title:
Black Phosphorus based One-dimensional Photonic Crystals and
  Microcavities

abstract:
  The latest achievements in the fabrication of black phosphorus thin layers,
towards the technological breakthrough of a phosphorene atomically thin layer,
are paving the way for a their employment in electronics, optics, and
optoelectronics. In this work, we have simulated the optical properties of
one-dimensional photonic structures, i.e. photonic crystals and microcavities,
in which few-layer black phosphorus is one of the components. The insertion of
the 5 nm black phosphorous layers leads to a photonic band gap in the photonic
crystals and a cavity mode in the microcavity interesting for light
manipulation and emission enhancement.


title:
Discovery of the Interstellar Chiral Molecule Propylene Oxide
  (CH$_3$CHCH$_2$O)

abstract:
  Life on Earth relies on chiral molecules, that is, species not superimposable
on their mirror images. This manifests itself in the selection of a single
molecular handedness, or homochirality, across the biosphere. We present the
astronomical detection of a chiral molecule, propylene oxide (CH$_3$CHCH$_2$O),
in absorption toward the Galactic Center. Propylene oxide is detected in the
gas phase in a cold, extended molecular shell around the embedded, massive
protostellar clusters in the Sagittarius B2 star-forming region. This material
is representative of the earliest stage of solar system evolution in which a
chiral molecule has been found.


title:
Evolution Of Massive Black Hole Binaries In Rotating Stellar Nuclei:
  Implications For Gravitational Wave Detection

abstract:
  We compute the isotropic gravitational wave (GW) background produced by
binary supermassive black holes (SBHs) in galactic nuclei. In our model,
massive binaries evolve at early times via gravitational-slingshot interaction
with nearby stars, and at later times by the emission of GWs. Our expressions
for the rate of binary hardening in the "stellar" regime are taken from the
recent work of Vasiliev et al., who show that in the non-axisymmetric galaxies
expected to form via mergers, stars are supplied to the center at high enough
rates to ensure binary coalescence on Gyr timescales. We also include, for the
first time, the extra degrees of freedom associated with evolution of the
binary's orbital plane; in rotating nuclei, interaction with stars causes the
orientation and the eccentricity of a massive binary to change in tandem,
leading in some cases to very high eccentricities (e>0.9) before the binary
enters the GW-dominated regime. We argue that previous studies have
over-estimated the mean ratio of SBH mass to galaxy bulge mass by factors of 2
- 3. In the frequency regime currently accessible to pulsar timing arrays
(PTAs), our assumptions imply a factor 2 - 3 reduction in the characteristic
strain compared with the values computed in most recent studies, removing the
tension that currently exists between model predictions and the non-detection
of GWs.


title:
Monitoring Nonadiabatic Electron-Nuclear Dynamics in Molecules by
  Attosecond Streaking of Photoelectrons

abstract:
  Streaking of photoelectrons has long been used for the temporal
characterization of attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulses. When the
time-resolved photoelectrons originate from a coherent superposition of
electronic states, they carry an additional phase information, which can be
retrieved by the streaking technique. In this contribution we extend the
streaking formalism to include coupled electron and nuclear dynamics in
molecules as well as initial coherences and demonstrate how it offers a novel
tool to monitor non-adiabatic dynamics as it occurs in the vicinity of conical
intersections and avoided crossings. Streaking can enhance the time resolution
and provide direct signatures of electronic coherences, which affect many
primary photochemical and biological events.


title:
Partial self-consistency and analyticity in many-body perturbation
  theory: particle number conservation and a generalized sum rule

abstract:
  We consider a general class of approximations which guarantees the
conservation of particle number in many-body perturbation theory. To do this we
extend the concept of $\Phi$-derivability for the self-energy $\Sigma$ to a
larger class of diagrammatic terms in which only some of the Green's function
lines contain the fully dressed Green's function $G$. We call the corresponding
approximations for $\Sigma$ partially $\Phi$-derivable. A special subclass of
such approximations, which are gauge-invariant, is obtained by dressing loops
in the diagrammatic expansion of $\Phi$ consistently with $G$. These
approximations are number conserving but do not have to fulfill other
conservation laws, such as the conservation of energy and momentum. From our
formalism we can easily deduce if commonly used approximations will fulfill the
continuity equation, which implies particle number conservation. We further
show how the concept of partial $\Phi$-derivability plays an important role in
the derivation of a generalized sum rule for the particle number, which reduces
to the Luttinger-Ward theorem in the case of a homogeneous electron gas, and
the Friedel sum rule in the case of the Anderson model. To do this we need to
ensure that the Green's function has certain complex analytic properties, which
can be guaranteed if the spectral function is positive semi-definite.The latter
property can be ensured for a subset of partially $\Phi$-derivable
approximations for the self-energy, namely those that can be constructed from
squares of so-called half-diagrams. In case the analytic requirements are not
fulfilled we highlight a number of subtle issues related to branch cuts, pole
structure and multi-valuedness. We also show that various schemes of computing
the particle number are consistent for particle number conserving
approximations.


title: The VGLC: The Video Game Level Corpus

abstract:
  Levels are a key component of many different video games, and a large body of
work has been produced on how to procedurally generate game levels. Recently,
Machine Learning techniques have been applied to video game level generation
towards the purpose of automatically generating levels that have the properties
of the training corpus. Towards that end we have made available a corpora of
video game levels in an easy to parse format ideal for different machine
learning and other game AI research purposes.


title: Scalable Bayes under Informative Sampling

abstract:
  The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data using survey
instruments under informative sampling designs that assign probabilities of
inclusion to be correlated with the response. The bureau extensively uses
Bayesian hierarchical models and posterior sampling to impute missing items in
respondent-level data and to infer population parameters. Posterior sampling
for survey data collected based on informative designs are computationally
expensive and do not support production schedules of the bureau. Motivated by
this problem, we propose a new method to scale Bayesian computations in
informative sampling designs. Our method divides the data into smaller subsets,
performs posterior sampling in parallel for every subset, and combines the
collection of posterior samples from all the subsets through their mean in the
Wasserstein space of order 2. Theoretically, we construct conditions on a class
of sampling designs where posterior consistency of the proposed method is
achieved. Empirically, we demonstrate that our method is competitive with
traditional methods while being significantly faster in many simulations and in
the Current Employment Statistics survey conducted by the bureau.


title: Borel Functors and Infinitary Interpretations

abstract:
  We introduce the notion of infinitary interpretation of structures. In
general, an interpretation between structures induces a continuous homomorphism
between their automorphism groups, and furthermore, it induces a functor
between the categories of copies of each structure. We show that for the case
of infinitary interpretation the reversals are also true: Every
Baire-measurable homomorphism between the automorphism groups of two countable
structures is induced by an infinitary interpretation, and every
Baire-measurable functor between the set of copies of two countable structures
is induced by an infinitary interpretation. Furthermore, we show the
complexities are maintained in the sense that if the functor is
$\mathbf{\Delta}^0_\alpha$, then the interpretation that induces it is
$\Delta^{\mathtt{in}}_\alpha$ up to $\mathbf{\Delta}^0_\alpha$ equivalence.


title: Enhancing Accountability and Trust in Distributed Ledgers

abstract:
  Permisionless decentralized ledgers ("blockchains") such as the one
underlying the cryptocurrency Bitcoin allow anonymous participants to maintain
the ledger, while avoiding control or "censorship" by any single entity. In
contrast, permissioned decentralized ledgers exploit real-world trust and
accountability, allowing only explicitly authorized parties to maintain the
ledger. Permissioned ledgers support more flexible governance and a wider
choice of consensus mechanisms. Both kinds of decentralized ledgers may be
susceptible to manipulation by participants who favor some transactions over
others. The real-world accountability underlying permissioned ledgers provides
an opportunity to impose fairness constraints that can be enforced by
penalizing violators after-the- fact. To date, however, this opportunity has
not been fully exploited, unnecessarily leaving participants latitude to
manipulate outcomes undetectably. This paper draws attention to this issue, and
proposes design principles to make such manipulation more difficult, as well as
specific mechanisms to make it easier to detect when violations occur.


title:
Improved log-Sobolev inequalities, hypercontractivity and uncertainty
  principle on the hypercube

abstract:
  Log-Sobolev inequalities (LSIs) upper-bound entropy via a multiple of the
Dirichlet form (i.e. norm of a gradient). In this paper we prove a family of
entropy-energy inequalities for the binary hypercube which provide a non-linear
comparison between the entropy and the Dirichlet form and improve on the usual
LSIs for functions with small support. These non-linear LSIs, in turn, imply a
new version of the hypercontractivity for such functions. As another
consequence, we derive a sharp form of the uncertainty principle for the
hypercube: a function whose energy is concentrated on a set of small size, and
whose Fourier energy is concentrated on a small Hamming ball must be zero. The
tradeoff between the sizes that we derive is asymptotically optimal. This new
uncertainty principle implies a new estimate on the size of Fourier
coefficients of sparse Boolean functions. We observe that an analogous
(asymptotically optimal) uncertainty principle in the Euclidean space follows
from the sharp form of Young's inequality due to Beckner. This hints that
non-linear LSIs augment Young's inequality (which itself is sharp for finite
groups).


title: Deterministic Generation of a Cluster State of Entangled Photons

abstract:
  We use semiconductor quantum dots, "artificial atoms," to implement a scheme
for deterministic generation of long strings of entangled photons in a cluster
state, an important resource for quantum information processing. We demonstrate
a prototype device which produces strings of a few hundred photons in which the
entanglement persists over 5 sequential photons. The implementation follows a
proposal by Lindner and Rudolph (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2009) which suggested
periodic timed excitation of a precessing electron spin as a mechanism for
entangling the electron spin with the polarization of the sequentially emitted
photons. In our realization, the entangling qubit is a quantum dot confined
dark exciton. By performing full quantum process tomography, we obtain the
process map which fully characterizes the evolution of the system, containing
the dark exciton and n photons after n applications of the periodic
excitations. Our implementation may greatly reduce the resources needed for
quantum information processing.


