title:
Mechanical stability of particle-stabilized droplets under micropipette
  aspiration

abstract:
  We investigate the mechanical behavior of particle-stabilized droplets using
micropipette aspiration. We observe that droplets stabilized with amphiphilic
dumbbell-shaped particles exhibit a two-stage response to increasing suction
pressure. Droplets first drip, then wrinkle and buckle like an elastic shell.
While particles have a dramatic impact on the mechanism of failure, the
mechanical strength of the droplets is only modestly increased. On the other
hand, droplets coated with the molecular surfactant Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate are
even weaker than bare droplets. In all cases, the magnitude of the critical
pressure for the onset of instabilities is set by the fluid surface tension.


title:
Tracing low-mass galaxy clusters with radio relics: the discovery of
  Abell 3527-bis

abstract:
  Galaxy clusters undergo mergers that can generate extended radio sources
called radio relics. Radio relics are the consequence of merger-induced shocks
that propagate in the intra cluster medium (ICM). In this paper we analyse the
radio, optical and X-ray data from a candidate galaxy cluster that has been
selected from the radio emission coming from a candidate radio relic detected
in NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS). Our aim is to clarify the nature of this source
and prove that under certain conditions radio emission from radio relics can be
used to trace relatively low-mass galaxy clusters. We have observed the
candidate galaxy cluster with the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) at
three different frequencies. These datasets have been analysed together with
archival data from ROSAT in the X-ray and with archival data from the Gamma-Ray
Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) telescope in four different
optical bands. We confirm the presence of a 1 Mpc long radio relic located in
the outskirts of a previously unknown galaxy cluster. We confirm the presence
of the galaxy cluster through dedicated optical observations and using archival
X-ray data. Due to its proximity and similar redshift to a known Abell cluster,
we named it: Abell 3527-bis. The galaxy cluster is among the least massive
cluster known to host a radio relic. We showed that radio relics can be
effectively used to trace a subset of relatively low-mass galaxy clusters that
might have gone undetected in X-ray or Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) surveys. This
technique might be used in future deep, low-frequency surveys as those carried
on by LOFAR, uGMRT and, ultimately, SKA.


title: Ulrich bundles on ruled surfaces

abstract:
  In this short note, we study the existence problem for Ulrich bundles on
ruled surfaces, focusing our attention on the smallest possible rank. We show
that existence of Ulrich line bundles occurs if and only if the coefficient
$\alpha$ of the minimal section in the numerical class of the polarization
equals one. For other polarizations, we prove the existence of rank two Ulrich
bundles.


title:
Galactic Kinematics from Data on Open Star Clusters from the MWSC
  Catalogue

abstract:
  Open star clusters from the MWSC (Milky Way Star Clusters) catalogue have
been used to determine the Galactic rotation parameters. The circular rotation
velocity of the solar neighborhood around the Galactic center has been found
from data on more than 2000 clusters of various ages to be V_0=236+/-6 km
s^{-1} for the adopted Galactocentric distance of the Sun R_0=8.3+/-0.2 kpc.
The derived angular velocity parameters are \Omega_0=28.48+/-0.36 km s^{-1}
kpc^{-1}, \Omega'_0=-3.50+/-0.08 km s^{-1} kpc^{-2}, and \Omega"_0=
0.331+/-0.037 km s^{-1} kpc^{-3}. The influence of the spiral density wave has
been detected only in the sample of clusters younger than 50 Myr. For these
clusters the amplitudes of the tangential and radial velocity perturbations are
f_\theta=5.6+/-1.6 km s^{-1} and f_R=7.7+/-1.4 km s^{-1}, respectively; the
perturbation wavelengths are \lambda_\theta=2.6+/-0.5 kpc (i_\theta=-11+/-2
degrees) and \lambda_R=2.1+/-0.5 kpc (i_R=-9+/-2 degrees) for the adopted
four-armed model (m=4). The Sun's phase in the spiral density wave is
(\chi_\odot)_\theta=-62+/-9 degrees and (\chi_\odot)_R =-85+/-10 degrees from
the residual tangential and radial velocities, respectively.


title: Stability of a fermionic $N+1$ particle system with point interactions

abstract:
  We prove that a system of $N$ fermions interacting with an additional
particle via point interactions is stable if the ratio of the mass of the
additional particle to the one of the fermions is larger than some critical
$m^*$. The value of $m^*$ is independent of $N$ and turns out to be less than
$1$. This fact has important implications for the stability of the unitary
Fermi gas. We also characterize the domain of the Hamiltonian of this model,
and establish the validity of the Tan relations for all wave functions in the
domain.


title: Geometry dependence of 2-dimensional space-charge-limited currents

abstract:
  The space-charge-limited current in a zero thickness planar thin film depends
on the geometry of the electrodes. We present a theory which is to a large
extent analytical and applicable to many different lay-outs. We show that a
space-charge-limited current can only be sustained if the emitting electrode
induces a singularity in the field and if the singularity induced by the
collecting electrode is not too strong. For those lay-outs where no
space-charge-limited current can be sustained for a zero thickness film, the
real thickness of the film must be taken into account using a numerical model.


title:
Galactic Cosmic-Ray Induced Production of Lithium in the Small
  Magellanic Cloud

abstract:
  Recently, the first lithium detection outside of the Milky Way was made in
low-metallicity gas of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which was at the level of
the expected primordial value. Part of the observed lithium in any environment
has primordial origin, but there is always some post-BBN (Big Bang
Nucleosynthesis) contamination, since lithium can also be produced in
cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar medium. Using the fact that
processes involving cosmic rays produce lithium, but also gamma rays through
neutral pion decay, we use the Small Magellanic Cloud gamma-ray observations by
Fermi-LAT to make predictions on the amount of lithium in this galaxy that was
produced by galactic cosmic rays accelerated in supernova remnants. By
including both fusion processes, as well as spallation of heavier nuclei, we
find that galactic cosmic rays could produce a very small amount of lithium. In
the case of 6Li isotope (which should only be produced by cosmic rays) we can
only explain 0.16% of the measured abundance. If these cosmic rays are indeed
responsible for such small lithium production, observed abundances could be the
result of some other sources, which are discussed in the paper.


title:
A short review and primer on using video for psychophysiological
  observations in human-computer interaction applications

abstract:
  The application of psychophysiological measures in human-computer interaction
is a growing field with significant potential for future smart personalised
systems. Working in this emerging field requires comprehension of an array of
physiological signals and analysis techniques. An important aspect in measuring
psychophysiological variables in real-world settings is the invasiveness of the
measurement setup. Video is a signal which can be captured from a distance
without interrupting the subject. Furthermore, the advancements in camera
technologies enable detecting a growing variety of psychophysiological
phenomena from a video signal with an increasing accuracy. This paper aims to
serve as a primer for the novice, enabling rapid familiarisation with the
latest core concepts. We put special emphasis on everyday human-computer
interface applications to distinguish from the more common clinical or sports
uses of psychophysiology.
  This paper is an extract from a comprehensive review of the entire field of
ambulatory psychophysiology, including 12 similar chapters, plus application
guidelines and systematic review. Thus any citation should be made using the
following reference: B. Cowley, M. Filetti, K. Lukander, J. Torniainen, A.
Henelius, L. Ahonen, O. Barral, I. Kosunen, T. Valtonen, M. Huotilainen, N.
Ravaja, G. Jacucci. The Psychophysiology Primer: a guide to methods and a broad
review with a focus on human-computer interaction. Foundations and Trends in
Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 9, no. 3-4, pp. 150--307, 2016.


title: Possible associated signal with GW150914 in the LIGO data

abstract:
  We present a simple method for the identification of weak signals associated
with gravitational wave events. Its application reveals a signal with the same
time lag as the GW150914 event in the released LIGO strain data with a
significance around $3.2\sigma$. This signal starts about 10 minutes before
GW150914 and lasts for about 45 minutes. Subsequent tests suggest that this
signal is likely to be due to external sources.


title: Optimal design of observational studies: overview and synthesis

abstract:
  We review typical design problems encountered in the planning of
observational studies and propose a unifying framework that allows us to use
the same concepts and notation for different problems. In the framework, the
design is defined as a probability measure in the space of observational
processes that determine whether the value of a variable is observed for a
specific unit at the given time. The optimal design is then defined, according
to Bayesian decision theory, to be the one that maximizes the expected utility
related to the design. We present examples on the use of the framework and
discuss methods for deriving optimal or approximately optimal designs.


title:
Search for the anomalous electromagnetic moments of the tau lepton
  through electron-photon scattering at the CLIC

abstract:
  We have examined the anomalous electromagnetic moments of the tau lepton in
the processes $e^{-}\gamma \to \nu_e\tau\bar{\nu}_\tau$ ($\gamma$ is the
Compton backscattering photon) and $e^{-}e^{+} \to e^{-}\gamma^* e^{+} \to
\nu_{e}\tau \bar{\nu}_\tau e^+$ ($\gamma^*$ is the Weizsacker-Williams photon)
with unpolarized and polarized electron beams at the CLIC. We have obtained
95$\%$ confidence level bounds on the anomalous magnetic and electric dipole
moments for various values of the integrated luminosity and center-of-mass
energy. Improved constraints of the anomalous magnetic and electric dipole
moments have been obtained compared to the LEP sensitivity.


title: Multi-label Methods for Prediction with Sequential Data

abstract:
  The number of methods available for classification of multi-label data has
increased rapidly over recent years, yet relatively few links have been made
with the related task of classification of sequential data. If labels indices
are considered as time indices, the problems can often be seen as equivalent.
In this paper we detect and elaborate on connections between multi-label
methods and Markovian models, and study the suitability of multi-label methods
for prediction in sequential data. From this study we draw upon the most
suitable techniques from the area and develop two novel competitive approaches
which can be applied to either kind of data. We carry out an empirical
evaluation investigating performance on real-world sequential-prediction tasks:
electricity demand, and route prediction. As well as showing that several
popular multi-label algorithms are in fact easily applicable to sequencing
tasks, our novel approaches, which benefit from a unified view of these areas,
prove very competitive against established methods.


