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We propose Scale-aware AutoAug to learn data augmentation policies for object detection. We define a new scale-aware search space, where both image- and box-level augmentations are designed for maintaining scale invariance. Upon this search space, we propose a new search metric, termed Pareto Scale Balance, to facilitate search with high efficiency. In experiments, Scale-aware AutoAug yields significant and consistent improvement on various object detectors (e.g., RetinaNet, Faster R-CNN, Mask R-CNN, and FCOS), even compared with strong multi-scale training baselines. Our searched augmentation policies are transferable to other datasets and box-level tasks beyond object detection (e.g., instance segmentation and keypoint estimation) to improve performance. The search cost is much less than previous automated augmentation approaches for object detection. It is notable that our searched policies have meaningful patterns, which intuitively provide valuable insight for human data augmentation design. Code and models will be available at https://github.com/Jia-Research-Lab/SA-AutoAug.
With the incoming 5G network, the ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) devices can benefit our daily life, such as smart cameras, drones, etc. With the introduction of the millimeter-wave band and the thriving number of IoT devices, it is critical to design new dynamic spectrum access (DSA) system to coordinate the spectrum allocation across massive devices in 5G. In this paper, we present Hermes, the first decentralized DSA system for massive devices deployment. Specifically, we propose an efficient multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm and introduce a novel shuffle mechanism, addressing the drawbacks of collision and fairness in existing decentralized systems. We implement Hermes in 5G network via simulations. Extensive evaluations show that Hermes significantly reduces collisions and improves fairness compared to the state-of-the-art decentralized methods. Furthermore, Hermes is able to adapt the environmental changes within 0.5 seconds, showing its deployment practicability in dynamic environment of 5G.
We report the first-ever calculation of the isovector flavor combination of the chiral-odd twist-3 parton distribution $h_L(x)$ for the proton from lattice QCD. We employ gauge configurations with two degenerate light, a strange and a charm quark ($N_f=2+1+1$) of maximally twisted mass fermions with a clover improvement. The lattice has a spatial extent of 3 fm and lattice spacing of 0.093 fm. The values of the quark masses lead to a pion mass of $260$ MeV. We use a source-sink time separation of 1.12 fm to control contamination from excited states. Our calculation is based on the quasi-distribution approach, with three values for the proton momentum: 0.83 GeV, 1.25 GeV, and 1.67 GeV. The lattice data are renormalized non-perturbatively using the RI$'$ scheme, and the final result for $h_L(x)$ is presented in the $\overline{\rm MS}$ scheme at the scale of 2 GeV. Furthermore, we compute in the same setup the transversity distribution, $h_1(x)$, which allows us, in particular, to compare $h_L(x)$ to its Wandzura-Wilczek approximation. We also combine results for the isovector and isoscalar flavor combinations to disentangle the individual quark contributions for $h_1(x)$ and $h_L(x)$, and address the Wandzura-Wilczek approximation in that case as well.
We present an adaptation of the NPA hierarchy to the setting of synchronous correlation matrices. Our adaptation improves upon the original NPA hierarchy by using smaller certificates and fewer constraints, although it can only be applied to certify synchronous correlations. We recover characterizations for the sets of synchronous quantum commuting and synchronous quantum correlations. For applications, we show that the existence of symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures and maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases can be verified or invalidated with only two certificates of our adapted NPA hierarchy.
Nonlinear phononics relies on the resonant optical excitation of infrared-active lattice vibrations to coherently induce targeted structural deformations in solids. This form of dynamical crystal-structure design has been applied to control the functional properties of many interesting systems, including magneto-resistive manganites, magnetic materials, superconductors, and ferroelectrics. However, phononics has so far been restricted to protocols in which structural deformations occur locally within the optically excited volume, sometimes resulting in unwanted heating. Here, we extend nonlinear phononics to propagating polaritons, effectively separating in space the optical drive from the functional response. Mid-infrared optical pulses are used to resonantly drive an 18 THz phonon at the surface of ferroelectric LiNbO3. A time-resolved stimulated Raman scattering probe reveals that the ferroelectric polarization is reduced over the entire 50 micron depth of the sample, far beyond the ~ micron depth of the evanescent phonon field. We attribute the bulk response of the ferroelectric polarization to the excitation of a propagating 2.5 THz soft-mode phonon-polariton. For the highest excitation amplitudes, we reach a regime in which the polarization is reversed. In this this non-perturbative regime, we expect that the polariton model evolves into that of a solitonic domain wall that propagates from the surface into the materials at near the speed of light.
