title: Relativistic Measurements from Timing the Binary Pulsar PSR B1913+16

abstract:
  We present relativistic analyses of 9257 measurements of times-of-arrival
from the first binary pulsar, PSR B1913+16, acquired over the last thirty-five
years. The determination of the 'Keplerian' orbital elements plus two
relativistic terms completely characterizes the binary system, aside from an
unknown rotation about the line of sight; leading to a determination of the
masses of the pulsar and its companion: 1.438 $\pm$ 0.001 solar masses and
1.390 $\pm$ 0.001 solar masses, respectively. In addition, the complete system
characterization allows the creation of tests of relativistic gravitation by
comparing measured and predicted sizes of various relativistic phenomena. We
find that the ratio of observed orbital period decrease due to gravitational
wave damping (corrected by a kinematic term) to the general relativistic
prediction, is 0.9983 pm 0.0016; thereby confirming the existence and strength
of gravitational radiation as predicted by general relativity. For the first
time in this system, we have also successfully measured the two parameters
characterizing the Shapiro gravitational propagation delay, and find that their
values are consistent with general relativistic predictions. We have also
measured for the first time in any system the relativistic shape correction to
the elliptical orbit, $\delta_{\theta}$,although its intrinsic value is
obscured by currently unquantified pulsar emission beam aberration. We have
also marginally measured the time derivative of the projected semimajor axis,
which, when improved in combination with beam aberration modelling from
geodetic precession observations, should ultimately constrain the pulsar's
moment of inertia.


title:
Criteria For Superfluid Instabilities of Geometries with Hyperscaling
  Violation

abstract:
  We examine the onset of superfluid instabilities for geometries that exhibit
hyperscaling violation and Lifshitz-like scaling at infrared and intermediate
energy scales, and approach AdS in the ultraviolet. In particular, we are
interested in the role of a non-trivial coupling between the neutral scalar
supporting the scaling regime, and the (charged) complex scalar which
condenses. The analysis focuses exclusively on unstable modes arising from the
hyperscaling-violating portion of the geometry. Working at zero temperature, we
identify simple analytical criteria for the presence of scalar instabilities,
and discuss under which conditions a minimal charge will be needed to trigger a
transition. Finite temperature examples are constructed numerically for a few
illustrative cases.


title:
Anharmonicity of internal atomic oscillation and effective antineutrino
  mass evaluation from gaseous molecular tritium \beta -decay

abstract:
  Data analysis of the next generation effective antineutrino mass measurement
experiment KATRIN requires reliable knowledge of systematic corrections. In
particular, the width of the daughter molecular ion excitation spectrum
rovibrational band should be known with a better then 1% precision. Very
precise ab initio quantum calculations exist, and we compare them with the well
known tritium molecule parameters within the framework of a phenomenological
model. The rovibrational band width with accuracy of a few percent is
interpreted as a result of the zero-point atomic oscillation in the harmonic
potential. The Morse interatomic potential is used to investigate the impact of
anharmonic atomic oscillations. The calculated corrections cannot account for
the difference between the ab initio quantum calculations and the
phenomenological model.


title:
Another Method for Proving a Hypergeometric Generating relation
  contiguous to that of Exton

abstract:
  The aim of this note is to establish an interesting hypergeometric generating
relation contiguous to that of Exton by a short method.


title: A Contextual Model Of The Secessionist Rebellion in Eastern Ukraine

abstract:
  This paper explores the possible contextual factors that drove some
individuals to lead, and others to join the pro-secessionist rebellion in the
2013-2014 conflict in Eastern Ukraine. We expand on the existing rational
choice literature on revolutionary participation and rebellious movements by
building a contextual choice model accounting for both cost-benefit and
behavioral considerations taken by Pro-Russian militants and rebels in the
region of Donbass. Our model generates predictions about the characteristics of
the socio-political-cultural context that are most likely to ignite and sustain
hierarchical rebel movements similar to those in Ukraine.


title: Proton LINAC Using Spiral Wave-guide with Finite Energy of 80 MeV

abstract:
  The article considers an opportunity of simultaneous pulsed acceleration of
seven proton beams with current one hundred milliamps in each beam. The
accelerator consists of two parts. In the first part of the accelerator having
the length five meters, the protons are accelerated to the energy of mega
electron Volts. Consumption of high-frequency power by this part of the
accelerator is equal to mega Watts. In the second part of the accelerator
having the length fifty meters, the protons are accelerated to the finite
energy eighty mega electron Volts. Consumption of the high frequency power by
the second part of the accelerator is seventy fours mega Watts. The radial
focus of the proton beam in the first and second parts of the accelerator is
carried out with the magnetic field ten Tesla which is generated by a
superconducting solenoid.


title: Partial Sums of Normalized Wright Functions

abstract:
  In this paper we find the partial sums of two kinds normalized Wright
functions and the partial sums of Alexander transform of these normalized
Wright functions.


title: Quasianalytic Ilyashenko algebras

abstract:
  I construct a quasianalytic field $\mathcal F$ of germs at $+\infty$ of real
functions with logarithmic generalized power series as asymp\-totic expansions,
such that $\mathcal F$ is closed under differentiation and $\log$-composition;
in particular, $\mathcal F$ is a Hardy field. Moreover, the field $\mathcal F
\circ (-\log)$ of germs at $0^+$ contains all transition maps of hyperbolic
saddles of planar real analytic vector fields.


title: Constraints on CEMP-no progenitors from nuclear astrophysics

abstract:
  The CEMP-no stars are long-lived small mass stars presenting a very low iron
content and overabundances of carbon with no sign or only very weak signs for
the presence of s- or r-elements. Although the origin of that abundance pattern
is still a matter of debate, it was very likely inherited from a previous
massive star, that we shall call here the source star. We rely on a recent
classification of CEMP-no stars arguing that some of them are made of a
material processed by hydrogen burning that was enriched in products of helium
burning during the nuclear life of the source star. We examine the possibility
of forming CEMP-no stars with this material. We study the nucleosynthesis of
the CNO cycle and the Ne-Na Mg-Al chains in a hydrogen burning single zone
while injecting the helium burning products $^{12}$C, $^{16}$O, $^{22}$Ne and
$^{26}$Mg. We investigate the impact of changing the density and temperature,
as well as the injection rate. The nuclear reaction rates involving the
creation and destruction of $^{27}$Al are also examined. $^{14}$N, $^{23}$Na,
$^{24}$Mg and $^{27}$Al are formed when injecting $^{12}$C, $^{16}$O, $^{22}$Ne
and $^{26}$Mg in the hydrogen burning zone. The $^{12}$C/$^{13}$C ratio is
constant under various conditions in the hydrogen burning zone. The predicted
[Al/Fe] ratio varies up to $\sim 2$ dex depending on the prescription used for
the reaction rates involving $^{27}$Al. The experiments we carried out support
the view that some CEMP-no stars are made of a material processed by hydrogen
burning, coming from a massive star experiencing mild-to-strong rotational
mixing. During its burning, this material was likely enriched in helium burning
products. No material coming from the carbon-oxygen rich core of the source
star should be added to form the daughter star, otherwise the $^{12}$C/$^{13}$C
ratio would be largely above the observed range of values.


title:
Rotation Invariant Angular Descriptor Via A Bandlimited Gaussian-like
  Kernel

abstract:
  We present a new smooth, Gaussian-like kernel that allows the kernel density
estimate for an angular distribution to be exactly represented by a finite
number of its Fourier series coefficients. Distributions of angular quantities,
such as gradients, are a central part of several state-of-the-art image
processing algorithms, but these distributions are usually described via
histograms and therefore lack rotation invariance due to binning artifacts.
Replacing histograming with kernel density estimation removes these binning
artifacts and can provide a finite-dimensional descriptor of the distribution,
provided that the kernel is selected to be bandlimited. In this paper, we
present a new band-limited kernel that has the added advantage of being
Gaussian-like in the angular domain. We then show that it compares favorably to
gradient histograms for patch matching, person detection, and texture
segmentation.


title: Ultra-Peripheral Collisions with gold ions in STAR

abstract:
  In 2010, the STAR Collaboration collected 38 million low-multiplicity
triggers for ultra-peripheral collision studies. We present new results
involving photonuclear interactions in ultra-peripheral relativistic heavy ion
collisions (UPCs), based on an analysis of 384,000 photoproduced pion pairs,
from $\rho$, $\omega$ and direct $\pi^+\pi^-$ pair production.The $\omega$
component is clearly visible through its interference with the $\rho$ peak. The
relative amplitudes of the three components have been measured, along with the
phase angle between the $\rho$ and $\omega$ components.
  Using a two-year (2010 and 2011) dataset, we explore higher mass final
states, and observe a $\pi^+\pi^-$ state with a mass of $1653 \pm 10$ MeV and a
width of $164\pm 15$ MeV (statistical errors only). The state is at least
roughly compatible with the $\rho_3(1690)$.
  The $\rho^0$ squared momentum transfer ($t$) spectrum exhibits a spectrum
with both coherent and incoherent prodution. The coherent component shows two
characteristic diffraction minima, with positions that are sensitive to the
hadronic radius of the gold nucleus.


title:
V5852 Sgr: An Unusual Nova Possibly Associated with the Sagittarius
  Stream

abstract:
  We report spectroscopic and photometric follow-up of the peculiar nova
V5852~Sgr (discovered as OGLE-2015-NOVA-01), which exhibits a combination of
features from different nova classes. The photometry shows a flat-topped light
curve with quasi-periodic oscillations, then a smooth decline followed by two
fainter recoveries in brightness. Spectroscopy with the Southern African Large
Telescope shows first a classical nova with an Fe II or Fe IIb spectral type.
In the later spectrum, broad emissions from helium, nitrogen and oxygen are
prominent and the iron has faded which could be an indication to the start of
the nebular phase. The line widths suggest ejection velocities around
$1000\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}}$. The nova is in the direction of the Galactic bulge
and is heavily reddened by an uncertain amount. The $V$ magnitude 16 days after
maximum enables a distance to be estimated and this suggests that the nova may
be in the extreme trailing stream of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy.
If so it is the first nova to be detected from that, or from any dwarf
spheroidal galaxy. Given the uncertainty of the method and the unusual light
curve we cannot rule out the possibility that it is in the bulge or even the
Galactic disk behind the bulge.


