiplicity of solutions to
the above problem.


title:
Assortment optimisation under a general discrete choice model: A tight
  analysis of revenue-ordered assortments

abstract:
  The assortment problem in revenue management is the problem of deciding which
subset of products to offer to consumers in order to maximise revenue. A simple
and natural strategy is to select the best assortment out of all those that are
constructed by fixing a threshold revenue $\pi$ and then choosing all products
with revenue at least $\pi$. This is known as the revenue-ordered assortments
strategy. In this paper we study the approximation guarantees provided by
revenue-ordered assortments when customers are rational in the following sense:
the probability of selecting a specific product from the set being offered
cannot increase if the set is enlarged. This rationality assumption, known as
regularity, is satisfied by almost all discrete choice models considered in the
revenue management and choice theory literature, and in particular by random
utility models. The bounds we obtain are tight and improve on recent results in
that direction, such as for the Mixed Multinomial Logit model by
Rusmevichientong et al. (2014). An appealing feature of our analysis is its
simplicity, as it relies only on the regularity condition.
  We also draw a connection between assortment optimisation and two pricing
problems called unit demand envy-free pricing and Stackelberg minimum spanning
tree: These problems can be restated as assortment problems under discrete
choice models satisfying the regularity condition, and moreover revenue-ordered
assortments correspond then to the well-studied uniform pricing heuristic. When
specialised to that setting, the general bounds we establish for
revenue-ordered assortments match and unify the best known results on uniform
pricing.


title:
Cisplatin coordination chemistry determination at hen egg white lysozyme
  His15 with ligand distances and angles, and their standard uncertainties, and
  also reporting a split occupancy effect

abstract:
  Following the interest of L Messori and A Merlino 2016 Coordination Chemistry
Reviews in the platinum ions coordination geometries in our PDB entries 4dd4
and 4dd6 we have extended our original analyses.


title:
Imaging and spectroscopic observations of a strange elliptical bubble in
  the northern arm of the spiral galaxy NGC 6946

abstract:
  NGC 6946, known as the Fireworks galaxy because of its high supernova rate
and high star formation, is embedded in a very extended HI halo. Its northern
spiral arm is well detached from the galactic main body. We found that this arm
contains a large (~300 pc in size) Red Ellipse, named according to a strong
contamination of the H-alpha emission line on its optical images. The ellipse
is accompanied by a short parallel arc and a few others still smaller and less
regular; a bright star cluster is seen inside these features. The complicated
combination of arcs seems to be unique, it is only a bit similar to some SNRs.
However, the long-slit spectral data obtained with the Russian 6-m telescope
did not confirm the origin of the nebula as a result of a single SN outburst.
The emission-line spectrum corresponds to the photoionization by young hot
stars with a small contribution of shock ionization. The most likely
explanation of the Red Ellipse is a superbbuble created by a collective
feedback of massive stars in the star cluster located in the NE side of the Red
Ellipse. However, the very regular elliptical shape of the nebulae seems
strange.


title: Cut-Set Bound Is Loose for Gaussian Relay Networks

abstract:
  The cut-set bound developed by Cover and El Gamal in 1979 has since remained
the best known upper bound on the capacity of the Gaussian relay channel. We
develop a new upper bound on the capacity of the Gaussian primitive relay
channel which is tighter than the cut-set bound. Our proof is based on
typicality arguments and concentration of Gaussian measure. Combined with a
simple tensorization argument proposed by Courtade and Ozgur in 2015, our
result also implies that the current capacity approximations for Gaussian relay
networks, which have linear gap to the cut-set bound in the number of nodes,
are order-optimal and leads to a lower bound on the pre-constant.