title: Sort Story: Sorting Jumbled Images and Captions into Stories

abstract:
  Temporal common sense has applications in AI tasks such as QA, multi-document
summarization, and human-AI communication. We propose the task of sequencing --
given a jumbled set of aligned image-caption pairs that belong to a story, the
task is to sort them such that the output sequence forms a coherent story. We
present multiple approaches, via unary (position) and pairwise (order)
predictions, and their ensemble-based combinations, achieving strong results on
this task. We use both text-based and image-based features, which depict
complementary improvements. Using qualitative examples, we demonstrate that our
models have learnt interesting aspects of temporal common sense.


title: Lattice QCD for Cosmology

abstract:
  We present a full result for the equation of state (EoS) in 2+1+1 (up/down,
strange and charm quarks are present) flavour lattice QCD. We extend this
analysis and give the equation of state in 2+1+1+1 flavour QCD. In order to
describe the evolution of the universe from temperatures several hundreds of
GeV to several tens of MeV we also include the known effects of the electroweak
theory and give the effective degree of freedoms. As another application of
lattice QCD we calculate the topological susceptibility (chi) up to the few GeV
temperature region. These two results, EoS and chi, can be used to predict the
dark matter axion's mass in the post-inflation scenario and/or give the
relationship between the axion's mass and the universal axionic angle, which
acts as a initial condition of our universe.


title: Classification of families of pr- and epr-sequences

abstract:
  This paper establishes new restrictions for attainable enhanced principal
rank characteristic sequences (epr-sequences). These results are then used to
classify two related families of sequences that are attainable by a real
symmetric matrix: the family of principal rank characteristic sequences
(pr-sequences) not containing three consecutive $1$s and the family of
epr-sequences which contain an $\tt{N}$ in every subsequence of length $3$.


title: Is a Picture Worth Ten Thousand Words in a Review Dataset?

abstract:
  While textual reviews have become prominent in many recommendation-based
systems, automated frameworks to provide relevant visual cues against text
reviews where pictures are not available is a new form of task confronted by
data mining and machine learning researchers. Suggestions of pictures that are
relevant to the content of a review could significantly benefit the users by
increasing the effectiveness of a review. We propose a deep learning-based
framework to automatically: (1) tag the images available in a review dataset,
(2) generate a caption for each image that does not have one, and (3) enhance
each review by recommending relevant images that might not be uploaded by the
corresponding reviewer. We evaluate the proposed framework using the Yelp
Challenge Dataset. While a subset of the images in this particular dataset are
correctly captioned, the majority of the pictures do not have any associated
text. Moreover, there is no mapping between reviews and images. Each image has
a corresponding business-tag where the picture was taken, though. The overall
data setting and unavailability of crucial pieces required for a mapping make
the problem of recommending images for reviews a major challenge. Qualitative
and quantitative evaluations indicate that our proposed framework provides high
quality enhancements through automatic captioning, tagging, and recommendation
for mapping reviews and images.


title: Testing Modeling Assumptions in the West Africa Ebola Outbreak

abstract:
  The Ebola virus in West Africa has infected almost 30,000 and killed over
11,000 people. Recent models of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) have often made
assumptions about how the disease spreads, such as uniform transmissibility and
homogeneous mixing within a population. In this paper, we test whether these
assumptions are necessarily correct, and offer simple solutions that may
improve disease model accuracy. First, we use data and models of West African
migration to show that EVD does not homogeneously mix, but spreads in a
predictable manner. Next, we estimate the initial growth rate of EVD within
country administrative divisions and find that it significantly decreases with
population density. Finally, we test whether EVD strains have uniform
transmissibility through a novel statistical test, and find that certain
strains appear more often than expected by chance.


title: Project Based Learning of Embedded Systems

abstract:
  Traditional teaching, usually based on lectures and tutorials fosters the
idea of instruction-driven learning model where students are passive listeners.
Besides this approach, Project Based Learning (PBL) as a different learning
paradigm is standing behind constructivism learning theory, where learning from
real-world situations is put on the first place. The purpose of this paper is
to present our approach in learning embedded systems at our University. It is
based on combination of traditional (face-to-face) learning and PBL. Our PBL
represents an interdisciplinary project based on wireless sensor monitoring of
real-world environment (greenhouse). The students use UML that was shown as an
excellent tool for developing such a projects. From the student perspective, we
found that this high level of interdisciplinary is very valuable from the point
of view of facing the students with real-life problems.


title: Non-amenable principal groupoids with weak containment

abstract:
  We construct examples of principal groupoids that have weak containment but
are not amenable, thus answering questions by Claire Anantharaman-Delaroche and
Rufus Willett.


title: Evolution of Vacuum Bubbles Embeded in Inhomogeneous Spacetimes

abstract:
  We study the propagation of bubbles of new vacuum in a radially inhomogeneous
background filled with dust or radiation, and including a cosmological
constant, as a first step in the analysis of the influence of inhomogeneities
in the evolution of an inflating region. We also compare the cases with dust
and radiation backgrounds and show that the evolution of the bubble in
radiation environments is notably different from that in the corresponding dust
cases, both for homogeneous and inhomogeneous ambients, leading to appreciable
differences in the evolution of the proper radius of the bubble.


title: Gauge Mediation at LHC: status and prospects

abstract:
  We show that the predictivity of general gauge mediation (GGM) with TeV-scale
stops is greatly increased once the Higgs mass constraint is imposed. The most
notable results are a strong lower bound on the mass of the gluino and
right-handed squarks, and an upper bound on the Higgsino mass. If the
mu-parameter is positive, the wino mass is also bounded from above. These
constraints relax significantly for high messenger scales and as such
long-lived NLSPs are favored in GGM. We identify a small set of most promising
topologies for the neutralino/sneutrino NLSP scenarios and estimate the impact
of the current bounds and the sensitivity of the high luminosity LHC. The stau,
stop and sbottom NLSP scenarios can be robustly excluded at the high luminosity
LHC.


title:
Wireless Sensor Networks Localization Methods: Multidimensional Scaling
  vs. Semidefinite Programming Approach

abstract:
  With the recent development of technology, wireless sensor networks are
becoming an important part of many applications such as health and medical
applications, military applications, agriculture monitoring, home and office
applications, environmental monitoring, etc. Knowing the location of a sensor
is important, but GPS receivers and ophisticated sensors are too expensive and
require processing power. Therefore, the localization wireless sensor network
problem is a growing field of interest. The aim of this paper is to give a
comparison of wireless sensor network localization methods, and therefore,
multidimensional scaling and semidefinite programming are chosen for this
research. Multidimensional scaling is a simple mathematical technique
widely-discussed that solves the wireless sensor networks localization problem.
In contrast, semidefinite programming is a relatively new field of optimization
with a growing use, although being more complex. In this paper, using extensive
simulations, a detailed overview of these two approaches is given, regarding
different network topologies, various network parameters and performance
issues. The performances of both techniques are highly satisfactory and
estimation errors are minimal


title:
Entanglement Swapping with Independent Sources over an Optical Fibre
  Network

abstract:
  Teleportation of an entangled state, known as entanglement swapping, plays an
essential role in quantum communication and network.Here we report a field-test
entanglement swapping experiment with two independent telecommunication band
entangled photon-pair sources over the optical fibre network of Hefei city. The
two sources are located at two nodes 12 km apart and the Bell-state measurement
is performed in a third location which is connected to the two source nodes
with 14.7 km and 10.6 km optical fibres. An average visibility of 79.9+/-4.8%
is observed in our experiment, which is high enough to infer a violation of
Bell inequality. With the entanglement swapping setup, we demonstrate a source
independent quantum key distribution, which is also immune to any attack
against detection in the measurement site.


title: Variational Calculus with Conformable Fractional Derivatives

abstract:
  Invariant conditions for conformable fractional problems of the calculus of
variations under the presence of external forces in the dynamics are studied.
Depending on the type of transformations considered, different necessary
conditions of invariance are obtained. As particular cases, we prove fractional
versions of Noether's symmetry theorem. Invariant conditions for fractional
optimal control problems, using the Hamiltonian formalism, are also
investigated. As an example of potential application in Physics, we show that
with conformable derivatives it is possible to formulate an Action Principle
for particles under frictional forces that is far simpler than the one obtained
with classical fractional derivatives.


title: Understanding close-lying exotic charmonia states within QCD sum rules

abstract:
  Motivated by the experimental findings of some new exotic states decaying
into channels like $J/\psi \phi$, we investigate the formation of
resonances/bound states in the $D^*_s\bar D^*_s$ system using QCD sum rules. To
do this we start with a current of the type vector times vector and use spin
projectors to separate the spin 0, 1 and 2 contributions to the correlation
function. We find three states with isospin 0, nearly spin degenerate, with a
mass around 4.1 GeV. We have also investigated the decay of these states to
$J/\psi \phi$ and provide the corresponding partial widths. Such information
should be useful for experimental studies in future.


title:
Cluster-based MDS Algorithm for Nodes Localization in Wireless Sensor
  Networks with Irregular Topologies

abstract:
  Nodes localization in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has arisen as a very
challenging problem in the research community. Most of the applications for WSN
are not useful without a priori known nodes positions. One solution to the
problem is by adding GPS receivers to each node. Since this is an expensive
approach and inapplicable for indoor environments, we need to find an
alternative intelligent mechanism for determining nodes location. In this
paper, we propose our cluster-based approach of multidimensional scaling (MDS)
technique. Our initial experiments show that our algorithm outperforms
MDS-MAP[8], particularly for irregular topologies in terms of accuracy.


title: Order and symmetry-breaking in the fluctuations of driven systems

abstract:
  Dynamical phase transitions (DPTs) in the space of trajectories are one of
the most intriguing phenomena of nonequilibrium physics, but their nature in
realistic high-dimensional systems remains puzzling. Here we observe for the
first time a DPT in the current vector statistics of an archetypal
two-dimensional (2d) driven diffusive system, and characterize its properties
using macroscopic fluctuation theory. The complex interplay among the external
field, anisotropy and vector currents in 2d leads to a rich phase diagram, with
different symmetry-broken fluctuation phases separated by lines of first- and
second-order DPTs. Remarkably, different types of 1d order in the form of
jammed density waves emerge to hinder transport for low-current fluctuations,
revealing a connection between rare events and self-organized structures which
enhance their probability.

