title: On Truncated Generalized Gibbs Ensembles in the Ising Field Theory

abstract:
  We discuss the implementation of two different truncated Generalized Gibbs
Ensembles (GGE) describing the stationary state after a mass quench process in
the Ising Field Theory. One truncated GGE is based on the semi-local charges of
the model, the other on regularized versions of its ultra-local charges. We
test the efficiency of the two different ensembles by comparing their
predictions for the stationary state values of the single-particle Green's
function $G(x) = \langle \psi^{\dagger}(x) \psi(0) \rangle$ of the complex
fermion field $\psi(x)$. We find that both truncated GGEs are able to recover
$G(x)$, but for a given number of charges the semi-local version performs
better.


title: SaberLDA: Sparsity-Aware Learning of Topic Models on GPUs

abstract:
  Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a popular tool for analyzing discrete
count data such as text and images. Applications require LDA to handle both
large datasets and a large number of topics. Though distributed CPU systems
have been used, GPU-based systems have emerged as a promising alternative
because of the high computational power and memory bandwidth of GPUs. However,
existing GPU-based LDA systems cannot support a large number of topics because
they use algorithms on dense data structures whose time and space complexity is
linear to the number of topics. In this paper, we propose SaberLDA, a GPU-based
LDA system that implements a sparsity-aware algorithm to achieve sublinear time
complexity and scales well to learn a large number of topics. To address the
challenges introduced by sparsity, we propose a novel data layout, a new
warp-based sampling kernel, and an efficient sparse count matrix updating
algorithm that improves locality, makes efficient utilization of GPU warps, and
reduces memory consumption. Experiments show that SaberLDA can learn from
billions-token-scale data with up to 10,000 topics, which is almost two orders
of magnitude larger than that of the previous GPU-based systems. With a single
GPU card, SaberLDA is able to learn 10,000 topics from a dataset of billions of
tokens in a few hours, which is only achievable with clusters with tens of
machines before.


title:
Multiuser Diversity Gain from Superposition of Infinite Users over
  Block-Fading MAC

abstract:
  In uplink block-fading multiple access channel (BF-MAC), the advantage of
multiuser diversity (MUD) can be taken to achieve higher system throughput. In
this letter, with rate constraints for all users and only channel state
information available at the receiver assumed, we demonstrate that
non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) outperforms the counterpart of orthogonal
multiple access (OMA) via exploiting the MUD from the superposition of multiple
users. The MUD gain achieved by NOMA compared with OMA is quantitatively
analyzed for finite users, and the closed-form upper bound of MUD gain from the
superposition of infinite users is also derived. Numerical results show that
the potential MUD gain from superposition of infinite users can be well
approached with limited superposed users, which indicates that multiple access
schemes with limited superposed users can provide a good tradeoff between
system performance and decoding complexity.


title:
On geometry of congruences of null strings in 4-dimensional complex and
  real pseudo-Riemannian spaces

abstract:
  4-dimensional spaces equipped with 2-dimensional (complex holomorphic or real
smooth) completely integrable distributions are considered. The integral
manifolds of such distributions are totally null and totally geodesics
2-dimensional surfaces which are called the null strings. Properties of
congruences (foliations) of such 2-surfaces are studied. Some relations between
properties of congruences of null strings, Petrov-Penrose type of SD Weyl
spinor and algebraic types of the traceless Ricci tensor are analyzed.


title: SU(1,2) invariance in two-dimensional oscillator

abstract:
  Performing the Hamiltonian analysis we explicitly established the canonical
equivalence of the deformed oscillator, constructed in
arXiv:1607.03756[hep-th], with the ordinary one. As an immediate consequence,
we proved that the SU(1,2) symmetry is the dynamical symmetry of the ordinary
two-dimensional oscillator. The characteristic feature of this SU(1,2) symmetry
is a non-polynomial structure of its generators written it terms of the
oscillator variables.


title:
Probabilistic Process Algebra to Unifying Quantum and Classical
  Computing in Closed Systems

abstract:
  We have unified quantum and classical computing in open quantum systems
called qACP which is a quantum generalization of process algebra ACP. But, an
axiomatization for quantum and classical processes with an assumption of closed
quantum systems is still missing. For closed quantum systems, unitary operator,
quantum measurement and quantum entanglement are three basic components for
quantum computing. This leads to probability unavoidable. Along the solution of
qACP to unify quantum and classical computing in open quantum systems, we unify
quantum and classical computing with an assumption of closed systems under the
framework of ACP-like probabilistic process algebra. This unification make it
can be used widely in verification for quantum and classical computing mixed
systems, such as most quantum communication protocols.


title: Revisiting Multiple Instance Neural Networks

abstract:
  Recently neural networks and multiple instance learning are both attractive
topics in Artificial Intelligence related research fields. Deep neural networks
have achieved great success in supervised learning problems, and multiple
instance learning as a typical weakly-supervised learning method is effective
for many applications in computer vision, biometrics, nature language
processing, etc. In this paper, we revisit the problem of solving multiple
instance learning problems using neural networks. Neural networks are appealing
for solving multiple instance learning problem. The multiple instance neural
networks perform multiple instance learning in an end-to-end way, which take a
bag with various number of instances as input and directly output bag label.
All of the parameters in a multiple instance network are able to be optimized
via back-propagation. We propose a new multiple instance neural network to
learn bag representations, which is different from the existing multiple
instance neural networks that focus on estimating instance label. In addition,
recent tricks developed in deep learning have been studied in multiple instance
networks, we find deep supervision is effective for boosting bag classification
accuracy. In the experiments, the proposed multiple instance networks achieve
state-of-the-art or competitive performance on several MIL benchmarks.
Moreover, it is extremely fast for both testing and training, e.g., it takes
only 0.0003 second to predict a bag and a few seconds to train on a MIL
datasets on a moderate CPU.


title: Dynamic Trade-Off Prediction in Multi-Stage Retrieval Systems

abstract:
  Modern multi-stage retrieval systems are comprised of a candidate generation
stage followed by one or more reranking stages. In such an architecture, the
quality of the final ranked list may not be sensitive to the quality of initial
candidate pool, especially in terms of early precision. This provides several
opportunities to increase retrieval efficiency without significantly
sacrificing effectiveness. In this paper, we explore a new approach to
dynamically predicting two different parameters in the candidate generation
stage which can directly affect the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the
entire system. Previous work exploring this tradeoff has focused on global
parameter settings that apply to all queries, even though optimal settings vary
across queries. In contrast, we propose a technique which makes a parameter
prediction that maximizes efficiency within a effectiveness envelope on a per
query basis, using only static pre-retrieval features. The query-specific
tradeoff point between effectiveness and efficiency is decided using a
classifier cascade that weighs possible efficiency gains against effectiveness
losses over a range of possible parameter cutoffs to make the prediction. The
interesting twist in our new approach is to train classifiers without requiring
explicit relevance judgments. We show that our framework is generalizable by
applying it to two different retrieval parameters - selecting k in common top-k
query retrieval algorithms, and setting a quality threshold, $\rho$, for
score-at-a-time approximate query evaluation algorithms. Experimental results
show that substantial efficiency gains are achievable depending on the dynamic
parameter choice. In addition, our framework provides a versatile tool that can
be used to estimate the effectiveness-efficiency tradeoffs that are possible
before selecting and tuning algorithms to make machine learned predictions.


title:
Some comments about A Bayesian criterion for singular models by M. Drton
  and M. Plummer

abstract:
  These are written comments about the Read Paper A Bayesian criterion for
singular models by M. Drton and M. Plummer, read to the Royal Statistical
Society on October 5, 2016. The discussion was delivered by Judith Rousseau.


title: Minimizing the sum of projections of a finite set

abstract:
  Consider the projections of a finite set $A\subset R^n$ onto the coordinate
hyperplanes. How small can the sum of the sizes of these projections be, given
the size of $A$? In a different form, this problem has been studied earlier in
the context of edge-isoperimetric inequalities on graphs, and it is can be
derived from the known results that there is a linear order on the set of
$n$-tuples with non-negative integer coordinates, such that the sum in question
is minimised for the initial segments with respect to this order. We present a
new, self-contained and constructive proof, enabling us to obtain a stability
result and establish algebraic properties of the smallest possible projection
sum. We also solve the problem of minimising the sum of the sizes of the
one-dimensional projections.


title: Resolution studies with the DATURA beam telescope

abstract:
  Detailed studies of the resolution of a EUDET-type beam telescope are carried
out using the DATURA beam telescope as an example. The EUDET-type beam
telescopes make use of CMOS MIMOSA 26 pixel detectors for particle tracking
allowing for precise characterisation of particle sensing devices. A profound
understanding of the performance of the beam telescope as a whole is obtained
by a detailed characterisation of the sensors themselves. The differential
intrinsic resolution as measured in a MIMOSA 26 sensor is extracted using an
iterative pull method and various quantities that depend on the size of the
cluster are discussed: the residual distribution, the intra-pixel
residual-width distribution and the intra-pixel density distribution of track
incident positions.


title:
Global hyperon polarization at local thermodynamic equilibrium with
  vorticity, magnetic field and feed-down

abstract:
  The system created in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions is known to behave
as an almost ideal liquid. In non-central collisions, due to the large orbital
momentum, such a system might be the fluid with the highest vorticity ever
created under laboratory conditions. Particles emerging from such a highly
vorticous fluid are expected to be globally polarized with their spins on
average pointing along the system angular momentum. Vorticity-induced
polarization is the same for particles and antiparticles, but the intense
magnetic field generated in these collisions may lead to the splitting in
polarization. In this paper we outline the thermal approach to the calculation
of the global polarization phenomenon for particles with spin and we discuss
the details of the experimental study of this phenomenon, estimating the effect
of feed-down. A general formula is derived for the polarization transfer in
two-body decays and, particularly, for strong and electromagnetic decays. We
find that accounting for such effects is crucial when extracting vorticity and
magnetic field from the experimental data.


title: Metalenses at visible wavelengths: past, present, perspectives

abstract:
  The so-called "flat optics" that shapes the phase of an incident wave in free
space through subwavelength structures has a venerable history. In that domain,
achieving high efficiency at large deflection angles requires a low absorption
material, a suitable technological process, as well as suitably engineered
nanostructures that makes them electromagnetically independent despite the
small spacing required to spatially sample a rapidly varying phase.