title: Mott transitions in the Periodic Anderson Model

abstract:
  The periodic Anderson model (PAM) is studied within the framework of
dynamical mean-field theory, with particular emphasis on the interaction-driven
Mott transition it contains, and on resultant Mott insulators of both
Mott-Hubbard and charge-transfer type. The form of the PAM phase diagram is
first deduced on general grounds using two exact results, over the full range
of model parameters and including metallic, Mott, Kondo and band insulator
phases.The effective low-energy model which describes the PAM in the vicinity
of a Mott transition is then shown to be a one-band Hubbard model, with
effective hoppings that are not in general solely nearest neighbour, but decay
exponentially with distance. This mapping is shown to have a range of
implications for the physics of the problem, from phase boundaries to
single-particle dynamics; all of which are confirmed and supplemented by NRG
calculations. Finally we consider the locally degenerate, non-Fermi liquid Mott
insulator, to describe which requires a two-self-energy description. This is
shown to yield a number of exact results for the associated local moment,
charge, and interaction-renormalised levels, together with a generalisation of
Luttinger's theorem to the Mott insulator.


title: Universal Sets and Cover-Free Families

abstract:
  We propose a polynomial time construction of an $(n,d)$-universal set over
alphabet $\Sigma=\{0,1\}$, of size $d\cdot 2^{d+o(d)}\cdot\log n$. This is an
improvement over the size, $d^{5}2^{2.66d}\log n$, of an $(n,d)$-universal set
constructed by Bshouty, \cite{BshoutyTesters}, over alphabet $\Sigma=\{0,1\}$.


title:
A Tale of Two Bases: Local-Nonlocal Regularization on Image Patches with
  Convolution Framelets

abstract:
  We propose an image representation scheme combining the local and nonlocal
characterization of patches in an image. Our representation scheme can be shown
to be equivalent to a tight frame constructed from convolving local bases (e.g.
wavelet frames, discrete cosine transforms, etc.) with nonlocal bases (e.g.
spectral basis induced by nonlinear dimension reduction on patches), and we
call the resulting frame elements {\it convolution framelets}. Insight gained
from analyzing the proposed representation leads to a novel interpretation of a
recent high-performance patch-based image inpainting algorithm using Point
Integral Method (PIM) and Low Dimension Manifold Model (LDMM) [Osher, Shi and
Zhu, 2016]. In particular, we show that LDMM is a weighted
$\ell_2$-regularization on the coefficients obtained by decomposing images into
linear combinations of convolution framelets; based on this understanding, we
extend the original LDMM to a reweighted version that yields further improved
inpainting results. In addition, we establish the energy concentration property
of convolution framelet coefficients for the setting where the local basis is
constructed from a given nonlocal basis via a linear reconstruction framework;
a generalization of this framework to unions of local embeddings can provide a
natural setting for interpreting BM3D, one of the state-of-the-art image
denoising algorithms.


title:
Studies on an inverse source problem for a space-time fractional
  diffusion equation by constructing a strong maximum principle

abstract:
  In this paper, we focus on a space-time fractional diffusion equation with
the generalized Caputo's fractional derivative operator and a general space
nonlocal operator (with the fractional Laplace operator as a special case). A
weak Harnack's inequality has been established by using a special test function
and some properties of the space nonlocal operator. Based on the weak Harnack's
inequality, a strong maximum principle has been obtained which is an important
characterization of fractional parabolic equations. With these tools, we
establish a uniqueness result for an inverse source problem on the
determination of the temporal component of the inhomogeneous term.


title:
Refined Composite Multiscale Dispersion Entropy and its Application to
  Biomedical Signals

