title:
Predict genome-scale fluxes based solely on enzyme abundance by a novel
  Hyper-Cube Shrink Algorithm

abstract:
  One of the long-expected goals of genome-scale metabolic modeling is to
evaluate the influence of the perturbed enzymes to the flux distribution. Both
ordinary differential equation (ODE) models and the constraint-based models,
like Flux balance analysis (FBA), lack of the room of performing metabolic
control analysis (MCA) for large-scale networks. In this study, we developed a
Hyper-Cube Shrink Algorithm (HCSA) to incorporate the enzymatic properties to
the FBA model by introducing a pseudo reaction constrained by enzymatic
parameters. Our algorithm was able to handle not only prediction of knockout
strains but also strains with quantitative adjustment of expression level or
activity. We first demonstrate the concept by applying HCSA to a simplest
three-node network. Then we validate its prediction by comparing with ODE and
with a synthetic network in Saccharomyces cerevisiae producing voilacein and
analogues. Finally we show its capability of predicting the flux distribution
in genome-scale networks by applying it to the sporulation in yeast.


title:
The spherical transform of a Schwartz function on the free two step
  nilpotent lie group

abstract:
  Let $F(n)$ be a connected and simply connected free 2-step nilpotent lie
group and $K$ be a compact subgroup of Aut($F(n)$). We say that $(K,F(n))$ is a
Gelfand pair when the set of integrable $K$-invariant functions on $F(n)$ forms
an abelian algebra under convolution. In this paper, we consider the case when
$K=O(n)$. In this case, the Gelfand space $(O(n),F(n)$ is equipped with the
Godement-Plancherel measure, and the spherical transform
$\land:L_{O(n)}^{2}(F(n))\rightarrow L^{2}(\Delta (O(n),F(n)))$ is an isometry.
I will prove the Gelfand space $\Delta (O(n),F(n))$ is equipped with the
Godement-Plancherel measure and the inversion formula. Both of which have
something related to its correspond Heisenberg group. The main result in this
paper provides a complete characterization of the set $\varphi_{O(n)}
(F(n))^{\wedge}$=$\{\widehat{f}\mid f\in \varphi_{O(n)} (F(n))\}$ of spherical
transforms of $O(n)$-invariant Schwartz functions on $F(n)$. I show that a
function $F$ on $\Delta (O(n),F(n))$ belongs to $\varphi_{O(n)}
(F(n))^{\wedge}$ if and only if the functions obtained from $F$ via application
of certain derivatives and difference operators satisfy decay conditions.


title:
The isospin dependent nucleon-nucleon inelastic cross section in the
  nuclear medium

abstract:
  The calculation of the energy-, density-, and isospin-dependent $\Delta$
production cross sections in nucleon-nucleon (NN) scattering
$\sigma^*_{NN\rightarrow N\Delta}$ has been performed within the framework of
the relativistic BUU approach. The N$\Delta$ cross sections are calculated in
Born approximation taking into account the effective mass splitting of the
nucleons and $\Delta$s in asymmetric matter. Due to the different mass
splitting for neutron, proton and differently charged $\Delta$s, it is shown
that, similar to the NN elastic ones, the reductions of N$\Delta$ inelastic
cross sections in isospin-asymmetric nuclear medium are different from each
other for all the individual channels and the effect is largest and of opposite
sign for the $\Delta^{++}$ and $\Delta^{-}$ states. This approach is also
compared to calculations without effective mass splitting and with splitting
derived from Dirac-Brueckerner (DB) calculations. The isospin dependence of the
N$\Delta$ cross sections is expected to influence the production of $\pi^+$ and
$\pi^-$ mesons as well as their yield ratio, and thus affect the use of the
latter quantity as a probe of the stiffness of the symmetry energy at
supranormal densities.


title: Techniques of constructions of variations of mixed Hodge structures

abstract:
  We give a way of constructing real variations of mixed Hodge structures over
compact K\"ahler manifolds by using mixed Hodge structures on Sullivan's
$1$-minimal models of certain differential graded algebras associated with real
variations of Hodge structures.


title: Polymerization of sodium-doped liquid nitrogen under pressure

abstract:
  First-principles molecular dynamics (FPMD) simulations are performed on 6 and
12% Na in dense liquid N. A detailed description of structural and electronic
properties leading to an understanding of the effect of Na-doping on the
polymerization phase transition of N is presented. Compression of the mixtures
from 5 to 90 GPa shows three distinct regions of characteristic local order
separated by pressures near 30 and 65 GPa. Computation of Gibbs free energies
of mixing shows that these mixtures are thermodynamically stable beyond 20 and
15 GPa for 6 and 12 % Na respectively.


title:
Double-temperature ratchet model and current reversal of coupled
  Brownian motors

abstract:
  On the basis of the transport features and experimental phenomena observed in
studies of molecular motors, we proposea double-temperature ratchet model of
coupled motors to reveal the dynamical mechanism of cooperative transport of
motors with two heads, where the interactions and asynchrony between two motor
heads are taken into account. We investigate the collective unidirectional
transport of coupled system and find that the direction of motion can be
reversed under certain conditions. Reverse motion can be achieved by modulating
the coupling strength, coupling free length, and asymmetric coefficient of the
periodic potential, which is understood in terms of the effective potential
theory. The dependence of the directed current on various parameters is studied
systematically. Directed transport of coupled Brownian motors can be
manipulated and optimized by adjusting the pulsation period or the phase shift
of the pulsation temperature.


title:
Notes on Pure Dataflow Matrix Machines: Programming with
  Self-referential Matrix Transformations

abstract:
  Dataflow matrix machines are self-referential generalized recurrent neural
nets. The self-referential mechanism is provided via a stream of matrices
defining the connectivity and weights of the network in question. A natural
question is: what should play the role of untyped lambda-calculus for this
programming architecture? The proposed answer is a discipline of programming
with only one kind of streams, namely the streams of appropriately shaped
matrices. This yields Pure Dataflow Matrix Machines which are networks of
transformers of streams of matrices capable of defining a pure dataflow matrix
machine.


title: Vanishing simplicial volume for certain affine manifolds

abstract:
  We show that closed aspherical manifolds supporting an affine structure,
whose holonomy map is injective and contains a pure translation, must have
vanishing simplicial volume. This provides some further evidence for the
veracity of the Auslander Conjecture. Along the way, we provide a simple
cohomological criterion for aspherical manifolds with normal amenable subgroups
of $\pi_1$ to have vanishing simplicial volume. This answers a special case of
a question due to L\"uck.


title: The spectral radius of graphs without trees of diameter at most four

abstract:
  Nikiforov (LAA, 2010) conjectured that for given integer $k$, any graph $G$
of sufficiently large order $n$ with spectral radius $\mu(G)\geq \mu(S_{n,k})$
contains all trees of order $2k+2$, unless $G=S_{n,k}$, where $S_{n,k}=K_k\vee
\overline{K_{n-k}}$, the join of a complete graph of order $k$ and an empty
graph of order $n-k$. In this paper, we show that the conjecture is true for
trees of diameter at most four.


title:
Discovery of Infalling Motion with Rotation of the Cluster-Forming Clump
  S235AB and Its Implication to the Clump Structures

abstract:
  We report the discovery of infalling motion with rotation of S235AB the
massive cluster-forming clump (~10^3 Mo) in the S235 region. Our C18O
observations with the 45m telescope at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory have
revealed the elliptical shape of the clump. Position-velocity (PV) diagram
taken along its major axis exhibits two well-defined peaks symmetrically
located with respect to the clump center, which is similar to that found for a
dynamically infalling envelope with rotation around a single protostar modeled
by N. Ohashi and his collaborators, indicating that the cluster-forming clump
is also collapsing by the self-gravity toward the clump center. With analogue
to Ohashi's model, we made a simple model of an infalling, rotating clump to
fit the observed data. Based on the inferred model parameters as well as
results of earlier observations and simulations in the literature, we discuss
structures of the clump such as the relation among the global mass infall rate
(~10^-3 Mo/yr), formation of a compact core (with a mass and size of ~4 Mo and
< 0.1 pc) at the center, and a massive star (~11 Mo) forming in the core.


title: A fast algorithm for radiative transport in isotropic media

abstract:
  We propose in this work a fast numerical algorithm for solving the equation
of radiative transfer (ERT) in isotropic media. The algorithm has two steps. In
the first step, we derive an integral equation for the angularly averaged ERT
solution by taking advantage of the isotropy of the scattering kernel, and
solve the integral equation with a fast multipole method (FMM). In the second
step, we solve a scattering-free transport equation to recover the original ERT
solution. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the performance of
the algorithm for both homogeneous and inhomogeneous media.


title: Non-parametric inverse curvature flows in the AdS-Schwarzschild manifold

abstract:
  We consider the inverse curvature flows in the anti-de Sitter-Schwarzschild
manifold with star-shaped initial hypersurface, driven by the 1-homogeneous
curvature function. We show that the solutions exist for all time and the
principle curvatures of the hypersurface converges to 1 exponentially fast.


title: Phase transition in firefly cellular automata on finite trees

abstract:
  We study a one-parameter family of discrete dynamical systems called the
$\kappa$-color firefly cellular automata (FCAs), which were introduced recently
by the author. At each discrete time $t$, each vertex in a graph has a state in
${\{0, \ldots, \kappa-1\}}$, and a special state $b(\kappa) =
\lfloor\frac{\kappa-1}{2}\rfloor$ is designated as the `blinking' state. At
step $t$, simultaneously for all vertices, the state of a vertex increments
from $k$ to $k+1\mod \kappa$ unless $k>b(\kappa)$ and at least one of its
neighbors is in the state $b(\kappa)$. A central question about this system is
that on what class of network topologies synchrony is guaranteed to emerge. In
a previous work, we have shown that for $\kappa\in \{3,4,5\}$, every
$\kappa$-coloring on a finite tree synchronizes iff the maximum degree is less
than $\kappa$, and asked whether this behavior holds for all $\kappa$. In this
paper, we answer the question positively for $\kappa=6$ and negatively for all
$\kappa\ge 7$ by constructing counterexamples on trees with maximum degree at
most $\kappa/2+1$.


