title:
Reviving trinification models through an $\mathrm{E}_6$-extended
  supersymmetric GUT

abstract:
  We present a supersymmetric (SUSY) model based on trinification
$[\mathrm{SU}(3)]^3$ and family $\mathrm{SU}(3)_\mathrm{F}$ symmetries embedded
into a maximal subgroup of $\mathrm{E}_8$, where the sectors of light Higgs
bosons and leptons are unified into a single chiral supermultiplet. The common
origin of gauge trinification and of the family symmetry from $\mathrm{E}_8$
separates the model from other trinification-based GUTs, as it protects, in
particular, the Standard Model fermions from gaining mass until the electroweak
symmetry is broken. Furthermore, it allows us to break the trinification
symmetry via vacuum expectation values in $\mathrm{SU}(3)$-adjoint scalars down
to a left-right symmetric theory. Simultaneously, it ensures the unification of
the gauge and Yukawa couplings as well as proton stability. Although the
low-energy regime (e.g. mass hierarchies in the scalar sector determined by a
soft SUSY-breaking mechanism) is yet to be established, these features are one
key to revive the once very popular trinification-based GUTs.


title:
Anodic TiO2 nanotube layers: why does self-organized growth occur - A
  mini review

abstract:
  The present review gives an overview of the highlights of more than 10 years
of research on synthesis and applications of ordered oxide structures (nanotube
layers, hexagonal pore arrangements) that are formed by self-organizing
anodization of metals. In particular we address the questions after the
critical factors that lead to the spectacular self-ordering during the growth
of anodic oxides that finally yield morphologies such as highly ordered TiO2
nanotube arrays and similar structures. Why are tubes and pores formed - what
are the key parameters controlling these processes?


title:
Evidence for topological proximity effect in graphene coupled to
  topological insulator

abstract:
  The emergence of topological order in graphene is in great demand for the
realization of quantum spin Hall states. Recently, it is theoretically proposed
that the spin textures of surface states in topological insulator can be
directly transferred to graphene by means of proximity effect. Here we report
the observations of the topological proximity effect in the
graphene-topological insulator Bi2Se3 heterojunctions via magnetotransport
measurements. The coupling between the p_z orbitals of graphene and the p
orbitals of surface states on the Bi2Se3 bottom surface can be enhanced by
applying perpendicular negative magnetic field, resulting in a giant negative
magnetoresistance at the Dirac point up to about -91%. An obvious resistivity
dip in the transfer curve at the Dirac point is also observed in the hybrid
devices, which is consistent with the theoretical predictions of the distorted
Dirac bands with unique spin textures inherited from Bi2Se3 surface states.


title: Spoof Plasmon Hybridization

abstract:
  Plasmon hybridization between closely spaced nanoparticles yields new hybrid
modes not found in individual constituents, allowing for the engineering of
resonance properties and field enhancement capabilities of metallic
nanostructure. Experimental verifications of plasmon hybridization have been
thus far mostly limited to optical frequencies, as metals cannot support
surface plasmons at longer wavelengths. Here, we introduce the concept of
'spoof plasmon hybridization' in highly conductive metal structures and
investigate experimentally the interaction of localized surface plasmon
resonances (LSPR) in adjacent metal disks corrugated with subwavelength spiral
patterns. We show that the hybridization results in the splitting of spoof
plasmon modes into bonding and antibonding resonances analogous to molecular
orbital rule and plasmonic hybridization in optical spectrum. These hybrid
modes can be manipulated to produce enormous field enhancements (larger than
5000) by tuning the separation between disks or alternatively, the disk size,
which effectively changes the relative gap size. The impact of the radiation
loss is considered to find out the optimum disk size that maximizes field
enhancement capabilities. Our investigation not only extends the range of
applicability of the hybridization model, but also provides insightful guidance
to exporting the exciting applications associated with plasmon hybridization to
lower spectral range.


title:
Multi 3D Camera Mapping for Predictive and Reflexive Robot Manipulator
  Trajectory Estimation

abstract:
  With advancing technologies, robotic manipulators and visual environment
sensors are becoming cheaper and more widespread. However, robot control can be
still a limiting factor for better adaptation of these technologies. Robotic
manipulators are performing very well in structured workspaces, but do not
adapt well to unexpected changes, like people entering the workspace. We
present a method combining 3D Camera based workspace mapping, and a predictive
and reflexive robot manipulator trajectory estimation to allow more efficient
and safer operation in dynamic workspaces. In experiments on a real UR5 robot
our method has proven to provide shorter and smoother trajectories compared to
a reactive trajectory planner in the same conditions. Furthermore, the robot
has successfully avoided any contact by initialising the reflexive movement
even when an obstacle got unexpectedly close to the robot. The main goal of our
work is to make the operation more flexible in unstructured dynamic workspaces
and not just avoid obstacles, but also adapt when performing collaborative
tasks with humans in the near future.


title: Exploring Website Location as a Security Indicator

abstract:
  Authenticating websites is an ongoing problem for users. Recent proposals
have suggested strengthening current server authentication methods by
incorporating website location as a comprehensible additional trust factor. In
this work, we explore users' acceptance of location information and how it
affects decision-making for security and privacy. We conducted a series of
qualitative interviews to learn how location can be integrated into users'
decision-making for security, and we designed a security indicator to alert the
user to changes in website locations. We evaluated our tool in a 44-participant
user study and found that users were less likely to perform security-sensitive
tasks when alerted to location changes. Our results suggest that website
location can be used as an effective indicator for users' security assessments.


title: Coexistent physics of massive black holes in the phase transitions

abstract:
  The coexistent physics of de Rham-Gabada-dze-Tolley (dRGT) massive black
holes and holographic massive black holes is investigated in the extended phase
space where the cosmological constant is viewed as pressure. Van der Waals like
phase transitions are found for both of them. Coexistent curves of reduced
pressure and reduced temperature are found to be different from that of RN-AdS
black holes. Coexistent curves of reduced Gibbs free energy and reduced
pressure show that Gibbs free energy in the canonical ensemble decreases
monotonically with the increasing pressure. The concept number density is
introduced to study the coexistent physics. It is uncovered that with the
increasing pressure, the number densities of small black holes (SBHs) and large
black holes (LBHs) change monotonically in the contrary directions till finally
reaching the same value at the critical points of the phase transitions. In
other words, with the increasing pressure the number density differences
between SBHs and LBHs decrease monotonically before disappearance at the
critical points. Further more, HEPM thermodynamic scalar curvature differences
between SBHs and LBHs are found to decrease monotonically to zero when
approaching to the critical points, which is similar as a RN-AdS black hole. We
propose that both the number density difference and the HEPM scalar curvature
difference can be order parameters describing the SBH/LBH phase transition and
judging the upcoming of critical point where a second-order phase transition
takes place. These results provide us with new recognition of the massive
gravity. The thermodynamics in the extended phase space of AdS black holes is
enriched.


title: A mechanical model for phase-separation in debris flow

abstract:
  Understanding the physics of phase-separation between solid and fluid phases
as a mixture mass moves down slope is a long-standing challenge. Here, we
propose an extension of the two phase mass flow model (Pudasaini, 2012) by
including a new mechanism, called separation-flux, that leads to strong
phase-separation in avalanche and debris flows while balancing the enhanced
solid flux with the reduced fluid flux. The separation flux mechanism is
capable of describing the dynamically evolving phase-separation and levee
formation in a multi-phase, geometrically three-dimensional debris flow. These
are often observed phenomena in natural debris flows and industrial processes
that involve the transportation of particulate solid-fluid mixture material.
The novel separation-flux model includes several dominant physical and
mechanical aspects such as pressure gradients, volume fractions of solid and
fluid phases and their gradients, shear-rates, flow depth, material friction,
viscosity, material densities, topographic constraints, grain size, etc. Due to
the inherent separation mechanism, as the mass moves down slope, more and more
solid particles are transported to the front and the sides, resulting in
solid-rich and mechanically strong frontal surge head, and lateral levees
followed by a weaker tail largely consisting of viscous fluid. The primary
frontal solid-rich surge head followed by secondary fluid-rich surges is the
consequence of phase-separation. Such typical and dominant phase-separation
phenomena are revealed for two-phase debris flow simulations. Finally, changes
in flow composition, that are explicitly considered by the new modelling
approach, result in significant changes of impact pressure estimates. These are
highly important in hazard assessment and mitigation planning and highlight the
application potential of the new approach.


title: Symmetry energy and density

abstract:
  The nuclear equation-of-state is a topic of highest current interest in
nuclear structure and reactions as well as in astrophysics. In particular, the
equation-of-state of asymmetric matter and the symmetry energy representing the
difference between the energy densities of neutron matter and of symmetric
nuclear matter are not sufficiently well constrained at present. The density
dependence of the symmetry energy is conventionally expressed in the form of
the slope parameter L describing the derivative with respect to density of the
symmetry energy at saturation. Results deduced from nuclear structure and
heavy-ion reaction data are distributed around a mean value L=60 MeV.
  Recent studies have more thoroughly investigated the density range that a
particular observable is predominantly sensitive to. Two thirds of the
saturation density is a value typical for the information contained in
nuclear-structure data. Higher values exceeding saturation have been shown to
be probed with meson production and collective flows at incident energies in
the range of up to about 1 GeV/nucleon.
  From the measurement of the elliptic-flow ratio of neutrons with respect to
light charged particles in recent experiments at the GSI laboratory, a new more
stringent constraint for the symmetry energy at suprasaturation density has
been deduced. It confirms, with a considerably smaller uncertainty, the
moderately soft to linear density dependence of the symmetry energy previously
deduced from the FOPI-LAND data. Future opportunities offered by FAIR will be
discussed.


title: Efficient Probabilistic Collision Detection for Non-Convex Shapes

abstract:
  We present new algorithms to perform fast probabilistic collision queries
between convex as well as non-convex objects. Our approach is applicable to
general shapes, where one or more objects are represented using Gaussian
probability distributions. We present a fast new algorithm for a pair of convex
objects, and extend the approach to non-convex models using hierarchical
representations. We highlight the performance of our algorithms with various
convex and non-convex shapes on complex synthetic benchmarks and trajectory
planning benchmarks for a 7-DOF Fetch robot arm.