About 5-8% of individuals over the age of 60 have dementia. With our ever-aging population this number is likely to increase, making dementia one of the most important threats to public health in the 21st century. Given the phenotypic overlap of individual dementias the diagnosis of dementia is a major clinical challenge, even with current gold standard diagnostic approaches. However, it has been shown that certain dementias show specific structural characteristics in the brain. Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and multiple system atrophy (MSA) are prototypical examples of this phenomenon, as they often present with characteristic brainstem atrophy. More detailed characterization of brain atrophy due to individual diseases is urgently required to select biomarkers and therapeutic targets that are meaningful to each disease. Here we present a joint multi-atlas-segmentation and deep-learning-based segmentation method for fast and robust parcellation of the brainstem into its four sub-structures, i.e., the midbrain, pons, medulla, and superior cerebellar peduncles (SCP), that in turn can provide detailed volumetric information on the brainstem sub-structures affected in PSP and MSA. The method may also benefit other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease; a condition which is often considered in the differential diagnosis of PSP and MSA. Comparison with state-of-the-art labeling techniques evaluated on ground truth manual segmentations demonstrate that our method is significantly faster than prior methods as well as showing improvement in labeling the brainstem indicating that this strategy may be a viable option to provide a better characterization of the brainstem atrophy seen in PSP and MSA.
It is shown that the relativistic invariance plays a key role in the study of integrable systems. Using the relativistically invariant sine-Gordon equation, the Tzitzeica equation, the Toda fields and the second heavenly equation as dual relations, some continuous and discrete integrable positive hierarchies such as the potential modified Korteweg-de Vries hierarchy, the potential Fordy-Gibbons hierarchies, the potential dispersionless Kadomtsev-Petviashvili-like (dKPL) hierarchy, the differential-difference dKPL hierarchy and the second heavenly hierarchies are converted to the integrable negative hierarchies including the sG hierarchy and the Tzitzeica hierarchy, the two-dimensional dispersionless Toda hierarchy, the two-dimensional Toda hierarchies and negative heavenly hierarchy. In (1+1)-dimensional cases the positive/negative hierarchy dualities are guaranteed by the dualities between the recursion operators and their inverses. In (2+1)-dimensional cases, the positive/negative hierarchy dualities are explicitly shown by using the formal series symmetry approach, the mastersymmetry method and the relativistic invariance of the duality relations. For the 4-dimensional heavenly system, the duality problem is studied firstly by formal series symmetry approach. Two elegant commuting recursion operators of the heavenly equation appear naturally from the formal series symmetry approach so that the duality problem can also be studied by means of the recursion operators.
Predictions of biodiversity trajectories under climate change are crucial in order to act effectively in maintaining the diversity of species. In many ecological applications, future predictions are made under various global warming scenarios as described by a range of different climate models. The outputs of these various predictions call for a reliable interpretation. We propose a interpretable and flexible two step methodology to measure the similarity between predicted species range maps and cluster the future scenario predictions utilizing a spectral clustering technique. We find that clustering based on ecological impact (predicted species range maps) is mainly driven by the amount of warming. We contrast this with clustering based only on predicted climate features, which is driven mainly by climate models. The differences between these clusterings illustrate that it is crucial to incorporate ecological information to understand the relevant differences between climate models. The findings of this work can be used to better synthesize forecasts of biodiversity loss under the wide spectrum of results that emerge when considering potential future biodiversity loss.