categories: cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.soft math-ph math.MP nlin.PS


title:
A characterization of integral input-to-state stability for hybrid
  systems

abstract:
  This paper addresses characterizations of integral input-to-state stability
(iISS) for hybrid systems. In particular, we give a Lyapunov characterization
of iISS unifying and generalizing the existing theory for pure continuous-time
and pure discrete-time systems. Moreover, iISS is related to dissipativity and
detectability notions. Robustness of iISS to sufficiently small perturbations
is also investigated. As an application of our results, we provide a maximum
allowable sampling period guaranteeing iISS for sampled-data control systems
with an emulated controller.


title:
Convex Decomposition And Efficient Shape Representation Using Deformable
  Convex Polytopes

abstract:
  Decomposition of shapes into (approximate) convex parts is essential for
applications such as part-based shape representation, shape matching, and
collision detection. In this paper, we propose a novel convex decomposition
using a parametric implicit shape model called Disjunctive Normal Shape Model
(DNSM). The DNSM is formed as a union of polytopes which themselves are formed
by intersections of halfspaces. The key idea is by deforming the polytopes,
which naturally remain convex during the evolution, the polytopes capture
convex parts without the need to compute convexity. The major contributions of
this paper include a robust convex decomposition which also results in an
efficient part-based shape representation, and a novel shape convexity measure.
The experimental results show the potential of the proposed method.


title:
Orbital solution and evolutionary state for the eclipsing binary 1SWASP
  J080150.03+471433.8

abstract:
  We present an orbital solution study for the newly discovered system 1SWASP
J080150.03+471433.8 by means of new CCD observations in VRI bands. Our
observations were carried out on 25 Feb. 2013 using the Kottamia optical
telescope at NRIAG, Egypt. 12 new times of minima were estimated and the
observed light curves were analysed using the Wilson-Devinney code. The
accepted orbital solution reveals that the primary component of is more massive
and hotter than the secondary one by about 280K. The system is an over-contact
one with fillout ratio ~ 29% and is located at a distance of 195 Pc. The
evolutionary status of the system is investigated by means of stellar models
and empirical data.


title: Disjunctive Normal Level Set: An Efficient Parametric Implicit Method

abstract:
  Level set methods are widely used for image segmentation because of their
capability to handle topological changes. In this paper, we propose a novel
parametric level set method called Disjunctive Normal Level Set (DNLS), and
apply it to both two phase (single object) and multiphase (multi-object) image
segmentations. The DNLS is formed by union of polytopes which themselves are
formed by intersections of half-spaces. The proposed level set framework has
the following major advantages compared to other level set methods available in
the literature. First, segmentation using DNLS converges much faster. Second,
the DNLS level set function remains regular throughout its evolution. Third,
the proposed multiphase version of the DNLS is less sensitive to
initialization, and its computational cost and memory requirement remains
almost constant as the number of objects to be simultaneously segmented grows.
The experimental results show the potential of the proposed method.


title: Constrained fractional variational problems of variable order

abstract:
  Isoperimetric problems consist in minimizing or maximizing a cost functional
subject to an integral constraint. In this work, we present two fractional
isoperimetric problems where the Lagrangian depends on a combined Caputo
derivative of variable fractional order and we present a new variational
problem subject to a holonomic constraint. We establish necessary optimality
conditions in order to determine the minimizers of the fractional problems. The
terminal point in the cost integral, as well the terminal state, are considered
to be free, and we obtain corresponding natural boundary conditions.


title: The Problem of Analogical Inference in Inductive Logic

abstract:
  We consider one problem that was largely left open by Rudolf Carnap in his
work on inductive logic, the problem of analogical inference. After discussing
some previous attempts to solve this problem, we propose a new solution that is
based on the ideas of Bruno de Finetti on probabilistic symmetries. We explain
how our new inductive logic can be developed within the Carnapian paradigm of
inductive logic-deriving an inductive rule from a set of simple postulates
about the observational process-and discuss some of its properties.


title: Human-Agent Decision-making: Combining Theory and Practice

abstract:
  Extensive work has been conducted both in game theory and logic to model
strategic interaction. An important question is whether we can use these
theories to design agents for interacting with people? On the one hand, they
provide a formal design specification for agent strategies. On the other hand,
people do not necessarily adhere to playing in accordance with these
strategies, and their behavior is affected by a multitude of social and
psychological factors. In this paper we will consider the question of whether
strategies implied by theories of strategic behavior can be used by automated
agents that interact proficiently with people. We will focus on automated
agents that we built that need to interact with people in two negotiation
settings: bargaining and deliberation. For bargaining we will study game-theory
based equilibrium agents and for argumentation we will discuss logic-based
argumentation theory. We will also consider security games and persuasion games
and will discuss the benefits of using equilibrium based agents.


title: Resolving Distributed Knowledge

abstract:
  Distributed knowledge is the sum of the knowledge in a group; what someone
who is able to discern between two possible worlds whenever any member of the
group can discern between them, would know. Sometimes distributed knowledge is
referred to as the potential knowledge of a group, or the joint knowledge they
could obtain if they had unlimited means of communication. In epistemic logic,
the formula D_G{\phi} is intended to express the fact that group G has
distributed knowledge of {\phi}, that there is enough information in the group
to infer {\phi}. But this is not the same as reasoning about what happens if
the members of the group share their information. In this paper we introduce an
operator R_G, such that R_G{\phi} means that {\phi} is true after G have shared
all their information with each other - after G's distributed knowledge has
been resolved. The R_G operators are called resolution operators. Semantically,
we say that an expression R_G{\phi} is true iff {\phi} is true in what van
Benthem [11, p. 249] calls (G's) communication core; the model update obtained
by removing links to states for members of G that are not linked by all members
of G. We study logics with different combinations of resolution operators and
operators for common and distributed knowledge. Of particular interest is the
relationship between distributed and common knowledge. The main results are
sound and complete axiomatizations.


title: Epistemic Protocols for Distributed Gossiping

abstract:
  Gossip protocols aim at arriving, by means of point-to-point or group
communications, at a situation in which all the agents know each other's
secrets. We consider distributed gossip protocols which are expressed by means
of epistemic logic. We provide an operational semantics of such protocols and
set up an appropriate framework to argue about their correctness. Then we
analyze specific protocols for complete graphs and for directed rings.


title: Coordination Games on Directed Graphs

abstract:
  We study natural strategic games on directed graphs, which capture the idea
of coordination in the absence of globally common strategies. We show that
these games do not need to have a pure Nash equilibrium and that the problem of
determining their existence is NP-complete. The same holds for strong
equilibria. We also exhibit some classes of games for which strong equilibria
exist and prove that a strong equilibrium can then be found in linear time.


title: On the Solvability of Inductive Problems: A Study in Epistemic Topology

abstract:
  We investigate the issues of inductive problem-solving and learning by
doxastic agents. We provide topological characterizations of solvability and
learnability, and we use them to prove that AGM-style belief revision is
"universal", i.e., that every solvable problem is solvable by AGM conditioning.


title: Bayesian Games with Intentions

abstract:
  We show that standard Bayesian games cannot represent the full spectrum of
belief-dependent preferences. However, by introducing a fundamental distinction
between intended and actual strategies, we remove this limitation. We define
Bayesian games with intentions, generalizing both Bayesian games and
psychological games, and prove that Nash equilibria in psychological games
correspond to a special class of equilibria as defined in our setting.


title: Standard State Space Models of Unawareness (Extended Abstract)

abstract:
  The impossibility theorem of Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini has been thought to
demonstrate that standard state-space models cannot be used to represent
unawareness. We first show that Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini do not establish
this claim. We then distinguish three notions of awareness, and argue that
although one of them may not be adequately modeled using standard state spaces,
there is no reason to think that standard state spaces cannot provide models of
the other two notions. In fact, standard space models of these forms of
awareness are attractively simple. They allow us to prove completeness and
decidability results with ease, to carry over standard techniques from decision
theory, and to add propositional quantifiers straightforwardly.


title:
Do players reason by forward induction in dynamic perfect information
  games?

abstract:
  We conducted an experiment where participants played a perfect-information
game against a computer, which was programmed to deviate often from its
backward induction strategy right at the beginning of the game. Participants
knew that in each game, the computer was nevertheless optimizing against some
belief about the participant's future strategy.
  It turned out that in the aggregate, participants were likely to respond in a
way which is optimal with respect to their best-rationalization extensive form
rationalizability conjecture - namely the conjecture that the computer is after
a larger prize than the one it has foregone, even when this necessarily meant
that the computer has attributed future irrationality to the participant when
the computer made the first move in the game. Thus, it appeared that
participants applied forward induction. However, there exist alternative
explanations for the choices of most participants; for example, choices could
be based on the extent of risk aversion that participants attributed to the
computer in the remainder of the game, rather than to the sunk outside option
that the computer has already foregone at the beginning of the game. For this
reason, the results of the experiment do not yet provide conclusive evidence
for Forward Induction reasoning on the part of the participants.


title: Ceteris paribus logic in counterfactual reasoning

abstract:
  The semantics for counterfactuals due to David Lewis has been challenged on
the basis of unlikely, or impossible, events. Such events may skew a given
similarity order in favour of those possible worlds which exhibit them. By
updating the relational structure of a model according to a ceteris paribus
clause one forces out, in a natural manner, those possible worlds which do not
satisfy the requirements of the clause. We develop a ceteris paribus logic for
counterfactual reasoning capable of performing such actions, and offer several
alternative (relaxed) interpretations of ceteris paribus. We apply this
framework in a way which allows us to reason counterfactually without having
our similarity order skewed by unlikely events. This continues the
investigation of formal ceteris paribus reasoning, which has previously been
applied to preferences, logics of game forms, and questions in decision-making,
among other areas.