title: Flavor Constraints on New Physics

abstract:
  This talk highlights, from a theoretical point of view, some recent exciting
results in flavor physics, as well as future prospects. We discuss possible
implications of a subset of the experimental results in tension with the
standard model, such as the $4\sigma$ deviation in the $B\to
D^{(*)}\tau\bar\nu$ decay rates, and recent improvements in the constraints on
axion portal dark matter models. We use the examples of constraining new
physics contributions to neutral meson mixing and the search for possible
vector-like fermions to illustrate the expected progress over the next decade
to increase the sensitivity to new physics at shorter distance scales. We also
speculate about the ultimate limitations of (quark) flavor physics probes of
new physics.


title:
Collective resonance fluorescence in small and dense atom clouds:
  Comparison between theory and experiment

abstract:
  We study the emergence of a collective optical response of a cold and dense
$^{87}$Rb atomic cloud to a near-resonant low-intensity light when the atom
number is gradually increased. Experimental observations are compared with
microscopic stochastic simulations of recurrent scattering processes between
the atoms that incorporate the atomic multilevel structure and the optical
measurement setup. We analyze the optical response of an
inhomogeneously-broadened gas and find that the experimental observations of
the resonance line shifts and the total collected scattered light intensity in
cold atom clouds substantially deviate from those of thermal atomic ensembles,
indicating strong light-induced resonant dipole-dipole interactions between the
atoms. At high densities, the simulations also predict a significantly slower
decay of light-induced excitations in cold than in thermal atom clouds. The
role of dipole-dipole interactions is discussed in terms of resonant coupling
examples and the collective radiative excitation eigenmodes of the system.

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


title: Superfluid transport dynamics in a capacitive atomtronic circuit

abstract:
  We simulate transport in an atomtronic circuit of a Bose-Einstein condensate
that flows from a source region into a drain through a gate channel. The
time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) solution matches the data of a
recent experiment. The atomtronic circuit is found to be similar to a
variable-resistance RLC circuit, which is critically damped at early times and
shows LC oscillations later. The GPE also predicts atom loss from the drain.
Studies of the dependence of condensate transport upon gate parameters suggest
the utility of the GPE for investigation of atomtronic circuits.


title:
MultiDK: A Multiple Descriptor Multiple Kernel Approach for Molecular
  Discovery and Its Application to The Discovery of Organic Flow Battery
  Electrolytes

abstract:
  We propose a multiple descriptor multiple kernel (MultiDK) method for
efficient molecular discovery using machine learning. We show that the MultiDK
method improves both the speed and the accuracy of molecular property
prediction. We apply the method to the discovery of electrolyte molecules for
aqueous redox flow batteries. Using \emph{multiple-type - as opposed to
single-type - descriptors}, more relevant features for machine learning can be
obtained. Following the principle of the 'wisdom of the crowds', the
combination of multiple-type descriptors significantly boosts prediction
performance. Moreover, MultiDK can exploit irregularities between molecular
structure and property relations better than the linear regression method by
employing multiple kernels - more than one kernel functions for a set of the
input descriptors. The multiple kernels consist of the Tanimoto similarity
function and a linear kernel for a set of binary descriptors and a set of
non-binary descriptors, respectively. Using MultiDK, we achieve average
performance of $r^2 = 0.92$ with a set of molecules for solubility prediction.
We also extend MultiDK to predict pH-dependent solubility and apply it to
solubility estimation of quinone molecules with ionizable functional groups as
strong candidates of flow battery electrolytes.


title: The geometry and combinatorics of Springer fibers

abstract:
  This survey paper describes Springer fibers, which are used in one of the
earliest examples of a geometric representation. We will compare and contrast
them with Schubert varieties, another family of subvarieties of the flag
variety that play an important role in representation theory and combinatorics,
but whose geometry is in many respects simpler. The end of the paper describes
a way that Springer fibers and Schubert varieties are related, as well as open
questions.


title:
Deep LMT/AzTEC millimeter observations of Epsilon Eridani and its
  surroundings

abstract:
  Epsilon Eridani is a nearby, young Sun-like star that hosts a ring of cool
debris analogous to the solar system's Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. Early
observations at (sub-)mm wavelengths gave tentative evidence of the presence of
inhomogeneities in the ring, which have been ascribed to the effect of a
putative low eccentricity planet, orbiting close to the ring. The existence of
these structures have been recently challenged by high resolution
interferometric millimeter observations. Here we present the deepest
single-dish image of Epsilon Eridani at millimeter wavelengths, obtained with
the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT). The main goal of these
LMT observations is to confirm (or refute) the presence of non-axisymmetric
structure in the disk. The dusty ring is detected for the first time along its
full projected elliptical shape. The radial extent of the ring is not spatially
resolved and shows no evidence, to within the uncertainties, of dust density
enhancements. Additional features of the 1.1 mm map are: (i) the presence of
significant flux in the gap between the ring and the star, probably providing
the first exo-solar evidence of Poynting-Robertson drag, (ii) an unambiguous
detection of emission at the stellar position with a flux significantly above
that expected from Epsilon Eridani's photosphere, and (iii) the identification
of numerous unresolved sources which could correspond to background dusty
star-forming galaxies.


title: Bragg-Berry mirrors: reflective broadband q-plates

abstract:
  We report on the experimental realization of flat mirrors enabling the
broadband generation of optical vortices upon reflection. The effect is based
on the geometric Berry phase associated with the circular Bragg reflection
phenomenon from chiral uniaxial media. We show the reflective optical vortex
generation from both diffractive and nondiffractive paraxial light beams using
spatially patterned chiral liquid crystal films. The intrinsic spectrally
broadband character of spin-orbit generation of optical phase singularities is
demonstrated over the full visible domain. Our results do not rely on any
birefringent retardation requirement and consequently foster the development of
a novel generation of robust optical elements for spin-orbit photonic
technologies.


title: On Matched Metric and Channel Problem

abstract:
  The sufficient condition for partial function from the cartesian square of
the finite set to the reals to be compatible with some metric on this set is
given. It is then shown, that when afforementioned set and function are
respectively a space of binary words of length n and probalities of receiving
some word after sending the other word through Binary Assymetric Channel the
condition is satisfied so the required metrics exist.


title: Can we prevent the "dead layer" formation at manganite interfaces?

abstract:
  The present work theoretically studies the possibility to hinder the
formation of a "dead" layer at the interfaces in manganite superlattices. We
showed that this goal can be reached by using alkaline-earth simple oxides as
alternating layers in very thin superlattices. Indeed, such alternating layer
promotes the contraction of manganite layers at the interfaces and
$d_{x^2-y^2}$ preferred $e_g$ orbital occupancy, while Boltzman's transport
calculations show an increase in conductivity. This result hold for different
manganites, different alkaline-earth simple oxides as well as different
thicknesses of the two layers.


title: Transient cell assembly networks encode persistent spatial memories

abstract:
  While cognitive representations of an environment can last for days and even
months, the synaptic architecture of the neuronal networks that underlie these
representations constantly changes due to various forms of synaptic and
structural plasticity at a much faster timescale. This raises an immediate
question: how can a transient network maintain a stable representation of
space? In the following, we propose a computational model for describing
emergence of the hippocampal cognitive map in a network of transient place cell
assemblies and demonstrate, using methods of algebraic topology, that such a
network can maintain a robust map of the environment.


title:
Local Adaption for Approximation and Minimization of Univariate
  Functions

abstract:
  Most commonly used \emph{adaptive} algorithms for univariate real-valued
function approximation and global minimization lack theoretical guarantees. Our
new locally adaptive algorithms are guaranteed to provide answers that satisfy
a user-specified absolute error tolerance for a cone, $\mathcal{C}$, of
non-spiky input functions in the Sobolev space $W^{2,\infty}[a,b]$. Our
algorithms automatically determine where to sample the function---sampling more
densely where the second derivative is larger. The computational cost of our
algorithm for approximating a univariate function $f$ on a bounded interval
with $L^{\infty}$-error no greater than $\varepsilon$ is
$\mathcal{O}\Bigl(\sqrt{{\left\|f"\right\|}_{\frac12}/\varepsilon}\Bigr)$ as
$\varepsilon \to 0$. This is the same order as that of the best function
approximation algorithm for functions in $\mathcal{C}$. The computational cost
of our global minimization algorithm is of the same order and the cost can be
substantially less if $f$ significantly exceeds its minimum over much of the
domain. Our Guaranteed Automatic Integration Library (GAIL) contains these new
algorithms. We provide numerical experiments to illustrate their superior
performance.


title: Theoretical Robopsychology: Samu Has Learned Turing Machines

abstract:
  From the point of view of a programmer, the robopsychology is a synonym for
the activity is done by developers to implement their machine learning
applications. This robopsychological approach raises some fundamental
theoretical questions of machine learning. Our discussion of these questions is
constrained to Turing machines. Alan Turing had given an algorithm (aka the
Turing Machine) to describe algorithms. If it has been applied to describe
itself then this brings us to Turing's notion of the universal machine. In the
present paper, we investigate algorithms to write algorithms. From a pedagogy
point of view, this way of writing programs can be considered as a combination
of learning by listening and learning by doing due to it is based on applying
agent technology and machine learning. As the main result we introduce the
problem of learning and then we show that it cannot easily be handled in
reality therefore it is reasonable to use machine learning algorithm for
learning Turing machines.


title: On optimal currents of indistinguishable particles

abstract:
  We establish a mathematically rigorous, general and quantitative framework to
describe currents of non- (or weakly) interacting, indistinguishable particles
driven far from equilibrium. We derive tight upper and lower bounds for the
achievable fermionic and bosonic steady state current, respectively, which can
serve as benchmarks for special cases of interacting many-particle dynamics.
For fermionic currents, we identify a symmetry-induced enhancement mechanism in
parameter regimes where the coupling between system and reservoirs is weak.
This mechanism is broadly applicable provided the inter-particle interaction
strength is small as compared to typical exchange interactions.

categories: quant-ph cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.stat-mech math-ph math.MP


title: Landau Theory and the Emergence of Chirality in Viral Capsids

abstract:
  We present a generalized Landau-Brazovskii theory for the solidification of
chiral molecules on a spherical surface. With increasing sphere radius one
encounters first intervals where robust achiral density modulations appear with
icosahedral symmetry via first-order transitions. Next, one en- counters
intervals where fragile but stable icosahedral structures still can be
constructed but only by superposition of multiple irreducible representations.
Chiral icoshedral structures appear via continuous or very weakly first-order
transitions. Outside these parameter intervals, icosahedral symmetry is broken
along a three-fold axis or a five-fold axis. The predictions of the theory are
compared with recent numerical simulations.