title: Plasmon properties and hybridization effects in Silicene

abstract:
  The plasmonic character of monolayer silicene is investigated by
time-dependent density functional theory in the random phase approximation. The
energy-loss function of the system is analyzed, with particular reference to
its induced charge-density fluctuations, i.e., plasmon resonances and
corresponding dispersions, occurring in the investigated energy-momentum
region. At energies larger than 1.5eV, two intrinsic interband modes are
detected and characterized. The first one is a hybridized pi-like plasmon,
which is assisted by competing one-electron processes involving sp2 and sp3
states. The second one is a more conventional pi-sigma plasmon, which is more
intense than the pi-like plasmon and more affected by one-electron processes
involving the sigma bands, with respect to the analogous collective oscillation
in monolayer graphene. At energies below 1eV, two extrinsic intraband modes are
predicted to occur, which are generated by distinct types of Dirac electrons
(associated with different Fermi velocities at the so-called Dirac points). The
most intense of them is a two-dimensional plasmon, having an energy-momentum
dispersion that resembles that of a two-dimensional electron gas. The other is
an acoustic plasmon that occurs for specific momentum directions and competes
with the two-dimensional plasmon at mid infrared energies. The strong
anisotropic character of this mode cannot be explained in terms of the widely
used Dirac-cone approximation. As in mono-, bi-, and few-layer graphene, the
extrinsic oscillations of silicene are highly sensitive to the concentration of
injected or ejected charge carriers. More importantly, the two-dimensional and
acoustic plasmons appear to be a signature of the honeycomb lattice,
independently of the chemistry of the group-IV elements and the details of the
unit-cell geometry.


title: Dynamic patterns of overexploitation in fisheries

abstract:
  Understanding overfishing phenomenon and regulating fishing quotas is a major
global challenge for the 21st Century both in terms of providing food for
humankind and to preserve the oceans ecosystems. However, fishing is a complex
economic activity, affected not just by overfishing but also by such factors as
pollution, technology, financial factors and more. For this reason, it is often
difficult to state with complete certainty that overfishing is the cause of the
decline of a fishery. In this study, we developed a simple dynamic model based
on the earlier, well-known Lotka-Volterra model or Prey-Predator model. To
describe exploitation patterns, we assume that the fish stock and the fishing
industry are coupled stock variables in the model and they dynamically affect
each other, with the fishing yield proportional to both the fishing capital and
the fish stock. The model is based on the concept that the fishing industry
acts as the predator of the resource and that its growth and subsequent decline
is directly related to the abundance of the fish stock. If the model can be fit
historical data relative to specific fisheries, then it is a strong indication
that the fishing industry is strongly affected by the magnitude of the fish
stock and that, in particular, the decline of the yield and the decline of the
stock are linked to each other. The model does not pretend to be a general
description of the fishing industry in all its varied forms; however, the data
reported here show that the model can indeed qualitatively describe several
historical case of the collapse of fisheries. The model can also be used as a
qualitative guide to understand the behavior of several other fisheries. These
result indicate that one of the main factors causing the present crisis of the
world's fisheries is the overexploitation of the fish stocks.


title: Asymptotic limit of oscillatory integrals with certain smooth phases

abstract:
  We give an exact result about the asymptotic limit of an oscillatory integral
whose phase contains a certain flat term. Corresponding to the real analytic
phase case, one can see an essential difference in the behavior of the above
oscillatory integral.


title: Slow-roll approximation in loop quantum cosmology

abstract:
  The slow-roll approximation is an analytical approach to study dynamical
properties of the inflationary universe. In this article, systematic
construction of the slow-roll expansion for effective loop quantum cosmology is
presented. The analysis is performed up to the fourth order in both slow-roll
parameters and the parameter controlling the strength of deviation from the
classical case. The expansion is performed for three types of the slow-roll
parameters: Hubble slow-roll parameters, Hubble flow parameters and potential
slow-roll parameters. An accuracy of the approximation is verified by
comparison with the numerical phase space trajectories for the case with a
massive potential term. The results obtained in this article may be helpful in
the search for the subtle quantum gravitational effects with use of the
cosmological data.


title:
Gas Fraction and Depletion Time of Massive Star Forming Galaxies at
  z~3.2: No Change in Global Star Formation Process out to z>3

abstract:
  The observed evolution of the gas fraction and its associated depletion time
in main sequence (MS) galaxies provides insights on how star formation proceeds
over cosmic time. We report ALMA detections of the rest-frame $\sim$300$\mu$m
continuum observed at 240 GHz for 45 massive ($\rm \langle
log(M_{\star}(M_{\odot}))\rangle=10.7$), normal star forming ($\rm \langle
log(sSFR(yr^{-1}))\rangle=-8.6$), i.e. MS, galaxies at $\rm z\approx3.2$ in the
COSMOS field. From an empirical calibration between cold neutral, i.e.
molecular and atomic, gas mass $\rm M_{gas}$ and monochromatic (rest-frame)
infrared luminosity, the gas mass for this sample is derived. Combined with
stellar mass $\rm M_{\star}$ and star formation rate (SFR) estimates (from {\sc
MagPhys} fits) we obtain a median gas fraction of $\rm
\mu_{gas}=M_{gas}/M_{\star}=1.65_{-0.19}^{+0.18}$ and a median gas depletion
time $\rm t_{depl.}(Gyr)=M_{gas}/SFR=0.68_{-0.08}^{+0.07}$; correction for the
location on the MS will only slightly change the values. The reported
uncertainties are the $\rm 1\sigma$ error on the median. Our results are fully
consistent with the expected flattening of the redshift evolution from the
2-SFM (2 star formation mode) framework that empirically prescribes the
evolution assuming a universal, log-linear relation between SFR and gas mass
coupled to the redshift evolution of the specific star formation rate (sSFR) of
main sequence galaxies. While $\rm t_{dep.}$ shows only a mild dependence on
location within the MS, a clear trend of increasing $\rm \mu_{gas}$ across the
MS is observed (as known from previous studies). Further we comment on trends
within the MS and (in)consistencies with other studies.


title:
Level spectrum and charge relaxation in a silicon double quantum dot
  probed by dual-gate reflectometry

abstract:
  We report on dual-gate reflectometry in a metal-oxide-semiconductor
double-gate silicon transistor operating at low temperature as a double quantum
dot device. The reflectometry setup consists of two radio-frequency resonators
respectively connected to the two gate electrodes. By simultaneously measuring
their dispersive response, we obtain the complete charge stability diagram of
the device. Charge transitions between the two quantum dots and between each
quantum dot and either the source or the drain contact are detected through
phase shifts in the reflected radio-frequency signals. At finite bias,
reflectometry allows probing charge transitions to excited quantum-dot states
thereby enabling direct access to the energy level spectra of the quantum dots.
Interestingly, we find that in the presence of charge transport across the two
dots the reflectometry signatures of interdot transitions display a dip-peak
structure containing quantitative information on the charge relaxation rates in
the double quantum dot.


title:
Symbolic Blowup algebras and invariants of certain monomial curves in an
  affine space

abstract:
  Let $d \geq 2$ and $m\geq 1$ be integers such that $\gcd (d,m)=1.$ Let
${\mathfrak p}$ be the defining ideal of the monomial curve in ${\mathbb A}_{
\Bbbk{k}}^d$ parametrized by $(t^{n_1}, \ldots, t^{n_d})$ where $n_i = d +
(i-1)m$ for all $i = 1, \ldots, d$. In this paper, we describe the symbolic
powers ${\mathfrak p}^{(n)} $ for all $n \geq 1$. As a consequence we show that
the symbolic blowup algebras ${\mathcal R}_s{({\mathfrak p})}$ and
$G_{s}({\mathfrak p}) $ are Cohen-Macaulay. This gives a positive answer to a
question posed by S.~Goto in \cite{goto}. We also discuss when these blowup
algebras are Gorenstein. Moreover, for $d=3$, considering ${\mathfrak p}$ as a
weighted homogeneous ideal, we compute the resurgence, the Waldschmidt constant
and the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of ${\mathfrak p}^{(n)}$ for all $n \geq
1$. The techniques of this paper for computing ${\mathfrak p}^{(n)}$ are new
and we hope that these will be useful to study the symbolic powers of other
prime ideals.


title: Scattering from spin-polarized charged impurities in graphene

abstract:
  We study the spin relaxation of charge carriers in graphene in the presence
of spin-polarized charged impurities by calculating the time evolution of
initially polarized state. The spin relaxation time shows completely different
energy behaviour for short-ranged and long-ranged spin scatterers and can be
used to identify the dominant source of spin scattering. Our results agree well
with recent experimental findings and indicate that their spin relaxation is
likely caused by long-ranged scatterers.


title: Image Based Camera Localization: an Overview

abstract:
  Recently, virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, autonomous driving et
al attract much attention of both academic and industrial community, in which
image based camera localization is a key task. However, there has not been a
complete review on image-based camera localization. It is urgent to map this
topic to help people enter the field quickly. In this paper, an overview of
image based camera localization is presented. A new and complete kind of
classifications for image based camera localization is provided and the related
techniques are introduced. Trends for the future development are also
discussed. It will be useful to not only researchers but also engineers and
other people interested.


title: Superadiabatic Holonomic Quantum Computation in Cavity QED

abstract:
  Adiabatic quantum control is a powerful tool for quantum engineering and a
key component in some quantum computation models, where accurate control over
the timing of the involved pulses is not needed. However, the adiabatic
condition requires that the process should be very slow and thus limits its
application in quantum computation, where quantum gates are preferred to be
fast due to the limited coherent times of the quantum systems. Here, we propose
a feasible scheme to implement universal holonomic quantum computation based on
non-Abelian geometric phases with superadiabatic quantum control, where the
adiabatic manipulation is sped up while retaining its robustness against errors
in the timing control. Consolidating the advantages of both strategies, our
proposal is thus both robust and fast. The quantum cavity QED system is adopted
as a typical example to illustrate the merits, where the proposed scheme can be
realized in a tripod configuration by appropriately controlling the pulse
shapes and their relative strength. To demonstrate the distinct performance of
our proposal, we also compare our scheme with the conventional adiabatic
strategy.


