title:
Long-period variations in the radial velocity of spectroscopic binary m
  giant mu ursae majoris

abstract:
  We report that the spectroscopic binary ? Ursae Majoris (?mu UMa) has
secondary RV variations of 471.2 days in addition to those of 230.0 days
already known. Keplerian orbit analysis yields stellar mass companions of 1.6
M_Sun for the 230-d period and 0.14 M_Sun for the 471-d period. However, the
HIPPARCOS photometries show a period similar to the stellar rotational period,
which is one-quarter of the RV period. Variations in the bisector velocity
curvature show a period of 463.6 days. We also find ~?473-day variations in the
equivalent width (EW) measurements of the H_alpha and H_beta lines, whose
origin is probably stellar activity. We note that the nature of 471-day
variations is similar to one observed in "Sequence D" of symptotic Giant Branch
(AGB) pulsating stars. We therefore conclude that the RV and the EW variations
in the spectroscopic binary M giant mu UMa A originate from the complex
pulsations and the chromospheric activity.


title:
Phase-coupled Oscillators with Plastic Coupling: Synchronization and
  Stability

abstract:
  In this article we study synchronization of systems of homogeneous
phase-coupled oscillators with plastic coupling strengths and arbitrary
underlying topology. The dynamics of the coupling strength between two
oscillators is governed by the phase difference between these oscillators. We
show that, under mild assumptions, such systems are gradient systems, and
always achieve frequency synchronization. Furthermore, we provide sufficient
stability and instability conditions that are based on results from algebraic
graph theory. For a special case when underlying topology is a tree, we
formulate a criterion (necessary and sufficient condition) of stability of
equilibria. For both, tree and arbitrary topologies, we provide sufficient
conditions for phase-locking, i.e. convergence to a stable equilibrium almost
surely. We additionally find conditions when the system possesses a unique
stable equilibrium, and thus, almost global stability follows. Several examples
are used to demonstrate variety of equilibria the system has, their dependence
on system's parameters, and to illustrate differences in behavior of systems
with constant and plastic coupling strengths.


title: Improved Bounds for Shortest Paths in Dense Distance Graphs

abstract:
  We study the problem of computing shortest paths in so-called dense distance
graphs. Every planar graph $G$ on $n$ vertices can be partitioned into a set of
$O(n/r)$ edge-disjoint regions (called an $r$-division) with $O(r)$ vertices
each, such that each region has $O(\sqrt{r})$ vertices (called boundary
vertices) in common with other regions. A dense distance graph of a region is a
complete graph containing all-pairs distances between its boundary nodes. A
dense distance graph of an $r$-division is the union of the $O(n/r)$ dense
distance graphs of the individual pieces. Since the introduction of dense
distance graphs by Fakcharoenphol and Rao, computing single-source shortest
paths in dense distance graphs has found numerous applications in fundamental
planar graph algorithms.
  Fakcharoenphol and Rao proposed an algorithm (later called FR-Dijkstra) for
computing single-source shortest paths in a dense distance graph in
$O\left(\frac{n}{\sqrt{r}}\log{n}\log{r}\right)$ time. We show an
$O\left(\frac{n}{\sqrt{r}}\left(\frac{\log^2{r}}{\log^2\log{r}}+\log{n}\log^{\epsilon}{r}\right)\right)$
time algorithm for this problem, which is the first improvement to date over
FR-Dijkstra for the important case when $r$ is polynomial in $n$. In this case,
our algorithm is faster by a factor of $O(\log^2{\log{n}})$ and implies
improved upper bounds for such planar graph problems as multiple-source
multiple-sink maximum flow, single-source all-sinks maximum flow, and (dynamic)
exact distance oracles.


title:
Efficient Geometric Probabilities of Multi-Transiting Exoplanetary
  Systems from CORBITS

abstract:
  NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has successfully discovered thousands of
exoplanet candidates using the transit method, including hundreds of stars with
multiple transiting planets. In order to estimate the frequency of these
valuable systems, it is essential to account for the unique geometric
probabilities of detecting multiple transiting extrasolar planets around the
same parent star. In order to improve on previous studies that used numerical
methods, we have constructed an efficient, semi-analytical algorithm called
CORBITS which, given a collection of conjectured exoplanets orbiting a star,
computes the probability that any particular group of exoplanets can be
observed to transit. The algorithm applies theorems of elementary differential
geometry to compute the areas bounded by circular curves on the surface of a
sphere (see Ragozzine & Holman 2010). The implemented algorithm is more
accurate and orders of magnitude faster than previous algorithms, based on
comparisons with Monte Carlo simulations. We use CORBITS to show that the
present solar system would only show a maximum of 3 transiting planets, but
that this varies over time due to dynamical evolution. We also used CORBITS to
geometrically debias the period ratio and mutual Hill sphere distributions of
Kepler's multi-transiting planet candidates, which results in shifting these
distributions towards slightly larger values. In an Appendix, we present
additional semi-analytical methods for determining the frequency of exoplanet
mutual events, i.e., the geometric probability that two planets will transit
each other (Planet-Planet Occultation, relevant to transiting circumbinary
planets) and the probability that this transit occurs simultaneously as they
transit their star. The CORBITS algorithms and several worked examples are
publicly available at https://github.com/jbrakensiek/CORBITS


title:
The calibration and electron energy reconstruction of the BGO ECAL of
  the DAMPE detector

abstract:
  The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space experiment designed to
search for dark matter indirectly by measuring the spectra of photons,
electrons, and positrons up to 10 TeV. The BGO electromagnetic calorimeter
(ECAL) is its main sub-detector for energy measurement. In this paper, the
instrumentation and development of the BGO ECAL is briefly described. The
calibration on the ground, including the pedestal, minimum ionizing particle
(MIP) peak, dynode ratio, and attenuation length with the cosmic rays and beam
particles is discussed in detail. Also, the energy reconstruction results of
the electrons from the beam test are presented.


title: Geometric Heat Engines Featuring Power that Grows with Efficiency

abstract:
  Thermodynamics places a limit on the efficiency of heat engines, but not on
their output power or on how the power and efficiency change with the engine's
cycle time. In this manuscript, we develop a geometrical description of the
power and efficiency as a function of the cycle time, applicable to an
important class of heat engine models. This geometrical description is used to
design engine protocols that attain both the maximal power and maximal
efficiency at the fast driving limit. Furthermore, using this method we also
prove that no protocol can exactly attain the Carnot efficiency at non-zero
power.


title: A survey of sparse representation: algorithms and applications

abstract:
  Sparse representation has attracted much attention from researchers in fields
of signal processing, image processing, computer vision and pattern
recognition. Sparse representation also has a good reputation in both
theoretical research and practical applications. Many different algorithms have
been proposed for sparse representation. The main purpose of this article is to
provide a comprehensive study and an updated review on sparse representation
and to supply a guidance for researchers. The taxonomy of sparse representation
methods can be studied from various viewpoints. For example, in terms of
different norm minimizations used in sparsity constraints, the methods can be
roughly categorized into five groups: sparse representation with $l_0$-norm
minimization, sparse representation with $l_p$-norm (0$<$p$<$1) minimization,
sparse representation with $l_1$-norm minimization and sparse representation
with $l_{2,1}$-norm minimization. In this paper, a comprehensive overview of
sparse representation is provided. The available sparse representation
algorithms can also be empirically categorized into four groups: greedy
strategy approximation, constrained optimization, proximity algorithm-based
optimization, and homotopy algorithm-based sparse representation. The
rationales of different algorithms in each category are analyzed and a wide
range of sparse representation applications are summarized, which could
sufficiently reveal the potential nature of the sparse representation theory.
Specifically, an experimentally comparative study of these sparse
representation algorithms was presented. The Matlab code used in this paper can
be available at: http://www.yongxu.org/lunwen.html.


title:
A Reduced-Space Algorithm for Minimizing $\ell_1$-Regularized Convex
  Functions

abstract:
  We present a new method for minimizing the sum of a differentiable convex
function and an $\ell_1$-norm regularizer. The main features of the new method
include: $(i)$ an evolving set of indices corresponding to variables that are
predicted to be nonzero at a solution (i.e., the support); $(ii)$ a
reduced-space subproblem defined in terms of the predicted support; $(iii)$
conditions that determine how accurately each subproblem must be solved, which
allow for Newton, Newton-CG, and coordinate-descent techniques to be employed;
$(iv)$ a computationally practical condition that determines when the predicted
support should be updated; and $(v)$ a reduced proximal gradient step that
ensures sufficient decrease in the objective function when it is decided that
variables should be added to the predicted support. We prove a convergence
guarantee for our method and demonstrate its efficiency on a large set of model
prediction problems.


title: Sentence Similarity Learning by Lexical Decomposition and Composition

abstract:
  Most conventional sentence similarity methods only focus on similar parts of
two input sentences, and simply ignore the dissimilar parts, which usually give
us some clues and semantic meanings about the sentences. In this work, we
propose a model to take into account both the similarities and dissimilarities
by decomposing and composing lexical semantics over sentences. The model
represents each word as a vector, and calculates a semantic matching vector for
each word based on all words in the other sentence. Then, each word vector is
decomposed into a similar component and a dissimilar component based on the
semantic matching vector. After this, a two-channel CNN model is employed to
capture features by composing the similar and dissimilar components. Finally, a
similarity score is estimated over the composed feature vectors. Experimental
results show that our model gets the state-of-the-art performance on the answer
sentence selection task, and achieves a comparable result on the paraphrase
identification task.


title: Future Colliders Symposium in Hong Kong: Scientific Overview

abstract:
  Opening Lecture at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Jockey
Club Institute for Advanced Study Program on High Energy Physics Conference,
January 18--21, 2016.


title: Computing Jacobi Forms

abstract:
  We describe an implementation for computing holomorphic and skew-holomorphic
Jacobi forms of integral weight and scalar index on the full modular group.
This implementation is based on formulas derived by one of the authors which
express Jacobi forms in terms of modular symbols of elliptic modular forms.
Since this method allows to generate a Jacobi eigenform directly from a given
modular eigensymbol without reference to the whole ambient space of Jacobi
forms it makes it possible to compute Jacobi Hecke eigenforms of large index.
We illustrate our method with several examples.