abstract:
  Multiscale entropy (MSE) is a widely-used tool to analyze biomedical signals.
It was proposed to overcome the deficiencies of conventional entropy methods
when quantifying the complexity of time series. However, MSE is undefined for
very short signals and slow for real-time applications because of the use of
sample entropy (SampEn). To overcome these shortcomings, we introduce
multiscale dispersion entropy (DisEn - MDE) as a very fast and powerful method
to quantify the complexity of signals. MDE is based on our recently developed
DisEn, which has a computation cost of O(N), compared with O(N2) for SampEn. We
also propose the refined composite MDE (RCMDE) to improve the stability of MDE.
We evaluate MDE, RCMDE, and refined composite MSE (RCMSE) on synthetic signals
and find that these methods have similar behaviors but the MDE and RCMDE are
significantly faster than MSE and RCMSE, respectively. The results also
illustrate that RCMDE is more stable than MDE for short and noisy signals,
which are common in biomedical applications. To evaluate the proposed methods
on real signals, we employ three biomedical datasets, including focal and
non-focal electroencephalograms (EEGs), blood pressure recordings in Fantasia
database, and resting-state EEGs activity in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The
results again demonstrate a similar behavior of RCMSE, MDE and RCMDE, although
the RCMDE and MDE are significantly faster and lead to larger differences
between physiological conditions known to alter the complexity of the
physiological recordings. To sum up, MDE and RCMDE are expected to be useful
for the analysis of physiological signals thanks to their ability to
distinguish different types of dynamics.


title: Effective Multi-Robot Spatial Task Allocation using Model Approximations

abstract:
  Real-world multi-agent planning problems cannot be solved using
decision-theoretic planning methods due to the exponential complexity. We
approximate firefighting in rescue simulation as a spatially distributed task
and model with multi-agent Markov decision process. We use recent approximation
methods for spatial task problems to reduce the model complexity. Our
approximations are single-agent, static task, shortest path pruning, dynamic
planning horizon, and task clustering. We create scenarios from RoboCup Rescue
Simulation maps and evaluate our methods on these graph worlds. The results
show that our approach is faster and better than comparable methods and has
negligible performance loss compared to the optimal policy. We also show that
our method has a similar performance as DCOP methods on example RCRS scenarios.


title:
Quasi-negative holomorphic sectional curvature and positivity of the
  canonical bundle

abstract:
  We show that if a compact complex manifold admits a K\"ahler metric whose
holomorphic sectional curvature is everywhere non positive and strictly
negative in at least one point, then its canonical bundle is positive.


title:
Near-Gaussian entropic functional calculation and density estimation
  using an asymptotic series

abstract:
  Near-Gaussian probability densities are common in many important physical
applications. Here we develop an asymptotic expansion methodology for computing
entropic functionals for such densities. The expansion proposed is a close
relative of standard perturbation expansions in quantum field theory. We give
novel results on the low-order effects of non-Gaussian even moments and
asymmetry (e.g. skewness) on the entropy. The asymptotic expansion is also used
to define a best fit maximum entropy density given a set of observed low order
moments. The maximum entropy density estimation technique consists simply of
the solution of a small set of algebraic equations and is therefore more
straightforward numerically than classical maximum-entropy methods which rely
on sophisticated convex optimization techniques.


title: Properness for scaled gauged maps

abstract:
  We give an algebraic proof of properness of moduli stacks of gauged maps
satisfying a stability conditition introduced by Mundet and Schmitt. The proof
combines a git construction of Schmitt, properness for twisted stable maps by
Abramovich-Vistoli, a variation of a boundedness argument due to
Ciocan-Fontanine-Kim-Maulik, and a removal of singularities for bundles on
surfaces in Colliot-Th\'el\`ene-Sansuc.


title: Stable gauged maps

abstract:
  We give an introduction to moduli stacks of gauged maps satisfying a
stability conditition introduced by Mundet and Schmitt, and the associated
integrals giving rise to gauged Gromov-Witten invariants. We survey various
applications to cohomological and K-theoretic Gromov-Witten invariants.


title: Conditional Copula Models for Right-Censored Clustered Event Time Data

abstract:
  This paper proposes a modelling strategy to infer the impact of a covariate
on the dependence structure of right-censored clustered event time data. The
joint survival function of the event times is modelled using a parametric
conditional copula whose parameter depends on a cluster-level covariate in a
functional way. We use a local likelihood approach to estimate the form of the
copula parameter and outline a generalized likelihood ratio-type test strategy
to formally test its constancy. A bootstrap procedure is employed to obtain an
approximate $p$-value for the test. The performance of the proposed estimation
and testing methods are evaluated in simulations under different rates of
right-censoring and for various parametric copula families, considering both
parametrically and nonparametrically estimated margins. We apply the methods to
data from the Diabetic Retinopathy Study to assess the impact of disease onset
age on the loss of visual acuity.