title: Storing light with subradiant correlations in arrays of atoms

abstract:
  We show how strong light-mediated resonant dipole-dipole interactions between
atoms can be utilized in a control and storage of light. The method is based on
a high-fidelity preparation of a collective atomic excitation in a single
correlated subradiant eigenmode in a lattice. We demonstrate how a simple
phenomenological model captures the qualitative features of the dynamics and
sharp transmission resonances that may find applications in sensing.

categories: physics.atom-ph cond-mat.quant-gas physics.optics quant-ph


title: Electron impact excitation rates for transitions in Mg V

abstract:
  Energy levels, radiative rates (A-values) and lifetimes, calculated with the
GRASP code, are reported for an astrophysically important O-like ion Mg~V.
Results are presented for transitions among the lowest 86 levels belonging to
the 2s$^2$2p$^4$, 2s2p$^5$, 2p$^6$, and 2s$^2$2p$^3$3$\ell$ configurations.
There is satisfactory agreement with earlier data for most levels/transitions,
but scope remains for improvement. Collision strengths are also calculated,
with the DARC code, and the results obtained are comparable for most
transitions (at energies above thresholds) with earlier work using the DW code.
In thresholds region, resonances have been resolved in a fine energy mesh to
determine values of effective collision strengths ($\Upsilon$) as accurately as
possible. Results are reported for all transitions at temperatures up to
10$^6$~K, which should be sufficient for most astrophysical applications.
However, a comparison with earlier data reveals discrepancies of up to two
orders of magnitude for over 60\% of transitions, at all temperatures. The
reasons for these discrepancies are discussed in detail.


title: Thermometry of bosonic mixtures in Optical Lattices via Demixing

abstract:
  Motivated by recent experiments and theoretical investigations on binary
mixtures, we investigate the miscible-immiscible transition at finite
temperature by means of Quantum Monte Carlo. Based on the observation that the
segregated phase is strongly affected by temperature, we propose to use the
degree of demixing for thermometry of a binary bosonic mixture trapped in an
optical lattice. We show that the proposed method is especially sensitive at
low temperatures, of the order of the tunnelling amplitude, and therefore is
particularly suitable in the regime where quantum magnetism is expected.


title: A brief overview of the sock matching problem

abstract:
  This short note deals with the so-called $ Sock \; Matching \; Problem$. We
define $B_{n,k}$ as the number of all the finite sequences $a_1, \ldots,
a_{2n}$ of nonnegative integers which contain at least one occurrence of $k$
$(1 \leq k \leq n)$ and for which $a_1 = 1 $, $a_{2n}=0$ and $ \mid a_i
-a_{i+1}\mid \; = 1$. The value $a_i$ can be interpreted as the number of
unmatched socks being present after having drawn the first $i$ socks randomly
out of the pile which initially contained $n$ pairs of socks. Here,
establishing a link between this problem and with both some old and some new
results, related to the number of restricted Dyck paths, we obtain a few valid
forms of the sock matching theorem and prove that the probability for $k$
unmatched socks to appear (in the very process of drawing one sock at a time)
approaches $1$ as the number of socks becomes large enough.


title:
The Lambda(1405) state in a chiral unitary approach with off-shell
  corrections to dimensional regularized loop functions

abstract:
  The Bethe-Salpeter equation is solved in the framework of unitary
coupled-channel approximation by using the pseudoscalar meson-baryon octet
interaction. The loop function of the intermediate meson and baryon is deduced
in a dimensional regularization scheme, where the relativistic kinetic effect
and off-shell corrections are taken into account. According to the experimental
data at the $K^- p$ threshold, the subtraction constants in the loop function
are determined. The squared amplitude is suppressed strongly and only one
$\Lambda(1405)$ state is generated dynamically in the strangeness $S=-1$ and
isospin $I=0$ sector.


title: Analysing degeneracies in networks spectra

abstract:
  Many real-world networks exhibit a high degeneracy at few eigenvalues. We
show that a simple transformation of the network's adjacency matrix provides an
understanding of the origins of occurrence of high multiplicities in the
networks spectra. We find that the eigenvectors associated with the degenerate
eigenvalues shed light on the structures contributing to the degeneracy. Since
these degeneracies are rarely observed in model graphs, we present results for
various cancer networks. This approach gives an opportunity to search for
structures contributing to degeneracy which might have an important role in a
network.


title:
Quantum Simulations of One-Dimensional Nanostructures under Arbitrary
  Deformations

abstract:
  A powerful technique is introduced for simulating mechanical and
electromechanical properties of one-dimensional nanostructures under arbitrary
combinations of bending, twisting, and stretching. The technique is based on a
novel control of periodic symmetry, which eliminates artifacts due to
deformation constraints and quantum finite-size effects, and allows transparent
electronic structure analysis. Via density-functional tight-binding
implementation, the technique demonstrates its utility by predicting novel
electromechanical properties in carbon nanotubes and abrupt behavior in the
structural yielding of Au7 and MoS nanowires. The technique drives simulations
markedly closer to the realistic modeling of these slender nanostructures under
experimental conditions.


title: A stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi equation with infinite speed of propagation

abstract:
  We give an example of a stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi equation $du = H(Du) d\xi$
which has an infinite speed of propagation as soon as the driving signal $\xi$
is not of bounded variation.


title:
Spin-wave dynamics in FeGe helimagnet: studied by small-angle neutron
  scattering

abstract:
  We have studied the spin-wave stiffness of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya
helimagnet FeGe in a temperature range from 225~K up to $T_C \approx$~278.7~K
by small-angle neutron scattering. The method we have used is based on [S. V.
Grigoriev et al. Phys. Rev. B \textbf{92} 220415(R) (2015)] and was extended
here for the application in polycrystalline samples. We confirm the validity of
the anisotropic spin-wave dispersion for FeGe caused by the
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We have shown that the spin-wave stiffness
$A$ for FeGe helimagnet decreases with a temperature as $A(T) =
194(1-0.7(T/T_C)^{4.2})$ meV\AA$^2$. The finite value of the spin-wave
stiffness $A = 58$ meV\AA$^2$ at $T_C$ classifies the order-disorder phase
transition in FeGe as being the first order one.


title: emoji2vec: Learning Emoji Representations from their Description

abstract:
  Many current natural language processing applications for social media rely
on representation learning and utilize pre-trained word embeddings. There
currently exist several publicly-available, pre-trained sets of word
embeddings, but they contain few or no emoji representations even as emoji
usage in social media has increased. In this paper we release emoji2vec,
pre-trained embeddings for all Unicode emoji which are learned from their
description in the Unicode emoji standard. The resulting emoji embeddings can
be readily used in downstream social natural language processing applications
alongside word2vec. We demonstrate, for the downstream task of sentiment
analysis, that emoji embeddings learned from short descriptions outperforms a
skip-gram model trained on a large collection of tweets, while avoiding the
need for contexts in which emoji need to appear frequently in order to estimate
a representation.


title: No fixed-point guarantee of Nash equilibrium in quantum games

abstract:
  The theory of quantum games permits players to choose strategies that prepare
and measure quantum states. Whereas conventional game theory provides
guarantees for fixed-point stability in non-cooperative games, so-called Nash
equilibria, we find this guarantee is not provided for quantum games. In
particular, we show the conditions for Glickberg's fixed-point theorem do not
apply to pure quantum games when the payoff is a physical observable. We
further show that Nash equilibrium can be guaranteed when the payoff is defined
with respect to state preparation.


title:
Electric power generation of a liquid self-assembled drop on a
  semiconductor surface

abstract:
  The technological innovation of the direct conversion of solar energy to
electric plays an important role in electric power generation. Earlier
discussions of band bending in a semiconductor contacting a metal and liquid
electrolyte solutions containing redox couples with different electrochemical
potentials should not overshadow the fact that under absorption of photons
takes place in a solar cell, which can generate free charge for an electrical
circuit. Here we propose new band bending of ZnO and Cu2O semiconductors
induced by a liquid self-assembled microdrop of a physiological salt solution.


title:
Computer simulation study of a mesogenic lattice model based on
  long-range dispersion interactions

abstract:
  In contrast to thermotropic biaxial nematic phases, for which some long
sought for experimental realizations have been obtained, no experimental
realizations are yet known for their tetrahedratic and cubatic
counterparts,involving orientational orders of ranks 3 and 4, respectively,
also studied theoretically over the last few decades. In previous studies,
cubatic order has been found for hard-core or continuous models consisting of
particles possessing cubic or nearly-cubic tetragonal or orthorhombic
symmetries; in a few cases, hard-core models involving uniaxial ($D_{\infty
h}-$symmetric) particles have been claimed to produce cubatic order as well.
Here we address by Monte Carlo simulation a lattice model consisting of
uniaxial particles coupled by long-range dispersion interactions of the
London-De Boer-Heller type; the model was found to produce no second-rank
nematic but only fourth-rank cubatic order, in contrast to the nematic behavior
long known for its counterpart with interactions truncated at nearest-neighbor
separation.


title:
Seasonal variations of the rate of multiple-muons in the Gran Sasso
  underground laboratory

abstract:
  It is well known that the rate of cosmic ray muons depends on the atmospheric
temperature, and that for events with a single muon the peak of the rate is in
summer, in underground laboratories in the northern hemisphere. In 2015 the
MINOS experiment, in USA, found that, for small distances between the
multiple-muons, the rate of multiple-muons peaks in the winter and that the
amplitude of the modulation is smaller than in the case of a single muon. I
have done a re-analysis of data of the past MACRO experiment. The result is
that under Gran Sasso the rate of multiple-muons at small distances peaks in
the summer. This difference with MINOS could be explained by differences in the
atmospheric temperature due to latitude. This results could be of interest for
dark matter experiments looking to dark matter seasonal modulation due to the
Earth's motion.


title: Automated Breast Lesion Segmentation in Ultrasound Images

abstract:
  The main objective of this project is to segment different breast ultrasound
images to find out lesion area by discarding the low contrast regions as well
as the inherent speckle noise. The proposed method consists of three stages
(removing noise, segmentation, classification) in order to extract the correct
lesion. We used normalized cuts approach to segment ultrasound images into
regions of interest where we can possibly finds the lesion, and then K-means
classifier is applied to decide finally the location of the lesion. For every
original image, an annotated ground-truth image is given to perform comparison
with the obtained experimental results, providing accurate evaluation measures.