title: The core-degenerate scenario for the progenitors of type Ia supernovae

abstract:
  The origin of the progenitors of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is still
uncertain. The core-degenerate (CD) scenario has been proposed as an
alternative way for the production of SNe Ia. In this scenario, SNe Ia are
formed at the final stage of common-envelope evolution from a merger of a
carbon-oxygen white dwarf (CO WD) with the CO core of an asymptotic giant
branch companion. However, the birthrates of SNe Ia from this scenario are
still not well determined. In this work, we performed a detailed investigation
on the CD scenario based on a binary population synthesis approach. The SN Ia
delay times from this scenario are basically in the range of 90Myr-2500Myr,
mainly contributing to the observed SNe Ia with short and intermediate delay
times although this scenario can also produce some old SNe Ia. Meanwhile, our
work indicates that the Galactic birthrates of SNe Ia from this scenario are no
more than 20% of total SNe Ia due to more careful treatment of mass transfer.
Although the SN Ia birthrates in the present work are lower than those in Ilkov
& Soker, the CD scenario cannot be ruled out as a viable mechanism for the
formation of SNe Ia. Especially, SNe Ia with circumstellar material from this
scenario contribute to 0.7-10% of total SNe Ia, which means that the CD
scenario can reproduce the observed birthrates of SNe Ia like PTF 11kx. We also
found that SNe Ia happen systemically earlier for a high value of metallicity
and their birthrates increase with metallicity.


title: Six-dimensional Origin of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM with Duality Defects

abstract:
  We study the topologically twisted compactification of the 6d $(2,0)$
M5-brane theory on an elliptically fibered K\"ahler three-fold preserving two
supercharges. We show that upon reducing on the elliptic fiber, the 4d theory
is $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super-Yang Mills, with varying complexified coupling $\tau$,
in the presence of defects. For abelian gauge group this agrees with the
so-called duality twisted theory, and we determine a non-abelian generalization
to $U(N)$. When the elliptic fibration is singular, the 4d theory contains 3d
walls (along the branch-cuts of $\tau$) and 2d surface defects, around which
the 4d theory undergoes $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ duality transformations. Such
duality defects carry chiral fields, which from the 6d point of view arise as
modes of the two-form $B$ in the tensor multiplet. Each duality defect has a
flavor symmetry associated to it, which is encoded in the structure of the
singular elliptic fiber above the defect. Generically 2d surface defects will
intersect in points in 4d, where there is an enhanced flavor symmetry. The 6d
point of view provides a complete characterization of this 4d-3d-2d-0d
`Matroshka'-defect configuration.


title:
New classes of quadratic vector fields admitting integral-preserving
  Kahan-Hirota-Kimura discretizations

abstract:
  We present some new families of quadratic vector fields, not necessarily
integrable, for which their Kahan-Hirota-Kimura discretization exhibits the
preservation of some of the characterizing features of the underlying
continuous systems (conserved quantities and invariant measures).


title:
An analytic halo approach to the bispectrum of galaxies in redshift
  space

abstract:
  We present an analytic formula for the galaxy bispectrum in redshift space on
the basis of the halo approach description with the halo occupation
distribution of central galaxies and satellite galaxies. This work is an
extension of a previous work on the galaxy power spectrum, which illuminated
the significant contribution of satellite galaxies to the higher multipole
spectrum through the non-linear redshift space distortions of their random
motions. Behaviors of the multipoles of the bispectrum are compared with
results of numerical simulations assuming a halo occupation distribution of the
LOWZ sample of the SDSS-III BOSS survey. Also presented are analytic
approximate formulas for the multipoles of the bispectrum, which is useful to
understanding their characteristic properties. We demonstrate that the Fingers
of God effect is quite important for the higher multipoles of the bispectrum in
redshift space, depending on the halo occupation distribution parameters.


title:
Search for the $C\!P$-violating strong decays $\eta \to \pi^+\pi^-$ and
  $\eta^\prime(958) \to \pi^+\pi^-$

abstract:
  A search for the $C\!P$-violating strong decays $\eta \to \pi^+\pi^-$ and
$\eta^\prime(958) \to \pi^+\pi^-$ has been performed using approximately $2.5
\times 10^{7}$ events of each of the decays $D^+ \to \pi^+\pi^+\pi^-$ and
$D_s^+ \to \pi^+\pi^+\pi^-$, recorded by the LHCb experiment. The data set
corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data
recorded during LHC Run 1 and 0.3 fb$^{-1}$ recorded in Run 2. No evidence is
seen for $D^+_{(s)} \to \pi^+ \eta^{(\prime)}$ with $\eta^{(\prime)} \to
\pi^+\pi^-$, and upper limits at 90% confidence level are set on the branching
fractions, $\mathcal{B}(\eta \to \pi^+\pi^-) < 1.6 \times 10^{-5}$ and
$\mathcal{B}(\eta^\prime \to \pi^+\pi^-) < 1.8 \times 10^{-5}$. The limit for
the $\eta$ decay is comparable with the existing one, while that for the
$\eta^\prime$ is a factor of three smaller than the previous limit.


title:
An Inter-Node Interference Suppression Approach in Full-Duplex Wireless
  Communications

abstract:
  Considering that a full-duplex network is comprised of a full-duplex (FD)
base station (BS) and two half-duplex (HD) users, one user transmits on the
uplink channel and the other receives through the downlink channel on the same
frequency. The uplink user will generate inter-user interference (IUI) on the
downlink user through the interference channel. In this paper, we propose a
novel IUI suppression approach when the BS knows the full channel station
information. The main idea of the approach is to retransmit the weighted uplink
signal as soon as it has been received at the BS. For the narrowband case, we
first derive the closed-form expression of the optimum weighted coefficient
when the SI is perfectly cancelled at the BS and then analyze the performance
of the proposed IUI suppression approach in practical considerations.
Furthermore, the proposed IUI suppression approach can be extended to the
broadband case using a time-domain weighted filter. Simulation results shows
the advantage over existing IUI suppression schemes.


title:
Diet variation in climbing perch populations inhabiting eight different
  types of ecosystems

abstract:
  The present study revealed that populations of climbing perch (Anabas
testudineus) inhabiting river, backwater, shallow water channel, ponds with and
without vegetation cover, marsh, sewage canal and aquaculture tank varied
significantly in the number of food items consumed. Chironomous larvae, organic
debris and filamentous algae were the common ingredients of the menu of this
species across focal ecosystems, whereas sewage canal population was found
surviving solely on insect larvae and organic debris.


title:
An exact upper bound for sums of element orders in non-cyclic finite
  groups

abstract:
  Denote the sum of element orders in a finite group $G$ by $\psi(G)$ and let
$C_n$ denote the cyclic group of order $n$. Suppose that $G$ is a non-cyclic
finite group of order $n$ and $q$ is the least prime divisor of $n$. We proved
that $\psi(G)\leq\frac 7{11}\psi(C_n)$ and $\psi(G)<\frac 1{q-1}\psi(C_n)$. The
first result is best possible, since for each $n=4k$, $k$ odd, there exists a
group $G$ of order $n$ satisfying $\psi(G)=\frac 7{11}\psi(C_n)$ and the second
result implies that if $G$ is of odd order, then $\psi(G)<\frac 12\psi(C_n)$.
Our results improve the inequality $\psi(G)<\psi(C_n)$ obtained by H. Amiri,
S.M. Jafarian Amiri and I.M. Isaacs in 2009, as well as other results obtained
by S.M. Jafarian Amiri and M. Amiri in 2014 and by R. Shen, G. Chen and C. Wu
in 2015. Furthermore, we obtained some $\psi(G)$-based sufficient conditions
for the solvability of $G$.


title: Multi-Task Curriculum Transfer Deep Learning of Clothing Attributes

abstract:
  Recognising detailed clothing characteristics (fine-grained attributes) in
unconstrained images of people in-the-wild is a challenging task for computer
vision, especially when there is only limited training data from the wild
whilst most data available for model learning are captured in well-controlled
environments using fashion models (well lit, no background clutter, frontal
view, high-resolution). In this work, we develop a deep learning framework
capable of model transfer learning from well-controlled shop clothing images
collected from web retailers to in-the-wild images from the street.
Specifically, we formulate a novel Multi-Task Curriculum Transfer (MTCT) deep
learning method to explore multiple sources of different types of web
annotations with multi-labelled fine-grained attributes. Our multi-task loss
function is designed to extract more discriminative representations in training
by jointly learning all attributes, and our curriculum strategy exploits the
staged easy-to-complex transfer learning motivated by cognitive studies. We
demonstrate the advantages of the MTCT model over the state-of-the-art methods
on the X-Domain benchmark, a large scale clothing attribute dataset. Moreover,
we show that the MTCT model has a notable advantage over contemporary models
when the training data size is small.


title:
The JCMT Gould Belt Survey: First results from SCUBA-2 observations of
  the Cepheus Flare Region

abstract:
  We present observations of the Cepheus Flare obtained as part of the James
Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) Gould Belt Legacy Survey (GBLS) with the SCUBA-2
instrument. We produce a catalogue of sources found by SCUBA-2, and separate
these into starless cores and protostars. We determine masses and densities for
each of our sources, using source temperatures determined by the Herschel Gould
Belt Survey. We compare the properties of starless cores in four different
molecular clouds: L1147/58, L1172/74, L1251 and L1228. We find that the core
mass functions for each region typically show shallower-than-Salpeter
behaviour. We find that L1147/58 and L1228 have a high ratio of starless cores
to Class II protostars, while L1251 and L1174 have a low ratio, consistent with
the latter regions being more active sites of current star formation, while the
former are forming stars less actively. We determine that, if modelled as
thermally-supported Bonnor-Ebert spheres, most of our cores have stable
configurations accessible to them. We estimate the external pressures on our
cores using archival $^{13}$CO velocity dispersion measurements and find that
our cores are typically pressure-confined, rather than gravitationally bound.
We perform a virial analysis on our cores, and find that they typically cannot
be supported against collapse by internal thermal energy alone, due primarily
to the measured external pressures. This suggests that the dominant mode of
internal support in starless cores in the Cepheus Flare is either non-thermal
motions or internal magnetic fields.