title:
On the Spectral Efficiency of Space-Constrained Massive MIMO with Linear
  Receivers

abstract:
  In this paper, we investigate the spectral efficiency (SE) of massive
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with a large number of antennas
at the base station (BS) accounting for physical space constraints. In contrast
to the vast body of related literature, which considers fixed inter-element
spacing, we elaborate on a practical topology in which an increase in the
number of antennas in a fixed total space induces an inversely proportional
decrease in the inter-antenna distance. For this scenario, we derive exact and
approximate expressions, as well as simplified upper/lower bounds, for the SE
of maximum-ratio combining (MRC), zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-squared
error receivers (MMSE) receivers. In particular, our analysis shows that the
MRC receiver is non-optimal for space-constrained massive MIMO topologies. On
the other hand, ZF and MMSE receivers can still deliver an increasing SE as the
number of BS antennas grows large. Numerical results corroborate our analysis
and show the effect of the number of antennas, the number of users, and the
total antenna array space on the sum SE performance.


title: Squeezed light from a diamond-turned monolithic cavity

abstract:
  For some crystalline materials, a regime can be found where continuous
ductile cutting is feasible. Using precision diamond turning, such materials
can be cut into complex optical components with high surface quality and form
accuracy. In this work we use diamond-turning to machine a monolithic,
square-shaped, doubly-resonant $LiNbO_3$ cavity with two flat and two convex
facets. When additional mild polishing is implemented, the Q-factor of the
resonator is found to be limited only by the material absorption loss. We show
how our monolithic square resonator may be operated as an optical parametric
oscillator that is evanescently coupled to free-space beams via birefringent
prisms. The prism arrangement allows for independent and large tuning of the
fundamental and second harmonic coupling rates. We measure $2.6\pm0.5$ dB of
vacuum squeezing at 1064 nm using our system. Potential improvements to obtain
higher degrees of squeezing are discussed.


title:
Moving Target Defense for Web Applications using Bayesian Stackelberg
  Games

abstract:
  The present complexity in designing web applications makes software security
a difficult goal to achieve. An attacker can explore a deployed service on the
web and attack at his/her own leisure. Moving Target Defense (MTD) in web
applications is an effective mechanism to nullify this advantage of their
reconnaissance but the framework demands a good switching strategy when
switching between multiple configurations for its web-stack. To address this
issue, we propose modeling of a real-world MTD web application as a repeated
Bayesian game. We then formulate an optimization problem that generates an
effective switching strategy while considering the cost of switching between
different web-stack configurations. To incorporate this model into a developed
MTD system, we develop an automated system for generating attack sets of Common
Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) for input attacker types with predefined
capabilities. Our framework obtains realistic reward values for the players
(defenders and attackers) in this game by using security domain expertise on
CVEs obtained from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). We also address
the issue of prioritizing vulnerabilities that when fixed, improves the
security of the MTD system. Lastly, we demonstrate the robustness of our
proposed model by evaluating its performance when there is uncertainty about
input attacker information.


title:
Local functional equations for submodule zeta functions associated to
  nilpotent algebras of endomorphisms

abstract:
  We give a sufficient criterion for generic local functional equations for
submodule zeta functions associated to nilpotent algebras of endomorphisms
defined over number fields. This allows us, in particular, to prove various
conjectures on such functional equations for ideal zeta functions of nilpotent
Lie lattices. Via the Mal'cev correspondence, these results have corollaries
pertaining to zeta functions enumerating normal subgroups of finite index in
finitely generated nilpotent groups, most notably finitely generated free
nilpotent groups of any given class.


title:
An optimal three-point eighth-order iterative method without memory for
  solving nonlinear equations with its dynamics

abstract:
  We present a three-point iterative method without memory for solving
nonlinear equations in one variable. The proposed method provides convergence
order eight with four function evaluations per iteration. Hence, it possesses a
very high computational efficiency and supports Kung and Traub's conjecture.
The construction, the convergence analysis, and the numerical implementation of
the method will be presented. Using several test problems, the proposed method
will be compared with existing methods of convergence order eight concerning
accuracy and basin of attraction. Furthermore, some measures are used to judge
methods with respect to their performance in finding the basin of attraction.


title:
Charmless $B_{c}$ $\to$ $PP$, $PV$ decays in the QCD factorization
  approach

abstract:
  The charmless $B_{c}$ $\to$ $PP$, $PV$~(where $P$ and $V$ denote the light
pseudoscalar and vector mesons, respectively) decays can occur only via the
weak annihilation diagrams within the Standard Model and provide, therefore, an
ideal place to probe the strength of annihilation contribution in hadronic
$B_{u,d,s}$ decays. In this paper, we study these kinds of decays in the
framework of QCD factorization, by adopting two different schemes: scheme I is
similar to the method usually adopted in the QCD factorization approach, while
scheme II is based on the infrared behavior of gluon propagator and running
coupling. For comparison, in our calculation, we adopt three kinds of wave
functions for $B_{c}$ meson. It is found that: (a) The predicted branching
ratios in scheme I are, however, quite small and are almost impossible to be
measured at the LHCb experiment. (b) In scheme II, by assigning a dynamical
gluon mass to the gluon propagator, we can avoid enhancements of the
contribution from soft endpoint region. The strength of annihilation
contributions predicted in scheme II is enhanced compared to that obtained in
scheme I. However, the predicted branching ratios are still smaller than the
corresponding ones obtained in the perturbative QCD approach. The large
discrepancies among these theoretical predictions indicate that more detailed
studies of these decays are urgently needed and will be tested by the future
measurements performed at the LHCb experiment.


title: Quiver Hecke algebras for alternating groups

abstract:
  The main result of this paper shows that, over large enough fields of
characteristic different from $2$, the alternating Hecke algebras are
$\mathbb{Z}$-graded algebras that are isomorphic to fixed-point subalgebras of
the quiver Hecke algebra of the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$. As a special
case, this shows that the group algebra of the alternating group, over large
enough fields of characteristic different from $2$, is a $\mathbb{Z}$-graded
algebra. We give a homogeneous presentation for these algebras, compute their
graded dimension and show that the blocks of the quiver Hecke algebras of the
alternating group are graded symmetric algebras.


title: Latent Skill Embedding for Personalized Lesson Sequence Recommendation

abstract:
  Students in online courses generate large amounts of data that can be used to
personalize the learning process and improve quality of education. In this
paper, we present the Latent Skill Embedding (LSE), a probabilistic model of
students and educational content that can be used to recommend personalized
sequences of lessons with the goal of helping students prepare for specific
assessments. Akin to collaborative filtering for recommender systems, the
algorithm does not require students or content to be described by features, but
it learns a representation using access traces. We formulate this problem as a
regularized maximum-likelihood embedding of students, lessons, and assessments
from historical student-content interactions. An empirical evaluation on
large-scale data from Knewton, an adaptive learning technology company, shows
that this approach predicts assessment results competitively with benchmark
models and is able to discriminate between lesson sequences that lead to
mastery and failure.


title:
Phonon Unfolding: A program for unfolding phonon dispersions of
  materials

abstract:
  We present Phonon Unfolding, a Fortran90 program for unfolding phonon
dispersions. It unfolds phonon dispersions by using a generalized projection
algorithm, which can be used to any kind of atomic systems in principle. Thus
our present program provides a very useful tool for the phonon dispersion and
vibration mode analysis of surface reconstructions, atomic point defects,
alloys and glasses.


title: Mobile Big Data Analytics Using Deep Learning and Apache Spark

abstract:
  The proliferation of mobile devices, such as smartphones and Internet of
Things (IoT) gadgets, results in the recent mobile big data (MBD) era.
Collecting MBD is unprofitable unless suitable analytics and learning methods
are utilized for extracting meaningful information and hidden patterns from
data. This article presents an overview and brief tutorial of deep learning in
MBD analytics and discusses a scalable learning framework over Apache Spark.
Specifically, a distributed deep learning is executed as an iterative MapReduce
computing on many Spark workers. Each Spark worker learns a partial deep model
on a partition of the overall MBD, and a master deep model is then built by
averaging the parameters of all partial models. This Spark-based framework
speeds up the learning of deep models consisting of many hidden layers and
millions of parameters. We use a context-aware activity recognition application
with a real-world dataset containing millions of samples to validate our
framework and assess its speedup effectiveness.


title: Unbounded Human Learning: Optimal Scheduling for Spaced Repetition

abstract:
  In the study of human learning, there is broad evidence that our ability to
retain information improves with repeated exposure and decays with delay since
last exposure. This plays a crucial role in the design of educational software,
leading to a trade-off between teaching new material and reviewing what has
already been taught. A common way to balance this trade-off is spaced
repetition, which uses periodic review of content to improve long-term
retention. Though spaced repetition is widely used in practice, e.g., in
electronic flashcard software, there is little formal understanding of the
design of these systems. Our paper addresses this gap in three ways. First, we
mine log data from spaced repetition software to establish the functional
dependence of retention on reinforcement and delay. Second, we use this memory
model to develop a stochastic model for spaced repetition systems. We propose a
queueing network model of the Leitner system for reviewing flashcards, along
with a heuristic approximation that admits a tractable optimization problem for
review scheduling. Finally, we empirically evaluate our queueing model through
a Mechanical Turk experiment, verifying a key qualitative prediction of our
model: the existence of a sharp phase transition in learning outcomes upon
increasing the rate of new item introductions.


title:
A numerical framework for computing steady states of size-structured
  population models and their stability

abstract:
  Structured population models are a class of general evolution equations which
are widely used in the study of biological systems. Many theoretical methods
are available for establishing existence and stability of steady states of
general evolution equations. However, except for very special cases, finding an
analytical form of stationary solutions for evolution equations is a
challenging task. In the present paper, we develop a numerical framework for
computing approximations to stationary solutions of general evolution
equations, which can also be used to produce existence and stability regions
for steady states. In particular, we use the Trotter-Kato Theorem to
approximate the infinitesimal generator of an evolution equation on a finite
dimensional space, which in turn reduces the evolution equation into a system
of ordinary differential equations. Consequently, we approximate and study the
asymptotic behavior of stationary solutions. We illustrate the convergence of
our numerical framework by applying it to a linear Sinko-Streifer structured
population model for which the exact form of the steady state is known. To
further illustrate the utility of our approach, we apply our framework to
nonlinear population balance equation, which is an extension of well-known
Smoluchowksi coagulation-fragmentation model to biological populations. We also
demonstrate that our numerical framework can be used to gain insight about the
theoretical stability of the stationary solutions of the evolution equations.
Furthermore, the open source Python program that we have developed for our
numerical simulations is freely available from our Github repository
(github.com/MathBioCU).