title: Image Aesthetic Assessment: An Experimental Survey

abstract:
  This survey aims at reviewing recent computer vision techniques used in the
assessment of image aesthetic quality. Image aesthetic assessment aims at
computationally distinguishing high-quality photos from low-quality ones based
on photographic rules, typically in the form of binary classification or
quality scoring. A variety of approaches has been proposed in the literature
trying to solve this challenging problem. In this survey, we present a
systematic listing of the reviewed approaches based on visual feature types
(hand-crafted features and deep features) and evaluation criteria (dataset
characteristics and evaluation metrics). Main contributions and novelties of
the reviewed approaches are highlighted and discussed. In addition, following
the emergence of deep learning techniques, we systematically evaluate recent
deep learning settings that are useful for developing a robust deep model for
aesthetic scoring. Experiments are conducted using simple yet solid baselines
that are competitive with the current state-of-the-arts. Moreover, we discuss
the possibility of manipulating the aesthetics of images through computational
approaches. We hope that our survey could serve as a comprehensive reference
source for future research on the study of image aesthetic assessment.


title: Resolving magnon number states in quantum magnonics

abstract:
  Collective excitation modes in solid state systems play a central role in
circuit quantum electrodynamics, cavity optomechanics, and quantum magnonics.
In the latter, quanta of collective excitation modes in a ferromagnet, called
magnons, interact with qubits to provide the nonlinearity necessary to access
quantum phenomena in magnonics. A key ingredient for future quantum magnonics
systems is the ability to probe magnon states. Here we observe individual
magnons in a millimeter-sized ferromagnet coherently coupled to a
superconducting qubit. Specifically, we resolve magnon number states in
spectroscopic measurements of a transmon qubit with the hybrid system in the
strong dispersive regime. This enables us to detect a change in the magnetic
dipole of the ferromagnet equivalent to a single spin flipped among more than
$10^{19}$ spins. The strong dispersive regime of quantum magnonics opens up the
possibility of encoding superconducting qubits into non-classical magnon
states, potentially providing a coherent interface between a superconducting
quantum processor and optical photons.


title:
Statistical connection of peak counts to power spectrum and moments in
  weak lensing field

abstract:
  The number density of local maxima of weak lensing field, referred to as
weak-lensing peak counts, can be used as a cosmological probe. However, its
relevant cosmological information is still unclear. We study the relationship
between the peak counts and other statistics in weak lensing field by using
1000 ray-tracing simulations. We construct a local transformation of lensing
field $\cal K$ to a new Gaussian field $y$, named local-Gaussianized
transformation. We calibrate the transformation with numerical simulations so
that the one-point distribution and the power spectrum of $\cal K$ can be
reproduced from a single Gaussian field $y$ and monotonic relation between $y$
and $\cal K$. Therefore, the correct information of two-point clustering and
any order of moments in weak lensing field should be preserved under
local-Gaussianized transformation. We then examine if local-Gaussianized
transformation can predict weak-lensing peak counts in simulations. The
local-Gaussianized transformation is insufficient to explain weak-lensing peak
counts in the absence of shape noise. The prediction by local-Gaussianized
transformation underestimates the simulated peak counts with a level of
$\sim20-30\%$ over a wide range of peak heights. Local-Gaussianized
transformation can predict the weak-lensing peak counts with a $\sim10\%$
accuracy in the presence of shape noise. Our analyses suggest that the
cosmological information beyond power spectrum and its moments would be
necessary to predict the weak-lensing peak counts with a percent-level
accuracy, which is an expected statistical uncertainty in upcoming wide-field
galaxy surveys.


title:
Parameters Differentiating the Characteristics and Security of Military
  Information Systems

abstract:
  Revolution in the area of information technology has brought about changes in
many spheres of life. Today, information systems are being used in very
sensitive areas such as defence and missile control systems, nuclear plants,
etc. Not only has it changed how business is conducted, it has also brought
about entirely new paradigms like that of information and cyber warfare.
Similarly, one of the many impacts that it has made, is how wars are fought.
For all what it has contributed, the information stored on digital devices and
computers has become a precious resource and special measures are taken to
guard it against attacks from malicious users. These special measures are
needed by any enterprise be it a business firm, a commercial entity, a
government agency or a military organization. However, requirements and
specifications for information security and assurance for a military
organization are essentially different from those of commercial or business
applications. This paper highlights and discusses various aspects related to
the security of information resources of military importance and outlines
certain parameters that should be taken into consideration when talking about
the security of military information resources. W also describe the role
satellite reconnaissance can play in cyber war. Authors proclaim that this
paper is first such attempt to correlate cyber war with satellite
reconnaissance.


title: Chinese Event Extraction Using DeepNeural Network with Word Embedding

abstract:
  A lot of prior work on event extraction has exploited a variety of features
to represent events. Such methods have several drawbacks: 1) the features are
often specific for a particular domain and do not generalize well; 2) the
features are derived from various linguistic analyses and are error-prone; and
3) some features may be expensive and require domain expert. In this paper, we
develop a Chinese event extraction system that uses word embedding vectors to
represent language, and deep neural networks to learn the abstract feature
representation in order to greatly reduce the effort of feature engineering. In
addition, in this framework, we leverage large amount of unlabeled data, which
can address the problem of limited labeled corpus for this task. Our
experiments show that our proposed method performs better compared to the
system using rich language features, and using unlabeled data benefits the word
embeddings. This study suggests the potential of DNN and word embedding for the
event extraction task.


title: The Search Problem in Mixture Models

abstract:
  We consider the task of learning the parameters of a {\em single} component
of a mixture model, for the case when we are given {\em side information} about
that component, we call this the "search problem" in mixture models. We would
like to solve this with computational and sample complexity lower than solving
the overall original problem, where one learns parameters of all components.
  Our main contributions are the development of a simple but general model for
the notion of side information, and a corresponding simple matrix-based
algorithm for solving the search problem in this general setting. We then
specialize this model and algorithm to four common scenarios: Gaussian mixture
models, LDA topic models, subspace clustering, and mixed linear regression. For
each one of these we show that if (and only if) the side information is
informative, we obtain parameter estimates with greater accuracy, and also
improved computation complexity than existing moment based mixture model
algorithms (e.g. tensor methods). We also illustrate several natural ways one
can obtain such side information, for specific problem instances. Our
experiments on real data sets (NY Times, Yelp, BSDS500) further demonstrate the
practicality of our algorithms showing significant improvement in runtime and
accuracy.


title: Revisiting Role Discovery in Networks: From Node to Edge Roles

abstract:
  Previous work in network analysis has focused on modeling the
mixed-memberships of node roles in the graph, but not the roles of edges. We
introduce the edge role discovery problem and present a generalizable framework
for learning and extracting edge roles from arbitrary graphs automatically.
Furthermore, while existing node-centric role models have mainly focused on
simple degree and egonet features, this work also explores graphlet features
for role discovery. In addition, we also develop an approach for automatically
learning and extracting important and useful edge features from an arbitrary
graph. The experimental results demonstrate the utility of edge roles for
network analysis tasks on a variety of graphs from various problem domains.


title: Isometrically Self-dual Cyclic Codes

abstract:
  General isometries of cyclic codes, including multipliers and translations,
are introduced; and isometrically self-dual cyclic codes are defined. In terms
of Type-I duadic splittings given by multipliers and translations, a necessary
and sufficient condition for the existence of isometrically self-dual cyclic
codes is obtained. A program to construct isometrically self-dual cyclic codes
is provided, and illustrated by several examples. In particular, a class of
isometrically self-dual MDS cyclic codes, which are alternant codes from a
class of generalized Reed-Solomon codes, is presented.


title:
Economical Energy Efficiency E3: An Advanced Performance Metric for 5G
  Systems

abstract:
  The performances of the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems
are significantly affected by edge cache and transport network. These emerging
components bring substantial costs of the placement and utilization, and the
evaluation of the cost impact is beyond the capability of traditional
performance metrics, including spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency
(EE). In this article, economical energy efficiency (E3) is proposed, whose
core idea is to take SE/EE and cost into account to evaluate comprehensive
gains when different kinds of advanced technologies are used in 5G systems. The
E3results are shown when the transport network and edge cache are separately or
jointly used. Open issues in terms of modeling the cost, E3optimization based
radio resource allocation, and E3optimization for internet of things, are
identified as well.


title:
Transverse K\"ahler structures on central foliations of complex
  manifolds

abstract:
  For a compact complex manifold, we introduce holomorphic foliations
associated with certain abelian subgroups of the automorphism group. Such
foliations are generalizations of holomorphic principal torus bundles. If there
exists a transverse K\"ahler structure on such a foliation, then we obtain a
nice differential graded algebra which is quasi-isomorphic to the de Rham
complex and a nice differential bigraded algebra which is quasi-isomorphic to
the Dolbeault complex like the formality of compact K\"ahler manifolds.
Moreover, under certain additional condition, we can develop Morgan's theory of
mixed Hodge structures as similar to the study on smooth algebraic varieties.


title:
The effect of porosity of dust particles on polarization and color with
  special reference to comets

abstract:
  Cosmic dusts are mostly responsible for polarization of the light that we ob-
serve from astrophysical objects. They also lead to color-extinction, thermal
re- emission and other scattering related phenomena. Dusts are made of small
particles which are characterised by their size (radius), composition (matter),
and structure (morphology, including porosity). In the present work, we address
the question of the role of the dust particle porosity on light polarization
and color, using Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA) light scattering code. To
answer this question, we developed an algorithm to generate solid particles of
arbitrary values of porosity. In brief, the model considers a given homogeneous
structure made of touching dipoles. The dipoles are randomly removed one by
one, such that the remaining structure remains connected. We stop the removal
process when the desired poros- ity is obtained. Then we study the optical
properties of the porous particle. That way, we show how the proper value of
the porosity affects the polarization and color of the light scattered by these
porous particles. In addition to polarization, porosity has important effects
on photometric color. Considering an important application, we emphasize the
possible role of the porosity of the cometary dust particles on polarization
and color of the light scattered by cometary coma.


title:
Effects of Pb doping on the Thermoelectric Properties of
  Tl8.67PbxSb1.33-xTe6 Materials

abstract:
  We present the effects of lead doping on the thermoelectric properties of
Tellurium Telluride, prepared by solid state reactions in an evacuated sealed
silica tubes. Structurally, all these compounds were found to be phase pure as
confirmed by the x-rays and energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis. The
Seebeck co-efficient S was measured for all these compounds which show that S
increases with increasing temperature from 295 to 550 K. The Seebeck
coefficient is positive for the whole temperature range, showing p-type
semiconductor characteristics. Complex behavior of Seebeck coefficient for lead
doped compounds has been observed that at room temperature, the values of S for
these compounds have complex behavior, first S decreasing with increase in lead
concentration, and then S increases with increase in lead contents up to
Similarly the electrical conductivity and the power factors have also complex
behavior with lead concentrations. The power factor observed for these
compounds are increases with increase in the whole temperature range studied
here.