title: An Axiomatic Approach to Routing

abstract:
  Information delivery in a network of agents is a key issue for large, complex
systems that need to do so in a predictable, efficient manner. The delivery of
information in such multi-agent systems is typically implemented through
routing protocols that determine how information flows through the network.
Different routing protocols exist each with its own benefits, but it is
generally unclear which properties can be successfully combined within a given
algorithm. We approach this problem from the axiomatic point of view, i.e., we
try to establish what are the properties we would seek to see in such a system,
and examine the different properties which uniquely define common routing
algorithms used today.
  We examine several desirable properties, such as robustness, which ensures
adding nodes and edges does not change the routing in a radical, unpredictable
ways; and properties that depend on the operating environment, such as an
"economic model", where nodes choose their paths based on the cost they are
charged to pass information to the next node. We proceed to fully characterize
minimal spanning tree, shortest path, and weakest link routing algorithms,
showing a tight set of axioms for each.


title: Preference at First Sight

abstract:
  We consider decision-making and game scenarios in which an agent is limited
by his/her computational ability to foresee all the available moves towards the
future - that is, we study scenarios with short sight. We focus on how short
sight affects the logical properties of decision making in multi-agent
settings. We start with single-agent sequential decision making (SSDM)
processes, modeling them by a new structure of "preference-sight trees". Using
this model, we first explore the relation between a new natural solution
concept of Sight-Compatible Backward Induction (SCBI) and the histories
produced by classical Backward Induction (BI). In particular, we find necessary
and sufficient conditions for the two analyses to be equivalent. Next, we study
whether larger sight always contributes to better outcomes. Then we develop a
simple logical special-purpose language to formally express some key properties
of our preference-sight models. Lastly, we show how short-sight SSDM scenarios
call for substantial enrichments of existing fixed-point logics that have been
developed for the classical BI solution concept. We also discuss changes in
earlier modal logics expressing "surface reasoning" about best actions in the
presence of short sight. Our analysis may point the way to logical and
computational analysis of more realistic game models.


title:
Relating Knowledge and Coordinated Action: The Knowledge of
  Preconditions Principle

abstract:
  The Knowledge of Preconditions principle (KoP) is proposed as a widely
applicable connection between knowledge and action in multi-agent systems.
Roughly speaking, it asserts that if some condition is a necessary condition
for performing a given action A, then knowing that this condition holds is also
a necessary condition for performing A. Since the specifications of tasks often
involve necessary conditions for actions, the KoP principle shows that such
specifications induce knowledge preconditions for the actions. Distributed
protocols or multi-agent plans that satisfy the specifications must ensure that
this knowledge be attained, and that it is detected by the agents as a
condition for action. The knowledge of preconditions principle is formalised in
the runs and systems framework, and is proven to hold in a wide class of
settings. Well-known connections between knowledge and coordinated action are
extended and shown to derive directly from the KoP principle: a "common
knowledge of preconditions" principle is established showing that common
knowledge is a necessary condition for performing simultaneous actions, and a
"nested knowledge of preconditions" principle is proven, showing that
coordinating actions to be performed in linear temporal order requires a
corresponding form of nested knowledge.


title:
Parameterized Complexity Results for a Model of Theory of Mind Based on
  Dynamic Epistemic Logic

abstract:
  In this paper we introduce a computational-level model of theory of mind
(ToM) based on dynamic epistemic logic (DEL), and we analyze its computational
complexity. The model is a special case of DEL model checking. We provide a
parameterized complexity analysis, considering several aspects of DEL (e.g.,
number of agents, size of preconditions, etc.) as parameters. We show that
model checking for DEL is PSPACE-hard, also when restricted to single-pointed
models and S5 relations, thereby solving an open problem in the literature. Our
approach is aimed at formalizing current intractability claims in the cognitive
science literature regarding computational models of ToM.


title: Announcement as effort on topological spaces

abstract:
  We propose a multi-agent logic of knowledge, public and arbitrary
announcements, that is interpreted on topological spaces in the style of subset
space semantics. The arbitrary announcement modality functions similarly to the
effort modality in subset space logics, however, it comes with intuitive and
semantic differences. We provide axiomatizations for three logics based on this
setting, and demonstrate their completeness.


title: A Dynamic Epistemic Framework for Conformant Planning

abstract:
  In this paper, we introduce a lightweight dynamic epistemic logical framework
for automated planning under initial uncertainty. We reduce plan verification
and conformant planning to model checking problems of our logic. We show that
the model checking problem of the iteration-free fragment is PSPACE-complete.
By using two non-standard (but equivalent) semantics, we give novel model
checking algorithms to the full language and the iteration-free language.


title:
The optimality of coarse categories in decision-making and information
  storage

abstract:
  An agent who lacks preferences and instead makes decisions using criteria
that are costly to create should select efficient sets of criteria, where the
cost of making a given number of choice distinctions is minimized. Under mild
conditions, efficiency requires that binary criteria with only two categories
per criterion are chosen. When applied to the problem of determining the
optimal number of digits in an information storage device, this result implies
that binary digits (bits) are the efficient solution, even when the marginal
cost of using additional digits declines rapidly to 0. This short paper pays
particular attention to the symmetry conditions entailed when sets of criteria
are efficient.


title:
Escobar's Type Theorems for elliptic fully nonlinear degenerate
  equations

abstract:
  In this paper we prove non-existence and classification results for elliptic
fully nonlinear elliptic degenerate conformal equations on certain subdomains
of the sphere with prescribed constant mean curvature along its boundary. We
also consider non-degenerate equations. Such subdomains are the hemisphere (or
a geodesic ball in $\mathbb{S}^m$), punctured balls and annular domains.
  Our results extend those of Escobar in when $m\geq 3$, and Hang-Wang and
Jimenez in when $m=2$.


title: One-Bit Compressive Sensing of Dictionary-Sparse Signals

abstract:
  One-bit compressive sensing has extended the scope of sparse recovery by
showing that sparse signals can be accurately reconstructed even when their
linear measurements are subject to the extreme quantization scenario of binary
samples---only the sign of each linear measurement is maintained. Existing
results in one-bit compressive sensing rely on the assumption that the signals
of interest are sparse in some fixed orthonormal basis. However, in most
practical applications, signals are sparse with respect to an overcomplete
dictionary, rather than a basis. There has already been a surge of activity to
obtain recovery guarantees under such a generalized sparsity model in the
classical compressive sensing setting. Here, we extend the one-bit framework to
this important model, providing a unified theory of one-bit compressive sensing
under dictionary sparsity. Specifically, we analyze several different
algorithms---based on convex programming and on hard thresholding---and show
that, under natural assumptions on the sensing matrix (satisfied by Gaussian
matrices), these algorithms can efficiently recover analysis-dictionary-sparse
signals in the one-bit model.


title: Presymplectic structures and intrinsic Lagrangians

abstract:
  It is well-known that a Lagrangian induces a compatible presymplectic form on
the equation manifold (stationary surface, understood as a submanifold of the
respective jet-space). Given an equation manifold and a compatible
presymplectic form therein, we define the first-order Lagrangian system which
is formulated in terms of the intrinsic geometry of the equation manifold. It
has a structure of a presymplectic AKSZ sigma model for which the equation
manifold, equipped with the presymplectic form and the horizontal differential,
serves as the target space. For a wide class of systems (but not all) we show
that if the presymplectic structure originates from a given Lagrangian, the
proposed first-order Lagrangian is equivalent to the initial one and hence the
Lagrangian per se can be entirely encoded in terms of the intrinsic geometry of
its stationary surface. If the compatible presymplectic structure is generic,
the proposed Lagrangian is only a partial one in the sense that its stationary
surface contains the initial equation manifold but does not necessarily
coincide with it.


title: Translucent Players: Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Social Dilemmas

abstract:
  In the last few decades, numerous experiments have shown that humans do not
always behave so as to maximize their material payoff. Cooperative behavior
when non-cooperation is a dominant strategy (with respect to the material
payoffs) is particularly puzzling. Here we propose a novel approach to explain
cooperation, assuming what Halpern and Pass call translucent players.
Typically, players are assumed to be opaque, in the sense that a deviation by
one player in a normal-form game does not affect the strategies used by other
players. But a player may believe that if he switches from one strategy to
another, the fact that he chooses to switch may be visible to the other
players. For example, if he chooses to defect in Prisoner's Dilemma, the other
player may sense his guilt. We show that by assuming translucent players, we
can recover many of the regularities observed in human behavior in well-studied
games such as Prisoner's Dilemma, Traveler's Dilemma, Bertrand Competition, and
the Public Goods game.


title:
Essential norms of Volterra-type operators between~$Zygmund$~ type
  spaces

abstract:
  ~In this paper, we investigate the boundedness of some Volterra-type
operators between ~$Zygmund$~ type spaces. Then, we give the essential norms of
such operators in terms of ~$g,\varphi$, their derivatives and the n-th power
~$\varphi^n$ of ~$\varphi$.


title: Some Three-body force cancellations in Chiral Lagrangians

abstract:
  The cancellation between off-shell two body forces and three body forces
implies a tremendous simplification in the study of three body resonances in
two meson-one baryon systems. While this can be done by means of Faddeev
equations we provide an alternative and simpler derivation using just the
chiral Lagrangian and the field re-parametrization invariance.


title: Coupled Generative Adversarial Networks

abstract:
  We propose coupled generative adversarial network (CoGAN) for learning a
joint distribution of multi-domain images. In contrast to the existing
approaches, which require tuples of corresponding images in different domains
in the training set, CoGAN can learn a joint distribution without any tuple of
corresponding images. It can learn a joint distribution with just samples drawn
from the marginal distributions. This is achieved by enforcing a weight-sharing
constraint that limits the network capacity and favors a joint distribution
solution over a product of marginal distributions one. We apply CoGAN to
several joint distribution learning tasks, including learning a joint
distribution of color and depth images, and learning a joint distribution of
face images with different attributes. For each task it successfully learns the
joint distribution without any tuple of corresponding images. We also
demonstrate its applications to domain adaptation and image transformation.