title: A review of Cosmic-ray electrons and fermi-LAT

abstract:
  The study of Galactic Cosmic-ray electrons (CREs) saw important developments
in recent years, with the assumption of positron production only in interaction
of hadronic Cosmic-rays with interstellar matter challenged by new measurements
of CRE spectrum and related quantities. Indeed, all recent experiments seem to
confirm an hardening in the positrons, a feature that is totally in contrast
with the all-secondaries hypothesis, even if significant disagreements are
present about the CRE spectral behavior and the possible presence of spectral
features. Together with insufficient precision of current measurements, these
disagreements prevent the identification of the primary positron source, with
models involving Dark matter or astrophysical sources like Super Nova Remnants
and Pulsar Wind Nebula all able to explain current data.
  The fermi-LAT contribution to the CRE study was fundamental, with the 2009
measurement of the positron + electron spectrum extended to the 7 MeV - 1TeV
range with a statistics already exceeding previous results by many order of
magnitude; since then, the last statistic has largely increased, while the LAT
event reconstruction was significantly improved.
  In this article the reader will find an extensive and historical review of
the CRE science, a summary of the history of gamma astronomy before fermi, an
accurate description of the LAT and of its data analysis, a review of the
present knowledge about CRE spectrum and on the theories that try to explain
it, and finally a description of the changes and improvements introduced in the
LAT event reconstruction process at the beginning of 2015.


title: Radiative striped wind model for gamma-ray bursts

abstract:
  In this paper we revisit the striped wind model in which the wind is
accelerated by magnetic reconnection. In our treatment, radiation is included
as an independent component, and two scenarios are considered. In the first
one, radiation cannot stream efficiently through the reconnection layer, while
the second scenario assumes that radiation is homogeneous in the striped wind.
We show how these two assumptions affect the dynamics. In particular, we find
that the asymptotic radial evolution of the Lorentz factor is not strongly
modified whether radiation can stream through the reconnection layer or not. On
the other hand, we show that the width, density and temperature of the
reconnection layer are strongly dependent on these assumptions. We then apply
the model to the gamma-ray burst context and find that photons cannot diffuse
efficiently through the reconnection layer below radius $r_{\rm D}^{\Delta}
\sim 10^{10.5}$ cm, which is about an order of magnitude below the photospheric
radius. Above $r_{\rm D}^{\Delta}$, the dynamics asymptotes to the solution of
the scenario in which radiation can stream through the reconnection layer. As a
result, the density of the current sheet increases sharply, providing efficient
photon production by the Bremsstrahlung process which could have profound
influence on the emerging spectrum. This effect might provide a solution to the
soft photon problem in GRBs.


title:
The Effect of Quantum Fluctuations in the High-Energy Cold Nuclear
  Equation of State and in Compact Star Observables

abstract:
  We present a novel technique to obtain exact equation of state (EoS) by the
Functional Renormalization Group (FRG) method, using the expansion of the
effective potential in a base of harmonic functions at finite chemical
potential. Within this theoretical framework we determined the equation of
state and the phase diagram of a simple model of massless fermions coupled to
scalars through Yukawa-coupling at the zero-temperature limit. We compared our
results to the 1-loop and the mean field approximation of the same model and
other high-density nuclear matter equation of states. We found a $10-20\%$
difference between these approximations. As an application, we used our exact,
FRG-based equation of states to test the effect of the quantum fluctuations in
superdense nuclear matter of a compact astrophysical object for the first time.
We calculated the mass-radius relation for a compact star using the
Tolmann-Oppenheimer-Volkov equation and observed a $\sim 5\%$ effect in compact
star observables due to quantum fluctuations.


title: Virtual Element Method for Second Order Elliptic Eigenvalue Problems

abstract:
  We introduce the Virtual Element Method (VEM) for elliptic eigenvalue
problems. The main result of the paper states that VEM provides an optimal
order approximation of the eigenmodes. A wide set of numerical tests confirm
the theoretical analysis.


title: DeepCity: A Feature Learning Framework for Mining Location Check-ins

abstract:
  Online social networks being extended to geographical space has resulted in
large amount of user check-in data. Understanding check-ins can help to build
appealing applications, such as location recommendation. In this paper, we
propose DeepCity, a feature learning framework based on deep learning, to
profile users and locations, with respect to user demographic and location
category prediction. Both of the predictions are essential for social network
companies to increase user engagement. The key contribution of DeepCity is the
proposal of task-specific random walk which uses the location and user
properties to guide the feature learning to be specific to each prediction
task. Experiments conducted on 42M check-ins in three cities collected from
Instagram have shown that DeepCity achieves a superior performance and
outperforms other baseline models significantly.


title: Deep Fruit Detection in Orchards

abstract:
  An accurate and reliable image based fruit detection system is critical for
supporting higher level agriculture tasks such as yield mapping and robotic
harvesting. This paper presents the use of a state-of-the-art object detection
framework, Faster R-CNN, in the context of fruit detection in orchards,
including mangoes, almonds and apples. Ablation studies are presented to better
understand the practical deployment of the detection network, including how
much training data is required to capture variability in the dataset. Data
augmentation techniques are shown to yield significant performance gains,
resulting in a greater than two-fold reduction in the number of training images
required. In contrast, transferring knowledge between orchards contributed to
negligible performance gain over initialising the Deep Convolutional Neural
Network directly from ImageNet features. Finally, to operate over orchard data
containing between 100-1000 fruit per image, a tiling approach is introduced
for the Faster R-CNN framework. The study has resulted in the best yet
detection performance for these orchards relative to previous works, with an
F1-score of >0.9 achieved for apples and mangoes.


title:
Combined Partial Wave Analysis for the description of exclusive $p+p \to
  p + K^+ + \Lambda$ production

abstract:
  The production of p K+ {\Lambda} in elementary p + p collision was
investigated using the Bonn Gatchina Partial Wave Analysis framework. This
approach allows the determination of possible participating production wave
depending on the quantum numbers of the system. For the analysis seven data
samples, measured at different detectors and beam energies, were used.For the
extraction of the p{\Lambda} scattering length a cross check with established
methods is required. Furthermore the total cross section of the production
process is needed to be determined to extra cross section for the separate
waves. Both methods are described in this work.


title:
Band-gap structure and chiral discrete solitons in optical lattices with
  artificial gauge fields

abstract:
  We study three-leg-ladder optical lattices loaded with repulsive atomic
Bose-Einstein condensates and subjected to artificial gauge fields. By
employing the plane-wave analysis and variational approach, we analyze the
band-gap structure of the energy spectrum and reveal the exotic swallow-tail
loop structures in the energy-level anti-crossing regions due to an interplay
between the atom-atom interaction and artificial gauge field. Also, we discover
stable discrete solitons residing in a semi-infinite gap above the highest
band, these discrete solitons are associated with the chiral edge currents.


title: Recovering asymmetric communities in the stochastic block model

abstract:
  We consider the sparse stochastic block model in the case where the degrees
are uninformative. The case where the two communities have approximately the
same size has been extensively studied and we concentrate here on the community
detection problem in the case of unbalanced communities. In this setting,
spectral algorithms based on the non-backtracking matrix are known to solve the
community detection problem (i.e. do strictly better than a random guess) when
the signal is sufficiently large namely above the so-called Kesten Stigum
threshold. In this regime and when the average degree tends to infinity, we
show that if the community of a vanishing fraction of the vertices is revealed,
then a local algorithm (belief propagation) is optimal down to Kesten Stigum
threshold and we quantify explicitly its performance. Below the Kesten Stigum
threshold, we show that, in the large degree limit, there is a second threshold
called the spinodal curve below which, the community detection problem is not
solvable. The spinodal curve is equal to the Kesten Stigum threshold when the
fraction of vertices in the smallest community is above
$p^*=\frac{1}{2}-\frac{1}{2\sqrt{3}}$, so that the Kesten Stigum threshold is
the threshold for solvability of the community detection in this case. However
when the smallest community is smaller than $p^*$, the spinodal curve only
provides a lower bound on the threshold for solvability. In the regime below
the Kesten Stigum bound and above the spinodal curve, we also characterize the
performance of best local algorithms as a function of the fraction of revealed
vertices. Our proof relies on a careful analysis of the associated
reconstruction problem on trees which might be of independent interest. In
particular, we show that the spinodal curve corresponds to the reconstruction
threshold on the tree.


title:
Composition Heterogeneity Induced Crystallization in Double Crystalline
  Binary Polymer Blends

abstract:
  Polymer blends offer an exciting material for various potential applications
due to their tunable properties by varying constituting components and their
relative composition. Our simulation results unravel an intrinsic relationship
between the phase behavior and crystallization characteristics with the
relative composition of A- and B-polymer in the system. We report simulation
results for non-isothermal and isothermal crystallization with weak and strong
segregation strength to elucidate the composition dependent crystallization
behavior. With increasing composition of low melting B-polymer, macrophase
separation and crystallization temperature changes non-monotonically, which is
attributed to the change in diffusivity of both the polymers with increasing
composition of B-polymer. In weak segregation strength, however, at high enough
composition of B-polymer, A-polymer yields relatively thicker crystals, which
is attributed to the dilution effect exhibited by B-polymer. When B-polymer
composition is high enough, it acts like a solvent while A-polymer
crystallizes. Under this situation, A-polymer segments become more mobile and
less facile to crystallize. As a result, A-polymer crystallizes at a relative
low temperature with the formation of thicker crystals. At strong segregation
strength, dilution effect is accompanied with the strong A-B repulsive
interaction, which is reflected in non-monotonic trend of mean square radius of
gyration with increasing composition of B-polymer. Isothermal crystallization
reveals a strong relationship between composition and crystallization behavior.
Two-step (viz., sequential crystallization) yields better crystals than
one-step (viz., coincident crystallization) for both the polymers.


title: Fidelity as a figure of merit in quantum error correction

abstract:
  We discuss the fidelity as a figure of merit in quantum error correction
schemes. We show that when identifiable but uncorrectable errors occur as a
result of the action of the channel, a common strategy that improves the
fidelity actually decreases the transmitted mutual information. The conclusion
is that while the fidelity is simple to calculate and therefore often used, it
is perhaps not always a recommendable figure of merit for quantum error
correction. The reason is that while it roughly speaking encourages
optimisation of the "mean probability of success", it gives no incentive for a
protocol to indicate exactly where the errors lurk. For small error
probabilities, the latter information is more important for the integrity of
the information than optimising the mean probability of success.