title:
Characterization of switching field distributions in Ising-like magnetic
  arrays

abstract:
  The switching field distribution within arrays of single-domain ferromagnetic
islands incorpo- rates both island-island interactions and quenched disorder in
island geometry. Separating these two contributions is important for
disentangling the effects of disorder and interactions in the magnetization
dynamics of island arrays. Using sub-micron, spatially resolved Kerr imaging in
an external magnetic field for islands with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy,
we map out the evolution of island arrays during hysteresis loops. Resolving
and tracking individual islands across four different lattice types and a range
of inter-island spacings, we extract the individual switching fields of every
island and thereby determine the relative contributions of interactions and
quenched disorder in the arrays. The width of the switching field distribution
is well explained by a simple model comprising the sum of an array-independent
contribution (interpreted as disorder-induced), and a term proportional to the
maximum field the fully polarized array could exert on a single island. We
conclude that disorder in these arrays is primarily a single-island property.


title: The Effective Bootstrap

abstract:
  We study the numerical bounds obtained using a conformal-bootstrap method -
advocated in ref. [1] but never implemented so far - where different points in
the plane of conformal cross ratios $z$ and $\bar z$ are sampled. In contrast
to the most used method based on derivatives evaluated at the symmetric point
$z=\bar z =1/2$, we can consistently "integrate out" higher-dimensional
operators and get a reduced simpler, and faster to solve, set of bootstrap
equations. We test this "effective" bootstrap by studying the 3D Ising and
$O(n)$ vector models and bounds on generic 4D CFTs, for which extensive results
are already available in the literature. We also determine the scaling
dimensions of certain scalar operators in the $O(n)$ vector models, with
$n=2,3,4$, which have not yet been computed using bootstrap techniques.


title:
Single reconstructed Fermi surface pocket in an underdoped single layer
  cuprate superconductor

abstract:
  The observation of a reconstructed Fermi surface via quantum oscillations in
hole-doped cuprates opened a path towards identifying broken symmetry states in
the pseudogap regime. However, such an identification has remained inconclusive
due to the multi-frequency quantum oscillation spectra and complications
accounting for bilayer effects in most studies. We overcome these impediments
with high resolution measurements on the structurally simpler cuprate
HgBa2CuO4+d (Hg1201), which features one CuO2 plane per unit cell. We find only
a single oscillatory component with no signatures of magnetic breakdown
tunneling to additional orbits. Therefore, the Fermi surface comprises a single
quasi-two-dimensional pocket. Quantitative modeling of these results indicates
that biaxial charge-density-wave within each CuO2 plane is responsible for the
reconstruction, and rules out criss-crossed charge stripes between layers as a
viable alternative in Hg1201. Lastly, we determine that the characteristic gap
between reconstructed pockets is a significant fraction of the pseudogap
energy.


title: Numerical integration for fractal measures

abstract:
  We find estimates for the error in replacing an integral $\int f d\mu$ with
respect to a fractal measure $\mu$ with a discrete sum $\sum_{x \in E} w(x)
f(x)$ over a given sample set $E$ with weights $w$. Our model is the classical
Koksma-Hlawka theorem for integrals over rectangles, where the error is
estimated by a product of a discrepancy that depends only on the geometry of
the sample set and weights, and variance that depends only on the smoothness of
$f$. We deal with p.c.f self-similar fractals, on which Kigami has constructed
notions of energy and Laplacian. We develop generic results where we take the
variance to be either the energy of $f$ or the $L^1$ norm of $\Delta f$, and we
show how to find the corresponding discrepancies for each variance. We work out
the details for a number of interesting examples of sample sets for the
Sierpi\'{n}ski gasket, both for the standard self-similar measure and energy
measures, and for other fractals.


title: Inexpensive LED-based spectrophotometer for analyzing optical coatings

abstract:
  Optical coatings are widespread in everyday life, from camera lenses to
glasses, to complex optics experiments. A simple, reliable device that can
quickly and inexpensively analyze optical coatings is a valuable laboratory
tool. Such a device can identify unknown or mislabelled optics, and
characterize the transmission spectra of optical elements used in an
experiment. We present the design and characterization of a LED-based
spectrophotometer, and demonstrate its ability to identify different optical
coatings. Our approach uses ten LEDs that cover a spectrum from 365 nm to 1000
nm. A small servomotor and microcontroller rotates a LED board to sequentially
position each LED over an optical sample, and the transmitted light
corresponding to each LED is measured with a silicon photodetector. The device
is automated, portable, inexpensive, user-friendly and simple to build.


title: Birational geometry of moduli spaces of sheaves and Bridgeland stability

abstract:
  Moduli spaces of sheaves and Hilbert schemes of points have experienced a
recent resurgence in interest in the past several years, due largely to new
techniques arising from Bridgeland stability conditions and derived category
methods. In particular, classical questions about the birational geometry of
these spaces can be answered by using new tools such as the positivity lemma of
Bayer and Macr\`i. In this article we first survey classical results on moduli
spaces of sheaves and their birational geometry. We then discuss the
relationship between these classical results and the new techniques coming from
Bridgeland stability, and discuss how cones of ample divisors on these spaces
can be computed with these new methods. This survey expands upon the author's
talk at the 2015 Bootcamp in Algebraic Geometry preceding the 2015 AMS Summer
Research Institute on Algebraic Geometry at the University of Utah.


title:
Vortex lines attached to dark solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates and
  Boson-Vortex Duality in 3+1 Dimensions

abstract:
  We demonstrate the existence of stationary states composed of vortex lines
attached to planar dark solitons in scalar Bose-Einstein condensates.
Dynamically stable states of this type are found at low values of the chemical
potential in channeled condensates, where the long-wavelength instability of
dark solitons is prevented. In oblate, harmonic traps, U-shaped vortex lines
attached by both ends to a single planar soliton are shown to be long-lived
states. Our results are reported for parameters typical of current experiments,
and open up a way to explore the interplay of different topological structures.
These configurations provide Dirichlet boundary conditions for vortex lines and
thereby mimic open strings attached to D-branes in string theory. We show that
these similarities can be formally established by mapping the Gross-Pitaevskii
theory into a dual effective string theory for open strings via a boson-vortex
duality in 3+1 dimensions. Combining a one-form gauge field living on the
soliton plane which couples to the endpoints of vortex lines and a two-form
gauge field which couples to vortex lines, we obtain a gauge-invariant dual
action of open vortex lines with their endpoints attached to dark solitons.


title: On well posedness for the inhomogeneous nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation

abstract:
  The purpose of this paper is to study well-posedness of the initial value
problem (IVP) for the inhomogeneous nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (INLS) $$
i u_t +\Delta u+\lambda|x|^{-b}|u|^\alpha u = 0, $$ where $\lambda=\pm 1$ and
$\alpha$, $b>0$.
  We obtain local and global results for initial data in $H^s(\mathbb{R}^N)$,
with $0\leq s\leq 1$. To this end, we use the contraction mapping principle
based on the Strichartz estimates related to the linear problem.


title: Lectures on tropical curves and their moduli spaces

abstract:
  These are notes for a series of five lectures on "Moduli and degenerations of
algebraic curves via tropical geometry" delivered at the CIMPA-CIMAT-ICTP
School on Moduli of Curves, February 29-March 4, 2016 in Guanajuato, Mexico.


title: Competitive-cooperative models with various diffusion strategies

abstract:
  The paper is concerned with different types of dispersal chosen by competing
species. We introduce a model with the diffusion-type term $\nabla \cdot \left[
a \nabla \left( u/P \right) \right]$ which includes some previously studied
systems as special cases, where a positive space-dependent function $P$ can be
interpreted as a chosen dispersal strategy. The well-known result that if the
first species chooses $P$ proportional to the carrying capacity while the
second does not then the first species will bring the second one to extinction,
is also valid for this type of dispersal. However, we focus on the case when
the ideal free distribution is attained as a combination of the two strategies
adopted by the two species. Then there is a globally stable coexistence
equilibrium, its uniqueness is justified. If both species choose the same
dispersal strategy, non-proportional to the carrying capacity, then the
influence of higher diffusion rates is negative, while of higher intrinsic
growth rates is positive for survival in a competition. This extends the result
of [J. Math. Biol. {\bf 37} (1) (1998), 61--83] for the regular diffusion to a
more general type of dispersal.


title: On conditional expectations in L^p(mu;L^q(nu;X))

abstract:
  Let $(A,\mathscr{A},\mu)$ and $(B,\mathscr{B},\nu)$ be probability spaces,
let $\mathscr{F}$ be a sub-$\sigma$-algebra of the product $\sigma$-algebra
$\mathscr{A}\times\mathscr{B}$, let $X$ be a Banach space, and let $1< p,q<
\infty$. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions in order that the
conditional expectation with respect to $\mathscr{F}$ defines a bounded linear
operator from $L^p(\mu;L^q(\nu;X))$ onto $L^p_{\mathscr{F}}(\mu;L^q(\nu;X))$,
the closed subspace in $L^p(\mu;L^q(\nu;X))$ of all functions having a strongly
$\mathscr{F}$-measurable representative.


title:
The Marginally Stable Circular Orbit of the Fluid Disk around a Black
  Hole

abstract:
  The inner boundary of a black hole accretion disk is often set to the
marginally stable circular orbit (or the innermost stable circular orbit, ISCO)
around the black hole. It is important for the theories of black hole accretion
disks and their applications to astrophysical black hole systems.
Traditionally, the marginally stable circular orbit is obtained by considering
the equatorial motion of a test particle around a black hole. However, in
reality the accretion flow around black holes consists of fluid, in which the
pressure often plays an important role. Here we consider the influence of fluid
pressure on the location of marginally stable circular orbit around black
holes. It is found that when the temperature of the fluid is so low that the
thermal energy of a particle is much smaller than its rest energy, the location
of marginally stable circular orbit is almost the same as that in the test
particle case. However, we demonstrate that in some special cases the
marginally stable circular orbit can be different when the fluid pressure is
large and the thermal energy becomes non-negligible comparing with the rest
energy. We present our results for both the cases of non-spinning and spinning
black holes. The influences of our results on the black hole spin parameter
measurement in X-ray binaries and the energy release efficiency of accretion
flows around black holes are discussed.