title:
Sistem Informasi Pengarsipan Menggunakan Algoritma Levensthein String
  pada Kecamatan Seberang Ulu II

abstract:
  Archival information systems in government agency is one of the most used
applications for daily acitivities. One feature in application management
information document is searching. This feature serves to search for documents
from a collection of available information based on keywords entered by the
user. But some researches on a search engine (searching) concluded that the
average user error in the search is quite high due to several factors.
Therefore, we need a development on this feature as search suggestion. This
study discusses the application of the method of approximate string matching
algorithm using levenshtein distance. Levensthein distance algorithm is capable
of calculating the minimum distance conversion of a string into another string
to the optimum. Archiving information system using Levensthein Algorithm String
is an application that will be built to address these problems, this
application will help, especially in the administration to enter or save a
document, locate and make a report that will be seen by government agencies.


title: Solar Neutrino Measurements in Super-Kamiokande-IV

abstract:
  Upgraded electronics, improved water system dynamics, better calibration and
analysis techniques allowed Super-Kamiokande-IV to clearly observe very
low-energy 8B solar neutrino interactions, with recoil electron kinetic
energies as low as 3.49 MeV. Super-Kamiokande-IV data-taking began in September
of 2008; this paper includes data until February 2014, a total livetime of 1664
days. The measured solar neutrino flux is (2.308+-0.020(stat.) +
0.039-0.040(syst.)) x 106/(cm2sec) assuming no oscillations. The observed
recoil electron energy spectrum is consistent with no distortions due to
neutrino oscillations. An extended maximum likelihood fit to the amplitude of
the expected solar zenith angle variation of the neutrino-electron elastic
scattering rate in SK-IV results in a day/night asymmetry of
(-3.6+-1.6(stat.)+-0.6(syst.))%. The SK-IV solar neutrino data determine the
solar mixing angle as sin2 theta_12 = 0.327+0.026-0.031, all SK solar data
(SK-I, SK-II, SK III and SKIV) measures this angle to be sin2 theta_12 =
0.334+0.027-0.023, the determined mass-squared splitting is Delta m2_21 =
4.8+1.5-0.8 x10-5 eV2.


title:
A Unified Framework for Producing CAI Melting, Wark-Lovering Rims and
  Bowl-Shaped CAIs

abstract:
  Calcium Aluminium Inclusions (CAIs) formed in the Solar System, some 4,567
million years ago. CAIs are almost always surrounded by Wark-Lovering Rims
(WLRs), which are a sequence of thin, mono/bi-mineralic layers of refractory
minerals, with a total thickness in the range of 1 to 100 microns. Recently,
some CAIs have been found that have tektite-like bowl-shapes. To form such
shapes, the CAI must have travelled through a rarefied gas at hypersonic
speeds. We show how CAIs may have been ejected from the inner solar accretion
disc via the centrifugal interaction between the solar magnetosphere and the
inner disc rim. They subsequently punched through the hot, inner disc rim wall
at hypersonic speeds. This re-entry heating partially or completely evaporated
the CAIs. Such evaporation could have significantly increased the metal
abundances of the inner disc rim. High speed movement through the inner disc
produced WLRs. To match the observed thickness of WLRs required metal
abundances at the inner disc wall that are of order ten times that of standard
solar abundances. The CAIs cooled as they moved away from the protosun, the
deduced CAI cooling rates are consistent with the CAI cooling rates obtained
from experiment and observation. The speeds and gas densities required to form
bowl-shaped CAIs are also consistent with the expected speeds and gas densities
for larger, ~ 1 cm, CAIs punching through an inner accretion disc wall.


title:
Current-Induced Instability of a Perpendicular Ferromagnet in Spin Hall
  Geometry

abstract:
  We develop a theoretical formula of spin Hall torque in the presence of two
ferromagnets. While the direction of the conventional spin Hall torque always
points to the in-plane direction, the present system enables to manipulate the
torque direction acting on one magnetization by changing the direction of
another magnetization. Based on the diffusion equation of the spin accumulation
and the Landauer formula, we derive analytical formula of the spin Hall torque.
The present model provides a solution to switch a perpendicular ferromagnet
deterministically at zero field using the spin Hall effect.


title: Tetravalent edge-transitive Cayley graphs of Frobenius groups

abstract:
  In this paper, we give a characterization for a class of edge-transitive
Cayley graphs, and provide methods for constructing Cayley graphs with certain
symmetry properties. Also this study leads to construct and characterise a new
family of half-transitive graphs.


title:
Whispering-gallery-mode based CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite microrod lasers
  with high quality factors

abstract:
  Lead halide perovskite based micro- and nano- lasers have been widely studied
in past two years. Due to their long carrier diffusion length and high external
quantum efficiency, lead halide perovskites have been considered to have bright
future in optoelectronic devices, especially in the "green gap" wavelength
region. However, the quality (Q) factors of perovskite lasers are unspectacular
compared to conventional microdisk lasers. The record value of full width at
half maximum (FWHM) at threshold is still around 0.22 nm. Herein we synthesized
solution-processed, single-crystalline CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite microrods and
studied their lasing actions. In contrast to entirely pumping a microrod on
substrate, we partially excited the microrods that were hanging in the air.
Consequently, single-mode or few-mode laser emissions have been successfully
obtained from the whispering-gallery like diamond modes, which are confined by
total internal reflection within the transverse plane. Owning to the better
light confinement and high crystal quality, the FWHM at threshold have been
significantly improved. The smallest FWHM at threshold is around 0.1 nm, giving
a Q factor over 5000.


title:
Robust metastable skyrmions and their triangular-square
  lattice-structural transition in a high-temperature chiral magnet

abstract:
  Skyrmions, topologically-protected nanometric spin vortices, are being
investigated extensively in various magnets. Among them, many of
structurally-chiral cubic magnets host the triangular-lattice skyrmion crystal
(SkX) as the thermodynamic equilibrium state. However, this state exists only
in a narrow temperature and magnetic-field region just below the magnetic
transition temperature $T_\mathrm{c}$, while a helical or conical magnetic
state prevails at lower temperatures. Here we describe that for a
room-temperature skyrmion material, $\beta$-Mn-type Co$_8$Zn$_8$Mn$_4$, a
field-cooling via the equilibrium SkX state can suppress the transition to the
helical or conical state, instead realizing robust metastable SkX states that
survive over a very wide temperature and magnetic-field region, including down
to zero temperature and up to the critical magnetic field of the ferromagnetic
transition. Furthermore, the lattice form of the metastable SkX is found to
undergo reversible transitions between a conventional triangular lattice and a
novel square lattice upon varying the temperature and magnetic field. These
findings exemplify the topological robustness of the once-created skyrmions,
and establish metastable skyrmion phases as a fertile ground for technological
applications.


title:
Spin-liquid Mott quantum criticality in two dimensions: Destabilization
  of a spinon Fermi surface and emergence of one-dimensional spin dynamics

abstract:
  Resorting to a recently developed theoretical device called dimensional
regularization for quantum criticality with a Fermi surface, we examine a
metal-insulator quantum phase transition from a Landau's Fermi-liquid state to
a U(1) spin-liquid phase with a spinon Fermi surface in two dimensions.
Unfortunately, we fail to approach the spin-liquid Mott quantum critical point
from the U(1) spin-liquid state within the dimensional regularization
technique. Self-interactions between charge fluctuations called holons are not
screened, which shows a run-away renormalization group flow, interpreted as
holons remain gapped. This leads us to consider another fixed point, where the
spinon Fermi surface can be destabilized across the Mott transition. Based on
this conjecture, we reveal the nature of the spin-liquid Mott quantum critical
point: Dimensional reduction to one dimension occurs for spin dynamics
described by spinons. As a result, Landau damping for both spin and charge
dynamics disappear in the vicinity of the Mott quantum critical point. When the
flavor number of holons is over its critical value, an interacting fixed point
appears to be identified with an inverted XY universality class, controlled
within the dimensional regularization technique. On the other hand, a
fluctuation-driven first order metal-insulator transition results when it is
below the critical number. We propose that the destabilization of a spinon
Fermi surface and the emergence of one-dimensional spin dynamics near the
spin-liquid Mott quantum critical point can be checked out by spin
susceptibility with a $2 k_{F}$ transfer momentum, where $k_{F}$ is a Fermi
momentum in the U(1) spin-liquid state: The absence of Landau damping in U(1)
gauge fluctuations gives rise to a divergent behavior at zero temperature while
it vanishes in the presence of a spinon Fermi surface.


title: Interactive Semantic Featuring for Text Classification

abstract:
  In text classification, dictionaries can be used to define
human-comprehensible features. We propose an improvement to dictionary features
called smoothed dictionary features. These features recognize document contexts
instead of n-grams. We describe a principled methodology to solicit dictionary
features from a teacher, and present results showing that models built using
these human-comprehensible features are competitive with models trained with
Bag of Words features.


title:
The Spin-Orbit Evolution of GJ 667C System: The Effect of Composition
  and Other Planet's Perturbations

abstract:
  Potentially habitable planets within the habitable zone of M-dwarfs are
affected by tidal interaction. We studied the tidal evolution in GJ 667C using
a numerical code we call TIDEV. We reviewed the problem of the dynamical
evolution focusing on the effects that a rheological treatment, different
compositions and the inclusion of orbital perturbations, have on the spin-down
time and the probability to be trapped in a low spin-orbit resonance.
Composition have a strong effect on the spin-down time, changing, in some
cases, by almost a factor of 2 with respect to the value estimated for a
reference Earth-like model. We calculated the time to reach a low resonance
value (3:2) for the configuration of 6 planets. Capture probabilities are
affected when assuming different compositions and eccentricities variations. We
chose planets b and c to evaluate the probabilities of capture in resonances
below 5:2 for two compositions: Earth-like and Waterworld planets. We found
that perturbations, although having a secular effect on eccentricities, have a
low impact on capture probabilities and noth- ing on spin-down times. The
implications of the eccentricity variations and actual habitability of the GJ
667C system are discussed.