title:
Asymptotics of a Gauss hypergeometric function with large parameters,
  III: Application to the Legendre functions of large imaginary order and real
  degree

abstract:
  We obtain the asymptotic expansion for the Gauss hypergeometric function
\[F(a-\lambda,b+\lambda;c+i\alpha\lambda;z)\] for $\lambda\rightarrow+\infty$
with $a$, $b$ and $c$ finite parameters by application of the method of
steepest descents. The quantity $\alpha$ is real, so that the denominatorial
parameter is complex and $z$ is a finite complex variable restricted to lie in
the sector $|\arg (1-z)|<\pi$. We concentrate on the particular case $a=0$,
$b=c=1$, which is associated with the Legendre functions of real degree and
imaginary order. The resulting expansions are of Poincar\'e type and hold in
restricted domains of the $z$-plane. An expansion is given at the coalescence
of two saddle points. Numerical results illustrating the accuracy of the
different expansions are given.


title:
Vertical midscale ionospheric disturbances caused by surface seismic
  waves based on Irkutsk chirp ionosonde data in 2011-2016

abstract:
  Based on the Irkutsk fast monostatic chirp ionosonde data we made a
statistical analysis of ionospheric effects for 28 earthquakes which appeared
in 2011-2016 years. These effects are related with surface (Rayleigh) seismic
waves far from epicenter. The analysis has shown that nine of these earthquakes
were accompanied by vertical midscale ionospheric irregularities (multicusp).
To estimate the ionospheric efficiency of the seismic waves we proposed new
index $K_{W}$. The index estimates the maximal amplitude of the acoustic shock
wave generated by given spatial distribution of seismic vibrations and related
with maximal spectral power of seismic oscillations.
  Based on the analysis of experimental data we have shown that
earthquake-related multicusp is observed mostly at daytime [07:00-17:00]LST for
$K_{W}\ge4.7$. The observations of intrinsic gravity waves by GPS technique in
the epicenter vicinity do not show such a daytime dependence. Based on
24/05/2013 Okhotsk Sea earthquake example, we demonstrated that deep-focus
earthquakes can produce strong multicusp far from the epicenter, although do
not produce significant GPS ionospheric response in the epicenter vicinity.
Three cases of sporadic E bifurcation in far epicentral zone were also detected
and discussed.


title:
Stream Differential Equations: Specification Formats and Solution
  Methods

abstract:
  Streams, or infinite sequences, are infinite objects of a very simple type,
yet they have a rich theory partly due to their ubiquity in mathematics and
computer science. Stream differential equations are a coinductive method for
specifying streams and stream operations, and their theory has been developed
in many papers over the past two decades. In this paper we present a survey of
the many results in this area. Our focus is on the classification of different
formats of stream differential equations, their solution methods, and the
classes of streams they can define. Moreover, we describe in detail the
connection between the so-called syntactic solution method and abstract GSOS.


title: New Quantum Transition in Weyl Semimetals with Correlated Disorder

abstract:
  A Weyl semimetal denotes an electronic phase of solids in which two bands
cross linearly. In this paper we study the effect of a spatially correlated
disorder on such a phase. Using a renormalization group analysis, we show that
in three dimensions, three scenarios are possible depending on the disorder
correlations. A standard transition is recovered for short range correlations.
For disorder decaying slower than $1/r^{2}$, the Weyl semimetal is unstable to
any weak disorder and no transition persists. In between, a new phase
transition occurs. This transition still separates a disordered metal from a
semi-metal, but with a new critical behavior that we analyze to two-loop order.


title:
Searches for long-lived and highly-ionizing particles at the CMS and
  ATLAS experiments

abstract:
  Long-lived particles are contained in a variety of beyond Standard Model
theories, including supersymmetric models, universal extra dimensions, or
technicolor theories. If the lifetime of such a particle is long enough, the
particle can enter - or even pass through - the detector before it decays.
Therefore, searches for long-lived particles require a very different search
strategy compared to conventional searches for particles beyond the Standard
Model. If the new particle is not only weakly interacting, the particle can be
reconstructed itself and not only via its decay products. A very specific
characteristic of such new heavy charged particles is their large ionization
losses when traveling through the detector. This article summarizes searches
for long-lived particles at the CMS and ATLAS experiments that exploit the
potentially high ionization losses per path length (dE/dx) of the new particle.
The presented searches are performed on 8 and/or 13 TeV data. Additionally, an
overview of the methodology of dE/dx measurements at the CMS and ATLAS
experiments is given.


title: Vizing's conjecture for cographs

abstract:
  We show that if $G$ is a cograph, that is $P_4$-free, then for any graph $H$,
$\gamma(G\square H)\geq \gamma(G)\gamma(H)$. By the characterization of
cographs as a finite sequence of unions and joins of $K_1$, this result easily
follows from that of Bartsalkin and German. However, the techniques used are
new and may be useful to prove other results.


title:
Relay-Linking Models for Prominence and Obsolescence in Evolving
  Networks

abstract:
  The rate at which nodes in evolving social networks acquire links (friends,
citations) shows complex temporal dynamics. Preferential attachment and link
copying models, while enabling elegant analysis, only capture rich-gets-richer
effects, not aging and decline. Recent aging models are complex and heavily
parameterized; most involve estimating 1-3 parameters per node. These
parameters are intrinsic: they explain decline in terms of events in the past
of the same node, and do not explain, using the network, where the linking
attention might go instead. We argue that traditional characterization of
linking dynamics are insufficient to judge the faithfulness of models. We
propose a new temporal sketch of an evolving graph, and introduce several new
characterizations of a network's temporal dynamics. Then we propose a new
family of frugal aging models with no per-node parameters and only two global
parameters. Our model is based on a surprising inversion or undoing of triangle
completion, where an old node relays a citation to a younger follower in its
immediate vicinity. Despite very few parameters, the new family of models shows
remarkably better fit with real data. Before concluding, we analyze temporal
signatures for various research communities yielding further insights into
their comparative dynamics. To facilitate reproducible research, we shall soon
make all the codes and the processed dataset available in the public domain.


title: An Evaluation of Coarse-Grained Locking for Multicore Microkernels

abstract:
  The trade-off between coarse- and fine-grained locking is a well understood
issue in operating systems. Coarse-grained locking provides lower overhead
under low contention, fine-grained locking provides higher scalability under
contention, though at the expense of implementation complexity and re- duced
best-case performance.
  We revisit this trade-off in the context of microkernels and tightly-coupled
cores with shared caches and low inter-core migration latencies. We evaluate
performance on two architectures: x86 and ARM MPCore, in the former case also
utilising transactional memory (Intel TSX). Our thesis is that on such
hardware, a well-designed microkernel, with short system calls, can take
advantage of coarse-grained locking on modern hardware, avoid the run-time and
complexity cost of multiple locks, enable formal verification, and still
achieve scalability comparable to fine-grained locking.


title: Thermodynamics and cosmological reconstruction in $f(T,B)$ gravity

abstract:
  Recently, it was formulated a teleparallel theory called $f(T,B)$ gravity
which connects both $f(T)$ and $f(R)$ under suitable limits. In this theory,
the function in the action is assumed to depend on the torsion scalar $T$ and
also on a boundary term related with the divergence of torsion,
$B=2\nabla_{\mu}T^{\mu}$. In this work, we study different features of a flat
Friedmann-Lema\^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology in this theory. First,
we show that the FLRW equations can be transformed to the form of Clausius
relation $\hat{T}_hS_{\rm eff}=-dE+WdV$, where $\hat{T}_h$ is the horizon
temperature and $S_{\rm eff}$ is the entropy which contains contributions both
from horizon entropy and an additional entropy term introduced due to the
non-equilibrium. We also formulate the constraint for the validity of the
generalised second law of thermodynamics (GSLT). Additionally, using a
cosmological reconstruction technique, we show that both $f(T,B)$ and $-T+F(B)$
gravity can mimic power-law, de-Sitter and $\Lambda$CDM models. Finally, we
formulate the perturbed evolution equations and analyse the stability of some
important cosmological solutions.


title:
Implementing structural slow light on short length scales: the photonic
  speed-bump

abstract:
  One-dimensional (1D) infinite periodic systems exhibit vanishing group
velocity and diverging density of states (DOS) near band edges. However, in
practice, systems have finite sizes and inevitably this prompts the question of
whether helpful physical quantities related to infinite systems, such as the
group velocity that is deduced from the band structure, remain relevant in
finite systems. For instance, one may wonder how the DOS divergence can be
approached with finite systems. Intuitively, one may expect that the
implementation of larger and larger DOS, or equivalently smaller and smaller
group velocities, would critically increase the system length. Based on general
1D-wave-physics arguments, we demonstrate that the large slow-light DOS
enhancement of periodic systems can be observed with very short systems, whose
lengths scale with the logarithm of the inverse of the group velocities. The
understanding obtained for 1D systems leads us to propose a novel sort of
microstructure to enhance light-matter interaction, a sort of photonic speed
bump that abruptly changes the speed of light by a few orders of magnitude
without any reflection. We show that the DOS enhancements of speed bumps result
from a classical electromagnetic resonance characterized by a single resonance
mode and also that the nature and the properties of the resonance are markedly
different from those of classical defect-mode photonic-crystal cavities.


title:
The distribution of first hitting times of non-backtracking random walks
  on Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi networks

abstract:
  We present analytical results for the distribution of first hitting times of
non-backtracking random walks on finite Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi networks of $N$
nodes. The walkers hop randomly between adjacent nodes on the network, without
stepping back to the previous node, until they hit a node which they have
already visited before or get trapped in a dead-end node. At this point, the
path is terminated. The length, $d$, of the resulting path, is called the first
hitting time. Using recursion equations, we obtain analytical results for the
tail distribution of first hitting times, $P(d>\ell)$, $\ell=0,1,2,\dots$, of
non-backtracking random walks starting from a random initial node. It turns out
that the distribution $P(d>\ell)$ is given by a product of a discrete Rayleigh
distribution and an exponential distribution. It is found that the paths of
non-backtracking random walks, up to their termination at the first hitting
time, are longer, on average, than those of the corresponding simple RWs.
However, they are shorter than those of SAWs on the same network, which
terminate at the last hitting time. We obtain analytical results for the
probabilities, $p_{\rm ret}$ and $p_{\rm trap}$, that a path will terminate by
retracing, namely stepping into an already visited node, or by trapping, namely
entering a node of degree $k=1$, which has no exit link, respectively. It is
shown that in dilute networks the dominant termination scenario is trapping
while in dense networks most paths terminate by retracing. We obtain
expressions for the conditional tail distributions of path lengths,
$P(d>\ell|{\rm ret})$ and $P(d>\ell|\rm{trap})$, for those paths which
terminate by retracing or by trapping, respectively. We also study a class of
generalized non-backtracking random walk models which not only avoid the
backtracking step into the previous node but avoid stepping into the last $S$
visited nodes.