title:
Numerical solution of many-body wave scattering problem and creating
  materials with a desired refraction coefficient

abstract:
  Scalar wave scattering by many small particles with impedance boundary
condition and creating material with a desired refraction coefficient are
studied. The acoustic wave scattering problem is solved asymptotically and
numerically under the assumptions $ka \ll 1, \zeta_m = \frac{h(x_m)}{a^\kappa},
d = O(a^{\frac{2-\kappa}{3}}), M = O(\frac{1}{a^{2-\kappa}}), \kappa \in
[0,1)$, where $k = 2\pi/\lambda$ is the wave number, $\lambda$ is the wave
length, $a$ is the radius of the particles, $d$ is the distance between
neighboring particles, $M$ is the total number of the particles embedded in a
bounded domain $\Omega \subset \RRR$, $\zeta_m$ is the boundary impedance of
the m\textsuperscript{th} particle $D_m$, $h \in C(D)$, $D := \bigcup_{m=1}^M
D_m$, is a given arbitrary function which satisfies Im$h \le 0$, $x_m \in
\Omega$ is the position of the m\textsuperscript{th} particle, and $1 \leq m
\leq M$. Numerical results are presented for which the number of particles
equals $10^4, 10^5$, and $10^6$.


title: Star-reductions of ideals and Prufer v-multiplication domains

abstract:
  Let R be a commutative ring and I an ideal of R. A sub-ideal J of I is a
reduction of I if JI^n = I^n+1 for some positive integer n. The ring R has the
(finite) basic ideal property if (finitely generated) ideals of R do not have
proper reductions. Hays characterized (one-dimensional) Prufer domains as
domains with the finite basic ideal property (basic ideal property). We extend
Hays' results to Prufer v-multiplication domains by replacing "basic" with
"w-basic," where w is a particular star operation. We also investigate
relations among star-basic properties for certain star operations.


title:
On the fundamental aspect of the first Kelvin's relation in
  thermoelectricity

abstract:
  Kelvin's relations may be considered as cornerstones in the theory of
thermoelectricity. Indeed, they gather together the three thermoelectric
effects, associated respectively with Seebeck, Peltier and Thomson, to get a
unique and consistent description of thermoelectric phenomena. However, their
physical status in literature are quite different. On the one hand, the second
Kelvin's relation is associated with the microscopic reversibility, considered
as a fundamental thermodynamical property. On the other hand, the first
Kelvin's relation is traditionally introduced only as a convenient mathematical
relation between Seebeck and Thomson coefficients. In the present article, we
stress that, contrary to common believes, this relation may demonstrates deeper
insights than a bold mathematical expression between thermoelectric
coefficients. It actually reflects the coexistence of two different mechanisms
taking place inside thermoelectric systems: Energy conversion and
reorganization of heat flow when Seebeck coefficient varies.


title:
Remarks on $L^p$-boundedness of wave operators for Schr\"odinger
  operators with threshold singularities

abstract:
  We consider the continuity property in Lebesgue spaces $L^p(\R^m)$ of wave
operators $W_\pm$ of scattering theory for Schr\"odinger operator $H=-\lap + V$
on $\R^m$, $|V(x)|\leq C\ax^{-\delta}$ for some $\delta>2$ when $H$ is of
exceptional type, i.e. $\Ng=\{u \in \ax^{-s} L^2(\R^m) \colon (1+
(-\lap)^{-1}V)u=0 \}\not=\{0\}$ for some $1/2<s<\delta-1/2$. It has recently
been proved by Goldberg and Green for $m\geq 5$ that $W_\pm$ are bounded in
$L^p(\R^m)$ for $1\leq p<m/2$, the same holds for $1\leq p<m$ if all $\f\in
\Ng$ satisfy $\int_{\R^m} V\f dx=0$ and, for $1\leq p<\infty$ if in addition
$\int_{\R^m} x_i V\f dx=0$, $i=1, \dots, m$. We make the results for $p>m/2$
more precise and prove in particular that these conditions are also necessary
for the stated properties of $W_\pm$. We also prove that, for $m=3$, $W_\pm$
are bounded in $L^p(\R^3)$ for $1<p<3$ and that the same holds for $1<p<\infty$
if and only if all $\f\in \Ng$ satisfy $\int_{\R^3}V\f dx=0$ and $\int_{\R^3}
x_i V\f dx=0$, $i=1, 2, 3$, simultaneously.


title: Computer Aided Restoration of Handwritten Character Strokes

abstract:
  This work suggests a new variational approach to the task of computer aided
restoration of incomplete characters, residing in a highly noisy document. We
model character strokes as the movement of a pen with a varying radius.
Following this model, a cubic spline representation is being utilized to
perform gradient descent steps, while maintaining interpolation at some initial
(manually sampled) points. The proposed algorithm was utilized in the process
of restoring approximately 1000 ancient Hebrew characters (dating to ca.
8th-7th century BCE), some of which are presented herein and show that the
algorithm yields plausible results when applied on deteriorated documents.


title: Ordering connected graphs by their Kirchhoff indices

abstract:
  The Kirchhoff index $Kf(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the sum of resistance distances
between all unordered pairs of vertices, which was introduced by Klein and
Randi\'c. In this paper we characterized all extremal graphs with Kirchhoff
index among all graphs obtained by deleting $p$ edges from a complete graph
$K_n$ with $p\leq\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\rfloor$ and obtained a sharp upper bound on
the Kirchhoff index of these graphs. In addition, all the graphs with the first
to ninth maximal Kirchhoff indices are completely determined among all
connected graphs of order $n>27$.


title: Clustering Optimisation Techniques in Mobile Networks

abstract:
  The use of mobile phones has exploded over the past years,abundantly through
the introduction of smartphones and the rapidly expanding use of mobile data.
This has resulted in a spiraling problem of ensuring quality of service for
users of mobile networks. Hence, mobile carriers and service providers need to
determine how to prioritise expansion decisions and optimise network faults to
ensure customer satisfaction and optimal network performance. To assist in that
decision-making process, this research employs data mining classification of
different Key Performance Indicator datasets to develop a monitoring scheme for
mobile networks as a means of identifying the causes of network malfunctions.
Then, the data are clustered to observe the characteristics of the technical
areas with the use of k-means clustering. The data output is further trained
with decision tree classification algorithms. The end result was that this
method of network optimisation allowed for significantly improved fault
detection performance


title: t-Reductions and t-integral closure of ideals

abstract:
  Let R be an integral domain and I a nonzero ideal of R. A sub-ideal J of I is
a t-reduction of I if (JI^{n})_{t}=(I^{n+1})_{t} for some positive integer n.
An element x in R is t-integral over I if there is an equation x^{n} +
a_{1}x^{n-1} +...+ a_{n-1}x + a_{n} = 0 with a_{i} in (I^{i})_{t} for I =
1,...,n. The set of all elements that are t-integral over I is called the
t-integral closure of I. This paper investigates the t-reductions and
t-integral closure of ideals. Our objective is to establish satisfactory
t-analogues of well-known results, in the literature, on the integral closure
of ideals and its correlation with reductions. Namely, Section 2 identifies
basic properties of t-reductions of ideals and features explicit examples
discriminating between the notions of reduction and t-reduction. Section 3
investigates the concept of t-integral closure of ideals, including its
correlation with t-reductions. Section 4 studies the persistence and
contraction of t-integral closure of ideals under ring homomorphisms. All along
the paper, the main results are illustrated with original examples.


title:
The Levy-Perdew-Sahni equation for the density: accurate effective
  potential and self-consistent solution for two-electron atomic systems

abstract:
  Levy-Perdew-Sahni (LPS) provided a proof of the connection between the
density and ionization potential of a many-electron system using the equation
for the density directly. This equation employs an effective potential which is
derived by LPS from the many-electron wavefunction of the system. In this
paper, we calculate this potential explicitly by employing an accurate
wavefunction for two-electron systems. With this wavefunction connection the
LPS equation is then solved self- consistently employing this potential and
shown to lead to accurate densities and chemical potentials for these systems.


title: Auditing Black-box Models for Indirect Influence

abstract:
  Data-trained predictive models see widespread use, but for the most part they
are used as black boxes which output a prediction or score. It is therefore
hard to acquire a deeper understanding of model behavior, and in particular how
different features influence the model prediction. This is important when
interpreting the behavior of complex models, or asserting that certain
problematic attributes (like race or gender) are not unduly influencing
decisions.
  In this paper, we present a technique for auditing black-box models, which
lets us study the extent to which existing models take advantage of particular
features in the dataset, without knowing how the models work. Our work focuses
on the problem of indirect influence: how some features might indirectly
influence outcomes via other, related features. As a result, we can find
attribute influences even in cases where, upon further direct examination of
the model, the attribute is not referred to by the model at all.
  Our approach does not require the black-box model to be retrained. This is
important if (for example) the model is only accessible via an API, and
contrasts our work with other methods that investigate feature influence like
feature selection. We present experimental evidence for the effectiveness of
our procedure using a variety of publicly available datasets and models. We
also validate our procedure using techniques from interpretable learning and
feature selection, as well as against other black-box auditing procedures.


title:
A micro-scale simulation of red blood cell passage through symmetric and
  asymmetric bifurcated vessels

abstract:
  Blood exhibits a heterogeneous nature of hematocrit, velocity, and effective
viscosity in microcapillaries. Microvascular bifurcations have a significant
influence on the distribution of the blood cells and blood flow behavior. This
paper presents a simulation study performed on the two-dimensionalmotions and
deformation of multiple red blood cells in microvessels with diverging and
converging bifurcations. Fluid dynamics and membrane mechanics were
incorporated. Effects of cell shape, hematocrit, and deformability of the cell
membrane on rheological behavior of the red blood cells and the hemodynamics
have been investigated. It was shown that the blood entering the daughter
branch with a higher flow rate tended to receive disproportionally more cells.
The results also demonstrate that red blood cells in microvessels experienced
lateral migration in the parent channel and blunted velocity profiles in both
straight section and daughter branches, and this effect was influenced by the
shape and the initial position of the cells, the hematocrit, and the membrane
deformability. In addition, a cell free region around the tip of the confluence
was observed. The simulation results are qualitatively consistent with existing
experimental findings. This study may provide fundamental knowledge for a
better understanding of hemodynamic behavior of micro-scale blood flow.