title:
Full Characterization of embedding relations between alpha modulation
  spaces

abstract:
  In this paper, we consider the embedding relations between any two $\alpha$%
-modulation spaces. Based on an observation that the $\alpha$-modulation space
with smaller $\alpha$ can be regarded as a corresponding $\alpha$% -modulation
space with larger $\alpha$, we give a complete characterization of the Fourier
multipliers between $\alpha$-modulation spaces with different $\alpha$. Then we
establish a full version of optimal embedding relations between
$\alpha$-modulation spaces. As an application, we determine that the bounded
operators commuting with translations between $\alpha$-modulation spaces are of
convolution type.


title: Formal Verification of Multi-Paxos for Distributed Consensus

abstract:
  Paxos is an important algorithm for a set of distributed processes to agree
on a single value or a sequence of values, for which it is called Basic Paxos
or Multi-Paxos, respectively. Consensus is critical when distributed services
are replicated for fault-tolerance, because non-faulty replicas must agree on
the state of the system or the sequence of operations that have been performed.
Unfortunately, consensus algorithms including Multi-Paxos in particular are
well-known to be difficult to understand, and their accurate specifications and
correctness proofs remain challenging, despite extensive studies ever since
Lamport introduced Paxos.
  This article describes formal specification and verification of Lamport's
Multi-Paxos algorithm for distributed consensus. The specification is written
in TLA+, Lamport's Temporal Logic of Actions. The proof is written and
automatically checked using TLAPS, the TLA+ Proof System. The proof is for the
safety property of the algorithm. Building on Lamport, Merz, and Doligez's
specification and proof for Basic Paxos, we aim to facilitate the understanding
of Multi-Paxos and its proof by minimizing the difference from those for Basic
Paxos, and to demonstrate a general way of proving other variants of Paxos and
other sophisticated distributed algorithms. We also discuss our general
strategies and results for proving complex invariants using invariance lemmas
and increments, for proving properties about sets and tuples to help the proof
check succeed in significantly reduced time, and for overall proof improvement
leading to considerably reduced proof size.


title: Creation and characterization of He-related color centers in diamond

abstract:
  Diamond is a promising material for the development of emerging applications
in quantum optics, quantum information and quantum sensing. The fabrication and
characterization of novel luminescent defects with suitable opto-physical
properties is therefore of primary importance for further advances in these
research fields. In this work we report on the investigation in the formation
of photoluminescent (PL) defects upon MeV He implantation in diamond. Such
color centers, previously reported only in electroluminescence and
cathodoluminescence regime, exhibited two sharp emission lines at 536.5 nm and
560.5 nm, without significant phonon sidebands. A strong correlation between
the PL intensities of the above-mentioned emission lines and the He
implantation fluence was found in the 10^15-10^17 cm^{-2} fluence range. The PL
emission features were not detected in control samples, i.e. samples that were
either unirradiated or irradiated with different ion species (H, C). Moreover,
the PL emission lines disappeared in samples that were He-implanted above the
graphitization threshold. Therefore, the PL features are attributed to
optically active defects in the diamond matrix associated with He impurities.
The intensity of the 536.5 nm and 560.5 nm emission lines was investigated as a
function of the annealing temperature of the diamond substrate. The emission
was observed upon annealing at temperatures higher than 500{\deg}C, at the
expenses of the concurrently decreasing neutral-vacancy-related GR1 emission
intensity. Therefore, our findings indicate that the luminescence originates
from the formation of a stable lattice defect. Finally, the emission was
investigated under different laser excitations wavelengths (i.e. 532 nm and 405
nm) with the purpose of gaining a preliminary insight about the position of the
related levels in the energy gap of diamond.