title:
Lorentz symmetry violation in the fermion number anomaly with the chiral
  overlap operator

abstract:
  Recently, Grabowska and Kaplan proposed a four-dimensional lattice
formulation of chiral gauge theories on the basis of a chiral overlap operator.
We compute the classical continuum limit of the fermion number anomaly in this
formulation. Unexpectedly, we find that the continuum limit contains a term
which is not Lorentz invariant. The term is, however, proportional to the gauge
anomaly coefficient, and thus the fermion number anomaly in this lattice
formulation automatically restores the Lorentz-invariant form when and only
when the anomaly cancellation condition is met.


title:
Extremely scalable algorithm for 10$^8$-atom quantum material simulation
  on the full system of the K computer

abstract:
  An extremely scalable linear-algebraic algorithm was developed for quantum
material simulation (electronic state calculation) with 10$^8$ atoms or
100-nm-scale materials. The mathematical foundation is generalized shifted
linear equations ((zB - A) x = b), instead of conventional generalized
eigenvalue equations. The method has a highly parallelizable mathematical
structure. The fundamental theory is mathematical and is applicable also to
other scientific fields. The benchmark shows an extreme strong scaling and a
qualified time-to-solution on the full system of the K computer. The method was
demonstrated in a real material research for ultra-flexible (organic) devices,
key devices of next-generation IoT products. The present paper shows that an
innovative scalable algorithm for a real research can appear by the co-design
among application, algorithm and architecture.


title: Network formation and gelation in Telechelic star polymers

abstract:
  We investigate the efficiency of gelation and network formation in telechelic
star polymer melt, where the tips of polymer arms are dipoles while rest of the
monomers are uncharged. Our work is motivated by the experimental observations
[A.Kulkarni et.al, Macromolecules, {\bf 48}, 6580 (2015)], in which rheological
studies of telechelic star polymers of poly-(L-actide), a bio-degradable
polymer, showed a drastic increase in elastic properties (up to $2000$ times)
compared to corresponding star polymers without the telechelic arm ends. In
contrast to previous studies, we avoid using effective attractive Lennard Jones
potentials or dipolar potentials to model telechelic interactions. Instead we
use explicit Coulomb positive and negative charges at the tip of polymer-arms
of our bead-spring model of star polymers. By our simulations we show that the
dipoles at the tip of star arms aggregate together to form clusters of dipoles.
Each cluster has contribution from several stars, and in turn each star
contributes to several clusters. Thus the entire polymer melt forms a connected
network. Network forming tendencies decrease with decrease of the value of the
effective charge constituting the dipole: this can be experimentally realized
by choosing a different ionomer for the star tip. We systematically varied the
value of dipole charges, the fraction of star-arms with dipoles at the tip and
the length of the arms. The choice of explicit charges in our calculations
enables us to make better quantitative predictions about the onset of gelation,
moreover we get qualitatively distinct results about structural organization of
dipoles within a dipole-cluster.


title:
Orbit equivalence of linear systems on manifolds and semigroup actions
  on homogeneous spaces

abstract:
  In this paper we introduce the notion of orbit equivalence for semigroup
actions and the concept of generalized linear control system on smooth
manifold. The main goal is to prove that, under certain conditions, the
semigroup system of a generalized linear control system on a smooth manifold is
orbit equivalent to the semigroup system of a linear control system on a
homogeneous space.


title: Italy 100% Renewable: A Suitable Energy Transition Roadmap

abstract:
  We outline a realistic energy transition roadmap for Italy, in which the
whole energy demand is met by electricity generated by low cost renewable
energy technologies, namely solar photovoltaic, wind and hydroelectric power.
We assess the amount of extra power and storage capacity to be installed along
with costs, return on investment and payback time. Based on cost, renewable
nature and scalability, storage in energy dense polysaccharides enzymatically
synthesized from carbon dioxide, water and surplus electricity is proposed to
meet the significant storage requirements.


title: Multiplex Modeling of the Society

abstract:
  The society has a multi-layered structure, where the layers represent the
different contexts. To model this structure we begin with a single-layer
weighted social network (WSN) model showing the Granovetterian structure. We
find that when merging such WSN models, a sufficient amount of inter-layer
correlation is needed to maintain the relationship between topology and link
weights, while these correlations destroy the enhancement in the community
overlap due to multiple layers. To resolve this, we devise a geographic
multi-layer WSN model, where the indirect inter-layer correlations due to the
geographic constraints of individuals enhance the overlaps between the
communities and, at the same time, the Granovetterian structure is preserved.
Furthermore, the network of social interactions can be considered as a
multiplex from another point of view too: each layer corresponds to one
communication channel and the aggregate of all them constitutes the entire
social network. However, usually one has information only about one of the
channels, which should be considered as a sample of the whole. Here we show by
simulations and analytical methods that this sampling may lead to bias. For
example, while it is expected that the degree distribution of the whole social
network has a maximum at a value larger than one, we get with reasonable
assumptions about the sampling process a monotonously decreasing distribution
as observed in empirical studies of single channel data. We analyse the
far-reaching consequences of our findings.


title:
Search for long-lived charged particles in proton-proton collisions at
  sqrt(s) = 13 TeV

abstract:
  Results are presented of a search for heavy stable charged particles produced
in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV using a data sample
corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.5 inverse femtobarns collected
in 2015 with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. The search is conducted using
signatures of anomalously high energy deposits in the silicon tracker and long
time of flight measurements by the muon system. The data are consistent with
the expected background, and upper limits are set on the cross sections for
production of long-lived gluinos, top squarks, tau sleptons, and leptonlike
long-lived fermions. These upper limits are equivalently expressed as lower
limits on the masses of new states; the limits for gluinos, ranging up to 1610
GeV, are the most stringent to date. Limits on the cross sections for direct
pair production of long-lived tau sleptons are also determined.


title:
Quantization of the 1-D harmonic oscillator with variable mass using the
  operators $\hat v$ and $\hat p$

abstract:
  For the 1-D harmonic oscillator with position depending variable mass, a
Hamiltonian and constant of motion are given through a consistent approach.
Then, the quantization of this system is carried out using the operator $\hat
p$, for the Hamiltonian, and the operator $\hat v$ for the constant of motion.
We find that the result of both quantizations brings about different quantum
dynamics.


title:
Electronic and magnetic structures of hole doped trilayer
  La(4-x)Sr(x)Ni3O8 from first principles calculations

abstract:
  The magnetic and electronic properties of trilayer La4Ni3O8, similar to hole
doped cuprates, are investigated by performing full-potential linearized
augmented plane wave method-based spin-polarized calculations with LDA and GGA
functionals including Hubbard U parameters to account for strong correlation
effects. Based on these calculations, we found that La4Ni3O8 is a C-type
antiferromagnetic (C-AFM) Mott insulator in agreement with previous
experimental and theoretical observations. Our calculations suggest that Ni1+
and Ni2+ ions are found to be in high spin state with an average valency of
+1.33. Intermediate band gap states are originated from dz2 electrons of both
types of Ni ions after including the strong correlation effects. In order to
understand the role of hole doping on electronic structure, phase stability,
and magnetic properties of La4Ni3O8, similar calculations have been performed
for La(4-x)Sr(x)Ni3O8 as a function of x, using the supercell approach. We have
found that the hole doping brings insulator-to-metal transition without
changing the C-AFM ordering though the magnetic moment is enhanced at both Ni
sites. Moreover, these Ni atoms are always in an average valence state
irrespective of hole doping or volume change. So the electronic properties of
hole doped La4Ni3O8 can not be compared with hole doped cuprates which are high
Tc.


title:
Steady State and Dynamics of Joule Heating in Magnetic Tunnel Junctions
  Observed via the Temperature Dependence of RKKY Coupling

abstract:
  Understanding quantitatively the heating dynamics in magnetic tunnel
junctions (MTJ) submitted to current pulses is very important in the context of
spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memory development. Here we provide
a method to probe the heating of MTJ using the RKKY coupling of a synthetic
ferrimagnetic storage layer as a thermal sensor. The temperature increase
versus applied bias voltage is measured thanks to the decrease of the spin-flop
field with temperature. This method allows distinguishing spin transfer torque
(STT) effects from the influence of temperature on the switching field. The
heating dynamics is then studied in real-time by probing the conductance
variation due to spin-flop rotation during heating. This approach provides a
new method for measuring fast heating in spintronic devices, particularly
magnetic random access memory (MRAM) using thermally assisted or spin transfer
torque writing.


title: Weak KAM Theorem for a Class of Infinite-Dimensional Lagrangian systems

abstract:
  In this paper, we study infinite-dimensional Lagrangian systems where the
potential functions are periodic, rearrangement invariant and weakly upper
semicontinuous. And we prove that there exists a calibrated curve for every
$M\in L^{2}(I)$.


title: Tensor Based Second Order Variational Model for Image Reconstruction

abstract:
  Second order total variation (SOTV) models have advantages for image
reconstruction over their first order counterparts including their ability to
remove the staircase artefact in the reconstructed image, but they tend to blur
the reconstructed image. To overcome this drawback, we introduce a new Tensor
Weighted Second Order (TWSO) model for image reconstruction. Specifically, we
develop a novel regulariser for the SOTV model that uses the Frobenius norm of
the product of the SOTV Hessian matrix and the anisotropic tensor. We then
adapt the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to solve the
proposed model by breaking down the original problem into several subproblems.
All the subproblems have closed-forms and can thus be solved efficiently. The
proposed method is compared with a range of state-of-the-art approaches such as
tensor-based anisotropic diffusion, total generalised variation, Euler's
elastica, etc. Numerical experimental results of the method on both synthetic
and real images from the Berkeley database BSDS500 demonstrate that the
proposed method eliminates both the staircase and blurring effects and
outperforms the existing approaches for image inpainting and denoising
applications.