title: Conditional survival given covariates and marginal survival

abstract:
  Assuming some regression model, it is common to study the conditional
distribution of survival given covariates. Here, we consider the impact of
further conditioning, specifically conditioning on a marginal survival
function, known or estimated. We investigate to what purposes any such
information can be used in a proportional or non-proportional hazards
regression analysis of time on the covariates. It does not lead to any
improvement in efficiency when the form of the assumed proportional hazards
model is valid. However, when the proportional hazards model is not valid, the
usual partial likelihood estimator is not consistent and depends heavily on the
unknown censoring mechanism. In this case we show that the conditional estimate
that we propose is consistent for a parameter that has a strong interpretation
independent of censoring. Simulations and examples are provided.


title:
Content-Based Image Retrieval Using Multiresolution Analysis Of
  Shape-Based Classified Images

abstract:
  Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems have been widely used for a wide
range of applications such as Art collections, Crime prevention and
Intellectual property. In this paper, a novel CBIR system, which utilizes
visual contents (color, texture and shape) of an image to retrieve images, is
proposed. The proposed system builds three feature vectors and stores them into
MySQL database. The first feature vector uses descriptive statistics to
describe the distribution of data in each channel of RGB channels of the image.
The second feature vector describes the texture using eigenvalues of the 39
sub-bands that are generated after applying four levels 2D DWT in each channel
(red, green and blue channels) of the image. These wavelets sub-bands perfectly
describes the horizontal, vertical and diagonal edges that exist in the
multi-resolution analysis of the image. The third feature vector describes the
basic shapes that exist in the skeletonization version of the black and white
representation of the image. Experimental results on a private MYSQL database
that consists of 10000 images, using color, texture, shape and stored relevance
feedbacks, showed 96.4% average correct retrieval rate in an efficient recovery
time.


title: Gauged twistor spinors and symmetry operators

abstract:
  We consider gauged twistor spinors which are supersymmetry generators of
supersymmetric and superconformal field theories in curved backgrounds. We show
that the spinor bilinears of gauged twistor spinors satify the gauged conformal
Killing-Yano equation. We prove that the symmetry operators of the gauged
twistor spinor equation can be constructed from ordinary conformal Killing-Yano
forms in constant curvature backgrounds. This provides a way to obtain gauged
twistor spinors from ordinary twistor spinors.


title: Cost-Effective Millimeter Wave Communications with Lens Antenna Array

abstract:
  Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology for the
fifth-generation (5G) wireless system. However, the large number of antennas
used and the wide signal bandwidth in mmWave systems render the conventional
multi-antenna techniques increasingly costly in terms of signal processing
complexity, hardware implementation, and power consumption. In this article, we
investigate cost-effective mmWave communications by first providing an overview
of the main existing techniques that offer different trade-offs between
performance and cost, and then focusing our discussion on a promising new
technique based on the advanced lens antenna array. It is revealed that by
exploiting the angle-dependent energy focusing property of lens arrays,
together with the angular sparsity of the mmWave channels, mmWave lens-antenna
system is able to achieve the capacity-optimal performance with very few
radio-frequency (RF) chains and using the low-complexity single-carrier
transmission, even for wide-band frequency-selective channels. Numerical
results show that the lens-based system significantly outperforms the
state-of-the-art designs for mmWave systems in both spectrum efficiency and
energy efficiency.


title: Location-Aided Pilot Contamination Avoidance for Massive MIMO Systems

abstract:
  Pilot contamination, defined as the interference during the channel
estimation process due to reusing the same pilot sequences in neighboring
cells, can severely degrade the performance of massive multiple-input
multiple-output systems. In this paper, we propose a location-based approach to
mitigating the pilot contamination problem for uplink multiple-input
multiple-output systems. Our approach makes use of the approximate locations of
mobile devices to provide good estimates of the channel statistics between the
mobile devices and their corresponding base stations. Specifically, we aim at
avoiding pilot contamination even when the number of base station antennas is
not very large, and when multiple users from different cells, or even in the
same cell, are assigned the same pilot sequence. First, we characterize a
desired angular region of the target user at the serving base station based on
the number of base station antennas and the location of the target user, and
make the observation that in this region the interference is close to zero due
to the spatial separability. Second, based on this observation, we propose
pilot coordination methods for multi-user multi-cell scenarios to avoid pilot
contamination. The numerical results indicate that the proposed pilot
contamination avoidance schemes enhance the quality of the channel estimation
and thereby improve the per-cell sum rate offered by target base stations.


title: Smooth manifold structure for extreme channels

abstract:
  A quantum channel from a system $A$ of dimension $d_A$ to a system $B$ of
dimension $d_B$ is a completely positive trace-preserving map from complex
$d_A\times d_A$ to $d_B\times d_B$ matrices, and the set of all such maps with
Kraus rank $r$ has the structure of a smooth manifold. We describe this set in
two ways. First, as a quotient space of (a subset of) the $rd_B\times d_A$
dimensional Stiefel manifold. Secondly, as the set of all Choi-states of a
fixed rank $r$. These two descriptions are topologically equivalent. This
allows us to show that the set of all Choi-states corresponding to extreme
channels from system $A$ to system $B$ of a fixed Kraus rank $r$ is a smooth
submanifold of dimension $2rd_Ad_B-d_A^2-r^2$ of the set of all Choi-states of
rank $r$. As an application, we derive a lower bound on the number of
parameters required for a quantum circuit topology to be able to approximate
all extreme channels from $A$ to $B$ arbitrarily well.


title:
Teleportation of a qubit using entangled non-orthogonal states: A
  comparative study

abstract:
  The effect of non-orthogonality of an entangled non-orthogonal state based
quantum channel is investigated in detail in the context of the teleportation
of a qubit. Specifically, average fidelity, minimum fidelity and minimum
assured fidelity (MASFI) are obtained for teleportation of a single qubit state
using all the Bell type entangled non-orthogonal states known as quasi Bell
states. Using Horodecki criterion, it is shown that the teleportation scheme
obtained by replacing the quantum channel (Bell state) of the usual
teleportation scheme by a quasi Bell state is optimal. Further, the performance
of various quasi Bell states as teleportation channel is compared in an ideal
situation (i.e., in the absence of noise) and under different noise models
(e.g., amplitude and phase damping channels). It is observed that the best
choice of the quasi Bell state depends on the amount non-orthogonality, both in
noisy and noiseless case. A specific quasi Bell state, which was found to be
maximally entangled in the ideal conditions, is shown to be less efficient as a
teleportation channel compared to other quasi Bell states in particular cases
when subjected to noisy channels. It has also been observed that usually the
value of average fidelity falls with an increase in the number of qubits
exposed to noisy channels (viz., Alice's, Bob's and to be teleported qubits),
but the converse may be observed in some particular cases.


title: Inference for changepoint survival models

abstract:
  We consider a non-proportional hazards model where the regression coefficient
is not constant but piecewise constant. Following Andersen and Gill (1982), we
know that a knowledge of the changepoint leads to a relatively straightforward
estimation of the regression coefficients on either side of the changepoint.
Between adjacent changepoints, we place ourselves under the proportional
hazards model. We can then maximize the partial likelihood to obtain a
consistent estimation of the regression coefficients. Difficulties occur when
we want to estimate these changepoints. We obtain a confidence region for the
changepoint, under a two-step regression model (Anderson and Senthilselvan,
1982), based on the work of Davies (1977). Then we introduce a new estimation
method using the standardized score process (Chauvel and O'Quigley, 2014),
under a model with multiple changepoints. In this context, rather than make use
of the partial likelihood, we base inference on minimization of quadratic
residuals. Simulations and an example are provided.


title: Saliency-Guided Complexity Control for HEVC Decoding

abstract:
  The latest High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard significantly
improves coding efficiency over its previous video coding standards. The
expense of such improvement is enormous computational complexity, from both
encoding and decoding sides. Since computational capability and power capacity
are diverse across portable devices, it is necessary to reduce decoding
complexity to a target with tolerable quality loss, so called complexity
control. This paper proposes a Saliency-Guided Complexity Control (SGCC)
approach for HEVC decoding, which reduces the decoding complexity to the target
with minimal perceptual quality loss. First, we establish the SGCC formulation
to minimize perceptual quality loss at the constraint on reduced decoding
complexity, which is achieved via disabling Deblocking Filter (DF) and
simplifying Motion Compensation (MC) of some non-salient Coding Tree Units
(CTUs). One important component in this formulation is the modelled
relationship between decoding complexity reduction and DF disabling/MC
simplification, which determines the control accuracy of our approach. Another
component is the modelled relationship between quality loss and DF disabling/MC
simplification, responsible for optimizing perceptual quality. By solving the
SGCC formulation for a given target complexity, we can obtain the DF and MC
settings of each CTU, and then decoding complexity can be reduced to the
target. Finally, the experimental results validate the effectiveness of our
SGCC approach, from the aspects of control performance, complexity-distortion
performance, fluctuation of quality loss and subjective quality.


title:
A Hybrid Model for Estimating Software Project Effort from Use Case
  Points

abstract:
  Early software effort estimation is a hallmark of successful software project
management. Building a reliable effort estimation model usually requires
historical data. Unfortunately, since the information available at early stages
of software development is scarce, it is recommended to use software size
metrics as key cost factor of effort estimation. Use Case Points (UCP) is a
prominent size measure designed mainly for object-oriented projects.
Nevertheless, there are no established models that can translate UCP into its
corresponding effort, therefore, most models use productivity as a second cost
driver. The productivity in those models is usually guessed by experts and does
not depend on historical data, which makes it subject to uncertainty. Thus,
these models were not well examined using a large number of historical data. In
this paper, we designed a hybrid model that consists of classification and
prediction stages using a support vector machine and radial basis neural
networks. The proposed model was constructed over a large number of
observations collected from industrial and student projects. The proposed model
was compared against previous UCP prediction models. The validation and
empirical results demonstrated that the proposed model significantly surpasses
these models on all datasets. The main conclusion is that the environmental
factors of UCP can be used to classify and estimate productivity.