title:
A universal asymptotic regime in the hyperbolic nonlinear Schr\"odinger
  equation

abstract:
  The appearance of a fundamental long-time asymptotic regime in the two space
one time dimensional hyperbolic nonlinear Schr\"odinger (HNLS) equation is
discussed. Based on analytical and extensive numerical simulations an
approximate self-similar solution is found for a wide range of initial
conditions -- essentially for initial lumps of small to moderate energy. Even
relatively large initial amplitudes, which imply strong nonlinear effects,
eventually lead to local structures resembling those of the self-similar
solution, with appropriate small modifications. These modifications are
important in order to properly capture the behavior of the phase of the
solution. This solution has aspects that suggest it is a universal attractor
emanating from wide ranges of initial data.

categories: nlin.PS math-ph math.MP physics.ao-ph physics.optics physics.plasm-ph


title: A non-equilibrium formulation of food security resilience

abstract:
  Resilience, the ability to recover from adverse events ("shocks"), is of
fundamental importance to food security. This is especially true in poor
countries, where basic needs are frequently threatened by economic,
environmental, and health shocks. An empirically sound formalization of the
concept of food security resilience, however, is lacking. Here we introduce a
general framework for quantifying resilience based on a simple definition: a
unit is resilient if $(a)$ its long-term food security trend is not
deteriorating and $(b)$ the effects of shocks on this trend do not persist over
time. Our approach can be applied to any food security variable for which
high-frequency time-series data is available, can accommodate any unit of
analysis (e.g., individuals, households, countries), and is especially useful
in rapidly changing contexts wherein standard equilibrium-based economic models
are ineffective. We illustrate our method with an analysis of per capita
kilocalorie availability for 161 countries between 1961 and 2011. We find that
resilient countries are not necessarily those that are characterized by high
levels or less volatile fluctuations of kilocalorie intake. Accordingly, food
security policies and programs will need to be tailored not only to welfare
levels at any one time, but also to long-run welfare dynamics.


title:
Start-to-end simulation with rare isotope beam for post accelerator of
  the RAON accelerator

abstract:
  The RAON accelerator of the Rare Isotope Science Project (RISP) has been
developed to create and accelerate various kinds of stable heavy ion beams and
rare isotope beams for a wide range of the science applications. In the RAON
accelerator, the rare isotope beams generated by the Isotope Separation On-Line
(ISOL) system will be transported through the post accelerator, namely, from
the post Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) system and the post Radio Frequency
Quadrupole (RFQ) to the superconducting linac (SCL3). The accelerated beams
will be put to use in the low energy experimental hall or accelerated again by
the superconducting linac (SCL2) in order to be used in the high energy
experimental hall. In this paper, we will describe the results of the
start-to-end simulations with the rare isotope beams generated by the ISOL
system in the post accelerator of the RAON accelerator. In addition, the error
analysis and correction at the superconducting linac SCL3 will be presented.


title: Neural Network-Based Abstract Generation for Opinions and Arguments

abstract:
  We study the problem of generating abstractive summaries for opinionated
text. We propose an attention-based neural network model that is able to absorb
information from multiple text units to construct informative, concise, and
fluent summaries. An importance-based sampling method is designed to allow the
encoder to integrate information from an important subset of input. Automatic
evaluation indicates that our system outperforms state-of-the-art abstractive
and extractive summarization systems on two newly collected datasets of movie
reviews and arguments. Our system summaries are also rated as more informative
and grammatical in human evaluation.


title:
Maximum Selection and Sorting with Adversarial Comparators and an
  Application to Density Estimation

abstract:
  We study maximum selection and sorting of $n$ numbers using pairwise
comparators that output the larger of their two inputs if the inputs are more
than a given threshold apart, and output an adversarially-chosen input
otherwise. We consider two adversarial models. A non-adaptive adversary that
decides on the outcomes in advance based solely on the inputs, and an adaptive
adversary that can decide on the outcome of each query depending on previous
queries and outcomes.
  Against the non-adaptive adversary, we derive a maximum-selection algorithm
that uses at most $2n$ comparisons in expectation, and a sorting algorithm that
uses at most $2n \ln n$ comparisons in expectation. These numbers are within
small constant factors from the best possible. Against the adaptive adversary,
we propose a maximum-selection algorithm that uses $\Theta(n\log
(1/{\epsilon}))$ comparisons to output a correct answer with probability at
least $1-\epsilon$. The existence of this algorithm affirmatively resolves an
open problem of Ajtai, Feldman, Hassadim, and Nelson.
  Our study was motivated by a density-estimation problem where, given samples
from an unknown underlying distribution, we would like to find a distribution
in a known class of $n$ candidate distributions that is close to underlying
distribution in $\ell_1$ distance. Scheffe's algorithm outputs a distribution
at an $\ell_1$ distance at most 9 times the minimum and runs in time
$\Theta(n^2\log n)$. Using maximum selection, we propose an algorithm with the
same approximation guarantee but run time of $\Theta(n\log n)$.


title: Equivalent norms for the Morrey spaces with non-doubling measures

abstract:
  In this paper under some growth condition we investigate the connection
between RBMO and the Morrey spaces. We do not assume the doubling condition
which has been a key property of harmonic analysis. We also obtain another type
of equivalent norms.


title: Convex real projective structures and Weil's local rigidity Theorem

abstract:
  For an $n$-dimensional real hyperbolic manifold $M$, we calculate the Zariski
tangent space of a character variety $\chi(\pi_1(M),SL(n+1,\mathbb R)), n>2$ at
Fuchisan loci to show that the tangent space consists of cubic forms.
Furthermore we prove the Weil's local rigidity theorem for uniforml hyperbolic
lattices using real projective structures.


title: Dynamical Yang-Baxter maps and Hopf algebroids associated with s-sets

abstract:
  An s-set is an algebraic generalization of the regular s-manifold introduced
by Kowalski, one of the generalized symmetric spaces in differential geometry.
We prove that suitable s-sets give birth to dynamical Yang-Baxter maps,
set-theoretic solutions to a version of the quantum dynamical Yang-Baxter
equation. As an application, Hopf algebroids and rigid tensor categories are
constructed by means of these dynamical Yang-Baxter maps.


title:
A new local regularity criterion for suitable weak solutions of the
  Navier--Stokes equations in terms of the velocity gradient

abstract:
  We study the partial regularity of suitable weak solutions to the three
dimensional incompressible Navier--Stokes equations. There have been several
attempts to refine the Caffarelli--Kohn--Nirenberg criterion (1982). We present
an improved version of the CKN criterion with a direct method, which also
provides the quantitative relation in Seregin's criterion (2007).


title:
A note on the boundedness of discrete commutators on Morrey spaces and
  their preduals

abstract:
  Dyadic fractional integral operators are shown to be bounded on Morrey spaces
and their preduals. It seems that the proof of the boundedness by means of
dyadic fractional integral operators is effective particularly on the preduals.
In the present paper the commutators are proved to be bounded as well.


title:
Spontaneous Subtle Expression Detection and Recognition based on Facial
  Strain

abstract:
  Optical strain is an extension of optical flow that is capable of quantifying
subtle changes on faces and representing the minute facial motion intensities
at the pixel level. This is computationally essential for the relatively new
field of spontaneous micro-expression, where subtle expressions can be
technically challenging to pinpoint. In this paper, we present a novel method
for detecting and recognizing micro-expressions by utilizing facial optical
strain magnitudes to construct optical strain features and optical strain
weighted features. The two sets of features are then concatenated to form the
resultant feature histogram. Experiments were performed on the CASME II and
SMIC databases. We demonstrate on both databases, the usefulness of optical
strain information and more importantly, that our best approaches are able to
outperform the original baseline results for both detection and recognition
tasks. A comparison of the proposed method with other existing spatio-temporal
feature extraction approaches is also presented.


title:
Optimal estimates for the conductivity problem by Green's function
  method

abstract:
  We study a class of second-order elliptic equations of divergence form, with
discontinuous coefficients and data, which models the conductivity problem in
composite materials. We establish optimal gradient estimates by showing the
explicit dependence of the elliptic coefficients and the distance between
interfacial boundaries of inclusions. The novelty of these estimates is that
they unify the known results in the literature and answer open problem (b)
proposed by Li-Vogelius (2000) for the isotropic conductivity problem. We also
obtain more interesting higher-order derivative estimates, which answers open
problem (c) of Li-Vogelius (2000). It is worth pointing out that the equations
under consideration in this paper are nonhomogeneous.


title: Baum-Katz type theorems with exact threshold

abstract:
  Let $\{X_n\}_{n\geq 1}$ be either a sequence of arbitrary random variables,
or a martingale difference sequence, or a centered sequence with a suitable
level of negative dependence. We prove Baum-Katz type theorems by only assuming
that the variables $X_n$ satisfy a uniform moment bound condition. We also
prove that this condition is best possible even for sequences of centered,
independent random variables. This leads to Marcinkiewicz-Zygmund type strong
laws of large numbers with estimate for the rate of convergence.


title:
Sample Path Large Deviations for L\'evy Processes and Random Walks with
  Regularly Varying Increments

abstract:
  Let $X$ be a L\'evy process with regularly varying L\'evy measure $\nu$. We
obtain sample-path large deviations for scaled processes $\bar X_n(t)
\triangleq X(nt)/n$ and obtain a similar result for random walks. Our results
yield detailed asymptotic estimates in scenarios where multiple big jumps in
the increment are required to make a rare event happen; we illustrate this
through detailed conditional limit theorems. In addition, we investigate
connections with the classical large deviations framework. In that setting, we
show that a weak large deviation principle (with logarithmic speed) holds, but
a full large deviation principle does not hold.