title: The Stein-Tomas inequality in trace ideals

abstract:
  The goal of this review is to explain some recent results regarding
generalizations of the Stein-Tomas (and Strichartz) inequalities to the context
of trace ideals (Schatten spaces).


title: A Hackathon for Classical Tibetan

abstract:
  We describe the course of a hackathon dedicated to the development of
linguistic tools for Tibetan Buddhist studies. Over a period of five days, a
group of seventeen scholars, scientists, and students developed and compared
algorithms for intertextual alignment and text classification, along with some
basic language tools, including a stemmer and word segmenter.


title: Intertwinings and Stein's magic factors for birth-death processes

abstract:
  This article investigates second order intertwinings between semigroups of
birth-death processes and discrete gradients on the space of natural integers
N. It goes one step beyond a recent work of Chafa{\"i} and Joulin which
establishes and applies to the analysis of birth-death semigroups a first order
intertwining. Similarly to the first order relation, the second order
intertwining involves birth-death and Feynman-Kac semigroups and weighted
gradients on N, and can be seen as a second derivative relation. As our main
application, we provide new quantitative bounds on the Stein factors of
discrete distributions. To illustrate the relevance of this approach, we also
derive approximation results for the mixture of Poisson and geometric laws.


title: Multiple protein feature prediction with statistical relational learning

abstract:
  High throughput sequencing techniques have highly impactedon modern biology,
widening the gap between sequenced andannotated data. Automatic annotation
tools are thereforeof the foremost importance to guide biologists' experiments.
However, most of the state-of-the-art methods rely on annotation transfer,
offering reliable predictions only in homology settings. In this work we
present a novel appraoch to protein feature prediction, which exploits the
Semanti Based Regularization to inject prior knowledge in the learning process.
The experimental results conducted on the yeast genome show that the
introduction of the constraints positively impacts on the overall prediction
quality.


title: Cosmic Strings Stabilized by Quantum Fluctuations

abstract:
  We compute fermion quantum corrections to the energy of cosmic strings. A
number of rather technical tools is needed to formulate this correction and we
employ isospin and gauge invariance to verify consistency of these tools. These
corrections must also be included when computing the energy of strings that are
charged by populating fermion bound states in its background. We find that
charged strings are dynamically stabilized in theories similar to the standard
model of particle physics.


title: Semi Automatic Color Segmentation of Document Pages

abstract:
  -This paper presents a semi automatic method used to segment color documents
into different uniform color plans. The practical application is dedicated to
administrative documents segmentation. In these documents, like in many other
cases, color has a semantic meaning: it is then possible to identify some
specific regions like manual annotations, rubber stamps or colored
highlighting. A first step of user-controlled learning of the desired color
plans is made on few sample documents. An automatic process can then be
performed on the much bigger set as a batch. Our experiments show very
interesting results in with a very competitive processing time.


title:
Reducing the role of random numbers in matching algorithms for school
  admission

abstract:
  New methods for solving the college admissions problem with indifference are
presented and characterised with a Monte Carlo simulation in a variety of
simple scenarios. Based on a qualifier defined as the average rank, it is found
that these methods are more efficient than the Boston and Deferred Acceptance
algorithms. The improvement in efficiency is directly related to the reduced
role of random tie-breakers. The strategy-proofness of the new methods is
assessed as well.


title:
Appraisal of data-driven and mechanistic emulators of nonlinear
  hydrodynamic urban drainage simulators

abstract:
  Many model based scientific and engineering methodologies, such as system
identification, sensitivity analysis, optimization and control, require a large
number of model evaluations. In particular, model based real-time control of
urban water infrastructures and online flood alarm systems require fast
prediction of the network response at different actuation and/or parameter
values. General purpose urban drainage simulators are too slow for this
application. Fast surrogate models, so-called emulators, provide a solution to
this efficiency demand. Emulators are attractive, because they sacrifice
unneeded accuracy in favor of speed. However, they have to be fine-tuned to
predict the system behavior satisfactorily. Also, some emulators fail to
extrapolate the system behavior beyond the training set. Although, there are
many strategies for developing emulators, up until now the selection of the
emulation strategy remains subjective. In this paper, we therefore compare the
performance of two families of emulators for open channel flows in the context
of urban drainage simulators. We compare emulators that explicitly use
knowledge of the simulator's equations, i.e. mechanistic emulators based on
Gaussian Processes, with purely data-driven emulators using matrix
factorization. Our results suggest that in many urban applications, naive
data-driven emulation outperforms mechanistic emulation. Nevertheless, we
discuss scenarios in which we think that mechanistic emulation might be
favorable for i) extrapolation in time and ii) dealing with sparse and unevenly
sampled data. We also provide many references to advances in the field of
Machine Learning that have not yet permeated into the Bayesian environmental
science community.


title:
Internalizing decorated bicategories: The globularily generated
  condition

abstract:
  This is the first part of a series of papers studying the problem of
existence of double categories for which horizontal bicategory and object
category are given. We refer to this problem as the problem of existence of
internalizations for decorated bicategories. We establish a formal framework
within which the problem of existence of internalizations can be correctly
formulated. Further, we introduce the condition of a double category being
globularily generated. We prove that the problem of existence of
internalizations for a decorated bicategory admits a solution if and only if it
admits a globularily generated solution, and we prove that the condition of a
double category being globularily generated is precisely the condition of a
solution to the problem of existence of internalizations for a decorated
bicategory being minimal. The study of the condition of a double category being
globularily generated will thus be pivotal in our study of the problem of
existence of internalizations.


title: Generalization Error Bounds for Optimization Algorithms via Stability

abstract:
  Many machine learning tasks can be formulated as Regularized Empirical Risk
Minimization (R-ERM), and solved by optimization algorithms such as gradient
descent (GD), stochastic gradient descent (SGD), and stochastic variance
reduction (SVRG). Conventional analysis on these optimization algorithms
focuses on their convergence rates during the training process, however, people
in the machine learning community may care more about the generalization
performance of the learned model on unseen test data. In this paper, we
investigate on this issue, by using stability as a tool. In particular, we
decompose the generalization error for R-ERM, and derive its upper bound for
both convex and non-convex cases. In convex cases, we prove that the
generalization error can be bounded by the convergence rate of the optimization
algorithm and the stability of the R-ERM process, both in expectation (in the
order of $\mathcal{O}((1/n)+\mathbb{E}\rho(T))$, where $\rho(T)$ is the
convergence error and $T$ is the number of iterations) and in high probability
(in the order of
$\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{\log{1/\delta}}{\sqrt{n}}+\rho(T)\right)$ with
probability $1-\delta$). For non-convex cases, we can also obtain a similar
expected generalization error bound. Our theorems indicate that 1) along with
the training process, the generalization error will decrease for all the
optimization algorithms under our investigation; 2) Comparatively speaking,
SVRG has better generalization ability than GD and SGD. We have conducted
experiments on both convex and non-convex problems, and the experimental
results verify our theoretical findings.


title:
Matched filter detection with dynamic threshold for cognitive radio
  networks

abstract:
  -In cognitive radio networks, spectrum sensing aims to detect the unused
spectrum channels in order to use the radio spectrum more efficiently. Various
methods have been proposed in the past, such as energy, feature detection, and
matched filter. These methods are characterized by a sensing threshold, which
plays an important role in the sensing performance. Most of the existing
techniques used a static threshold. However, the noise is random, and, thus the
threshold should be dynamic. In this paper, we suggest an approach with an
estimated and dynamic sensing threshold to increase the efficiency of the
sensing detection. The matched filter method with dynamic threshold is
simulated and its results are compared to those of other existing techniques.
Keywords-cognitive radio networks; spectrum sensing; energy detection; matched
filter detection; autocorrelation based sensing; estimated dynamic threshold


title: House price estimation from visual and textual features

abstract:
  Most existing automatic house price estimation systems rely only on some
textual data like its neighborhood area and the number of rooms. The final
price is estimated by a human agent who visits the house and assesses it
visually. In this paper, we propose extracting visual features from house
photographs and combining them with the house's textual information. The
combined features are fed to a fully connected multilayer Neural Network (NN)
that estimates the house price as its single output. To train and evaluate our
network, we have collected the first houses dataset (to our knowledge) that
combines both images and textual attributes. The dataset is composed of 535
sample houses from the state of California, USA. Our experiments showed that
adding the visual features increased the R-value by a factor of 3 and decreased
the Mean Square Error (MSE) by one order of magnitude compared with
textual-only features. Additionally, when trained on the benchmark textual-only
features housing dataset, our proposed NN still outperformed the existing model
published results.


title: The Fukaya category pairs with Lagrangian cobordisms exactly

abstract:
  We prove that a pairing between the Fukaya category and the oo-category of
Lagrangian cobordisms respects mapping cones. This is another step toward
constructing a lift of Fukaya categories to the level of spectra (in the sense
of stable homotopy theory). As corollaries, we show that the map in our
previous work from cobordism groups to Floer cohomology lifts to the level of
spectra, and one also recovers some results of Biran and Cornea for what we
call "vertically collared" cobordisms.


title:
How Dennis realized he had `invented' $L_\infty$-algebras a.k.a.
  strongly homotopy Lie algebras

abstract:
  This is my attempt to rediscover how Dennis realized that he had
discovered/invented $L_\infty$-algebras a.k.a. strongly homotopy Lie algebras
before my colleagues and I defined them.


title: Holographic superconductor in a deformed four-dimensional STU model

abstract:
  In this paper, we consider deformed STU model in four dimensions including
both electric and magnetic charges. Using AdS/CFT correspondence, we study
holographic superconductor and obtain transport properties like electrical and
thermal conductivities. We obtain transport properties in terms of the black
hole magnetic charge and interpret it as magnetic monopole of dual field
theory. We find that presence of magnetic charge is necessary to have maximum
conductivities, and existence of magnetic monopole with a critical charge (137
e) to reach the maximum superconductivity is important. Also, we show that
thermal conductivity increases with increasing of magnetic charge. It may be
concluded that the origin of superconductivity is magnetic monopole.


