title: Collider Phenomenology of the 3-3-1 Model

abstract:
  We study collider phenomenology of the so-called 331 model with
$SU(3)_C\otimes SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X$ gauge structure at the large hadron
collider, including single and double Higgs boson productions, Higgs boson rare
decay, $Z^\prime$ boson production, new charged gauge boson pair production,
and heavy quark pair production. We discuss all the possible collider
signatures of new particle productions. Four benchmark 331 models, $\beta=\pm
\sqrt{3}$ and $\beta=\pm 1/\sqrt{3}$, are studied in this work.


title: Ergodicity of the Liouville system implies the Chowla conjecture

abstract:
  The Chowla conjecture asserts that the values of the Liouville function form
a normal sequence of plus and minus ones. Reinterpreted in the language of
ergodic theory it asserts that the Liouville function is generic for the
Bernoulli measure on the space of sequences with values plus or minus one. We
show that these statements are implied by the much weaker hypothesis that the
Liouville function is generic for an ergodic measure. We also give variants of
this result related to a conjecture of Elliott on correlations of
multiplicative functions with values on the unit circle. Our argument has an
ergodic flavor and combines recent results in analytic number theory,
finitistic and infinitary decomposition results involving uniformity seminorms,
and qualitative equidistribution results on nilmanifolds.


title:
The effect of ionic correlations on radiative properties in the solar
  interior and terrestrial experiments

abstract:
  Intending to solve the decade old problem of solar opacity, we report
substantial photoabsorption uncertainty due to the effect of ion-ion
correlations. By performing detailed opacity calculations of the solar mixture,
we find that taking into account the ionic structure changes the Rosseland
opacity near the convection zone by about 10%. We also report about 15%
difference in the Rosseland opacity for iron, which was recently measured at
the Sandia Z facility, where the temperature reached that prevailing in the
convection zone boundary while the density is 2.5 times lower. Finally, we
propose a method to measure opacities at solar temperatures and densities that
were never reached in the past via laboratory radiation flow experiments, by
using plastic foams doped with permilles of dominant photon absorbers in the
Sun. The method is advantageous for an experimental study of solar opacities
that may lead to a resolution of the solar problem.


title: Diet Networks: Thin Parameters for Fat Genomics

abstract:
  Learning tasks such as those involving genomic data often poses a serious
challenge: the number of input features can be orders of magnitude larger than
the number of training examples, making it difficult to avoid overfitting, even
when using the known regularization techniques. We focus here on tasks in which
the input is a description of the genetic variation specific to a patient, the
single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), yielding millions of ternary inputs.
Improving the ability of deep learning to handle such datasets could have an
important impact in precision medicine, where high-dimensional data regarding a
particular patient is used to make predictions of interest. Even though the
amount of data for such tasks is increasing, this mismatch between the number
of examples and the number of inputs remains a concern. Naive implementations
of classifier neural networks involve a huge number of free parameters in their
first layer: each input feature is associated with as many parameters as there
are hidden units. We propose a novel neural network parametrization which
considerably reduces the number of free parameters. It is based on the idea
that we can first learn or provide a distributed representation for each input
feature (e.g. for each position in the genome where variations are observed),
and then learn (with another neural network called the parameter prediction
network) how to map a feature's distributed representation to the vector of
parameters specific to that feature in the classifier neural network (the
weights which link the value of the feature to each of the hidden units). We
show experimentally on a population stratification task of interest to medical
studies that the proposed approach can significantly reduce both the number of
parameters and the error rate of the classifier.


title: A Bayes Factor for Replications of ANOVA Results

abstract:
  With an increasing number of replication studies performed in psychological
science, the question of how to evaluate the outcome of a replication attempt
deserves careful consideration. Bayesian approaches allow to incorporate
uncertainty and prior information into the analysis of the replication attempt
by their design. The Replication Bayes Factor, introduced by Verhagen &
Wagenmakers (2014), provides quantitative, relative evidence in favor or
against a successful replication. In previous work by Verhagen & Wagenmakers
(2014) it was limited to the case of $t$-tests. In this paper, the Replication
Bayes Factor is extended to $F$-tests in multi-group, fixed-effect ANOVA
designs. Simulations and examples are presented to facilitate the understanding
and to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach. Finally, the Replication
Bayes Factor is compared to other Bayesian and frequentist approaches and
discussed in the context of replication attempts. R code to calculate
Replication Bayes factors and to reproduce the examples in the paper is
available at https://osf.io/jv39h/.


title:
Hedgehogs for neutral dissipative germs of holomorphic diffeomorphisms
  of $(\mathbb{C}^{2},0)$

abstract:
  We prove the existence of hedgehogs for germs of complex analytic
diffeomorphisms of $(\mathbb{C}^{2},0)$ with a semi-neutral fixed point at the
origin, using topological techniques. This approach also provides an
alternative proof of a theorem of P\'erez-Marco on the existence of hedgehogs
for germs of univalent holomorphic maps of $(\mathbb{C},0)$ with a neutral
fixed point.


title: On Kahler extensions of abelian groups

abstract:
  We show that any Kahler extension of a finitely generated abelian group by a
surface group of genus g at least 2 is virtually a product. Conversely, we
prove that any homomorphism of an even rank, finitely generated abelian group
into the genus g mapping class group with finite image gives rise to a Kahler
extension. The main tools come from surface topology and known restrictions on
Kahler groups.


title: A holographic perspective on phonons and pseudo-phonons

abstract:
  We analyze the concomitant spontaneous breaking of translation and conformal
symmetries by introducing in a CFT a complex scalar operator that acquires a
spatially dependent expectation value. The model, inspired by the holographic
Q-lattice, provides a privileged setup to study the emergence of phonons from a
spontaneous translational symmetry breaking in a conformal field theory and
offers valuable hints for the treatment of phonons in QFT at large. We first
analyze the Ward identity structure by means of standard QFT techniques,
considering both spontaneous and explicit symmetry breaking. Next, by
implementing holographic renormalization, we show that the same set of Ward
identities holds in the holographic Q-lattice. Eventually, relying on the
holographic and QFT results, we study the correlators realizing the symmetry
breaking pattern and how they encode information about the low-energy spectrum.


title:
Unifying Multi-Domain Multi-Task Learning: Tensor and Neural Network
  Perspectives

abstract:
  Multi-domain learning aims to benefit from simultaneously learning across
several different but related domains. In this chapter, we propose a single
framework that unifies multi-domain learning (MDL) and the related but better
studied area of multi-task learning (MTL). By exploiting the concept of a
\emph{semantic descriptor} we show how our framework encompasses various
classic and recent MDL/MTL algorithms as special cases with different semantic
descriptor encodings. As a second contribution, we present a higher order
generalisation of this framework, capable of simultaneous
multi-task-multi-domain learning. This generalisation has two mathematically
equivalent views in multi-linear algebra and gated neural networks
respectively. Moreover, by exploiting the semantic descriptor, it provides
neural networks the capability of zero-shot learning (ZSL), where a classifier
is generated for an unseen class without any training data; as well as
zero-shot domain adaptation (ZSDA), where a model is generated for an unseen
domain without any training data. In practice, this framework provides a
powerful yet easy to implement method that can be flexibly applied to MTL, MDL,
ZSL and ZSDA.


title: Active learning of linearly parametrized interatomic potentials

abstract:
  This paper introduces an active learning approach to the fitting of machine
learning interatomic potentials. Our approach is based on the D-optimality
criterion for selecting atomic configurations on which the potential is fitted.
It is shown that the proposed active learning approach is highly efficient in
training potentials on the fly, ensuring that no extrapolation is attempted and
leading to a completely reliable atomistic simulation without any significant
decrease in accuracy. We apply our approach to molecular dynamics and structure
relaxation, and we argue that it can be applied, in principle, to any other
type of atomistic simulation. The software, test cases, and examples of usage
are published at http://gitlab.skoltech.ru/shapeev/mlip/.


title: Quantum Machine Learning

abstract:
  Fuelled by increasing computer power and algorithmic advances, machine
learning techniques have become powerful tools for finding patterns in data.
Since quantum systems produce counter-intuitive patterns believed not to be
efficiently produced by classical systems, it is reasonable to postulate that
quantum computers may outperform classical computers on machine learning tasks.
The field of quantum machine learning explores how to devise and implement
concrete quantum software that offers such advantages. Recent work has made
clear that the hardware and software challenges are still considerable but has
also opened paths towards solutions.


title: On the complexity and the information content of cosmic structures

abstract:
  The emergence of cosmic structure is commonly considered one of the most
complex phenomena in Nature. However, this complexity has never been defined
nor measured in a quantitative and objective way. In this work we propose a
method to measure the information content of cosmic structure and to quantify
the complexity that emerges from it, based on Information Theory. The emergence
of complex evolutionary patterns is studied with a statistical symbolic
analysis of the datastream produced by state-of-the-art cosmological
simulations of forming galaxy clusters. This powerful approach allows us to
measure how many bits of information are necessary to predict the evolution of
energy fields in a statistical way, and it offers a simple way to quantify
when, where and how the cosmic gas behaves in complex ways. The most complex
behaviors are found in the peripheral regions of galaxy clusters, where
supersonic flows drive shocks and large energy fluctuations over a few tens of
million years. Describing the evolution of magnetic energy requires at least a
twice as large amount of bits than for the other energy fields. When radiative
cooling and feedback from galaxy formation are considered, the cosmic gas is
overall found to double its degree of complexity. In the future, Cosmic
Information Theory can significantly increase our understanding of the
emergence of cosmic structure as it represents an innovative framework to
design and analyze complex simulations of the Universe in a simple, yet
powerful way.


title:
Chaotic sedimentation of particle pairs in a vertical channel at low
  Reynolds number: multiple states and routes to chaos

abstract:
  The sedimentation of a pair of rigid circular particles in a two-dimensional
vertical channel containing a Newtonian fluid is investigated numerically, for
terminal particle Reynolds numbers ranging from 1 to 10, and for a confinement
ratio equal to 4. While it is widely admitted that sufficiently inertial pairs
should sediment by performing a regular DKT oscillation
(Drafting-Kissing-Tumbling), the present analysis shows in contrast that a
chaotic regime can also exist for such particles, leading to a much slower
sedimentation velocity. It consists of a nearly horizontal pair, corresponding
to a maximum effective blockage ratio, and performing a quasiperiodic
transition to chaos under increasing the particle weight. For less inertial
regimes, the classical oblique doublet structure and its complex behavior
(multiple stable states and hysteresis, period-doubling cascade and chaotic
attractor) are recovered, in agreement with previous work [Aidun & Ding,
Physics of Fluids 15(6), 2003]. As a consequence of these various behaviors,
the link between the terminal Reynolds number and the non-dimensional driving
force is complex: it contains several branches displaying hysteresis as well as
various bifurcations. For the range of Reynolds number considered here, a
global bifurcation diagram is given.


