title: Pivotal and Ribbon Entwining Datums

abstract:
  Let $(C,A,\varphi)$ be an entwining structure over $k$. In this paper, we
introduce the notions of the pivotal entwined datums and ribbon entwined datums
to generalize (co)pivotal Hopf algebras and (co)ribbon Hopf algebras. These
notions give necessary and sufficient conditions for the category of entwined
modules to be a pivotal category and ribbon category.


title: FPGA-Based Low-Power Speech Recognition with Recurrent Neural Networks

abstract:
  In this paper, a neural network based real-time speech recognition (SR)
system is developed using an FPGA for very low-power operation. The implemented
system employs two recurrent neural networks (RNNs); one is a
speech-to-character RNN for acoustic modeling (AM) and the other is for
character-level language modeling (LM). The system also employs a statistical
word-level LM to improve the recognition accuracy. The results of the AM, the
character-level LM, and the word-level LM are combined using a fairly simple
N-best search algorithm instead of the hidden Markov model (HMM) based network.
The RNNs are implemented using massively parallel processing elements (PEs) for
low latency and high throughput. The weights are quantized to 6 bits to store
all of them in the on-chip memory of an FPGA. The proposed algorithm is
implemented on a Xilinx XC7Z045, and the system can operate much faster than
real-time.


title: A general theory of linear cosmological perturbations: bimetric theories

abstract:
  We implement the method developed in [1] to construct the most general
parametrised action for linear cosmological perturbations of bimetric theories
of gravity. Specifically, we consider perturbations around a homogeneous and
isotropic background, and identify the complete form of the action invariant
under diffeomorphism transformations, as well as the number of free parameters
characterising this cosmological class of theories. We discuss, in detail, the
case without derivative interactions, and compare our results with those found
in massive bigravity.


title: Recombining Tree Approximations for Optimal Stopping for Diffusions

abstract:
  In this paper we develop two numerical methods for optimal stopping in the
framework of one dimensional diffusion. Both of the methods use the Skorohod
embedding in order to construct recombining tree approximations for diffusions
with general coefficients. This technique allows us to determine convergence
rates and construct nearly optimal stopping times which are optimal at the same
rate. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency of our schemes on several models


title: Gravitational birefringence of light in Robertson-Walker cosmologies

abstract:
  The spacetime evolution of massless spinning particles in a Robertson-Walker
background is derived using the deterministic system of equations of motion due
to Papapetrou, Souriau and Saturnini. A numerical integration of this system of
differential equations in the case of the standard model of cosmology is
performed. The deviation of the photon worldlines from the null geodesics is of
the order of the wavelength. Perturbative solutions are also worked out in a
more general case. An experimental measurement of this deviation would test the
acceleration of our expanding universe.


title: Spin correlations and colossal magnetoresistance in HgCr$_2$Se$_4$

abstract:
  This study aims to unravel the mechanism of colossal magnetoresistance (CMR)
observed in n-type HgCr$_2$Se$_4$, in which low-density conduction electrons
are exchange-coupled to a three-dimensional Heisenberg ferromagnet with a Curie
temperature $T_C\approx$ 105 K. Near room temperature the electron transport
exhibits an ordinary semiconducting behavior. As temperature drops below
$T^*\simeq2.1T_C$, the magnetic susceptibility deviates from the Curie-Weiss
law, and concomitantly the transport enters an intermediate regime exhibiting a
pronounced CMR effect before a transition to metallic conduction occurs at
$T<T_C$. Our results suggest an important role of spin correlations not only
near the critical point, but also for a wide range of temperatures
($T_C<T<T^*$) in the paramagnetic phase. In this intermediate temperature
regime the transport undergoes a percolation type of transition from isolated
magnetic polarons to a continuous network when temperature is lowered or
magnetic field becomes stronger.


title: PALOMA: A Magnetic CV between Polars and Intermediate Polars

abstract:
  We present analyses of archival X-ray data obtained from the XMM-Newton
satellite and optical photometric data obtained from 1 m class telescopes of
ARIES, Nainital of a magnetic cataclysmic variable (MCV) Paloma. Two persistent
periods at 156 $\pm$ 1 minutes and 130 $\pm$ 1 minutes are present in the X-ray
data, which we interpret as the orbital and spin periods, respectively. These
periods are similar to those obtained from the previous as well as new optical
photometric observations. The soft-X-ray excess seen in the X-ray spectrum of
Paloma and the averaged X-ray spectra are well fitted by two-temperature plasma
models with temperatures of 0.10$_{-0.01}^{+0.02}$ and 13.0$_{-0.5}^{+0.5}$ keV
with an Fe K$\alpha$ line and an absorbing column density of 4.6 $\times$
10^{22} cm^{-2}. This material partially covers 60 $\pm$ 2 % of the X-ray
source. We also present the orbital and spin-phase-resolved spectroscopy of
Paloma in the $0.3 - 10.0$ keV energy band and find that the X-ray spectral
parameters show orbital and spin-phase dependencies. New results obtained from
optical and X-ray studies of Paloma indicate that it belongs to a class of a
few magnetic CVs that seem to have the characteristics of both the polars and
the intermediate polars.


title: Weighted Procrustes problems

abstract:
  Let $\mathcal{H}$ be a Hilbert space, $L(\mathcal{H})$ the algebra of bounded
linear operators on $\mathcal{H}$ and $W \in L(\mathcal{H})$ a positive
operator such that $W^{1/2}$ is in the p-Schatten class, for some $1 \leq p<
\infty.$ Given $A \in L(\mathcal{H})$ with closed range and $B \in
L(\mathcal{H}),$ we study the following weighted approximation problem: analize
the existence of $$\underset{X \in L(\mathcal{H})}{min}\Vert AX-B
\Vert_{p,W},$$ where $\Vert X \Vert_{p,W}=\Vert W^{1/2}X \Vert_{p}.$
  In this paper we prove that the existence of this minimum is equivalent to a
compatibility condition between $R(B)$ and $R(A)$ involving the weight $W,$ and
we characterize the operators which minimize this problem as $W$-inverses of
$A$ in $R(B).$


title:
Simulating fast time variations in the supernova neutrino flux in
  Hyper-Kamiokande

abstract:
  Hyper-Kamiokande is a proposed next-generation water Cherenkov detector. If a
galactic supernova happens, it will deliver a high event rate
($\mathcal{O}(10^5)$ neutrino events in total) as well as event-by-event energy
information. Recent supernova simulations exhibit the Standing Accretion Shock
Instability (SASI) which causes oscillations in the number flux and mean energy
of neutrinos. The amplitude of these oscillations is energy-dependent, so the
energy information available in Hyper-Kamiokande could be used to improve the
detection prospects of these SASI oscillations. To determine whether this can
be achieved in the presence of detector effects like backgrounds and finite
energy uncertainty, we have started work on a detailed simulation of
Hyper-Kamiokande's response to a supernova neutrino burst.


title: Poly-Symmetry in Processor-Sharing Systems

abstract:
  We consider a system of processor-sharing queues with state-dependent service
rates. These are allocated according to balanced fairness within a polymatroid
capacity set. Balanced fairness is known to be both insensitive and
Pareto-efficient in such systems, which ensures that the performance metrics,
when computable, will provide robust insights into the real performance of the
system considered. We first show that these performance metrics can be
evaluated with a complexity that is polynomial in the system size if the system
is partitioned into a finite number of parts, so that queues are exchangeable
within each part and asymmetric across different parts. This in turn allows us
to derive stochastic bounds for a larger class of systems which satisfy less
restrictive symmetry assumptions. These results are applied to practical
examples of tree data networks, such as backhaul networks of Internet service
providers, and computer clusters.


title:
The Moutard transformation of two-dimensional Dirac operators and
  conformal geometry of surfaces in the four-space

abstract:
  The Moutard transformation for a two-dimensional Dirac operator with a
complex-valued potential is constructed. It is showed that this transformation
relates the potentials of Weierstrass representations of surfaces related by a
composition of the inversion and a reflection with respect to an axis. It is
given an analytical description of an explicit example of such a transformation
which results in a creation of double points on the spectral curve of a Dirac
operator with a double-periodic potential.


title:
Exact Wave Packet Dynamics of Singlet Fission in Unsubstituted and
  Substituted Polyene Chains within Long-Range Interacting Models

abstract:
  Singlet fission (SF) is a potential pathway for significant enhancement of
efficiency in organic solar cells (OSC). In this paper, we study singlet
fission in a pair of polyene molecules in two different stacking arrangements
employing exact many-body wave packet dynamics. In the non-interacting model,
the SF yield is absent. The individual molecules are treated within Hubbard and
Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) models and the interaction between them involves
transfer terms, intersite electron repulsions and site-charge--bond-charge
repulsion terms. Initial wave packet is constructed from excited singlet state
of one molecule and ground state of the other. Time development of this wave
packet under the influence of intermolecular interactions is followed within
the Schr\"odinger picture by an efficient predictor-corrector scheme. In
unsubstituted Hubbard and PPP chains, $2{}^1A$ excited singlet state leads to
significant SF yield while the $1{}^1B$ state gives negligible fission yield.
On substitution by donor-acceptor groups of moderate strength, the lowest
excited state will have sufficient $2{}^1A$ character and hence results in
significant SF yield. Because of rapid internal conversion, the nature of the
lowest excited singlet will determine the SF contribution to OSC efficiency.
Furthermore, we find the fission yield depends considerably on the stacking
arrangement of the polyene molecules.


title: Monopoles on R^5 and Generalized Nahm's equations

abstract:
  Our approach to define monopoles is twistorial and we start by developing the
twistor theory of R^5, which is an analogue of the twistor theory for R^3
developed by Hitchin. Using this, we describe a Hitchin-Ward transform for R^5,
that gives monopoles. In order for us to construct monopoles we make use of
spectral curves. Then, using those spectral curves we find a new system of
equations, analogue to the Nahm's equations.


title:
End-to-End Radio Traffic Sequence Recognition with Deep Recurrent Neural
  Networks

abstract:
  We investigate sequence machine learning techniques on raw radio signal
time-series data. By applying deep recurrent neural networks we learn to
discriminate between several application layer traffic types on top of a
constant envelope modulation without using an expert demodulation algorithm. We
show that complex protocol sequences can be learned and used for both
classification and generation tasks using this approach.