title:
Tight Hardness Results for Distance and Centrality Problems in Constant
  Degree Graphs

abstract:
  Finding important nodes in a graph and measuring their importance is a
fundamental problem in the analysis of social networks, transportation
networks, biological systems, etc. Among popular such metrics are graph
centrality, betweenness centrality (BC), and reach centrality (RC). These
measures are also very related to classic notions like diameter and radius.
Roditty and Vassilevska Williams~[STOC'13] showed that no algorithm can compute
a (3/2-\delta)-approximation of the diameter in sparse and unweighted graphs
faster that n^{2-o(1)} time unless the widely believed strong exponential time
hypothesis (SETH) is false. Abboud et al.~[SODA'15] and [SODA'16] further
analyzed these problems under the recent line of research on hardness in P.
They showed that in sparse and unweighted graphs (weighted for BC) none of
these problems can be solved faster than n^{2-o(1)} unless some popular
conjecture is false. Furthermore they ruled out a (2-\delta)-approximation for
RC, a (3/2-\delta)-approximation for Radius and a (5/3-\delta)-approximation
for computing all eccentricities of a graph for any \delta > 0. We extend these
results to the case of unweighted graphs with constant maximum degree. Through
new graph constructions we are able to obtain the same approximation and time
bounds as for sparse graphs even in unweighted bounded-degree graphs. We show
that no (3/2-\delta) approximation of Radius or Diameter,
(2-\delta)-approximation of RC, (5/3-\delta)-approximation of all
eccentricities or exact algorithm for BC exists in time n^{2-o(1)} for such
graphs and any \delta > 0. This strengthens the result for BC of Abboud et
al.~[SODA'16] by showing a hardness result for unweighted graphs, and follows
in the footsteps of Abboud et al.~[SODA'16] and Abboud and Dahlgaard~[FOCS'16]
in showing conditional lower bounds for restricted but realistic graph classes.


title:
Wave control through soft microstructural curling: bandgap shifting,
  reconfigurable anisotropy and switchable chirality

abstract:
  In this work, we discuss and numerically validate a strategy to attain
reversible macroscopic changes in the wave propagation characteristics of
cellular metamaterials with soft microstructures. The proposed cellular
architecture is characterized by unit cells featuring auxiliary populations of
symmetrically-distributed smart cantilevers stemming from the nodal locations.
Through an external stimulus (the application of an electric field), we induce
extreme, localized, reversible curling deformation of the cantilevers---a shape
modification which does not affect the overall shape, stiffness and load
bearing capability of the structure. By carefully engineering the spatial
pattern of straight (non activated) and curled (activated) cantilevers, we can
induce several profound modifications of the phononic characteristics of the
structure: generation and/or shifting of total and partial bandgaps, cell
symmetry relaxation (which implies reconfigurable wave beaming), and chirality
switching. While in this work we discuss the specific case of composite
cantilevers with a PDMS core and active layers of electrostrictive terpolymer
P(VDF-TrFE-CTFE), the strategy can be extended to other smart materials (such
as dielectric elastomers or shape-memory polymers).


title:
On the $L^p$-theory of $C_0$-semigroups associated with second-order
  elliptic operators with complex singular coefficients

abstract:
  We study $L^p$-theory of second-order elliptic divergence type operators with
complex measurable coefficients. The major aspect is that we allow complex
coefficients in the main part of the operator, too. We investigate generation
of analytic $C_0$-semigroups under very general conditions on the coefficients,
related to the notion of form-boundedness.
  We determine an interval $J$ in the $L^p$-scale, not necessarily containing
$p=2$, in which one obtains a consistent family of quasi-contractive
semigroups. This interval is close to optimal, as shown by several examples. In
the case of uniform ellipticity we construct a family of semigroups in an
extended range of $L^p$-spaces, and we prove $p$-independence of the
analyticity sector and of the spectrum of the generators.


title:
Effect of a bias field on disordered waveguides: Universal scaling of
  conductance and application to ultracold atoms

abstract:
  We study the transmission of a disordered waveguide subjected to a finite
bias field. The statisticaldistribution of transmission is analytically shown
to take a universal form. It depends on a singleparameter, the system length
expressed in a rescaled metrics, which encapsulates all the microscopicfeatures
of the medium and the bias field. Excellent agreement with numerics is found
for variousmodels of disorder and bias field. For white-noise disorder and a
linear bias field, we demonstratethe algebraic nature of the decay of the
transmission with distance, irrespective of the value ofthe bias field. It
contrasts with the expansion of a wave packet, which features a
delocalizationtransition for large bias field. The difference is attributed to
the different boundary conditionsfor the transmission and expansion schemes.
The observability of these effects in conductancemeasurements for electrons or
ultracold atoms is discussed, taking into account key features, suchas
finite-range disorder correlations, nonlinear bias fields, and finite
temperatures.


title:
Minimal sets of dequantizers and quantizers for finite-dimensional
  quantum systems

abstract:
  The problem of finding and characterizing minimal sets of dequantizers and
quantizers applied in the mapping of operators onto functions is considered,
for finite-dimensional quantum systems. The general properties of such sets are
determined. An explicit description of all the minimum self-dual sets of
dequantizers and quantizers for a qubit system is derived. The connection
between some known sets of dequantizers and quantizers and the derived formulae
is presented.


title: Deep learning for detection of bird vocalisations

abstract:
  This work focuses on reliable detection of bird sound emissions as recorded
in the open field. Acoustic detection of avian sounds can be used for the
automatized monitoring of multiple bird taxa and querying in long-term
recordings for species of interest for researchers, conservation practitioners,
and decision makers. Recordings in the wild can be very noisy due to the
exposure of the microphones to a large number of audio sources originating from
all distances and directions, the number and identity of which cannot be known
a-priori. The co-existence of the target vocalizations with abiotic
interferences in an unconstrained environment is inefficiently treated by
current approaches of audio signal enhancement. A technique that would spot
only bird vocalization while ignoring other audio sources is of prime
importance. These difficulties are tackled in this work, presenting a deep
autoencoder that maps the audio spectrogram of bird vocalizations to its
corresponding binary mask that encircles the spectral blobs of vocalizations
while suppressing other audio sources. The procedure requires minimum human
attendance, it is very fast during execution, thus suitable to scan massive
volumes of data, in order to analyze them, evaluate insights and hypotheses,
identify patterns of bird activity that, hopefully, finally lead to design
policies on biodiversity issues.


title:
Modelling Radiological Language with Bidirectional Long Short-Term
  Memory Networks

abstract:
  Motivated by the need to automate medical information extraction from
free-text radiological reports, we present a bi-directional long short-term
memory (BiLSTM) neural network architecture for modelling radiological
language. The model has been used to address two NLP tasks: medical
named-entity recognition (NER) and negation detection. We investigate whether
learning several types of word embeddings improves BiLSTM's performance on
those tasks. Using a large dataset of chest x-ray reports, we compare the
proposed model to a baseline dictionary-based NER system and a negation
detection system that leverages the hand-crafted rules of the NegEx algorithm
and the grammatical relations obtained from the Stanford Dependency Parser.
Compared to these more traditional rule-based systems, we argue that BiLSTM
offers a strong alternative for both our tasks.


title:
Steady-state entanglement between distant quantum dots in photonic
  crystal dimers

abstract:
  We show that two spatially separated semiconductor quantum dots under
resonant and continuous-wave excitation can be strongly entangled in the
steady-state, thanks to their radiative coupling by mutual interaction through
the normal modes of a photonic crystal dimer. We employ a quantum master
equation formalism to quantify the steady-state entanglement by calculating the
system {\it negativity}. Calculations are specified to consider realistic
semiconductor nanostructure parameters for the photonic crystal dimer-quantum
dots coupled system, determined by a guided mode expansion solution of Maxwell
equations. Negativity values of the order of 0.1 ($20\%$ of the maximum value)
are shown for interdot distances that are larger than the resonant wavelength
of the system. It is shown that the amount of entanglement is almost
independent of the interdot distance, as long as the normal mode splitting of
the photonic dimer is larger than their linewidths, which becomes the only
requirement to achieve a local and individual qubit addressing. Considering
inhomogeneously broadened quantum dots, we find that the steady-state
entanglement is preserved as long as the detuning between the two quantum dot
resonances is small when compared to their decay rates. The steady-state
entanglement is shown to be robust against the effects of pure dephasing of the
quantum dot transitions. We finally study the entanglement dynamics for a
configuration in which one of the two quantum dots is initially excited and
find that the transient negativity can be enhanced by more than a factor of two
with respect to the steady-state value. These results are promising for
practical applications of entangled states at short time scales.


title: The Formation of Stellar Black Holes

abstract:
  It is believed that stellar black holes (BHs) can be formed in two different
ways: Either a massive star collapses directly into a BH without a supernova
(SN) explosion, or an explosion occurs in a proto-neutron star, but the energy
is too low to completely unbind the stellar envelope, and a large fraction of
it falls back onto the short-lived neutron star (NS), leading to the delayed
formation of a BH. Theoretical models set progenitor masses for BH formation by
implosion, namely, by complete or almost complete collapse, but observational
evidences have been elusive. Here are reviewed the observational insights on
BHs formed by implosion without large natal kicks from: (1) the kinematics in
three dimensions of space of five Galactic BH X-ray binaries (BH-XRBs), (2) the
diversity of optical and infrared observations of massive stars that collapse
in the dark, with no luminous SN explosions, possibly leading to the formation
of BHs, and (3) the sources of gravitational waves produced by mergers of
stellar BHs so far detected with LIGO. Multiple indications of BH formation
without ejection of a significant amount of matter and with no natal kicks
obtained from these different areas of observational astrophysics, and the
recent observational confirmation of the expected dependence of BH formation on
metallicity and redshift, are qualitatively consistent with the high merger
rates of binary black holes (BBHs) inferred from the first detections with
LIGO.