title: A note about the (2,3)-generation of SL_12(q)

abstract:
  We provide explicit uniform type (2,3)-generators for the special linear
group SL_{12}(q) for all q except for q=2 or 4. Our considerations are easily
traceable, self-contained and based only on the known list of maximal subgroups
of this group.


title: Adams Conditioning and Likelihood Ratio Transfer Mediated Inference

abstract:
  Bayesian inference as applied in a legal setting is about belief transfer and
involves a plurality of agents and communication protocols.
  A forensic expert (FE) may communicate to a trier of fact (TOF) first its
value of a certain likelihood ratio with respect to FE's belief state as
represented by a probability function on FE's proposition space. Subsequently
FE communicates its recently acquired confirmation that a certain evidence
proposition is true. Then TOF performs likelihood ratio transfer mediated
reasoning thereby revising their own belief state.
  The logical principles involved in likelihood transfer mediated reasoning are
discussed in a setting where probabilistic arithmetic is done within a meadow,
and with Adams conditioning placed in a central role.


title: Comment on "Time delays in molecular photoionization"

abstract:
  In a recent article by P. Hockett \textit{et al.}, time delays arising in the
context of molecular single-photon ionization are investigated from a
theoretical point of view. We argue that one of the central equations derived
in the paper is incorrect and present a reformulation that is consistent with
the established treatment of angle-dependent scattering delays.


title: Observational and Physical Classification of Supernovae

abstract:
  This chapter describes the current classification scheme of supernovae (SNe).
This scheme has evolved over many decades and now includes numerous SN Types
and sub-types. Many of these are universally recognized, while there are
controversies regarding the definitions, membership and even the names of some
sub-classes; we will try to review here the commonly-used nomenclature, noting
the main variants when possible. SN Types are defined according to
observational properties; mostly visible-light spectra near maximum light, as
well as according to their photometric properties. However, a long-term goal of
SN classification is to associate observationally-defined classes with specific
physical explosive phenomena. We show here that this aspiration is now finally
coming to fruition, and we establish the SN classification scheme upon direct
observational evidence connecting SN groups with specific progenitor stars.
Observationally, the broad class of Type II SNe contains objects showing strong
spectroscopic signatures of hydrogen, while objects lacking such signatures are
of Type I, which is further divided to numerous subclasses. Recently a class of
super-luminous SNe (SLSNe, typically 10 times more luminous than standard
events) has been identified, and it is discussed. We end this chapter by
briefly describing a proposed alternative classification scheme that is
inspired by the stellar classification system. This system presents our
emerging physical understanding of SN explosions, while clearly separating
robust observational properties from physical inferences that can be debated.
This new system is quantitative, and naturally deals with events distributed
along a continuum, rather than being strictly divided into discrete classes.
Thus, it may be more suitable to the coming era where SN numbers will quickly
expand from a few thousands to millions of events.


title:
The rest-frame optical (900nm) galaxy luminosity function at z~4-7:
  abundance matching points to limited evolution in the Mstar/Mhalo ratio at
  z>4

abstract:
  We present the first determination of the galaxy luminosity function (LF) at
z~4, 5, 6 and 7 in the rest-frame optical at lambda_rest~900 nm (z' band). The
rest-frame optical light traces the content in low-mass evolved stars (~stellar
mass - Mstar), minimizing potential measurement biases for Mstar. Moreover it
is less affected by nebular line emission contamination and dust attenuation,
is independent of stellar population models, and can be probed up to z~8
through Spitzer/IRAC. Our analysis leverages the unique full depth Spitzer/IRAC
3.6um-to-8.0um data over the CANDELS/GOODS-N, CANDELS/GOODS-S and
COSMOS/UltraVISTA fields. We find that at absolute magnitudes M_z' fainter than
>-23 mag, M_z' linearly correlates with M_UV,1600. At brighter M_z', M_UV,1600
presents a turnover, suggesting that the stellar mass-to-light ratio
Mstar/L_UV,1600 could be characterised by a very broad range of values at high
stellar masses. Median-stacking analysis recovers a Mstar/L_z' roughly
independent on M_z' for M_z'>-23 mag, but exponentially increasing at brighter
magnitudes. We find that the evolution of the LF marginally prefers a pure
evolution in luminosity over a pure evolution in density, with the
characteristic luminosity decreasing by a factor ~5x between z~4 and z~7.
Direct application of the recovered Mstar/L_z' generates stellar mass functions
consistent with average measurements from the literature. Measurements of the
stellar-to-halo mass ratio at fixed cumulative number density show that it is
roughly constant with redshift for Mh>10^12Msun. This is also supported by the
fact that the evolution of the LF at 4<z<7 can be accounted for by a rigid
displacement in luminosity corresponding to the evolution of the halo mass from
abundance matching.


title: A New Flavor of Searches for Axion-Like Particles

abstract:
  We propose new searches for axion-like particles (ALPs) produced in
flavor-changing neutral current (FCNC) processes. This proposal exploits the
often-overlooked coupling of ALPs to W bosons, leading to FCNC production of
ALPs even in the absence of a direct coupling to fermions. Our proposed
searches for resonant ALP production in decays such as $B\rightarrow
K^{(*)}a,\,a\rightarrow \gamma\gamma$ and $K\rightarrow \pi a, \,a\rightarrow
\gamma\gamma$ could greatly improve upon the current sensitivity to ALP
couplings to Standard Model particles. We also determine analogous constraints
and discovery prospects for invisibly decaying ALPs.


title:
Electroweak symmetry breaking and collider signatures in the
  next-to-minimal composite Higgs model

abstract:
  We conduct a detailed numerical analysis of the composite
pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Higgs model based on the next-to-minimal coset
$\text{SO}(6)/\text{SO}(5)\cong\text{SU}(4)/\text{Sp}(4)$, featuring an
additional SM singlet scalar in the spectrum, which we allow to mix with the
Higgs boson. We identify regions in parameter space compatible with all current
experimental constraints, including radiative electroweak symmetry breaking,
flavour physics, and direct searches at colliders. We find the additional
scalar, with a mass predicted to be below a TeV, to be virtually unconstrained
by current LHC data, but potentially in reach of run 2 searches. Promising
indirect searches include rare semi-leptonic $B$ decays, CP violation in $B_s$
mixing, and the electric dipole moment of the neutron.


title:
Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and
  their role in gravitational-wave generation

abstract:
  The dynamical processes involving stellar-remnant black holes (BH) in stellar
clusters has always drawn attention due to the BHs' potential in a number of
astrophysical phenomena, especially the dynamical formation of binary black
holes (BBH), which would potentially coalesce via radiation of gravitational
waves (GW). This study presents a preliminary set of evolutionary models of
compact stellar clusters with initial masses ranging over
$1.0\times10^4M_\odot-5.0\times10^4M_\odot$, and half-mass radius of 2 pc or 1
pc, that is typical for young massive and starburst clusters. They have
metallicities between $0.05Z_\odot-Z_\odot$. Including contemporary schemes for
stellar wind and remnant-formation, such model clusters are evolved, for the
first time, using the state-of-the-art direct N-body evolution program NBODY7,
until their dissolution or at least for 10 Gyr. That way, a self-regulatory
behaviour in the effects of dynamical interactions among the BHs, especially
while heating and expanding the cluster and self-depleting the BHs, is
demonstrated. The BBH mergers obtained here show a prominence in
triple-mediated mergers while being bound to the clusters, compared to those
occurring among the BBHs that are dynamically ejected from the clusters. This
is in contrast with earlier N-body computations and also with recent
Monte-Carlo method based ones. A broader mass spectrum of BHs and ejection of
BBHs generally of wider orbits and in lower numbers, for the cluster masses
explored here, might cause this which is yet to be fully understood. Among the
BBH coalescences obtained here, there are ones that resemble the detected
GW151226, LVT151012, and GW150914 events and also ones which are even more
massive. A preliminary estimate suggests few 10s - 100s of BBH coalescences per
year, originating due to dynamics in stellar clusters, that can be detected by
the LIGO at its design sensitivity.


title: Numerical study of the chaotic N=4 problem in a background potential

abstract:
  We perform a large suite of $N=4$ numerical scattering experiments between
two identical binaries consisting of identical point particles in a
(continuous) background potential. For investigative purposes, albeit without
loss of generality, we assume that the potential corresponds to a uniform
(natal or star-forming) gas medium. We explore a range of constant gas
densities, from $n=10~ {\rm cm}^{-3}$ to $10^{5}~ {\rm cm}^{-3}$. These
densities are relevant for various astrophysical environments, including
molecular clouds (i.e., star-forming regions) and denser, fragmented cores
within these clouds. Our primary goal is to characterize the effects of the
background potential on the subsequent stellar dynamics. We consider the
outcome probabilities as well as the properties of any binaries formed during
the binary-binary encounters, such as the distributions of binary binding
energies and eccentricities. We also present the final velocity distributions
of the ejected single stars. The background potential has two important effects
on the stellar dynamics: 1) The potential acts to reset the zero-point of the
total system energy, which in turn affects the types and properties of the
products of the encounter; 2) For higher $n$ and weakly bound systems (i.e.,
large semimajor axes), the stellar dynamics are significantly affected when
stars become trapped in the potential, oscillating around the system centre of
mass (CM). This, in turn, increases the number of scattering events between
stars (single, binary or triple) near the CM and makes it harder for single
stars to escape to infinity. This ultimately leads to the preferential
ionization of triples and wide binaries and the survival of compact binaries,
with the single stars escaping at very high ejection velocities.