title: The Advantage of Truncated Permutations

abstract:
  Constructing a Pseudo Random Function (PRF) is a fundamental problem in
cryptology. Such a construction, implemented by truncating the last $m$ bits of
permutations of $\{0, 1\}^{n}$ was suggested by Hall et al. (1998). They
conjectured that the distinguishing advantage of an adversary with $q$ queries,
${\bf Adv}_{n, m} (q)$, is small if $q = o (2^{(n+m)/2})$, established an upper
bound on ${\bf Adv}_{n, m} (q)$ that confirms the conjecture for $m < n/7$, and
also declared a general lower bound ${\bf Adv}_{n,m}(q)=\Omega(q^2/2^{n+m})$.
The conjecture was essentially confirmed by Bellare and Impagliazzo (1999).
Nevertheless, the problem of {\em estimating} ${\bf Adv}_{n, m} (q)$ remained
open. Combining the trivial bound $1$, the birthday bound, and a result of Stam
(1978) leads to the upper bound \begin{equation*} {\bf Adv}_{n,m}(q) =
O\left(\min\left\{\frac{q(q-1)}{2^n},\,\frac{q}{2^{\frac{n+m}{2}}},\,1\right\}\right).
\end{equation*} In this paper we show that this upper bound is tight for every
$0\leq m<n$ and any $q$. This, in turn, verifies that the converse to the
conjecture of Hall et al. is also correct, i.e., that ${\bf Adv}_{n, m} (q)$ is
negligible only for $q = o (2^{(n+m)/2})$.


title:
Boundedness of the total energy of relativistic membranes evolving in a
  curved spacetime

abstract:
  We establish a global existence theory for the equation governing the
evolution of a relativistic membrane in a (possibly curved) Lorentzian
manifold, when the spacetime metric is a perturbation of the Minkowski metric.
Relying on the Hyperboloidal Foliation Method introduced by LeFloch and Ma in
2014, we revisit a theorem established earlier by Lindblad (who treated
membranes in the flat Minkowski spacetime) and we provide a simpler proof of
existence, which is also valid in a curved spacetime and, most importantly,
leads to the important property that the total energy of the membrane is
globally bounded in time.


title:
Transport and localization of waves in ladder-shaped lattices with
  locally $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric potentials

abstract:
  We study numerically the transport and localization properties of waves in
ordered and disordered ladder-shaped lattices with local $\mathcal{PT}$
symmetry. Using a transfer matrix method, we calculate the transmittance and
the reflectance for the individual channels and the Lyapunov exponent for the
whole system. In the absence of disorder, we find that when the gain/loss
parameter $\rho$ is smaller than the interchain coupling parameter $t_{v}$, the
transmittance and the reflectance are periodic functions of the system size,
whereas when $\rho$ is larger than $t_{v}$, the transmittance is found to be an
exponentially-decaying function while the reflectance attains a saturation
value in the thermodynamic limit. For a fixed system size, there appear perfect
transmission resonances in each individual channel at several values of the
gain/loss strength smaller than $t_{v}$. A singular behavior of the
transmittance is also found to appear at various values of $\rho$ for a given
system size. When disorder is inserted into the on-site potentials, these
behaviors are changed substantially due to the interplay between disorder and
the gain/loss effect. When $\rho$ is smaller than $t_{v}$, we find that the
presence of locally $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric potentials suppresses Anderson
localization, as compared to the localization in the corresponding Hermitian
system. When $\rho$ is larger than $t_{v}$, we find that localization becomes
more pronounced at higher gain/loss strengths. We also find that the phenomenon
of anomalous localization occurs in disordered locally $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric
systems precisely at the spectral positions $E=0$ and
$E=\pm\sqrt{t_{v}^2-\rho^2}$. The anomaly at the band center manifests as a
sharp peak contrary to the conventional cases, whereas the anomalies at
$E=\pm\sqrt{t_{v}^2-\rho^2}$ manifest as sharp dips.


title:
Anderson localization and saturable nonlinearity in one-dimensional
  disordered lattices

abstract:
  We investigate numerically the propagation and the Anderson localization of
plane waves in a one-dimensional lattice chain, where disorder and saturable
nonlinearity are simultaneously present. Using a calculation scheme for solving
the stationary discrete nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation in the fixed input
case, the disorder-averaged logarithmic transmittance and the localization
length are calculated in a numerically precise manner. The localization length
is found to be a nonmonotonic function of the incident wave intensity,
acquiring a minimum value at a certain finite intensity, due to saturation
effects. For low incident intensities where the saturation effect is
ineffective, the enhancement of localization due to Kerr-type nonlinearity
occurs in a way similar to the case without saturation. For sufficiently high
incident intensities, we find that the localization length is an increasing
function of the incident wave intensity, which implies that localization is
suppressed for stronger input intensities, and ultimately approaches a
saturation value. This feature is associated with the fact that the nonlinear
system is reduced to an effectively linear one, when either the incident wave
intensity or the saturation parameter is sufficiently large. We also find that
the nonlinear saturation effect is stronger and more pronounced when the energy
of the incident wave is larger.


title:
The $k_{R}$-property of free Abelian topological groups and products of
  sequential fans

abstract:
  A space $X$ is called a $k_{R}$-space, if $X$ is Tychonoff and the necessary
and sufficient condition for a real-valued function $f$ on $X$ to be continuous
is that the restriction of $f$ to each compact subset is continuous. In this
paper, we discuss the $k_{R}$-property of products of sequential fans and free
Abelian topological groups by applying the $\kappa$-fan introduced by Banakh.
In particular, we prove the following two results:
  (1) The space $S_{\omega_{1}}\times S_{\omega_{1}}$ is not a $k_{R}$-space.
  (2) The space $S_{\omega}\times S_{\omega_{1}}$ is a $k_{R}$-space if and
only if $S_{\omega}\times S_{\omega_{1}}$ is a $k$-space if and only if
$\mathfrak b>\omega_1$.
  These results generalize some well-known results on sequential fans.
Furthermore, we generalize some results of Yamada on the free Abelian
topological groups by applying the above results. Finally, we pose some open
questions about the $k_{R}$-spaces.


title: The $k_{R}$-property on free topological groups

abstract:
  A space $X$ is called a $k_{R}$-space, if $X$ is Tychonoff and the necessary
and sufficient condition for a real-valued function $f$ on $X$ to be continuous
is that the restriction of $f$ on each compact subset is continuous. In this
paper, we mainly discuss the $k_{R}$-property on the free topological groups,
and generalize some well-known results of K. Yamada's in the free topological
groups.


title:
Scalable orbital-angular-momentum sorting without destroying photon
  states

abstract:
  Single photons with orbital angular momentum (OAM) have attracted substantial
attention from researchers. A single photon can carry infinite OAM values
theoretically. Thus, OAM photon states have been widely used in quantum
information and fundamental quantum mechanics. Although there have been many
methods for sorting quantum states with different OAM values, the
nondestructive and efficient sorter of high-dimensional OAM remains a
fundamental challenge. Here, we propose a scalable OAM sorter which can
categorize different OAM states simultaneously, meanwhile, preserving both OAM
and spin angular momentum. Fundamental elements of the sorter are composed of
symmetric multiport beam splitters (BSs) and Dove prisms with cascading
structure, which in principle can be flexibly and effectively combined to sort
arbitrarily high-dimensional OAM photons. The scalable structures proposed here
greatly reduce the number of BSs required for sorting high-dimensional
OAMstates. In view of the nondestructive and extensible features, the sorters
can be used as fundamental devices not only for high-dimensional quantum
information processing, but also for traditional optics.


title: Sign changing solutions for quasilinear superlinear elliptic problems

abstract:
  Results on existence and multiplicity of solutions for a nonlinear elliptic
problem driven by the $\Phi$-Laplace operator are established. We employ
minimization arguments on suitable Nehari manifolds to build a negative and a
positive ground state solutions. In order to find a nodal solution we employ
additionally the well known Deformation Lemma and Topological Degree Theory.


title: Towards Policy Enforcement Point as a Service (PEPS)

abstract:
  In this paper, we coin the term Policy Enforcement as a Service (PEPS), which
enables the provision of innovative inter-layer and inter-domain Access
Control. We leverage the architecture of Software-Defined-Network (SDN) to
introduce a common network-level enforcement point, which is made available to
a range of access control systems. With our PEPS model, it is possible to have
a `defense in depth' protection model and drop unsuccessful access requests
before engaging the data provider (e.g. a database system). Moreover, the
current implementation of access control within the `trusted' perimeter of an
organization is no longer a restriction so that the potential for novel,
distributed and cooperative security services can be realized. We conduct an
analysis of the security requirements and technical challenges for implementing
Policy Enforcement as a Service. To illustrate the benefits of our proposal in
practice, we include a report on our prototype PEPS-enabled location-based
access control.


title:
Federated Optimization: Distributed Machine Learning for On-Device
  Intelligence

abstract:
  We introduce a new and increasingly relevant setting for distributed
optimization in machine learning, where the data defining the optimization are
unevenly distributed over an extremely large number of nodes. The goal is to
train a high-quality centralized model. We refer to this setting as Federated
Optimization. In this setting, communication efficiency is of the utmost
importance and minimizing the number of rounds of communication is the
principal goal.
  A motivating example arises when we keep the training data locally on users'
mobile devices instead of logging it to a data center for training. In
federated optimziation, the devices are used as compute nodes performing
computation on their local data in order to update a global model. We suppose
that we have extremely large number of devices in the network --- as many as
the number of users of a given service, each of which has only a tiny fraction
of the total data available. In particular, we expect the number of data points
available locally to be much smaller than the number of devices. Additionally,
since different users generate data with different patterns, it is reasonable
to assume that no device has a representative sample of the overall
distribution.
  We show that existing algorithms are not suitable for this setting, and
propose a new algorithm which shows encouraging experimental results for sparse
convex problems. This work also sets a path for future research needed in the
context of \federated optimization.