title: 2-absorbing and strongly 2-absorbing secondary submodules of modules

abstract:
  In this paper, we will introduce the concept of 2-absorbing (resp. strongly
2-absorbing) secondary submodules of modules over a commutative ring as a
generalization of secondary modules and investigate some basic properties of
these classes of modules.


title: Symplectic embeddings of four-dimensional polydisks into balls

abstract:
  In this paper we obtain new obstructions to symplectic embeddings of the
four-dimensional polydisk $P(a,1)$ into the ball $B(c)$ for $2\leq
a<\frac{\sqrt{7}-1} {\sqrt{7}-2} \approx 2.549$, extending work done by
Hind-Lisi and Hutchings. Schlenk's folding construction permits us to conclude
our bound on $c$ is optimal. Our proof makes use of the combinatorial criterion
necessary for one "convex toric domain" to symplectically embed into another
introduced by Hutchings in \cite{Beyond}. Additionally, we prove that if
certain symplectic embeddings of four dimensional convex toric domains exist
then a modified version of this criterion from \cite{Beyond} must hold, thereby
reducing the computational complexity of the original criterion from $O(2^n)$
to $O(n^2)$.


title:
A complete characterization of Galois subfields of the generalized
  Giulietti--Korchm\'aros function field

abstract:
  We give a complete characterization of all Galois subfields of the
generalized Giulietti--Korchm\'aros function fields $\mathcal C_n / \fqn$ for
$n\ge 5$. Calculating the genera of the corresponding fixed fields, we find new
additions to the list of known genera of maximal function fields.


title:
The role of Dark Matter sub-halos in the non-thermal emission of galaxy
  clusters

abstract:
  Annihilation of Dark Matter (DM) particles has been recognized as one of the
possible mechanisms for the production of non-thermal particles and radiation
in galaxy clusters. Previous studies have shown that, while DM models can
reproduce the spectral properties of the radio halo in the Coma cluster, they
fail in reproducing the shape of the radio halo surface brightness because they
produce a shape that is too concentrated towards the center of the cluster with
respect to the observed one. However, in previous studies the DM distribution
was modeled as a single spherically symmetric halo, while the DM distribution
in Coma is found to have a complex and elongated shape. In this work we
calculate a range of non-thermal emissions in the Coma cluster by using the
observed distribution of DM sub-halos. We find that, by including the observed
sub-halos in the DM model, we obtain a radio surface brightness with a shape
similar to the observed one, and that the sub-halos boost the radio emission by
a factor between 5 and 20%, thus allowing to reduce the gap between the
annihilation cross section required to reproduce the radio halo flux and the
upper limits derived from other observations, and that this gap can be
explained by realistic values of the boosting factor due to smaller
substructures. Models with neutralino mass of 9 GeV and composition $\tau^+
\tau^-$, and mass of 43 GeV and composition $b \bar b$ can fit the radio halo
spectrum using the observed properties of the magnetic field in Coma, and do
not predict a gamma-ray emission in excess compared to the recent Fermi-LAT
upper limits. These findings make these DM models viable candidate to explain
the origin of radio halos in galaxy clusters. [abridged]


title: Topological structure and the H-index in complex networks

abstract:
  The generalized $H(n)$ Hirsch index of order $n$ has been recently introduced
and shown to interpolate between the degree and the $K$-core centrality in
networks. We provide a detailed analytical characterization of the properties
of sets of nodes having the same $H(n)$, within the annealed network
approximation. The connection between the Hirsch indices and the degree is
highlighted. Numerical tests in synthetic uncorrelated networks and real-world
correlated ones validate the findings. We also test the use of the Hirsch index
for the identification of influential spreaders in networks, finding that it is
in general outperformed by the recently introduced Non-Backtracking centrality.


title: Relative $m$-ovoids of elliptic quadrics

abstract:
  Let ${\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q)$ be an elliptic quadric of ${\rm PG}(2n+1,q)$. A
relative $m$-ovoid of ${\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q)$ (with respect to a parablic section
${\cal Q} := {\cal Q}(2n,q) \subset {\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q)$) is a subset $\cal R$
of points of ${\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q)\setminus {\cal Q}$ such that every generator
of ${\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q)$ not contained in $\cal Q$ meets $\cal R$ in precisely
$m$ points. A relative $m$-ovoid having the same size as its complement (in
${\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q) \setminus {\cal Q}$) is called a relative hemisystem. We
show that a nontrivial relative $m$-ovoid of ${\cal Q}^-(2n+1,q)$ is
necessarily a relative hemisystem, forcing $q$ to be even. Also, we construct
an infinite family of relative hemisystems of ${\cal Q}^-(4n+1,q)$, $n \ge 2$,
admitting ${\rm PSp}(2n,q^2)$ as an automorphism group. Finally, some
applications are given.


title: Dynamic Complexity of Parity Games with Bounded Tree-Width

abstract:
  Dynamic complexity is concerned with updating the output of a problem when
the input is slightly changed. We study the dynamic complexity of two-player
parity games over graphs of bounded tree-width, where updates may add or delete
edges, or change the owner or color of states. We show that this problem is in
DynFO (with LOGSPACE precomputation); this is achieved by a reduction to a
Dyck-path problem on an acyclic automaton.


title: An Arabic-Hebrew parallel corpus of TED talks

abstract:
  We describe an Arabic-Hebrew parallel corpus of TED talks built upon WIT3,
the Web inventory that repurposes the original content of the TED website in a
way which is more convenient for MT researchers. The benchmark consists of
about 2,000 talks, whose subtitles in Arabic and Hebrew have been accurately
aligned and rearranged in sentences, for a total of about 3.5M tokens per
language. Talks have been partitioned in train, development and test sets
similarly in all respects to the MT tasks of the IWSLT 2016 evaluation
campaign. In addition to describing the benchmark, we list the problems
encountered in preparing it and the novel methods designed to solve them.
Baseline MT results and some measures on sentence length are provided as an
extrinsic evaluation of the quality of the benchmark.


title: Polarimetry as a tool to study multi-dimensional winds and disks

abstract:
  I start with a discussion of spherical winds and small-scale clumping, before
continuing with various theories that have been proposed to predict how mass
loss depends on stellar rotation -- both in terms of wind strength, as well as
the latitudinal dependence of the wind. This very issue is crucial for our
general understanding of angular momentum evolution in massive stars, and the
B[e] phenomenon in particular. I then discuss the tool of linear polarimetry
that allows us to probe the difference between polar and equatorial mass loss,
allowing us to test B[e] and related disk formation theories.


title:
Fast Cosine Similarity Search in Binary Space with Angular Multi-index
  Hashing

abstract:
  Given a large dataset of binary codes and a binary query point, we address
how to efficiently find $K$ codes in the dataset that yield the largest cosine
similarities to the query. The straightforward answer to this problem is to
compare the query with all items in the dataset, but this is practical only for
small datasets. One potential solution to enhance the search time and achieve
sublinear cost is to use a hash table populated with binary codes of the
dataset and then look up the nearby buckets to the query to retrieve the
nearest neighbors. However, if codes are compared in terms of cosine similarity
rather than the Hamming distance, then the main issue is that the order of
buckets to probe is not evident. To examine this issue, we first elaborate on
the connection between the Hamming distance and the cosine similarity. Doing
this allows us to systematically find the probing sequence in the hash table.
However, solving the nearest neighbor search with a single table is only
practical for short binary codes. To address this issue, we propose the angular
multi-index hashing search algorithm which relies on building multiple hash
tables on binary code substrings. The proposed search algorithm solves the
exact angular $K$ nearest neighbor problem in a time that is often orders of
magnitude faster than the linear scan baseline and even approximation methods.


title: Facility Leasing with Penalties

abstract:
  In this paper we study the facility leasing problem with penalties. We
present a primal-dual algorithm which is a 3-approximation, based on the
algorithm by Nagarajan and Williamson for the facility leasing problem and on
the algorithm by Charikar et al. for the facility location problem with
penalties.


title:
Electromagnetic description of three-dimensional time-reversal invariant
  ponderable topological insulators

abstract:
  A general technique to analyze the classical interaction between ideal
topological insulators, and electromagnetic sources and fields, has been
previously elaborated. Nevertheless it is not immediately applicable in the
laboratory as it fails to describe real ponderable media. In this work we
provide a description of real topologically insulating materials taking into
account their dielectric and magnetic properties. For inhomogeneous
permittivity and permeability, the problem of finding the Green's function must
be solved in an ad hoc manner. Nevertheless, the physically feasible cases of
piecewise constant $\varepsilon, \mu$ and $\theta$ make the problem tractable,
where $\theta$ encodes the topological magnetoelectric polarizability
properties of the medium. To this end we employ the Green's function method to
find the fields resulting form the interaction between these materials and
electromagnetic sources. Furthermore we exploit the fact that in the cases here
studied, the full Green's function can be successfully found if the Green's
function of the corresponding ponderable media with $\theta = 0$ is known. Our
results, satisfactorily reproduce previously existing ones and also generalize
some others. The method here elaborated can be exploited to determine the
electromagnetic fields for more general configurations aiming to measure the
interaction between real 3D topological insulators and electromagnetic fields.


title:
Exponential functionals of Levy processes and variable annuity
  guaranteed benefits

abstract:
  Exponential functionals of Brownian motion have been extensively studied in
financial and insurance mathematics due to their broad applications, for
example, in the pricing of Asian options. The Black-Scholes model is appealing
because of mathematical tractability, yet empirical evidence shows that
geometric Brownian motion does not adequately capture features of market equity
returns. One popular alternative for modeling equity returns consists in
replacing the geometric Brownian motion by an exponential of a Levy process. In
this paper we use this latter model to study variable annuity guaranteed
benefits and to compute explicitly the distribution of certain exponential
functionals.


title: Mass loss and stellar superwinds

abstract:
  Mass loss bridges the gap between massive stars and supernovae (SNe) in two
major ways: (i) theoretically it is the amount of mass lost that determines the
mass of the star prior to explosion, and (ii) observations of the circumstellar
material around SNe may teach us the type of progenitor that made the SN. Here,
I present the latest models and observations of mass loss from massive stars,
both for canonical massive O stars, as well as very massive stars (VMS) that
show Wolf-Rayet type features.