title:
Sharp and Bright Photoluminescence Emission of Single Crystalline
  Diacetylene Nanoparticles

abstract:
  Amorphous nanoparticles (NPs) of diacetylene (DA) molecules were prepared by
using a reprecipitation method. After crystallization through solvent-vapor
annealing process, the highly crystalline DA NPs show different structural and
optical characteristics compared with the amorphous DA NPs. The single crystal
structure of DA NPs was confirmed by high-resolution transmission electron
microscopy (HR-TEM) and wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS). The luminescence
color and photoluminescence (PL) characteristics of the DA NPs were measured
using color charge-coupled device (CCD) images and high-resolution laser
confocal microscope (LCM). The crystalline DA NPs emit bright green light
emission compared with amorphous DA NPs and the main PL peak of the crystalline
DA NPs exhibits relative narrow and blue shift phenomena due to enhanced
interaction between DA molecular in the nano-size crystal structure.


title:
Orbit Error Correction on the High Energy Beam Transport Line at the
  KHIMA Accelerator System

abstract:
  For the purpose of treatment of various cancer and medical research, the
synchrotron based medical machine under the Korea Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator
(KHIMA) project have been conducted and is going to treat the patient at the
beginning of 2018. The KHIMA synchrotron is designed to accelerate and extract
the carbon ion (proton) beam with various energy range, 110 up to 430 MeV/u (60
up to 230 MeV). A lattice design and beam optics studies for the High Energy
Beam Transport (HEBT) line at the KHIMA accelerator system have been carried
out with WinAgile and the MAD-X codes. Because the magnetic eld errors and the
mis-alignments introduce to the deviations from the design parameters, these
error sources should be treated explicitly and the sensitivity of the machine's
lattice to di erent individual error sources is considered. Various types of
errors which are static and dynamic one have been taken into account and have
been consequentially corrected with a dedicated correction algorithm by using
the MAD-X program. As a result, the tolerances for the diverse error
contributions have been speci ed for the dedicated lattice components in the
whole HEBT lines.


title:
Landau quantization, Aharonov-Bohm effect and two-dimensional
  pseudoharmonic quantum dot around a screw dislocation

abstract:
  In this paper, we investigate the influence of a screw dislocation on the
energy levels and the wavefunctions of an electron confined in a
two-dimensional pseudoharmonic quantum dot under the influence of an external
magnetic field inside a dot and Aharonov-Bohm field inside a pseudodot. The
exact solutions for energy eigenvalues and wavefunctions are computed as
functions of applied uniform magnetic field strength, Aharonov-Bohm flux,
magnetic quantum number and the parameter characterizing the screw dislocation,
the Burgers vector. We investigate the modifications due to the screw
dislocation on the light interband absorption coefficient and absorption
threshold frequency. Two scenarios are possible, depending on if singular
effects either manifest or not. We found that as the Burgers vector increases,
the curves of frequency are pushed up towards of the growth of it. One
interesting aspect which we have observed is that the Aharonov-Bohm flux can be
tuned in order to cancel the screw effect of the model.


title: Device-independent tests of quantum channels

abstract:
  We develop a device-independent framework for testing quantum channels. That
is, we falsify a hypothesis about a quantum channel based only on an observed
set of input-output correlations. Formally, the problem consists of
characterizing the set of input-output correlations compatible with any
arbitrary given quantum channel. For binary (i.e., two input symbols, two
output symbols) correlations, we show that extremal correlations are always
achieved by orthogonal encodings and measurements, irrespective of whether or
not the channel preserves commutativity. We further provide a full, closed-form
characterization of the sets of binary correlations in the case of: i) any
dihedrally-covariant qubit channel (such as any Pauli and amplitude-damping
channels), and ii) any universally-covariant commutativity-preserving channel
in an arbitrary dimension (such as any erasure, depolarizing, universal
cloning, and universal transposition channels).


title:
Boundedness and persistence of delay differential equations with mixed
  nonlinearity

abstract:
  For a nonlinear equation with several variable delays $$
\dot{x}(t)=\sum_{k=1}^m f_k(t, x(h_1(t)),\dots,x(h_l(t)))-g(t,x(t)), $$ where
the functions $f_k$ increase in some variables and decrease in the others, we
obtain conditions when a positive solution exists on $[0, \infty)$, as well as
explore boundedness and persistence of solutions. Finally, we present
sufficient conditions when a solution is unbounded. Examples include the
Mackey-Glass equation with non-monotone feedback and two variable delays; its
solutions can be neither persistent nor bounded, unlike the well studied case
when these two delays coincide.


title: Identifying statistically significant patterns in gene expression data

abstract:
  Motivation: Clustering techniques are routinely applied to identify patterns
of co-expression in gene expression data. Co-regulation, and involvement of
genes in similar cellular function, is subsequently inferred from the clusters
which are obtained. Increasingly sophisticated algorithms have been applied to
microarray data, however, less attention has been given to the statistical
significance of the results of clustering studies. We present a technique for
the analysis of commonly used hierarchical linkage-based clustering called
Significance Analysis of Linkage Trees (SALT).
  Results: The statistical significance of pairwise similarity levels between
gene expression profiles, a measure of co-expression, is established using a
surrogate data analysis method. We find that a modified version of the standard
linkage technique, complete-linkage, must be used to generate hierarchical
linkage trees with the appropriate properties. The approach is illustrated
using synthetic data generated from a novel model of gene expression profiles
and is then applied to previously analysed microarray data on the
transcriptional response of human fibroblasts to serum stimulation.


title:
Iterative oscillation tests for difference equations with several
  non-monotone arguments

abstract:
  We consider difference equations with several non-monotone deviating
arguments and nonnegative coefficients. The deviations (delays and advances)
are, generally, unbounded. Sufficient oscillation conditions are obtained in an
explicit iterative form. Additional results in terms of $\liminf $ are obtained
for bounded deviations. Examples illustrating the oscillation tests are
presented.


title: Endomorphism fields of abelian varieties

abstract:
  We give a sharp divisibility bound, in terms of g, for the degree of the
field extension required to realize the endomorphisms of an abelian variety of
dimension g over an arbitrary number field; this refines a result of
Silverberg. This follows from a stronger result giving the same bound for the
order of the component group of the Sato-Tate group of the abelian variety,
which had been proved for abelian surfaces by Fite-Kedlaya-Rotger-Sutherland.
The proof uses Minkowski's reduction method, but with some care required in the
extremal cases when p equals 2 or a Fermat prime.


title: Particle scattering by harmonically trapped Bose and Fermi gases

abstract:
  We have analytically explored the quantum phenomenon of particle scattering
by harmonically trapped Bose and Fermi gases with the short ranged (Fermi-Huang
$\delta^3_p$ [1]) interactions among the incident particle and the scatterers.
We have predicted differential scattering cross-sections and their temperature
dependence in this regard. Coherent scattering even by a single boson or
fermion in the finite geometry gives rise to new tool of determining energy
eigenstate of the scatterer. Our predictions on the differential scattering
cross-sections, can be tested within the present day experimental setups,
specially, for (i) 3-D harmonically trapped interacting Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC), (ii) BECs in a double well, and (iii) BECs in an optical
lattice.


title:
Axisymmetric Stationary Spacetimes of Constant Scalar Curvature in Four
  Dimensions

abstract:
  In this paper we construct a special class of four dimensional axissymmetric
stationary spacetimes whose Ricci scalar is constant in the Boyer-Lindquist
coordinates. The first step is to construct Einstein metric by solving a
modified Ernst equation for nonzero cosmological constant. Then, we modify the
previous result by adding two additional functions to the metric to obtain a
more general metric of constant scalar curvature which are not Einstein.


title:
On stability of cooperative and hereditary systems with a distributed
  delay

abstract:
  We consider a system $\displaystyle \frac{dx}{dt}=r_1(t) G_1(x) \left[
\int_{h_1(t)}^t f_1(y(s))~d_s R_1 (t,s) - x(t) \right], \frac{dy}{dt}=r_2(t)
G_2(y) \left[ \int_{h_2(t)}^t f_2(x(s))~d_s R_2 (t,s) - y(t)\right]$ with
increasing functions $f_1$ and $f_2$, which has at most one positive
equilibrium. Here the values of the functions $r_i,G_i,f_i$ are positive for
positive arguments, the delays in the cooperative term can be distributed and
unbounded, both systems with concentrated delays and integro-differential
systems are a particular case of the considered system. Analyzing the relation
of the functions $f_1$ and $f_2$, we obtain several possible scenarios of the
global behaviour. They include the cases when all nontrivial positive solutions
tend to the same attractor which can be the positive equilibrium, the origin or
infinity. Another possibility is the dependency of asymptotics on the initial
conditions: either solutions with large enough initial values tend to the
equilibrium, while others tend to zero, or solutions with small enough initial
values tend to the equilibrium, while others infinitely grow. In some sense
solutions of the equation are intrinsically non-oscillatory: if both initial
functions are less/greater than the equilibrium value, so is the solution for
any positive time value. The paper continues the study of equations with
monotone production functions initiated in [Nonlinearity, 2013, 2833-2849].


title:
Face valuing: Training user interfaces with facial expressions and
  reinforcement learning

abstract:
  An important application of interactive machine learning is extending or
amplifying the cognitive and physical capabilities of a human. To accomplish
this, machines need to learn about their human users' intentions and adapt to
their preferences. In most current research, a user has conveyed preferences to
a machine using explicit corrective or instructive feedback; explicit feedback
imposes a cognitive load on the user and is expensive in terms of human effort.
The primary objective of the current work is to demonstrate that a learning
agent can reduce the amount of explicit feedback required for adapting to the
user's preferences pertaining to a task by learning to perceive a value of its
behavior from the human user, particularly from the user's facial
expressions---we call this face valuing. We empirically evaluate face valuing
on a grip selection task. Our preliminary results suggest that an agent can
quickly adapt to a user's changing preferences with minimal explicit feedback
by learning a value function that maps facial features extracted from a camera
image to expected future reward. We believe that an agent learning to perceive
a value from the body language of its human user is complementary to existing
interactive machine learning approaches and will help in creating successful
human-machine interactive applications.


title:
Stability conditions for scalar delay differential equations with a
  nondelay term

abstract:
  The problem considered in the paper is exponential stability of linear
equations and global attractivity of nonlinear non-autonomous equations which
include a non-delay term and one or more delayed terms. First, we demonstrate
that introducing a non-delay term with a non-negative coefficient can destroy
stability of the delay equation. Next, sufficient exponential stability
conditions for linear equations with concentrated or distributed delays and
global attractivity conditions for nonlinear equations are obtained. The
nonlinear results are applied tothe Mackey-Glass model of respiratory dynamics.