title: Synchronized and mixed outbreaks of coupled recurrent epidemics

abstract:
  Epidemic spreading has been studied for a long time and most of them are
focused on the growing aspect of a single epidemic outbreak. Recently, we
extended the study to the case of recurrent epidemics (Sci. Rep. {\bf 5}, 16010
(2015)) but limited only to a single network. We here report from the real data
of coupled regions or cities that the recurrent epidemics in two coupled
networks are closely related to each other and can show either synchronized
outbreak phase where outbreaks occur simultaneously in both networks or mixed
outbreak phase where outbreaks occur in one network but do not in another one.
To reveal the underlying mechanism, we present a two-layered network model of
coupled recurrent epidemics to reproduce the synchronized and mixed outbreak
phases. We show that the synchronized outbreak phase is preferred to be
triggered in two coupled networks with the same average degree while the mixed
outbreak phase is preferred for the case with different average degrees.
Further, we show that the coupling between the two layers is preferred to
suppress the mixed outbreak phase but enhance the synchronized outbreak phase.
A theoretical analysis based on microscopic Markov-chain approach is presented
to explain the numerical results. This finding opens a new window for studying
the recurrent epidemics in multi-layered networks.


title: Higher Sobolev Regularity of Convex Integration Solutions in Elasticity

abstract:
  In this article we discuss quantitative properties of convex integration
solutions arising in problems modeling shape-memory materials. For a
two-dimensional, geometrically linearized model case, the hexagonal-to-rhombic
phase transformation, we prove the existence of convex integration solutions
$u$ with higher Sobolev regularity, i.e. there exists $\theta_0>0$ such that
$\nabla u \in W^{s,p}_{loc}(\mathbb{R}^2)\cap L^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^2)$ for
$s\in(0,1)$, $p\in(1,\infty)$ with $0<sp < \theta_0$. We also recall a
construction, which shows that in situations with additional symmetry much
better regularity properties hold.


title:
Hyper-parallel Toffoli gate on three-photon system with two degrees of
  freedom assisted by single-sided optical microcavities

abstract:
  Encoding qubits in multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) of a quantum system
allows less-decoherence quantum information processing with much less quantum
resources. We present a compact and scalable quantum circuit to determinately
implement a hyper-parallel controlled-controlled-phase-flip
(hyper-$\rm{C^2PF}$) gate on a three-photon system in both the polarization and
spatial DOFs. In contrast with the one with many qubits encoding in one DOF
only, our hyper-$\rm{C^2PF}$ gate operating two independent $\rm{C^2PF}$ gates
on a three-photon system with less decoherence, and reduces the quantum
resources required in quantum information processing by a half. Additional
photons, necessary for many approaches, are not required in the present scheme.
Our calculation shows that this hyper-$\rm{C^2PF}$ gate is feasible in
experiment.


title:
Sunspot Sizes and The Solar Cycle: Analysis Using Kodaikanal White-light
  Digitized Data

abstract:
  Sizes of the sunspots vary in a wide range during the progression of a solar
cycle. Long-term variation study of different sunspot sizes are key to better
understand the underlying process of sunspot formation and their connection to
the solar dynamo. Kodaikanal white-light digitized archive provides daily
sunspot observations for a period of 90 years (1921-2011). Using different size
criteria on the detected individual sunspots, we have generated yearly averaged
sunspot area time series for the full Sun as well as for the individual
hemispheres. In this paper, we have used the sunspot area values instead of
sunspot numbers used in earlier studies. Analysis of these different time
series show that different properties of the sunspot cycles depend on the
sunspot sizes. The `odd-even rule', double peaks during the cycle maxima and
the long-term periodicities in the area data are found to be present for
specific sunspot sizes and are absent or not so prominent in other size ranges.
Apart from that, we also find a range of periodicities in the asymmetry index
which have a dependency on the sunspot sizes. These statistical differences in
the different size ranges may indicate that a complex dynamo action is
responsible for the generation and dynamics of sunspots with different sizes.


title:
On uniform closeness of local times of Markov chains and i.i.d.
  sequences

abstract:
  In this paper we consider the field of local times of a discrete-time Markov
chain on a general state space, and obtain uniform (in time) upper bounds on
the total variation distance between this field and the one of a sequence of
$n$ i.i.d. random variables with law given by the invariant measure of that
Markov chain. The proof of this result uses a refinement of the soft local time
method of [11].


title: Loop Quantum Cosmology Gravitational Baryogenesis

abstract:
  Loop Quantum Cosmology is an appealing quantum completion of classical
cosmology, which brings along various theoretical features which in many cases
offer remedy or modify various classical cosmology aspects. In this paper we
address the gravitational baryogenesis mechanism in the context of Loop Quantum
Cosmology. As we demonstrate, when Loop Quantum Cosmology effects are taken
into account in the resulting Friedmann equations for a flat
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Universe, then even for a radiation dominated
Universe, the predicted baryon-to-entropy ratio from the gravitational
baryogenesis mechanism is non-zero, in contrast to the Einstein-Hilbert case,
in which case the baryon-to-entropy ratio is zero. We also discuss various
other cases apart from the radiation domination case, and we discuss how the
baryon-to-entropy ratio is affected from the parameters of the quantum theory.
In addition, we use illustrative exact solutions of Loop Quantum Cosmology and
we investigate under which circumstances the baryon-to-entropy ratio can be
compatible with the observational constraints.


title: On the security defects of an image encryption scheme

abstract:
  This paper studies the security of a recently-proposed chaos-based image
encryption scheme, and points out the following problems: 1) there exist a
number of invalid keys and weak keys, and some keys are partially equivalent
for encryption/decryption; 2) given one chosen plain-image, a subkey $K_{10}$
can be guessed with a smaller computational complexity than that of the simple
brute-force attack; 3) given at most 128 chosen plain-images, a
chosen-plaintext attack can possibly break the following part of the secret
key: $\{K_i\bmod 128\}_{i=4}^{10}$, which works very well when $K_{10}$ is not
too large; 4) when $K_{10}$ is relatively small, a known-plaintext attack can
be carried out with only one known plain-image to recover some visual
information of any other plain-images encrypted by the same key.


title:
An Archive of Spectra from the Mayall Fourier Transform Spectrometer at
  Kitt Peak

abstract:
  We describe the SpArc science gateway for spectral data obtained during the
period from 1975 through 1995 at the Kitt Peak National Observatory using the
Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) in operation at the Mayall 4-m telescope.
SpArc is hosted by Indiana University Bloomington and is available for public
access. The archive includes nearly 10,000 individual spectra of more than 800
different astronomical sources including stars, nebulae, galaxies, and Solar
System objects. We briefly describe the FTS instrument itself, and summarize
the conversion of the original interferograms into spectral data and the
process for recovering the data into FITS files. The architecture of the
archive is discussed, and the process for retrieving data from the archive is
introduced. Sample use cases showing typical FTS spectra are presented.


title:
Nonlinear Zel'dovich effect: Parametric amplification from medium
  rotation

abstract:
  The interaction of light with rotating media has attracted recent interest
for both fundamental and applied studies including rotational Doppler shift
measurements. It is also possible to obtain amplification through the
scattering of light with orbital angular momentum from a rotating and absorbing
cylinder, as proposed by Zel'dovich more than 40 years ago. This amplification
mechanism has never been observed experimentally yet has connections to other
fields such as Penrose superradiance in rotating black holes. Here we propose a
nonlinear optics system whereby incident light carrying orbital angular
momentum drives parametric interaction in a rotating medium. The crystal
rotation is shown to take the phase-mismatched parametric interaction with
negligible energy exchange at zero rotation to amplification for sufficiently
large rotation rates. The amplification is shown to result from breaking of
anti-PT symmetry induced by the medium rotation.


title: Lindblad Decoherence in Atomic Clocks

abstract:
  It is shown how possible corrections to ordinary quantum mechanics described
by the Lindblad equation might be detected by exploiting the great precision of
atomic clocks.


title: A simple method to convert sink particles into stars

abstract:
  Hydrodynamical simulations of star formation often do not possess the dynamic
range needed to fully resolve the build-up of individual stars and star
clusters, and thus have to resort to subgrid models. A popular way to do this
is by introducing Lagrangian sink particles, which replace contracting high
density regions at the point where the resolution limit is reached. A common
problem then is how to assign fundamental stellar properties to sink particles,
such as the distribution of stellar masses.
  We present a new and simple statistical method to assign stellar contents to
sink particles. Once the stellar content is specified, it can be used to
determine a sink particle's radiative output, supernovae rate or other feedback
parameters that may be required in the calculations. Advantages of our method
are (i) it is simple to implement, (ii) it guarantees that the obtained stellar
populations are good samples of the initial mass function, (iii) it can easily
deal with infalling mass accreted at later times, and (iv) it does not put
restrictions on the sink particles' masses in order to be used. The method
works very well for sink particles that represent large star clusters and for
which the stellar mass function is well sampled, but can also handle the
transition to sink particles that represent a small number of stars.


title: Additive Combinatorics Using Equivariant Cohomology

abstract:
  We introduce a geometric method to study additive combinatorial problems.
Using equivariant cohomology we reprove the Dias da Silva-Hamidoune theorem. We
improve a result of Sun on the linear extension of the Erd\H{o}s-Heilbronn
conjecture. We generalize a theorem of G. K\'os (the Grashopper problem) which
in some sense is a simultaneous generalization of the Erd\H{o}s-Heilbronn
conjecture. We also prove a signed version of the Erd\H{o}s-Heilbronn
conjecture and the Grashopper problem. Most identities used are based on
calculating the projective degree of an algebraic variety in two different
ways.


title:
An easy way to a theorem of Kira Adaricheva and Madina Bolat on
  convexity and circles

abstract:
  Kira Adaricheva and Madina Bolat have recently proved that if $U_0$ and $U_1$
are circles in a triangle with vertices $A_0,A_1,A_2$, then there exist $j\in
\{0,1,2\}$ and $k\in\{0,1\}$ such that $U_{1-k}$ is included in the convex hull
of $U_k\cup(\{A_0,A_1, A_2\}\setminus\{A_j\})$. We give a short new proof for
this result, and we point out that a straightforward generalizaton for shperes
fails.


title: Abelian Calabi-Yau threefolds: N\'eron models and rational points

abstract:
  We study Calabi-Yau threefolds fibered by abelian surfaces, in particular,
their arithmetic properties, e.g., N\'eron models and Zariski density.