title:
Relaxation time spectrum of low-energy excitations in one- and
  two-dimensional materials with charge or spin density waves

abstract:
  The long-time thermal relaxation of (TMTTF)$_2$Br, Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$
and Sr$_2$Ca$_{12}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ single crystals at temperatures below 1 K
and magnetic field up to 10 T is investigated. The data allow us to determine
the relaxation time spectrum of the low energy excitations caused by the
charge-density wave (CDW) or spin-density wave (SDW). The relaxation time is
mainly determined by a thermal activated process for all investigated
materials. The maximum relaxation time increases with increasing magnetic
field. The distribution of barrier heights corresponds to one or two Gaussian
functions. The doping of Sr$_{14-x}$Ca$_{x}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ with Ca leads to
a drastic shift of the relaxation time spectrum to longer time. The maximum
relaxation time changes from 50 s (x = 0) to 3000 s (x = 12) at 0.1 K and 10 T.
The observed thermal relaxation at x=12 clearly indicates the formation of the
SDW ground state at low temperatures.


title:
Light Field Compression with Disparity Guided Sparse Coding based on
  Structural Key Views

abstract:
  Recent imaging technologies are rapidly evolving for sampling richer and more
immersive representations of the 3D world. And one of the emerging technologies
are light field (LF) cameras based on micro-lens arrays. To record the
directional information of the light rays, a much larger storage space and
transmission bandwidth are required by a LF image as compared with a
conventional 2D image of similar spatial dimension, and the compression of LF
data becomes a vital part of its application.
  In this paper, we propose a LF codec that fully exploits the intrinsic
geometry between the LF sub-views by first approximating the LF with disparity
guided sparse coding over a perspective shifted light field dictionary. The
sparse coding is only based on several optimized Structural Key Views (SKV);
however the entire LF can be recovered from the coding coefficients. By keeping
the approximation identical between encoder and decoder, only the residuals of
the non-key views, disparity map and the SKVs need to be compressed into the
bit stream. An optimized SKV selection method is proposed such that most LF
spatial information could be preserved. And to achieve optimum dictionary
efficiency, the LF is divided into several Coding Regions (CR), over which the
reconstruction works individually. Experiments and comparisons have been
carried out over benchmark LF dataset, which show that the proposed SC-SKV
codec produces convincing compression results in terms of both rate-distortion
performance and visual quality compared with High Efficiency Video Coding
(HEVC): with 47.87% BD-rate reduction and 1.59 dB BD-PSNR improvement achieved
on average, especially with up to 4 dB improvement for low bit rate scenarios.


title: Smallest not $C_{2l+1}$-colourable graphs of odd-girth $2k+1$

abstract:
  Gr\"otzsch introduced his famous graph as a triangle-free graph which is not
3-colourable. Harary showed that any such graph must be of order at least 11
and Chv\'atal proved that the Gr\"otzsch graph is the only such graph on 11
vertices. As a generalization, Ngoc and Tuza asked about the order of a
smallest graph of odd-girth $2k+1$ which is not 3-colourable, a question which,
despite several partial results, remains open.
  Viewing 3-colouring as a homomorphism to the 3-cycle, along this line of
work, we ask more generally: What is the smallest order $\eta(k,l)$ of a graph
of odd-girth $2k+1$ that admits no homomorphism to the cycle $C_{2l+1}$?
  In this work, we determine the value of $\eta(k,l)$ for $l\leq
k\leq\frac{3l+i-3}{2}$ ($2k=i\bmod 3$) and for $(k,l)=(3,2)$. More precisely,
we show that $\eta(k,l)$=$4k$ for $l\leq k\leq\frac{3l+i-3}{2}$ ($2k=i\bmod 3$)
and that $\eta(3,2)=15$. The latter is to say that a smallest graph of
odd-girth 7 not admitting a homomorphism to the 5-cycle is of order 15 (there
are 10 such graphs on 15 vertices).


title: Condensate losses and oscillations induced by Rydberg atoms

abstract:
  We numerically analyze the impact of a single Rydberg electron onto a
Bose-Einstein condensate. Both $S-$ and $D-$ Rydberg states are studied. The
radial size of $S-$ and $D-$states are comparable, hence the only difference is
due to the angular dependence of the wavefunctions. We find the atom losses in
the condensate after the excitation of a sequence of Rydberg atoms.
Additionally, we investigate the mechanical effect in which the Rydberg atoms
force the condensate to oscillate. Our numerical analysis is based on the
classical fields approximation. Finally, we compare numerical results to
experimental data.


title:
Bayesian models for data missing not at random in health examination
  surveys

abstract:
  In epidemiological surveys, data missing not at random (MNAR) due to survey
nonresponse may potentially lead to a bias in the risk factor estimates. We
propose an approach based on Bayesian data augmentation and survival modelling
to reduce the nonresponse bias. The approach requires additional information
based on follow-up data. We present a case study of smoking prevalence using
FINRISK data collected between 1972 and 2007 with a follow-up to the end of
2012 and compare it to other commonly applied missing at random (MAR)
imputation approaches. A simulation experiment is carried out to study the
validity of the approaches. Our approach appears to reduce the nonresponse bias
substantially, where as MAR imputation was not successful in bias reduction.


title:
On the optimal experimental design for heat and moisture parameter
  estimation

abstract:
  In the context of estimating material properties of porous walls based on
in-site measurements and identification method, this paper presents the concept
of Optimal Experiment Design (OED). It aims at searching the best experimental
conditions in terms of quantity and position of sensors and boundary conditions
imposed to the material. These optimal conditions ensure to provide the maximum
accuracy of the identification method and thus the estimated parameters. The
search of the OED is done by using the Fisher information matrix and a priori
knowledge of the parameters. The methodology is applied for two case studies.
The first one deals with purely conductive heat transfer. The concept of
optimal experiment design is detailed and verified with 100 inverse problems
for different experiment designs. The second case study combines a strong
coupling between heat and moisture transfer through a porous building material.
The methodology presented is based on a scientific formalism for efficient
planning of experimental work that can be extended to the optimal design of
experiments related to other problems in thermal and fluid sciences.

categories: physics.comp-ph cs.CE math.NA physics.class-ph


title: Updated Lattice Results for Parton Distributions

abstract:
  We provide an analysis of the x-dependence of the bare unpolarized, helicity
and transversity iso-vector parton distribution functions (PDFs) from lattice
calculations employing (maximally) twisted mass fermions. The x-dependence of
the calculated PDFs resembles the one of the phenomenological
parameterizations, a feature that makes this approach very promising.
Furthermore, we apply momentum smearing for the relevant matrix elements to
compute the lattice PDFs and find a large improvement factor when compared to
conventional Gaussian smearing. This allows us to extend the lattice
computation of the distributions to higher values of the nucleon momentum,
which is essential for the prospects of a reliable extraction of the PDFs in
the future.


title: Large-scale normal fluid circulation in helium superflows

abstract:
  We perform fully-coupled numerical simulations of helium II pure superflows
in a channel, with vortex- line density typical of experiments. Peculiar to our
model is the computation of the back-reaction of the superfluid vortex motion
on the normal fluid and the presence of solid boundaries. We recover the
uniform vortex-line density experimentally measured employing second sound
resonators and we show that pure superflow in helium II is associated with a
large-scale circulation of the normal fluid which can be detected using
existing particle-tracking visualization techniques.


title: On killers of cable knots groups

abstract:
  A killer of a group Gis an element that normally generates G. We show that
the group of a cable knot contains infinitely many killers such that no two lie
in the same automorphic orbit.


title: A $q$-Robinson-Schensted-Knuth Algorithm and a $q$-polymer

abstract:
  In [Matveev-Petrov 2016](arXiv:1504.00666) a $q$-deformed
Robinson-Schensted-Knuth algorithm ($q$RSK) was introduced. In this article we
give reformulations of this algorithm in terms of the Noumi-Yamada description,
growth diagrams and local moves. We show that the algorithm is symmetric,
namely the output tableaux pairs are swapped in a sense of distribution when
the input matrix is transposed. We also formulate a $q$-polymer model based on
the $q$RSK, prove the corresponding Burke property, which we use to show a
strong law of large numbers for the partition function given stationary
boundary conditions and $q$-geometric weights. We use the $q$-local moves to
define a generalisation of the $q$RSK taking a Young diagram-shape of array as
the input. We write down the joint distribution of partition functions in the
space-like direction of the $q$-polymer in $q$-geometric environment, formulate
a $q$-version of the multilayer polynuclear growth model ($q$PNG) and write
down the joint distribution of the $q$-polymer partition functions at a fixed
time.


title: The series that Ramanujan misunderstood

abstract:
  We give a new appraisal of a famous oscillating power series considered by
Hardy and Ramanujan related to the erroneous theory of distribution of primes
by Ramanujan.


title:
Local asymptotic normality property for fractional Gaussian noise under
  high-frequency observations

abstract:
  Local Asymptotic Normality (LAN) property for fractional Gaussian noise under
high-frequency observations is proved with a non-diagonal rate matrix depending
on the parameter to be estimated. In contrast to the LAN families in the
literature, non-diagonal rate matrices are inevitable.


title:
Relaxation dynamics of a compressible bilayer vesicle containing highly
  viscous fluid

abstract:
  We study the relaxation dynamics of a compressible bilayer vesicle with an
asymmetry in the viscosity of the inner and outer fluid medium. First we
explore the stability of the vesicle free energy which includes a coupling
between the membrane curvature and the local density difference between the two
monolayers. Two types of instabilities are identified: a small wavelength
instability and a larger wavelength instability. Considering the bulk fluid
viscosity and the inter-monolayer friction as the dissipation sources, we next
employ Onsager's variational principle to derive the coupled equations both for
the membrane and the bulk fluid. The three relaxation modes are coupled to each
other due to the bilayer and the spherical structure of the vesicle. Most
importantly, a higher fluid viscosity inside the vesicle shifts the cross-over
mode between the bending and the slipping to a larger value. As the vesicle
parameters approach toward the unstable regions, the relaxation dynamics is
dramatically slowed down, and the corresponding mode structure changes
significantly. In some limiting cases, our general result reduces to the
previously obtained relaxation rates.


title:
Inverse participation ratio and localization in topological insulator
  phase transitions

abstract:
  Fluctuations of Hamiltonian eigenfunctions, measured by the inverse
participation ratio (IPR), turn out to characterize topological-band insulator
transitions occurring in 2D Dirac materials like silicene, which is
isostructural with graphene but with a strong spin-orbit interaction. Using
monotonic properties of the IPR, as a function of a perpendicular electric
field (which provides a tunable band gap), we define topological-like quantum
numbers that take different values in the topological-insulator and
band-insulator phases.