title: On Uplink User Capacity for Massive MIMO Cellular Networks

abstract:
  Under the conditions where performance in a massive MIMO network is limited
by pilot contamination, the reverse link signal-to-interference ratio (SIR)
exhibits different distributions when using different pilot allocation schemes.
By utilising different sets of orthogonal pilot sequences, as opposed to reused
sequences amongst adjacent cells, the resulting SIR distribution is more
favourable with respect to maximising the number of users on the network while
maintaining a given quality of service (QoS) for all users. This paper provides
a simple expression for uplink user capacity on such networks and presents
uplink user capacity figures for both pilot allocation schemes for a selection
of quality of service targets.


title: Colour Octet Extension of 2HDM

abstract:
  In this talk we consider some aspects of the Manohar-Wise extension of the SM
with a colour-octet electroweak-doublet scalar applied to 2HDM. We present
theoretical constraints on the parameters of this extension to both the SM and
the 2HDM and discuss related phenomenology at LHC.


title:
Machine Learning Techniques and Applications For Ground-based Image
  Analysis

abstract:
  Ground-based whole sky cameras have opened up new opportunities for
monitoring the earth's atmosphere. These cameras are an important complement to
satellite images by providing geoscientists with cheaper, faster, and more
localized data. The images captured by whole sky imagers can have high spatial
and temporal resolution, which is an important pre-requisite for applications
such as solar energy modeling, cloud attenuation analysis, local weather
prediction, etc.
  Extracting valuable information from the huge amount of image data by
detecting and analyzing the various entities in these images is challenging.
However, powerful machine learning techniques have become available to aid with
the image analysis. This article provides a detailed walk-through of recent
developments in these techniques and their applications in ground-based
imaging. We aim to bridge the gap between computer vision and remote sensing
with the help of illustrative examples. We demonstrate the advantages of using
machine learning techniques in ground-based image analysis via three primary
applications -- segmentation, classification, and denoising.


title:
Ground state and the spin precession of the Dirac electron in
  counterpropagating plane electromagnetic waves

abstract:
  The fundamental solution of the Dirac equation for an electron in an
electromagnetic field with harmonic dependence on space-time coordinates is
obtained. The field is composed of three standing plane harmonic waves with
mutually orthogonal phase planes and the same frequency. Each standing wave
consists of two eigenwaves with different complex amplitudes and opposite
directions of propagation. The fundamental solution is obtained in the form of
the projection operator defining the subspace of solutions to the Dirac
equation. It is illustrated by the analysis of the ground state and the spin
precession of the Dirac electron in the field of two counterpropagating plane
waves with left and right circular polarizations. Interrelations between the
fundamental solution and approximate partial solutions is discussed and a
criterion for evaluating accuracy of approximate solutions is suggested.


title: The Climate of Early Mars

abstract:
  The nature of the early Martian climate is one of the major unanswered
questions of planetary science. Key challenges remain, but a new wave of
orbital and in situ observations and improvements in climate modeling have led
to significant advances over the last decade. Multiple lines of geologic
evidence now point to an episodically warm surface during the late Noachian and
early Hesperian periods 3-4 Ga. The low solar flux received by Mars in its
first billion years and inefficiency of plausible greenhouse gases such as CO2
means that the steady-state early Martian climate was likely cold. A denser CO2
atmosphere would have caused adiabatic cooling of the surface and hence
migration of water ice to the higher altitude equatorial and southern regions
of the planet. Transient warming caused melting of snow and ice deposits and a
temporarily active hydrological cycle, leading to erosion of the valley
networks and other fluvial features. Precise details of the warming mechanisms
remain unclear, but impacts, volcanism and orbital forcing all likely played an
important role. The lack of evidence for glaciation across much of Mars'
ancient terrain suggests the late Noachian surface water inventory was not
sufficient to sustain a northern ocean. While mainly inhospitable on the
surface, early Mars may nonetheless have presented significant opportunities
for the development of microbial life.


title:
Measurement of the Top Quark Mass Using the Matrix Element Technique in
  Dilepton Final States

abstract:
  We present a measurement of the top quark mass in ppbar collisions at a
center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data
were collected by the D0 experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity
of 9.7 fb-1. The matrix element technique is applied to ttbar events in the
final state containing leptons (electrons or muons) with high transverse
momenta and at least two jets. The calibration of the jet energy scale
determined in the lepton + jets final state of ttbar decays is applied to jet
energies. This correction provides a substantial reduction in systematic
uncertainties. We obtain a top quark mass of mt = 173.93 +- 1.84 GeV.


title: Buchsbaumness of the second powers of edge ideals

abstract:
  We graph-theoretically characterize the class of graphs $G$ such that
$I(G)^2$ are Buchsbaum.


title: Audio Content based Geotagging in Multimedia

abstract:
  In this paper we propose methods to extract geographically relevant
information in a multimedia recording using its audio. Our method primarily is
based on the fact that urban acoustic environment consists of a variety of
sounds. Hence, location information can be inferred from the composition of
sound events/classes present in the audio. More specifically, we adopt matrix
factorization techniques to obtain semantic content of recording in terms of
different sound classes. These semantic information are then combined to
identify the location of recording.


title:
On SUSY Restoration in Single-Superfield Inflationary Models of
  Supergravity

abstract:
  We study the conditions of restoring supersymmetry (SUSY) after inflation in
the supergravity-based cosmological models with a single chiral superfield and
a quartic stabilization term in the K\"ahler potential. Some new, explicit, and
viable inflationary models satisfying those conditions are found. The
inflaton's scalar superpartner is dynamically stabilized during and after
inflation. We also demonstrate a possibility of having small and adjustable
SUSY breaking with a tiny cosmological constant.


title:
Enhancement of interfacial thermal conductance of SiC by overlapped
  carbon nanotubes and intertube atoms

abstract:
  We proposed a new way, adding intertube atoms, to enhance interfacial thermal
conductance (ITC) between SiC-carbon nanotube (CNT) array structure.
Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method was used to study the ITC. The
results show that the intertube atoms can significantly enhance the ITC. The
dependence of ITC on both the temperature and the number of intertube atoms are
shown. The mechanism is analyzed by calculating probability distributions of
atomic forces and vibrational density of states. Our study may provide some
guidance on enhancing the ITC of CNT-based composites.


title: Low-shot Visual Recognition by Shrinking and Hallucinating Features

abstract:
  Low-shot visual learning---the ability to recognize novel object categories
from very few examples---is a hallmark of human visual intelligence. Existing
machine learning approaches fail to generalize in the same way. To make
progress on this foundational problem, we present a low-shot learning benchmark
on complex images that mimics challenges faced by recognition systems in the
wild. We then propose a) representation regularization techniques, and b)
techniques to hallucinate additional training examples for data-starved
classes. Together, our methods improve the effectiveness of convolutional
networks in low-shot learning, improving the one-shot accuracy on novel classes
by 2.3x on the challenging ImageNet dataset.


title: Inducing Domain-Specific Sentiment Lexicons from Unlabeled Corpora

abstract:
  A word's sentiment depends on the domain in which it is used. Computational
social science research thus requires sentiment lexicons that are specific to
the domains being studied. We combine domain-specific word embeddings with a
label propagation framework to induce accurate domain-specific sentiment
lexicons using small sets of seed words, achieving state-of-the-art performance
competitive with approaches that rely on hand-curated resources. Using our
framework we perform two large-scale empirical studies to quantify the extent
to which sentiment varies across time and between communities. We induce and
release historical sentiment lexicons for 150 years of English and
community-specific sentiment lexicons for 250 online communities from the
social media forum Reddit. The historical lexicons show that more than 5% of
sentiment-bearing (non-neutral) English words completely switched polarity
during the last 150 years, and the community-specific lexicons highlight how
sentiment varies drastically between different communities.


title:
Cultural Shift or Linguistic Drift? Comparing Two Computational Measures
  of Semantic Change

abstract:
  Words shift in meaning for many reasons, including cultural factors like new
technologies and regular linguistic processes like subjectification.
Understanding the evolution of language and culture requires disentangling
these underlying causes. Here we show how two different distributional measures
can be used to detect two different types of semantic change. The first
measure, which has been used in many previous works, analyzes global shifts in
a word's distributional semantics, it is sensitive to changes due to regular
processes of linguistic drift, such as the semantic generalization of promise
("I promise." -> "It promised to be exciting."). The second measure, which we
develop here, focuses on local changes to a word's nearest semantic neighbors;
it is more sensitive to cultural shifts, such as the change in the meaning of
cell ("prison cell" -> "cell phone"). Comparing measurements made by these two
methods allows researchers to determine whether changes are more cultural or
linguistic in nature, a distinction that is essential for work in the digital
humanities and historical linguistics.


title: Suspending superconducting qubits by silicon micromachining

abstract:
  We present a method for relieving aluminum 3D transmon qubits from a silicon
substrate using micromachining. Our technique is a high yield, one-step deep
reactive ion etch that requires no additional fabrication processes, and
results in the suspension of the junction area and edges of the aluminum film.
The drastic change in the device geometry affects both the dielectric and flux
noise environment experienced by the qubit. In particular, the participation
ratios of various dielectric interfaces are significantly modified, and
suspended qubits exhibited longer $T_1$'s than non-suspended ones. We also find
that suspension increases the flux noise experienced by tunable SQUID-based
qubits.


title:
Detection of a hot molecular core in the Large Magellanic Cloud with
  ALMA

abstract:
  We report the first detection of a hot molecular core outside our Galaxy
based on radio observations with ALMA toward a high-mass young stellar object
(YSO) in a nearby low metallicity galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
Molecular emission lines of CO, C17O, HCO+, H13CO+, H2CO, NO, SiO, H2CS, 33SO,
32SO2, 34SO2, and 33SO2 are detected from a compact region (0.1 pc) associated
with a high-mass YSO, ST11. The temperature of molecular gas is estimated to be
higher than 100 K based on rotation diagram analysis of SO2 and 34SO2 lines.
The compact source size, warm gas temperature, high density, and rich molecular
lines around a high-mass protostar suggest that ST11 is associated with a hot
molecular core. We find that the molecular abundances of the LMC hot core are
significantly different from those of Galactic hot cores. The abundances of
CH3OH, H2CO, and HNCO are remarkably lower compared with Galactic hot cores by
at least 1-3 orders of magnitude. We suggest that these abundances are
characterized by the deficiency of molecules whose formation requires the
hydrogenation of CO on grain surfaces. In contrast, NO shows a high abundance
in ST11 despite the notably low abundance of nitrogen in the LMC. A multitude
of SO2 and its isotopologue line detections in ST11 imply that SO2 can be a key
molecular tracer of hot core chemistry in metal-poor environments. Furthermore,
we find molecular outflows around the hot core, which is the second detection
of an extragalactic protostellar outflow. In this paper, we discuss physical
and chemical characteristics of a hot molecular core in the low metallicity
environment.