title:
Distribution locale des points rationnels de hauteur born\'ee sur une
  surface de del Pezzo de degr\'e 6

abstract:
  We establish a measure which describes in a precise way the local asymptotic
distribution of rational points outside the locally accumulating subvarieties
around a general rational point on a del Pezzo surface of degree 6 in the sense
of diophantine approximation.


title:
Multi-Compartmental Biomaterial Scaffolds for Patterning Neural Tissue
  Organoids in Models of Neurodevelopment and Tissue Regeneration

abstract:
  Biomaterials are becoming an essential tool in the study and application of
stem cell research. Various types of biomaterials enable three-dimensional (3D)
culture of stem cells, and, more recently, also enable high-resolution
patterning and organization of multicellular architectures. Biomaterials also
hold potential to provide many additional advantages over cell transplants
alone in regenerative medicine. This paper describes novel designs for
functionalized biomaterial constructs that guide tissue development to targeted
regional identities and structures. Such designs comprise compartmentalized
regions in the biomaterial structure that are functionalized with molecular
factors that form concentration gradients through the construct and guide stem
cell development, axis patterning, and tissue architecture, including
rostral/caudal, ventral/dorsal, or medial/lateral identities of the central
nervous system. The ability to recapitulate innate developmental processes in a
3D environment and under specific controlled conditions has vital application
to advanced models of neurodevelopment and for repair of specific sites of
damaged or diseased neural tissue.


title: Computational linking theory

abstract:
  A linking theory explains how verbs' semantic arguments are mapped to their
syntactic arguments---the inverse of the Semantic Role Labeling task from the
shallow semantic parsing literature. In this paper, we develop the
Computational Linking Theory framework as a method for implementing and testing
linking theories proposed in the theoretical literature. We deploy this
framework to assess two cross-cutting types of linking theory: local v. global
models and categorical v. featural models. To further investigate the behavior
of these models, we develop a measurement model in the spirit of previous work
in semantic role induction: the Semantic Proto-Role Linking Model. We use this
model, which implements a generalization of Dowty's seminal Proto-Role Theory,
to induce semantic proto-roles, which we compare to those Dowty proposes.


title:
Analogues of the $3x + 1$ Problem in Polynomial Rings of Characteristic
  2

abstract:
  The Collatz conjecture (also known as the $3x+1$ problem) concerns the
behavior of the discrete dynamical system on the positive integers defined by
iteration of the so-called $3x + 1$ function. We investigate analogous
dynamical systems in rings of functions of algebraic curves over $\mathbb{F}_2$
. We prove in this setting a generalized analogue of a theorem of Terras
concerning the asymptotic distribution of stopping times. We also present
experimental data on the behavior of these dynamical systems.


title:
Pure spin current and perfect valley filter by designed separation of
  the chiral states in two-dimensional honeycomb lattices

abstract:
  We propose a realization of pure spin currents and perfect valley filter
based on a quantum anomalous Hall insulator, around which edge states with
up-spin and down-spin circulate. By applying staggered sublattice potential on
the strips along the edges of sample, the edge states with down spin can be
pushed into the inner boundaries of the strips while the other edge states with
up spin remain on the outer boundaries, resulting in spatially separated chiral
states with perfect spin polarization. Moreover, a valley filter, which is
immune to short-range and smooth long-range scatterers, can be engineered by
additionally applying boundary potentials on the outmost lattices of the
sample. We also find that the boundary potential can be used to control the
size effect induced oscillation of the inner chiral states. The connection of
the boundary potential to size effect is revealed.


title:
A categorization of arguments for counting methods for publication and
  citation indicators

abstract:
  Most publication and citation indicators are based on datasets with
multi-authored publications and thus a change in counting method will often
change the value of an indicator. Therefore it is important to know why a
specific counting method has been applied. I have identified arguments for
counting methods in a sample of 32 bibliometric studies published in 2016 and
compared the result with discussions of arguments for counting methods in three
older studies. Based on the underlying logics of the arguments I have arranged
the arguments in four groups. Group 1 focuses on arguments related to what an
indicator measures, Group 2 on the additivity of a counting method, Group 3 on
pragmatic reasons for the choice of counting method, and Group 4 on an
indicator's influence on the research community or how it is perceived by
researchers. This categorization can be used to describe and discuss how
bibliometric studies with publication and citation indicators argue for
counting methods.


title:
Exploring brain transcriptomic patterns: a topological analysis using
  spatial expression networks

abstract:
  Characterizing the transcriptome architecture of the human brain is
fundamental in gaining an understanding of brain function and disease. A number
of recent studies have investigated patterns of brain gene expression obtained
from an extensive anatomical coverage across the entire human brain using
experimental data generated by the Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA) project. In
this paper, we propose a new representation of a gene's transcription activity
that explicitly captures the pattern of spatial co-expression across different
anatomical brain regions. For each gene, we define a Spatial Expression Network
(SEN), a network quantifying co-expression patterns amongst several anatomical
locations. Network similarity measures are then employed to quantify the
topological resemblance between pairs of SENs and identify naturally occurring
clusters. Using network-theoretical measures, three large clusters have been
detected featuring distinct topological properties. We then evaluate whether
topological diversity of the SENs reflects significant differences in
biological function through a gene ontology analysis. We report on evidence
suggesting that one of the three SEN clusters consists of genes specifically
involved in the nervous system, including genes related to brain disorders,
while the remaining two clusters are representative of immunity, transcription
and translation. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing
that brain gene clusters are generally associated with one of these three major
biological processes.


title: Holographic p-wave superfluid in Gauss-Bonnet gravity

abstract:
  We construct the holographic p-wave superfluid in Gauss-Bonnet gravity via a
Maxwell complex vector field model and investigate the effect of the curvature
correction on the superfluid phase transition in the probe limit. We obtain the
rich phase structure and find that the higher curvature correction hinders the
condensate of the vector field but makes it easier for the appearance of
translating point from the second-order transition to the first-order one or
for the emergence of the Cave of Winds. Moreover, for the supercurrents versus
the superfluid velocity, we observe that our results near the critical
temperature are independent of the Gauss-Bonnet parameter and agree well with
the Ginzburg-Landau prediction.


title:
Perpendicularly magnetized CoFeB multilayers with tunable interlayer
  exchange for synthetic ferrimagnets

abstract:
  A study of the multilayer system MgO/CoFeB(1.1nm)/Ta($t$)/CoFeB(0.8nm)/MgO is
presented, where the two CoFeB layers are separated by a Ta interlayer of
varying thickness $t$. The magnetization properties deduced from complementary
techniques such as superconducting quantum interference magnetometry,
ferromagnetic resonance frequency measurements and Brillouin light scattering
spectroscopy can be tuned by changing the Ta thickness between $t$=0.25 nm, 0.5
nm and 0.75 nm. For $t$=0.5 nm, a ferromagnetic coupling is observed, whereas
for t=0.75 nm, the antiferromagnetic coupling needed to construct a synthetic
ferrimagnet is realized. In the later case, the shape of magnetic domain walls
between two ferrimagnetic alignments or between a ferro- and a ferrimagnetic
alignment is very different. This behavior can be interpreted as a result of
the change in dipolar as well as interlayer exchange energy and domain wall
pinning, which is an important conclusion for the realization of data storage
devices based on synthetic ferri- and antiferromagnets.


title:
Correction to the article "Dynamic power management in energy-aware
  computer networks and data intensive computing systems" published in "Future
  Generation Computer Systems" journal

abstract:
  This paper indicates two errors in the formulation of the main optimization
model in the article "Dynamic power management in energy-aware computer
networks and data intensive computing systems" by Niewiadomska-Szynkiewicz et
al. [FGCS, vol.37 (2014), pp.284-296] and shows how to fix them.


title: Diffuse flux of galactic neutrinos and gamma rays

abstract:
  We calculate the fluxes of neutrinos and gamma rays from interactions of
cosmic rays with interstellar matter in our galaxy. We use EPOS-LHC, SIBYLL and
GHEISHA to obtain the yield of these particles in proton, helium and iron
collisions at kinetic energies between 1 and 10^8 GeV, and we correlate the
cosmic ray density with the mean magnetic field strength in the disk and the
halo of our galaxy. We find that at E>1 PeV the fluxes depend very strongly on
the cosmic-ray composition, whereas at 1-5 GeV the main source of uncertainty
is the cosmic-ray spectrum out of the heliosphere. We show that the diffuse
flux of galactic neutrinos becomes larger than the conventional atmospheric one
at E>1 PeV, but that at all IceCube energies it is 4 times smaller than the
atmospheric flux from forward-charm decays.


title:
Regularization by noise and flows of solutions for a stochastic heat
  equation

abstract:
  Motivated by the regularization by noise phenomenon for SDEs we prove
existence and uniqueness of the flow of solutions for the non-Lipschitz
stochastic heat equation $$\frac{\partial u}{\partial
t}=\frac12\frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial z^2} + b(u(t,z)) + \dot{W}(t,z), $$
where $\dot W$ is a space-time white noise on $\mathbb{R}_+\times\mathbb{R}$
and $b$ is a bounded measurable function on $\mathbb{R}$. As a byproduct of our
proof we also establish the so-called path--by--path uniqueness for any initial
condition in a certain class on the same set of probability one. This extends
recent results of Davie (2007) to the context of stochastic partial
differential equations.


title:
Atomistic study of electrostatics and carrier transport properties of
  CNT@MS2 (M= Mo,W) and CNT@BN core-shell nanotubes

abstract:
  In this work we present an ab-initio study of electronic properties of 1
dimensional (1D) core-shell nanostructures made of MS2 (MoS2, WS2) or BN
armchair nanotube encapsulated carbon nanotubes (CNT). With local density
approximation (LDA) in density functional theory (DFT) we calculate the
bandstructure, carrier effective masses, various fundamental electrostatic
features and optical absorption in such core-shell tubes. The carrier transport
in these structures are important for nanoelectronics applications and are
studied with the Greens function formalism. Simulations show a moderate
indirect band gap in the core-shell CNT@MS2 tubes while the CNT@BN shows
metallic nature. The varying chirality of CNT strongly affects the carrier
effective masses of the CNT@MS2 structure. Electron density is found to be much
more localized near the atom cores and stronger in magnitude for the CNT@BN
while the W atoms show a more prominent electron-gas presence around them than
Mo atoms as found in the electron localization functions. In the CNT@MS2
systems the electrostatic difference potential indicates a drive to transfer
charge from the metal to the S atoms in the shell. In terms of optical
absorption a strong and sharper peak is observed around 6 eV for the CNT@BN
compared to a more broad absorption spectra of the CNT@MS2. Metallic
transmission spectra is seen for CNT@BN while CNT@MS2 shows non-metallic
transport but with a larger number of transmission states near fermi level. The
electronic and optical properties and its possible tuning in the core-shell
structures can be useful in various applications such as shielded
interconnects, logic switches and optoelectronics.