title: Quantifying Urban Traffic Anomalies

abstract:
  Detecting and quantifying anomalies in urban traffic is critical for
real-time alerting or re-routing in the short run and urban planning in the
long run. We describe a two-step framework that achieves these two goals in a
robust, fast, online, and unsupervised manner. First, we adapt stable principal
component pursuit to detect anomalies for each road segment. This allows us to
pinpoint traffic anomalies early and precisely in space. Then we group the
road-level anomalies across time and space into meaningful anomaly events using
a simple graph expansion procedure. These events can be easily clustered,
visualized, and analyzed by urban planners. We demonstrate the effectiveness of
our system using 7 weeks of anonymized and aggregated cellular location data in
Dallas-Fort Worth. We suggest potential opportunities for urban planners and
policy makers to use our methodology to make informed changes. These
applications include real-time re-routing of traffic in response to abnormally
high traffic, or identifying candidates for high-impact infrastructure
projects.


title:
Flint Water Crisis: Data-Driven Risk Assessment Via Residential Water
  Testing

abstract:
  Recovery from the Flint Water Crisis has been hindered by uncertainty in both
the water testing process and the causes of contamination. In this work, we
develop an ensemble of predictive models to assess the risk of lead
contamination in individual homes and neighborhoods. To train these models, we
utilize a wide range of data sources, including voluntary residential water
tests, historical records, and city infrastructure data. Additionally, we use
our models to identify the most prominent factors that contribute to a high
risk of lead contamination. In this analysis, we find that lead service lines
are not the only factor that is predictive of the risk of lead contamination of
water. These results could be used to guide the long-term recovery efforts in
Flint, minimize the immediate damages, and improve resource-allocation
decisions for similar water infrastructure crises.


title:
Time and Space Efficient Quantum Algorithms for Detecting Cycles and
  Testing Bipartiteness

abstract:
  We study space and time efficient quantum algorithms for two graph problems
-- deciding whether an $n$-vertex graph is a forest, and whether it is
bipartite. Via a reduction to the s-t connectivity problem, we describe quantum
algorithms for deciding both properties in $\tilde{O}(n^{3/2})$ time and using
$O(\log n)$ classical and quantum bits of storage in the adjacency matrix
model. We then present quantum algorithms for deciding the two properties in
the adjacency array model, which run in time $\tilde{O}(n\sqrt{d_m})$ and also
require $O(\log n)$ space, where $d_m$ is the maximum degree of any vertex in
the input graph.


title:
Multi-Octave Metamaterial Reflective Half-Wave Plate for Millimetre and
  Sub-Millimetre wave Applications

abstract:
  The quasi-optical modulation of linear polarization at millimeter and
sub-millimeter wavelengths can be achieved by using rotating half wave plates
(HWPs) in front of polarization sensitive detectors. Large operational
bandwidths are required when the same device is meant to work simultaneously
across different frequency bands. Previous realizations of half wave plates,
ranging from birefringent multi-plate to mesh-based devices, have achieved
bandwidths of the order of 100%. Here we present the design and the
experimental characterization of a reflective HWP able to work across
bandwidths of the order of 150%. The working principle of the novel device is
completely different from any previous realization and it is based on the
different phase-shift experienced by two orthogonal polarizations respectively
reflecting off an electric conductor and off an artificial magnetic conductor.


title: Resolutions for Twisted Tensor Products

abstract:
  We build resolutions for general twisted tensor products of algebras. These
bimodule and module resolutions unify many constructions in the literature and
are suitable for computing Hochschild (co)homology and more generally Ext and
Tor for (bi)modules. We analyze in detail the case of Ore extensions,
consequently obtaining Chevalley-Eilenberg resolutions for universal enveloping
algebras of Lie algebras (defining the cohomology of Lie groups and Lie
algebras). Other examples include semidirect products, crossed products, Weyl
algebras, Sridharan enveloping algebras, and Koszul pairs.


title: Equivalence of Jordan and Einstein frames at the quantum level

abstract:
  It is shown that the Jordan frame and its conformally transformed version,
the Einstein frame of nonminimally coupled theories of gravity, are actually
equivalent at the quantum level. The example of the theory taken up is the
Brans-Dicke theory, and the wave packet calculations are done for a homogeneous
and isotropic cosmological model in the purest form of the theory, i.e., in the
absence of any additional matter sector. The calculations are clean and exact,
and the result obtained are unambiguous.


title: A business dinner problem

abstract:
  We are given suppliers and customers, and a set of tables. Every evening of
the forthcoming days, there will be a dinner. Each customer must eat with each
supplier exactly once, but two suppliers may meet at most once at a table. The
number of customers and the number of suppliers who can sit together at a table
are bounded above by fixed parameters. What is the minimum number of evenings
to be scheduled in order to reach this objective? This question was submitted
by a firm to the Junior company of a French engineering school some years ago.
Lower and upper bounds are given in this paper, as well as proven optimal
solutions with closed-form expressions for some cases.


title: Positron production in collision of heavy nuclei

abstract:
  We consider the electromagnetic production of positron in collision of slow
heavy nuclei, with the simultaneously produced electron captured by one of the
nuclei. The cross-section of the discussed process exceeds essentially the
cross-section of $e^+e^-$ production.


title: Chaos-assisted tunneling in the presence of Anderson localization

abstract:
  Tunneling between two classically disconnected regular regions can be
strongly affected by the presence of a chaotic sea in between. This phenomenon,
known as chaos-assisted tunneling, gives rise to large fluctuations of the
tunneling rate. Here we study chaos-assisted tunneling in the presence of
Anderson localization effects in the chaotic sea. Our results show that the
standard tunneling rate distribution is strongly modified by localization,
going from the known Cauchy distribution in the ergodic regime to a log-normal
distribution in the strongly localized case. We develop an analytical
single-parameter scaling theory which accurately describes the numerical data,
for both a deterministic and a disordered model. Several possible experimental
implementations using cold atoms, photonic lattices or microwave billiards are
discussed.

categories: cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech nlin.CD quant-ph


title:
A mathematical, in silico implemented, modular model for tumor growth in
  a spatially inhomogeneous, time-varying chemical environment (1st unrevised
  edition)

abstract:
  During the last decades, medical observations and multiscale data concerning
tumor growth are mounting. At the same time, contemporary imaging techniques
well established in clinical practice, provide a variety of information on
real-time, in-vivo tumor growth. Mathematical and in-silico modeling has been
widely recruited to provide means for further understanding of pertinent
biological phenomena. However, despite the vast amounts of new evidence
compiled by medical doctors, there are still many aspects of tumor growth that
remain largely unknown. There is still a large variety of mechanisms to be
better understood and therefore, many hypotheses to be tested. To approach this
problem, starting from mathematical elaborations, we have developed a model of
the early phases of tumor growth consisting of several algorithmic modules,
each one corresponding to a particular biological mechanism. The modularity of
the model allows keeping track of the assumptions made in each step and
facilitates re-adjustment, in case new hypotheses need to be considered.
Simulations showed good qualitative agreement with biological observations, and
revealed a non-trivial interplay between between oxygen requirements of cancer
cells and their maximum mitosis rates. The proposed model has, at least in
principle, the potential to exploit data from contemporary imaging techniques
and is eligible for utilizing multicore computation.


title:
Multi-strange hadrons and the precision extraction of QGP properties in
  the RHIC-BES domain

abstract:
  We systematically compare an event-by-event transport+viscous hydrodynamics
hybrid model to data from the RHIC beam energy scan using a general Bayesian
method. We demonstrate how the inclusion of multistrange hadron observables
affects the outcome of the Bayesian analysis and conduct an in depth analysis
of the viability of $\phi$ and $\Omega$ as probes of the transition region
between a deconfined quark-gluon plasma and hadronic phase in heavy ion
collisions at higher-end RHIC collision energies. Utilizing UrQMD to model the
final hadronic interactions, we examine the collision rates of $\phi$ and
$\Omega$ and the modification to their transverse momentum spectra due to these
interactions.


title: Systematic Extraction of QGP Properties

abstract:
  We investigate the collision energy dependence of shear viscosity over the
entropy density ratio $\eta/s$ in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=19.6, 39$,
and $62.4$ GeV, using Bayesian statistical analysis and Gaussian process
emulators to explore the full input parameter space of a
transport+hydrodynamics hybrid model. The ratio is found to decrease as a
function of collision energy, supporting the results from previous studies
performed with the same hybrid model.


title: Large deviations for the macroscopic motion of an interface

abstract:
  We study the most probable way an interface moves on a macroscopic scale from
an initial to a final position within a fixed time in the context of large
deviations for a stochastic microscopic lattice system of Ising spins with Kac
interaction evolving in time according to Glauber (non-conservative) dynamics.
Such interfaces separate two stable phases of a ferromagnetic system and in the
macroscopic scale are represented by sharp transitions. We derive quantitative
estimates for the upper and the lower bound of the cost functional that
penalizes all possible deviations and obtain explicit error terms which are
valid also in the macroscopic scale. Furthermore, using the result of a
companion paper about the minimizers of this cost functional for the
macroscopic motion of the interface in a fixed time, we prove that the
probability of such events can concentrate on nucleations should the transition
happen fast enough.


title:
Experimental calibration of a Cahn-Hilliard phase-field model for phase
  transformations in Li-Sn electrodes

abstract:
  Experiments, numerical simulations, and analytical calculations are used to
calibrate a diffuse-interface Cahn-Hilliard model of Li-Sn thin film electrodes
that experience a transformation from Sn to Li2Sn5. It is shown that a
concentration-gradient dependent mobility can be used in the Cahn-Hilliard
equation to give the interface a finite mobility and capture its nonequilibrium
behavior. Comparing experiments and simulations, the free-energy of Li-Sn,
diffusivity of Li in Sn and Li2Sn5, the exchange current density for the
surface reaction, and the mobility of the Sn/Li2Sn5 interface are extracted.
The implications of finite interface mobility for practical battery electrodes
are discussed.