title:
OC16-CE80: A Chinese-English Mixlingual Database and A Speech
  Recognition Baseline

abstract:
  We present the OC16-CE80 Chinese-English mixlingual speech database which was
released as a main resource for training, development and test for the
Chinese-English mixlingual speech recognition (MixASR-CHEN) challenge on
O-COCOSDA 2016. This database consists of 80 hours of speech signals recorded
from more than 1,400 speakers, where the utterances are in Chinese but each
involves one or several English words. Based on the database and another two
free data resources (THCHS30 and the CMU dictionary), a speech recognition
(ASR) baseline was constructed with the deep neural network-hidden Markov model
(DNN-HMM) hybrid system. We then report the baseline results following the
MixASR-CHEN evaluation rules and demonstrate that OC16-CE80 is a reasonable
data resource for mixlingual research.


title: Inclusive production of J/$\psi$ and $\psi'$ mesons at the LHC

abstract:
  We discuss the prompt production of $J/\psi$ mesons in proton-proton
collisions at the LHC within a NRQCD $k_{t}$-factorization approach using
Kimber-Martin-Ryskin (KMR) unintegrated gluon distributions (UGDF). We include
both direct color-singlet production ($gg \to J/\psi$g) as well as a feed-down
from $\chi_{c} \to J/\psi \gamma$ and $\psi' \to J/\psi X$. The production of
the decaying mesons ($\chi_{c}$ or $\psi'$)is also calculated within NRQCD
$k_{t}$-factorization. The corresponding matrix elements for $gg \to J/\psi$,
$gg \to \psi'$ and $gg \to \chi_{c}$ include parameters of the nonrelativistic
spatial wave functions of quarkonia at $r=0$, which are taken from potential
models from the literature. We get the ratio of the corresponding of the cross
sections for $\chi_{c}(2)$-to-$\chi_{c}(1)$ much closer to experimental data
than obtained in recent analyses. Differential distributions in rapidity of
$J/\psi$ and $\psi'$ are calculated and compared to experimental data of the
ALICE and LHCb collaborations. We discuss possible onset of gluon saturation
effects at forward/backward rapidities. One can describe the experimental data
for $J/\psi$ production within model uncertainties with color-singlet component
only. Therefore our theoretical results leave only a relatively small room for
the color-octet contributions.


title: Reactive Collision Avoidance using Evolutionary Neural Networks

abstract:
  Collision avoidance systems can play a vital role in reducing the number of
accidents and saving human lives. In this paper, we introduce and validate a
novel method for vehicles reactive collision avoidance using evolutionary
neural networks (ENN). A single front-facing rangefinder sensor is the only
input required by our method. The training process and the proposed method
analysis and validation are carried out using simulation. Extensive experiments
are conducted to analyse the proposed method and evaluate its performance.
Firstly, we experiment the ability to learn collision avoidance in a static
free track. Secondly, we analyse the effect of the rangefinder sensor
resolution on the learning process. Thirdly, we experiment the ability of a
vehicle to individually and simultaneously learn collision avoidance. Finally,
we test the generality of the proposed method. We used a more realistic and
powerful simulation environment (CarMaker), a camera as an alternative input
sensor, and lane keeping as an extra feature to learn. The results are
encouraging; the proposed method successfully allows vehicles to learn
collision avoidance in different scenarios that are unseen during training. It
also generalizes well if any of the input sensor, the simulator, or the task to
be learned is changed.


title:
Report on imaging of individual skyrmions of MML systems made by
  different techniques

abstract:
  Deliverable 1.1 is a report on imaging of individual skyrmions of MML systems
made by different techniques. This deliverable falls within work package 1
(WP1:Static equilibrium properties of interface induced skyrmions in magnetic
films and multilayers) of the MAGicSky research proposal whose objectives are:
the growth of magnetic multilayer systems with large interfacial chiral
interaction, the determination of the amplitude of the Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya
interactions (DMi), the detailed structural and magnetic characterization of
interfaces, the magnetic imaging of individual skyrmions and the thermal
stability and interaction of skyrmions with intrinsic and/or artificial
defects. It should be emphasized that imaging magnetic skyrmionic structures
forms the basis for all the planned subsequent material optimization,
electrical transport experiments and devices preparation in the MAGicSky
research program. In particular, imaging is paramount as a technique since it
enables us to unequivocally demonstrate chiral magnetic skyrmions by directly
imaging i) the effects of engineering multilayer samples with large DMis and
ii) the skyrmionic structure and properties. In order to get complementary
physical insight on the properties of magnetic skyrmions and to corroborate our
research results, we utilise a plethora of key state-of-the-art advanced
magnetic imaging techniques, namely: i) Spin-polarised Scanning Tunnelling
Microscopy (SP-STM), Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy (STXM) Lorentz
Transmission Electron Microscopy (Lorentz TEM) as well as, Magnetic Force
Microscopy (MFM). These imaging experiments can therefore stand as the base for
all the other objectives in WP1 as well as WP2 that will study Dynamic
properties: nucleation, propagation and detection of skyrmions. Imaging has
been aimed to test and get feedback from the theoretical and numerical
investigations of skyrmion systems of WP3. Finally, for WP4: Towards skyrmion
based devices for information storage and processing, some of the techniques
detailed here in D1.1 will enable us to image and test the first devices and
their functionality. In short, the MAGicSky consortium research results in D1.1
constitute a major milestone that acts as a stepping-stone to every other
experimental effort and we have achieved it. The results relevant to the D1.1
deliverable were presented in 5 publications and several invited talks at
international workshop and conferences:


title:
A necessary condition for incompatibility of observables in general
  probabilistic theories

abstract:
  We quantify the intrinsic noise content of an observable in a general
probabilistic theory and derive a noise content inequality for incompatible
observables. We apply the derived inequality to standard quantum theory, the
quantum theory of processes, and polytope state spaces. The noise content for
positive operator-valued measures takes a particularly simple form and equals
the sum of minimal eigenvalues of all the effects. We illustrate our findings
with a number of examples including the introduced notion of reverse
observables.


title:
Learning convolutional neural network to maximize Pos@Top performance
  measure

abstract:
  In the machine learning problems, the performance measure is used to evaluate
the machine learning models. Recently, the number positive data points ranked
at the top positions (Pos@Top) has been a popular performance measure in the
machine learning community. In this paper, we propose to learn a convolutional
neural network (CNN) model to maximize the Pos@Top performance measure. The CNN
model is used to represent the multi-instance data point, and a classifier
function is used to predict the label from the its CNN representation. We
propose to minimize the loss function of Pos@Top over a training set to learn
the filters of CNN and the classifier parameter. The classifier parameter
vector is solved by the Lagrange multiplier method, and the filters are updated
by the gradient descent method alternately in an iterative algorithm.
Experiments over benchmark data sets show that the proposed method outperforms
the state-of-the-art Pos@Top maximization methods.


title:
Optimal Transportation with Boundary Costs and Summability Estimates on
  the Transport Density

abstract:
  In this paper we analyze a mass transportation problem in a bounded domain
with the possibility to transport mass to/from the boundary, paying the
transport cost, that is given by the Euclidean distance plus an extra cost
depending on the exit/entrance point. This problem appears in import/export
model, as well as in some shape optimization problems. We study the L^p
summability of the transport density which does not follow from standard
theorems, as the target measures are not absolutely continuous but they have
some parts of them which are concentrated on the boundary. We also provide the
relevant duality arguments to connect the corresponding Beckmann and
Kantorovich problems to a formulation with Kantorovich potentials with
Dirichlet boundary conditions.


title: Decision Making Based on Cohort Scores for Speaker Verification

abstract:
  Decision making is an important component in a speaker verification system.
For the conventional GMM-UBM architecture, the decision is usually conducted
based on the log likelihood ratio of the test utterance against the GMM of the
claimed speaker and the UBM. This single-score decision is simple but tends to
be sensitive to the complex variations in speech signals (e.g. text content,
channel, speaking style, etc.). In this paper, we propose a decision making
approach based on multiple scores derived from a set of cohort GMMs (cohort
scores). Importantly, these cohort scores are not simply averaged as in
conventional cohort methods; instead, we employ a powerful discriminative model
as the decision maker. Experimental results show that the proposed method
delivers substantial performance improvement over the baseline system,
especially when a deep neural network (DNN) is used as the decision maker, and
the DNN input involves some statistical features derived from the cohort
scores.


title: Semifields and a theorem of Abhyankar

abstract:
  Abhyankar proved that every field of finite transcendence degree over
$\mathbb{Q}$ or over a finite field is a homomorphic image of a subring of the
ring of polynomials $\mathbb{Z}[T_1, \dots, T_n]$ (for some $n$ depending on
the field). We conjecture that his result can not be substantially strengthened
and show that our conjecture implies a well-known conjecture on the additive
idempotence of semifields that are finitely generated as semirings.


title: Numerical analysis of wet separation of particles by density differences

abstract:
  Wet particle separation is widely used in mineral processing and plastic
recycling to separate mixtures of particulate materials into further usable
fractions due to density differences. This work presents efforts aiming to
numerically analyze the wet separation of particles with different densities.
In the current study the discrete element method (DEM) is used for the solid
phase while the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is used for modeling of
the liquid phase. The two phases are coupled by the use of a volume averaging
technique. In the current study, simulations of spherical particle separation
were performed. In these simulations, a set of generated particles with two
different densities is dropped into a rectangular container filled with liquid.
The results of simulations with two different mixtures of particles
demonstrated how separation depends on the densities of particles.


title:
Optimizing the placement of tap positions and guess and determine
  cryptanalysis with variable sampling

abstract:
  In this article an optimal selection of tap positions for certain LFSR-based
encryption schemes is investigated from both design and cryptanalytic
perspective. Two novel algorithms towards an optimal selection of tap positions
are given which can be satisfactorily used to provide (sub)optimal resistance
to some generic cryptanalytic techniques applicable to these schemes. It is
demonstrated that certain real-life ciphers (e.g. SOBER-t32, SFINKS and
Grain-128), employing some standard criteria for tap selection such as the
concept of full difference set, are not fully optimized with respect to these
attacks. These standard design criteria are quite insufficient and the proposed
algorithms appear to be the only generic method for the purpose of (sub)optimal
selection of tap positions. We also extend the framework of a generic
cryptanalytic method called Generalized Filter State Guessing Attacks (GFSGA),
introduced in [26] as a generalization of the FSGA method, by applying a
variable sampling of the keystream bits in order to retrieve as much
information about the secret state bits as possible. Two different modes that
use a variable sampling of keystream blocks are presented and it is shown that
in many cases these modes may outperform the standard GFSGA mode. We also
demonstrate the possibility of employing GFSGA-like attacks to other design
strategies such as NFSR-based ciphers (Grain family for instance) and filter
generators outputting a single bit each time the cipher is clocked. In
particular, when the latter scenario is considered, the idea of combining GFSGA
technique and algebraic attacks appears to be a promising unified cryptanalytic
method against NFSR-based stream ciphers.