title:
Comparing Human-Centric and Robot-Centric Sampling for Robot Deep
  Learning from Demonstrations

abstract:
  Motivated by recent advances in Deep Learning for robot control, this paper
considers two learning algorithms in terms of how they acquire demonstrations.
"Human-Centric" (HC) sampling is the standard supervised learning algorithm,
where a human supervisor demonstrates the task by teleoperating the robot to
provide trajectories consisting of state-control pairs. "Robot-Centric" (RC)
sampling is an increasingly popular alternative used in algorithms such as
DAgger, where a human supervisor observes the robot executing a learned policy
and provides corrective control labels for each state visited. RC sampling can
be challenging for human supervisors and prone to mislabeling. RC sampling can
also induce error in policy performance because it repeatedly visits areas of
the state space that are harder to learn. Although policies learned with RC
sampling can be superior to HC sampling for standard learning models such as
linear SVMs, policies learned with HC sampling may be comparable with
highly-expressive learning models such as deep learning and hyper-parametric
decision trees, which have little model error. We compare HC and RC using a
grid world and a physical robot singulation task, where in the latter the input
is a binary image of a connected set of objects on a planar worksurface and the
policy generates a motion of the gripper to separate one object from the rest.
We observe in simulation that for linear SVMs, policies learned with RC
outperformed those learned with HC but that with deep models this advantage
disappears. We also find that with RC, the corrective control labels provided
by humans can be highly inconsistent. We prove there exists a class of examples
where in the limit, HC is guaranteed to converge to an optimal policy while RC
may fail to converge.


title:
Relaxation of the entanglement spectrum in quench dynamics of
  topological systems

abstract:
  We study how the entanglement spectrum relaxes to its steady state in
one-dimensional quadratic systems after a quantum quench. In particular we
apply the saddle point expansion to the dimerized chains and 1-D p-wave
superconductors. We find that the entanglement spectrum always exhibits a
power-law relaxation superimposed with oscillations at certain characteristic
angular frequencies. For the dimerized chains, we find that the exponent $\nu$
of the power-law decay is always $3/2$. For 1-D p-wave superconductors,
however, we find that depending on the initial and final Hamiltonian, the
exponent $\nu$ can take value from a limited list of values. The smallest
possible value is $\nu=1/2$, which leads to a very slow convergence to its
steady state value.


title:
Ensemble Maximum Entropy Classification and Linear Regression for Author
  Age Prediction

abstract:
  The evolution of the internet has created an abundance of unstructured data
on the web, a significant part of which is textual. The task of author
profiling seeks to find the demographics of people solely from their linguistic
and content-based features in text. The ability to describe traits of authors
clearly has applications in fields such as security and forensics, as well as
marketing. Instead of seeing age as just a classification problem, we also
frame age as a regression one, but use an ensemble chain method that
incorporates the power of both classification and regression to learn the
authors exact age.


title:
Constrained Hitting Set and Steiner Tree in $SC_k$ and $2K_2$-free
  Graphs

abstract:
  \emph{Strictly Chordality-$k$ graphs ($SC_k$)} are graphs which are either
cycle-free or every induced cycle is of length exactly $k, k \geq 3$. Strictly
chordality-3 and strictly chordality-4 graphs are well known chordal and
chordal bipartite graphs, respectively. For $k\geq 5$, the study has been
recently initiated in \cite{sadagopan} and various structural and algorithmic
results are reported. In this paper, we show that maximum independent set
(MIS), minimum vertex cover, minimum dominating set, feedback vertex set (FVS),
odd cycle transversal (OCT), even cycle transversal (ECT) and Steiner tree
problem are polynomial time solvable on $SC_k$ graphs, $k\geq 5$. We next
consider $2K_2$-free graphs and show that FVS, OCT, ECT, Steiner tree problem
are polynomial time solvable on subclasses of $2K_2$-free graphs.


title:
Cosmology with gamma-ray bursts: I. The Hubble diagram through the
  calibrated $E_{\rm p,i}$ - $E_{\rm iso}$ correlation

abstract:
  Gamma-ray bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe. They are
detectable up to very high redshifts, therefore can be used to study the
expansion rate of the Universe and to investigate the observational properties
of dark energy, provided that empirical correlations between spectral and
intensity properties are appropriately calibrated. We used the type Ia
supernova luminosity distances to calibrate the correlation between the peak
photon energy, $E_{p, i}$, and the isotropic equivalent radiated energy, $
E_{iso}$ in GRBs. With this correlation, we tested the reliability of applying
GRBs to measure cosmological parameters and to obtain indications on the basic
properties and evolution of dark energy. Using 162 GRBs with measured redshifts
and spectra, we applied a local regression technique to calibrate the $E_{p,
i}$-$E_{iso}$ correlation against the type Ia SN data to build a calibrated GRB
Hubble diagram. We tested the possible redshift dependence of the correlation
and its effect on the Hubble diagram. Finally, we used the GRB Hubble diagram
to investigate the dark energy EOS. For this, we focused on the so-called
Chevalier-Polarski-Linder (CPL) parametrization of the dark energy EOS and
implemented the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to efficiently sample
the space of cosmological parameters. Our analysis shows once more that the
$E_{p, i}$-$E_{iso}$ correlation has no significant redshift dependence.
Therefore the high-redshift GRBs can be used as a cosmological tool to
determine the basic cosmological parameters and to test different models of
dark energy in the redshift region ($z\geqslant 3$), which is unexplored by the
SNIa and baryonic acoustic oscillations data. Our updated calibrated Hubble
diagram of GRBs provides some marginal indication (at $1\sigma$ level) of an
evolving dark energy EOS.


title: The Hamiltonian Cycle in $K_{1,r}$-free Split Graphs -- A Dichotomy

abstract:
  In this paper, we investigate the well-studied Hamiltonian cycle problem
(HCYCLE), and present an interesting dichotomy result on split graphs. T.
Akiyama et al. (1980) have shown that HCYCLE is NP-complete in planar bipartite
graphs with maximum degree $3$. Using this reduction, we show that HCYCLE is
NP-complete in split graphs. In particular, we show that the problem is
NP-complete in $K_{1,5}$-free split graphs. Further, we present polynomial-time
algorithms for Hamiltonian cycle in $K_{1,3}$-free and $K_{1,4}$-free split
graphs. We believe that the structural results presented in this paper can be
used to show similar dichotomy result for Hamiltonian path problem (HPATH) and
other variants of HCYCLE.


title:
Spin Injection and Inverse Edelstein Effect in the Surface States of
  Topological Kondo Insulator SmB6

abstract:
  There has been considerable interest in exploiting the spin degrees of
freedom of electrons for potential information storage and computing
technologies. Topological insulators (TI), a class of quantum materials, have
special gapless edge/surface states, where the spin polarization of the Dirac
fermions is locked to the momentum direction. This spin-momentum locking
property gives rise to very interesting spin-dependent physical phenomena such
as the Edelstein and inverse Edelstein effects. However, the spin injection in
pure surface states of TI is very challenging because of the coexistence of the
highly conducting bulk states. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the spin
injection and observe the inverse Edelstein effect in the surface states of a
topological Kondo insulator, SmB6. At low temperatures when only surface
carriers are present, a clear spin signal is observed. Furthermore, the
magnetic field angle dependence of the spin signal is consistent with
spin-momentum locking property of surface states of SmB6.


title: Multiuser Rate-Diverse Network-Coded Multiple Access

abstract:
  This paper presents the first Network-Coded Multiple Access (NCMA) system
with multiple users adopting different signal modulations, referred to as
rate-diverse NCMA. A distinguishing feature of NCMA is the joint use of
physical-layer network coding (PNC) and multiuser decoding (MUD) to boost
throughput of multipacket reception systems. In previous NCMA systems, users
adopt the same modulation regardless of their individual channel conditions.
This leads to suboptimal throughput for many practical scenarios, especially
when different users have widely varying channel conditions. A rate-diverse
NCMA system allows different users to use modulations that are commensurate
with their channel conditions. A key challenge is the design of the PNC mapping
and decoding mechanisms in NCMA when different users adopt different
modulations. While there have been past work on non-channel-coded rate-diverse
PNC, this paper is the first attempt to design channel-coded rate-diverse PNC
to ensure the reliability of the overall NCMA system. Specifically, we put
forth a symbol-splitting channel coding and modulation design so that PNC/NCMA
can work over different modulations. We implemented our rate-diverse NCMA
system on software-defined radios. Experimental results show that the
throughput of rate-diverse NCMA can outperform the state-of-the-art
rate-homogeneous NCMA by 80%. Overall, the introduction of rate diversity
significantly boosts the NCMA system throughput in practical scenarios.


title:
No finite axiomatizations for posets embeddable into distributive
  lattices

abstract:
  Let $m$ and $n$ be cardinals with $3\leq m,n\leq\omega$. We show that the
class of posets that can be embedded into a distributive lattice via a map
preserving all existing meets and joins with cardinalities strictly less than
$m$ and $n$ respectively cannot be finitely axiomatized.


title:
Influence of Fe, Ni, and Cu Doping on the Photocatalytic Efficiency of
  ZnS: Implications for Prebiotic Chemistry

abstract:
  The mineral sphalerite (ZnS) is a typical constituent at the periphery of
submarine hydrothermal deposits on Earth. It has been frequently suggested to
have played an important role in the prebiotic chemistry due to its prominent
photocatalytic activity. Nevertheless, the need for {\lambda} < 344 nm UV
radiation, which accounts for a very minor part of the energy range of the
incoming solar spectrum, limits the application of this semiconductor. In this
paper we employed a simple co-precipitation method for the fabrication of Fe,
Ni, and Cu-doped ZnS colloids and investigated their activities in the
photocatalyzed reduction of fumaric acid. The results show that the
photocatalytic activity of pristine ZnS is almost identical with that of 0.1
atom% Fe-doped ZnS, but decreases by doping 0.1 atom% Ni. However, it can be
significantly enhanced by doping Cu because this dopant makes the optical
absorption edges of ZnS shift from UV band to longer wavelengths. The optimal
doping concentration was found to be 0.3 atom%. Even under {\lambda} > 450 nm
light irradiation, the photocatalyst Zn1-xCuxS can drive the reduction of
fumaric acid to produce succinic acid. Given the existence of this doped
semiconductor in the hydrothermal vents on early Earth and its capability to
utilize both UV and visible light, ZnS might have participated more efficiently
than ever estimated in the prebiotic chemical evolution.