title:
Neutron star natal kicks: Collisions, $\mu$TDEs, faint SNe, GRBs and GW
  sources with preceding electromagnetic counterparts

abstract:
  Based on the observed high velocity of pulsars it is thought that neutron
stars (NSs) receive a significant velocity kick at birth. Such natal kicks are
considered to play an important role in the the evolution of binary-NS systems.
The kick given to the NS (together with the effect of mass loss due to the
supernova explosion of the NS progenitor) may result in the binary disruption
or lead to a significant change of the binary orbital properties. Here we
explore in detail the dynamical aftermath of natal kicks in binary systems,
determine their possible outcomes and characterize their relative frequency,
making use of analytic arguments and detailed population synthesis models. In a
fraction of the cases the kick may cast the NS in such a trajectory as to
collide with the binary companion, or pass sufficiently close to it as to
disrupt it (micro tidal disruption event; $\mu$TDE), or alternatively it could
be tidally-captured into a close orbit, eventually forming an X-ray binary. We
calculate the rates of direct post-kick physical collisions and the possible
potential production of Thorne-Zytkow objects or long-GRBs through this
process, estimate the rates X-ray binaries formation and determine the rates of
$\mu$TDEs and faint supernovae from white dwarf disruptions by NSs. Finally we
suggest that natal kicks can produce BH-NS binaries with very short
gravitational-wave merger time, possibly giving rise to a new type of promptly
appearing eLISA gravitational wave (GW) sources, as well as producing aLIGO
binary-merger GW sources with a unique (likely type Ib/c) supernova
electromagnetic counterpart which precedes the GW merger.


title:
The MAterials Simulation Toolkit (MAST) for atomistic modeling of
  defects and diffusion

abstract:
  The MAterials Simulation Toolkit (MAST) is a workflow manager and
post-processing tool for ab initio defect and diffusion workflows. MAST
codifies research knowledge and best practices for such workflows, and allows
for the generation and management of easily modified and reproducible
workflows, where data is stored along with workflow information for data
provenance tracking. MAST is open-source and available for download (see PDF
for links).


title: Towards a Gravity Dual for the Large Scale Structure of the Universe

abstract:
  The dynamics of the large-scale structure of the universe enjoys at all
scales, even in the highly non-linear regime, a Lifshitz symmetry during the
matter-dominated period. In this paper we propose a general class of
six-dimensional spacetimes which could be a gravity dual to the
four-dimensional large-scale structure of the universe. In this set-up, the
Lifshitz symmetry manifests itself as an isometry in the bulk and our universe
is a four-dimensional brane moving in such six-dimensional bulk. After finding
the correspondence between the bulk and the brane dynamical Lifshitz exponents,
we find the intriguing result that the preferred value of the dynamical
Lifshitz exponent of our observed universe, at both linear and non-linear
scales, corresponds to a fixed point of the RGE flow of the dynamical Lifshitz
exponent in the dual system where the symmetry is enhanced to the Schrodinger
group containing a non-relativistic conformal symmetry. We also investigate the
RGE flow between fixed points of the Lifshitz dynamical exponent in the bulk
and observe that this flow is reflected in a growth rate of the large-scale
structure, which seems to be in qualitative agreement with what is observed in
current data. Our set-up might provide an interesting new arena for testing the
ideas of holography and gravitational duals.


title: Thermodynamics of Multiple Two-body Systems with Long-range Correlation

abstract:
  We aim to study thermodynamics of multiple two-body systems with long-range
correlation using non-extensive statistics. Long-range correlation will cause
multiple systems in anomalous diffusion. We consider the influence of
long-range correlation as a background noise effect on a two-body system. We
solve probability and entropy equations of a two-body system to obtain the
temperature and distance dependence of the non-extensive parameter. The result
shows the long-range correlation changes the system's entropy and energy. The
more strongly is the system bounded, the less its energy is affected by the
long-range correlation. Moreover, the anomalous diffusion approaches Brown
motion with increasing temperature. This will help to understand how nonlinear
field affects thermodynamics of a system.


title:
Mean exit time and escape probability for the anomalous processes with
  the tempered power-law waiting times

abstract:
  The mean first exit (passage) time characterizes the average time of a
stochastic process never leaving a fixed region in the state space, while the
escape probability describes the likelihood of a transition from one region to
another for a stochastic system driven by discontinuous (with jumps) L\'evy
motion. This paper discusses the two deterministic quantities, mean first exit
time and escape probability, for the anomalous processes having the tempered
L\'{e}vy stable waiting times with the tempering index $\lambda>0$ and the
stability index $0<\alpha \le 1$; as for the distribution of jump lengths or
the type of the noises driving the system, two cases are considered, i.e.,
Gaussian white noise and non-Gaussian (tempered) $\beta$-stable ($0<\beta<2$)
L\'{e}vy noise. Firstly, we derive the nonlocal elliptic partial differential
equations (PDEs) governing the mean first exit time and escape probability.
Based on the derived PDEs, it is observed that the mean first exit time depends
strongly on the domain size and the values of $\alpha$, $\beta$ and $\lambda$;
when $\lambda$ is close to zero, the mean first exit time tends to $\infty$. In
particular, we also find an interesting result that the escape probability of a
particle with (tempered) power-law jumping length distribution has no relation
with the distribution of waiting times for the model considered in this paper.
For the solutions of the derived PDEs, the boundary layer phenomena are
observed, which inspires the motivation for developing the boundary layer
theory for nonlocal PDEs.


title: La maravillosa funci\'on y ecuaci\'on cuadr\'atica

abstract:
  This article discusses some important applications of the quadratic function
with the aim of highlighting the importance of cuadr\'aticas.- forms are also
intended to show how a simple function covers virtually all areas of knowledge
are presented. The interested reader can display more sites where this function
is, perhaps growing populations or chaos, or perhaps in the fractal theory.


title: Vortex generated fluid flows in multiply connected domains

abstract:
  A fluid flow in a multiply connected domain generated by an arbitrary number
of point vortices is considered. A stream function for this flow is constructed
as a limit of a certain functional sequence using the method of images. The
convergence of this sequence is discussed, and the speed of convergence is
determined explicitly. The presented formulas allow for the easy computation of
the values of the stream function with arbitrary precision in the case of
well-separated cylinders. The considered problem is important for applications
such as eddy flows in the oceans. Moreover, since finding the stream function
of the flow is essentially identical to finding the modified Green's function
for Laplace's equation, the presented method can be applied to a more general
class of applied problems which involve solving the Dirichlet problem for
Laplace's equation.


title:
Rossiter--McLaughlin models and their effect on estimates of stellar
  rotation, illustrated using six WASP systems

abstract:
  We present new measurements of the projected spin--orbit angle $\lambda$ for
six WASP hot Jupiters, four of which are new to the literature (WASP-61, -62,
-76, and -78), and two of which are new analyses of previously measured systems
using new data (WASP-71, and -79). We use three different models based on two
different techniques: radial velocity measurements of the Rossiter--McLaughlin
effect, and Doppler tomography. Our comparison of the different models reveals
that they produce projected stellar rotation velocities ($v \sin I_{\rm s}$)
measurements often in disagreement with each other and with estimates obtained
from spectral line broadening. The Bou\'e model for the Rossiter--McLaughlin
effect consistently underestimates the value of $v\sin I_{\rm s}$ compared to
the Hirano model. Although $v \sin I_s$ differed, the effect on $\lambda$ was
small for our sample, with all three methods producing values in agreement with
each other. Using Doppler tomography, we find that WASP-61\,b
($\lambda=4^\circ.0^{+17.1}_{-18.4}$), WASP-71\,b
($\lambda=-1^\circ.9^{+7.1}_{-7.5}$), and WASP-78\,b
($\lambda=-6^\circ.4\pm5.9$) are aligned. WASP-62\,b
($\lambda=19^\circ.4^{+5.1}_{-4.9}$) is found to be slightly misaligned, while
WASP-79\,b ($\lambda=-95^\circ.2^{+0.9}_{-1.0}$) is confirmed to be strongly
misaligned and has a retrograde orbit. We explore a range of possibilities for
the orbit of WASP-76\,b, finding that the orbit is likely to be strongly
misaligned in the positive $\lambda$ direction.


title:
Nonlinear response of inertial tracers in steady laminar flows:
  differential and absolute negative mobility

abstract:
  We study the mobility and the diffusion coefficient of an inertial tracer
advected by a two-dimensional incompressible laminar flow, in the presence of
thermal noise and under the action of an external force. We show, with
extensive numerical simulations, that the force-velocity relation for the
tracer, in the nonlinear regime, displays complex and rich behaviors, including
negative differential and absolute mobility. These effects rely upon a subtle
coupling between inertia and applied force which induce the tracer to persist
in particular regions of phase space with a velocity opposite to the force. The
relevance of this coupling is revisited in the framework of non-equilibrium
response theory, applying a generalized Einstein relation to our system. The
possibility of experimental observation of these results is also discussed.


title:
Multimodal Semantic Simulations of Linguistically Underspecified Motion
  Events

abstract:
  In this paper, we describe a system for generating three-dimensional visual
simulations of natural language motion expressions. We use a rich formal model
of events and their participants to generate simulations that satisfy the
minimal constraints entailed by the associated utterance, relying on semantic
knowledge of physical objects and motion events. This paper outlines technical
considerations and discusses implementing the aforementioned semantic models
into such a system.


title:
Measurement of Elastic pp Scattering at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV in the
  Coulomb-Nuclear Interference Region - Determination of the $\rho$-Parameter
  and the Total Cross-Section

abstract:
  The TOTEM experiment at the CERN LHC has measured elastic proton-proton
scattering at the centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV and four-momentum
transfers squared, |t|, from 6 x $10^{-4}$ GeV$^2$ to 0.2 GeV$^2$. Near the
lower end of the |t|-interval the differential cross-section is sensitive to
the interference between the hadronic and the electromagnetic scattering
amplitudes. This article presents the elastic cross-section measurement and the
constraints it imposes on the functional forms of the modulus and phase of the
hadronic elastic amplitude. The data exclude the traditional Simplified West
and Yennie interference formula that requires a constant phase and a purely
exponential modulus of the hadronic amplitude. For parametrisations of the
hadronic modulus with second- or third-order polynomials in the exponent, the
data are compatible with hadronic phase functions giving either central or
peripheral behaviour in the impact parameter picture of elastic scattering. In
both cases, the $\rho$-parameter is found to be 0.12 $\pm$ 0.03. The results
for the total hadronic cross-section are $\sigma_{tot}$ = (102.9 $\pm$ 2.3) mb
and (103.0 $\pm$ 2.3) mb for central and peripheral phase formulations,
respectively. Both are consistent with previous TOTEM measurements.