abstract:
  We consider an N=2 supersymmetric odd-order Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator with
distinct frequencies of oscillation. The technique previously developed in
[Acta Phys. Polon. B 36 (2005) 2115; Nucl. Phys. B 902 (2016) 95] is used to
construct a family of Hamiltonian structures for this system.


title: Arbitrage-Free Combinatorial Market Making via Integer Programming

abstract:
  We present a new combinatorial market maker that operates arbitrage-free
combinatorial prediction markets specified by integer programs. Although the
problem of arbitrage-free pricing, while maintaining a bound on the subsidy
provided by the market maker, is #P-hard in the worst case, we posit that the
typical case might be amenable to modern integer programming (IP) solvers. At
the crux of our method is the Frank-Wolfe (conditional gradient) algorithm
which is used to implement a Bregman projection aligned with the market maker's
cost function, using an IP solver as an oracle. We demonstrate the tractability
and improved accuracy of our approach on real-world prediction market data from
combinatorial bets placed on the 2010 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball
Tournament, where the outcome space is of size 2^63. To our knowledge, this is
the first implementation and empirical evaluation of an arbitrage-free
combinatorial prediction market on this scale.


title: On Spinfoams Near a Classical Curvature Singularity

abstract:
  We apply the technique of spinfoam to study the space-time which,
classically, contains a curvature singularity. We derive from the full
covariant Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) that the region near curvature singularity
has to be of strong quantum gravity effect. We show that the spinfoam
configuration describing the near-singularity region has to be of small spins
$j$, in order that its contribution to the full spinfoam amplitude is
nontrivial. The spinfoams in low and high curvature regions of the space-time
may be viewed as in two different {phases} of covariant LQG. There should be a
phase transition as the space-time described by spinfoam becomes more and more
curved. A candidate of order parameter is proposed for understanding the phase
transition. Moreover, we also analyze the spin-spin correlation function of
spinfoam, and show the correlation is of long-range in the low curvature phase.
This work is a first step toward understanding the physics of black hole and
early universe from the full covariant LQG theory.


title: Variational Information Maximization for Feature Selection

abstract:
  Feature selection is one of the most fundamental problems in machine
learning. An extensive body of work on information-theoretic feature selection
exists which is based on maximizing mutual information between subsets of
features and class labels. Practical methods are forced to rely on
approximations due to the difficulty of estimating mutual information. We
demonstrate that approximations made by existing methods are based on
unrealistic assumptions. We formulate a more flexible and general class of
assumptions based on variational distributions and use them to tractably
generate lower bounds for mutual information. These bounds define a novel
information-theoretic framework for feature selection, which we prove to be
optimal under tree graphical models with proper choice of variational
distributions. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method strongly
outperforms existing information-theoretic feature selection approaches.


title:
Spatial modeling and analysis of cellular networks using the Ginibre
  point process: A tutorial

abstract:
  Spatial stochastic models have been much used for performance analysis of
wireless communication networks. This is due to the fact that the performance
of wireless networks depends on the spatial configuration of wireless nodes and
the irregularity of node locations in a real wireless network can be captured
by a spatial point process. Most works on such spatial stochastic models of
wireless networks have adopted homogeneous Poisson point processes as the
models of wireless node locations. While this adoption makes the models
analytically tractable, it assumes that the wireless nodes are located
independently of each other and their spatial correlation is ignored. Recently,
the authors have proposed to adopt the Ginibre point process---one of the
determinantal point processes---as the deployment models of base stations (BSs)
in cellular networks. The determinantal point processes constitute a class of
repulsive point processes and have been attracting attention due to their
mathematically interesting properties and efficient simulation methods. In this
tutorial, we provide a brief guide to the Ginibre point process and its
variant, $\alpha$-Ginibre point process, as the models of BS deployments in
cellular networks and show some existing results on the performance analysis of
cellular network models with $\alpha$-Ginibre deployed BSs. The authors hope
the readers to use such point processes as a tool for analyzing various
problems arising in future cellular networks.


title: Fingering instability of a suspension film spreading on a spinning disk

abstract:
  The spreading of a thin film of suspension on a spinning disk and the
accompanying contact line instability is studied through flow visualization
experiments. The critical radius for the onset of instability shows an increase
with increase in the particle fraction ($\phi_{p}$) before decreasing slightly
at the highest value of $\phi_{p}$ studied, while the instability wavelength
($\lambda$) exhibits a non-monotonic dependence. The value of $\lambda$ is
close to that for a partially wetting liquid at lower $\phi_{p}$, it decreases
with increasing $\phi_{p}$ to a minimum before increasing again at largest
$\phi_{p}$. The non-monotonic trends observed for $\lambda$ are discussed in
light of the linear stability analysis of thin film equations derived for
suspensions by Cook {\it et al.} [Linear stability of particle-laden thin
films, Eur. Phys. J.: Spec. Top. {\bf 166}, 77 (2009)] and Balmforth {\it et
al.} [Surface tension driven fingering of a viscoplastic film, J. Non Newtonian
Fluid Mech. {\bf 142}, 143 (2007)].


title: Imaging the elusive H-poor gas in the high ADF planetary nebula NGC 6778

abstract:
  We present the first direct image of the high-metallicity gas component in a
planetary nebula (NGC 6778), taken with the OSIRIS Blue Tunable Filter centered
on the O II 4649+50 angstroms optical recombination lines (ORLs) at the 10.4m
Gran Telescopio Canarias. We show that the emission of these faint O II ORLs is
concentrated in the central parts of the planetary nebula and is not spatially
coincident either with emission coming from the bright [O III] 5007 angstroms
collisionally excited line (CEL) or the bright H alpha recombination line. From
monochromatic emission line maps taken with VIMOS at the 8.2m Very Large
Telescope, we find that the spatial distribution of the emission from the
auroral [O III] 4363 line resembles that of the O II ORLs but differs from
nebular [O III] 5007 CEL distribution, implying a temperature gradient inside
the planetary nebula. The centrally peaked distribution of the O II emission
and the differences with the [O III] and H I emission profiles are consistent
with the presence of an H-poor gas whose origin may be linked to the binarity
of the central star. However, determination of the spatial distribution of the
ORLs and CELs in other PNe, and a comparison of their dynamics is needed to
further constrain the geometry and ejection mechanism of the metal-rich
(H-poor) component and hence, understand the origin of the abundance
discrepancy problem in PNe.


title: Light fidelity (LI-FI) based indoor communication system

abstract:
  Indoor wireless communication is an essential part of next generation
wireless communication system.For an indoor communication number of users and
their device are increasing very rapidly so as a result capacity of frequency
spectrum to accommodate further users in future is limited and also it would be
difficult for service providers to provide more user reliable and high speed
communication so this short come can be solve in future by using Li-Fi based
indoor communication system. Li-Fi which is an emerging branch of optical
wireless communication can be useful in future as a replacement and backup of
Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi)for indoor communication because it can provide high
data rate of transmission along with high capacity to utilize more users as its
spectrum bandwidth is much broader than the radio spectrum. In this paper we
will look at the different aspects of the Li-Fi based indoor communication
system,summarizes some of the research conducted so far and we will also
proposed a Li-Fi based communication model keeping in mind coverage area for
multiple user and evaluate its performance under different scenarios .


title:
$W^{s,p}$-approximation properties of elliptic projectors on polynomial
  spaces, with application to the error analysis of a Hybrid High-Order
  discretisation of Leray-Lions problems

abstract:
  In this work we prove optimal $W^{s,p}$-approximation estimates (with
$p\in[1,+\infty]$) for elliptic projectors on local polynomial spaces. The
proof hinges on the classical Dupont--Scott approximation theory together with
two novel abstract lemmas: An approximation result for bounded projectors, and
an $L^p$-boundedness result for $L^2$-orthogonal projectors on polynomial
subspaces. The $W^{s,p}$-approximation results have general applicability to
(standard or polytopal) numerical methods based on local polynomial spaces. As
an illustration, we use these $W^{s,p}$-estimates to derive novel error
estimates for a Hybrid High-Order discretization of Leray--Lions elliptic
problems whose weak formulation is classically set in $W^{1,p}(\Omega)$ for
some $p\in(1,+\infty)$. This kind of problems appears, e.g., in the modelling
of glacier motion, of incompressible turbulent flows, and in airfoil design.
Denoting by $h$ the meshsize, we prove that the approximation error measured in
a $W^{1,p}$-like discrete norm scales as $h^{\frac{k+1}{p-1}}$ when $p\ge 2$
and as $h^{(k+1)(p-1)}$ when $p<2$.


title:
On a property of Fermi curves of 2-dimensional periodic Schr\"odinger
  operators

abstract:
  We consider a compact Riemann surface with a holomorphic involution, two
marked fixed points of the involution and a divisor obeying an equation up to
linear equivalence of divisors involving all this data. Examples of such data
are Fermi curves of 2-dimensional periodic Schr\"odinger operators. We show
that the equation has a solution if and only if the two marked points are the
only fixed points of the involution.


title:
Crossover scaling of apparent first-order wetting in two dimensional
  systems with short-ranged forces

abstract:
  Recent analyses of wetting in the semi-infinite two dimensional Ising model,
extended to include both a surface coupling enhancement and a surface field,
have shown that the wetting transition may be effectively first-order and that
surprisingly the surface susceptibility develops a divergence described by an
anomalous exponent with value $\gamma_{11}^{\rm eff}=\frac{3}{2}$. We reproduce
these results using an interfacial Hamiltonian model making connection with
previous studies of two dimensional wetting and show that they follow from the
simple crossover scaling of the singular contribution to the surface
free-energy which describes the change from apparent first-order to continuous
(critical) wetting due to interfacial tunnelling. The crossover scaling
functions are calculated explicitly within both the strong-fluctuation and
intermediate-fluctuation regimes and determine uniquely and more generally the
value of $\gamma_{11}^{\rm eff}$ which is non-universal for the latter regime.
The location and the rounding of a line of pseudo pre-wetting transitions
occurring above the wetting temperature and off bulk coexistence, together with
the crossover scaling of the parallel correlation length, is also discussed in
detail.