title:
Drop morphologies on flexible fibers: influence of elastocapillary
  effects

abstract:
  Various materials are made of long thin fibers that are randomly oriented to
form a complex network in which drops of wetting liquid tend to accumulate at
the nodes. The capillary force exerted by the liquid can bend flexible fibers,
which in turn influences the morphology adopted by the liquid. In this paper,
we investigate, the role of the fiber flexibility on the shape of a small
volume of liquid on a pair of crossed flexible fibers, through a model
situation. We characterize the liquid morphologies as we vary the volume of
liquid, the angle between the fibers, and the length of the fibers. The drop
morphologies previously reported for rigid crossed fibers, i.e., a drop, a
column and a mixed morphology, are also observed on flexible crossed fibers
with modified domains of existence. In addition, at small tilting angles
between the fibers, a new behavior is observed: the fibers bend and collapse.
Depending on the volume of liquid, a thin column with or without a drop is
reported on the collapsed fibers. Our study suggests that the fiber flexibility
adds a rich variety of behaviors that may be important for some applications.


title:
Local Quench, Majorana Zero Modes, and Disturbance Propagation in the
  Ising chain

abstract:
  We study the generation and propagation of local perturbations in a quantum
many-body spin system. In particular, we study the Ising model in transverse
field in the presence of a local field defect at one edge. This system
possesses a rich phase diagram with different regions characterized by the
presence of one or two Majorana zero modes. We show that their localized
character {\it i}) enables a characterization of the Ising phase transition
through a local-only measurement performed on the edge spin, and {\it ii})
strongly affects the propagation of quasiparticles emitted after the sudden
removal of the defect, so that the dynamics of the local magnetization show
clear deviations from a ballistic behavior in presence of the Majorana
fermions.


title: Almost band preservers

abstract:
  We study the stability of band preserving operators on Banach lattices. To
this end the notion of $\varepsilon$-band preserving mapping is introduced. It
is shown that, under quite general assumptions, a $\varepsilon$-band preserving
operator is in fact a small perturbation of a band preserving one. However, a
counterexample can be produced in some circumstances. Some results on automatic
continuity of $\varepsilon$-band preserving maps are also obtained.


title:
Design Analysis for Optimal Calibration of Diffusivity in Reactive
  Multilayers

abstract:
  Calibration of the uncertain Arrhenius diffusion parameters for quantifying
mixing rates in Zr-Al nanolaminate foils was performed in a Bayesian setting
[Vohra et al., 2014]. The parameters were inferred in a low temperature regime
characterized by homogeneous ignition and a high temperature regime
characterized by self-propagating reactions in the multilayers. In this work,
we extend the analysis to find optimal experimental designs that would provide
the best data for inference. We employ a rigorous framework that quantifies the
expected in- formation gain in an experiment, and find the optimal design
conditions using numerical techniques of Monte Carlo, sparse quadrature, and
polynomial chaos surrogates. For the low temperature regime, we find the
optimal foil heating rate and pulse duration, and confirm through simulation
that the optimal design indeed leads to sharper posterior distributions of the
diffusion parameters. For the high temperature regime, we demonstrate potential
for increase in the expected information gain of the posteriors by increasing
sample size and reducing uncertainty in measurements. Moreover, posterior
marginals are also produced to verify favorable experimental scenarios for this
regime.


title: Convolution identities for Tribonacci numbers with symmetric formulae

abstract:
  Many kinds of convolution identities have been considered about several
numbers, including Bernoulli, Euler, Genocchi, Cauchy, Stirling, and Fibonacci
numbers. The well-known basic result about Bernoulli numbers is due to Euler.
The convolution identities have been studied.
  In this paper, we give convolution identities for Tribonacci numbers without
binomial coefficients and with binomial coefficients. Convolution identities of
Fiboancci numbers or Lucas numbers can be expressed in the form of linear
combinations of Fibonacci numbers and Lucas numbers only. Fibonacci numbers and
Lucas numbers are in pairs with different values. Covolution identities of
Tribonacci numbers can be expressed in the linear combination of several
Tribonacci numbers with different values. Symmetric formulas are basic tools
for these expressions.


title:
Calculation of entanglement in graph states up to five-qubit based on
  generalized concurrence

abstract:
  We propose a new classification for the entanglement in graph states based on
generalized con- currence. The numerical results indicate that the eight
different three-qubit graph states in three categories, 64 four-qubit graph
states in five categories and 1024 five-qubit graph states are in ten classes.
We also compare this classification with equivalence classes of these graph
states under local complementation (LC) operator, and the obtained result
suggests that classification by generalized concurrence is not in contradiction
with the LC-rule.


title: A boundary theory approach to de Finetti's theorem

abstract:
  We show that boundary theory for transient Markov chains, as initiated by
Doob, can be used to prove de Finetti's classical representation result for
exchangeable random sequences. We also include the relevant parts of the
theory, with full proofs.


title:
Some families of generalized Mathieu-type power series, associated
  probability distributions and related functional inequalities involving
  complete monotonicity and log-convexity

abstract:
  By making use of the familiar Mathieu series and its generalizations, the
authors derive a number of new integral representations and present a
systematic study of probability density functions and probability distributions
associated with some generalizations of the Mathieu series. In particular, the
mathematical expectation, variance and the characteristic functions, related to
the probability density functions of the considered probability distributions
are derived. As a consequence, some interesting inequalities involving complete
monotonicity and log-convexity are derived.


title: Diabolical entropy

abstract:
  Milnor and Thurston's famous paper proved monotonicity of the topological
entropy for the real quadratic family. Guckenheimer showed that it is H\"older
continuous. We obtain a precise formula for the H\"older exponent at almost
every quadratic parameter.
  Furthermore, the entropy of most parameters is proven to be in a set of
Hausdorff dimension smaller than one, while most values of the entropy arise
from a set of parameters of dimension smaller than one.


title: Anomalous mass dimension of multi-flavor QCD

abstract:
  Models of strongly interacting theories with a large mass anomalous dimension
($\gamma_m$) provide an interesting possibility for the dynamical origin of the
electroweak symmetry breaking. A laboratory for these models is QCD with many
flavors, which may present a non-trivial fixed point associated to a conformal
region. Studies based on conformal field theories and on Schwinger-Dyson
equations have suggested the existence of bounds on the mass anomalous
dimension at the fixed points of these models. In this note we discuss
$\gamma_m$ values of multi-flavor QCD exhibiting a non-trivial fixed point and
affected by relevant four-fermion interactions.


title: High-dynamic-range water window ptychography

abstract:
  Ptychographic imaging with soft X-rays, especially in the water window energy
range, suffers from limited detector dynamic range that directly influences the
maximum spatial resolution achievable. High-dynamic-range data can be obtained
by multiple exposures. By this approach we have increased the dynamic range of
a ptychographic data set by a factor of 76 and obtained diffraction signal till
the corners of the detector. The real space half period resolution was improved
from 50 nm for the single exposure data to 18 nm for the high-dynamic-range
data.


title:
Performance Bounds for Remote Estimation under Energy Harvesting
  Constraints

abstract:
  Remote estimation with an energy harvesting sensor with a limited data and
energy buffer is considered. The sensor node observes an unknown Gaussian field
and communicates its observations to a remote fusion center using the energy it
harvested. The fusion center employs minimum mean-square error (MMSE)
estimation to reconstruct the unknown field. The distortion minimization
problem under the online scheme, where the sensor has access to only the
statistical information for the future energy packets is considered. We provide
performance bounds on the achievable distortion under a slotted block
transmission scheme, where at each transmission time slot, the data and the
energy buffer are completely emptied. Our bounds provide insights to the
trade-offs between the buffer sizes, the statistical properties of the energy
harvesting process and the achievable distortion. In particular, these
trade-offs illustrate the insensitivity of the performance to the buffer sizes
for signals with low degree of freedom and suggest performance improvements
with increasing buffer size for signals with relatively higher degree of
freedom. Depending only on the mean, variance and finite support of the energy
arrival process, these results provide practical insights for the battery and
buffer sizes for deployment in future energy harvesting wireless sensing
systems.


title:
Mining the Web for Pharmacovigilance: the Case Study of Duloxetine and
  Venlafaxine

abstract:
  Adverse reactions caused by drugs following their release into the market are
among the leading causes of death in many countries. The rapid growth of
electronically available health related information, and the ability to process
large volumes of them automatically, using natural language processing (NLP)
and machine learning algorithms, have opened new opportunities for
pharmacovigilance. Survey found that more than 70% of US Internet users consult
the Internet when they require medical information. In recent years, research
in this area has addressed for Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) pharmacovigilance
using social media, mainly Twitter and medical forums and websites. This paper
will show the information which can be collected from a variety of Internet
data sources and search engines, mainly Google Trends and Google Correlate.
While considering the case study of two popular Major depressive Disorder (MDD)
drugs, Duloxetine and Venlafaxine, we will provide a comparative analysis for
their reactions using publicly-available alternative data sources.


title: Stable components of sound fields in the ocean

abstract:
  A method is proposed for finding the wave field components which are weakly
sensitive to the sound speed perturbation in the ocean acoustic waveguides.
Such a component is formed by a narrow beam of rays whose spread in vertical
direction, up to the observation range, remains less than the vertical scale of
perturbation. These rays pass through practically the same inhomogeneities and
therefore their phases acquire close increments. If the ray amplitudes vary
insignificantly, then (i) the stable component of the monochromatic field in
the perturbed and unperturbed waveguide differ by only a constant phase factor,
and (ii) in the case of transient wave field the perturbation causes only an
additional time delay of the stable component as a whole. It is shown how the
stable components can be selected from the total wave field using the field
expansions in coherent states or in normal modes. The existence of stable
components is demonstrated by numerical simulation of sound field in a deep
water waveguide. It turns out, that even though the assumptions (i) and (ii)
are not met exactly, the stable components in the perturbed and unperturbed
waveguide are quite close.