title:
Extended canonical Monte Carlo methods: Improving accuracy of
  microcanonical calculations using a re-weighting technique

abstract:
  Velazquez and Curilef have proposed a methodology to extend Monte Carlo
algorithms that are based on canonical ensemble. According to our previous
study, their proposal allows us to overcome slow sampling problems in systems
that undergo any type of temperature-driven phase transition. After a
comprehensive review about ideas and connections of this framework, we discuss
the application a re-weighting technique to improve the accuracy of
microcanonical calculations, specifically, the well-known multi-histograms
method of Ferrenberg and Swendsen. As example of application, we reconsider the
study of four-state Potts model on the square lattice $L\times L$ with periodic
boundary conditions. This analysis allows us to detect the existence of a very
small latent heat per site $q_{L}$ during the occurrence of temperature-driven
phase transition of this model, whose size dependence seems to follow a
power-law $q_{L}(L)\propto(1/L)^{z}$ with exponent $z\simeq0$.$26\pm0$.$02$. It
is discussed the compatibility of these results with the continuous character
of temperature-driven phase transition when $L\rightarrow+\infty$.


title: An Improved Gap-Dependency Analysis of the Noisy Power Method

abstract:
  We consider the noisy power method algorithm, which has wide applications in
machine learning and statistics, especially those related to principal
component analysis (PCA) under resource (communication, memory or privacy)
constraints. Existing analysis of the noisy power method shows an
unsatisfactory dependency over the "consecutive" spectral gap
$(\sigma_k-\sigma_{k+1})$ of an input data matrix, which could be very small
and hence limits the algorithm's applicability. In this paper, we present a new
analysis of the noisy power method that achieves improved gap dependency for
both sample complexity and noise tolerance bounds. More specifically, we
improve the dependency over $(\sigma_k-\sigma_{k+1})$ to dependency over
$(\sigma_k-\sigma_{q+1})$, where $q$ is an intermediate algorithm parameter and
could be much larger than the target rank $k$. Our proofs are built upon a
novel characterization of proximity between two subspaces that differ from
canonical angle characterizations analyzed in previous works. Finally, we apply
our improved bounds to distributed private PCA and memory-efficient streaming
PCA and obtain bounds that are superior to existing results in the literature.


title: Dispersion-enabled quantum state control in integrated photonics

abstract:
  Integrated optics has brought unprecedented levels of stability and
performance to quantum photonic circuits. However, integrated devices are not
merely micron-scale equivalents of their bulk-optics counterparts. By
exploiting the inherently dispersive characteristics of the integrated setting,
such devices can play a remarkably more versatile role in quantum circuit
architectures. We show this by examining the implications of linear dispersion
in an ordinary directional coupler. Dispersion unlocks several novel
capabilities for this device, including in-situ control over photon spectral
and polarization entanglement, tunable photon time-ordering, and
entanglement-sensitive two-photon coincidence generation. Also revealed is an
ability to maintain perfect two-photon anti-coalescence while tuning the
interference visibility, which has no equivalent in bulk-optics. The outcome of
this work adds to a suite of state engineering and characterization tools that
benefit from the advantages of integration. It also paves the way for
re-evaluating the possibilities offered by dispersion in other on-chip devices.


title:
Structural Diversity and Homophily: A Study Across More than One Hundred
  Big Networks

abstract:
  A widely recognized organizing principle of networks is structural homophily,
which suggests that people with more common neighbors are more likely to
connect with each other. However, what influence the diverse structures
embedded in common neighbors have on link formation is much less
well-understood. To explore this problem, we begin by characterizing the
structural diversity of common neighborhoods. Using a collection of 120
large-scale networks, we demonstrate that the impact of the common neighborhood
diversity on link existence can vary substantially across networks. We find
that its positive effect on Facebook and negative effect on LinkedIn suggest
different underlying networking needs in these networks. We also discover
striking cases where diversity violates the principle of homophily---that is,
where fewer mutual connections may lead to a higher tendency to link with each
other. We then leverage structural diversity to develop a common neighborhood
signature (CNS), which we apply to a large set of networks to uncover unique
network superfamilies not discoverable by conventional methods. Our findings
shed light on the pursuit to understand the ways in which network structures
are organized and formed, pointing to potential advancement in designing graph
generation models and recommender systems.


title:
Limited Tomography Reconstruction via Tight Frame and Sinogram
  Extrapolation

abstract:
  X-ray computed tomography (CT) is one of widely used diagnostic tools for
medical and dental tomographic imaging of the human body. However, the standard
filtered backprojection reconstruction method requires the complete knowledge
of the projection data. In the case of limited data, the inverse problem of CT
becomes more ill-posed, which makes the reconstructed image deteriorated by the
artifacts. In this paper, we consider two dimensional CT reconstruction using
the horizontally truncated projections. Over the decades, the numerous results
including the sparsity model based approach has enabled the reconstruction of
the image inside the region of interest (ROI) from the limited knowledge of the
data. However, unlike these existing methods, we try to reconstruct the entire
CT image from the limited knowledge of the sinogram via the tight frame
regularization and the simultaneous sinogram extrapolation. Our proposed model
shows more promising numerical simulation results compared with the existing
sparsity model based approach.


title:
Half-quantized Non-Abelian Vortices in Neutron $^3P_2$ Superfluids
  inside Magnetars

abstract:
  We point out that half-quantized non-Abelian vortices exist as the minimum
energy states in rotating neutron $^3P_2$ superfluids in the inner cores of
magnetars with magnetic field greater than $3 \times 10^{15}$ Gauss, while they
do not in ordinary neutron stars with smaller magnetic fields. One integer
vortex is split into two half-quantized vortices. The number of vortices is
about $10^{19}$ and they are separated at about $\mu$m in a vortex lattice for
typical parameters, while the vortex core size is about 10-100 fm. They are
non-Abelian vortices characterized by non-Abelian first homotopy group, and
consequently when two vortices corresponding to non-commutative elements
collide, a rung vortex must be created between them, implying the formation of
an entangled vortex network inside the cores of magnetars. We find the
spontaneous magnetization in the vortex core showing anti-ferromagnetism whose
typical magnitude is about $10^{8-9}$ Gauss that is ten times larger than that
of integer vortices, when external magnetic fields are present along the vortex
line.

categories: nucl-th astro-ph.HE cond-mat.other hep-th


title:
Abrupt PN Junctions: Analytical Solutions Under Equilibrium and
  Non-equilibrium

abstract:
  We present an explicit solution of carrier and field distributions in abrupt
PN junctions under equilibrium. An accurate logarithmic numerical method is
implemented and results are compared to the analytical solutions. Analysis of
results shows reasonable agreement with numerical solution as well as the
depletion layer approximation. We discuss extensions to the asymmetric
junctions. Approximate relations for differential capacitance and I-V
characteristics are also found under non-zero external bias.


title:
$\beta$-decay half-lives and nuclear structure of exotic proton-rich
  waiting point nuclei under $rp$-process conditions

abstract:
  We investigate even-even nuclei in the $A\sim70$ mass region within the
framework of the proton-neutron quasi-particle random phase approximation
(\mbox{pn-QRPA}) and the interacting boson model-1 (\mbox{IBM-1}). Our work
includes calculation of the energy spectra and the potential energy surfaces
$V(\beta,\gamma)$ of Zn, Ge, Se, Kr and Sr nuclei with the same proton and
neutron number, $N = Z$. The parametrization of the \mbox{IBM-1} Hamiltonian
was performed for the calculation of the energy levels in the ground state
bands. Geometric shape of the nuclei was predicted by plotting the potential
energy surfaces $V(\beta,\gamma)$ obtained from the \mbox{IBM-1} Hamiltonian in
the classical limit. The \mbox{pn-QRPA} model was later used to compute
half-lives of the neutron-deficient nuclei which were found to be in very good
agreement with the measured ones. The \mbox{pn-QRPA} model was also used to
calculate the Gamow-Teller strength distributions and was found to be in decent
agreement with the measured data. We further calculate the electron capture and
positron decay rates for these $N$ = $Z$ waiting point (WP) nuclei in the
stellar environment employing the \mbox{pn-QRPA} model. For the $rp$-process
conditions, our total weak rates are within a factor two compared with the
Skyrme HF+BCS+QRPA calculation. All calculated electron capture rates are
comparable to the competing positron decay rates under $rp$-process conditions.
Our study confirms the finding that electron capture rates form an integral
part of the weak rates under $rp$-process conditions and should not be
neglected in the nuclear network calculations.


title:
Effective Static and Adaptive Carrier Sensing for Dense Wireless CSMA
  Networks

abstract:
  The increasingly dense deployments of wireless CSMA networks arising from
applications of Internet-of-things call for an improvement to mitigate the
interference among simultaneous transmitting wireless devices. For cost
efficiency and backward compatibility with legacy transceiver hardware, a
simple approach to address interference is by appropriately configuring the
carrier sensing thresholds in wireless CSMA protocols, particularly in dense
wireless networks. Most prior studies of the configuration of carrier sensing
thresholds are based on a simplified conflict graph model, whereas this paper
considers a realistic signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio model. We provide
a comprehensive study for two effective wireless CSMA protocols:
Cumulative-interference-Power Carrier Sensing and
Incremental-interference-Power Carrier Sensing, in two aspects: (1) static
approach that sets a universal carrier sensing threshold to ensure
interference-safe transmissions regardless of network topology, and (2)
adaptive approach that adjusts the carrier sensing thresholds dynamically based
on the feedback of nearby transmissions. We also provide simulation studies to
evaluate the starvation ratio, fairness, and goodput of our approaches.


title: Quantum networks with chiral light--matter interaction in waveguides

abstract:
  We propose a scalable architecture for a quantum network based on a simple
on-chip photonic circuit that performs loss-tolerant two-qubit measurements.
The circuit consists of two quantum emitters positioned in the arms of an
on-chip Mach-Zehnder interferometer composed of waveguides with chiral
light--matter interfaces. The efficient chiral light--matter interaction allows
the emitters to perform high-fidelity intranode two-qubit parity measurements
within a single chip, and to emit photons to generate internode entanglement,
without any need for reconfiguration. We show that by connecting multiple
circuits of this kind into a quantum network, it is possible to perform
universal quantum computation with heralded two-qubit gate fidelities ${\cal F}
\sim 0.998$ achievable in state-of-the-art quantum dot systems.