title:
Operator theory and representation of distinguished varieties in the
  symmetrized tridisc

abstract:
  We show that every distinguished variety in the symmetrized tridisc $\mathbb
G_3$ is one-dimensional and can be represented as \begin{equation}\label{eqn:1}
\Lambda=\{ (s_1,s_2,p)\in \mathbb G_3 \,:\, (s_1,s_2) \in
\sigma_T(F_1^*+pF_2\,,\, F_2^*+pF_1) \}, \end{equation} where $F_1,F_2$ are
commuting square matrices of the same order satisfying
$[F_1^*,F_1]=[F_2^*,F_2]$ and a norm condition. The converse also holds, i.e, a
set of the form (\ref{eqn:1}) is always a distinguished variety in $\mathbb
G_3$. We show that for a triple of commuting operators $\Sigma = (S_1,S_2,P)$
having $\Gamma_3$ as a spectral set, there is a one-dimensional subvariety
$\Lambda_{\Sigma}$ of $\Gamma_3$ depending on $\Sigma$ such that von-Neumann's
inequality holds, i.e, \[ f(S_1,S_2,P)\leq
\sup_{(s_1,s_2,p)\in\Lambda_{\Sigma}}\, |f(s_1,s_2,p)|, \] for any holomorphic
polynomial $f$ in three variables, provided that $P^n\rightarrow 0$ strongly as
$n\rightarrow \infty$. The variety $\Lambda_\Sigma$ has been shown to have
representation like (\ref{eqn:1}), where $F_1,F_2$ are the unique solutions of
the operator equations \begin{gather*}
S_1-S_2^*P=(I-P^*P)^{\frac{1}{2}}X_1(I-P^*P)^{\frac{1}{2}} \text{ and } \\
S_2-S_1^*P=(I-P^*P)^{\frac{1}{2}}X_2(I-P^*P)^{\frac{1}{2}}. \end{gather*} We
also show that under certain condition, $\Lambda_\Sigma$ is a distinguished
variety in $\mathbb G_3$. We produce an explicit dilation and a concrete
functional model for such a triple $(S_1,S_2,P)$ in which the unique operators
$F_1,F_2$ play the main role. Also, we describe a connection of this theory
with the distinguished varieties in the symmetrized bidisc and in the unit
bidisc $\mathbb D^2$.


title:
Modulation of elasticity and interactions in charged lipid
  multibilayers: monovalent salt solutions

abstract:
  We have studied the electrostatic screening effect of NaCl solutions on the
interactions between anionic lipid bilayers in the fluid lamellar phase using a
Poisson-Boltzmann based mean-field approach with constant charge and constant
potential limiting charge regulation boundary conditions. The full DLVO
potential, including the electrostatic, hydration and van der Waals
interactions, was coupled to thermal bending fluctuations of the membranes via
a variational Gaussian Ansatz. This allowed us to analyze the coupling between
the osmotic pressure and the fluctuation amplitudes and compare them both
simultaneously with the measured dependence on the bilayer separation,
determined by the small-angle X-ray scattering experiments. High-structural
resolution analysis of the scattering data revealed no significant changes of
membrane structure as a function of salt concentration. Parsimonious
description of our results is consistent with the constant charge limit of the
general charge regulation phenomenology, with fully dissociated lipid charge
groups, together with a four-fold reduction of the membranes' bending rigidity
upon increasing NaCl concentration.


title: Scaling Study and Thermodynamic Properties of the cubic Helimagnet FeGe

abstract:
  The critical behavior of the cubic helimagnet FeGe was obtained from
isothermal magnetization data in very close vicinity of the ordering
temperature. A thorough and consistent scaling analysis of these data revealed
the critical exponents $\beta=0.368$, $\gamma=1.382$, and $\delta=4.787$. The
anomaly in the specific heat associated with the magnetic ordering can be well
described by the critical exponent $\alpha=-0.133$. The values of these
exponents corroborate that the magnetic phase transition in FeGe belongs to the
isotropic 3D-Heisenberg universality class. The specific heat data are well
described by ab initio phonon calculations and confirm the localized character
of the magnetic moments.


title: Topological transivity and mixing of the composition operators

abstract:
  Let $X=(X,\mathcal{B},\mu)$ be a $\sigma$-finite measure space and
\mbox{$f:X\to X$} be a measurable transformation such that the composition
operator $T_f:\varphi\mapsto \varphi\circ f$ is a bounded linear operator
acting on $L^p(X,\mathcal{B},\mu)$, $1\le p<\infty$.
  We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on $f$ for $T_f$ to be
topologically transitive or topologically mixing.
  We also characterize the topological dynamics of composition operators
induced by weighted shifts, non-singular odometers and inner functions.
  The results provided in this article hold for composition operators acting on
more general Banach spaces of functions.


title: Fluctuations of eigenvalues of patterned random matrices

abstract:
  In this article we study the fluctuation of linear statistics of eigenvalues
of circulant, symmetric circulant, reverse circulant and Hankel matrices. We
show that the linear spectral statistics of these matrices converges to the
Gaussian distribution in total variation norm when the matrices are constructed
using i.i.d. normal random variables. We also calculate the limiting variance
of the linear spectral statistics for circulant, symmetric circulant and
reverse circulant matrices.


title: Molecular Shocks and the Gamma-ray Clouds of the W28 Supernova Remnant

abstract:
  Interstellar medium clouds in the W28 region are emitting gamma-rays and it
is likely that the W28 supernova remnant is responsible, making W28 a prime
candidate for the study of cosmic-ray acceleration and diffusion. Understanding
the influence of both supernova remnant shocks and cosmic rays on local
molecular clouds can help to identify multi-wavelength signatures of probable
cosmic-ray sources. To this goal, transitions of OH, SiO, NH3, HCO+ and CS have
complemented CO in allowing a characterization of the chemically rich
environment surrounding W28. This remnant has been an ideal test-bed for
techniques that will complement arcminute-scale studies of cosmic-ray source
candidates with future GeV-PeV gamma-ray observations.


title: Finite coupling effects in double quantum dots near equilibrium

abstract:
  A weak coupling quantum master equation provides reliable steady-state
results only in the van Hove limit, i.e., when the system-lead coupling
approaches zero. Recently, J. Thingna et al. [Phys. Rev. E 88, 052127 (2013)]
proposed an alternative approach, based on an analytic continuation of the
Redfield solution, to evaluate the reduced density matrix up to second order in
the system-bath coupling. The approach provides accurate results for harmonic
oscillator and spin-bosonic systems. We apply this approach to study fermionic
systems and the calculation on an exactly solvable double quantum dot system
shows that the method is rigorously valid only near equilibrium, i.e., linear
response regime. We further compare to the Redfield and the secular Redfield
(Lindblad-type) master equations that are inaccurate in all parameter regimes.
Lastly, we consider the non-trivial problem of strong Coulomb interaction and
illustrate the interplay between system-lead coupling, inter-dot tunneling, and
Coulomb strength that can be captured only via the analytic continuation
method.


title: Broadcast Function Computation with Complementary Side Information

abstract:
  We consider the function computation problem in a three node network with one
encoder and two decoders. The encoder has access to two correlated sources $X$
and $Y$. The encoder encodes $X^n$ and $Y^n$ into a message which is given to
two decoders. Decoder 1 and decoder 2 have access to $X$ and $Y$ respectively,
and they want to compute two functions $f(X,Y)$ and $g(X,Y)$ respectively using
the encoded message and their respective side information. We want to find the
optimum (minimum) encoding rate under the zero error and $\epsilon$-error (i.e.
vanishing error) criteria. For the special case of this problem with $f(X,Y) =
Y$ and $g(X,Y) = X$, we show that the $\epsilon$-error optimum rate is also
achievable with zero error. This result extends to a more general
`complementary delivery index coding' problem with arbitrary number of messages
and decoders. For other functions, we show that the cut-set bound is achievable
under $\epsilon$-error if $X$ and $Y$ are binary, or if the functions are from
a special class of `compatible' functions which includes the case $f=g$.


title: Three-dimensional thermographic imaging using a virtual wave concept

abstract:
  In this work, it is shown that image reconstruction methods from ultrasonic
imaging can be employed for thermographic signals. Before using these imaging
methods, a virtual signal is calculated by applying a local transformation to
the temperature evolution measured on a sample surface. The introduced
transformation describes all the irreversibility of the heat diffusion process
and can be used for every sample shape. To date, one-dimensional methods have
been primarily used in thermographic imaging. The proposed two-stage algorithm
enables reconstruction in two and three dimensions. The feasibility of this
approach is demonstrated through simulations and experiments. For the latter,
small steel beads embedded in an epoxy resin are imaged. The resolution limit
is found to be proportional to the depth of the structures and to be inversely
proportional to the logarithm of the signal-to-noise ratio. Limited-view
artefacts can arise if the measurement is performed on a single planar
detection surface. These artifacts can be reduced by measuring the
thermographic signals from multiple planes, which is demonstrated by numerical
simulations and by experiments performed on an epoxy cube.


title:
Interlayer coupling in commensurate and incommensurate bilayer
  structures of transition metal dichalcogenides

abstract:
  The interlayer couplings in commensurate and incommensurate bilayer
structures of transition metal dichalcogenides are investigated with
perturbative treatment. The interlayer coupling in \pm K valleys can be
decomposed into a series of hopping terms with distinct phase factors. In
H-type and R-type commensurate bilayers, the interference between the three
main terms leads to a sensitive dependence of the interlayer coupling strength
on the translation. The magnitudes of the main hopping terms are found to some
dozen of meV by fitting to the ab initio results. The interlayer couplings in
\Gamma valley of valence band and Q valley of conduction band are also studied.
The obtained strong coupling strengths of several hundred meV can play
important roles in mediating the ultrafast interlayer charge transfer in
heterobilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides.


title: Beam distribution reconstruction simulation for electron beam probe

abstract:
  Electron beam probe (EBP) is a new principle detector, which makes use of a
low-intensity and low-energy electron beam to measure the transverse profile,
bunch shape, beam neutralization and beam wake field of an intense beam with
small dimensions. While can be applied to many aspects, we limit our analysis
to beam distribution reconstruction. This kind of detector is almost
non-interceptive for all of the beam and does not disturb the machine
environment. In this paper, we present the theoretical aspects behind this
technique for beam distribution measurement and some simulation results of the
detector involved. First, a method to obtain parallel electron beam is
introduced and a simulation code is developed. And then, EBP as a profile
monitor for dense beam is simulated using fast scan method under various target
beam profile, such as KV distribution, waterbag distribution, parabolic
distribution, Gaussian distribution and halo distribution. Profile
reconstruction from the deflected electron beam trajectory is implemented and
compared with the actual one, and an expected agreement is achieved.
Furthermore, Instead of fast scan, a slow scan, i.e. step-by-step scan, is
considered, which lows the requirement for hardware, i.e. Radio Frequency
deflector. we calculate the three dimensional electric field of Gaussian
distribution and simulate the electron motion under this field. In addition,
fast scan along the target beam direction and slow scan across the beam is also
presented, and can provide a measurement of longitudinal distribution as well
as transverse profile simultaneously. Final, simulation results for China
Accelerator Driven Sub-critical System (CADS) and High Intensity Heavy Ion
Accelerator Facility (HIAF) are given to investigate the quantitative behavior
of EBP.