title: The branching ratio $\omega \to \pi^+\pi^-$ revisited

abstract:
  We analyze the most recent data for the pion vector form factor in the
timelike region, employing a model-independent approach based on dispersion
theory. We confirm earlier observations about the inconsistency of different
modern high-precision data sets. Excluding the BaBar data, we find an updated
value for the isospin-violating branching ratio $\mathcal{B}(\omega \to
\pi^+\pi^-) = (1.46\pm 0.08) \times 10^{-2}$. As a side result, we also extract
an improved value for the pion vector or charge radius, $\sqrt{\langle
r_V^2\rangle} = 0.6603(5)(4)\text{fm}$, where the first uncertainty is
statistical as derived from the fit, while the second estimates the possible
size of nonuniversal radiative corrections. In addition, we demonstrate that
modern high-quality data for the decay $\eta' \to \pi^+\pi^-\gamma$ will allow
for an even improved determination of the transition strength
$\omega\to\pi^+\pi^-$.


title:
A Systematic Effective Operator Analysis of Semi-Annihilating Dark
  Matter

abstract:
  Semi-annihilation is a generic feature of dark matter theories stabilised by
symmetries larger than a $Z_2$. It contributes to thermal freeze out, but is
irrelevant for direct and collider searches. This allows semi-annihilating dark
matter to avoid those limits in a natural way. We use an effective operator
approach to make the first model-independent study of the associated
phenomenology. We enumerate all possible operators that contribute to $2\to2$
semi-annihilation up to dimension 6, plus leading terms at dimension 7. We find
that when the only light states charged under the dark symmetry are dark
matter, the model space is highly constrained. Only fifteen operators exist,
and just two for single-component dark sectors. If there can be additional
light, unstable "dark partner" states the possible phenomenology greatly
increases, at the cost of additional model dependence in the dark partner decay
modes. We also derive the irreducible constraints on models with
single-component dark matter from cosmic ray searches and astrophysical
observations. We find that for semi-annihilation to electrons and light quarks,
the thermal relic cross sections can be excluded for dark matter masses up


title: Grand Design Spiral Arms in A Young Forming Circumstellar Disk

abstract:
  We study formation and long-term evolution of a circumstellar disk in a
collapsing molecular cloud core using a resistive magnetohydrodynamic
simulation. While the formed circumstellar disk is initially small, it grows as
accretion continues and its radius becomes as large as 200 AUs toward the end
of the Class-I phase. A pair of grand-design spiral arms form due to
gravitational instability in the disk, and they transfer angular momentum in
the highly resistive disk. Although the spiral arms disappear in a few
rotations as expected in a classical theory, new spiral arms form recurrently
as the disk soon becomes unstable again by gas accretion. Such recurrent spiral
arms persist throughout the Class-0 and I phase. We then perform synthetic
observations and compare our model with a recent high-resolution observation of
a young stellar object Elias 2-27, whose circumstellar disk has grand design
spiral arms. We find good agreement between our theoretical model and the
observation. Our model suggests that the grand design spiral arms around Elias
2-27 are consistent with material arms formed by gravitational instability. If
such spiral arms commonly exist in young circumstellar disks, it implies that
young circumstellar disks are considerably massive and gravitational
instability is the key process of angular momentum transport.


title:
Hints against the cold and collisionless nature of dark matter from the
  galaxy velocity function

abstract:
  The observed number of dwarf galaxies as a function of rotation velocity is
significantly smaller than predicted by the standard model of cosmology. This
discrepancy cannot be simply solved by assuming strong baryonic feedback
processes, since they would violate the observed relation between maximum
circular velocity ($v_{\rm max}$) and baryon mass of galaxies. A speculative
but tantalising possibility is that the mismatch between observation and theory
points towards the existence of non-cold or non-collisionless dark matter (DM).
In this paper, we investigate the effects of warm, mixed (i.e warm plus cold),
and self-interacting DM scenarios on the abundance of dwarf galaxies and the
relation between observed HI line-width and maximum circular velocity. Both
effects have the potential to alleviate the apparent mismatch between the
observed and theoretical abundance of galaxies as a function of $v_{\rm max}$.
For the case of warm and mixed DM, we show that the discrepancy disappears,
even for luke-warm models that evade stringent bounds from the Lyman-$\alpha$
forest. Self-interacting DM scenarios can also provide a solution as long as
they lead to extended ($\gtrsim 1.5$ kpc) dark matter cores in the density
profiles of dwarf galaxies. Only models with velocity-dependent cross sections
can yield such cores without violating other observational constraints at
larger scales.


title: Dissonant Black Droplets and Black Funnels

abstract:
  A holographic field theory on a fixed black hole background has a
gravitational dual represented by a black funnel or a black droplet. These
states are "detuned" when the temperature of the field theory near the horizon
does not match the temperature of the background black hole. In particular, the
gravitational dual to the Boulware state must be a detuned solution. We
construct detuned droplets and funnels dual to a Schwarzschild background and
show that the Boulware phase is represented by a droplet. We also construct
hairy black droplets associated to a low-temperature scalar condensation
instability and show that they are thermodynamically preferred to their
hairless counterparts.


title: Self-Learning Monte Carlo Method in Fermion Systems

abstract:
  We develop the self-learning Monte Carlo (SLMC) method, a general-purpose
numerical method recently introduced to simulate many-body systems, for
studying interacting fermion systems. Our method uses a highly-efficient update
algorithm, which we design and dub "cumulative update", to generate new
candidate configurations in the Markov chain based on a self-learned bosonic
effective model. From general analysis and numerical study of the double
exchange model as an example, we find the SLMC with cumulative update
drastically reduces the computational cost of the simulation, while remaining
statistically exact. Remarkably, its computational complexity is far less than
the conventional algorithm with local updates.


title:
The Disc-Jet Symbiosis Emerges: Modeling the Emission of Sagittarius A*
  with Electron Thermodynamics

abstract:
  We calculate the radiative properties of Sagittarius A* -- spectral energy
distribution, variability, and radio-infrared images -- using the first 3D,
physically motivated black hole accretion models that directly evolve the
electron thermodynamics in general relativistic MHD simulations. These models
reproduce the coupled disc-jet structure for the emission favored by previous
phenomenological analytic and numerical works. More specifically, we find that
the low frequency radio emission is dominated by emission from a polar outflow
while the emission above 100 GHz is dominated by the inner region of the
accretion disc. The latter produces time variable near infrared (NIR) and X-ray
emission, with frequent flaring events (including IR flares without
corresponding X-ray flares and IR flares with weak X-ray flares). The photon
ring is clearly visible at 230 GHz and 2 microns, which is encouraging for
future horizon-scale observations. We also show that anisotropic electron
thermal conduction along magnetic field lines has a negligible effect on the
radiative properties of our model. We conclude by noting limitations of our
current generation of first-principles models, particularly that the outflow is
closer to adiabatic than isothermal and thus underpredicts the low frequency
radio emission.


title:
Lensing Constraints on the Mass Profile Shape and the Splashback Radius
  of Galaxy Clusters

abstract:
  The lensing signal around galaxy clusters can, in principle, be used to test
detailed predictions for their average mass profile from numerical simulations.
However, the intrinsic shape of the profiles can be smeared out when a sample
that spans a wide range of cluster masses is averaged in physical length units.
This effect especially conceals rapid changes in gradient such as the steep
drop associated with the splashback radius, a sharp edge corresponding to the
outermost caustic in accreting halos. We optimize the extraction of such local
features by scaling individual halo profiles to a number of spherical
overdensity radii, and apply this method to 16 X-ray-selected high-mass
clusters targeted in the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble. By
forward-modeling the weak- and strong-lensing data presented by Umetsu et al.,
we show that, regardless of the scaling overdensity, the projected ensemble
density profile is remarkably well described by an NFW or Einasto profile out
to $R \sim 2.5h^{-1}$Mpc, beyond which the profiles flatten. We constrain the
NFW concentration to $c_{200c} = 3.66 \pm 0.11$ at $M_{200c} \simeq 1.0 \times
10^{15}h^{-1}M_\odot$, consistent with and improved from previous work that
used conventionally stacked lensing profiles, and in excellent agreement with
theoretical expectations. Assuming the profile form of Diemer & Kravtsov and
generic priors calibrated from numerical simulations, we place a lower limit on
the splashback radius of the cluster halos, if it exists, of $R_{sp}/r_{200m} >
0.89$ ($R_{sp} > 1.83h^{-1}$Mpc) at 68% confidence. The corresponding density
feature is most pronounced when the cluster profiles are scaled by $r_{200m}$,
and smeared out when scaled to higher overdensities.


title: Majorana fermions in finite-size strips with in-plane magnetic fields

abstract:
  We study the Majorana bound states arising in quasi-one-dimensional systems
with Rashba spin-orbit coupling in the presence of an in-plane Zeeman magnetic
field. Using two different methods, first, the numerical diagonalization of the
tight-binding Hamiltonian, and second, finding the singular points of the
Hamiltonian (see Refs. [1-4]), we obtain the topological phase diagram for
these systems as a function of the chemical potential and the magnetic field,
and we demonstrate the consistency of these two methods. By introducing
disorder into these systems we confirm that the states with even number of
Majorana pairs are not topologically protected. Finally, we show that a formal
calculation of the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological invariants recovers correctly the
parity of the number of Majorana bound states pairs, and it is thus fully
consistent with the phase diagrams of the disordered systems.


title: Holographic Kondo and Fano Resonances

abstract:
  We use holography to study a $(1+1)$-dimensional Conformal Field Theory (CFT)
coupled to an impurity. The CFT is an $SU(N)$ gauge theory at large $N$, with
strong gauge interactions. The impurity is an $SU(N)$ spin. We trigger an
impurity Renormalization Group (RG) flow via a Kondo coupling. The Kondo effect
occurs only below the critical temperature of a large-$N$ mean-field
transition. We show that at all temperatures $T$, impurity spectral functions
exhibit a Fano resonance, which in the low-$T$ phase is a large-$N$
manifestation of the Kondo resonance. We thus provide an example in which the
Kondo resonance survives strong correlations, and uncover a novel mechanism for
generating Fano resonances, via RG flows between $(0 + 1)$-dimensional fixed
points


title:
A revised planetary nebula luminosity function distance to NGC 628 using
  MUSE

abstract:
  Distance uncertainties plague our understanding of the physical scales
relevant to the physics of star formation in extragalactic studies. The
planetary nebulae luminosity function (PNLF) is one of very few techniques that
can provide distance estimates to within ~10%, however it requires a planetary
nebula (PN) sample that is uncontaminated by other ionizing sources. We employ
optical IFU spectroscopy using MUSE on the VLT to measure [OIII] line fluxes
for sources unresolved on 50 pc scales within the central star-forming galaxy
disk of NGC 628. We use diagnostic line ratios to identify 62 PNe, 30 supernova
remnants and 87 HII regions within our fields. Using the 36 brightest PNe we
determine a new PNLF distance modulus of 29.91^{+0.08}_{-0.13} mag
(9.59^{+0.35}_{-0.57} Mpc), in good agreement with literature values but
significantly larger than the previously reported PNLF distance. We are able to
explain the discrepancy and recover the previous result when we reintroduce SNR
contaminants to our sample. This demonstrates the power of full spectral
information over narrowband imaging in isolating PNe. Given our limited spatial
coverage within the galaxy, we show that this technique can be used to refine
distance estimates even when IFU observations cover only a fraction of a galaxy
disk.