title: Higgs amplitude mode in massless Dirac fermion systems

abstract:
  The Higgs amplitude mode in superconductors is the condensed matter analogy
of Higgs bosons in particle physics. We investigate the time evolution of Higgs
amplitude mode in massless Dirac systems, induced by a weak quench of an
attractive interaction. We find that the Higgs amplitude mode in the
half-filling honeycomb lattice has a logarithmic decaying behaviour,
qualitatively different from the $1/\sqrt{t}$ decay in the normal
superconductors. Our study is also extended to the doped cases in honeycomb
lattice. As for the 3D Dirac semimetal at half filling, we obtain an undamped
oscillation of the amplitude mode. Our finding is not only an important
supplement to the previous theoretical studies on normal fermion systems, but
also provide an experimental signature to characterize the superconductivity in
2D or 3D Dirac systems.


title: The two subset recurrent property of Markov chains

abstract:
  This paper proposes a new type of recurrence where we divide the Markov
chains into intervals that start when the chain enters into a subset A, then
sample another subset B far away from A and end when the chain again return to
A. The length of these intervals have the same distribution and if A and B are
far apart, almost independent of each other. A and B may be any subsets of the
state space that are far apart of each other and such that the movement between
the subsets is repeated several times in a long Markov chain. The expected
length of the intervals is used in a function that describes the mixing
properties of the chain and improves our understanding of Markov chains.
  The paper proves a theorem that gives a bound on the variance of the estimate
for {\pi}(A), the probability for A under the limiting density of the Markov
chain. This may be used to find the length of the Markov chain that is needed
to explore the state space sufficiently. It is shown that the length of the
periods between each time A is entered by the Markov chain, has a heavy tailed
distribution. This increases the upper bound for the variance of the estimate
{\pi}(A).
  The paper gives a general guideline on how to find the optimal scaling of
parameters in the Metropolis-Hastings simulation algorithm that implicit
determine the acceptance rate. We find examples where it is optimal to have a
much smaller acceptance rate than what is generally recommended in the
literature and also examples where the optimal acceptance rate vanishes in the
limit.


title:
Finding Needle in a Million Metrics: Anomaly Detection in a Large-scale
  Computational Advertising Platform

abstract:
  Online media offers opportunities to marketers to deliver brand messages to a
large audience. Advertising technology platforms enables the advertisers to
find the proper group of audiences and deliver ad impressions to them in real
time. The recent growth of the real time bidding has posed a significant
challenge on monitoring such a complicated system. With so many components we
need a reliable system that detects the possible changes in the system and
alerts the engineering team. In this paper we describe the mechanism that we
invented for recovering the representative metrics and detecting the change in
their behavior. We show that this mechanism is able to detect the possible
problems in time by describing some incident cases.


title:
Transport of Spin Qubits with Donor Chains under Realistic Experimental
  Conditions

abstract:
  The ability to transport quantum information across some distance can
facilitate the design and operation of a quantum processor. One-dimensional
spin chains provide a compact platform to realize scalable spin transport for a
solid-state quantum computer. Here, we model odd-sized donor chains in silicon
under a range of experimental non-idealities, including variability of donor
position within the chain. We show that the tolerance against donor placement
inaccuracies is greatly improved by operating the spin chain in a mode where
the electrons are confined at the Si-SiO$_2$ interface. We then estimate the
required timescales and exchange couplings, and the level of noise that can be
tolerated to achieve high fidelity transport. We also propose a protocol to
calibrate and initialize the chain, thereby providing a complete guideline for
realizing a functional donor chain and utilizing it for spin transport.


title: Moduli of log twisted $\mathcal{N} =1$ SUSY curves

abstract:
  The goal of the present paper is to construct a smooth compactification of
the moduli superstack classifying pointed $\mathcal{N} =1$ SUSY (=
$\text{SUSY}_1$) curves. This construction is based on the
Abramovich-Jarvis-Chiodo compactification of the moduli stack classifying spin
curves. First, we give a general framework of a theory of log superschemes (or
more generally, log superstacks). Then, we introduce the notion of a pointed
(stable) log twisted $\text{SUSY}_1$ curve; it may be thought of as a
logarithmic and twisted generalization of the classical notion of a pointed
$\text{SUSY}_1$ curve, as well as a supersymmetric analogue of the notion of a
pointed (log) twisted curve. The main result of the present paper asserts that
the moduli superstack classifying pointed stable log twisted $\text{SUSY}_1$
curves may be represented by a log superstack whose underlying superstack is a
superproper and supersmooth Deligne-Mumford superstack. Consequently, this
moduli superstack forms a smooth compactification different from the
compactification proposed by P. Deligne.


title: Categorical representation of superschemes

abstract:
  In the present paper, we prove that a locally noetherian superscheme
$X^\circledS$ may be reconstructed (up to certain equivalence)
category-theoretically from the category of noetherian superschemes over
$X^\circledS$. This result is a supergeometric generalization of the result
proved by Shinichi Mochizuki concerning categorical reconstruction of schemes.


title:
Cyclic \'{e}tale coverings of generic curves and ordinariness of dormant
  opers

abstract:
  The ordinariness of elliptic curves is essential in proving various expected
properties of elliptic curves in positive characteristic and can be extended to
algebraic curves of arbitrary genus. The present paper deals with another kind
of extension, i.e., ordinariness of dormant $\mathfrak{sl}_2$-opers, or more
generally, dormant $\mathfrak{sl}_n$-opers. We prove that, for dormant
$\mathfrak{sl}_2$-opers on elliptic curves, this notion is essentially
equivalent to the classical ordinariness. Moreover, the main result of the
present paper asserts that the pull-back of an ordinary dormant
$\mathfrak{sl}_n$-oper on a general curve by a cyclic covering is ordinary
whenever the order of its Galois group is prime to the characteristic of the
base field. This result may be regarded as an analogue of a result by S.
Nakajima for ordinary algebraic curves.


title:
Numerical analysis for the moments of Bessel functions and
  Bessel-trigonometric functions

abstract:
  The moments of Bessel functions and Bessel-trigonometric functions play a
basic role in many practical problems and numerical analysis. This paper
presents a complete analysis for these moments based on the recursive relations
of Bessel functions. To evaluate the moments of Bessel functions numerically, a
fast and efficient scheme is also proposed to approximate the integral of
Bessel function of the first kind and of zero order. The moments of
Bessel-trigonometric functions are proved to be expressed in a closed form. In
the numerical results, the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed analysis for
the moments of Bessel functions is validated first and then by comparing the
existing methods, a better scheme for the moments of Bessel functions is
presented.


title:
Geo-Conquesting Based on Graph Analysis for Crowdsourced Metatrails from
  Mobile Sensing

abstract:
  This article investigates graph analysis for intelligent marketing in smart
cities, where metatrails are crowdsourced by mobile sensing for marketing
strategies. Unlike most works that focused on client sides, this study is
intended for market planning, from the perspective of enterprises. Several
novel crowdsourced features based on metatrails, including hotspot networks,
crowd transitions, affinity subnetworks, and sequential visiting patterns, are
discussed in the article. These smart footprints can reflect crowd preferences
and the topology of a site of interest. Marketers can utilize such information
for commercial resource planning and deployment. Simulations were conducted to
demonstrate the performance. At the end, this study also discusses different
scenarios for practical geo-conquesting applications.


title: SIFT: An Algorithm for Extracting Structural Information From Taxonomies

abstract:
  In this work we present SIFT, a 3-step algorithm for the analysis of the
structural information represented by means of a taxonomy. The major advantage
of this algorithm is the capability to leverage the information inherent to the
hierarchical structures of taxonomies to infer correspondences which can allow
to merge them in a later step. This method is particular relevant in scenarios
where taxonomy alignment techniques exploiting textual information from
taxonomy nodes cannot operate successfully.


title: Composition, Cooperation, and Coordination of Computational Systems

abstract:
  In this paper I elaborated on the idea of David Harel and Amir Pnueli to
think systems and their interaction from the point of view of their
compositional behaviour.
  The obvious idea to base the composition of systems on the concept of
computable functions and their compositional behaviour leads to supersystem
formation by composing simple and recursive systems.
  But this approach does not allow to account adequately for systems that
interact with many other systems in a stateful and nondeterministic way, which
is why I introduce the concept of interactivity and cooperation. In order to
describe interactive systems satisfactorily, a balance is needed between the
representation of their relationship to all the other systems and what happens
within the systems. I thus introduce the complementary descriptions of external
interactions and internal coordination, both based on a role concept in the
sense of a projection of a system onto its interactions. It actually mirrors
the internal vs. external distinction initially introduced by the system model
and reflects the problem how systems are supposed to cooperate without melting
into a common supersystem.
  Components become systems, intended for (a given) composition and with the
notion of an interface we subsume all relevant information necessary for this
composition.
  I introduce the concept of decisions as an additional internal input alphabet
in order to determine nondeterministic interactions and thus fictitiously
assume a system function where we actually do not have the knowledge to do so.
Thus, the close relationship between protocols and games becomes obvious.
  Finally, I transfer the gained insights to the field of IT system
architecture and introduce the concept of the "interaction oriented
architecture (IOA)" for interactive systems with its three elements of roles,
coordination rules, and decisions.


title:
Fully coherent hard X-ray generation by two-stage of Phase-merging
  Enhanced Harmonic Generation

abstract:
  Cascading stages of seeded free electron laser (FEL) is a promising way to
produce fully coherent X-ray radiations. We study a new approach to produce
coherent hard X-rays by cascading the recently proposed phase-merging enhanced
harmonic generation (PEHG). The scheme consists of one dogleg and two PEHG
configurations, which may be one of the leading candidates for the extracted
undulator branch in future X-ray FEL facilities. FEL physics studies show that
such a scheme is feasible within the present technology and can provide high
brightness X-ray radiation pulses with narrow bandwidth and fully coherence,
and the radiated peak power at 1 angstrom wavelength converted from an initial
200 nm seed laser is over 2 GW.


title:
Online Low-Rank Tensor Subspace Tracking from Incomplete Data by CP
  Decomposition using Recursive Least Squares

abstract:
  We propose an online tensor subspace tracking algorithm based on the CP
decomposition exploiting the recursive least squares (RLS), dubbed OnLine
Low-rank Subspace tracking by TEnsor CP Decomposition (OLSTEC). Numerical
evaluations show that the proposed OLSTEC algorithm gives faster convergence
per iteration comparing with the state-of-the-art online algorithms.