title: Why do only some Radio Galaxies acquire giant Sizes?

abstract:
  We study the morphology of the radio emission of giant radio galaxies (GRGs),
a rare type of active galaxies, in order to find new clues for the reasons of
their large size. Using radio images from two sky surveys at 1.4 GHz we
quantified their radio morphology by measuring the geometry (armlength, bending
angle, etc.) and flux symmetry for 58 such objects. Preliminary analysis
suggests that radio source symmetry does not differ between galaxies and
quasars, that there is no evidence for a decrease in linear size with redshift,
and only a marginal trend for increasing symmetry with larger size. A merging
with data available for other such objects is expected to yield new clues on
the possible reasons for their large size. We also searched radio survey images
around the positions of 1059 galaxies and quasars for further giant radio
sources, and present a preliminary sample of six of these.


title: Real-time Error Control for Surgical Simulation

abstract:
  Objective: To present the first real-time a posteriori error-driven adaptive
finite element approach for real-time simulation and to demonstrate the method
on a needle insertion problem. Methods: We use corotational elasticity and a
frictional needle/tissue interaction model. The problem is solved using finite
elements within SOFA. The refinement strategy relies upon a hexahedron-based
finite element method, combined with a posteriori error estimation driven local
$h$-refinement, for simulating soft tissue deformation. Results: We control the
local and global error level in the mechanical fields (e.g. displacement or
stresses) during the simulation. We show the convergence of the algorithm on
academic examples, and demonstrate its practical usability on a percutaneous
procedure involving needle insertion in a liver. For the latter case, we
compare the force displacement curves obtained from the proposed adaptive
algorithm with that obtained from a uniform refinement approach. Conclusions:
Error control guarantees that a tolerable error level is not exceeded during
the simulations. Local mesh refinement accelerates simulations. Significance:
Our work provides a first step to discriminate between discretization error and
modeling error by providing a robust quantification of discretization error
during simulations.


title: Transitions in a magnetized quasi-laminar spherical Couette Flow

abstract:
  First results of a new spherical Couette experiment are presented. The liquid
metal flow in a spherical shell is exposed to a homogeneous axial magnetic
field. For a Reynolds number Re=1000, we study the effect of increasing
Hartmann number Ha. The resulting flow structures are inspected by ultrasound
Doppler velocimetry. With a weak applied magnetic field, we observe an
equatorially anti-symmetric jet instability with azimuthal wave number m=3. As
the magnetic field strength increases, this instability vanishes. When the
field is increased further, an equatorially symmetric return flow instability
arises. Our observations are shown to be in good agreement with linear
stability analysis and non-linear flow simulations.


title:
A Search for double-lobed radio emission from Galactic Stars and Spiral
  Galaxies

abstract:
  We present a systematic search for two types of very unusual astronomical
objects: Galactic stars and spiral galaxies with double radio lobes, i.e. radio
emission on opposite sides of the optical object, suggesting the ejection of
jets from them. We designed an algorithm to search for pairs of radio sources
straddling objects from two unprecedented samples of 878,031 Galactic stars
from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and 675,874 spiral galaxy candidates drawn
from the recent literature. We found three new examples of double-lobed radio
stars, while for the spiral galaxies we only rediscovered one known such double
source, confirming that the latter objects are extremely rare.


Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Robot Learning and
  Planning (RLP 2016)


title:
Remarks on the maximum atom-bond connectivity index of graphs with given
  parameters

abstract:
  The atom-bond connectivity (ABC) index is a degree-based molecular structure
descriptor that can be used for modelling thermodynamic properties of organic
chemical compounds. Motivated by its applicable potential, a series of
investigations have been carried out in the past several years. In this note we
first consider graphs with given edge-connectivity that attain the maximum ABC
index. In particular, we give an affirmative answer to the conjecture about the
structure of graphs with edge-connectivity equal to one that maximize the ABC
index, which was recently raised by Zhang, Yang, Wang and Zhang~\cite{zywz
mabciggp-2016}. In addition, we provide supporting evidence for another
conjecture posed by the same authors which concerns graphs that maximize the
ABC index among all graphs with chromatic number equal to some fixed $\chi \geq
3$. Specifically, we confirm this conjecture in the case where the order of the
graph is divisible by $\chi$.


title:
Properties of Healthcare Teaming Networks as a Function of Network
  Construction Algorithms

abstract:
  Network models of healthcare systems can be used to examine how providers
collaborate, communicate, refer patients to each other. Most healthcare service
network models have been constructed from patient claims data, using billing
claims to link patients with providers. The data sets can be quite large,
making standard methods for network construction computationally challenging
and thus requiring the use of alternate construction algorithms. While these
alternate methods have seen increasing use in generating healthcare networks,
there is little to no literature comparing the differences in the structural
properties of the generated networks. To address this issue, we compared the
properties of healthcare networks constructed using different algorithms and
the 2013 Medicare Part B outpatient claims data. Three different algorithms
were compared: binning, sliding frame, and trace-route. Unipartite networks
linking either providers or healthcare organizations by shared patients were
built using each method. We found that each algorithm produced networks with
substantially different topological properties. Provider networks adhered to a
power law, and organization networks to a power law with exponential cutoff.
Censoring networks to exclude edges with less than 11 shared patients, a common
de-identification practice for healthcare network data, markedly reduced edge
numbers and greatly altered measures of vertex prominence such as the
betweenness centrality. We identified patterns in the distance patients travel
between network providers, and most strikingly between providers in the
Northeast United States and Florida. We conclude that the choice of network
construction algorithm is critical for healthcare network analysis, and discuss
the implications for selecting the algorithm best suited to the type of
analysis to be performed.


title:
Schroedinger electrons interacting with optical gratings: quantum
  mechanical study of the inverse Smith Purcell effect

abstract:
  Slow swift electrons with low self-inertia interact differently with matter
and light in comparison with their relativistic counterparts: they are easily
recoiled, reflected, and also diffracted form optical gratings and
nanostructures. As a consequence, they can be also better manipulated into the
desired shape. For example, they get bunched quite fast in interaction with
acceleration gratings in presence of an external electromagnetic radiation, a
phenomenon which can be desirable in development of superradiant coherent light
sources. Here, I examine the spatiotemporal behavior of pulsed electron wave
packets at low energies interacting with pulsed light and optical gratings,
using a quantum-mechanical self-consistent numerical toolbox which is
introduced here. It will be shown that electron pulses are accelerated very
fast in interaction with the near-field of the grating, demanding that a
synchronicity condition is met. To prevent the electrons to be transversely
deflected from the grating a symmetric double-grating configuration is
necessary. It is found that even in this configuration, diffraction due to the
interaction of the electron with the standing-wave light inside the gap between
the gratings, is a source of defocusing. Moreover, the longitudinal broadening
of the electron pulse directly affects the final shape of the electron wave
packet due to the occurrence of multiple electron-photon scatterings. These
investigations pave the way towards the design of more efficient
electron-driven photon sources and accelerators.


title:
The Tayler instability at low magnetic Prandtl numbers: Chiral symmetry
  breaking and synchronizable helicity oscillations

abstract:
  The current-driven, kink-type Tayler instability (TI) is a key ingredient of
the Tayler-Spruit dynamo model for the generation of stellar magnetic fields,
but is also discussed as a mechanism that might hamper the up-scaling of liquid
metal batteries. Under some circumstances, the TI involves a helical flow
pattern which goes along with some alpha effect. Here we focus on the chiral
symmetry breaking and the related impact on the alpha effect that would be
needed to close the dynamo loop in the Tayler-Spruit model. For low magnetic
Prandtl numbers, we observe intrinsic oscillations of the alpha effect. These
oscillations serve then as the basis for a synchronized Tayler-Spruit dynamo
model, which could possibly link the periodic tidal forces of planets with the
oscillation periods of stellar dynamos.


title: Defect tolerance: fundamental limits and examples

abstract:
  This paper addresses the problem of adding redundancy to a collection of
physical objects so that the overall system is more robust to failures. In
contrast to its information counterpart, which can exploit parity to protect
multiple information symbols from a single erasure, physical redundancy can
only be realized through duplication and substitution of objects. We propose a
bipartite graph model for designing defect-tolerant systems in which defective
objects are replaced by judiciously connected redundant objects. The
fundamental limits of this model are characterized under various asymptotic
settings and both asymptotic and finite-size systems that approach these limits
are constructed. Among other results, we show that simple modular redundancy is
in general suboptimal. As we develop, this combinatorial problem of defect
tolerant system design has a natural interpretation as one of graph coloring,
and the analysis is significantly different from that traditionally used in
information redundancy for error-control codes.


title: Crafting GBD-Net for Object Detection

abstract:
  The visual cues from multiple support regions of different sizes and
resolutions are complementary in classifying a candidate box in object
detection. Effective integration of local and contextual visual cues from these
regions has become a fundamental problem in object detection.
  In this paper, we propose a gated bi-directional CNN (GBD-Net) to pass
messages among features from different support regions during both feature
learning and feature extraction. Such message passing can be implemented
through convolution between neighboring support regions in two directions and
can be conducted in various layers. Therefore, local and contextual visual
patterns can validate the existence of each other by learning their nonlinear
relationships and their close interactions are modeled in a more complex way.
It is also shown that message passing is not always helpful but dependent on
individual samples. Gated functions are therefore needed to control message
transmission, whose on-or-offs are controlled by extra visual evidence from the
input sample. The effectiveness of GBD-Net is shown through experiments on
three object detection datasets, ImageNet, Pascal VOC2007 and Microsoft COCO.
This paper also shows the details of our approach in wining the ImageNet object
detection challenge of 2016, with source code provided on
\url{https://github.com/craftGBD/craftGBD}.