title:
Probing and controlling terahertz-driven structural dynamics with
  surface sensitivity

abstract:
  Intense, single-cycle terahertz (THz) pulses offer a promising approach for
understanding and controlling the properties of a material on an ultrafast time
scale. In particular, resonantly exciting phonons leads to a better
understanding of how they couple to other degrees of freedom in the material
(e.g., ferroelectricity, conductivity and magnetism) while enabling coherent
control of lattice vibrations and the symmetry changes associated with them.
However, an ultrafast method for observing the resulting structural changes at
the atomic scale is essential for studying phonon dynamics. A simple approach
for doing this is optical second harmonic generation (SHG), a technique with
remarkable sensitivity to crystalline symmetry in the bulk of a material as
well as at surfaces and interfaces. This makes SHG an ideal method for probing
phonon dynamics in topological insulators (TI), materials with unique surface
transport properties. Here, we resonantly excite a polar phonon mode in the
canonical TI Bi$_2$Se$_3$ with intense THz pulses and probe the subsequent
response with SHG. This enables us to separate the photoinduced lattice
dynamics at the surface from transient inversion symmetry breaking in the bulk.
Furthermore, we coherently control the phonon oscillations by varying the time
delay between a pair of driving THz pulses. Our work thus demonstrates a
versatile, table-top tool for probing and controlling ultrafast phonon dynamics
in materials, particularly at surfaces and interfaces, such as that between a
TI and a magnetic material, where exotic new states of matter are predicted to
exist.


title: Potential theory of subordinate killed Brownian motion

abstract:
  Let $W^D$ be a killed Brownian motion in a domain $D\subset {\mathbb R}^d$
and $S$ an independent subordinator with Laplace exponent $\phi$. The process
$Y^D$ defined by $Y^D_t=W^D_{S_t}$ is called a subordinate killed Brownian
motion. It is a Hunt process with infinitesimal generator $-\phi(-\Delta|_D)$,
where $\Delta|_D$ is the Dirichlet Laplacian. In this paper we study the
potential theory of $Y^D$ under a weak scaling condition on the derivative of
$\phi$. We first show that non-negative harmonic functions of $Y^D$ satisfy the
scale invariant Harnack inequality. Subsequently we prove two types of scale
invariant boundary Harnack principles with explicit decay rates for
non-negative harmonic functions of $Y^D$. The first boundary Harnack principle
deals with a $C^{1,1}$ domain $D$ and non-negative functions which are harmonic
near the boundary of $D$, while the second one is for a more general domain $D$
and non-negative functions which are harmonic near the boundary of an interior
open subset of $D$. The obtained decay rates are not the same, reflecting
different boundary and interior behaviors of $Y^D$.


title: Code Design for Short Blocks: A Survey

abstract:
  The design of block codes for short information blocks (e.g., a thousand or
less information bits) is an open research problem which is gaining relevance
thanks to emerging applications in wireless communication networks. In this
work, we review some of the most recent code constructions targeting the short
block regime, and we compare then with both finite-length performance bounds
and classical error correction coding schemes. We will see how it is possible
to effectively approach the theoretical bounds, with different performance vs.
decoding complexity trade-offs.


title: Peculiarities of the Accretion Flow in the System HL CMa

abstract:
  The properties of the aperiodic brightness variability for the dwarf nova HL
CMa are considered. The variability of the system HL CMa is shown to be
suppressed at frequencies above $7\times10^{-3}$Hz. Different variability
suppression mechanisms related to the radiation reprocessing time, partial disk
evaporation, and characteristic variability formation time are proposed. It has
been found that the variability suppression frequency does not change when the
system passes from the quiescent state to the outburst one, suggesting that the
accretion flow geometry is invariable. It is concluded from the optical and
X-ray luminosities of the system that the boundary layer on the white dwarf
surface is optically thick in both quiescent and outburst states. The latter
implies that the optically thick part of the accretion flow (disk) reaches the
white dwarf surface. The accretion rate in the system, the flow geometry and
temperature have been estimated from the variability power spectra and spectral
characteristics in a wide energy range, from the optical to X-ray.


title:
On the Asymptotic Superlinear Convergence of the Augmented Lagrangian
  Method for Semidefinite Programming with Multiple Solutions

abstract:
  Solving large scale convex semidefinite programming (SDP) problems has long
been a challenging task numerically. Fortunately, several powerful solvers
including SDPNAL, SDPNAL+ and QSDPNAL have recently been developed to solve
linear and convex quadratic SDP problems to high accuracy successfully. These
solvers are based on the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) applied to the dual
problems with the subproblems being solved by semismooth Newton-CG methods.
Noticeably, thanks to Rockafellar's general theory on the proximal point
algorithms, the primal iteration sequence generated by the ALM enjoys an
asymptotic Q-superlinear convergence rate under a second order sufficient
condition {for the primal problem}. This second order sufficient condition
implies that the primal problem has a unique solution, which can be restrictive
in many applications. For gaining more insightful interpretations on the high
efficiency of these solvers, in this paper we conduct an asymptotic superlinear
convergence analysis of the ALM for convex SDP when the primal problem has
multiple solutions (can be unbounded). Under a fairly mild second order growth
condition, we prove that the primal iteration sequence generated by the ALM
converges asymptotically Q-superlinearly, while the dual feasibility and the
dual objective function value converge asymptotically R-superlinearly.
Moreover, by studying the metric subregularity of the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker
solution mapping, we also provide sufficient conditions to guarantee the
asymptotic R-superlinear convergence of the dual iterate.


title: Subdivisions in digraphs of large out-degree or large dichromatic number

abstract:
  In 1985, Mader conjectured the existence of a function $f$ such that every
digraph with minimum out-degree at least $f(k)$ contains a subdivision of the
transitive tournament of order $k$. This conjecture is still completely open,
as the existence of $f(5)$ remains unknown. In this paper, we show that if $D$
is an oriented path, or an in-arborescence (i.e., a tree with all edges
oriented towards the root) or the union of two directed paths from $x$ to $y$
and a directed path from $y$ to $x$, then every digraph with minimum out-degree
large enough contains a subdivision of $D$. Additionally, we study Mader's
conjecture considering another graph parameter. The dichromatic number of a
digraph $D$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $D$ can be partitioned into
$k$ acyclic subdigraphs. We show that any digraph with dichromatic number
greater than $4^m (n-1)$ contains every digraph with $n$ vertices and $m$ arcs
as a subdivision.


title: Constraints on Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami

abstract:
  Encke-type comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami is experiencing cascading fragmentation
events during its 2016 apparition. It is likely the first splitting Encke-type
comet ever being observed. A nongravitational solution to the astrometry
reveals a statistical detection of the radial and transverse nongravitational
parameters, $A_{1} = \left(1.54 \pm 0.39\right) \times 10^{-8}$ AU day$^{-2}$,
and $A_{2} = \left(7.19 \pm 1.92\right) \times 10^{-9}$ AU day$^{-2}$,
respectively, which implies a nucleus erosion rate of $\left(0.91 \pm
0.17\right)$% per orbital revolution. The mass-loss rate likely has to be
supported by a much larger fraction of an active surface area than known cases
of short-period comets; it may be relevant to the ongoing fragmentation. We
failed to detect any serendipitous pre-discovery observations of the comet in
archival data from major sky surveys, whereby we infer that 332P used to be
largely inactive, and is perhaps among the few short-period comets which have
been reactivated from weakly active or dormant states. We therefore constrain
an upper limit to the nucleus size as $2.0 \pm 0.2$ km in radius. A search for
small bodies in similar orbits to that of 332P reveals comet P/2010 B2 (WISE)
as the best candidate. From an empirical generalised Jupiter-family (Encke-type
included) comet population model, we estimate the likelihood of chance
alignment of the 332P--P/2010 B2 pair to be 1 in 33, a small number indicative
of a genetic linkage between the two comets on a statistical basis. The pair
possibly originated from a common progenitor which underwent a disintegration
event well before the twentieth century.


title:
Reverse mathematics of the finite downwards closed subsets of
  $\mathbb{N}^k$ ordered by inclusion and adjacent Ramsey for fixed dimension

abstract:
  We show that the well-partial orderedness of the finite downwards closed
subsets of $\mathbb{N}^k$ ,ordered by inclusion, is equivalent to the
well-foundedness of the ordinal $\omega^{\omega^\omega}$. This was conjectured
to be the case by Hatzikiriakou and Simpson. Since we use Friedman's adjacent
Ramsey theorem for fixed dimensions in the upper bound, we also give a
treatment of the reverse mathematical status of that theorem.


title: A Computational Approach to Automatic Prediction of Drunk Texting

abstract:
  Alcohol abuse may lead to unsociable behavior such as crime, drunk driving,
or privacy leaks. We introduce automatic drunk-texting prediction as the task
of identifying whether a text was written when under the influence of alcohol.
We experiment with tweets labeled using hashtags as distant supervision. Our
classifiers use a set of N-gram and stylistic features to detect drunk tweets.
Our observations present the first quantitative evidence that text contains
signals that can be exploited to detect drunk-texting.


title:
History of the solar-type protostar IRAS16293-2422 as told by the
  cyanopolyynes

abstract:
  Cyanopolyynes are chains of carbon atoms with an atom of hydrogen and a CN
group on either side. They are detected almost everywhere in the ISM, as well
as in comets. In the past, they have been used to constrain the age of some
molecular clouds, since their abundance is predicted to be a strong function of
time. We present an extensive study of the cyanopolyynes distribution in the
solar-type protostar IRAS16293-2422 based on TIMASSS IRAM-30m observations. The
goals are (i) to obtain a census of the cyanopolyynes in this source and of
their isotopologues; (ii) to derive how their abundance varies across the
protostar envelope; and (iii) to obtain constraints on the history of
IRAS16293-2422. We detect several lines from HC3N and HC5N, and report the
first detection of DC3N, in a solar-type protostar. We found that the HC3N
abundance is roughly constant (~1.3x10^(-11)) in the outer cold envelope of
IRAS16293-2422, and it increases by about a factor 100 in the inner region
where Tdust>80K. The HC5N has an abundance similar to HC3N in the outer
envelope and about a factor of ten lower in the inner region. The HC3N
abundance derived in the inner region, and where the increase occurs, also
provide strong constraints on the time taken for the dust to warm up to 80K,
which has to be shorter than ~10^3-10^4yr. Finally, the cyanoacetylene
deuteration is about 50\% in the outer envelope and <5$\% in the warm inner
region. The relatively low deuteration in the warm region suggests that we are
witnessing a fossil of the HC3N abundantly formed in the tenuous phase of the
pre-collapse and then frozen into the grain mantles at a later phase. The
accurate analysis of the cyanopolyynes in IRAS16293-2422 unveils an important
part of its past story. It tells us that IRAS16293-2422 underwent a relatively
fast (<10^5yr) collapse and a very fast (<10^3-10^4yr) warming up of the cold
material to 80K.