title:
Particle production and chemical freezeout from the hybrid UrQMD
  approach at NICA energies

abstract:
  The energy dependence of various particle ratios is calculated within the
Ultra-Relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics approach and compared with the
hadron resonance gas (HRG) model and measurements from various experiments,
including RHIC-BES, SPS and AGS. It is found that the UrQMD particle ratios
agree well with the experimental results at the RHIC-BES energies. Thus, we
have utilized UrQMD in simulating particle ratios at other beam energies down
to 3 GeV, which will be accessed at NICA and FAIR future facilities. We observe
that the particle ratios for crossover and first-order phase transition,
implemented in the hybrid UrQMD v3.4, are nearly indistinguishable, especially
at low energies (at large baryon chemical potentials or high density).


title:
A note on the equioscillation theorem for best ridge function
  approximation

abstract:
  We consider the approximation of a continuous function, defined on a compact
set of the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, by sums of two ridge functions. We
obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for such a sum to be a best
approximation. The result resembles the classical Chebyshev equioscillation
theorem for polynomial approximation.


title: Breeding the optical Schroedinger's cat state

abstract:
  Superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states, introduced in
Schroedinger's famous Gedankenexperiment, are an epitome of quantum
"strangeness" and a natural tool for determining the validity limits of quantum
physics. The optical incarnation of Schroedinger's cat - the superposition of
two opposite-amplitude coherent states - is also the backbone of quantum
information processing in the continuous-variable domain. However, existing
preparation methods limit the amplitudes of the component coherent states by
about 2, which curtails the state's usefulness for fundamental and practical
applications. Here we produce higher-amplitude optical Schroedinger's cats from
two such states of lower amplitudes. The protocol consists in bringing the
initial states into interference on a beamsplitter and a subsequent heralding
quadrature measurement in one of the output channels. In the experiment, we
convert a pair of negative squeezed Schroedinger's cat states of amplitude 1.25
to a single positive Schroedinger's cat of amplitude 2.15 with success
probability of ~0.2. This amplitude is comparable to the highest values
obtained for this state in any physical system. Our technique can be realized
in an iterative manner, in principle allowing creation of Schroedinger's cat
states of arbitrarily high amplitude.


title:
Matter-Antimatter Propulsion via QFT Effects from Parallel Electric and
  Magnetic Fields

abstract:
  Matter/antimatter (MAM) pair production from the vacuum through intense
electric fields has been investigated theoretically for nearly a century. This
history is reviewed and proposals of MAM for intra-solar system and
interstellar propulsion systems are examined. The quantum mechanical foundation
of MAM production was developed by MAM production occurs when the electric
field strength is above the critical value at which the fields become
non-linear with self-interactions (known as the Schwinger limit).MAM production
occurs when the electric field strength is above the critical value at which
the fields become non-linear with self-interactions (known as the Schwinger
limit). As the energy density of lasers approach the critical strength of 10^16
V/cm, the feasibility and functionality of electron-positron pair production
has received growing interest. Current laser intensities are approaching within
1 order of magnitude of the Schwinger limit. Processes for lowering the
critical energy density below the Schwinger limit through additional quantum
mechanical effects have been explored. One under study at the U. of Connecticut
and the U. of Duisburg-Essen is pulsation of inhomogeneous electric fields
within a carrier wave. Another is via enhancement of quantum effects by
addition of a magnetic field parallel to the electric field. Magnetic field
enhancement to quark/anti-quark production through chiral symmetry breaking
effects in QCD was considered by J. Preskill in the 1980's. S. Pyo and D. Page
showed in 2007 that parallel magnetic fields enhance electron/positron
production via an analogous QED effect. MAM production as a highly efficient
fuel source for intra solar system and interstellar propulsion was proposed by
D. Crow in 1983. The viability of this method of propulsion will be studied,
especially from the parallel electric and magnetic field approach.


title: Quantum Mechanics and Common Sense

abstract:
  A physical picture for Quantum Mechanics which permits to conciliate it with
the usual common sense is proposed. The picture agrees with the canonical
Copenhagen interpretation making more clear its statements.


title:
Flatness-based nonlinear control strategies for trajectory tracking of
  quadcopter systems

abstract:
  This paper proposes several nonlinear control strategies for trajectory
tracking of a quadcopter system based on the property of differential flatness.
Its originality is twofold. Firstly, it provides a flat output for the
quadcopter dynamics capable of creating full flat parametrization of the states
and inputs. Moreover, B-splines characterizations of the flat output and their
properties allow for optimal trajectory generation subject to way-point
constraints. Secondly, several control strategies based on computed torque
control and feedback linearization are presented and compared. The advantages
of flatness within each control strategy are analyzed and detailed through
extensive simulation results.


title: Time resolved heat exchange in driven quantum systems

abstract:
  We study time-dependent heat transport in systems composed of a resonant
level periodically forced with an external power source and coupled to a
fermionic continuum. This simple model contains the basic ingredients to
understand time resolved energy exchange in quantum capacitors that behave as
single particle emitters. We analyse the behaviour of the dynamic heat current
for driving frequencies within the non-adiabatic regime, showing that it does
not obey a Joule dissipation law.


title:
Well-posedness in Gevrey space for the Prandtl equations with
  non-degenerate critical points

abstract:
  In the paper, we study the Prandtl system with initial data admitting
non-degenerate critical points. For any index $\sigma\in[3/2, 2],$ we obtain
the local in time well-posedness in the space of Gevrey class $G^\sigma$ in the
tangential variable and Sobolev class in the normal variable so that the
monotonicity condition on the tangential velocity is not needed to overcome the
loss of tangential derivative. This answers the open question raised in the
paper of D. G\'{e}rard-Varet and N. Masmoudi [{\it Ann. Sci. \'{E}c. Norm.
Sup\'{e}r}. (4) 48 (2015), no. 6, 1273-1325], in which the case $\sigma=7/4$ is
solved.


title: DESQ: Frequent Sequence Mining with Subsequence Constraints

abstract:
  Frequent sequence mining methods often make use of constraints to control
which subsequences should be mined. A variety of such subsequence constraints
has been studied in the literature, including length, gap, span,
regular-expression, and hierarchy constraints. In this paper, we show that many
subsequence constraints---including and beyond those considered in the
literature---can be unified in a single framework. A unified treatment allows
researchers to study jointly many types of subsequence constraints (instead of
each one individually) and helps to improve usability of pattern mining systems
for practitioners. In more detail, we propose a set of simple and intuitive
"pattern expressions" to describe subsequence constraints and explore
algorithms for efficiently mining frequent subsequences under such general
constraints. Our algorithms translate pattern expressions to compressed finite
state transducers, which we use as computational model, and simulate these
transducers in a way suitable for frequent sequence mining. Our experimental
study on real-world datasets indicates that our algorithms---although more
general---are competitive to existing state-of-the-art algorithms.


title:
Identical Spin Rotation Effect and Electron Spin Waves in Quantum Gas of
  Atomic Hydrogen

abstract:
  We present an experimental study of electron spin waves in atomic hydrogen
gas compressed to high densities of $\sim 5 \times 10^{18}$ cm$^{-3}$ at
temperatures ranging from 0.26 to 0.6 K in strong magnetic field of 4.6 T.
Hydrogen gas is in a quantum regime when the thermal de Broglie wavelength is
much larger than the s-wave scattering length. In this regime the identical
particle effects play major role in atomic collisions and lead to the Identical
Spin Rotation effect (ISR). We observed a variety of spin wave modes caused by
this effect with strong dependence on the magnetic potential caused by
variations of the polarizing magnetic field. We demonstrate confinement of the
ISR modes in the magnetic potential and manipulate their properties by changing
the spatial profile of magnetic field. We have found that at a high enough
density of H gas the magnons accumulate in their ground state in the magnetic
trap and exhibit long coherence, which has a profound effect on the electron
spin resonance spectra. Such macroscopic accumulation of the ground state
occurs at a certain critical density of hydrogen gas, where the chemical
potential of the magnons becomes equal to the energy of their ground state in
the trapping potential.


title: Local Training for PLDA in Speaker Verification

abstract:
  PLDA is a popular normalization approach for the i-vector model, and it has
delivered state-of-the-art performance in speaker verification. However, PLDA
training requires a large amount of labeled development data, which is highly
expensive in most cases. A possible approach to mitigate the problem is various
unsupervised adaptation methods, which use unlabeled data to adapt the PLDA
scattering matrices to the target domain.
  In this paper, we present a new `local training' approach that utilizes
inaccurate but much cheaper local labels to train the PLDA model. These local
labels discriminate speakers within a single conversion only, and so are much
easier to obtain compared to the normal `global labels'. Our experiments show
that the proposed approach can deliver significant performance improvement,
particularly with limited globally-labeled data.


title: High-luminosity LHC prospects with the upgraded ATLAS detector

abstract:
  Run 1 at the LHC was very successful with the discovery of a new boson. The
boson's properties are found to be compatible with those of the Standard Model
Higgs boson. It is now revealing the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking
and (possibly) the discovery of physics beyond the Standard Model that are the
primary goals of the just restarted LHC. The ultimate precision will be reached
at the High-Luminosity LHC phase with a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of
14 TeV. In this contribution physics prospects are presented for ATLAS for the
integrated luminosities 300/fb and 3000/fb: the ultimate precision attainable
on measurements of the Higgs boson couplings to elementary fermions and bosons,
its trilinear self-coupling, as well as perspectives on the searches for
supersymmetric partners associated with the Higgs boson. Benchmark studies are
presented to show how the sensitivity improves at the future LHC runs. For all
these studies, a parametrised simulation of the upgraded ATLAS detector is used
and expected pileup conditions are accounted for.