title:
Origin and stability of dark pulse Kerr combs in normal dispersion
  resonators

abstract:
  We analyze dark pulse Kerr frequency combs in optical resonators with normal
group-velocity dispersion using the Lugiato-Lefever model. We show that in the
time domain these correspond to interlocked switching waves between the upper
and lower homogeneous states, and explain how this fact accounts for many of
their experimentally observed properties. Modulational instability does not
play any role in their existence. Furthermore, we provide a detailed map
indicating where stable dark pulse Kerr combs can be found in parameter space,
and how they are destabilized for increasing values of frequency detuning.


title:
Understanding the nature of the heavy pentaquarks and searching for them
  in pion-induced reactions

abstract:
  We investigate the reaction $\pi^- p \to \pi^- J/\psi p$ via the open-charm
hadron rescattering diagrams. Due to the presence of the triangle singularity
(TS) in the rescattering amplitudes, the TS peaks can simulate the
pentaquark-like resonances arising in the $J/\psi p$ invariant mass
distributions, which may bring ambiguities on our understanding of the nature
of the exotic states. Searching for the heavy pentaquark in different processes
may help us to clarify the ambiguities, because of the highly process-dependent
characteristic of the TS mechanism.


title: ALMA Imaging of the CO(6-5) Line Emission in NGC 7130

abstract:
  In this paper, we report our high-resolution
($0^{\prime\prime}.20\times0^{\prime\prime}.14$ or $\sim$$70\times49$ pc)
observations of the CO(6-5) line emission, which probes warm and dense
molecular gas, and the 434 $\mu$m dust continuum in the nuclear region of NGC
7130, obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). The CO line and
dust continuum fluxes detected in our ALMA observations are $1230\pm74$ Jy km
s$^{-1}$ and $814\pm52$ mJy, respectively, which account for 100% and 51% of
their total respective fluxes. We find that the CO(6-5) and dust emissions are
generally spatially correlated, but their brightest peaks show an offset of
$\sim$70 pc, suggesting that the gas and dust emissions may start decoupling at
this physical scale. The brightest peak of the CO(6-5) emission does not
spatially correspond to the radio continuum peak, which is likely dominated by
an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). This, together with our additional
quantitative analysis, suggests that the heating contribution of the AGN to the
CO(6-5) emission in NGC 7130 is negligible. The CO(6-5) and the
extinction-corrected Pa-$\alpha$ maps display striking differences, suggestive
of either a breakdown of the correlation between warm dense gas and star
formation at linear scales of $<$100 pc or a large uncertainty in our
extinction correction to the observed Pa-$\alpha$ image. Over a larger scale of
$\sim$2.1\,kpc, the double-lobed structure found in the CO(6-5) emission agrees
well with the dust lanes in the optical/near-infrared images.


title:
A finite-element toolbox for the stationary Gross-Pitaevskii equation
  with rotation

abstract:
  We present a new numerical system using classical finite elements with mesh
adaptivity for computing stationary solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.
The programs are written as a toolbox for FreeFem++ (www.freefem.org), a free
finite-element software available for all existing operating systems. This
offers the advantage to hide all technical issues related to the implementation
of the finite element method, allowing to easily implement various numerical
algorithms.Two robust and optimised numerical methods were implemented to
minimize the Gross-Pitaevskii energy: a steepest descent method based on
Sobolev gradients and a minimization algorithm based on the state-of-the-art
optimization library Ipopt. For both methods, mesh adaptivity strategies are
implemented to reduce the computational time and increase the local spatial
accuracy when vortices are present. Different run cases are made available for
2D and 3D configurations of Bose-Einstein condensates in rotation. An optional
graphical user interface is also provided, allowing to easily run predefined
cases or with user-defined parameter files. We also provide several
post-processing tools (like the identification of quantized vortices) that
could help in extracting physical features from the simulations. The toolbox is
extremely versatile and can be easily adapted to deal with different physical
models.

categories: math.NA cond-mat.quant-gas math-ph math.MP quant-ph


title: Timelike Hilbert and Funk geometries

abstract:
  A timelike space is a Hausdorff topological space equipped with a partial
order relation $<$ and a distance function $\rho$ satisfying a collection of
axioms including a set of compatibility conditions between the partial order
relation and the distance function. The distance function is defined only on a
subset of the product of the space with itself that contains the diagonal,
namely, $\rho(x,y)$ is defined if and only if $x<y$ or $x=y$. Distances between
pairs of distinct points in a triple $x,y,z$, whenever these distances are
defined, satisfy the so-called \emph{time inequality}, which is a reverse
triangle inequality $\rho(x,y)+\rho(y,z)\leq \rho(z,y)$. In the 1960s, Herbert
Busemann developed an axiomatic theory of timelike spaces and of locally
timelike spaces. His motivation comes from the geometry underlying the theory
of relativity, and he tried to adapt to this setting his geometric theory of
metric spaces, namely, his theory of $G$-spaces (geodesic spaces). The
classical example he considers is the $n$-dimensional Lorentzian space. Two
other interesting classes of examples of timelike spaces he introduced are the
timelike analogues of the Funk and Hilbert geometries. In this paper, we
investigate these two geometries, and in doing this, we introduce variants of
them, in particular the timelike relative Funk and Hilbert geometries, in the
Euclidean and spherical settings. We describe the Finsler infinitesimal
structure of each of these geometries (with an appropriate notion of Finsler
structure) and we display the interactions among the Euclidean and timelike
spherical geometries. In particular, we characterize the de Sitter geometry as
a special case of a timelike spherical Hilbert geometry. The final version of
this paper will appear in Differential Geometry and its Applications.


title: Mathematisches Wissen, erworben in empirischen Theorien

abstract:
  Following the processing of individual topics of elementary school
mathematics as content of empirical theories the question is adressed wether
the associated conception of mathematics finds itself under established
concepts, and how it can be supported. A position of learning psychology and a
teaching concept will be used that fit in the position of mathematics and of
the learning of mathematics developed here.


title: Flexible polymer confined inside a cone-shaped nano-channel

abstract:
  Nano-scale confinement of polymer in cone-shaped geometries occurs in many
experimental situations. A flexible polymer confined in a cone-shaped
nano-channel is studied theoretically and using molecular dynamics simulations.
Distribution of the monomers inside the channel, configuration of the confined
polymer, entropic force acting on the polymer, and their dependence on the
channel and the polymer parameters are investigated. The theory and the
simulation results are in very good agreement. The entropic force on the
polymer that results from the asymmetric shape of the channel is measured in
the simulations and its magnitude is found to be significant relative to
thermal energy. The obtained dependence of the force on the channel parameters
may be useful in the design of cone-shaped nano-channels.


title: Lagrangian sections on mirrors of toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds

abstract:
  We construct Lagrangian sections of a Lagrangian torus fibration on a
3-dimensional conic bundle, which are SYZ dual to holomorphic line bundles over
the mirror toric Calabi-Yau 3-fold. We then demonstrate a ring isomorphism
between the wrapped Floer cohomology of the zero-section and the regular
functions on the mirror toric Calabi-Yau 3-fold. Furthermore, we show that in
the case when the Calabi-Yau 3-fold is affine space, the zero section generates
the wrapped Fukaya category of the mirror conic bundle. This allows us to
complete the proof of one direction of homological mirror symmetry for toric
Calabi-Yau orbifold quotients of the form $\mathbb{C}^3/\Check{G}$. We finish
by describing some elementary applications of our computations to symplectic
topology.


title:
Quasi-classical expansion of the star-triangle relation and integrable
  systems on quad-graphs

abstract:
  In this paper we give an overview of exactly solved edge-interaction models,
where the spins are placed on sites of a planar lattice and interact through
edges connecting the sites. We only consider the case of a single spin degree
of freedom at each site of the lattice. The Yang-Baxter equation for such
models takes a particular simple form called the star-triangle relation.
Interestigly all known solutions of this relation can be obtained as particular
cases of a single "master solution", which is expressed through the elliptic
gamma function and have continuous spins taking values of the circle. We show
that in the low-temperature (or quasi-classical) limit these lattice models
reproduce classical discrete integrable systems on planar graphs previously
obtained and classified by Adler, Bobenko and Suris through the
consistency-around-a-cube approach. We also discuss inversion relations, the
physicical meaning of Baxter's rapidity-independent parameter in the
star-triangle relations and the invariance of the action of the classical
systems under the star-triangle (or cube-flip) transformation of the lattice,
which is a direct consequence of Baxter's Z-invariance in the associated
lattice models.


title:
On the Carleman ultradifferentiable vectors of a scalar type spectral
  operator

abstract:
  A description of the Carleman classes of vectors, in particular the Gevrey
classes, of a scalar type spectral operator in a reflexive complex Banach space
is shown to remain true without the reflexivity requirement. A similar nature
description of the entire vectors of exponential type, known for a normal
operator in a complex Hilbert space, is generalized to the case of a scalar
type spectral operator in a complex Banach space.


title: HCN observations of comets C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) and C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)

abstract:
  HCN J=1-0 emission from the long-period comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) was
observed from the Onsala Space Observatory on multiple occasions during the
month before its perihelion passage on December 22, 2013. We report detections
for seven different dates, spanning heliocentric distances (R_h) decreasing
from 0.94 to 0.82 au. Estimated HCN production rates are generally higher than
previously reported for the same time period, but the implied increase in
production rate with heliocentric distance, Q_{HCN} proportionate to
R_h^{-3.2}, represent well the overall documented increase since it was first
observed at R_h=1.35. The implied mean HCN abundance relative to water in R1
Lovejoy is 0.2%. We also report on a detection of HCN with the new 3 mm
receiver system at Onsala Space Observatory in comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) on
January 14, 2015, when its heliocentric distance was 1.3 au. Relative to comet
C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy), the HCN production rate of C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was more
than 5 times higher at similar heliocentric distances, and the implied HCN
abundance relative to water 0.09%.