categories: quant-ph cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.mtrl-sci physics.optics


title: Subfemtonewton Force Spectroscopy at the Thermal Limit in Liquids

abstract:
  We demonstrate thermally limited force spectroscopy using a probe formed by a
dielectric microsphere optically trapped in water near a dielectric surface. We
achieve force resolution below 1 fN in 100 s, corresponding to a 2 {\AA} rms
displacement of the probe. Our measurement combines a calibrated evanescent
wave particle tracking technique and a lock-in detection method. We demonstrate
the accuracy of our method by measurement of the height-dependent force exerted
on the probe by an evanescent wave, the results of which are in agreement with
Mie theory calculations.


title: The Vorticity of Solar Photospheric Flows on the Scale of Granulation

abstract:
  We employ time sequences of images observed with a G-band filter (4305{\AA})
by the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on board of Hinode spacecraft at different
latitude along solar central me-ridian to study vorticity of granular flows in
quiet Sun areas during deep minimum of solar activity. Using a feature
correlation tracking (FCT) technique, we calculate the vorticity of
granular-scale flows. Assuming the known pattern of vertical flows (upward in
granules and downward in inter-granular lanes), we infer the sign of kinetic
helicity of these flows. We show that the kinetic helicity of granular flows
and intergranular vortices exhibits a weak hemispheric preference, which is in
agreement with the action of the Coriolis force. This slight hemispheric sign
asymmetry, however, is not statistically significant given large scatter in the
average vorticity. The sign of the current he-licity density of network
magnetic fields computed using full disk vector magnetograms from the Synoptic
Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun (SOLIS) does not show any
hemispheric preference. The combination of these two findings suggests that the
photospheric dynamo operating on the scale of granular flows is non-helical in
nature.


title: A Broadband Emission Model of Magnetar Wind Nebulae

abstract:
  Angular momentum loss by the plasma wind is considered as a universal feature
of isolated neutron stars including magnetars. The wind nebulae powered by
magnetars allow us to compare the wind properties and the spin-evolution of
magnetars with those of rotation-powered pulsars (RPPs). In this paper, we
construct a broadband emission model of magnetar wind nebulae (MWNe). The model
is similar to past studies of young pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) around RPPs, but
is modified for the application to MWNe that have far less observational
information than the young PWNe. We apply the model to the MWN around the
youngest ($\sim$ 1kyr) magnetar 1E 1547.0-5408 that has the largest spin-down
power $L_{\rm spin}$ among all the magnetars. However, the MWN is faint because
of low $L_{\rm spin}$ of 1E 1547.0-5408 compared with the young RPPs. Since
most of parameters are not well constrained only by an X-ray flux upper limit
of the MWN, we adopt the model parameters from young PWN Kes 75 around PSR
J1846-0258 that is a peculiar RPP showing magnetar-like behaviors. The model
predicts $\gamma$-ray flux that will be detected in a future TeV $\gamma$-ray
observation by {\it CTA}. The MWN spectrum does not allow us to test hypothesis
that 1E 1547.0-5408 had milliseconds period at its birth because the particles
injected early phase of evolution are suffered from severe adiabatic and
synchrotron losses. Further both observational and theoretical studies of the
wind nebulae around magnetars are required to constrain the wind and spin-down
properties of magnetars.


title: The Physics of Biofilms -- An Introduction

abstract:
  Biofilms are complex, self-organized consortia of microorganisms that produce
a functional, protective matrix of biomolecules. Physically, the structure of a
biofilm can be described as an entangled polymer network which grows and
changes under the effect of gradients of nutrients, cell differentiation,
quorum sensing, bacterial motion, and interaction with the environment. Its
development is complex, and constantly adapting to environmental stimuli. Here,
we review the fundamental physical processes the govern the inception, growth
and development of a biofilm. Two important mechanisms guide the initial phase
in a biofilm life cycle: (\emph{i}) the cell motility near or at a solid
interface, and (\emph{ii}) the cellular adhesion. Both processes are crucial
for initiating the colony and for ensuring its stability. A mature biofilm
behaves as a viscoelastic fluid with a complex, history-dependent dynamics. We
discuss progress and challenges in the determination of its physical
properties. Experimental and theoretical methods are now available that aim at
integrating the biofilm's hierarchy of interactions, and the heterogeneity of
composition and spatial structures. We also discuss important directions in
which future work should be directed.