title:
Flowing dusty plasma experiments: Generation of flow and measurement
  techniques

abstract:
  A variety of experimental techniques for the generation of
subsonic/supersonic dust fluid flows and means of measuring such flow
velocities are presented. The experiments have been carried out in a
$\Pi-$shaped Dusty Plasma Experimental (DPEx) device with micron size
kaolin/Melamine Formaldehyde (MF) particles embedded in a background of Argon
plasma created by a direct current (DC) glow discharge. A stationary dust cloud
is formed over the cathode region by precisely balancing the pumping speed and
gas flow rate. A flow of dust particles/fluid is generated by additional gas
injection from a single or dual locations or by altering the dust confining
potential. The flow velocity is then estimated by three different techniques,
namely, by super Particle Identification (sPIT) code, Particle Image
Velocimetry (PIV) analysis and the excitation of Dust Acoustic Waves (DAWs).
The results obtained from these three different techniques along with their
merits and demerits are discussed. An estimation of the neutral drag force
responsible for the generation as well as the attenuation of the dust fluid
flow is made. These techniques can be usefully employed in laboratory devices
to investigate linear and non-linear collective excitations in a flowing dusty
plasma.


title:
A Sentence Compression Based Framework to Query-Focused Multi-Document
  Summarization

abstract:
  We consider the problem of using sentence compression techniques to
facilitate query-focused multi-document summarization. We present a
sentence-compression-based framework for the task, and design a series of
learning-based compression models built on parse trees. An innovative beam
search decoder is proposed to efficiently find highly probable compressions.
Under this framework, we show how to integrate various indicative metrics such
as linguistic motivation and query relevance into the compression process by
deriving a novel formulation of a compression scoring function. Our best model
achieves statistically significant improvement over the state-of-the-art
systems on several metrics (e.g. 8.0% and 5.4% improvements in ROUGE-2
respectively) for the DUC 2006 and 2007 summarization task.


title: The Study of TVS Trigger Geometry and Triggered Vacuum Conditions

abstract:
  This presentation focuses on the optimization of the trigger unit of a
six-rod TVS. The different configurations of the trigger pin and of the trigger
electrode have been considered to study the electric field distribution at the
triple points of the unit embedded in the cathode. To optimize the field
enhancement, electric field simulations with a planar and a circular heads of
the trigger pin in combinations with a convex and a concave shaped trigger
electrodes have been done. The simulations were done with an applied trigger
pulse voltage of Utrigger = 5 kV and with a discharge voltage the main switch
of Uswitch = 20 kV. The experimental values had been Utrigger = 40 kV and
Uswitch = 5 kV. The simulation results show that the combination of a circular
trigger pin head and a concave trigger electrode yields the highest electric
field of 9.6 .106 V/m at the triple point. In-parallel experiments have been
performed with those four trigger configurations. The results of the
experiments however cannot yet clearly confirm the trend in the results of the
field simulations.


title: SNAP: A General Purpose Network Analysis and Graph Mining Library

abstract:
  Large networks are becoming a widely used abstraction for studying complex
systems in a broad set of disciplines, ranging from social network analysis to
molecular biology and neuroscience. Despite an increasing need to analyze and
manipulate large networks, only a limited number of tools are available for
this task.
  Here, we describe Stanford Network Analysis Platform (SNAP), a
general-purpose, high-performance system that provides easy to use, high-level
operations for analysis and manipulation of large networks. We present SNAP
functionality, describe its implementational details, and give performance
benchmarks. SNAP has been developed for single big-memory machines and it
balances the trade-off between maximum performance, compact in-memory graph
representation, and the ability to handle dynamic graphs where nodes and edges
are being added or removed over time. SNAP can process massive networks with
hundreds of millions of nodes and billions of edges. SNAP offers over 140
different graph algorithms that can efficiently manipulate large graphs,
calculate structural properties, generate regular and random graphs, and handle
attributes and meta-data on nodes and edges. Besides being able to handle large
graphs, an additional strength of SNAP is that networks and their attributes
are fully dynamic, they can be modified during the computation at low cost.
SNAP is provided as an open source library in C++ as well as a module in
Python.
  We also describe the Stanford Large Network Dataset, a set of social and
information real-world networks and datasets, which we make publicly available.
The collection is a complementary resource to our SNAP software and is widely
used for development and benchmarking of graph analytics algorithms.


title:
The graphs with exactly two distance eigenvalues different from $-1$ and
  $-3$

abstract:
  In this paper, we completely characterize the graphs with third largest
distance eigenvalue at most $-1$ and smallest distance eigenvalue at least
$-3$. In particular, we determine all graphs whose distance matrices have
exactly two eigenvalues (counting multiplicity) different from $-1$ and $-3$.
It turns out that such graphs consist of three infinite classes, and all of
them are determined by their distance spectra. We also show that the friendship
graph is determined by its distance spectrum.


title:
Type-controlled Nanodevices Based on Encapsulated Few-layer Black
  Phosphorus for Quantum Transport

abstract:
  We demonstrate that encapsulation of atomically thin black phosphorus (BP) by
hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) sheets is very effective for minimizing the
interface impurities induced during fabrication of BP channel material for
quantum transport nanodevices. Highly stable BP nanodevices with ultrahigh
mobility and controllable types are realized through depositing appropriate
metal electrodes after conducting a selective etching to the BP encapsulation
structure. Chromium and titanium are suitable metal electrodes for BP channels
to control the transition from a p-type unipolar property to ambipolar
characteristic because of different work functions. Record-high mobilities of
6000 $cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$ and 8400 $cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$ are respectively obtained
for electrons and holes at cryogenic temperatures. High-mobility BP devices
enable the investigation of quantum oscillations with an indistinguishable
Zeeman effect in laboratory magnetic field.


title: Actin filaments growing against a barrier with fluctuating shape

abstract:
  We study force generation by a set of parallel actin filaments growing
against a non-rigid obstacle, in presence of an external load. The filaments
polymerize by either moving the whole obstacle, with a large energy cost, or by
causing local distortion in its shape which costs much less energy. The
non-rigid obstacle also has local thermal fluctuations due to which its shape
can change with time and we describe this using fluctuations in the height
profile of a one dimensional interface with Kardar-Parisi-Zhang dynamics. We
find the shape fluctuations of the barrier strongly affects the force
generation mechanism. The qualitative nature of the force-velocity curve is
crucially determined by the relative time-scale of filament and barrier
dynamics. The height profile of the barrier also shows interesting variation
with the external load. Our analytical calculation within mean-field theory
shows reasonable agreement with our simulation results.


title:
Optimized Tomography of Continuous Variable Systems Using Excitation
  Counting

abstract:
  We propose a systematic procedure to optimize quantum state tomography
protocols for continuous variable systems based on excitation counting preceded
by a displacement operation. Compared with conventional tomography based on
Husimi or Wigner function measurement, the excitation counting approach can
significantly reduce the number of measurement settings. We investigate both
informational completeness and robustness, and provide a bound of
reconstruction error involving the condition number of the sensing map. We also
identify the measurement settings that optimize this error bound, and
demonstrate that the improved reconstruction robustness can lead to an order of
magnitude reduction of estimation error with given resources. This optimization
procedure is general and can incorporate prior information of the unknown state
to further simplify the protocol.


title:
Type-II Topological Dirac Semimetals: Theory and Materials Prediction
  (VAl3 family)

abstract:
  The discoveries of Dirac and Weyl semimetal states in spin-orbit compounds
led to the realizations of elementary particle analogs in table-top
experiments. In this paper, we propose the concept of a three-dimensional
type-II Dirac fermion and identify a new topological semimetal state in the
large family of transition-metal icosagenides, MA3 (M=V, Nb, Ta; A=Al, Ga, In).
We show that the VAl3 family features a pair of strongly Lorentz-violating
type-II Dirac nodes and that each Dirac node consists of four type-II Weyl
nodes with chiral charge +/-1 via symmetry breaking. Furthermore, we predict
the Landau level spectrum arising from the type-II Dirac fermions in VAl3 that
is distinct from that of known Dirac semimetals. We also show a topological
phase transition from a type-II Dirac semimetal to a quadratic Weyl semimetal
or a topological crystalline insulator via crystalline distortions. The new
type-II Dirac fermions, their novel magneto-transport response, the topological
tunability and the large number of compounds make VAl3 an exciting platform to
explore the wide-ranging topological phenomena associated with
Lorentz-violating Dirac fermions in electrical and optical transport,
spectroscopic and device-based experiments.


title:
Do the Young Live in a "Smaller World" Than the Old? Age-Specific
  Degrees of Separation in Human Communication

abstract:
  In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of "age-specific small worlds"
using data from a large-scale mobile communication network approximating
interaction patterns at societal scale. Rather than asking whether two random
individuals are separated by a small number of links, we ask whether
individuals in specific age groups live in a small world in relation to
individuals from other age groups. Our analysis shows that there is systematic
variation in this age-relative small world effect. Young people live in the
"smallest world," being separated from other young people and their parent's
generation via a smaller number of intermediaries than older individuals. The
oldest people live in the "least small world," being separated from their same
age peers and their younger counterparts by a larger number of intermediaries.
Variation in the small world effect is specific to age as a node attribute
(being absent in the case of gender) and is consistently observed under several
data robustness checks. The discovery of age-specific small worlds is
consistent with well-known social mechanisms affecting the way age interacts
with network connectivity and the relative prevalence of kin ties and non-kin
ties observed in this network. This social pattern has significant implications
for our understanding of generation-specific dynamics of information cascades,
diffusion phenomena, and the spread of fads and fashions.


title:
Dynamic Witnesses for Static Type Errors (or, Ill-Typed Programs Usually
  Go Wrong)

abstract:
  Static type errors are a common stumbling block for newcomers to typed
functional languages. We present a dynamic approach to explaining type errors
by generating counterexample witness inputs that illustrate how an ill-typed
program goes wrong. First, given an ill-typed function, we symbolically execute
the body to synthesize witness values that make the program go wrong. We prove
that our procedure synthesizes general witnesses in that if a witness is found,
then for all inhabited input types, there exist values that can make the
function go wrong. Second, we show how to extend this procedure to produce a
reduction graph that can be used to interactively visualize and debug witness
executions. Third, we evaluate the coverage of our approach on two data sets
comprising over 4,500 ill-typed student programs. Our technique is able to
generate witnesses for around 85% of the programs, our reduction graph yields
small counterexamples for over 80% of the witnesses, and a simple heuristic
allows us to use witnesses to locate the source of type errors with around 70%
accuracy. Finally, we evaluate whether our witnesses help students understand
and fix type errors, and find that students presented with our witnesses show a
greater understanding of type errors than those presented with a standard error
message.