title: First results from a microwave cavity axion search at 24 micro-eV

abstract:
  We report on the first results from a new microwave cavity search for dark
matter axions with masses above $20~\mu\text{eV}$. We exclude axion models with
two-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma\gamma} \gtrsim 2\times10^{-14}~\text{GeV}^{-1}$
over the range $23.55~\mu\text{eV} < m_a < 24.0~\mu\text{eV}$. These results
represent two important achievements. First, we have reached cosmologically
relevant sensitivity an order of magnitude higher in mass than any existing
limits. Second, by incorporating a dilution refrigerator and Josephson
parametric amplifier, we have demonstrated total noise approaching the standard
quantum limit for the first time in an axion search.


title: Variance-based regularization with convex objectives

abstract:
  We develop an approach to risk minimization and stochastic optimization that
provides a convex surrogate for variance, allowing near-optimal and
computationally efficient trading between approximation and estimation error.
Our approach builds off of techniques for distributionally robust optimization
and Owen's empirical likelihood, and we provide a number of finite-sample and
asymptotic results characterizing the theoretical performance of the estimator.
In particular, we show that our procedure comes with certificates of
optimality, achieving (in some scenarios) faster rates of convergence than
empirical risk minimization by virtue of automatically balancing bias and
variance. We give corroborating empirical evidence showing that in practice,
the estimator indeed trades between variance and absolute performance on a
training sample, improving out-of-sample (test) performance over standard
empirical risk minimization for a number of classification problems.


title: Contraction Principles in $M_s$-metric Spaces

abstract:
  In this paper, we give an interesting extension of the partial S-metric space
which was introduced [4] to the M_s-metric space. Also, we prove the existence
and uniqueness of a fixed point for a self mapping on an Ms-metric space under
different contraction principles.


title: A Gentle Tutorial of Recurrent Neural Network with Error Backpropagation

abstract:
  We describe recurrent neural networks (RNNs), which have attracted great
attention on sequential tasks, such as handwriting recognition, speech
recognition and image to text. However, compared to general feedforward neural
networks, RNNs have feedback loops, which makes it a little hard to understand
the backpropagation step. Thus, we focus on basics, especially the error
backpropagation to compute gradients with respect to model parameters. Further,
we go into detail on how error backpropagation algorithm is applied on long
short-term memory (LSTM) by unfolding the memory unit.


title:
Perspectives on the mathematics of biological patterning and
  morphogenesis

abstract:
  A central question in developmental biology is how size and position are
determined. The genetic code carries instructions on how to control these
properties in order to regulate the pattern and morphology of structures in the
developing organism. Transcription and protein translation mechanisms implement
these instructions. However, this cannot happen without some manner of sampling
of epigenetic information on the current patterns and morphological forms of
structures in the organism. Any rigorous description of space- and time-varying
patterns and morphological forms reduces to one among various classes of
spatio-temporal partial differential equations. Reaction-transport equations
represent one such class. Starting from simple Fickian diffusion, the
incorporation of reaction, phase segregation and advection terms can represent
many of the patterns seen in the animal and plant kingdoms. Morphological form,
requiring the development of three-dimensional structure, also can be
represented by these equations of mass transport, albeit to a limited degree.
The recognition that physical forces play controlling roles in shaping tissues
leads to the conclusion that (nonlinear) elasticity governs the development of
morphological form. In this setting, inhomogeneous growth drives the elasticity
problem. The combination of reaction-transport equations with those of
elasto-growth makes accessible a potentially unlimited spectrum of patterning
and morphogenetic phenomena in developmental biology. This perspective
communication is a survey of the partial differential equations of mathematical
physics that have been proposed to govern patterning and morphogenesis in
developmental biology. Several numerical examples are included to illustrate
these equations and the corresponding physics, with the intention of providing
physical insight wherever possible.


title:
HD 164492C: a rapidly-rotating, H$\alpha$-bright, magnetic early B star
  associated with a 12.5d spectroscopic binary

abstract:
  We employ high resolution spectroscopy and spectropolarimetry to derive the
physical properties and magnetic characteristics of the multiple system HD
164492C, located in the young open cluster M20. The spectrum reveals evidence
of 3 components: a broad-lined early B star (HD 164492C1), a narrow-lined early
B star (HD 164492C2), and a late B star (HD 164492C3). Components C2 and C3
exhibit significant ($>100$ km/s) bulk radial velocity variations with a period
of $12.5351(7)$ d that we attribute to eccentric binary motion around a common
centre-of-mass. Component C1 exhibits no detectable radial velocity variations.
Using constraints derived from modeling the orbit of the C2+C3 binary and from
synthesis of the combined spectrum, we determine the approximate physical
characteristics of the components. We conclude that a coherent evolutionary
solution consistent with the published age of M20 implies a distance to the
system of $0.9\pm 0.2$ kpc, corresponding to the smallest published values. We
confirm the detection of a strong magnetic field in the combined spectrum. The
field is clearly associated with the broad-lined C1 component of the system.
Repeated measurement of the longitudinal magnetic field allows the derivation
of the rotation period of the magnetic star, $P_{\rm rot}=1.36986(6)$ d. We
derive the star's magnetic geometry, finding $i=63\pm 6$ deg, $\beta=33\pm 6$
deg and a dipole polar strength $B_{\rm d}=7.9^{+1.2}_{-1.0}$ kG. Strong
emission - varying according to the magnetic period - is detected in the
H$\alpha$ profile. This is consistent with the presence of a centrifugal
magnetosphere surrounding the rapidly rotating magnetic C1 component.


title: Baryon asymmetry from primordial black holes

abstract:
  We propose a new scenario of the baryogenesis from primordial black holes
(PBH). Assuming presence of microscopic baryon (or lepton) number violation and
a CP violating operator such as $\partial_\alpha F(\mathcal{R_{....}} )
J^\alpha$, where $F(\mathcal{R_{....}})$ is a scalar function of the Riemann
tensor, time evolution of an evaporating black hole generates baryonic
(leptonic) chemical potential at the horizon; consequently PBH enumerates
asymmetric Hawking radiation between baryons (leptons) and anti-baryons
(leptons). Though the operator is higher dimensional and largely suppressed by
a high mass scale $M_*$, we show that sufficient amount of asymmetry can be
generated for a wide range of parameters of the PBH mass $M_{\rm PBH}$, its
abundance $\Omega_{\rm PBH}$, and the scale $M_*$.


title: Partially Observed Optimal Control for Mean-Field SDEs

abstract:
  In this paper, we are concerned with a stochastic optimal control problem of
mean-field type under partial observation, where the state equation is governed
by the controlled nonlinear mean-field stochastic differential equation,
moreover the observation noise is allowed to enter into the state equation and
the observation coefficients may depend not only on the control process and but
also on its probability distribution. Under standard assumptions on the
coefficients, by dual analysis and convex variation, we establish the maximum
principle for optimal control in a strong sense as well as a weak one,
respectively. As an application, a partially observed linear quadratic control
problem of mean-field type is studied detailed and the corresponding dual
characterization and state feedback presentation of the partially observed
optimal control are obtained by the stochastic maximum principles and the
classic technique of completing squares.


title:
Iterative proportional scaling revisited: a modern optimization
  perspective

abstract:
  This paper revisits the classic iterative proportional scaling (IPS) from a
modern optimization perspective. In contrast to the criticisms made in the
literature, we show that based on a coordinate descent characterization, IPS
can be slightly modified to deliver coefficient estimates, and from a
majorization-minimization standpoint, IPS can be extended to handle log-affine
models with features not necessarily binary-valued or nonnegative. Furthermore,
some state-of-the-art optimization techniques such as block-wise computation,
randomization and momentum-based acceleration can be employed to provide more
scalable IPS algorithms, as well as some regularized variants of IPS for
concurrent feature selection.


title:
Modeling, implementation and performance analysis of mobility load
  balancing for LTE downlink data transmission

abstract:
  We propose in this paper a simulation implementation of self-organizing
Networks optimization related to mobility load balancing (MLB) for lte systems
using ns-3. the implementation is achieved toward two MLB algorithms
dynamically adjusting handover (HO) parameters based on the reference signal
received power measurements. such adjustments are done with respect to loads of
both an overloaded cell and its cell neighbours having enough available
resources enabling to achieve load balancing. numerical investigations through
selected key performance indicators of the proposed MLB algorithms when
compared with another HO algorithm (already implemented in ns3) based on A3
event highlight the significant MLB gains provided in terms global network
throughput, packet loss rate and the number of successful HO without incurring
significant overhead.


title: Indirect Gaussian Graph Learning beyond Gaussianity

abstract:
  This paper studies how to capture dependency graph structures from real data
which may not be Gaussian. Starting from marginal loss functions not
necessarily derived from probability distributions, we utilize an additive
over-parametrization with shrinkage to incorporate variable dependencies into
the criterion. An iterative Gaussian graph learning algorithm is proposed with
ease in implementation. Statistical analysis shows that the estimators achieve
satisfactory accuracy with the error measured in terms of a proper Bregman
divergence. Real-life examples in different settings are given to demonstrate
the efficacy of the proposed methodology.


title: Solving Marginal MAP Problems with NP Oracles and Parity Constraints

abstract:
  Arising from many applications at the intersection of decision making and
machine learning, Marginal Maximum A Posteriori (Marginal MAP) Problems unify
the two main classes of inference, namely maximization (optimization) and
marginal inference (counting), and are believed to have higher complexity than
both of them. We propose XOR_MMAP, a novel approach to solve the Marginal MAP
Problem, which represents the intractable counting subproblem with queries to
NP oracles, subject to additional parity constraints. XOR_MMAP provides a
constant factor approximation to the Marginal MAP Problem, by encoding it as a
single optimization in polynomial size of the original problem. We evaluate our
approach in several machine learning and decision making applications, and show
that our approach outperforms several state-of-the-art Marginal MAP solvers.


title: An Introduction to Geometric Topology

abstract:
  This book provides a self-contained introduction to the topology and geometry
of surfaces and three-manifolds. The main goal is to describe Thurston's
geometrisation of three-manifolds, proved by Perelman in 2002. The book is
divided into three parts: the first is devoted to hyperbolic geometry, the
second to surfaces, and the third to three-manifolds. It contains complete
proofs of Mostow's rigidity, the thick-thin decomposition, Thurston's
classification of the diffeomorphisms of surfaces (via Bonahon's geodesic
currents), the prime and JSJ decomposition, the topological and geometric
classification of Seifert manifolds, and Thurston's hyperbolic Dehn filling
Theorem.