title: Aharonov-Bohm protection of black hole's baryon/skyrmion hair

abstract:
  The baryon/skyrmion correspondence implies that the baryon number is encoded
into a topological surface integral. Under certain conditions that we clarify,
this surface integral can be measured by an asymptotic observer in form of an
Aharonov-Bohm phase-shift in an experiment in which the skyrmion passes through
a loop of a probe string. In such a setup the baryon/skyrmion number must be
respected by black holes, despite the fact that it produces no long-range
classical field. If initially swallowed by a black hole, the baryon number must
resurface in form of a classical skyrmion hair, after the black hole evaporates
below a certain critical size. Needless to say, the respect of the baryon
number by black holes is expected to have potentially-interesting astrophysical
consequences.


title: Correlation functions in theories with Lifshitz scaling

abstract:
  The 2+1 dimensional quantum Lifshitz model can be generalised to a class of
higher dimensional free field theories that exhibit Lifshitz scaling. When the
dynamical critical exponent equals the number of spatial dimensions, equal time
correlation functions of scaling operators in the generalised quantum Lifshitz
model are given by a d-dimensional higher-derivative conformal field theory.
Autocorrelation functions in the generalised quantum Lifshitz model in any
number of dimensions can on the other hand be expressed in terms of
autocorrelation functions of a two-dimensional conformal field theory. This
also holds for autocorrelation functions in a strongly coupled Lifshitz field
theory with a holographic dual of Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton type. The map to a
two-dimensional conformal field theory extends to autocorrelation functions in
thermal states and out- of-equilbrium states preserving symmetry under spatial
translations and rotations in both types of Lifshitz models. Furthermore, the
spectrum of quasinormal modes of scalar field perturbations in Lifshitz black
hole backgrounds can be obtained analytically at low spatial momenta and
exhibits a linear dispersion relation at z = d. At high momentum, the mode
spectrum can be obtained in a WKB approximation and displays very different
behaviour compared to holographic duals of conformal field theories. This has
implications for thermalisation in strongly coupled Lifshitz field theories
with z > 1.


title:
H$_2$-based star formation laws in hierarchical models of galaxy
  formation

abstract:
  We update our recently published model for GAlaxy Evolution and Assembly
(GAEA), to include a self-consistent treatment of the partition of cold gas in
atomic and molecular hydrogen. Our model provides significant improvements with
respect to previous ones used for similar studies. In particular, GAEA (i)
includes a sophisticated chemical enrichment scheme accounting for
non-instantaneous recycling of gas, metals, and energy; (ii) reproduces the
measured evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function; (iii) reasonably
reproduces the observed correlation between galaxy stellar mass and gas
metallicity at different redshifts. These are important prerequisites for
models considering a metallicity dependent efficiency of molecular gas
formation. We also update our model for disk sizes and show that model
predictions are in nice agreement with observational estimates for the gas,
stellar and star forming disks at different cosmic epochs. We analyse the
influence of different star formation laws including empirical relations based
on the hydro-static pressure of the disk, analytic models, and prescriptions
derived from detailed hydro-dynamical simulations. We find that modifying the
star formation law does not affect significantly the global properties of model
galaxies, neither their distributions. The only quantity showing significant
deviations in different models is the cosmic molecular-to-atomic hydrogen
ratio, particularly at high redshift. Unfortunately, however, this quantity
also depends strongly on the modelling adopted for additional physical
processes. Useful constraints on the physical processes regulating star
formation can be obtained focusing on low mass galaxies and/or at higher
redshift. In this case, self-regulation has not yet washed out differences
imprinted at early time.


title: Hot-Jupiter Core Mass from Roche-lobe Overflow

abstract:
  The orbits of many observed hot Jupiters are decaying rapidly due to tidal
interaction, eventually reaching the Roche limit. We analytically study the
ensuing coupled mass loss and orbital evolution during the Roche-lobe overflow
and find two possible scenarios. Planets with light cores $M_c\lesssim
6M_\oplus$ (assuming a nominal tidal dissipation factor $Q\sim 10^6$ for the
host star) are transformed into Neptune-mass gas planets, orbiting at a
separation (relative to the stellar radius) $a/R_\star\approx 3.5$. Planets
with heavier cores $M_c\gtrsim 6M_\oplus$ plunge rapidly until they are
destroyed at the stellar surface. Remnant gas-Neptunes, which are stable to
photo-evaporation, are absent from the observations, despite their unique
transit radius ($5-10R_\oplus$). This result suggests that $M_c\gtrsim
6M_\oplus$, providing a useful constraint on the poorly-known core mass that
may distinguish between different formation theories of gas giants.
Alternatively, if one assumes a prior of $M_c\approx 6 M_\oplus$ from the
core-accretion theory, our results suggest that $Q$ does not lie in the range
$10^6\lesssim Q\lesssim 10^7$.


title:
The Cardy limit of the topologically twisted index and black strings in
  AdS$_5$

abstract:
  We evaluate the topologically twisted index of a general four-dimensional
$\mathcal{N} = 1$ gauge theory in the "high-temperature" limit. The index is
the partition function for $\mathcal{N} = 1$ theories on $S^2 \times T^2$, with
a partial topological twist along $S^2$, in the presence of background magnetic
fluxes and fugacities for the global symmetries. We show that the logarithm of
the index is proportional to the conformal anomaly coefficient of the
two-dimensional $\mathcal{N} = (0,2)$ SCFTs obtained from the compactification
on $S^2$. We also present a universal formula for extracting the index from the
four-dimensional conformal anomaly coefficient and its derivatives. We give
examples based on theories whose holographic duals are black strings in type
IIB backgrounds AdS$_5 \times \text{SE}_5$, where SE$_5$ are five-dimensional
Sasaki-Einstein spaces.


title:
Speeding up $N$-body simulations of modified gravity: Chameleon
  screening models

abstract:
  We describe and demonstrate the potential of a new and very efficient method
for simulating certain classes of modified gravity theories, such as the widely
studied $f(R)$ gravity models. High resolution simulations for such models are
currently very slow due to the highly nonlinear partial differential equation
that needs to be solved exactly to predict the modified gravitational force.
This nonlinearity is partly inherent, but is also exacerbated by the specific
numerical algorithm used, which employs a variable redefinition to prevent
numerical instabilities. The standard Newton-Gauss-Seidel iterative method used
to tackle this problem has a poor convergence rate. Our new method not only
avoids this, but also allows the discretised equation to be written in a form
that is analytically solvable. We show that this new method greatly improves
the performance and efficiency of $f(R)$ simulations. For example, a test
simulation with $512^3$ particles in a box of size $512 \, \mathrm{Mpc}/h$ is
now 5 times faster than before, while a Millennium-resolution simulation for
$f(R)$ gravity is estimated to be more than 20 times faster than with the old
method. Our new implementation will be particularly useful for running very
high resolution, large-sized simulations which, to date, are only possible for
the standard model, and also makes it feasible to run large numbers of lower
resolution simulations for covariance analyses. We hope that the method will
bring us to a new era for precision cosmological tests of gravity.


title: GSV-index for holomorphic Pfaff Systems

abstract:
  In this work we introduce a GSV type index for varieties invariant by
holomorphic Pfaff systems (possibly non locally decomposables) on projective
manifolds. We prove a non-negativity property for the index. As an application,
we prove that the non-negativity of the GSV-index gives us an obstruction to
the solution of the Poincar\'e problem for Pfaff systems on projectives spaces.


title:
Investigating the Use of Mastery-Style Online Homework Exercises in
  Introductory Algebra-based Mechanics in a Controlled Clinical Study

abstract:
  Homework in introductory physics represents an important part of a student's
learning experience; therefore choosing the manner in which homework is
presented merits investigation. We performed three rounds of clinical trials
comparing the effects of mastery-style homework vs traditional-style homework
with students in both algebra-based and calculus-based introductory mechanics.
Results indicate a benefit from mastery-style over traditional-style homework,
principally for weaker students who are less familiar with the material being
covered and on questions that are nearer transfer to the study materials.


title: Dissipation-Induced Superradiance in a Non-Markovian Open Dicke Model

abstract:
  We consider the Dicke model, describing an ensemble of $N$ quantum spins
interacting with a cavity field, and study how the coupling to a non-Markovian
environment with power-law spectrum changes the physics of superradiant phase
transition. Quite remarkably we find that dissipation can induce, rather than
suppress, the ordered phase, a result which is in striking contrast with both
thermal and Markovian quantum baths. We interpret this dissipation-induced
superradiance as a genuine dissipative quantum phase transition that exists
even at finite $N$ due to the coupling with the bath modes and whose nature and
critical properties strongly depend on the spectral features of the
non-Markovian environment.


title: Fast Multipole Method based filtering of non-uniformly sampled data

abstract:
  Non-uniform fast Fourier Transform (NUFFT) and inverse NUFFT (INUFFT)
algorithms, based on the Fast Multipole Method (FMM) are developed and tested.
Our algorithms are based on a novel factorization of the FFT kernel, and are
implemented with attention to data structures and error analysis.
  Note: This unpublished manuscript was available on our web pages and has been
referred to by others in the literature. To provide a proper archival reference
we are placing it on arXiv.


title: Diffusion and Chaos from near AdS$_2$ horizons

abstract:
  We calculate the thermal diffusivity $D = \kappa/c_{\rho}$ and butterfly
velocity $v_B$ in holographic models that flow to AdS$_2 \times R^{d}$ fixed
points in the infra-red. We show that both these quantities are governed by the
same irrelevant deformation of AdS$_2$ and hence establish a simple
relationship between them. When this deformation corresponds to a universal
dilaton mode of dimension $\Delta = 2$ then this relationship is always given
by $D = v_B^2/(2 \pi T)$.