title: Simulation of a Hyperbolic Field Energy Analyzer

abstract:
  Energy analyzers are important plasma diagnostic tools with applications in a
broad range of disciplines including molecular spectroscopy, electron
microscopy, basic plasma physics, plasma etching, plasma processing, and ion
sputtering technology. The Hyperbolic Field Energy Analyzer (HFEA) is a novel
device able to determine ion and electron energy spectra and temperatures. The
HFEA is well suited for ion temperature and density diagnostics at those
situations where ions are scarce. A simulation of the capacities of the HFEA to
discriminate particles of a particular energy level, as well as to determine
temperature and density is performed in this work. The electric field due the
combination of the conical elements, collimator lens, and Faraday cup applied
voltage was computed in a well suited three-dimensional grid. The field is
later used to compute the trajectory of a set of particles with a predetermined
energy distribution. The results include the observation of the particle
trajectories inside the sensor, the comparison of the input energy distribution
to the energy distribution of the particles captured by the Faraday cup, and
the IV characteristic at the Faraday cup, using the voltage sweep at the
conical elements as the abscissa.


title:
Action minimization and macroscopic interface motion under forced
  displacement

abstract:
  We study an one dimensional model where an interface is the stationary
solution of a mesoscopic non local evolution equation which has been derived by
a microscopic stochastic spin system. Deviations from this evolution equation
can be quantified by obtaining the large deviations cost functional from the
underlying stochastic process. For such a functional, derived in a companion
paper, we investigate the optimal way for a macroscopic interface to move from
an initial to a final position distant by R within fixed time T. We find that
for small values of R/T the interface moves with a constant speed, while for
larger values there appear nucleations of the other phase ahead of the front.


title:
Speckle suppression and companion detection using coherent differential
  imaging

abstract:
  Residual speckles due to aberrations arising from optical errors after the
split between the wavefront sensor and the science camera path are the most
significant barriers to imaging extrasolar planets. While speckles can be
suppressed using the science camera in conjunction with the deformable mirror,
this requires knowledge of the phase of the electric field in the focal plane.
We describe a method which combines a coronagraph with a simple phase-shifting
interferometer to measure and correct speckles in the full focal plane. We
demonstrate its initial use on the Stellar Double Coronagraph at the Palomar
Observatory. We also describe how the same hardware can be used to distinguish
speckles from true companions by measuring the coherence of the optical field
in the focal plane. We present results observing the brown dwarf HD 49197b with
this technique, demonstrating the ability to detect the presence of a companion
even when it is buried in the speckle noise, without the use of any standard
"calibration" techniques. We believe this is the first detection of a
substellar companion using the coherence properties of light.


title: B[e] Supergiants' circumstellar environment: disks or rings?

abstract:
  B[e] Supergiants are a phase in the evolution of some massive stars for which
we have observational evidence but no predictions by any stellar evolution
model. The mass-loss during this phase creates a complex circumstellar
environment with atomic, molecular, and dust regions usually found in rings or
disk-like structures. However, the detailed structure and the formation of the
circumstellar environment are not well-understood, requiring further
investigation. To address that we initiated an observing campaign to obtain a
homogeneous set of high-resolution spectra in both the optical and NIR (using
MPG-ESO/FEROS, GEMINI/Phoenix and VLT/CRIRES, respectively). We monitor a
number of Galactic B[e] Supergiants, for which we examined the [OI] and [CaII]
emission lines and the bandheads of the CO and SiO molecules to probe the
structure and the kinematics of their formation regions. We find that the
emission from each tracer forms either in a single or in multiple equatorial
rings.


title:
Boson condensation and instability in the tensor network representation
  of string-net states

abstract:
  The tensor network representation of many-body quantum states, given by local
tensors, provides a promising numerical tool for the study of strongly
correlated topological phases in two dimension. However, tensor network
representations may be vulnerable to instabilities caused by small
perturbations of the local tensor, especially when the local tensor is not
injective. For example, the topological order in tensor network representations
of the toric code ground state has been shown to be unstable under certain
small variations of the local tensor, if these small variations do not obey a
local $Z_2$ symmetry of the tensor. In this paper, we ask the questions of
whether other types of topological orders suffer from similar kinds of
instability and if so, what is the underlying physical mechanism and whether we
can protect the order by enforcing certain symmetries on the tensor. We answer
these questions by showing that the tensor network representation of all
string-net models are indeed unstable, but the matrix product operator (MPO)
symmetries of the local tensor can help to protect the order. We find that,
`stand-alone' variations that break the MPO symmetries lead to instability
because they induce the condensation of bosonic quasi-particles and destroy the
topological order in the system. Therefore, such variations must be forbidden
for the encoded topological order to be reliably extracted from the local
tensor. On the other hand, if a tensor network based variational algorithm is
used to simulate the phase transition due to boson condensation, then such
variation directions must be allowed in order to access the continuous phase
transition process correctly.


title: Congestion Control for Network-Aware Telehaptic Communication

abstract:
  Telehaptic applications involve delay-sensitive multimedia communication
between remote locations with distinct Quality of Service (QoS) requirements
for different media components. These QoS constraints pose a variety of
challenges, especially when the communication occurs over a shared network,
with unknown and time-varying cross-traffic. In this work, we propose a
transport layer congestion control protocol for telehaptic applications
operating over shared networks, termed as dynamic packetization module (DPM).
DPM is a lossless, network-aware protocol which tunes the telehaptic
packetization rate based on the level of congestion in the network. To monitor
the network congestion, we devise a novel network feedback module, which
communicates the end-to-end delays encountered by the telehaptic packets to the
respective transmitters with negligible overhead. Via extensive simulations, we
show that DPM meets the QoS requirements of telehaptic applications over a wide
range of network cross-traffic conditions. We also report qualitative results
of a real-time telepottery experiment with several human subjects, which reveal
that DPM preserves the quality of telehaptic activity even under heavily
congested network scenarios. Finally, we compare the performance of DPM with
several previously proposed telehaptic communication protocols and demonstrate
that DPM outperforms these protocols.


title:
Influence of galaxy stellar mass and observed wavelength on disc breaks
  in S$^4$G, NIRS0S, and SDSS data

abstract:
  Breaks in the surface brightness profiles in the outer regions of galactic
discs are thought to have formed by various internal and external processes,
and by studying the breaks we aim to better understand what processes are
responsible for the evolution of the outer discs. We use a large well-defined
sample to study how common the breaks are, and whether their properties depend
on galaxy stellar mass or observed wavelength. We study radial surface
brightness profiles of 753 galaxies, obtained from the $3.6 \mu m$ images of
the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S$^4$G), and the
$K_s$-band data from the Near InfraRed S0-Sa galaxy Survey (NIRS0S), covering a
wide range of galaxy morphologies and stellar masses. Optical SDSS or Liverpool
telescope data was used for 480 of these galaxies. We find that in low-mass
galaxies the single exponential discs (Type I) are most common, and that their
fraction decreases with increasing galaxy stellar mass. The fraction of
down-bending (Type II) discs increases with stellar mass, possibly due to more
common occurrence of bar resonance structures. The up-bending (Type III) discs
are also more common in massive galaxies. The observed wavelength affects the
scalelength of the disc of every profile type. Especially the scalelength of
the inner disc of Type II profiles increases from infrared to u-band on average
by a factor of $\sim 2.2$. Consistent with the previous studies, we find that
Type II outer disc scalelengths ($h_o$) in late-type and low-mass galaxies are
shorter in bluer wavelengths, possibly due to stellar radial migration
populating the outer discs with old stars. In Type III discs $h_o$ are larger
in the u-band, hinting to the presence of young stellar population in the outer
disc. While the observed wavelength affects the disc parameters, it does not
significantly affect the profile type in our sample. (Abridged)


title: Analytical modelling of temperature effects on synapses

abstract:
  It was previously reported, that temperature may significantly influence
neural dynamics on different levels of brain modelling. Due to this fact, while
creating the model in computational neuroscience we would like to make it
scalable for wide-range of various brain temperatures. However currently,
because of a lack of experimental data and an absence of analytical model
describing temperature influence on synapses, it is not possible to include
temperature effects on multi-neuron modelling level. In this paper, we propose
first step to deal with this problem: new analytical model of AMPA-type
synaptic conductance, which is able to include temperature effects in
low-frequency stimulations. It was constructed on basis of Markov model
description of AMPA receptor kinetics and few simplifications motivated both
experimentally and from Monte Carlo simulation of synaptic transmission. The
model may be used for efficient and accurate implementation of temperature
effects on AMPA receptor conductance in large scale neural network simulations.
This in fact, opens wide-range of new possibilities for researching an
influence of temperature on brain functioning.


title: Transverse spin with coupled plasmons

abstract:
  We study theoretically the transverse spin associated with the eigenmodes of
a thin metal film embedded in a dielectric. We show that the transverse spin
has a direct dependence on the nature and strength of the coupling leading to
two distinct branches for the long- and short- range modes. We show that the
short-range mode exhibits larger extraordinary spin because of its more
'structured' nature due to higher decay in propagation. In contrast to some of
the earlier studies, calculations are performed retaining the full lossy
character of the metal. In the limit of vanishing losses we present analytical
results for the extraordinary spin for both the coupled modes. The results can
have direct implications for enhancing the elusive transverse spin exploiting
the coupled plasmon structures.


title:
Suppression and azimuthal anisotropy of prompt and nonprompt J/psi
  production in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

abstract:
  The nuclear modification factor RAA and the azimuthal anisotropy coefficient
v[2] of prompt and nonprompt (i.e. those from decays of b hadrons) J/psi
mesons, measured from PbPb and pp collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV at the
LHC, are reported. The results are presented in several event centrality
intervals and several kinematic regions, for transverse momenta pt > 6.5 GeV/c
and rapidity abs(y) < 2.4, extending down to pt = 3 GeV/c in the 1.6 < abs(y) <
2.4 range. The v[2] of prompt J/psi is found to be nonzero, but with no strong
dependence on centrality, rapidity, or pt over the full kinematic range
studied. The measured v[2] of nonprompt J/psi is consistent with zero. The RAA
of prompt J/psi exhibits a suppression that increases from peripheral to
central collisions but does not vary as a function of either y or pt in the
fiducial range. The nonprompt J/psi RAA shows a suppression which becomes
stronger as rapidity or pt increase. The v[2] and nuclear suppression of open
and hidden charm, and of open charm and beauty, are compared.