title: Heavy-tailed random walks on complexes of half-lines

abstract:
  We study a random walk on a complex of finitely many half-lines joined at a
common origin; jumps are heavy-tailed and of two types, either one-sided
(towards the origin) or two-sided (symmetric). Transmission between half-lines
via the origin is governed by an irreducible Markov transition matrix, with
associated stationary distribution $\mu_k$. If $\chi_k$ is $1$ for one-sided
half-lines $k$ and $1/2$ for two-sided half-lines, and $\alpha_k$ is the tail
exponent of the jumps on half-line $k$, we show that the recurrence
classification for the case where all $\alpha_k \chi_k \in (0,1)$ is determined
by the sign of $\sum_k \mu_k \cot ( \chi_k \pi \alpha_k )$. In the case of two
half-lines, the model fits naturally on $\mathbb{R}$ and is a version of the
oscillating random walk of Kemperman. In that case, the cotangent criterion for
recurrence becomes linear in $\alpha_1$ and $\alpha_2$; our general setting
exhibits the essential non-linearity in the cotangent criterion. For the
general model, we also show existence and non-existence of polynomial moments
of return times. Our moments results are sharp (and new) for several cases of
the oscillating random walk; they are apparently even new for the case of a
homogeneous random walk on $\mathbb{R}$ with symmetric increments of tail
exponent $\alpha \in (1,2)$.


title:
Coherent control of a strongly driven silicon vacancy optical transition
  in diamond

abstract:
  The ability to prepare, optically read out and coherently control single
quantum states is a key requirement for quantum information processing.
Optically active solid state emitters have emerged as promising candidates with
their prospects for on chip integration as quantum nodes and sources of
coherent photons for connecting these nodes. Under strongly driving resonant
laser field, such quantum emitter can exhibit quantum behavior such as
Autler-Townes splitting and Mollow triplet spectrum. Here we demonstrate
coherent control of a strongly driven optical transition in silicon vacancy
(SiV) center in diamond. Rapid optical detection of photons enabled the
observation of time resolved coherent Rabi oscillations and the Mollow triplet
from an optical transition of a single SiV defect. Detection with a probing
transition further confirmed Autler-Townes splitting generated by a strong
laser field. Coherence time of the emitted photons is shown to be comparable to
its lifetime and robust under very strong driving laser field, which is
promising for generation of indistinguishable photons.


title: Are Word Embedding-based Features Useful for Sarcasm Detection?

abstract:
  This paper makes a simple increment to state-of-the-art in sarcasm detection
research. Existing approaches are unable to capture subtle forms of context
incongruity which lies at the heart of sarcasm. We explore if prior work can be
enhanced using semantic similarity/discordance between word embeddings. We
augment word embedding-based features to four feature sets reported in the
past. We also experiment with four types of word embeddings. We observe an
improvement in sarcasm detection, irrespective of the word embedding used or
the original feature set to which our features are augmented. For example, this
augmentation results in an improvement in F-score of around 4\% for three out
of these four feature sets, and a minor degradation in case of the fourth, when
Word2Vec embeddings are used. Finally, a comparison of the four embeddings
shows that Word2Vec and dependency weight-based features outperform LSA and
GloVe, in terms of their benefit to sarcasm detection.


title:
Locally compact groups acting on trees, the type I conjecture and
  non-amenable von Neumann algebras

abstract:
  We address the problem to characterise closed type I subgroups of the
automorphism group of a tree. Even in the well-studied case of Burger-Mozes'
universal groups, non-type I criteria were unknown. We prove that a huge class
of groups acting properly on trees are not of type I. In the case of
Burger-Mozes groups, this yields a complete classification of type I groups
among them. Our key novelty is the use of von Neumann algebraic techniques to
prove the stronger statement that the group von Neumann algebra of the groups
under consideration is non-amenable.


title: Revisiting the Hahn-Banach Theorem and Nonlinear Infinite Programming

abstract:
  [REVISED VERSION] The aim of this paper is to state a sharp version of the
K\"onig supremum theorem, an equivalent reformulation of the Hahn--Banach
theorem. We apply it to derive statements of the Lagrange multipliers,
Karush-Kuhn-Tucker and Fritz John type, for nonlinear infinite programs. We
also show that a weak concept of convexity coming from minimax theory,
infsup-convexity, is the adequate one for this kind of results.


title: Shadow casted by a twisted and rotating black hole

abstract:
  Zhang have obtained recently a twisted rotating black hole metric, which is a
vacuum solution in four-dimensional Einstein gravity. This black hole solution
has a rotation parameter, but without the total angular moment. Here, we have
investigated the shadow casted by a twisted rotating black hole. Our results
show that the shape of the shadow of the twisted rotating black hole is a
standard round disk and does not depend on the inclination angle of the
observer. It means that although the twisted rotating black hole has a rotation
parameter, its shadow possesses the same behaviors as the common static black
hole rather than the usual Kerr-like black holes. Moreover, we find that the
marginally circular orbit radius of photon is independent of the direction of
photon around the black hole. The value of the marginally circular orbit radius
of photon and the size of shadow increase monotonously with the rotation
parameter.


title:
Impact of Schwarzschild black hole's gravity upon the Rossby wave
  instability

abstract:
  In an early work the Rossby Wave Instability (RWI) has been proposed to
explain variability thought to originate in the close vicinity of black-holes
but this was done in the pseudo-Newtonian approach. Here we present the first
general relativistic hydrodynamics simulations of this instability not only
proving its theorized existence in a full general relativistic (GR) environment
but also studying the effect of the strong gravity on the instability. To that
end we performed a set of simulations increasingly closer to the black hole
with our new GR version of the MPI-AMRVAC code.This allows us to study the
minute changes in the behaviour of the instability.We found that the
pseudo-Newtonian approach gives adequate results provided that time shifting
induced by the black hole gravity is taken into account. Hence, to view the
disc as a distant observer would a full GR ray-tracing post treatment of the
simulations is a must.


title:
A theorem of the alternative with an arbitrary number of inequalities
  and quadratic programming

abstract:
  In this paper we are concerned with a Gordan-type theorem involving an
arbitrary number of inequality functions. We not only state its validity under
a weak convexity assumption on the functions, but also show it is an optimal
result. We discuss generalizations of several recent results on nonlinear
quadratic optimization, as well as a formula for the Fenchel conjugate of the
supremum of a family of functions, in order to illustrate the applicability of
that theorem of the alternative.


title: Cardea: Context-Aware Visual Privacy Protection from Pervasive Cameras

abstract:
  The growing popularity of mobile and wearable devices with built-in cameras,
the bright prospect of camera related applications such as augmented reality
and life-logging system, the increased ease of taking and sharing photos, and
advances in computer vision techniques have greatly facilitated people's lives
in many aspects, but have also inevitably raised people's concerns about visual
privacy at the same time. Motivated by recent user studies that people's
privacy concerns are dependent on the context, in this paper, we propose
Cardea, a context-aware and interactive visual privacy protection framework
that enforces privacy protection according to people's privacy preferences. The
framework provides people with fine-grained visual privacy protection using: i)
personal privacy profiles, with which people can define their context-dependent
privacy preferences; and ii) visual indicators: face features, for devices to
automatically locate individuals who request privacy protection; and iii) hand
gestures, for people to flexibly interact with cameras to temporarily change
their privacy preferences. We design and implement the framework consisting of
the client app on Android devices and the cloud server. Our evaluation results
confirm this framework is practical and effective with 86% overall accuracy,
showing promising future for context-aware visual privacy protection from
pervasive cameras.


title: The Embedded Homology of Hypergraphs and Applications

abstract:
  Hypergraphs are mathematical models for many problems in data sciences. In
recent decades, the topological properties of hypergraphs have been studied and
various kinds of (co)homologies have been constructed (cf. [3, 4, 12]). In this
paper, generalising the usual homology of simplicial complexes, we define the
embedded homology of hypergraphs as well as the persistent embedded homology of
sequences of hypergraphs. As a generalisation of the Mayer-Vietoris sequence
for the homology of simplicial complexes, we give a Mayer-Vietoris sequence for
the embedded homology of hypergraphs. Moreover, as applications of the embedded
homology, we study acyclic hypergraphs and construct some indices for the data
analysis of hyper-networks.


title:
Rigid representations of the multiplicative coalescent with linear
  deletion

abstract:
  We introduce the multiplicative coalescent with linear deletion, a
continuous-time Markov process describing the evolution of a collection of
blocks. Any two blocks of sizes $x$ and $y$ merge at rate $xy$, and any block
of size $x$ is deleted with rate $\lambda x$ (where $\lambda\geq 0$ is a fixed
parameter). This process arises for example in connection with a variety of
random-graph models which exhibit self-organised criticality. We focus on
results describing states of the process in terms of collections of excursion
lengths of random functions. For the case $\lambda=0$ (the coalescent without
deletion) we revisit and generalise previous works by authors including Aldous,
Limic, Armendariz, Uribe Bravo, and Broutin and Marckert, in which the
coalescence is related to a "tilt" of a random function, which increases with
time; for $\lambda>0$ we find a novel representation in which this tilt is
complemented by a "shift" mechanism which produces the deletion of blocks. We
describe and illustrate other representations which, like the tilt-and-shift
representation, are "rigid", in the sense that the coalescent process is
constructed as a projection of some process which has all of its randomness in
its initial state. We explain some applications of these constructions to
models including mean-field forest-fire and frozen-percolation processes.


title:
Hydrodynamics of Lock-exchange Turbidity Currents down a Slope Based on
  Direct Numerical Simulation

abstract: Please refer to the Abstract part in the paper.