title: Probing BFKL dynamics in Mueller-Navelet jet production at the LHC

abstract:
  We review the results of our studies on the production of two jets with a
large interval of rapidity at hadron colliders, which was proposed by Mueller
and Navelet as a possible test of the high energy dynamics of QCD, within the
next-to-leading logarithm framework. The application of the
Brodsky-Lepage-Mackenzie procedure to fix the renormalization scale leads to a
very good description of the available CMS data at the LHC for the azimuthal
correlations of the jets. We show that the inclusion of next-to-leading order
corrections to the jet vertex significantly reduces the importance of
energy-momentum non-conservation which is inherent to the BFKL approach, for an
asymmetric jet configuration.


title: Anisotropic compact stars in Karmarkar spacetime

abstract:
  We present a new class of solutions to the Einstein field equations for an
anisotropic matter distribution in which the interior space-time obeys the
Karmarkar condition. The necessary and sufficient condition required for a
spherically symmetric space-time to be of class one reduces the gravitational
behavior of the model to a single metric function. By assuming a physically
viable form for the $g_{rr}$ metric potential we obtain an exact solution of
the Einstein field equations which is free from any singularities and satisfies
all the physical criteria. We utilize this solution to predict the masses and
radii of well-known compact objects such as Cen X-3, PSR J0348+0432,
PSRB0943+10 and XTE J1739-285.
  To be publish in Chinese Physics C (Accepted)


title: Band Offset in (Ga,In)As/Ga(As,Sb) Heterostructures

abstract:
  A series of (Ga,In)As/GaAs/Ga(As,Sb) multi-quantum well heterostructures is
analyzed using temperature- and power-dependent photoluminescence (PL)
spectroscopy. Pronounced PL variations with sample temperature are observed and
analyzed using microscopic many-body theory and band structure calculations
based on the k$\cdot$p method. This theory-experiment comparison reveals an
unusual, temperature dependent variation of the band alignment between the
(Ga,In)As and Ga(As,Sb) quantum wells.


title:
Identifying the order of a quantum phase transition by means of Wehrl
  entropy in phase-space

abstract:
  We propose a method to identify the order of a Quantum Phase Transition by
using area measures of the ground state in phase space. We illustrate our
proposal by analyzing the well known example of the Quantum Cusp, and four
different paradigmatic boson models: Dicke, Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick, interacting
boson model, and vibron model.


title: Localization in High-Dimensional Monte Carlo Filtering

abstract:
  The high dimensionality and computational constraints associated with
filtering problems in large-scale geophysical applications are particularly
challenging for the Particle Filter (PF). Approximate but efficient methods
such as the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) are therefore usually preferred. A
key element of these approximate methods is localization, which is in principle
a general technique to avoid the curse of dimensionality and consists in
limiting the influence of observations to neighboring sites. However, while it
works effectively with the EnKF, localization introduces harmful
discontinuities in the estimated physical fields when applied blindly to the
PF. In the present paper, we explore two possible local algorithms based on the
EnKPF, a hybrid method combining the EnKF and the PF. A simulation study in a
conjugate normal setup allows to highlight the trade-offs involved when
applying localization to PF type of algorithms in the high-dimensional setting.
Experiments with the Lorenz96 model demonstrate the ability of the local EnKPF
algorithms to perform well even with a small number of particles compared to
the problem size.


title: General Relativity Revisited: Generalized Nordstr\"om Theory

abstract:
  In 1945 Einstein concluded that [1]: 'The present theory of relativity is
based on a division of physical reality into a metric field (gravitation) on
the one hand, and into an electromagnetic field and matter on the other hand.
In reality space will probably be of a uniform character and the present theory
be valid only as a limiting case. For large densities of field and of matter,
the field equations and even the field variables which enter into them will
have no real significance.'. The dichotomy can be resolved by introducing a
scalar field/potential algebraically related to the Ricci tensor for which the
corresponding metric is free of additional singularities. Hence, although a
fundamentally nonlinear theory, the scalar field/potential provides an analytic
framework for interacting particles; described by linear superposition. The
stress tensor for the scalar field includes both the sources of and the
energy-momentum for the gravitational field, and has zero covariant and
ordinary divergence. Hence, the energy-momentum for the gravitational field and
sources are conserved. The theory's predictions agree with the experimental
results for General Relativity. By introducing the corresponding Lagrangian to
analytic mechanics, what is experimentally known for GR can be accounted for.


title:
Eigenvalues of the static, spherically-symmetric Einstein-Proca
  equations

abstract:
  The Proca potential has been used in many contexts in flat spacetime, but not
so often in curved spacetime. Here, the static Proca potentials are derived on
a Schwarzschild background, and are found to have very different forms from
those in flat space. In addition, the coupling of the two fields leads to a
quantum condition on the particle mass, which is found to be quantized and
inversely proportional to the range parameter, $\mu$. This suggests that
gravity may induce quantization in other physical fields.


title: A low-cost indoor and outdoor terrestrial autonomous navigation model

abstract:
  In this paper, a method for low-cost system design oriented to indoor and
outdoor autonomous navigation is illustrated. In order to provide a motivation
for the solution here presented, a brief discussion of the typical drawbacks of
state-of-the-art technologies is reported. Finally, an application of such a
method for the design of a navigation system for blindfolded people is shown.


title:
Structure Properties of Koch Networks Based on Networks Dynamical
  Systems

abstract:
  We introduce an informative labeling algorithm for the vertices of a family
of Koch networks. Each of the labels is consisted of two parts, the precise
position and the time adding to Koch networks. The shortest path routing
between any two vertices is determined only on the basis of their labels, and
the routing is calculated only by few computations. The rigorous solutions of
betweenness centrality for every node and edge are also derived by the help of
their labels. Furthermore, the community structure in Koch networks is studied
by the current and voltage characteristics of its resistor networks.


title: Bibliometric Index for Academic Leadership

abstract:
  Academic leadership is essential for research innovation and impact. Until
now, there has been no dedicated measure of leadership by bibliometrics.
Popular bibliometric indices are mainly based on academic output, such as the
journal impact factor and the number of citations. Here we develop an academic
leadership index based on readily available bibliometric data that is sensitive
to not only academic output but also research efficiency. Our leadership index
was tested in two studies on peer-reviewed journal papers by
extramurally-funded principal investigators in the field of life sciences from
China and the USA, respectively. The leadership performance of these principal
investigators was quantified and compared relative to university rank and other
factors. As a validation measure, we show that the highest average leadership
index was achieved by principal investigators at top national universities in
both countries. More interestingly, our results also indicate that on an
individual basis, strong leadership and high efficiency are not necessarily
associated with those at top-tier universities nor with the most funding. This
leadership index may become the basis of a comprehensive merit system,
facilitating academic evaluation and resource management.


title:
Cauchy problem to the homogeneous Boltzmann equation with Debye-Yukawa
  potential for measure initial datum

abstract:
  In this work, we prove the existence, uniqueness and smoothing properties of
the solution to the Cauchy problem for the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann
equation with Debye-Yukawa potential for probability measure initial datum.


title: Generating captions without looking beyond objects

abstract:
  This paper explores new evaluation perspectives for image captioning and
introduces a noun translation task that achieves comparative image caption
generation performance by translating from a set of nouns to captions. This
implies that in image captioning, all word categories other than nouns can be
evoked by a powerful language model without sacrificing performance on n-gram
precision. The paper also investigates lower and upper bounds of how much
individual word categories in the captions contribute to the final BLEU score.
A large possible improvement exists for nouns, verbs, and prepositions.


title:
Representations of elementary abelian p-groups and finite subgroups of
  fields

abstract:
  Suppose $\mathbb{F}$ is a field of prime characteristic $p$ and $E$ is a
finite subgroup of the additive group $(\mathbb{F},+)$. Then $E$ is an
elementary abelian $p$-group. We consider two such subgroups, say $E$ and $E'$,
to be equivalent if there is an
$\alpha\in\mathbb{F}^*:=\mathbb{F}\setminus\{0\}$ such that $E=\alpha E'$. In
this paper we show that rational functions can be used to distinguish
equivalence classes of subgroups and, for subgroups of prime rank or rank less
than twelve, we give explicit finite sets of separating invariants.


title: Visualizing electromagnetic vacuum by MRI

abstract:
  Based upon Maxwell's equations, it has long been established that oscillating
electromagnetic (EM) fields incident upon a metal surface decay exponentially
inside the conductor, leading to a virtual EM vacuum at sufficient depths.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) utilizes radiofrequency (r.f.) EM fields to
produce images. Here we present the first visualization of an EM vacuum inside
a bulk metal strip by MRI, amongst several novel findings.
  We uncover unexpected MRI intensity patterns arising from two orthogonal
pairs of faces of a metal strip, and derive formulae for their intensity
ratios, revealing differing effective elemental volumes (voxels) underneath
these faces.
  Further, we furnish chemical shift imaging (CSI) results that discriminate
different faces (surfaces) of a metal block according to their distinct nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shifts, which holds much promise for
monitoring surface chemical reactions noninvasively.
  Bulk metals are ubiquitous, and MRI is a premier noninvasive diagnostic tool.
Combining the two, the emerging field of bulk metal MRI can be expected to grow
in importance. The fundamental nature of results presented here may impactbulk
metal MRI and CSI across many fields.


title: Plasmon mass scale in classical nonequilibrium gauge theory

abstract:
  Classical lattice Yang-Mills calculations provide a good way to understand
different nonequilibrium phenomena in nonperturbatively overoccupied systems.
Above the Debye scale the classical theory can be matched smoothly to kinetic
theory. The aim of this work is to study the limits of this quasiparticle
picture by determining the plasmon mass in classical real time Yang-Mills
theory on a lattice in 3 spatial dimensions. We compare three methods to
determine the plasmon mass: a hard thermal loop expression in terms of the
particle distribution, an effective dispersion relation constructed from fields
and their time derivatives, and by measuring oscillations between electric and
magnetic field modes after artificially introducing a homogeneous color
electric field. We find that a version of the dispersion relation that uses
electric fields and their time derivatives agrees with the other methods within
50%.