title:
The Cessation Threshold of Nonsuspended Sediment Transport Across
  Aeolian and Fluvial Environments

abstract:
  Using particle-scale simulations of non-suspended sediment transport for a
large range of Newtonian fluids driving transport, including air and water, we
determine the bulk transport cessation threshold $\Theta^r_t$ by extrapolating
the transport load as a function of the dimensionless fluid shear stress
(`Shields number') $\Theta$ to the vanishing transport limit. In this limit,
the simulated steady states of continuous transport can be described by simple
analytical model equations relating the average transport layer properties to
the law of the wall flow velocity profile. We use this model to calculate
$\Theta^r_t$ for arbitrary environments and derive a general Shields-like
threshold diagram in which a Stokes-like number replaces the particle Reynolds
number. Despite the simplicity of our hydrodynamic description, the predicted
cessation threshold, both from the simulations and analytical model,
quantitatively agrees with measurements for transport in air and viscous and
turbulent liquids despite not being fitted to these measurements. We interpret
the analytical model as a description of a continuous rebound motion of
transported particles and thus $\Theta^r_t$ as the minimal fluid shear stress
needed to compensate the average energy loss of transported particles during an
average rebound at the bed surface. This interpretation, supported by
simulations near $\Theta^r_t$, implies that entrainment mechanisms are needed
to sustain transport above $\Theta^r_t$. While entrainment by turbulent events
sustains intermittent transport, entrainment by particle-bed impacts sustains
continuous transport. Combining our interpretations with the critical energy
criterion for incipient motion by Valyrakis and coworkers, we put forward a new
conceptual picture of sediment transport intermittency.

categories: physics.ao-ph cond-mat.soft physics.geo-ph physics.space-ph


title:
Techniques for Gradient Based Bilevel Optimization with Nonsmooth Lower
  Level Problems

abstract:
  We propose techniques for approximating bilevel optimization problems with
non-smooth lower level problems that can have a non-unique solution. To this
end, we substitute the expression of a minimizer of the lower level
minimization problem with an iterative algorithm that is guaranteed to converge
to a minimizer of the problem. Using suitable non-linear proximal distance
functions, the update mappings of such an iterative algorithm can be
differentiable, notwithstanding the fact that the minimization problem is
non-smooth.


title:
Quantum teleportation with independent sources over an optical fibre
  network

abstract:
  Quantum teleportation faithfully transfers a quantum state between distant
nodes in a network, enabling revolutionary information processing applications.
Here we report teleporting quantum states over a 30 km optical fiber network
with the input single photon state and the EPR state prepared independently. By
buffering photons in 10 km coiled optical fiber, we perform Bell state
measurement after entanglement distribution. With active feed-forward
operation, the average quantum state fidelity and quantum process fidelity are
measured to be 0.85 and 0.77, exceeding classical limits of 0.67 and 0.5,
respectively. The statistical hypothesis test shows that the probability of a
classical process to predict an average state fidelity no less than the one
observed in our experiment is less than 2.4E-14, confirming the quantum nature
of our quantum teleportation experiment. Our experiment marks a critical step
towards the realization of quantum internet in the future.


title:
Genetic redundancies enhance information transfer in noisy regulatory
  circuits

abstract:
  Cellular decision making is based on regulatory circuits that associate
signal thresholds to specific physiological actions. This transmission of
information is subjected to molecular noise what can decrease its fidelity.
Here, we show instead how such intrinsic noise enhances information transfer in
the presence of multiple circuit copies. The result is due to the contribution
of noise to the generation of autonomous responses by each copy, which are
altogether associated with a common decision. Moreover, factors that correlate
the responses of the redundant units (extrinsic noise or regulatory cross-talk)
contribute to reduce fidelity, while those that further uncouple them
(heterogeneity within the copies) can lead to stronger information gain.
Overall, our study emphasizes how the interplay of signal thresholding,
redundancy, and noise influences the accuracy of cellular decision making.
Understanding this interplay provides a basis to explain collective cell
signaling mechanisms, and to engineer robust decisions with noisy genetic
circuits.


title:
On the generation of Beurling type Carleman ultradifferentiable
  $C_0$-semigroups by scalar type spectral operators

abstract:
  A characterization of the scalar type spectral generators of Beurling type
Carleman ultradifferentiable $C_0$-semigroups is established, the important
case of the Gevrey ultradifferentiability is considered in detail, the
implementation of the general criterion corresponding to a certain rapidly
growing defining sequence is observed.


title: Numerical radius attaining compact linear operators

abstract:
  We show that there are compact linear operators on Banach spaces which cannot
be approximated by numerical radius attaining operators.


title:
New extremal binary self-dual codes of length 68 via short kharaghani
  array over f_2 + uf_2

abstract:
  In this work, new construction methods for self-dual codes are given. The
methods use the short Kharaghani array and a variation of it. These are
applicable to any commutative Frobenius ring. We apply the constructions over
the ring F_2 + uF_2 and self-dual Type I [64, 32, 12]_2-codes with various
weight enumerators obtained as Gray images. By the use of an extension theorem
for self-dual codes we were able to construct 27 new extremal binary self-dual
codes of length 68. The existence of the extremal binary self-dual codes with
these weight enumerators was previously unknown.


title:
A note on the uniqueness and the non-degeneracy of positive radial
  solutions for semilinear elliptic problems and its application

abstract:
  In this paper, we are concerned with the uniqueness and the non-degeneracy of
positive radial solutions for a class of semilinear elliptic equations. Using
detailed ODE analysis, we extend previous results to cases where nonlinear
terms may have sublinear growth. As an application, we obtain the uniqueness
and the non-degeneracy of ground states for modified Schr\"odinger equations.


title:
Generalized wave operators: dynamical and stationary cases and
  divergence problem

abstract:
  Ideas and results of the generalized wave operator theory for dynamical and
stationary cases are developed further and exact expressions for generalized
scattering operators are obtained for wide classes of differential equations.
New results on the structure of the generalized scattering operators are
derived. Interesting interrelations between dynamical and stationary cases are
found for radial Schr\"odinger and Dirac equations, and for Dirac-type
equations as well. For some important examples we explain why the well-known
divergences in the higher order approximations of the scattering matrices do
not appear in the "generalized wave operator" approach.

categories: math-ph math.CA math.MP math.SP quant-ph


title:
Symmetrized quartic polynomial oscillators and their partial exact
  solvability

abstract:
  Sextic polynomial oscillator is probably the best known quantum system which
is partially exactly {\it alias} quasi-exactly solvable (QES), i.e., which
possesses closed-form, elementary-function bound states $\psi(x)$ at certain
couplings and energies. In contrast, the apparently simpler and
phenomenologically more important quartic polynomial oscillator is {\em not\,}
QES. A resolution of the paradox is proposed: The one-dimensional
Schr\"{o}dinger equation is shown QES after the analyticity-violating
symmetrization $V(x)=A|x|+B x^2+C|x|^3+x^4$ of the quartic polynomial
potential.


title:
Cumulants of multiplicity distributions in most-central heavy-ion
  collisions

abstract:
  I investigate the volume corrections on cumulants of total charge
distributions and net proton distributions. The required volume information is
generated by an optical Glauber model. I find that the corrected statistical
expectations of multiplicity distributions mimic the negative binomial
distributions at non-central collisions, and they tend to approach the Poisson
ones at most-central collisions due to the "boundary effects," which suppress
the volume corrections. However, net proton distributions and reference
multiplicity distributions are sensitive to the external volume fluctuations at
most-central collisions, which imply that one has to consider the details of
volume distributions in event-by-event multiplicity fluctuation studies.


title: Almost square and octahedral norms in tensor products of Banach spaces

abstract:
  The aim of this note is to study some geometrical properties like diameter
two properties, octahedrality and almost squareness in the setting of
(symmetric) tensor product spaces. In particular, we show that the injective
tensor product of two octahedral Banach spaces is always octahedral, the
injective tensor product of an almost square Banach space with any Banach space
is almost square, and the injective symmetric tensor product of an octahedral
Banach space is octahedral.


title:
IgG Adhesion on Hydrophobic Surfaces: Theory, Modelling, and Application
  to ELISA

abstract:
  Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assays (ELISA) are a range of widely used
analytical methods whose implementation requires to build antibodies (IgG) thin
films onto surfaces predominantly made of polystyrene. The high hydrophobicity
of polystyrene ensures a spontaneous and strong adhesion of proteins allowing
to easily build IgG monolayers. Since the ELISA improvements definitely lie in
the comprehension of physico-chemical mechanisms on which IgG immobilization on
hydrophobic surfaces are relied, this work develops a theorization essay
(thermodynamics of the so-called hydrophobic effect and of thin films building)
emphasized by numerical modelling (random sequential additions model, i.e. RSA)
and experimental estimations by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and ELISA.
Keeping in mind the hydrophobic effect, thermodynamics (of irreversible
processes) allows to explain why IgG adhesion on polystyrene occurs whereas
numerical modelling approaches show a way of surface saturation leading to
promote IgG orientations expected for ELISA. Finally, an improvement of RSA in
a RSA+R model taking into account orientational and/or structural changes
throughout relaxation phenomena shows an obvious relationship between
deposition conditions and obtained monolayer structure. Such theoretical
results seem to be strongly correlated with experimental facts, i.e. AFM and
ELISA.


title: Quality Attributes in Practice: Contemporary Data

abstract:
  It is well known that the software process in place impacts the quality of
the resulting product. However, the specific way in which this effect occurs is
still mostly unknown and reported through anecdotes. To gather a better
understanding of such relationship, a very large survey has been conducted
during the last year and has been completed by more than 100 software
developers and engineers from 21 countries. We have used the percentage of
satisfied customers estimated by the software developers and engineers as the
main dependent variable. The results evidence some interesting patterns, like
that quality attribute of which customers are more satisfied appears
functionality, architectural styles may not have a significant influence on
quality, agile methodologies might result in happier customers, larger
companies and shorter projects seems to produce better products.


title:
Isotropy of 5-dimensional quadratic forms over the function field of a
  quadric in characteristic 2

abstract:
  We complete a classification of quadratic forms over a field of
characteristic 2 of type (1,3) that become isotropic over the function field of
a quadric.


title:
Revisiting the lifetime estimate of large presolar grains in the
  interstellar medium

abstract:
  Some very large (>0.1 um) presolar grains are sampled in meteorites. We
reconsider the lifetime of very large grains (VLGs) in the interstellar medium
focusing on interstellar shattering caused by turbulence-induced large velocity
dispersions. This path has never been noted as a dominant mechanism of
destruction. We show that, if interstellar shattering is the main mechanism of
destruction of VLGs, their lifetime is estimated to be $\gtrsim 10^8$ yr; in
particular, very large SiC grains can survive cosmic-ray exposure time.
However, most presolar SiC grains show residence times significantly shorter
than 1 Gyr, which may indicate that there is a more efficient mechanism than
shattering in destroying VLGs, or that VLGs have larger velocity dispersions
than 10 km s$^{-1}$. We also argue that the enhanced lifetime of SiC relative
to graphite can be the reason why we find SiC among $\mu$m-sized presolar
grains, while the abundance of SiC in the normal interstellar grains is much
lower than graphite.