title:
Cusps in the center of galaxies: a real conflict with observations or a
  numerical artefact of cosmological simulations?

abstract:
  Galaxy observations and N-body cosmological simulations produce conflicting
dark matter halo density profiles for galaxy central regions. While simulations
suggest a cuspy and universal density profile (UDP) of this region, the
majority of observations favor variable profiles with a core in the center. In
this paper, we investigate the convergency of standard N-body simulations,
especially in the cusp region, following the approach proposed by
\protect{\citep{13}}. We simulate the well known Hernquist model using the SPH
code Gadget-3 and consider the full array of dynamical parameters of the
particles. We find that, although the cuspy profile is stable, all integrals of
motion characterizing individual particles suffer strong unphysical variations
along the whole halo, revealing an effective interaction between the test
bodies. This result casts doubts on the reliability of the velocity
distribution function obtained in the simulations. Moreover, we find unphysical
Fokker-Planck streams of particles in the cusp region. The same streams should
appear in cosmological N-body simulations, being strong enough to change the
shape of the cusp or even to create it. Our analysis, based on the Hernquist
model and the standard SPH code, strongly suggests that the UDPs generally
found by the cosmological N-body simulations may be a consequence of numerical
effects. A much better understanding of the N-body simulation convergency is
necessary before a 'core-cusp problem' can properly be used to question the
validity of the CDM model.

categories: astro-ph.GA astro-ph.CO astro-ph.HE hep-th


title:
Recurrence Relations of the Multi-Indexed Orthogonal Polynomials IV :
  closure relations and creation/annihilation operators

abstract:
  We consider the exactly solvable quantum mechanical systems whose
eigenfunctions are described by the multi-indexed orthogonal polynomials of
Laguerre, Jacobi, Wilson and Askey-Wilson types. Corresponding to the
recurrence relations with constant coefficients for the $M$-indexed orthogonal
polynomials, it is expected that the systems satisfy the generalized closure
relations. In fact we can verify this statement for small $M$ examples. The
generalized closure relation gives the exact Heisenberg operator solution of a
certain operator, from which the creation and annihilation operators of the
system are obtained.


title: Spatial neutral dynamics

abstract:
  Neutral models, in which individual agents with equal fitness undergo a
birth-death-mutation process, are very popular in population genetics and
community ecology. Usually these models are applied to populations and
communities with spatial structure, but the analytic results presented so far
are limited to well-mixed or mainland-island scenarios. Here we present a new
technique, based on interface dynamics analysis, and apply it to the neutral
dynamics in one, two and three spatial dimensions. New results are derived for
the correlation length and for the main characteristics of the community, like
total biodiversity and the species abundance distribution above the correlation
length. Our results are supported by extensive numerical simulations, and
provide qualitative and quantitative insights that allow for a rigorous
comparison between model predictions and empirical data.


title: Sketching for Large-Scale Learning of Mixture Models

abstract:
  Learning parameters from voluminous data can be prohibitive in terms of
memory and computational requirements. We propose a "compressive learning"
framework where we estimate model parameters from a sketch of the training
data. This sketch is a collection of generalized moments of the underlying
probability distribution of the data. It can be computed in a single pass on
the training set, and is easily computable on streams or distributed datasets.
The proposed framework shares similarities with compressive sensing, which aims
at drastically reducing the dimension of high-dimensional signals while
preserving the ability to reconstruct them. To perform the estimation task, we
derive an iterative algorithm analogous to sparse reconstruction algorithms in
the context of linear inverse problems. We exemplify our framework with the
compressive estimation of a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), providing heuristics
on the choice of the sketching procedure and theoretical guarantees of
reconstruction. We experimentally show on synthetic data that the proposed
algorithm yields results comparable to the classical Expectation-Maximization
(EM) technique while requiring significantly less memory and fewer computations
when the number of database elements is large. We further demonstrate the
potential of the approach on real large-scale data (over 10 8 training samples)
for the task of model-based speaker verification. Finally, we draw some
connections between the proposed framework and approximate Hilbert space
embedding of probability distributions using random features. We show that the
proposed sketching operator can be seen as an innovative method to design
translation-invariant kernels adapted to the analysis of GMMs. We also use this
theoretical framework to derive information preservation guarantees, in the
spirit of infinite-dimensional compressive sensing.


title:
Integer Quantum Magnon Hall Plateau-Plateau Transition in a Spin Ice
  Model

abstract:
  Low-energy magnon bands in a two-dimensional spin ice model become integer
quantum magnon Hall bands. By calculating the localization length and the
two-terminal conductance of magnon transport, we show that the magnon bands
with disorders undergo a quantum phase transition from an integer quantum
magnon Hall regime to a conventional magnon localized regime. Finite size
scaling analysis as well as a critical conductance distribution shows that the
quantum critical point belongs to the same universality class as that in the
quantum Hall transition. We characterize thermal magnon Hall conductivity in
disordered quantum magnon Hall system in terms of robust chiral edge magnon
transport.


title:
Decoding dynamic brain patterns from evoked responses: A tutorial on
  multivariate pattern analysis applied to time-series neuroimaging data

abstract:
  Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) or brain decoding methods have become
standard practice in analysing fMRI data. Although decoding methods have been
extensively applied in Brain Computing Interfaces (BCI), these methods have
only recently been applied to time-series neuroimaging data such as MEG and EEG
to address experimental questions in Cognitive Neuroscience. In a
tutorial-style review, we describe a broad set of options to inform future
time-series decoding studies from a Cognitive Neuroscience perspective. Using
example MEG data, we illustrate the effects that different options in the
decoding analysis pipeline can have on experimental results where the aim is to
'decode' different perceptual stimuli or cognitive states over time from
dynamic brain activation patterns. We show that decisions made at both
preprocessing (e.g., dimensionality reduction, subsampling, trial averaging)
and decoding (e.g., classifier selection, cross-validation design) stages of
the analysis can significantly affect the results. In addition to standard
decoding, we describe extensions to MVPA for time-varying neuroimaging data
including representational similarity analysis, temporal generalisation, and
the interpretation of classifier weight maps. Finally, we outline important
caveats in the design and interpretation of time-series decoding experiments.


title: Pressure Driven Phase Transition in 1T-TiSe$_2$ , a MOIPT+DMFT Study

abstract:
  The nature of unconventional superconductivity associated with charge density
wave order in transition metal dichalcogenides is currently a debated issue.
Starting from a normal state elec- tronic structure followed by a charge
ordered state how superconductivity in 1T-TiSe 2 arises with applied pressure
is still under research. A preformed excitonic liquid driven ordered state
mediated superconductivity is found in broad class of TMD on the border of CDW.
Using dynamical mean field theory with input from noninteracting band structure
calculation, I show a superconducting phase appears near about 2 GPa pressure
at a temperature of 2 K and this region persists upto 4 GPa Pressure.


title:
Can the structure of amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide be described in
  terms of a few polyhedral motifs?

abstract:
  The coordination polyhedra around the cations are the building blocks of
ionic solids. In context of amorphous InGaZn oxide (a-IGZO), even though the
coordination polyhedra are irregularly arranged, it will be beneficial to
identify them. In this work, we address the questions, (a) is it possible to
classify all the polyhedra that occur in a-IGZO into only a few distinct
groups? and (b) are these the same polyhedral motifs as those observed in the
crystalline indium gallium zinc oxide (c-IGZO) or other related crystalline
oxides of indium, gallium and zinc? Therefore, in this first principles based
study, a large number (ten) of equivalent samples of a-IGZO were prepared by ab
initio melt-and-quench molecular dynamics, so that several distinct samples of
the amorphous landscape are obtained. The combination of all these structures
thus obtained is a better representation of a real a-IGZO sample. For the ten
samples containing 360 cations, we propose a simpler and more accurate method
for determining the coordination number of each polyhedron, which was verified
by charge density plots. Based on a method of comparing bond angles between
metal and oxygen atoms, the identified polyhedra were matched to the polyhedral
motifs present in the related crystalline systems, such as, InGaZnO4, In2O3,
Ga2O3 and ZnO. We find, the a-IGZO primarily consists of the following
polyhedra: a tetrahedron from space group 199 and an octahedron from space
group 206 of In2O3; a tetrahedron from space group 12 and an octahedron from
space group 167 of Ga2O3; a tetrahedron from space group 186 of ZnO; zinc and
gallium trigonal bipyramids from c-IGZO; and one zinc 4-fold, one zinc 5-fold
and one indium 5-fold coordination polyhedra that occur only in the amorphous
phase. We are able to reduce the description of structure from 360 to 10 groups
of polyhedra. The benefits of this identification could be enormous.


title: Coherent population trapping in a Raman atom interferometer

abstract:
  We investigate the effect of coherent population trapping (CPT) in an atom
inter-ferometer gravimeter based on the use of stimulated Raman transitions. We
find that CPT leads to significant phase shifts, of order of a few mrad, which
may compromise the accuracy of inertial measurements. We show that this effect
is rejected by the k-reversal technique, which consists in averaging inertial
measurements performed with two opposite orientations of the Raman wavevector
k, provided that internal states at the input of the interferometer are kept
identical for both configurations.


title: The Farrell-Jones Conjecture for mapping class groups

abstract:
  We prove the Farrell-Jones Conjecture for mapping class groups. The proof
uses the Masur-Minsky theory of the large scale geometry of mapping class
groups and the geometry of the thick part of Teichmueller space. The proof is
presented in an axiomatic setup, extending the projection axioms of
Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara. More specifically, we prove that the action of the
mapping class group on the Thurston compactification of Teichmueller space is
finitely F-amenable for the family F consisting of virtual point stabilizers.


title: Inverse Mellin Transform of Holonomic Sequences

abstract:
  We describe a method to compute the inverse Mellin transform of holonomic
sequences, that is based on a method to compute the Mellin transform of
holonomic functions. Both methods are implemented in the computer algebra
package HarmonicSums.