title:
Automated Image Captioning for Rapid Prototyping and Resource
  Constrained Environments

abstract:
  Significant performance gains in deep learning coupled with the exponential
growth of image and video data on the Internet have resulted in the recent
emergence of automated image captioning systems. Ensuring scalability of
automated image captioning systems with respect to the ever increasing volume
of image and video data is a significant challenge. This paper provides a
valuable insight in that the detection of a few significant (top) objects in an
image allows one to extract other relevant information such as actions (verbs)
in the image. We expect this insight to be useful in the design of scalable
image captioning systems. We address two parameters by which the scalability of
image captioning systems could be quantified, i.e., the traditional algorithmic
time complexity which is important given the resource limitations of the user
device and the system development time since the programmers' time is a
critical resource constraint in many real-world scenarios. Additionally, we
address the issue of how word embeddings could be used to infer the verb
(action) from the nouns (objects) in a given image in a zero-shot manner. Our
results show that it is possible to attain reasonably good performance on
predicting actions and captioning images using our approaches with the added
advantage of simplicity of implementation.


title:
State Space Path Integrals for Electronically Nonadiabatic Reaction
  Rates

abstract:
  We present a state-space-based path integral method to calculate the rate of
electron transfer (ET) in multi-state, multi-electron condensed-phase
processes. We employ an exact path integral in discrete electronic states and
continuous Cartesian nuclear variables to obtain a transition state theory
(TST) estimate to the rate. A dynamic recrossing correction to the TST rate is
then obtained from real-time dynamics simulations using mean field ring polymer
molecular dynamics. We employ two different reaction coordinates in our
simulations and show that, despite the use of mean field dynamics, the use of
an accurate dividing surface to compute TST rates allows us to achieve
remarkable agreement with Fermi's golden rule rates for nonadiabatic ET in the
normal regime of Marcus theory. Further, we show that using a reaction
coordinate based on electronic state populations allows us to capture the
turnover in rates for ET in the Marcus inverted regime.


title: Sensing supercurrents using geometric effects

abstract:
  We describe a superconducting three-terminal device that uses a simple
geometric effect known as current crowding to sense the flow of current and
actuate a readout signal. The device consists of a "Y"-shaped current combiner,
with two currents (sense and bias) entering through the top arms of the "Y",
intersecting, and then exiting through the bottom leg of the "Y"'. This
geometry--mixing two inputs at a sharp intersection point--takes its
inspiration from Y-shaped combiners in fluid flow systems, where variations in
the input pressures can produce at turbulence and mixing at the intersection.
When current is added to or removed from one of the arms (the sense arm), the
superconducting critical current in the other arm (the bias arm) is modulated.
The current in the sense arm can thus be determined by measuring the critical
current of the bias arm. The dependence of the bias critical current on the
sense current is possible because current crowding causes the sense current to
interact locally with the bias arm. Measurement of the critical current in the
bias arm does not break the superconducting state of the sense arm or of the
bottom leg, and thus the signal to be sensed is fully restored after the
measurement process. This device thus has potential for broad applicability
across superconducting technologies and materials.


title: Root-finding with Implicit Deflation

abstract:
  Functional iterations such as Newton's are a popular tool for polynomial
root-finding. We consider realistic situation where some (e.g.,
better-conditioned) roots have already been approximated and where further
computations is directed to approximation of the remaining roots. Such
situation is also realistic for root-finding by means of subdivision. A natural
approach of applying explicit deflation has been much studied and recently
advanced by one of the authors of this paper, but presently we contribute to
the alternative approach of applying implicit deflation, which we combine with
mapping the variable and reversion of an input polynomial.
  We also show another unexplored direction for substantial further progress in
this long and extensively studied area. Namely we dramatically increase their
local efficiency by means of the incorporation of fast algorithms for
multipoint polynomial evaluation and Fast Multipole Method.