title:
Evolution of fusion hindrance for asymmetric systems at deep sub barrier
  energies

abstract:
  Measurements of fusion cross-sections of 7Li and 12C with 198Pt at deep
sub-barrier energies are reported to unravel the role of the entrance channel
in the occurrence of fusion hindrance. The onset of fusion hindrance has been
clearly observed in 12C + 198Pt system but not in 7Li + 198Pt system, within
the measured energy range. Emergence of the hindrance, moving from lighter
(6,7Li) to heavier (12C,16O) projectiles is explained employing a model that
considers a gradual transition from a sudden to adiabatic regime at low
energies. The model calculation reveals a weak effect of the damping of
coupling to collective motion for the present systems as compared to that
obtained for systems with heavier projectiles.


title:
Direct extraction of nuclear effects in quasielastic scattering on
  carbon

abstract:
  Nuclear effects on neutrino reactions are expected to be a significant
complication in current and future neutrino oscillation experiments seeking
precision measurements of neutrino flavor transitions. Calculations of these
nuclear effects are hampered by a lack of experimental data comparing neutrino
reactions on free nucleons to neutrino reactions on nuclei. We present results
from a novel technique that compares neutrino and antineutrino charged current
quasielastic scattering on hydrocarbons to extract a cross section ratio of
antineutrino charged current elastic reactions on free protons to charged
current quasielastic reactions on the protons bound in a carbon nucleus. This
measurement of nuclear effects is compared to models.


title:
The Most General $4\mathcal{D}$ $\mathcal{N}=1$ Superconformal Blocks
  for Scalar Operators

abstract:
  We compute the most general superconformal blocks for scalar operators in
$4\mathcal{D}$ $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal field theories. Specifically we
employ the supershadow formalism to study the four-point correlator
$\langle\Phi_1 \Phi_2 \Phi_3 \Phi_4\rangle$, in which the four scalars $\Phi_i$
have arbitrary scaling dimensions and R-charges with the only constraint from
R-symmetry invariance of the four-point function. The exchanged operators can
have arbitrary R-charges. Our results extend previous studies on $4\mathcal{D}$
$\mathcal{N}=1$ superconmformal blocks to the most general case, which are the
essential ingredient for superconformal bootstrap, especially for bootstrapping
mixed correlators of scalars with independent scaling dimensions and R-charges.


title: Can brown dwarfs survive on close orbits around convective stars?

abstract:
  Brown dwarfs straddle the mass range transition from planetary to stellar
objects. There is a relative paucity of brown dwarfs companions around FGKM
stars compared to exoplanets for orbital periods less than a few years, but
most of the short-period brown dwarf companions fully characterised by transits
and radial velocities are found around F-type stars. We examine the hypothesis
that brown dwarf companions could not survive on close orbit around stars with
important convective envelopes because the tides and angular momentum loss
through magnetic breaking should lead to a rapid orbital decay and quick
engulfment of the companion. We use a classical Skumanich-type braking law, and
constant time-lag tidal theory to assess the characteristic timescale for
orbital decay for the brown dwarf mass range as a function of the host
properties. We find that F-type stars may host massive companions for a
significantly longer time than G-type stars for a given orbital period, which
may explain the paucity of G-type hosts for brown dwarfs with orbital period
less than 5 days. On the other hand, we show that the small radius of early
M-type stars contributes to orbital decay timescales that are only half those
of F-type stars, despite their more efficient tidal dissipation and magnetic
braking. For fully convective later type M-dwarfs, orbital decay timescales
could be orders of magnitude greater than for F-type stars. For orbital periods
greater than 10 days, brown dwarf occurrence should largely be unaffected by
tidal decay, whatever the mass of the host. On closer orbital periods, the
rapid engulfment of massive companions could explain the lack of G and K-type
hosts in the sample of known systems with transiting brown dwarfs. However, the
paucity of M-type hosts can not be an effect of tidal decay alone, but may be
the result of a selection effect in the sample and/or the formation mechanism.


title: CP-Violation and Non-Standard Interactions at the MOMENT

abstract:
  To measure the last unknown $3\nu$ oscillation parameter ($\delta$), several
long baseline neutrino experiments have been designed or proposed. Recently it
has been shown that turning on neutral current Non-Standard Interactions (NSI)
of neutrinos with matter can induce degeneracies that may even hinder the
proposed state-of-the-art DUNE long baseline experiment from measuring the
value of $\delta$. We study how the result of the proposed MOMENT experiment
with a baseline of 150 km and $200~{\rm MeV}<E_\nu<600~{\rm MeV}$ can help to
solve the degeneracy induced by NSI and determine the true value of $\delta$.


title: Connectopic mapping with resting-state fMRI

abstract:
  Brain regions are often topographically connected: nearby locations within
one brain area connect with nearby locations in another area. Mapping these
connection topographies, or 'connectopies' in short, is crucial for
understanding how information is processed in the brain. Here, we propose
principled, fully data-driven methods for mapping connectopies using functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired at rest by combining spectral
embedding of voxel-wise connectivity 'fingerprints' with a novel approach to
spatial statistical inference. We applied the approach in human primary motor
and visual cortex, and show that it can trace biologically plausible,
overlapping connectopies in individual subjects that follow these regions'
somatotopic and retinotopic maps. As a generic mechanism to perform inference
over connectopies, the new spatial statistics approach enables rigorous
statistical testing of hypotheses regarding the fine-grained spatial profile of
functional connectivity and whether that profile is different between subjects
or between experimental conditions. The combined framework offers a fundamental
alternative to existing approaches to investigating functional connectivity in
the brain, from voxel- or seed-pair wise characterizations of functional
association, towards a full, multivariate characterization of spatial
topography.


title:
New data on cross-sections of deuteron induced nuclear reactions on gold
  up to 50 MeV and comparison of production routes of medically relevant Au and
  Hg radioisotopes

abstract:
  Investigations of cross-sections of deuteron induced nuclear reactions on
gold were extended up to 50 MeV by using the standard stacked foil irradiation
technique and high resolution gamma-ray spectrometry. New cross-sections are
reported for the $^{197}$Au(d,xn)$^{197m,197g,195m,195g,193m,193g}$Hg and
$^{197}$Au(d,x)$^{198m,198g,196m,196g,195,194}$Au nuclear reactions. The
application for production of the medically relevant isotopes $^{198}$Au and
$^{195m,195g,197m,197g}$Hg is discussed, including the comparison with other
charged particle induced production routes. The possible use of the
$^{197}$Au(d,x)$^{197m,197g,195m,193m}$Hg and $^{196m,196g}$Au reactions for
monitoring deuteron beam parameters is also investigated.


title:
Effects of confinement between attractive and repulsive walls on the
  thermodynamics of an anomalous fluid

abstract:
  We study by molecular dynamics simulations the thermodynamics of an anomalous
fluid confined in a slit pore with one wall structured and attractive and
another unstructured and repulsive. We find that the phase diagram of the
homogeneous part of the confined fluid is shifted to higher temperatures,
densities and pressures with respect to the bulk, but it can be rescaled on the
bulk case. We calculate a moderate increase of mobility of the homogeneous
confined fluid that we interpret as a consequence of the layering due to
confinement and the collective modes due to long-range correlations. We show
that, as in bulk, the confined fluid has structural, diffusion and density
anomalies, that order in the water-like hierarchy, and a liquid-liquid critical
point (LLCP). The overall anomalous region moves to higher temperatures,
densities and pressure and the LLCP displaces to higher temperature compared to
bulk. Motivated by experiments, we calculate also the phase diagram not just
for the homogeneous part of the confined fluid but for the entire fluid in the
pore and show that it is shifted towards higher pressures but preserves the
thermodynamics, including the LLCP. Because our model has water-like
properties, we argue that in experiments with supercooled water confined in
slit pores with a width of > 3 nm if hydrophilic, and of > 1.5 nm if
hydrophobic, the existence of the LLCP could be easier to test than in bulk,
where it is not directly accessible.


title: Visualizing Gene Ontology annotations

abstract:
  Contemporary techniques in biology produce readouts for large numbers of
genes simultaneously, the typical example being differential gene expression
measurements. Moreover, those genes are often richly annotated using GO terms
that describe gene function and that can be used to summarize the results of
the genome-scale experiments. However, making sense of such GO enrichment
analyses may be challenging. For instance, overrepresented GO functions in a
set of differentially expressed genes are typically output as a flat list, a
format not adequate to capture the complexities of the hierarchical structure
of the GO annotation labels.
  In this chapter, we survey the various methods to visualize large,
difficult-to-interpret lists of GO terms. We catalogue their availability
(web-based or standalone), the main principles they employ in summarizing large
lists of GO terms, and the visualization styles they support. These brief
commentaries on each software are intended as a helpful inventory, rather than
comprehensive descriptions of the underlying algorithms. Instead, we show
examples of their use and suggest that the choice of an appropriate
visualization tool may be crucial to the utility of GO in biological discovery.


title: Resource Management for OFDMA based Next Generation 802.11ax WLANs

abstract:
  Recently, IEEE 802.11ax Task Group has adapted OFDMA as a new technique for
enabling multi-user transmission. It has been also decided that the scheduling
duration should be same for all the users in a multi-user OFDMA so that the
transmission of the users should end at the same time. In order to realize that
condition, the users with insufficient data should transmit null data (i.e.
padding) to fill the duration. While this scheme offers strong features such as
resilience to Overlapping Basic Service Set (OBSS) interference and ease of
synchronization, it also poses major side issues of degraded throughput
performance and waste of devices' energy. In this work, for OFDMA based 802.11
WLANs we first propose practical algorithm in which the scheduling duration is
fixed and does not change from time to time. In the second algorithm the
scheduling duration is dynamically determined in a resource allocation
framework by taking into account the padding overhead, airtime fairness and
energy consumption of the users. We analytically investigate our resource
allocation problems through Lyapunov optimization techniques and show that our
algorithms are arbitrarily close to the optimal performance at the price of
reduced convergence rate. We also calculate the overhead of our algorithms in a
realistic set-up and propose solutions for the implementation issues.