title: Satisfying Real-world Goals with Dataset Constraints

abstract:
  The goal of minimizing misclassification error on a training set is often
just one of several real-world goals that might be defined on different
datasets. For example, one may require a classifier to also make positive
predictions at some specified rate for some subpopulation (fairness), or to
achieve a specified empirical recall. Other real-world goals include reducing
churn with respect to a previously deployed model, or stabilizing online
training. In this paper we propose handling multiple goals on multiple datasets
by training with dataset constraints, using the ramp penalty to accurately
quantify costs, and present an efficient algorithm to approximately optimize
the resulting non-convex constrained optimization problem. Experiments on both
benchmark and real-world industry datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our
approach.


title:
Medium effect in high-density nuclear matter probed by systematic
  analyses of nucleus-nucleus elastic scattering

abstract:
  We investigate the property of the high-density nuclear matter probed by the
nucleus-nucleus elastic scattering in the framework of the double-folding (DF)
model with the complex $G$-matrix interaction. The medium effect including
three-body-force (TBF) effect is investigated with present two methods based on
the frozen density approximation (FDA). The medium effect is clearly seen on
the potential and the elastic cross section for the $^{16}$O + $^{16}$O system
at $E/A =$ 70 MeV. The crucial role of the medium effect is also confirmed with
other effective nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interactions. In addition, the present
methods are applied to other heavy-ion elastic scattering systems. Again, the
medium effect is clearly seen in the heavy-ion elastic cross section. The
medium effect on the elastic cross section becomes invisible with the increase
of the target mass and the incident energy (up to $E/A =$ 200 MeV). However,
the medium effect is again important to fix the heavy-ion scattering over $E/A
=$ 200 MeV. Finally, we make clear the crucial role of the TBF effect up to
$k_F =$ 1.6 fm$^{-1}$ in the nucleus-nucleus elastic scattering.


title:
BDDC and FETI-DP algorithms with adaptive coarse spaces for
  three-dimensional elliptic problems with oscillatory and high contrast
  coefficients

abstract:
  BDDC and FETI-DP algorithms are developed for three-dimensional elliptic
problems with adaptively enriched coarse components. It is known that these
enriched components are necessary in the development of robust preconditioners.
To form the adaptive coarse components, carefully designed generalized
eigenvalue problems are introduced for each faces and edges, and the coarse
components are formed by using eigenvectors with their corresponding
eigenvalues larger than a given tolerance $\lambda_{TOL}$. Upper bounds for
condition numbers of the preconditioned systems are shown to be $C
\lambda_{TOL}$, with the constant $C$ depending only on the maximum number of
edges and faces per subdomain, and the maximum number of subdomains sharing an
edge. Numerical results are presented to test the robustness of the proposed
approach.


title:
On (Secure) Information flow for Multiple-Unicast Sessions: Analysis
  with Butterfly Network

abstract:
  This paper considers a class of wireline networks, derived from the
well-known butterfly network, over which two independent unicast sessions take
place simultaneously. The main objectives are to understand when network coding
type of operations are beneficial with and without security considerations and
to derive the ultimate gains that cooperation among sources and sinks can
bring. Towards these goals, the capacity region of the butterfly network with
arbitrary edge capacities is first derived. It is then shown that no rate can
be guaranteed over this network under security considerations, when an
eavesdropper wiretaps any of the links. Three variants of the butterfly
network, such as the case of co-located sources, are analyzed as well and their
secure and non-secure capacity regions are characterized. By using the
butterfly network and its variants as building blocks, these results can be
used to design high-throughput achieving transmission schemes for general
multiple-unicast networks.


title:
Tunable band-notched line-defect waveguide in a surface-wave photonic
  crystal

abstract:
  We propose and experimentally demonstrate a tunable band-notched line-defect
waveguide in a surface-wave photonic crystal, which consists of a straight
line-defect waveguide and side-coupled defect cavities. A tunable narrow
stopband can be observed in the broadband transmission spectra. We also
demonstrate that both the filtering levels and filtering frequencies of the
band-notched line-defect waveguide can be conveniently tuned through changing
the total number and the pillar height of the side-coupled defect cavities. The
band-notch function is based on the idea that the propagating surface modes
with the resonance frequencies of the side-coupled defect cavities will be
tightly localized around the defect sites, being filtered from the waveguide
output. Transmission spectra measurements and direct near-field profiles
imaging are performed at microwave frequencies to verify our idea and design.
These results may enable new band-notched devices design and provide routes for
the realization of tunable surface-wave filters on a single metal surface.


title:
Remotely detecting the signal of a local decohering process in spin
  chains

abstract:
  We study the dynamics of a one dimensional quantum spin chain evolving from
unentangled or entangled initial state. At a given instant of time a quantum
dynamical process (ex. measurement) is performed on a single spin at one end of
the chain, decohering the system. Through the further unitary evolution, a
signal propagates in the spin chain, which can be detected from a measurement
on a different spin at later times. From the dynamical unitary evolution of the
decohered state from the epoch time, it is possible to detect the occurrence of
the dynamical process. The propagation of the signal for the dynamical process,
and the speed of the signal are investigated for various spin models, viz.
using the Ising, Heisenberg, and the transverse-XY dynamics.


title: Dynamical effects in fusion with exotic nuclei

abstract:
  [Background] Reactions with stable beams have demonstrated a strong interplay
between nuclear structure and fusion. Exotic beam facilities open new
perspectives to understand the impact of neutron skin, large isospin, and weak
binding energies on fusion. Microscopic theories of fusion are required to
guide future experiments.
  [Purpose] To investigate new effects of exotic structures and dynamics in
near-barrier fusion with exotic nuclei.
  [Method] Microscopic approaches based on the Hartree-Fock (HF) mean-field
theory are used for studying fusion barriers in $^{40-54}$Ca+$^{116}$Sn
reactions for even isotopes. Bare potential barriers are obtained assuming
frozen HF ground-state densities. Dynamical effects on the barrier are
accounted for in time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) calculations of the
collisions. Vibrational couplings are studied in the coupled-channel framework
and near-barrier nucleon transfer is investigated with TDHF calculations.
  [Results] The development of a neutron skin in exotic calcium isotopes
strongly lowers the bare potential barrier. However, this static effect is not
apparent when dynamical effects are included. On the contrary, a fusion
hindrance is observed in TDHF calculations with the most neutron rich calcium
isotopes which cannot be explained by vibrational couplings. Transfer reactions
are also important in these systems due to charge equilibration processes.
  [Conclusions] Despite its impact on the bare potential, the neutron skin is
not seen as playing an important role in the fusion dynamics. However, the
charge transfer with exotic projectiles could lead to an increase of the
Coulomb repulsion between the fragments, suppressing fusion. The effect of
transfer and dissipative mechanisms on fusion with exotic nuclei deserve
further studies.


title: Adaptability of Neural Networks on Varying Granularity IR Tasks

abstract:
  Recent work in Information Retrieval (IR) using Deep Learning models has
yielded state of the art results on a variety of IR tasks. Deep neural networks
(DNN) are capable of learning ideal representations of data during the training
process, removing the need for independently extracting features. However, the
structures of these DNNs are often tailored to perform on specific datasets. In
addition, IR tasks deal with text at varying levels of granularity from single
factoids to documents containing thousands of words. In this paper, we examine
the role of the granularity on the performance of common state of the art DNN
structures in IR.


title:
Global well-posedness for the derivative nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger
  equation in $H^{\frac 12} (\mathbb{R})$

abstract:
  We prove that the derivative nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation is globally
well-posed in $H^{\frac 12} (\mathbb{R})$ when the mass of initial data is
strictly less than $4\pi$.


title:
Analysis of Spent Nuclear Fuel Imaging Using Multiple Coulomb Scattering
  of Cosmic Muons

abstract:
  Cosmic ray muons passing through matter lose energy from inelastic collisions
with electrons and are deflected from nuclei due to multiple Coulomb
scattering. The strong dependence of scattering on atomic number Z and the
recent developments on position sensitive muon detectors indicate that multiple
Coulomb scattering could be an excellent candidate for spent nuclear fuel
imaging. Muons present significant advantages over existing monitoring and
imaging techniques and can play a central role in monitoring nuclear waste and
spent nuclear fuel stored in dense well shielded containers. The main purpose
of this paper is to investigate the applicability of multiple Coulomb
scattering for imaging of spent nuclear fuel dry casks stored within vertical
and horizontal commercial storage dry casks. Calculations of muon scattering
were performed for various scenarios, including vertical and horizontal fully
loaded dry casks, half loaded dry casks, dry casks with one row of fuel
assemblies missing, dry casks with one fuel assembly missing and empty dry
casks. Various detector sizes (1.2 m x 1.2 m, 2.4 m x 2.4 m and 3.6 m x 3.6 m)
and number of muons ($10^{5}, 5\cdot10^{5}, 10^{6}$ and $10^{7}$) were used to
assess the effect on image resolution. The Point-of-Closest-Approach (PoCA)
algorithm was used for the reconstruction of the stored contents. The results
demonstrate that multiple Coulomb scattering can be used to successfully
reconstruct the dry cask contents and allow identification of all scenarios
with the exception of one fuel assembly missing. In this case, an indication
exists that a fuel assembly is not present; however the resolution of the
imaging algorithm was not enough to identify exact location.


title: Positive Rational Nodal Leaves on Surfaces

abstract:
  We consider singular holomorphic foliations on compact complex surfaces with
invariant rational nodal curve of positive self-intersection. Then, under some
assumptions, we list all possible foliations.