title:
Scanning probe microscopy and field emission schemes for studying
  electron emission from polycrystalline diamond

abstract:
  The letter introduces a diagram that rationalizes tunneling atomic force
microscopy (TUNA) observations of electron emission from polycrystalline
diamonds as described in recent publications. The direct observations of
electron emission from grain boundary sites by TUNA could indeed be evidence of
electrons originating from grain boundaries under external electric fields. At
the same time, from the diagram it follows that TUNA and field emission schemes
are complimentary rather than equivalent for results interpretation. It is
further proposed that TUNA could provide better insights into emission
mechanisms by measuring the detailed structure of the potential barrier on the
surface of polycrystalline diamonds.


title: High rate, fast timing Glass RPC for the high {\eta} CMS muon detectors

abstract:
  The HL-LHC phase is designed to increase by an order of magnitude the amount
of data to be collected by the LHC experiments. To achieve this goal in a
reasonable time scale the instantaneous luminosity would also increase by an
order of magnitude up to $6.10^{34} cm^{-2} s^{-1}$ . The region of the forward
muon spectrometer ($|{\eta}| > 1.6$) is not equipped with RPC stations. The
increase of the expected particles rate up to $2 kHz/cm^{2}$ (including a
safety factor 3) motivates the installation of RPC chambers to guarantee
redundancy with the CSC chambers already present. The actual RPC technology of
CMS cannot sustain the expected background level. The new technology that will
be chosen should have a high rate capability and provides a good spatial and
timing resolution. A new generation of Glass-RPC (GRPC) using low-resistivity
(LR) glass is proposed to equip at least the two most far away of the four high
${\eta}$ muon stations of CMS. First the design of small size prototypes and
studies of their performance in high-rate particles flux is presented. Then the
proposed designs for large size chambers and their fast-timing electronic
readout are examined and preliminary results are provided.


title: A Fundamental Line of Black Hole Activity

abstract:
  Black hole systems with outflows are characterized by intrinsic physical
quantities such as the outflow beam power, $L_j$, the bolometric accretion disk
luminosity, $L_{bol}$, and black hole mass or Eddington luminosity, $L_{Edd}$.
When these systems produce compact radio emission and X-ray emission, they can
be placed on the fundamental plane (FP), an empirical relationship between
compact radio luminosity, X-ray luminosity, and black hole mass. We consider a
fundamental line (FL) of black hole activity written in terms of dimensionless
intrinsic physical quantities: $\rm{log} (L_j/L_{Edd}) = A
~\rm{log}(L_{bol}/L_{Edd}) +B$ or equivalently $\rm{log} (L_j/L_{bol}) = (A-1)
~\rm{log}(L_{bol}/L_{Edd}) +B$, and show that the FP may be written in the form
of the FL. The FL has a smaller dispersion than the FP suggesting the FP
derives from the FL. Disk-dominated and jet-dominated systems have consistent
best fit FL parameters suggesting they are governed by the same physics. There
are sharp cutoffs at $L_{bol}/L_{Edd} \simeq 1$ and $L_j/L_{Edd} \simeq 0.2$,
and no indication of a strong break as $L_{bol}/L_{Edd} \rightarrow 1$.
Consistent values of $A$ are obtained for numerous samples including FRII
sources, LINERS, AGNs with compact radio emission, and Galactic black holes,
which indicate a weighted mean value of $A \simeq 0.45 \pm 0.01$. The results
suggest that a common physical mechanism related to the dimensionless
bolometric luminosity of the disk controls the jet power relative to the disk
power. The beam power $L_j$ can be obtained by combining FP best-fit parameters
and compact radio luminosity for sources that fall on the FP.