title: Answer to a question of Ros\l{}anowski and Shelah

abstract:
  In [arXiv:1605.02261] Ros\l{}anowski and Shelah asked whether every locally
compact non-discrete group has a null but non-meager subgroup, and conversely,
whether it is consistent with $ZFC$ that in every locally compact group a
meager subgroup is always null. They gave affirmative answers for both
questions in the case of the Cantor group and the reals. In this paper we give
affirmative answers for the general case.


title: One-dimensional foliations on topological manifolds

abstract:
  Let $X$ be an $(n+1)$-dimensional manifold, $\Delta$ be a one-dimensional
foliation on $X$, and $p: X \to X / \Delta$ be a quotient map. We will say that
a leaf $\omega$ of $\Delta$ is special whenever the space of leaves $X /
\Delta$ is not Hausdorff at $\omega$. We present necessary and sufficient
conditions for the map $p: X \to X / \Delta$ to be a locally trivial fibration
under assumptions that all leaves of $\Delta$ are non-compact and the family of
all special leaves of $\Delta$ is locally finite.


title:
On the possibility of helicity oscillations in the saturation of the
  Tayler instability

abstract:
  Recent numerical results of current-driven instabilities at low magnetic
Prandtl number and high Hartmann number support the possibility of a saturation
state characterized by helicity oscillations. We investigate the underlying
mechanism by analyzing this possibility using an higher-order Landau-Ginzburg
effective Lagrangian for the weakly non-linear amplitude dynamics, where the
magnetic and velocity perturbations are linearly dependent. We find that, if
the mirror symmetry between left- and right-handed modes is spontaneously
broken, it is impossible to achieve an oscillating helical state. We argue that
the result is likely to hold also adding higher-order terms and in the presence
of an explicit symmetry breaking. We conclude that an oscillating saturating
state for the Tayler instability is unlikely to depend on the interaction of
chiral modes.


title:
New Insights into the Dynamics of Zwitterionic Micelles and Their
  Hydration Waters by Gigahertz-to-Terahertz Dielectric Spectroscopy

abstract:
  Gigahertz-to-terahertz spectroscopy of macromolecules in aqueous environments
provides an important approach for identifying their global and transient
molecular structures, as well as directly assessing hydrogen-bonding. We report
dielectric properties of zwitterionic dodecylphosphocholine (DPC) micelles in
aqueous solutions over a wide frequency range, from 50 MHz to 1.12 THz. The
dielectric relaxation spectra reveal different polarization mechanisms at the
molecular level, reflecting the complexity of DPC micelle-water interactions.
We have made a deconvolution of the spectra into different components and
combined them with the effective-medium approximation to separate delicate
processes of micelles in water. Our measurements demonstrate reorientational
motion of the DPC surfactant head groups within the micelles, and two levels of
hydration water shells, including tightly- and loosely-bound hydration water
layers. From the dielectric strength of bulk water in DPC solutions, we found
that the number of waters in hydration shells is approximately constant at 950
+/- 45 water molecules per micelle in DPC concentrations up to 400 mM, and it
decreases after that. At terahertz frequencies, employing the effective-medium
approximation, we estimate that each DPC micelle is surrounded by a
tightly-bound layer of 310 +/- 45 water molecules that behave as if they are an
integral part of the micelle. Combined with molecular dynamics simulations, we
determine that tightly-bound waters are directly hydrogen-bonded to oxygens of
DPC, while loosely-bound waters reside within 4 A of micellar atoms. The
dielectric response of DPC micelles at terahertz frequencies yields, for the
first time, experimental information regarding the largest-scale, lowest
frequency collective motions in micelles.


title: Curvas algebraicas y la pregunta de Halphen

abstract:
  This is an expository paper written in Spanish. This paper discusses the
answer and ideas around the Halphen question: what are the pairs (g,d) that
occur as the genus and degree of a smooth algebraic curve in projective
3-space.
  Halphen's question has been studied by many authors, including Halphen in
1881, Castelnuovo in 1890, and was finally answered almost 100 years later by
Gruson and Peskin in 1981. We (very briefly) sketch arguments by Castelnuovo in
studying this question and comment on the ideas of the final answer provided by
Gruson and Peskin. This paper is meant to be brief and elementary introduction
to some ideas about algebraic curves embedded in projective space and as such,
we start out with basic definitions such as that of an algebraic curve, genus
and degree. Towards the end, we mention some modern developments about this
question as well as directions of research.


title:
Towards a quantitative description of tunneling conductance of
  superconductors: application to LiFeAs

abstract:
  Since the discovery of iron-based superconductors, a number of theories have
been put forward to explain the qualitative origin of pairing, but there have
been few attempts to make quantitative, material-specific comparisons to
experimental results. The spin-fluctuation theory of electronic pairing, based
on first-principles electronic structure calculations, makes predictions for
the superconducting gap. Within the same framework, the surface wave functions
may also be calculated, allowing, e.g., for detailed comparisons between
theoretical results and measured scanning tunneling topographs and spectra.
Here we present such a comparison between theory and experiment on the Fe-based
superconductor LiFeAs. Results for the homogeneous surface as well as impurity
states are presented as a benchmark test of the theory. For the homogeneous
system, we argue that the maxima of topographic image intensity may be located
at positions above either the As or Li atoms, depending on tip height and the
setpoint current of the measurement. We further report the experimental
observation of transitions between As and Li-registered lattices as functions
of both tip height and setpoint bias, in agreement with this prediction. Next,
we give a detailed comparison between the simulated scanning tunneling
microscopy images of transition-metal defects with experiment. Finally, we
discuss possible extensions of the current framework to obtain a theory with
true predictive power for scanning tunneling microscopy in Fe-based systems.


title:
FogMQ: A Message Broker System for Enabling Distributed, Internet-Scale
  IoT Applications over Heterogeneous Cloud Platforms

abstract:
  Excessive tail end-to-end latency occurs with conventional message brokers as
a result of having massive numbers of geographically distributed devices
communicate through a message broker. On the other hand, broker-less messaging
systems, though ensure low latency, are highly dependent on the limitation of
direct device-to-device (D2D) communication technologies, and cannot scale well
as large numbers of resource-limited devices exchange messages. In this paper,
we propose FogMQ, a cloud-based message broker system that overcomes the
limitations of conventional systems by enabling autonomous discovery,
self-deployment, and online migration of message brokers across heterogeneous
cloud platforms. For each device, FogMQ provides a high capacity device cloning
service that subscribes to device messages. The clones facilitate near-the-edge
data analytics in resourceful cloud compute nodes. Clones in FogMQ apply Flock,
an algorithm mimicking flocking-like behavior to allow clones to dynamically
select and autonomously migrate to different heterogeneous cloud platforms in a
distributed manner.


title:
Emergent eddy saturation from an energy constrained eddy
  parameterisation

abstract:
  The large-scale features of the global ocean circulation and the sensitivity
of these features with respect to forcing changes are critically dependent upon
the influence of the mesoscale eddy field. One such feature, observed in
numerical simulations whereby the mesoscale eddy field is at least partially
resolved, is the phenomenon of eddy saturation, where the time-mean circumpolar
transport of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current displays relative insensitivity
to wind forcing changes. Coarse-resolution models employing the
Gent--McWilliams parameterisation with a constant Gent--McWilliams coefficient
seem unable to reproduce this phenomenon. In this article, an idealised model
for a wind-forced, zonally symmetric flow in a channel is used to investigate
the sensitivity of the circumpolar transport to changes in wind forcing under
different eddy closures. It is shown that, when coupled to a simple
parameterised eddy energy budget, the Gent--McWilliams coefficient of the form
described in Marshall et al. (2012) [A framework for parameterizing eddy
potential vorticity fluxes, J. Phys. Oceanogr., vol. 42, 539--557], which
includes a linear eddy energy dependence, produces eddy saturation as an
emergent property.


title: Benchmark Problems for Numerical Implementations of Phase Field Models

abstract:
  We present the first set of benchmark problems for phase field models that
are being developed by the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD)
and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). While many
scientific research areas use a limited set of well-established software, the
growing phase field community continues to develop a wide variety of codes and
lacks benchmark problems to consistently evaluate the numerical performance of
new implementations. Phase field modeling has become significantly more popular
as computational power has increased and is now becoming mainstream, driving
the need for benchmark problems to validate and verify new implementations. We
follow the example set by the micromagnetics community to develop an evolving
set of benchmark problems that test the usability, computational resources,
numerical capabilities and physical scope of phase field simulation codes. In
this paper, we propose two benchmark problems that cover the physics of solute
diffusion and growth and coarsening of a second phase via a simple spinodal
decomposition model and a more complex Ostwald ripening model. We demonstrate
the utility of benchmark problems by comparing the results of simulations
performed with two different adaptive time stepping techniques, and we discuss
the needs of future benchmark problems. The development of benchmark problems
will enable the results of quantitative phase field models to be confidently
incorporated into integrated computational materials science and engineering
(ICME), an important goal of the Materials Genome Initiative.


title:
Noninvasive imaging of three dimensional micro and nanostructures by
  topological methods

abstract:
  We present topological derivative and energy based procedures for the imaging
of micro and nanostructures using one beam of visible light of a single
wavelength. Objects with diameters as small as 10 nm can be located, and their
position tracked with nanometer precision. Multiple objects distributed either
on planes perpendicular to the incidence direction or along axial lines in the
incidence direction are distinguishable. More precisely, the shape and size of
plane sections perpendicular to the incidence direction can be clearly
determined, even for asymmetric and non-convex scatterers. Axial resolution
improves as the size of the objects decreases. Initial reconstructions may
proceed by glueing together 2D horizontal slices between axial peaks or by
locating objects at 3D peaks of topological energies, depending on the
effective wavenumber. Below a threshold size, topological derivative based
iterative schemes improve initial predictions of the location, size and shape
of objects by postprocessing fixed measured data. For larger sizes, tracking
the peaks of topological energy fields that average information from additional
incident light beams seems to be more effective.