title: Adaptive Graph-based Total Variation for Tomographic Reconstructions

abstract:
  Sparsity exploiting image reconstruction (SER) methods have been extensively
used with Total Variation (TV) regularization for tomographic reconstructions.
Local TV methods fail to preserve texture details and often create additional
artefacts due to over-smoothing. Non-Local TV (NLTV) methods have been proposed
as a solution to this but they either lack continuous updates due to
computational constraints or limit the locality to a small region. In this
paper, we propose Adaptive Graph-based TV (AGTV). The proposed method goes
beyond spatial similarity between different regions of an image being
reconstructed by establishing a connection between similar regions in the
entire image regardless of spatial distance. As compared to NLTV the proposed
method is computationally efficient and involves updating the graph prior
during every iteration making the connection between similar regions stronger.
Moreover, it promotes sparsity in the wavelet and graph gradient domains. Since
TV is a special case of graph TV the proposed method can also be seen as a
generalization of SER and TV methods.


title:
Performance of synthetic antiferromagnetic racetrack memory: domain wall
  vs skyrmion

abstract:
  A storage scheme based on racetrack memory, where the information can be
coded in a domain or a skyrmion, seems to be an alternative to conventional
hard disk drive for high density storage. Here, we perform a full micromagnetic
study of the performance of synthetic antiferromagnetic (SAF) racetrack memory
in terms of velocity and sensitivity to defects by using experimental
parameters. We find that to stabilize a SAF skyrmion, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya
Interaction in the top and the bottom ferromagnet should have an opposite sign.
The velocity of SAF skyrmion and SAF Neel domain wall are of the same order and
can reach values larger than 1200 m/s if a spin-orbit torque from the spin-Hall
effect with opposite sign is applied to both ferromagnets.


title: Electroluminescence from indirect band gap semiconductor ReS$_2$

abstract:
  It has been recently claimed that bulk crystals of transition metal
dichalcogenide (TMD) ReS$_2$ are direct band gap semiconductors, which would
make this material an ideal candidate, among all TMDs, for the realization of
efficient opto-electronic devices. The situation is however unclear, because
even more recently an indirect transition in the photoluminescence spectra of
this material has been detected, whose energy is smaller than the supposed
direct gap. To address this issue we exploit the properties of ionic liquid
gated field-effect transistors (FETs) to investigate the gap structure of bulk
ReS$_2$. Using these devices, whose high quality is demonstrated by a record
high electron FET mobility of 1,100 cm$^2$/Vs at 4K, we can induce hole
transport at the surface of the material and determine quantitatively the
smallest band gap present in the material, irrespective of its direct or
indirect nature. The value of the band gap is found to be 1.41 eV, smaller than
the 1.5 eV direct optical transition but in good agreement with the energy of
the indirect optical transition, providing an independent confirmation that
bulk ReS$_2$ is an indirect band gap semiconductor. Nevertheless, contrary to
the case of more commonly studied semiconducting TMDs (e.g., MoS$_2$, WS$_2$,
etc.) in their bulk form, we also find that ReS$_2$ FETs fabricated on bulk
crystals do exhibit electroluminescence when driven in the ambipolar injection
regime, likely because the difference between the direct and indirect gap is
only 100 meV. We conclude that ReS$_2$ does deserve more in-depth
investigations in relation to possible opto-electronic applications.


title:
An investigation of the low-DeltaV near-Earth asteroids (341843) 2008
  EV5 and (52381) 1993 HA. Two suitable targets for the ARM and MarcoPolo-M5
  space missions

abstract:
  The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) under development by NASA is being
planned to collect a multi-meter boulder from a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), and
to bring it to the cis-lunar space in the mid-2020's for future study and
exploitation by a crewed mission. The MarcoPolo-M5 project is being proposed in
2016 for the M5 mission opportunity by ESA, to bring back to Earth a sample
from a very primitive D-type NEA.
  We aim to further characterize the physical properties of two optimal targets
for sample return space missions, the low-DeltaV NEAs (341843) 2008 EV5 and
(52381) 1993 HA. 2008 EV5 is the baseline target of ARM, but only one spectrum
of this object exists in the literature. 1993 HA is a very favourable target
for a space mission based on its dynamical properties: here we intend to assess
if it is a suitable target for MarcoPolo-M5.
  We obtained visible spectroscopy of 2008 EV5 with the FORS2 instrument at
ESO-VLT, at different rotational phases. We also obtained visible and
near-infrared spectroscopy of 1993 HA, using the EFOSC2 and SOfI instruments at
ESO-NTT. Visible photometry of 1993 HA was carried out within the IMPACTON
project at the Observatorio Astronomico do Sertao de Itaparica (Brazil).
  Our new observations are in agreement with the C-type classification of 2008
EV5. We obtained five visible spectra which do not show any variability within
the limits of noise, suggesting a homogeneous surface. We obtained the first
ever spectroscopic dataset for 1993 HA, finding a featureless, red-sloped
behaviour typical of D-types. We found that the synodic rotation period of 1993
HA is 4.107+-0.002 h. The derived lightcurve also suggests an elongated shape
(axis ratio a/b>=1.71). At this stage 1993 HA does indeed seem to be the most
favourable target for MarcoPolo-M5, though future observations are necessary to
study it further.


title: Piecewise Adiabatic Following in Non-Hermitian Cycling

abstract:
  The time evolution of periodically driven non-Hermitian systems is in general
non-unitary but can be stable. It is hence of considerable interest to examine
the adiabatic following dynamics in periodically driven non-Hermitian systems.
We show in this work the possibility of piecewise adiabatic following
interrupted by hopping between instantaneous system eigenstates. This
phenomenon is first observed in a computational model and then theoretically
explained, using an exactly solvable model, in terms of the Stokes phenomenon.
In the latter case, the piecewise adiabatic following is shown to be a genuine
critical behavior and the precise phase boundary in the parameter space is
located. Interestingly, the critical boundary for piecewise adiabatic following
is found to be unrelated to the domain for exceptional points. To characterize
the adiabatic following dynamics, we also advocate a simple definition of the
Aharonov-Anandan (AA) phase for non-unitary cyclic dynamics, which always
yields real AA phases. In the slow driving limit, the AA phase reduces to the
Berry phase if adiabatic following persists throughout the driving without
hopping, but oscillates violently and does not approach any limit in cases of
piecewise adiabatic following. This work exposes the rich features of
non-unitary dynamics in cases of slow cycling and should stimulate future
applications of non-unitary dynamics.


title:
An Elementary Approach on Left-Orderability, Cables of Torus Knots and
  Dehn Surgery

abstract:
  Motivated by Clay and Watson's question on left-orderability of the
fundamental group of the resultant space of an $r'$-surgery on the $(p,
q)$-cable knots for $r' \in (pq-p-q,pq)$, this paper proves by elementary means
that for specific pairs of $(p,q)$-cable knots of torus knots, $r' \in
[pq-1,pq]$ gives a surgery yielding non-left orderable fundamental groups.


title: Localization of massive and massless fermion on two field brane

abstract:
  In this paper we study fermion localization and resonances on a special type
of braneworld model supporting brane splitting. In such models one can
construct multi-wall branes which cause considerable simplification in field
equations. We use a polynomial superpotential to construct this brane. The
suitable Yukawa coupling between the background scalar field and localized
fermion is determined. The massive fermion resonance spectrum is obtained. The
number of resonances is increased for higher values of Yukawa coupling.


title: Self-Dual Codes over $\mathbb{Z}_2\times (\mathbb{Z}_2+u\mathbb{Z}_2)$

abstract:
  In this paper, we study self-dual codes over $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times
(\mathbb{Z}_2+u\mathbb{Z}_2) $, where $u^2=0$. Three types of self-dual codes
are defined. For each type, the possible values $\alpha,\beta$ such that there
exists a code $\mathcal{C}\subseteq \mathbb{Z}_{2}^\alpha\times
(\mathbb{Z}_2+u\mathbb{Z}_2)^\beta$ are established. We also present several
approaches to construct self-dual codes over $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times
(\mathbb{Z}_2+u\mathbb{Z}_2) $. Moreover, the structure of two-weight self-dual
codes is completely obtained for $\alpha \cdot\beta\neq 0$.


title: Coverage, Matching, and Beyond: New Results on Budgeted Mechanism Design

abstract:
  We study a type of reverse (procurement) auction problems in the presence of
budget constraints. The general algorithmic problem is to purchase a set of
resources, which come at a cost, so as not to exceed a given budget and at the
same time maximize a given valuation function. This framework captures the
budgeted version of several well known optimization problems, and when the
resources are owned by strategic agents the goal is to design truthful and
budget feasible mechanisms, i.e. elicit the true cost of the resources and
ensure the payments of the mechanism do not exceed the budget. Budget
feasibility introduces more challenges in mechanism design, and we study
instantiations of this problem for certain classes of submodular and XOS
valuation functions. We first obtain mechanisms with an improved approximation
ratio for weighted coverage valuations, a special class of submodular functions
that has already attracted attention in previous works. We then provide a
general scheme for designing randomized and deterministic polynomial time
mechanisms for a class of XOS problems. This class contains problems whose
feasible set forms an independence system (a more general structure than
matroids), and some representative problems include, among others, finding
maximum weighted matchings, maximum weighted matroid members, and maximum
weighted 3D-matchings. For most of these problems, only randomized mechanisms
with very high approximation ratios were known prior to our results.


title:
Rare semileptonic $B \to K(\pi)l_i^- l_j^+$ decay in vector leptoquark
  model

abstract:
  We investigate the consequence of vector leptoquarks on the rare semileptonic
lepton flavour violating decays of $B$ meson which are more promising and
effective channels to probe the new physics signal. We constrain the resulting
new leptoquark parameter space by using the branching ratios of $B_{s, d} \to
l^+ l^-$, $K_L \to l^+ l^-$ and $\tau^- \to l^- \gamma$ processes. We estimate
the branching ratios of rare lepton flavour violating $B \to K(\pi)l_i^- l_j^+$
processes using the constrained leptoquark couplings. We also compute the
forward-backward asymmetries and the lepton non-universality parameters of the
LFV decays in the vector leptoquark model. Furthermore, we study the effect of
vector leptoquark on $(g-2)_\mu$ anomaly.


title: On a Graph Connecting Hyperbinary Expansions

abstract:
  Le n be any positive integer. A hyperbinary expansion of n is are
presentation of n as sum of powers of 2, each power being used at most twice.
In this paper we study some properties of a suitable edge-coloured and
vertex-weighted oriented graph A(n) whose nodes are precisely the several
hyperbinary representations of n. In particular, we identify those integers m
in N such that the fundamental group of A(m) is abelian.