title: Conductivities from attractors

abstract:
  In the context of applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to condensed
matter physics, we compute conductivities for field theory duals of dyonic
planar black holes in 3+1-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theories at zero
temperature. We combine the near-horizon data obtained via Sen's entropy
function formalism with known expressions for conductivities. In this way we
express the conductivities in terms of the extremal black hole charges. We
apply our approach to three different examples for dilaton theories for which
the background geometry is not known explicitly. For a constant scalar
potential, the thermoelectric conductivity explicitly scales as
$\alpha_{xy}\sim N^{3/2}$, as expected. For the same model, our approach yields
a finite result for the heat conductivity $\kappa/T \propto N^{3/2}$ even for
$T \rightarrow 0$.


title: Kodaira fibrations, K\"ahler groups, and finiteness properties

abstract:
  We construct classes of K\"ahler groups that do not have finite classifying
spaces and are not commensurable to subdirect products of surface groups. Each
of these groups is the fundamental group of the generic fibre of a holomorphic
map from a product of Kodaira fibrations onto an elliptic curve.


title:
On timelike supersymmetric solutions of gauged minimal 5-dimensional
  supergravity

abstract:
  We analyze the timelike supersymmetric solutions of minimal gauged
5-dimensional supergravity for the case in which the K\"ahler base manifold
admits a holomorphic isometry and depends on two real functions satisfying a
simple second-order differential equation. Using this general form of the base
space, the equations satisfied by the building blocks of the solutions become
of, at most, fourth degree and can be solved by simple polynomic ansatzs. In
this way we construct two 3-parameter families of solutions that contain almost
all the timelike supersymmetric solutions of this theory with one angular
momentum known so far and a few more: the (singular) supersymmetric
Reissner-Nordstr\"om-AdS solutions, the three exact supersymmetric solutions
describing the three near-horizon geometries found by Gutowski and Reall, three
1-parameter asymptotically-AdS$_{5}$ black-hole solutions with those three
near-horizon geometries (Gutowski and Reall's black hole being one of them),
three generalizations of the G\"odel universe and a few potentially homogenous
solutions. A key r\^ole in finding these solutions is played by our ability to
write AdS$_{5}$'s K\"ahler base space ($\overline{\mathbb{CP}}^{2}$ or
SU$(1,2)/$U$(2)$) is three different, yet simple, forms associated to three
different isometries. Furthermore, our ansatz for the K\"ahler metric also
allows us to study the dimensional compactification of the theory and its
solutions in a systematic way.


title: The Emergence of Organizing Structure in Conceptual Representation

abstract:
  Both scientists and children make important structural discoveries, yet their
computational underpinnings are not well understood. Structure discovery has
previously been formalized as probabilistic inference about the right
structural form --- where form could be a tree, ring, chain, grid, etc. [Kemp &
Tenenbaum (2008). The discovery of structural form. PNAS, 105(3), 10687-10692].
While this approach can learn intuitive organizations, including a tree for
animals and a ring for the color circle, it assumes a strong inductive bias
that considers only these particular forms, and each form is explicitly
provided as initial knowledge. Here we introduce a new computational model of
how organizing structure can be discovered, utilizing a broad hypothesis space
with a preference for sparse connectivity. Given that the inductive bias is
more general, the model's initial knowledge shows little qualitative
resemblance to some of the discoveries it supports. As a consequence, the model
can also learn complex structures for domains that lack intuitive description,
as well as predict human property induction judgments without explicit
structural forms. By allowing form to emerge from sparsity, our approach
clarifies how both the richness and flexibility of human conceptual
organization can coexist.


title: Degravitation of the Cosmological Constant in Bigravity

abstract:
  In this article the phenomenon of degravitation of the cosmological constant
is studied in the framework of bigravity. It is demonstrated that despite a
sizable value of the cosmological constant its gravitational effect can be only
mild. The bigravity framework is chosen for this demonstration as it leads to a
consistent, ghost-free theory of massive gravity. We show that degravitation
takes place in the limit where the physical graviton is dominantly a gauge
invariant metric combination. We present and discuss several phenomenological
consequences expected in this regime.


title:
Constraining the dark matter content of NGC 1291 using hydrodynamic gas
  response simulations

abstract:
  We present a pilot study on the nearby massive barred galaxy NGC 1291, in
which we use dynamical modelling to constrain the disc mass-to-light ratio
(M/L), thus breaking the degeneracy between the baryonic and dark matter in its
central regions. We use the gas, specifically the morphology of the dust lanes
on the leading side of the bar, as a tracer of the underlying gravitational
potential. We run a large number of hydrodynamic gas response simulations, in
potentials obtained directly from near-infrared images of the galaxy, which
have three free parameters: the M/L, the bar pattern speed and the height
function. We explore the three-dimensional parameter space, by comparing the
morphology of the shocks created in the gas response simulations with those of
the observed dust lanes, and find the best-fitting models; these suggest that
the M/L of NGC 1291 agrees with that predicted by stellar population synthesis
models in the near-infrared ($\approx$0.6\,$M_{\odot}/L_{\odot}$), which leads
to a borderline maximum disc for this galaxy. Furthermore, we find that the bar
rotates fast, with a corotation radius which is $\leq$ 1.4 times the bar
length.


title: There is Something Beyond the Twitter Network

abstract:
  How information spreads through a social network? Can we assume, that the
information is spread only through a given social network graph? What is the
correct way to compare the models of information flow? These are the basic
questions we address in this work.
  We focus on meticulous comparison of various, well-known models of rumor
propagation in the social network. We introduce the model incorporating mass
media and effects of absent nodes. In this model the information appears
spontaneously in the graph. Using the most conservative metric, we showed that
the distribution of cascades sizes generated by this model fits the real data
much better than the previously considered models.


title:
WEAVE-QSO: A Massive Intergalactic Medium Survey for the William
  Herschel Telescope

abstract:
  In these proceedings we describe the WEAVE-QSO survey, which will observe
around 400,000 high redshift quasars starting in 2018. This survey is part of a
broader WEAVE survey to be conducted at the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope. We
will focus on chiefly on the science goals, but will also briefly summarise the
target selection methods anticipated and the expected survey plan.
  Understanding the apparent acceleration in the expansion of the Universe is
one of the key scientific challenges of our time. Many experiments have been
proposed to study this expansion, using a variety of techniques. Here we
describe a survey that can measure this acceleration and therefore help
elucidate the nature of dark energy: a survey of the Lyman-alpha forest (and
quasar absorption in general) in spectra towards z>2 quasars (QSOs). Further
constraints on neutrino masses and warm dark matter are also anticipated. The
same data will also shed light on galaxy formation via study of the properties
of inflowing/outflowing gas associated with nearby galaxies and in a cosmic web
context. Gas properties are sensitive to density, temperature, UV radiation,
metallicity and abundance pattern, and so constraint galaxy formation in a
variety of ways. WEAVE-QSO will study absorbers with a dynamic range spanning
more than 8 orders of magnitude in column density, their thermal broadening,
and a host of elements and ionization species. A core principal of the
WEAVE-QSO survey is the targeting of QSOs with near 100% efficiency principally
through use of the J-PAS (r < 23.2) and Gaia (r < 20) data.


title: Mid-infrared spectra of comet nuclei

abstract:
  Jovian Trojan D-type asteroids have mid-infrared emissivity features
strikingly similar to comet comae, suggesting that they have the same
compositions and that the surfaces of the Trojans are highly porous. However, a
direct comparison between a comet and asteroid surface has not been possible
due to the paucity of spectra of comet nuclei at mid-infrared wavelengths. We
present 5-35 {\mu}m thermal emission spectra of comets 10P/Tempel 2, and
49P/Arend-Rigaux observed with the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space
Telescope. Our analysis suggests the spectra are dominated by the comet
nucleus. We fit each spectrum with the near-Earth asteroid thermal model
(NEATM) and find sizes in agreement with previous values. However, the NEATM
beaming parameters of the nuclei, 0.74 to 0.83, are systematically lower than
the Jupiter-family comet population mean of 1.03+/-0.11, derived from 16- and
22-{\mu}m photometry. When the spectra are normalized by the NEATM model, a
weak 10-{\mu}m silicate plateau is evident, with a shape similar to those seen
in mid-infrared spectra of D-type asteroids. We compare, in detail, these comet
nucleus emission features to those seen in spectra of the Jovian Trojan D-types
(624) Hektor, (911) Agamemnon, and (1172) Aneas, as well as those seen in the
spectra of seven comet comae. The comet comae present silicate features with
two distinct shapes, either trapezoidal, or more rounded. The surfaces of
Tempel 2, Arend-Rigaux, and Hektor best agree with the comae that present
trapezoidal features. An emissivity minimum at 15 {\mu}m, present in the
spectra of Tempel 2, Arend-Rigaux, Hektor, and Agamemnon, is also described,
the origin of which remains unidentified. The compositional similarity between
D-type asteroids and comets is discussed, and our data supports the hypothesis
that they have similar origins in the early Solar System.


title: A weak convergence theorem for mean nonexpansive mappings

abstract:
  In this paper, we prove first that the iterates of a mean nonexpansive map
defined on a weakly compact, convex set converge weakly to a fixed point in the
presence of Opial's property and asymptotic regularity at a point. Next, we
prove the analogous result for closed, convex (not necessarily bounded) subsets
of uniformly convex Opial spaces. These results generalize the classical
theorems for nonexpansive maps of Browder and Petryshyn in Hilbert space and
Opial in reflexive spaces satisfying Opial's condition.


title: Simultaneous Clustering and Estimation of Heterogeneous Graphical Models

abstract:
  We consider joint estimation of multiple graphical models arising from
heterogeneous and high-dimensional observations. Unlike most previous
approaches which assume that the cluster structure is given in advance, an
appealing feature of our method is to learn cluster structure while estimating
heterogeneous graphical models. This is achieved via a high dimensional version
of Expectation Conditional Maximization (ECM) algorithm (Meng and Rubin, 1993).
A joint graphical lasso penalty is imposed on the conditional maximization step
to extract both homogeneity and heterogeneity components across all clusters.
Our algorithm is computationally efficient due to fast sparse learning routines
and can be implemented without unsupervised learning knowledge. The superior
performance of our method is demonstrated by extensive experiments and its
application to a Glioblastoma cancer dataset reveals some new insights in
understanding the Glioblastoma cancer. In theory, a non-asymptotic error bound
is established for the output directly from our high dimensional ECM algorithm,
and it consists of two quantities: statistical error (statistical accuracy) and
optimization error (computational complexity). Such a result gives a
theoretical guideline in terminating our ECM iterations.