title:
Minimal dimension faithful linear representations of common finitely
  presented groups

abstract:
  For various finitely presented groups, including right angled Artin groups
and free by cyclic groups, we investigate what is the smallest dimension of a
faithful linear representation. This is done both over C and over fields of
positive characteristic. In particular we show that Gersten's free by cyclic
group has no faithful linear representation of dimension 4 or less over C, but
has no faithful linear representation of any dimension over fields of positive
characteristic.


title: Optimistic Semi-supervised Least Squares Classification

abstract:
  The goal of semi-supervised learning is to improve supervised classifiers by
using additional unlabeled training examples. In this work we study a simple
self-learning approach to semi-supervised learning applied to the least squares
classifier. We show that a soft-label and a hard-label variant of self-learning
can be derived by applying block coordinate descent to two related but slightly
different objective functions. The resulting soft-label approach is related to
an idea about dealing with missing data that dates back to the 1930s. We show
that the soft-label variant typically outperforms the hard-label variant on
benchmark datasets and partially explain this behaviour by studying the
relative difficulty of finding good local minima for the corresponding
objective functions.


title:
Quantum state estimation when qubits are lost: A no-data-left-behind
  approach

abstract:
  We present an approach to Bayesian mean estimation of quantum states using
hyperspherical parametrization and an experiment-specific likelihood which
allows utilization of all available data, even when qubits are lost. With this
method, we report the first closed-form Bayesian mean estimate for the ideal
single qubit. Due to computational constraints, we utilize numerical sampling
to determine the Bayesian mean estimate for a photonic two-qubit experiment in
which our novel analysis reduces burdens associated with experimental
asymmetries and inefficiencies. This method can be applied to quantum states of
any dimension and experimental complexity.


title: Dynamic R&D Competition under Uncertainty and Strategic Disclosure

abstract:
  We study a model of dynamic two-stage R&D competition where the competing
firms are uncertain about the difficulty of the first stage. Staying in the
competition is costly and a firm can also choose whether and when to quit. When
a firm solves the first stage, it can choose whether and when to disclose the
solution. We find that there exists a unique symmetric equilibrium, in which
each firm will disclose the solution of the first stage if it arrives early,
withhold the solution if it arrives neither too soon nor too late, and exit the
competition if it has not arrived after a sufficiently long time. From a social
welfare perspective, a competition is surprisingly not always optimal: in
certain scenarios, it is socially more desirable to assign the R&D project to a
single firm.


title: Primary thermometry triad at 6 mK in mesoscopic circuits

abstract:
  Quantum physics emerge and develop as temperature is reduced. Although
mesoscopic electrical circuits constitute an outstanding platform to explore
quantum behavior, the challenge in cooling the electrons impedes their
potential. The strong coupling of such micrometer-scale devices with the
measurement lines, combined with the weak coupling to the substrate, makes them
extremely difficult to thermalize below 10 mK and imposes in-situ thermometers.
Here we demonstrate electronic quantum transport at 6 mK in micrometer-scale
mesoscopic circuits. The thermometry methods are established by the comparison
of three in-situ primary thermometers, each involving a different underlying
physics. The employed combination of quantum shot noise, quantum back-action of
a resistive circuit and conductance oscillations of a single-electron
transistor covers a remarkably broad spectrum of mesoscopic phenomena. The
experiment, performed in vacuum using a standard cryogen-free dilution
refrigerator, paves the way toward the sub-millikelvin range with additional
thermalization and refrigeration techniques.


title:
Effects of topological edge states on the thermoelectric properties of
  Bi nanoribbons

abstract:
  Using first-principles calculations combined with Boltzmann transport theory,
we investigate the effects of topological edge states on the thermoelectric
properties of Bi nanoribbons. It is found that there is a competition between
the edge and bulk contributions to the Seebeck coefficients. However, the
electronic transport of the system is dominated by the edge states because of
its much larger electrical conductivity. As a consequence, a room temperature
value exceeding 3.0 could be achieved for both p- and n-type systems when the
relaxation time ratio between the edge and the bulk states is tuned to be 1000.
Our theoretical study suggests that the utilization of topological edge states
might be a promising approach to cross the threshold of the industrial
application of thermoelectricity.


title:
Fast, Accurate, Straightforward Extreme Quantiles of Compound Loss
  Distributions

abstract:
  We present an easily implemented, fast, and accurate method for approximating
extreme quantiles of compound loss distributions (frequency+severity) as are
commonly used in insurance and operational risk capital models. The
Interpolated Single Loss Approximation (ISLA) of Opdyke (2014) is based on the
widely used Single Loss Approximation (SLA) of Degen (2010) and maintains two
important advantages over its competitors: first, ISLA correctly accounts for a
discontinuity in SLA that otherwise can systematically and notably bias the
quantile (capital) approximation under conditions of both finite and infinite
mean. Secondly, because it is based on a closed-form approximation, ISLA
maintains the notable speed advantages of SLA over other methods requiring
algorithmic looping (e.g. fast Fourier transform or Panjer recursion). Speed is
important when simulating many quantile (capital) estimates, as is so often
required in practice, and essential when simulations of simulations are needed
(e.g. some power studies). The modified ISLA (MISLA) presented herein increases
the range of application across the severity distributions most commonly used
in these settings, and it is tested against extensive Monte Carlo simulation
(one billion years' worth of losses) and the best competing method (the
perturbative expansion (PE2) of Hernandez et al., 2014) using twelve
heavy-tailed severity distributions, some of which are truncated. MISLA is
shown to be comparable to PE2 in terms of both speed and accuracy, and it is
arguably more straightforward to implement for the majority of Advanced
Measurement Approaches (AMA) banks that are already using SLA (and failing to
take into account its biasing discontinuity).


title: Backward stochastic differential equations with Young drift

abstract:
  We prove via a direct fixpoint argument the well-posedness of backward
stochastic differential equations containing an additional drift driven by a
path of finite $p$-variation with $p \in [1,2)$. An application to the
Feynman-Kac representation of semilinear rough partial differential equations
is given.


title: Quantum Critical Point revisited by the Dynamical Mean Field Theory

abstract:
  Dynamical mean field theory is used to study the quantum critical point (QCP)
in the doped Hubbard model on a square lattice. The QCP is characterized by a
universal scaling form of the self energy and a spin density wave instability
at an incommensurate wave vector. The scaling form unifies the low energy kink
and the high energy waterfall feature in the spectral function, while the spin
dynamics includes both the critical incommensurate and high energy
antiferromagnetic paramagnons. We use the frequency dependent four-point
correlation function of spin operators to calculate the momentum dependent
correction to the electron self energy. Our results reveal a substantial
difference with the calculations based on the Spin-Fermion model which
indicates that the frequency dependence of the the quasiparitcle-paramagnon
vertices is an important factor.


title:
Discovering Small Target Sets in Social Networks: A Fast and Effective
  Algorithm

abstract:
  Given a network represented by a graph $G=(V,E)$, we consider a dynamical
process of influence diffusion in $G$ that evolves as follows: Initially only
the nodes of a given $S\subseteq V$ are influenced; subsequently, at each
round, the set of influenced nodes is augmented by all the nodes in the network
that have a sufficiently large number of already influenced neighbors. The
question is to determine a small subset of nodes $S$ (\emph{a target set}) that
can influence the whole network. This is a widely studied problem that
abstracts many phenomena in the social, economic, biological, and physical
sciences. It is known that the above optimization problem is hard to
approximate within a factor of $2^{\log^{1-\epsilon}|V|}$, for any $\epsilon
>0$. In this paper, we present a fast and surprisingly simple algorithm that
exhibits the following features: 1) when applied to trees, cycles, or complete
graphs, it always produces an optimal solution (i.e, a minimum size target
set); 2) when applied to arbitrary networks, it always produces a solution of
cardinality which improves on the previously known upper bound; 3) when applied
to real-life networks, it always produces solutions that substantially
outperform the ones obtained by previously published algorithms (for which no
proof of optimality or performance guarantee is known in any class of graphs).


title: Synthesis of Perovskite SrIrO3 Thin Films by Sputtering Technique

abstract:
  We report on the synthesis of perovskite SrIrO3 thin films using sputtering
technique. Single phase (110) oriented SrIrO$_3$ thin films were epitaxially
grown on SrTiO3 (001) substrate. Using off-axis XRD $\theta-2\theta$ scans, we
demonstrate that these films exhibit (110) out-of-plane orientation with (001)
and (1-10) lying in-plane. The sputtering grown thin films have a smooth,
homogeneous surface, and excellent coherent interface with the substrate.


title: Measuring Charged Particle Multiplicity with Early ATLAS Public Data

abstract:
  We study 100 images of early LHC collisions that were recorded by the ATLAS
experiment and made public for outreach purposes, and extract the charged
particle multiplicity as a function of momentum for proton-proton collisions at
sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. As the collisions we study have already been pre-processed by
the ATLAS Collaboration, the tracks are visible, but are available to the
public only in the form of low-resolution bitmaps. We employ two separate image
processing methods, one based on the industry-standard OpenCV library and C++,
another based on self-developed algorithms in Python. We present the transverse
momentum and azimuthal angle distributions of the particles obtained through
both methods, in agreement with the literature.


title: Decision trees unearth return sign correlation in the S&P 500

abstract:
  Technical trading rules and linear regressive models are often used by
practitioners to find trends in financial data. However, these models are
unsuited to find non-linearly separable patterns. We propose a decision tree
forecasting model that has the flexibility to capture arbitrary patterns. To
illustrate, we construct a binary Markov process with a deterministic component
that cannot be predicted with an autoregressive process. A simulation study
confirms the robustness of the trees and limitation of the autoregressive
model. Finally, adjusting for multiple testing, we show that some tree based
strategies achieve trading performance significant at the 99% confidence level
on the S&P 500 over the past 20 years. The best strategy breaks even with the
buy-and-hold strategy at 21 bps in transaction costs per round trip. A
four-factor regression analysis shows significant intercept and correlation
with the market. The return anomalies are strongest during the bursts of the
dotcom bubble, financial crisis, and European debt crisis. The correlation of
the return signs during these periods confirms the theoretical model.