title: Operational Aspects of C/C++ Concurrency

abstract:
  In this work, we present a family of operational semantics that gradually
approximates the realistic program behaviors in the C/C++11 memory model. Each
semantics in our framework is built by elaborating and combining two simple
ingredients: viewfronts and operation buffers. Viewfronts allow us to express
the spatial aspect of thread interaction, i.e., which values a thread can read,
while operation buffers enable manipulation with the temporal execution aspect,
i.e., determining the order in which the results of certain operations can be
observed by concurrently running threads.
  Starting from a simple abstract state machine, through a series of gradual
refinements of the abstract state, we capture such language aspects and
synchronization primitives as release/acquire atomics, sequentially-consistent
and non-atomic memory accesses, also providing a semantics for relaxed atomics,
while avoiding the Out-of-Thin-Air problem. To the best of our knowledge, this
is the first formal and executable operational semantics of C11 capable of
expressing all essential concurrent aspects of the standard.
  We illustrate our approach via a number of characteristic examples, relating
the observed behaviors to those of standard litmus test programs from the
literature. We provide an executable implementation of the semantics in PLT
Redex, along with a number of implemented litmus tests and examples, and
showcase our prototype on a large case study: randomized testing and debugging
of a realistic Read-Copy-Update data structure.


title: Evolutionary consequences of behavioral diversity

abstract:
  Iterated games provide a framework to describe social interactions among
groups of individuals. Recent work stimulated by the discovery of
"zero-determinant" strategies has rapidly expanded our ability to analyze such
interactions. This body of work has primarily focused on games in which players
face a simple binary choice, to "cooperate" or "defect". Real individuals,
however, often exhibit behavioral diversity, varying their input to a social
interaction both qualitatively and quantitatively. Here we explore how access
to a greater diversity of behavioral choices impacts the evolution of social
dynamics in finite populations. We show that, in public goods games, some
two-choice strategies can nonetheless resist invasion by all possible
multi-choice invaders, even while engaging in relatively little punishment. We
also show that access to greater behavioral choice results in more "rugged "
fitness landscapes, with populations able to stabilize cooperation at multiple
levels of investment, such that choice facilitates cooperation when returns on
investments are low, but hinders cooperation when returns on investments are
high. Finally, we analyze iterated rock-paper-scissors games, whose
non-transitive payoff structure means unilateral control is difficult and
zero-determinant strategies do not exist in general. Despite this, we find that
a large portion of multi-choice strategies can invade and resist invasion by
strategies that lack behavioral diversity -- so that even well-mixed
populations will tend to evolve behavioral diversity.


title:
Finite almost simple groups whose Gruenberg--Kegel graphs coincide with
  Gruenberg--Kegel graphs of solvable groups

abstract:
  In this paper we describe all the finite almost simple groups whose
Gruenberg--Kegel graphs coincide with Gruenberg--Kegel graphs of finite
solvable groups.


title:
Andro-profiler: Detecting and Classifying Android Malware based on
  Behavioral Profiles

abstract:
  Mass-market mobile security threats have increased recently due to the growth
of mobile technologies and the popularity of mobile devices. Accordingly,
techniques have been introduced for identifying, classifying, and defending
against mobile threats utilizing static, dynamic, on-device, off-device, and
hybrid approaches. In this paper, we contribute to the mobile security defense
posture by introducing Andro-profiler, a hybrid behavior based analysis and
classification system for mobile malware. Andro-profiler classifies malware by
exploiting the behavior profiling extracted from the integrated system logs
including system calls, which are implicitly equivalent to distinct behavior
characteristics. Andro-profiler executes a malicious application on an emulator
in order to generate the integrated system logs, and creates human-readable
behavior profiles by analyzing the integrated system logs. By comparing the
behavior profile of malicious application with representative behavior profile
for each malware family, Andro-profiler detects and classifies it into malware
families. The experiment results demonstrate that Andro-profiler is scalable,
performs well in detecting and classifying malware with accuracy greater than
$98\%$, outperforms the existing state-of-the-art work, and is capable of
identifying zero-day mobile malware samples.