title: Generating Holistic 3D Scene Abstractions for Text-based Image Retrieval

abstract:
  Spatial relationships between objects provide important information for
text-based image retrieval. As users are more likely to describe a scene from a
real world perspective, using 3D spatial relationships rather than 2D
relationships that assume a particular viewing direction, one of the main
challenges is to infer the 3D structure that bridges images with users' text
descriptions. However, direct inference of 3D structure from images requires
learning from large scale annotated data. Since interactions between objects
can be reduced to a limited set of atomic spatial relations in 3D, we study the
possibility of inferring 3D structure from a text description rather than an
image, applying physical relation models to synthesize holistic 3D abstract
object layouts satisfying the spatial constraints present in a textual
description. We present a generic framework for retrieving images from a
textual description of a scene by matching images with these generated abstract
object layouts. Images are ranked by matching object detection outputs
(bounding boxes) to 2D layout candidates (also represented by bounding boxes)
which are obtained by projecting the 3D scenes with sampled camera directions.
We validate our approach using public indoor scene datasets and show that our
method outperforms baselines built upon object occurrence histograms and
learned 2D pairwise relations.


title: Electrical Resistivity Model for Quasi-one-dimensional structures

abstract:
  In this paper electron-impurity scattering coefficient of Bloch waves for one
dimensional Dirac comb potential is used for calculation of temperature
dependence of resistivity within kinetic theory. We restrict ourselves by
scattering on impurities that is also modeled by zero-range potential. The
standard averaging is expressed by integral that is evaluated within advanced
numerical procedure. The plots on base of the calculations results demonstrate
strong variability as function of temperature and impurity strength.


title: Material Recognition from Local Appearance in Global Context

abstract:
  Recognition of materials has proven to be a challenging problem due to the
wide variation in appearance within and between categories. Global image
context, such as where the material is or what object it makes up, can be
crucial to recognizing the material. Existing methods, however, operate on an
implicit fusion of materials and context by using large receptive fields as
input (i.e., large image patches). Many recent material recognition methods
treat materials as yet another set of labels like objects. Materials are,
however, fundamentally different from objects as they have no inherent shape or
defined spatial extent. Approaches that ignore this can only take advantage of
limited implicit context as it appears during training. We instead show that
recognizing materials purely from their local appearance and integrating
separately recognized global contextual cues including objects and places leads
to superior dense, per-pixel, material recognition. We achieve this by training
a fully-convolutional material recognition network end-to-end with only
material category supervision. We integrate object and place estimates to this
network from independent CNNs. This approach avoids the necessity of preparing
an impractically-large amount of training data to cover the product space of
materials, objects, and scenes, while fully leveraging contextual cues for
dense material recognition. Furthermore, we perform a detailed analysis of the
effects of context granularity, spatial resolution, and the network level at
which we introduce context. On a recently introduced comprehensive and diverse
material database \cite{Schwartz2016}, we confirm that our method achieves
state-of-the-art accuracy with significantly less training data compared to
past methods.


title:
Nonadiabatic dynamics and multiphoton resonances in strong field
  molecular ionization with few cycle laser pulses

abstract:
  We study strong field molecular ionization using few- (four to ten) cycle
laser pulses. Employing a supercontinuum light source, we are able to tune the
optical laser wavelength (photon energy) over a range of about $\sim$200 nm
(500 meV). We measure the photoelectron spectrum for a series of different
molecules as a function of laser intensity, frequency, and bandwidth and
illustrate how the ionization dynamics vary with these parameters. We find that
multiphoton resonances and nonadiabatic dynamics (internal conversion) play an
important role and result in ionization to different ionic continua.
Interestingly, while nuclear dynamics can be "frozen" for sufficiently short
laser pulses, we find that resonances strongly influence the photoelectron
spectrum and final cationic state of the molecule regardless of pulse duration
-- even for pulses that are less than four cycles in duration.


title: Holography for $\mathcal{N}=1^*$ on $S^4$ and Supergravity

abstract:
  We study the $SO(3)$ sector of the $\mathcal{N}=1^*$ mass deformation of
$\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills on $S^4$. The gravity dual of this sector is
$\mathcal{N}=2$ supergravity coupled to two hypermultiplets. The scalar fields
in the hypermultiplets span a quaternionic-Kahler manifold that is described by
the coset $G_{2,2}/SU(2)\times SU(2)$.
  We use the $\mathcal{N}=2$ supergravity dual to study field configurations in
the bulk that feature analytical solutions, and compute the corresponding $S^4$
free energy using the procedure of holographic renormalization. We find that
the free energy of these configurations is quadratic in the mass and show that
it is devoid of unphysical ambiguities, hence providing an analytical
prediction for the $\mathcal{N}=1$ four-sphere partition function at large 't
Hooft coupling in the planar limit.


title:
Measurement of top quark polarisation in t-channel single top quark
  production

abstract:
  A first measurement of the top quark spin asymmetry, sensitive to the top
quark polarisation, in $t$-channel single top quark production is presented. It
is based on a sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV
corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 $\mathrm{fb^{-1}}$. A
high-purity sample of $t$-channel single top quark events with an isolated muon
is selected. Signal and background components are estimated using a fit to
data. A differential cross section measurement, corrected for detector effects,
of an angular observable sensitive to the top quark polarisation is performed.
The differential distribution is used to extract a top quark spin asymmetry of
$0.26 \pm 0.03 \textrm{(stat)} \pm 0.10 \textrm{(syst)}$, which is compatible
with a p-value of $4.6\%$ with the standard model prediction of 0.44.


title: Calabi-Yau Varieties: from Quiver Representations to Dessins d'Enfants

abstract:
  The connections amongst (1) quivers whose representation varieties are
Calabi-Yau, (2) the combinatorics of bipartite graphs on Riemann surfaces, and
(3) the geometry of mirror symmetry have engendered a rich subject at whose
heart is the physics of gauge/string theories.
  We review the various parts of this intricate story in some depth, for a
mathematical audience without assumption of any knowledge of physics,
emphasizing a plethora of results residing at the intersection between
algebraic geometry, representation theory and number theory.


title:
Testing the formation scenarios of binary neutron star systems with
  measurements of the neutron star moment of inertia

abstract:
  Two low mass neutron stars, J0737-3039B and the companion to J1756-2251, show
strong evidence of being formed from the collapse of an ONeMg core in an
electron capture supernova (ECSN) or in an ultra-stripped iron core collapse
supernova (FeCCSN). Using three different systematically generated sets of
equations of state we explore the relationship between the moment of inertia of
J0737-3039A and the binding energy of the two low mass neutron stars. We find
this relationship, a less strict variant of the recently discovered I-Love-Q
relations, is nevertheless more robust than a previously explored correlation
between the binding energy and the slope of the nuclear symmetry energy L. We
find that, if either J0737-3039B or the J1756-2251 companion were formed in an
ECSN, no more than 0.06 solar masses could have been lost from the progenitor
core, more than four times the mass loss predicted by current supernova
modeling. A measurement of the moment of inertia of J0737-3039A to within 10%
accuracy from pulsar timing, possible within a decade, can discriminate between
formation scenarios such as ECSN or ultra-stripped FeCCSN and, given current
constraints on the predicted core mass loss, potentially rule them out. Using
the I-Love-Q relations we find that an Advanced LIGO can potentially measure
the neutron star tidal polarizability to equivalent accuracy in a neutron
star-neutron star merger at a distance of 200 Mpc, thus obtaining similar
constraints on the formation scenarios. Such information on the occurrence of
ECSNe is important for population synthesis calculations, especially for
estimating the rate of binary neutron star mergers and resulting
electromagnetic and gravitational wave signals. Further progress needs to be
made modeling the core collapse process that leads to low-mass neutron stars,
particularly in making robust predictions for the mass loss from the progenitor
core.


title:
Generalization of the de Bruijn's identity to general $\phi$-entropies
  and $\phi$-Fisher informations

abstract:
  In this paper, we propose generalizations of the de Bruijn's identities based
on extensions of the Shannon entropy, Fisher information and their associated
divergences or relative measures. The foundation of these generalizations are
the $\phi$-entropies and divergences of the Csisz\'a's class (or Salicr\'u's
class) considered within a multidimensional context, included the
monodimensional case, and for several type of noisy channels characterized by a
more general probability distribution beyond the well-known Gaussian noise. It
is found that the gradient and/or the hessian of these entropies or divergences
with respect to the noise parameters give naturally rise to generalized
versions of the Fisher information or divergence, which are named as the
$\phi$-Fisher information (divergence). The obtained identities can be viewed
as further extensions of the classical de Bruijn's identity. Analogously, it is
shown that a similar relation holds between the $\phi$-divergence and a
extended mean-square error, named $\phi$-mean square error, for the Gaussian
channel.


title: Star Formation Close to Sgr A* and Beyond the Nuclear Cluster

abstract:
  Two modes of star formation are involved to explain the origin of young stars
near Sgr A*. One is a disk-based mode, which explains the disk of stars
orbiting Sgr A*. The other is the standard cloud-based mode observed in the
Galactic disk. We discuss each of these modes of star formation and apply these
ideas to the inner few parsecs of Sgr A*. In particular, we focus on the latter
mode in more detail. We also discuss how the tidal force exerted by the nuclear
cluster makes the Roche density approaching zero and contributes to the
collapse of molecular clouds located tens of parsecs away from Sgr A*.


title:
Freezing Traveling and Rotating Waves in Second Order Evolution
  Equations

abstract:
  In this paper we investigate the implementation of the so-called freezing
method for second order wave equations in one and several space dimensions. The
method converts the given PDE into a partial differential algebraic equation
which is then solved numerically. The reformulation aims at separating the
motion of a solution into a co-moving frame and a profile which varies as
little as possible. Numerical examples demonstrate the feasability of this
approach for semilinear wave equations with sufficient damping. We treat the
case of a traveling wave in one space dimension and of a rotating wave in two
space dimensions. In addition, we investigate in arbitrary space dimensions the
point spectrum and the essential spectrum of operators obtained by linearizing
about the profile, and we indicate the consequences for the nonlinear stability
of the wave.