title: Post Selection Inference with Kernels

abstract:
  We propose a novel kernel based post selection inference (PSI) algorithm,
which can not only handle non-linearity in data but also structured output such
as multi-dimensional and multi-label outputs. Specifically, we develop a PSI
algorithm for independence measures, and propose the Hilbert-Schmidt
Independence Criterion (HSIC) based PSI algorithm (hsicInf). The novelty of the
proposed algorithm is that it can handle non-linearity and/or structured data
through kernels. Namely, the proposed algorithm can be used for wider range of
applications including nonlinear multi-class classification and multi-variate
regressions, while existing PSI algorithms cannot handle them. Through
synthetic experiments, we show that the proposed approach can find a set of
statistically significant features for both regression and classification
problems. Moreover, we apply the hsicInf algorithm to a real-world data, and
show that hsicInf can successfully identify important features.


title: Sum of Observables on MV-Effect Algebras

abstract:
  Using a one-to-one correspondence between observables and their spectral
resolutions, we introduce the sum of any two bounded observables of a
$\sigma$-MV-effect algebra. This sum is commutative, associative and with
neutral element. Under the Olson order of observables, the set of bounded
observables is a partially ordered semigroup, and the set of sharp observables
is even a Dedekind $\sigma$-complete $\ell$-group with strong unit.


title:
Fair distributed user-traffic association in cache equipped cellular
  networks

abstract:
  Caching of popular content on wireless nodes is recently proposed as a means
to reduce congestion in the backbone of cellular networks and to improve
Quality of Service. From a network point of view, the goal is to offload as
many users as possible from the backbone network to the wireless caches while
at the same time offering good service to cache-unrelated users. Aggressive
offloading can lead to an unbalanced user association. Some wireless nodes can
be overloaded by cache-related traffic while the resources of others remain
underused. Given a fixed content placement, this work proposes an efficient
distributed algorithm to control and balance the association of cache-related
traffic among cellular cache memories. The algorithm allows the network to
achieve the globally optimal solution and can be executed on base stations
using a limited amount of information exchange between them. It is based on a
novel algorithm we call Bucket-filling. The solution limits the cache-users per
node by balancing the total load among the nodes in a fair way. The improvement
compared to common user assignment policies is highlighted for single- as well
as for multi-tier random networks.


title:
Simulation and assessment of ion kinetic effects in a direct-drive
  capsule implosion experiment

abstract:
  The first simulations employing a kinetic treatment of both fuel and shell
ions to model inertial confinement fusion experiments are presented, including
results showing the importance of kinetic physics processes in altering fusion
burn. A pair of direct drive capsule implosions performed at the OMEGA facility
with two different gas fills of deuterium, tritium, and helium-3 are analyzed.
During implosion shock convergence, highly non-Maxwellian ion velocity
distributions and separations in the density and temperature amongst the ion
species are observed. Diffusion of fuel into the capsule shell is identified as
a principal process that degrades fusion burn performance.


title:
Scheduling of Event-Triggered Networked Control Systems using Timed Game
  Automata

abstract:
  We discuss the scheduling of a set of networked control systems implemented
over a shared communication network. Each control loop is described by a
linear-time-invariant (LTI) system with an event-triggered implementation. We
assume the network can be used by at most one control loop at any time instant
and after each controller update, a pre-defined channel occupancy time elapses
before the network is available. In our framework we offer the scheduler two
options to avoid conflicts: using the event-triggering mechanism, where the
scheduler can choose the triggering coefficient; or forcing controller updates
at an earlier pre-defined time. Our objective is avoiding communication
conflict while guaranteeing stability of all control loops. We formulate the
original scheduling problem as a control synthesis problem over a network of
timed game automata (NTGA) with a safety objective. The NTGA is obtained by
taking the parallel composition of the timed game automata (TGA) associated
with the network and with all control loops. The construction of TGA associated
with control loops leverages recent results on the abstraction of timing models
of event-triggered LTI systems. In our problem, the safety objective is to
avoid that update requests from a control loop happen while the network is in
use by another task. We showcase the results in some examples.


title:
Non-rigid band shift and non-monotonic electronic structure changes upon
  doping in the normal state of the pnictide high temperature superconductor
  Ba2(Fe1-xCox)2As2

abstract:
  We report systematic Angle Resolved Photoemission (ARPES) experiments using
different photon polarizations and experimental geometries and find that the
doping evolution of the normal state of Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 deviates significantly
from the predictions of a rigid band model. The data reveal a non-monotonic
dependence upon doping of key quantities such as band filling, bandwidth of the
electron pocket, and quasiparticle coherence. Our analysis suggests that the
observed phenomenology and the inapplicability of the rigid band model in
Co-doped Ba122 are due to electronic correlations, and not to either the size
of the impurity potential, or self-energy effects due to impurity scattering.
Our findings indicate that the effects of doping in pnictides are much more
complicated than currently believed. More generally, they indicate that a deep
understanding of the evolution of the electronic properties of the normal
state, which requires an understanding of the doping process, remains elusive
even for the 122 iron-pnictides, which are viewed as the least correlated of
the high-TC unconventional superconductors.


title:
A possible long-term activity cycle for {\iota} Horologii: First results
  from the HK{\alpha} & SPI-HK{\alpha} projects

abstract:
  To detect stellar activity cycles and study the possible star-planet
interactions (SPI's), we have developed both HK$\alpha$ and SPI-HK$\alpha$
projects since 1999 and 2012 respectively.
  In this work, we present preliminary results of possible SPI's studying the
chromospheric activity and look for possible correlations between stellar
activity and stellar/planetary parameters. We find that for stars with similar
T$_{eff}$, stellar activity increases with the mass of the planet, similar to
previous works. However, stellar ages can also play a role and a larger stellar
sample is needed to verify these trends. We also note that some of these stars
present a remarkably high level of chromospheric activity, even comparable with
RSCvn or BY Dra active stars. In addition, we do not observe any correlation
between stellar activity and semi-major axis.
  We present the first long-term activity study of the star $\iota$ Horologii,
a young solar-type star which hosts a non-transiting Jovian planet and presents
a high activity level. We analyze our own spectra, obtained between 2002 and
2015, combined with public HARPS observations. We calculate the Ca II indexes
derived from the 987 CASLEO and HARPS spectra and convert them to the
Mount-Wilson scale. We found a long-term activity cycle of $\sim$ 5 years which
fits the active sequence of Bohm-Vitense. The amplitude of this longer cycle is
irregular, as was also observed for the shorter one. This fact could be
attributed to an antisymmetric distribution of active regions on the stellar
surface.


title:
MiNDSTEp differential photometry of the gravitationally lensed quasars
  WFI2033-4723 and HE0047-1756: Microlensing and a new time delay

abstract:
  We present V and R photometry of the gravitationally lensed quasars
WFI2033-4723 and HE0047-1756. The data were taken by the MiNDSTEp collaboration
with the 1.54 m Danish telescope at the ESO La Silla observatory from 2008 to
2012. Differential photometry has been carried out using the image subtraction
method as implemented in the HOTPAnTS package, additionally using GALFIT for
quasar photometry. The quasar WFI2033-4723 showed brightness variations of
order 0.5 mag in V and R during the campaign. The two lensed components of
quasar HE0047-1756 varied by 0.2-0.3 mag within five years. We provide, for the
first time, an estimate of the time delay of component B with respect to A of
$\Delta t= 7.6\pm1.8$ days for this object. We also find evidence for a secular
evolution of the magnitude difference between components A and B in both
filters, which we explain as due to a long-duration microlensing event. Finally
we find that both quasars WFI2033-4723 and HE0047-1756 become bluer when
brighter, which is consistent with previous studies.


title: Study of the Six-Loop Beta Function of the $\lambda\phi^4_4$ Theory

abstract:
  We investigate whether the six-loop beta function of the $\lambda \phi^4_4$
theory exhibits evidence for an ultraviolet zero. As part of our analysis, we
calculate and analyze Pad\'e approximants to this beta function. Extending our
earlier results at the five-loop level, we find that in the range of $\lambda$
where the perturbative calculation of the six-loop beta function is reliable,
the theory does not exhibit robust evidence for an ultraviolet zero.


title:
Existence and multiplicity results for the fractional Laplacian in
  bounded domains

abstract:
  In this paper, first we study existence results for a linearly perturbed
elliptic problem driven by the fractional Laplacian. Then, we show a
multiplicity result when the perturbation parameter is close to the
eigenvalues. This latter result is obtained by exploiting the topological
structure of the sublevels of the associated functional, which permits to apply
a critical point theorem of mixed nature due to Marino and Saccon.


title: The magnetohydrodynamic description of Earth's ionosphere

abstract:
  The wave propagation in the partially ionized ionosphere plays an important
role in the magnetosphere ionosphere coupling. For example, the ionosphere may
supports very low-frequency Alfven wave which can be caused by a balance
between the bulk fluid inertia (mostly due to neutrals in the lower and middle
E region) and the deformation of the magnetic field. The plasma neutral
collisional momentum exchange facilitates the transfer of the magnetic stress
(felt directly by the ions) to the neutrals. Therefore, in the low-frequency
(with respect to the neutral ion collision frequency) limit, waves through the
ionosphere can propagate with very little damping. In the vanishing plasma
inertia limit, waves can be excited due to the loading of neutral inertia on
the field lines and thus may have very long wavelength and can easily couple to
the magnetosphere. The frequency of these waves are below few Hz.


title:
Burst Transmission Symbol Synchronization in the Presence of Cycle Slip
  Arising from Different Clock Frequencies

abstract:
  In digital communication systems different clock frequencies of transmitter
and receiver usually is translated into cycle slips. Receivers might experience
different sampling frequencies from transmitter due to manufacturing
imperfection, Doppler Effect introduced by channel or wrong estimation of
symbol rate. Timing synchronization in presence of cycle slip for a burst
sequence of received information, leads to severe degradation in system
performance that represents as shortening or prolonging of bit stream. Therefor
the necessity of prior detection and elimination of cycle slip is unavoidable.
Accordingly, the main idea introduced in this paper is to employ the Gardner
Detector (GAD) not only to recover a fixed timing offset, its output is also
processed in a way such that timing drifts can be estimated and corrected.
Deriving a two steps algorithm, eliminates the cycle slips arising from wrong
estimation of symbol rate firstly, and then iteratively synchronize symbol
timing of a burst received signal by applying GAD to a feed forward structure
with the additional benefits that convergence and stability problems are
avoided, as they are typical for feedback schemes normally used by GAD. The
proposed algorithm is able to compensate considerable symbol rate offsets at
the receiver side. Considerable results in terms of BER confirm the algorithm
proficiency.