title:
CDSFA Stochastic Frontier Analysis Approach to Revenue Modeling in Large
  Cloud Data Centers

abstract:
  Enterprises are investing heavily in cloud data centers to meet the ever
surging business demand. Data Center is a facility, which houses computer
systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage
systems. It generally includes power supply equipment, communication
connections and cooling equipment. A large data center can use as much
electricity as a small town. Due to the emergence of data center based
computing services, it has become necessary to examine how the costs associated
with data centers evolve over time, mainly in view of efficiency issues. We
have presented a quasi form of Cobb Douglas model, which addresses revenue and
profit issues in running large data centers. The stochastic form has been
introduced and explored along with the quasi Cobb Douglas model to understand
the behavior of the model in depth. Harrod neutrality and Solow neutrality are
incorporated in the model to identify the technological progress in cloud data
centers. This allows us to shed light on the stochastic uncertainty of cloud
data center operations. A general approach to optimizing the revenue cost of
data centers using Cobb Douglas Stochastic Frontier Analysis,CDSFA is
presented. Next, we develop the optimization model for large data centers. The
mathematical basis of CDSFA has been utilized for cost optimization and profit
maximization in data centers. The results are found to be quite useful in view
of production reorganization in large data centers around the world.


title:
A multiscale continuous Galerkin method for stochastic simulation and
  robust design of photonic crystals

abstract:
  We present a multiscale continuous Galerkin (MSCG) method for the fast and
accurate stochastic simulation and optimization of time-harmonic wave
propagation through photonic crystals. The MSCG method exploits repeated
patterns in the geometry to drastically decrease computational cost and
incorporates the following ingredients: (1) a reference domain formulation that
allows us to treat geometric variability resulting from manufacturing
uncertainties; (2) a reduced basis approximation to solve the parametrized
local subproblems; (3) a gradient computation of the objective function; and
(4) a model and variance reduction technique that enables the accelerated
computation of statistical outputs by exploiting the statistical correlation
between the MSCG solution and the reduced basis approximation. The proposed
method is thus well suited for both deterministic and stochastic simulations,
as well as robust design of photonic crystals. We provide convergence and cost
analysis of the MSCG method, as well as a simulation results for a waveguide
T-splitter and a Z-bend to illustrate its advantages for stochastic simulation
and robust design.


title:
Nernst heat theorem for the thermal Casimir interaction between two
  graphene sheets

abstract:
  We find analytic asymptotic expressions at low temperature for the Casimir
free energy, entropy and pressure of two parallel graphene sheets in the
framework of the Lifshitz theory. The reflection coefficients of
electromagnetic waves on graphene are described on the basis of first
principles of quantum electrodynamics at nonzero temperature using the
polarization tensor in (2+1)-dimensional space-time. The leading contributions
to the Casimir entropy and to the thermal corrections to the Casimir energy and
pressure are given by the thermal correction to the polarization tensor at
nonzero Matsubara frequencies. It is shown that the Casimir entropy for two
graphene sheets goes to zero when the temperature vanishes, i.e., the third law
of thermodynamics (the Nernst heat theorem) is satisfied. At low temperature,
the magnitude of the thermal correction to the Casimir pressure between two
graphene sheets is shown to vary inversely proportional to the separation. The
Nernst heat theorem for graphene is discussed in the context of problems
occurring in Casimir physics for both metallic and dielectric plates.


title: A non-equilibrium microscopic description of spallation

abstract:
  We investigate the prompt emission of few intermediate-mass fragments in
spallation reactions induced by protons and deuterons in the 1 GeV range. Such
emission has a minor contribution to the total reaction cross section, but it
may overcome evaporation and fission channels in the formation of light
nuclides. The role of mean-field dynamics and phase-space fluctuations in these
reactions is investigated through the Boltzmann-Langevin transport equation. We
found that a process of frustrated fragmentation and re-aggregation is a
prominent mechanism of production of IMFs which can not be assimilated to the
statistical decay of a compound nucleus. Very interestingly, this process may
yield a small number of IMF in the exit channel, which may even reduce to two,
and be wrongly confused with ordinary asymmetric fission. This interpretation,
inspired by nuclear-spallation experiments, can be generalised to heavy-ion
collisions approaching the fragmentation threshold.


title: Higgs physics at CLIC

abstract:
  The Compact Linear Collider CLIC is an option for a future multi-TeV
electron-positron collider, offering the potential for a rich precision physics
programme, combined with sensitivity to a wide range of new phenomena. The CLIC
physics potential for measurements of the 125 GeV Higgs boson has been studied
using full detector simulations for several centre-of-mass energies. The
presented results provide crucial input to the energy staging strategy for the
CLIC accelerator. The complete physics program for measurements of accessible
Higgs boson couplings is presented in this contribution. The ultimate
measurement precision is reached when all measurements available at a given
centre-of-mass energy are included in combined fits. Operation at a few hundred
GeV allows the couplings and width of the Higgs boson to be determined in a
model-independent manner through the study of the Higgsstrahlung and WW-fusion
processes. At a lepton collider, the measurement of the Higgsstrahlung cross
section using the recoil mass technique sets the absolute scale for all Higgs
coupling measurements. Recently, it has been shown that including both the
leptonic and the hadronic decays of the Z boson in this approach improves the
statistical precision significantly. Operation at higher centre-of-mass
energies provides large statistics for the study of Higgs boson decays and the
potential to directly measure the top Yukawa coupling. At the highest
centre-of-mass energy (presently assumed to be 3 TeV), the Higgs boson
self-coupling can be determined with 10% precision.


title: Bs to mu mu gamma from Bs to mu mu

abstract:
  The Bs to mu mu gamma decay offers sensitivity to a wider set of effective
operators than its non-radiative counterpart Bs to mu mu, and a set that is
interesting in the light of present-day discrepancies in flavour data. On the
other hand, the direct measurement of the Bs to mu mu gamma decay poses
challenges with respect to the Bs to mu mu one. We present a novel strategy to
search for Bs to mu mu gamma decays in the very event sample selected for Bs to
mu mu searches. The method consists in extracting the Bs to mu mu gamma
spectrum as a "contamination" to the Bs to mu mu one, as the signal window for
the latter is extended downward with respect to the peak region. We provide
arguments for the actual practicability of the method already on Run-2 data of
the LHC.


title:
Dynamical system-based robot reaching motions by para-model control
  approach - A preliminary study

abstract:
  In this report, we apply the proposed "para-model" framework in order to
control the trajectory of a dynamical system-based robot. The optimization of
the dynamical performances in closed-loop is performed using a derivative-free
optimization algorithm.


title:
Gauge Coupling Unification with Hidden Photon, and Minicharged Dark
  Matter

abstract:
  We show that gauge coupling unification is realized with a greater accuracy
in the presence of a massless hidden photon which has a large kinetic mixing
with hypercharge. We solve the renormalization group equations at two-loop
level and find that the GUT unification scale is around $10^{16.5}$ GeV which
sufficiently suppresses the proton decay rate, and that the unification is
essentially determined by the kinetic mixing only, and it is rather insensitive
to the hidden gauge coupling or the presence of vector-like matter fields
charged under U(1)$_H$ and/or SU(5). Matter fields charged under the unbroken
hidden U(1)$_H$ are stable and they contribute to dark matter. Interestingly,
they become minicharged dark matter which carries a small but non-zero electric
charge, if the hidden gauge coupling is tiny. The minicharged dark matter is a
natural outcome of the gauge coupling unification with a hidden photon.


title: Embedded Systems Security

abstract:
  Not long ago, it was thought that only software applications and general
purpose digital systems i.e. computers were prone to various types of attacks
against their security. The underlying hardware, hardware implementations of
these software applications, embedded systems, and hardware devices were
considered to be secure and out of reach of these attacks. However, during the
previous few years, it has been demonstrated that novel attacks against the
hardware and embedded systems can also be mounted. Not only viruses, but worms
and Trojan horses have been developed for them, and they have also been
demonstrated to be effective. Whereas a lot of research has already been done
in the area of security of general purpose computers and software applications,
hardware and embedded systems security is a relatively new and emerging area of
research. This chapter provides details of various types of existing attacks
against hardware devices and embedded systems, analyzes existing design
methodologies for their vulnerability to new types of attacks, and along the
way describes solutions and countermeasures against them for the design and
development of secure systems.


title:
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation with Asynchronous
  Off-Policy Updates

abstract:
  Reinforcement learning holds the promise of enabling autonomous robots to
learn large repertoires of behavioral skills with minimal human intervention.
However, robotic applications of reinforcement learning often compromise the
autonomy of the learning process in favor of achieving training times that are
practical for real physical systems. This typically involves introducing
hand-engineered policy representations and human-supplied demonstrations. Deep
reinforcement learning alleviates this limitation by training general-purpose
neural network policies, but applications of direct deep reinforcement learning
algorithms have so far been restricted to simulated settings and relatively
simple tasks, due to their apparent high sample complexity. In this paper, we
demonstrate that a recent deep reinforcement learning algorithm based on
off-policy training of deep Q-functions can scale to complex 3D manipulation
tasks and can learn deep neural network policies efficiently enough to train on
real physical robots. We demonstrate that the training times can be further
reduced by parallelizing the algorithm across multiple robots which pool their
policy updates asynchronously. Our experimental evaluation shows that our
method can learn a variety of 3D manipulation skills in simulation and a
complex door opening skill on real robots without any prior demonstrations or
manually designed representations.


title: Orthographic Syllable as basic unit for SMT between Related Languages

abstract:
  We explore the use of the orthographic syllable, a variable-length
consonant-vowel sequence, as a basic unit of translation between related
languages which use abugida or alphabetic scripts. We show that orthographic
syllable level translation significantly outperforms models trained over other
basic units (word, morpheme and character) when training over small parallel
corpora.


title: A Comparison of Existing Ethernet Frame Specifications

abstract:
  The Ethernet as we see it today is a result of many stages of evolution. As a
result, the Ethernet frame format at the link layer also has seen many changes.
One might expect a consistent format of link layer frames as we usually study
in text books, in actual practice this is not the case. Please refer to the
manuscript for complete abstract.


title: Double-critical graph conjecture for claw-free graphs

abstract:
  A connected graph $G$ with chromatic number $t$ is double-critical if $G
\backslash \{x, y\}$ is $(t - 2)$-colorable for each edge $xy \in E(G)$. The
complete graphs are the only known examples of double-critical graphs. A
long-standing conjecture of Erd\H os and Lov\'asz from 1966, which is referred
to as the Double-Critical Graph Conjecture, states that there are no other
double-critical graphs. That is, if a graph $G$ with chromatic number $t$ is
double-critical, then $G$ is the complete graph on $t$ vertices. This has been
verified for $t \le 5$, but remains open for $t \ge 6$. In this paper, we first
prove that if $G$ is a non-complete, double-critical graph with chromatic
number $t \ge 6$, then no vertex of degree $t + 1$ is adjacent to a vertex of
degree $t+1$, $t + 2$, or $t + 3$ in $G$. We then use this result to show that
the Double-Critical Graph Conjecture is true for double-critical graphs $G$
with chromatic number $t \le 8$ if $G$ is claw-free.