title:
Physical Conditions and Variability Processes in AGN Jets through
  Multi-Frequency Linear and Circular Radio Polarization Monitoring

abstract:
  Radio polarimetry is an invaluable tool to investigate the physical
conditions and variability processes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets.
However, detecting their linear and circular polarization properties is a
challenging endeavor due to their low levels and possible depolarization
effects. We have developed an end-to-end data analysis methodology to recover
the polarization properties of unresolved sources with high accuracy. It has
been applied to recover the linear and circular polarization of 87 AGNs
measured by the F-GAMMA program from July 2010 to January 2015 with a mean
cadence of 1.3 months. Their linear polarization was recovered at four
frequencies between 2.64 and 10.45 GHz and the circular polarization at 4.85
and 8.35 GHz. The physical conditions required to reproduce the observed
polarization properties and the processes which induce their variability were
investigated with a full-Stokes radiative transfer code which emulates the
synchrotron emission of modeled jets. The model was used to investigate the
conditions needed to reproduce the observed polarization behavior for the
blazar 3C 454.3, assuming that the observed variability is attributed to
evolving internal shocks propagating downstream.


title:
Global existence and estimates of the solutions to nonlinear integral
  equations

abstract:
  It is proved that nonlinear integral equations of certain class have global
solution and estimates of the solution are given as $t\to \infty$.


title:
An End-to-End Architecture for Keyword Spotting and Voice Activity
  Detection

abstract:
  We propose a single neural network architecture for two tasks: on-line
keyword spotting and voice activity detection. We develop novel inference
algorithms for an end-to-end Recurrent Neural Network trained with the
Connectionist Temporal Classification loss function which allow our model to
achieve high accuracy on both keyword spotting and voice activity detection
without retraining. In contrast to prior voice activity detection models, our
architecture does not require aligned training data and uses the same
parameters as the keyword spotting model. This allows us to deploy a high
quality voice activity detector with no additional memory or maintenance
requirements.


title:
Common Foundations of Optimal Control Across the Sciences: evidence of a
  free lunch

abstract:
  A common goal in the sciences is optimization of an objective function by
selecting control variables such that a desired outcome is achieved. This
scenario can be expressed in terms of a control landscape of an objective
considered as a function of the control variables. At the most basic level, it
is known that the vast majority of quantum control landscapes possess no traps,
whose presence would hinder reaching the objective. This paper reviews and
extends the quantum control landscape assessment, presenting evidence that the
same highly favorable landscape features exist in many other domains of
science. The implications of this broader evidence are discussed. Specifically,
control landscape examples from quantum mechanics, chemistry, and evolutionary
biology are presented. Despite the obvious differences, commonalities between
these areas are highlighted within a unified mathematical framework. This
mathematical framework is driven by the wide ranging experimental evidence on
the ease of finding optimal controls (in terms of the required algorithmic
search effort beyond laboratory set up overhead). The full scope and
implications of this observed common control behavior pose an open question for
assessment in further work.


title: Graded manifolds of type $\Delta$ and $n$-fold vector bundles

abstract:
  Vector bundles and double vector bundles, or $2$-fold vector bundles, arise
naturally for instance as base spaces for algebraic structures such as Lie
algebroids, Courant algebroids and double Lie algebroids. It is known that all
these structures possess a unified description using the language of
super\-geometry and graded manifolds of degree $\leq 2$. Indeed, a link has
been established between the super and classical pictures by the geometrization
process, leading to an equivalence of the category of graded manifolds of
degree $\leq 2$ and the category of (double) vector bundles with additional
structures.
  In this paper we study the geometrization process in the case of $\mathbb
Z^r$-graded manifolds of type $\Delta$, where $\Delta$ is a certain weight
system and $r$ is the rank of $\Delta$. We establish an equivalence between a
subcategory of the category of $n$-fold vector bundles and the category of
graded manifolds of type $\Delta$.


title:
A finite mixture model approach to regression under covariate
  misclassification

abstract:
  This paper considers the problem of mismeasured categorical covariates in the
context of regression modeling; if unaccounted for, such misclassification is
known to result in misestimation of model parameters. Here, we exploit the fact
that explicitly modeling covariate misclassification leads to a mixture
representation. Assuming common parametric families for the mixture components,
and assuming that the misclassification occurrence is independent of the
response variable, the mixture representation permits model parameters to be
identified even when misclassification probabilities are unknown. Previous
approaches to covariate misclassification use multiple surrogate covariates
and/or validation data on the magnitude of errors. Based on this mixture
structure, we demonstrate that valid inference can be performed on all the
parameters even when no such additional information is available. Using
Bayesian inference, the method allows for learning from data combined with
external information on the magnitude of errors when such information does
become available. The method is applied to adjust for misclassification on
self-reported cocaine use in the Longitudinal Studies of HIV-Associated Lung
Infections and Complications (Lung HIV). We find a substantial and
statistically significant effect of cocaine use on pulmonary complications
measured by the relative area of emphysema, whereas a regression that does not
adjust for misclassification yields a much smaller estimate.


title: ADE Spectral Networks and Decoupling Limits of Surface Defects

abstract:
  We study vacua and BPS spectra of canonical surface defects of class
$\mathcal{S}$ theories in different decoupling limits using ADE spectral
networks. In some regions of the IR moduli spaces of these 2d-4d systems, the
mixing between 2d and 4d BPS states is suppressed, and the spectrum of 2d-4d
BPS states becomes that of a 2d $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$ theory. For some decoupling
limits, we identify the 2d theories describing the surface defects with
nonlinear sigma models and coset models that have been previously studied. We
also study certain cases where the decoupling limit of a surface defect
exhibits a set of vacua and a BPS spectrum that appear to be entirely new. A
detailed analysis of these spectra and their wall-crossing behavior is
performed.


title: diagno-syst: a tool for accurate inventories in metabarcoding

abstract:
  Metabarcoding on amplicons is rapidly expanding as a method to produce
molecular based inventories of microbial communities. Here, we work on
freshwater diatoms, which are microalgae possibly inventoried both on a
morphological and a molecular basis. We have developed an algorithm, in a
program called diagno-syst, based a the notion of informative read, which
carries out supervised clustering of reads by mapping them exactly one by one
on all reads of a well curated and taxonomically annotated reference database.
This program has been run on a HPC (and HTC) infrastructure to address
computation load. We compare optical and molecular based inventories on 10
samples from L\'eman lake, and 30 from Swedish rivers. We track all
possibilities of mismatches between both approaches, and compare the results
with standard pipelines (with heuristics) like Mothur. We find that the
comparison with optics is more accurate when using exact calculations, at the
price of a heavier computation load. It is crucial when studying the long tail
of biodiversity, which may be overestimated by pipelines or algorithms using
heuristics instead (more false positive). This work supports the analysis that
these methods will benefit from progress in, first, building an agreement
between molecular based and morphological based systematics and, second, having
as complete as possible publicly available reference databases.


title:
Holographic duals for five-dimensional superconformal quantum field
  theories

abstract:
  We construct global solutions to Type IIB supergravity with 16 residual
supersymmetries whose space-time is $AdS_6 \times S^2$ warped over a Riemann
surface. Families of solutions are labeled by an arbitrary number $L\geq 3$ of
asymptotic regions, in each of which the supergravity fields match those of a
$(p,q)$ five-brane, and may therefore be viewed as near-horizon limits of fully
localized intersections of five-branes in Type IIB string theory. These
solutions provide compelling candidates for holographic duals to a large class
of five-dimensional superconformal quantum field theories which arise as
non-trivial UV fixed points of perturbatively non-renormalizable Yang-Mills
theories, thereby making them more directly accessible to quantitative
analysis.


title:
Double extension for commutative $n$-ary superalgebras with a
  skew-symmetric invariant form

abstract:
  The method of double extension, introduced by A.~Medina and Ph.~Revoy, is a
procedure which decomposes a Lie algebra with an invariant symmetric form into
elementary pieces. Such decompositions were developed for other algebras, for
instance for Lie superalgebras and associative algebras, Filippov $n$-algebras
and Jordan algebras.
  The aim of this note is to find a unified approach to such decompositions
using the derived bracket formalism. More precisely, we show that any
commutative $n$-ary superalgebra with a skew-symmetric invariant form can be
obtained inductively by taking orthogonal sums and generalized double
extensions.


title:
Spatial structure of the modified Coulomb potential in a superstrong
  magnetic field

abstract:
  The modification of the Coulomb potential due to the enhancement of loop
corrections in a superstrong magnetic field is studied numerically. We
calculate the modified potential with high precision and obtain the pattern of
equipotential lines. The results confirm the general features known from
previous studies, however we emphasize some differences in potential structure
that can be important for problems with spatially distributed charges.


title:
Split-door criterion: Identification of causal effects through auxiliary
  outcomes

abstract:
  We present a method for estimating causal effects in time series data when
fine-grained information about the outcome of interest is available.
Specifically, we examine what we call the split-door setting, where the outcome
variable can be split into two parts: one that is potentially affected by the
cause being studied and another that is independent of it, with both parts
sharing the same (unobserved) confounders. We show that under these conditions,
the problem of identification reduces to that of testing for independence among
observed variables, and present a method that uses this approach to
automatically find subsets of the data that are causally identified. We
demonstrate the method by estimating the causal impact of Amazon's recommender
system on traffic to product pages, finding thousands of examples within the
dataset that satisfy the split-door criterion. Unlike past studies based on
natural experiments that were limited to a single product category, our method
applies to a large and representative sample of products viewed on the site. In
line with previous work, we find that the widely-used click-through rate (CTR)
metric overestimates the causal impact of recommender systems; depending on the
product category, we estimate that 50-80\% of the traffic attributed to
recommender systems would have happened even without any recommendations. We
conclude with guidelines for using the split-door criterion as well as a
discussion of other contexts where the method can be applied.


title: $\tau$-invariants for knots in rational homology spheres

abstract:
  Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o used the knot filtration on $\widehat{CF}(S^3)$ to
define the $\tau$-invariant for knots in the 3-sphere. In this article, we
generalize their construction and define a collection of $\tau$-invariants
associated to a knot $K$ in a rational homology sphere $Y$. We then show that
some of these invariants provide lower bounds for the genus of a surface with
boundary $K$ properly embedded in a negative definite 4-manifold with boundary
$Y$..