title:
EXTraS discovery of two pulsators in the direction of the LMC: a
  Be/X-ray binary pulsar in the LMC and a candidate double-degenerate polar in
  the foreground

abstract:
  The EXTraS project to explore the X-ray Transient and variable Sky searches
for coherent signals in the X-ray archival data of XMM-Newton. XMM-Newton
performed more than 400 pointed observations in the region of the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We inspected the results of the EXTraS period search to
systematically look for new X-ray pulsators in our neighbour galaxy. We
analysed the XMM-Newton observations of two sources from the 3XMM catalogue
which show significant signals for coherent pulsations. 3XMM J051259.8-682640
was detected as source with hard X-ray spectrum in two XMM-Newton observations,
revealing a periodic modulation of the X-ray flux with 956~s. As optical
counterpart we identify an early-type star with Halpha emission. The OGLE
I-band light curve exhibits a regular pattern with three brightness dips which
mark a period of ~1350 d. The X-ray spectrum of 3XMM J051034.6-670353 is
dominated by a super-soft blackbody-like emission component (kT ~ 70 eV) which
is modulated by nearly 100% with a period of ~1418 s. From GROND observations
we suggest a star with r' = 20.9 mag as possible counterpart of the X-ray
source. 3XMM J051259.8-682640 is confirmed as a new Be/X-ray binary pulsar in
the Large Magellanic Cloud. We discuss the long-term optical period as likely
orbital period which would be the longest known from a high-mass X-ray binary.
The spectral and temporal properties of the super-soft source 3XMM
J051034.6-670353 are very similar to those of RX J0806.3+1527 and RX
J1914.4+2456 suggesting that it belongs to the class of double-degenerate
polars and is located in our Galaxy rather than in the LMC.


title:
Some exact sequences associated with adjunctions in bicategories.
  Applications

abstract:
  We prove that the classical result asserting that the relative Picard group
of a faithfully flat extension of commutative rings is isomorphic to the first
Amitsur cohomology group stills valid in the realm of symmetric monoidal
categories. To this end, we built some group exact sequences from an adjunction
in a bicategory, which are of independent interest. As a particular byproduct
of the evolving theory, we prove a version of Hilbert's theorem 90 for
cocommutatvie coalgebra coextensions (=surjective homomorphisms).


title:
Next-to-leading order corrections to capacity for nondispersive
  nonlinear optical fiber channel in intermediate power region

abstract:
  We consider the optical fiber channel modelled by the nonlinear
Shr\"{o}dinger equation with zero dispersion and additive Gaussian noise. Using
Feynman path-integral approach for the model we find corrections to conditional
probability density function, output signal distribution, conditional and
output signal entropies, and the channel capacity at large signal-to-noise
ratio. We demonstrate that the correction to the channel capacity is positive
for large signal power. Therefore, this correction increases the earlier
calculated capacity for a nondispersive nonlinear optical fiber channel in the
intermediate power region.


title:
Model Selection for Gaussian Process Regression by Approximation Set
  Coding

abstract:
  Gaussian processes are powerful, yet analytically tractable models for
supervised learning. A Gaussian process is characterized by a mean function and
a covariance function (kernel), which are determined by a model selection
criterion. The functions to be compared do not just differ in their
parametrization but in their fundamental structure. It is often not clear which
function structure to choose, for instance to decide between a squared
exponential and a rational quadratic kernel. Based on the principle of
approximation set coding, we develop a framework for model selection to rank
kernels for Gaussian process regression. In our experiments approximation set
coding shows promise to become a model selection criterion competitive with
maximum evidence (also called marginal likelihood) and leave-one-out
cross-validation.


title:
Radial decoupling of small and large dust grains in the transitional
  disk RX J1615.3-3255

abstract:
  We present H-band (1.6 {\mu}m) scattered light observations of the
transitional disk RX J1615.3-3255, located in the ~1 Myr old Lupus association.
From a polarized intensity image, taken with the HiCIAO instrument of the
Subaru Telescope, we deduce the position angle and the inclination angle of the
disk. The disk is found to extend out to 68 $\pm$ 12 AU in scattered light and
no clear structure is observed. Our inner working angle of 24 AU does not allow
us to detect a central decrease in intensity similar to that seen at 30 AU in
the 880 {\mu}m continuum observations. We compare the observations with
multiple disk models based on the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) and submm
interferometry and find that an inner rim of the outer disk at 30 AU containing
small silicate grains produces a polarized intensity signal which is an order
of magnitude larger than observed. We show that a model in which the small dust
grains extend smoothly into the cavity found for large grains is closer to the
actual H-band observations. A comparison of models with different dust size
distributions suggests that the dust in the disk might have undergone
significant processing compared to the interstellar medium.


title: Tuning Synthetic Semiflexible Networks by Bending Stiffness

abstract:
  The mechanics of complex soft matter often cannot be understood in the
classical physical frame of flexible polymers or rigid rods. The underlying
constituents are semiflexible polymers, whose finite bending stiffness
($\kappa$) leads to non-trivial mechanical responses. A natural model for such
polymers is the protein actin. Experimental studies of actin networks, however,
are limited since the persistence length ($l_{\text{p}} \propto \kappa$) cannot
be tuned. Here, we experimentally characterize this parameter for the first
time in entangled networks formed by synthetically produced, structurally
tunable DNA nanotubes. This material enabled the validation of characteristics
inherent to semiflexible polymers and networks thereof, i.e., persistence
length, inextensibility, reptation and mesh size scaling. While the scaling of
the elastic plateau modulus with concentration $G_0 \propto c^{7/5}$ is
consistent with previous measurements and established theories, the emerging
persistence length scaling $G_0 \propto l_{\text{p}}$ opposes predominant
theoretical predictions.


title:
The Liouville equation for flavour evolution of neutrinos and neutrino
  wave packets

abstract:
  We consider several aspects related to the form, derivation and applications
of the Liouville equation (LE) for flavour evolution of neutrinos. To take into
account the quantum nature of neutrinos we derive the evolution equation for
the matrix of densities using wave packets instead of Wigner functions. The
obtained equation differs from the standard LE by an additional term which is
proportional to the difference of group velocities. We show that this term
describes loss of the propagation coherence in the system. In absence of
inelastic collisions, the LE can be reduced to a single derivative equation
over a trajectory coordinate. Additional time and spacial dependence may steam
from initial (production) conditions. The transition from single neutrino
evolution to the evolution of a neutrino gas is considered.


title:
Approaching nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems through first
  order dynamical systems with hidden acceleration and Hessian driven damping
  terms

abstract:
  In this paper we carry out an asymptotic analysis of the proximal-gradient
dynamical system \begin{equation*}\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \dot x(t) +x(t) =
\prox_{\gamma f}\big[x(t)-\gamma\nabla\Phi(x(t))-ax(t)-by(t)\big],\\ \dot
y(t)+ax(t)+by(t)=0 \end{array}\right.\end{equation*} where $f$ is a proper,
convex and lower semicontinuous function, $\Phi$ a possibly nonconvex smooth
function and $\gamma, a$ and $b$ are positive real numbers. We show that the
generated trajectories approach the set of critical points of $f+\Phi$, here
understood as zeros of its limiting subdifferential, under the premise that a
regularization of this sum function satisfies the Kurdyka-\L{}ojasiewicz
property. We also establish convergence rates for the trajectories, formulated
in terms of the \L{}ojasiewicz exponent of the considered regularization
function.


title:
Decentralized Motion Planning with Collision Avoidance for a Team of
  UAVs under High Level Goals

abstract:
  This paper addresses the motion planning problem for a team of aerial agents
under high level goals. We propose a hybrid control strategy that guarantees
the accomplishment of each agent's local goal specification, which is given as
a temporal logic formula, while guaranteeing inter-agent collision avoidance.
In particular, by defining 3-D spheres that bound the agents' volume, we extend
previous work on decentralized navigation functions and propose control laws
that navigate the agents among predefined regions of interest of the workspace
while avoiding collision with each other. This allows us to abstract the motion
of the agents as finite transition systems and, by employing standard formal
verification techniques, to derive a high-level control algorithm that
satisfies the agents' specifications. Simulation and experimental results with
quadrotors verify the validity of the proposed method.


title: Distributed Cooperative Manipulation under Timed Temporal Specifications

abstract:
  This paper addresses the problem of cooperative manipulation of a single
object by N robotic agents under local goal specifications given as Metric
Interval Temporal Logic (MITL) formulas. In particular, we propose a
distributed model-free control protocol for the trajectory tracking of the
cooperatively manipulated object without necessitating feedback of the contact
forces/torques or inter-agent communication. This allows us to abstract the
motion of the coupled object-agents system as a finite transition system and,
by employing standard automata-based methodologies, we derive a hybrid control
algorithm for the satisfaction of a given MITL formula. In addition, we use
load sharing coefficients to represent potential differences in power
capabilities among the agents. Finally, simulation studies verify the validity
of the proposed scheme.


title: High-resolution optical spectroscopy of RS Ophiuchi during 2008 -- 2009

abstract:
  RS Ophiuchi is a symbiotic variable and a recurrent nova. We have monitored
it with the Nordic Optical Telescope and obtained 30 high resolution (R=46 000)
optical spectra over one orbital cycle during quiescence. To our knowledge this
is the best-sampled high resolution spectroscopic dataset of RS Oph over one
orbital period. We do not detect any direct signatures of an accretion disc
such as double peaked emission lines, but many line profiles are complex
consisting of superimposed emission and absorption components. We measure the
spin of the red giant and conclude that it is tidally locked to the binary
orbit. We observe Na I absorption features, probably arising from the
circumbinary medium, that has been shaped by previous recurrent nova outbursts.
We do not detect any intrinsic polarisation in the optical wavelengths.


title: Factors influencing thermal radiative properties of metals

abstract:
  Data on thermal absorptivity and emissivity are important for calculations of
heat flows in cryogenic devices. Although thermal radiative properties of
materials used in cryogenics are measured, published and used for more than
sixty years we have noticed that sometimes users of that data do not well
understand the significance of individual factors influencing thermal radiative
properties. The sensitivity of the thermal radiative properties of metals to
the condition of the surface and the difficulty of measurement, especially at
low temperatures is probably the reason of dispersion of the published values.
The effect of the material and its purity, finishing (machining, mechanical or
chemical polishing) and of the protective coatings or accidental layers (water,
oxidation) on the thermal radiative properties is not always obvious. Influence
of the material, surface treatment, roughness and layers on the surface is
discussed on the basis of our 20 year experience with measurement of the
emissivity and absorptivity in the range from 20 K to 300 K.