title: Symmetry Fractionalization in Two Dimensional Topological Phases

abstract:
  Symmetry fractionalization describes the fascinating phenomena that
excitations in a 2D topological system can transform under symmetry in a
fractional way. For example in fractional quantum Hall systems, excitations can
carry fractional charges while the electrons making up the system have charge
one. An important question is to understand what symmetry fractionalization
(SF) patterns are possible given different types of topological order and
different symmetries. A lot of progress has been made recently in classifying
the SF patterns, providing deep insight into the strongly correlated
experimental signatures of systems like spin liquids and topological
insulators. We review recent developments on this topic. First, it was shown
that the SF patterns need to satisfy some simple consistency conditions. More
interesting, it was realized that some seemingly consistent SF patterns are
actually `anomalous', i.e. they cannot be realized in strictly 2D systems. We
review various methods that have been developed to detect such anomalies.
Applying such an understanding to 2D spin liquid allows one to enumerate all
potentially realizable SF patterns and propose numerical and experimental
probing methods to distinguish them. On the other hand, the anomalous SF
patterns were shown to exist on the surface of 3D systems and reflect the
nontrivial order in the 3D bulk. We review examples of this kind where the bulk
states are topological insulators, topological superconductors, or have other
symmetry protected topological orders.


title: On $W_{1+\infty}$ $n$-algebra

abstract:
  We present the nontrivial $W_{1+\infty}$ $n$-algebra and analyze its
remarkable properties. We investigate the $W_{1+\infty}$ $n$-algebra in the
Landau problem and discuss the realization of the classical $w_{\infty}$
3-algebra. Furthermore, we discuss the case of the many-body system in the
lowest Landau level and derive the constraints for correlation functions of the
vertex operators.


title:
Detection of Prominent Stellar Disks in the Progenitors of Present-day
  Massive Elliptical Galaxies

abstract:
  Massive galaxies at higher redshifts ($\emph{z}$ $>$ 2) show different
characteristics from their local counterparts: They are compact and most likely
have a disk. In this study, we trace the evolution of local massive galaxies by
performing a detailed morphological analysis, namely, fitting single S\'{e}rsic
profiles and performing bulge+disk decompositions. We analyze $\sim$ 250
massive galaxies selected from all CANDELS fields (COSMOS, UDS, EGS,
GOODS-South and GOODS-North). We confirm that both star-forming and quiescent
galaxies increase their sizes significantly from $\emph{z}$ $\approx$ 2.5 to
the present day. The global S\'{e}rsic index of quiescent galaxies increases
over time (from $n$ $\approx$ 2.5 to $n$ $>$ 4), while that of star-forming
galaxies remains roughly constant ($n$ $\approx$ 2.5). By decomposing galaxy
profiles into bulge+disk components, we find that massive galaxies at high
redshift have prominent stellar disks, which are also evident from visual
inspection of the images. By $z$ $\approx$ 0.5, the majority of the disks
disappear and massive quiescent galaxies begin to resemble the local elliptical
galaxies. Star-forming galaxies have lower bulge-to-total ratios ($B/T$) than
their quiescent counterparts at each redshift bin. The bulges of star-forming
and quiescent galaxies follow different evolutionary histories, while their
disks evolve similarly. We conclude that major mergers, along with minor
mergers, have played a crucial role in the significant size increase of
high-\emph{z} galaxies and the destruction of their massive and large-scale
disks.


title: Enriching Linked Datasets with New Object Properties

abstract:
  Although several RDF knowledge bases are available through the LOD
initiative, the ontology schema of such linked datasets is not very rich. In
particular, they lack object properties. The problem of finding new object
properties (and their instances) between any two given classes has not been
investigated in detail in the context of Linked Data. In this paper, we present
DART (Detecting Arbitrary Relations for enriching T-Boxes of Linked Data) - an
unsupervised solution to enrich the LOD cloud with new object properties
between two given classes. DART exploits contextual similarity to identify text
patterns from the web corpus that can potentially represent relations between
individuals. These text patterns are then clustered by means of paraphrase
detection to capture the object properties between the two given LOD classes.
DART also performs fully automated mapping of the discovered relations to the
properties in the linked dataset. This serves many purposes such as
identification of completely new relations, elimination of irrelevant
relations, and generation of prospective property axioms. We have empirically
evaluated our approach on several pairs of classes and found that the system
can indeed be used for enriching the linked datasets with new object properties
and their instances. We compared DART with newOntExt system which is an
offshoot of the NELL (Never-Ending Language Learning) effort. Our experiments
reveal that DART gives better results than newOntExt with respect to both the
correctness, as well as the number of relations.


title: On nonlinear stabilization of linearly unstable maps

abstract:
  We examine the phenomenon of nonlinear stabilization, exhibiting a variety of
related examples and counterexamples. For G\^ateaux differentiable maps, we
discuss a mechanism of nonlinear stabilization, in finite and infinite
dimensions, which applies in particular to hyperbolic partial differential
equations, and, for Fr\'echet differentiable maps with linearized operators
that are normal, we give a sharp criterion for nonlinear exponential
instability at the linear rate. These results highlight the fundamental open
question whether Fr\'echet differentiability is sufficient for linear
exponential instability to imply nonlinear exponential instability, at possibly
slower rate.


title:
Haptic Feedback in Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery
  (NOTES)

abstract:
  Flexible tendon sheath mechanism is commonly used in NOTES systems because it
offers high flexibility, light weight, and easy transmission. Due to the size
constraints and sterilization problems, traditional sensors like force/torque
sensor are extremely difficult to place at the tool tips of surgical arms. In
addition, nonlinear dynamic friction and backlash cause challenges to provide
haptic feedback to the surgeons when the robotic arms are inside the patient's
body. Hence, it is extremely difficult to provide the force information to
haptic devices and subsequently to the surgeons. To deal with these problems,
in this paper we propose a new approach of friction model in the tendon-sheath
mechanism to provide the force at distal end of endoscopic system. In
comparison with current approaches in the literature, the proposed model is
able to provide force information at zero velocity and it is smooth. In
addition, the model is independent configuration and able to capture friction
force with any complex sheath shapes. A suitable experimental setup is
established to validate the proposed approach using the two degrees of freedom
Master-Slave system. The validity of the proposed approach is confirmed with a
good agreement between the estimated model and real experimental data. Finally,
a force feedback structure is also given for use in flexible endoscopic
systems.


title:
Multipartite Ranking-Selection of Low-Dimensional Instances by
  Supervised Projection to High-Dimensional Space

abstract:
  Pruning of redundant or irrelevant instances of data is a key to every
successful solution for pattern recognition. In this paper, we present a novel
ranking-selection framework for low-length but highly correlated instances.
Instead of working in the low-dimensional instance space, we learn a supervised
projection to high-dimensional space spanned by the number of classes in the
dataset under study. Imposing higher distinctions via exposing the notion of
labels to the instances, lets to deploy one versus all ranking for each
individual classes and selecting quality instances via adaptive thresholding of
the overall scores. To prove the efficiency of our paradigm, we employ it for
the purpose of texture understanding which is a hard recognition challenge due
to high similarity of texture pixels and low dimensionality of their color
features. Our experiments show considerable improvements in recognition
performance over other local descriptors on several publicly available
datasets.


title: Fractional Brownian motion and asymptotic Bayesian estimation

abstract:
  In this paper, we study the recovery of the Hurst parameter from a given
discrete sample of fractional Brownian motion with statistical inverse theory.
In particular, we show that in the limit the posteriori distribution of the
parameter given the sample determines the parameter uniquely. In order to
obtain this result, we first prove various strong laws of large numbers related
to the problem at hand and then employ these limit theorems to verify directly
the limiting behaviour of posteriori distributions without making additional
technical or simplifying assumptions that are commonly used.


title: Averaging for some simple constrained Markov processes

abstract:
  In this paper, a class of piecewise deterministic Markov processes with
underlying fast dynamic is studied. Using a "penalty method" , an averaging
result is obtained when the underlying dynamic is infinitely accelerated. The
features of the averaged process, which is still a piecewise deterministic
Markov process, are fully described.


title:
Regression Trees and Random forest based feature selection for malaria
  risk exposure prediction

abstract:
  This paper deals with prediction of anopheles number, the main vector of
malaria risk, using environmental and climate variables. The variables
selection is based on an automatic machine learning method using regression
trees, and random forests combined with stratified two levels cross validation.
The minimum threshold of variables importance is accessed using the quadratic
distance of variables importance while the optimal subset of selected variables
is used to perform predictions. Finally the results revealed to be
qualitatively better, at the selection, the prediction , and the CPU time point
of view than those obtained by GLM-Lasso method.


title:
Dynamics of phase oscillators in the Kuramoto model with generalized
  frequency-weighted coupling

abstract:
  We generalize the Kuramoto model for the synchronization transition of
globally coupled phase oscillators to populations by incorporating an
additional heterogeneity with the coupling strength, where each oscillator pair
interacts with different coupling strength weighted by a genera; function of
their natural frequency. The expression for the critical coupling can be
straightforwardly extended to a generalized explicit formula analytically, and
s self-consistency approach is developed to predict the stationary states in
the thermodynamic limit. The landau damping effect is further revealed by means
of the linear stability analysis and resonance poles theory above the critical
threshold which turns to be far more generic. Furthermore, the dimensionality
reduction technique of the Ott-Antonsen is implemented to capture the
analytical description of relaxation dynamics of the steady states valid on a
globally attracting manifold. Our theoretical analysis and numerical results
are consistent with each other, which can help us understand the
synchronization transition in general networks with heterogenous couplings.


title: A Low-Frequency and Refinement Stable Impedance Boundary Condition EFIE

abstract:
  In this contribution, a discretisation of the IBC EFIE is introduced that (i)
yields the correct solution at arbitrarily small frequencies, (ii) requires for
its solution a number of matrix vector products bounded as the frequency tends
to zero and as the mesh density increases. The low frequency stabilisation is
based on a projector-based discrete Helmholtz splitting, rescaling, and
recombination that depends on the low frequency behaviour of both the EFIE
operator and the surface impedance condition. The dense mesh stabilisation is a
modifcation of the Perfect Electric Conductor operator preconditioning approach
taking into account the effect on the singular value spectrum of the IBC term.