title:
Crossing the Eddington limit: examining disk spectra at high accretion
  rates

abstract:
  The faintest ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), those with 0.3-10 keV
luminosities 1 < L_X/10^39 < 3 erg s^-1, tend to have X-ray spectra that are
disk-like but broader than expected for thin accretion disks. These `broadened
disk' spectra are thought to indicate near- or mildly super-Eddington accretion
onto stellar remnant black holes. Here we report that a sample of bright
thermal-dominant black hole binaries, which have Eddington ratios constrained
to moderate values, also show broadened disk spectra in the 0.3-10 keV band at
an order of magnitude lower luminosities. This broadening would be missed in
studies that only look above ~2 keV. While this may suggest that broadened disk
ULXs could be powered by accretion onto massive stellar remnant black holes
with close to maximal spin, we argue in favor of a scenario where they are at
close to the Eddington luminosity, such that radiation pressure would be
expected to result in geometrically slim, advective accretion disks. However,
this implies that an additional physical mechanism is required to produce the
observed broad spectra at low Eddington ratios.


title: Harnack, Holder, Gauss and Widder: Serrin's Parabolic Legacy

abstract:
  James Serrin's fundamental contributions to the theory of quasilinear
elliptic equations are well-known and widely appreciated. He also made less
well-known contributions to the theory of quasilinear parabolic equations which
we dicuss in this note. Jurgen Moser gave greatly simplified proofs of the De
Giorgi-Nash regularity results for linear divergence structure elliptic and
parabolic differential equations using an original iterative technique. Serrin
extended Moser's techniques and applied them to the study of divergence
structure quasilinear elliptic equations, and in collaboration with Aronson, to
divergence structure quasilinear parabolic equations. Specifically, among other
results, they proved a maximum principle, Holder continuity of generalized
solutions and derived a Harnack principle for a very broad class of quasilinear
parabolic equations. In subsequent work, Aronson applied these results to study
non-negative solutions to divergence structure linear equations without
regularity assumptions on the coefficients. The results include a two-sided
Gaussian estimate for the fundamental solution and a generalization of the
Widder Representation Theorem.


title: Hierarchical Online Intrusion Detection for SCADA Networks

abstract:
  We propose a novel hierarchical online intrusion detection system (HOIDS) for
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks based on machine
learning algorithms. By utilizing the server-client topology while keeping
clients distributed for global protection, high detection rate is achieved with
minimum network impact. We implement accurate models of normal-abnormal binary
detection and multi-attack identification based on logistic regression and
quasi-Newton optimization algorithm using the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno
approach. The detection system is capable of accelerating detection by
information gain based feature selection or principle component analysis based
dimension reduction. By evaluating our system using the KDD99 dataset and the
industrial control system dataset, we demonstrate that HOIDS is highly
scalable, efficient and cost effective for securing SCADA infrastructures.


title:
Safety-Aware Robot Damage Recovery Using Constrained Bayesian
  Optimization and Simulated Priors

abstract:
  The recently introduced Intelligent Trial-and-Error (IT&E) algorithm showed
that robots can adapt to damage in a matter of a few trials. The success of
this algorithm relies on two components: prior knowledge acquired through
simulation with an intact robot, and Bayesian optimization (BO) that operates
on-line, on the damaged robot. While IT&E leads to fast damage recovery, it
does not incorporate any safety constraints that prevent the robot from
attempting harmful behaviors. In this work, we address this limitation by
replacing the BO component with a constrained BO procedure. We evaluate our
approach on a simulated damaged humanoid robot that needs to crawl as fast as
possible, while performing as few unsafe trials as possible. We compare our new
"safety-aware IT&E" algorithm to IT&E and a multi-objective version of IT&E in
which the safety constraints are dealt as separate objectives. Our results show
that our algorithm outperforms the other approaches, both in crawling speed
within the safe regions and number of unsafe trials.


title:
The Factor-Lasso and K-Step Bootstrap Approach for Inference in
  High-Dimensional Economic Applications

abstract:
  We consider inference about coefficients on a small number of variables of
interest in a linear panel data model with additive unobserved individual and
time specific effects and a large number of additional time-varying confounding
variables. We allow the number of these additional confounding variables to be
larger than the sample size, and suppose that, in addition to unrestricted time
and individual specific effects, these confounding variables are generated by a
small number of common factors and high-dimensional weakly-dependent
disturbances. We allow that both the factors and the disturbances are related
to the outcome variable and other variables of interest. To make informative
inference feasible, we impose that the contribution of the part of the
confounding variables not captured by time specific effects, individual
specific effects, or the common factors can be captured by a relatively small
number of terms whose identities are unknown. Within this framework, we provide
a convenient computational algorithm based on factor extraction followed by
lasso regression for inference about parameters of interest and show that the
resulting procedure has good asymptotic properties. We also provide a simple
k-step bootstrap procedure that may be used to construct inferential statements
about parameters of interest and prove its asymptotic validity. The proposed
bootstrap may be of substantive independent interest outside of the present
context as the proposed bootstrap may readily be adapted to other contexts
involving inference after lasso variable selection and the proof of its
validity requires some new technical arguments. We also provide simulation
evidence about performance of our procedure and illustrate its use in two
empirical applications.


title:
Nonparametric covariate-adjusted response-adaptive design based on a
  functional urn model

abstract:
  In this paper we propose a general class of covariate-adjusted
response-adaptive (CARA) designs based on a new functional urn model. We prove
strong consistency concerning the functional urn proportion and the proportion
of subjects assigned to the treatment groups, in the whole study and for each
covariate profile, allowing the distribution of the responses conditioned on
covariates to be estimated nonparametrically. In addition, we establish joint
central limit theorems for the above quantities and the sufficient statistics
of features of interest, which allow to construct procedures to make inference
on the conditional response distributions. These results are then applied to
typical situations concerning Gaussian and binary responses.


title: A new class of half-metallic ferromagnets from first principles

abstract:
  Half-metallic ferromagnetism (HMFM) occurs rarely in materials and yet offers
great potential for spintronic devices. Recent experiments suggest a class of
compounds with the `ThCr$_{2}$Si$_{2}$' (122) structure -- isostructural and
containing elements common with Fe pnictide-based superconductors -- can
exhibit HMFM. Here we use $ab$ $initio$ density-functional theory calculations
to understand the onset of half-metallicity in this family of materials and
explain the appearance of ferromagnetism at a quantum critical point. We also
predict new candidate materials with HMFM and high Curie temperatures through
A-site alloying.


title:
A threshold result for loose Hamiltonicity in random regular uniform
  hypergraphs

abstract:
  Let $\mathcal{G}(n,r,s)$ denote a uniformly random $r$-regular $s$-uniform
hypergraph on $n$ vertices, where $s$ is a fixed constant and $r=r(n)$ may grow
with $n$. An $\ell$-overlapping Hamilton cycle is a Hamilton cycle in which
successive edges overlap in precisely $\ell$ vertices, and 1-overlapping
Hamilton cycles are called loose Hamilton cycles.
  When $r,s\geq 3$ are fixed integers, we establish a threshold result for the
property of containing a loose Hamilton cycle. This partially verifies a
conjecture of Dudek, Frieze, Rucinski and Sileikis (2015). In this setting, we
also find the asymptotic distribution of the number of loose Hamilton cycles in
$\mathcal{G}(n,r,s)$.
  Finally we prove that for $\ell = 2,\ldots, s-1$ and for $r$ growing
moderately as $n\to\infty$, the probability that $\mathcal{G}(n,r,s)$ has a
$\ell$-overlapping Hamilton cycle tends to zero.


title:
Development of a multi-sensor perceptual system for mobile robot and
  EKF-based localization

abstract:
  This paper presents the design and implementation of a perceptual system for
the mobile robot using modern sensors and multi-point communication channels.
The data extracted from the perceptual system is processed by a sensor fusion
model to obtain meaningful information for the robot localization and control.
Due to the uncertainties of acquiring data, an extended Kalman filter was
applied to get optimal states of the system. Several experiments have been
conducted and the results confirmed the functioning operation of the perceptual
system and the efficiency of the Kalman filter approach.


title:
Horizontal Distribution Relations for Special Cycles on Unitary Shimura
  Varieties: Split Case

abstract:
  We study the local behavior of special cycles on Shimura varieties for
$\mathbf{U}(2, 1) \times \mathbf{U}(1, 1)$ in the setting of the
Gan-Gross-Prasad conjectures at primes $\tau$ of the totally real field of
definition of the unitary spaces which are split in the corresponding totally
imaginary quadratic extension. We establish a local formula for their fields of
definition, and prove a distribution relation between the Galois and Hecke
actions on them. This complements work of \cite{jetchev:unitary} at inert
primes, where the combinatorics of the formulas are reduced to calculations on
the Bruhat--Tits trees, which in the split case must be replaced with
higher-dimensional buildings.


title: Probing the distance-duality relation with high-$z$ data

abstract:
  Measurements of strong gravitational lensing jointly with type Ia supernovae
(SNe Ia) observations have been used to test the validity of the cosmic
distance duality relation (CDDR), $D_L(z)/[(1+z)^2D_A(z)]=\eta=1$, where
$D_L(z)$ and $D_A(z)$ are the luminosity and the angular diameter distances to
a given redshift $z$, respectively. However, several lensing systems lie in the
interval $1.4 \leq z \leq 3.6$ i.e., beyond the redshift range of current SNe
Ia compilations ($z \approx 1.50$), which prevents this kind of test to be
fully explored. In this paper, we circumvent this problem by testing the CDDR
considering observations of strong gravitational lensing along with SNe Ia and
{ a subsample from} the latest gamma-ray burst distance modulus data, whose
redshift range is $0.033 \leq z \leq 9.3$. { We parameterize their luminosity
distances with a second degree polynomial function and search for possible
deviations from the CDDR validity by using four different $\eta(z)$ functions:
$\eta(z)=1+\eta_0z$, $\eta(z)=1+\eta_0z/(1+z)$, $\eta(z)=(1+z)^{\eta_0}$ and
$\eta(z)=1+\eta_0\ln(1+z)$. Unlike previous tests done at redshifts lower than
$1.50$, the likelihood for $\eta_0$ depends strongly on the $\eta(z)$ function
considered, but we find no significant deviation from the CDDR validity
($\eta_0=0$). However, our analyses also point to the fact that caution is
needed when one fits data in higher redshifts to test the CDDR as well as a
better understanding of the mass distribution of lenses also is required for
more accurate results.