title: Imprint of DES super-structures on the Cosmic Microwave Background

abstract:
  Small temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background can be
sourced by density perturbations via the late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe
effect. Large voids and superclusters are excellent environments to make a
localized measurement of this tiny imprint. In some cases excess signals have
been reported. We probed these claims with an independent data set, using the
first year data of the Dark Energy Survey in a different footprint, and using a
different super-structure finding strategy. We identified 52 large voids and
102 superclusters at redshifts $0.2 < z < 0.65$. We used the Jubilee simulation
to a priori evaluate the optimal ISW measurement configuration for our
compensated top-hat filtering technique, and then performed a stacking
measurement of the CMB temperature field based on the DES data. For optimal
configurations, we detected a cumulative cold imprint of voids with $\Delta
T_{f} \approx -5.0\pm3.7~\mu K$ and a hot imprint of superclusters $\Delta
T_{f} \approx 5.1\pm3.2~\mu K$ ; this is $\sim1.2\sigma$ higher than the
expected $|\Delta T_{f}| \approx 0.6~\mu K$ imprint of such super-structures in
$\Lambda$CDM. If we instead use an a posteriori selected filter size
($R/R_{v}=0.6$), we can find a temperature decrement as large as $\Delta T_{f}
\approx -9.8\pm4.7~\mu K$ for voids, which is $\sim2\sigma$ above $\Lambda$CDM
expectations and is comparable to previous measurements made using SDSS
super-structure data.


title:
Uncertainty Quantified Computational Analysis of the Energetics of Virus
  Capsid Assembly

abstract:
  Most of the existing research in assembly pathway prediction/analysis of
virus cap- sids makes the simplifying assumption that the configuration of the
intermediate states can be extracted directly from the final configuration of
the entire capsid. This assump- tion does not take into account the
conformational changes of the constituent proteins as well as minor changes to
the binding interfaces that continues throughout the assembly process until
stabilization. This paper presents a statistical-ensemble based approach which
provides sufficient samples of the configurational space for each monomer and
the relative local orientation between monomers, to capture the uncertainties
in their binding and conformations. Furthermore, instead of using larger
capsomers (trimers, pentamers) as building blocks, we allow all possible
sub-assemblies to bind in all pos- sible combinations. We represent this
assembly graph in two different ways. First, we use the Wilcoxon signed rank
measure to compare the distributions of binding free energy computed on the
sampled conformations to predict likely pathways. Second, we represent chemical
equilibrium aspects of the transitions as a Bayesian Factor graph where both
associations and dissociations are modeled based on concentrations and the
binding free energies. Results from both of these experiments showed
significant departure from those one would obtain if only the static
configurations of the proteins were considered. Hence, we establish the
importance of an uncertainty-aware protocol for pathway analysis, and provide a
statistical framework as an important first step towards assembly pathway
prediction with high statistical confidence.


title: Superrotations and Black Hole Pair Creation

abstract:
  Recent work has shown that the symmetries of classical gravitational
scattering in asymptotically flat spacetimes include, at the linearized level,
infinitesimal superrotations. These act like Virasoro generators on the
celestial sphere at null infinity. However, due to the singularities in these
generators, the physical status of finite superrotations has remained unclear.
Here we address this issue in the context of the breaking of a cosmic string
via quantum black hole pair nucleation. This process is described by a
gravitational instanton known as the $C$-metric. After pair production, the
black holes are pulled by the string to null infinity with a constant
acceleration. At late times the string decays and the spacetime settles into a
vacuum state. We show that the early and late spacetimes before and after
string decay differ by a finite superrotation. This provides a physical
interpretation of superrotations. They act on spacetimes which are
asymptotically flat everywhere except at isolated singularities with cosmic
string defects.


title: Role of Free and Open Source Software in Computer and Internet Security

abstract:
  There is no denying the fact that with the widespread usage of computers and
the Internet in our daily lives, security of information and data has gained
increased attention. Information stored in electronic form is more susceptible
to being leaked to unauthorized individuals intentionally or without intent.
One of the major reasons for this breach of security has been attributed to
proprietary software whose source is available only to the company which made
it. Thus you have no surety that the proprietary and pre-compiled software has
no hole to help an individual break security of your computer or network.
Philosophy of free and open source software as against this provides everyone
an opportunity to view the source code for any possible vulnerabilities and
compile and change it according to ones need. This paper discusses this
philosophy in length with some examples and also some open source tools that
help maintain computer and Internet security.


title: Random walks in cooling random environments

abstract:
  We propose a model of a one-dimensional random walk in dynamic random
environment that interpolates between two classical settings: (I) the random
environment is sampled at time zero only; (II) the random environment is
resampled at every unit of time. In our model the random environment is
resampled along an increasing sequence of deterministic times. We consider the
annealed version of the model, and look at three growth regimes for the
resampling times: (R1) linear; (R2) polynomial; (R3) exponential. We prove weak
laws of large numbers and central limit theorems. We list some open problems
and conjecture the presence of a crossover for the scaling behaviour in regimes
(R2) and (R3).


title: Entanglement by Path Identity

abstract:
  Quantum entanglement is one of the most prominent features of quantum
mechanics and forms the basis of quantum information technologies. Here we
present a novel method for the creation of quantum entanglement in multipartite
and high-dimensional systems. The two ingredients are 1) superposition of
photon pairs with different origins and 2) aligning photons such that their
paths are identical. We explain the experimentally feasible creation of various
classes of multiphoton entanglement encoded in polarization as well as in
high-dimensional Hilbert spaces -- starting only from non-entangled photon
pairs. For two photons, arbitrary high-dimensional entanglement can be created.
The idea of generating entanglement by path identity could also apply to other
quantum entities than photons. We discovered the technique by analyzing the
output of a computer algorithm. This shows that computer designed quantum
experiments can be inspirations for new techniques.


title:
Performance of a nonempirical exchange functional from the density
  matrix expansion: comparative study with different correlation

abstract:
  Recently, Tao and Mo proposed an accurate meta-generalized gradient
approximation for the exchange-correlation energy. The exchange part is derived
from the density matrix expansion, while the correlation part is obtained by
improving the TPSS correlation in the low-density limit. To better understand
this exchange functional, in this work, we combine the TM exchange with the
original TPSS correlation, which we call TMTPSS, and make a systematic
assessment on molecular properties. The test sets include the 223 G3/99
enthalpies of formation, 58 electron affinities, 8 proton affinities, 96 bond
lengths, 82 harmonic frequencies, and 10 hydrogen-bonded molecular complexes.
Our calculations show that the TMTPSS functional is competitive with or even
more accurate than TM functional for some properties. In particular, it is the
most accurate nonempirical semilocal DFT for the enthalpies of formation and
harmonic vibrational frequencies, suggesting the robustness of TM exchange.


title:
Speech Enhancement via Two-Stage Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Packet
  Transform with a Speech Presence Probability Estimator

abstract:
  In this paper, a two-stage dual tree complex wavelet packet transform
(DTCWPT) based speech enhancement algorithm has been proposed, in which a
speech presence probability (SPP) estimator and a generalized minimum mean
squared error (MMSE) estimator are developed. To overcome the drawback of
signal distortions caused by down sampling of WPT, a two-stage analytic
decomposition concatenating undecimated WPT (UWPT) and decimated WPT is
employed. An SPP estimator in the DTCWPT domain is derived based on a
generalized Gamma distribution of speech, and Gaussian noise assumption. The
validation results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain enhanced
perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), and segmental signal-to-noise
ratio (SegSNR) at low SNR nonstationary noise, compared with other four
state-of-the-art speech enhancement algorithms, including optimally modified
LSA (OM-LSA), soft masking using a posteriori SNR uncertainty (SMPO), a
posteriori SPP based MMSE estimation (MMSE-SPP), and adaptive Bayesian wavelet
thresholding (BWT).


title: Weighted least square solutions of the equation AXB-C=0

abstract:
  Let $\mathcal{H}$ be a Hilbert space, $L(\mathcal{H})$ the algebra of bounded
linear operators on $\mathcal{H}$ and $W \in L(\mathcal{H})$ a positive
operator such that $W^{1/2}$ is in the p-Schatten class, for some $1 \leq p<
\infty.$ Given $A, B \in L(\mathcal{H})$ with closed range and $C \in
L(\mathcal{H}),$ we study the following weighted approximation problem: analize
the existence of \begin{equation}\label{eqa1} \underset{X \in
L(\mathcal{H})}{min}\Vert AXB-C \Vert_{p,W}, \ \ \ \ (1) \end{equation} where
$\Vert X \Vert_{p,W}=\Vert W^{1/2}X \Vert_{p}.$ We also study the related
operator approximation problem: analize the existence of \begin{equation}
\label{eqa2} \underset{X \in L(\mathcal{H})}{min} (AXB-C)^{*}W(AXB-C), \ \ \ \
(2) \end{equation} where the order is the one induced in $L(\mathcal{H})$ by
the cone of positive operators. In this paper we prove that the existence of
the minimum of (2) is equivalent to the existence of a solution of the normal
equation $A^*W(AXB-C)=0.$ We also give sufficient conditions for the existence
of the minimum of (1) and we characterize the operators where the minimum is
attained.


title:
The first moment of azimuthal anisotropy in nuclear collisions from AGS
  to LHC energies

abstract:
  We review topics related to the first moment of azimuthal anisotropy ($v_1$),
commonly known as directed flow, focusing on both charged particles and
identified particles from heavy-ion collisions. Beam energies from the highest
available, at the CERN LHC, down to projectile kinetic energies per nucleon of
a few GeV per nucleon, as studied in experiments at the Brookhaven AGS, fall
within our scope. We focus on experimental measurements and on theoretical work
where direct comparisons with experiment have been emphasized. The physics
addressed or potentially addressed by this review topic includes the study of
Quark Gluon Plasma, and more generally, investigation of the Quantum
Chromodynamics phase diagram and the equation of state describing the
accessible phases.