Short-period sub-Neptunes with substantial volatile envelopes are among the most common type of known exoplanets. However, recent studies of the Kepler population have suggested a dearth of sub-Neptunes on highly irradiated orbits, where they are vulnerable to atmospheric photoevaporation. Physically, we expect this "photoevaporation desert" to depend on the total lifetime X-ray and extreme ultraviolet flux, the main drivers of atmospheric escape. In this work, we study the demographics of sub-Neptunes as a function of lifetime exposure to high energy radiation and host star mass. We find that for a given present day insolation, planets orbiting a 0.3 $M_{sun}$ star experience $\sim$100 $\times$ more X-ray flux over their lifetimes versus a 1.2 $M_{sun}$ star. Defining the photoevaporation desert as a region consistent with zero occurrence at 2 $\sigma$, the onset of the desert happens for integrated X-ray fluxes greater than 1.43 $\times 10^{22}$ erg/cm$^2$ to 8.23 $\times 10^{20}$ erg/cm$^2$ as a function of planetary radii for 1.8 -- 4 $R_{\oplus}$. We also compare the location of the photoevaporation desert for different stellar types. We find much greater variability in the desert onset in bolometric flux space compared to integrated X-ray flux space, suggestive of photoevaporation driven by steady state stellar X-ray emissions as the dominant control on desert location. Finally, we report tentative evidence for the sub-Neptune valley, first seen around Sun-like stars, for M & K dwarfs. The discovery of additional planets around low-mass stars from surveys such as the TESS mission will enable detailed exploration of these trends.
The theoretical maximum efficiency of a solar cell is typically characterized by a detailed balance of optical absorption and emission for a semiconductor in the limit of unity radiative efficiency and an ideal step-function response for the density of states and absorbance at the semiconductor band edges, known as the Shockley-Queisser limit. However, real materials have non-abrupt band edges, which are typically characterized by an exponential distribution of states, known as an Urbach tail. We develop here a modified detailed balance limit of solar cells with imperfect band edges, using optoelectronic reciprocity relations. We find that for semiconductors whose band edges are broader than the thermal energy, kT, there is an effective renormalized bandgap given by the quasi-Fermi level splitting within the solar cell. This renormalized bandgap creates a Stokes shift between the onset of the absorption and photoluminescence emission energies, which significantly reduces the maximum achievable efficiency. The abruptness of the band edge density of states therefore has important implications for the maximum achievable photovoltaic efficiency.
We study relativistic hydrodynamics in the presence of a non vanishing spin chemical potential. Using a variety of techniques we carry out an exhaustive analysis, and identify the constitutive relations for the stress tensor and spin current in such a setup, allowing us to write the hydrodynamic equations of motion to second order in derivatives. We then solve the equations of motion in a perturbative setup and find surprisingly good agreement with measurements of global $\Lambda$-hyperon polarization carried out at RHIC.
A monopolist wants to sell one item per period to a consumer with evolving and persistent private information. The seller sets a price each period depending on the history so far, but cannot commit to future prices. We show that, regardless of the degree of persistence, any equilibrium under a D1-style refinement gives the seller revenue no higher than what she would get from posting all prices in advance.
Development of the new artificial systems with unique characteristics is very challenging task. In this paper the application of the hybrid super intelligence concept with object-process methodology to develop unique high-performance computational systems is considered. The methodological approach how to design new intelligent components for existing high-performance computing development systems is proposed on the example of system requirements creation for "MicroAI" and "Artificial Electronic" systems.
We define a class of discrete operators that, in particular, include the delta and nabla fractional operators.
Existing image segmentation networks mainly leverage large-scale labeled datasets to attain high accuracy. However, labeling medical images is very expensive since it requires sophisticated expert knowledge. Thus, it is more desirable to employ only a few labeled data in pursuing high segmentation performance. In this paper, we develop a data augmentation method for one-shot brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image segmentation which exploits only one labeled MRI image (named atlas) and a few unlabeled images. In particular, we propose to learn the probability distributions of deformations (including shapes and intensities) of different unlabeled MRI images with respect to the atlas via 3D variational autoencoders (VAEs). In this manner, our method is able to exploit the learned distributions of image deformations to generate new authentic brain MRI images, and the number of generated samples will be sufficient to train a deep segmentation network. Furthermore, we introduce a new standard segmentation benchmark to evaluate the generalization performance of a segmentation network through a cross-dataset setting (collected from different sources). Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art one-shot medical segmentation methods. Our code has been released at https://github.com/dyh127/Modeling-the-Probabilistic-Distribution-of-Unlabeled-Data.
We study the homogenized energy densities of periodic ferromagnetic Ising systems. We prove that, for finite range interactions, the homogenized energy density, identifying the effective limit, is crystalline, i.e. its Wulff crystal is a polytope, for which we can (exponentially) bound the number of vertices. This is achieved by deriving a dual representation of the energy density through a finite cell formula. This formula also allows easy numerical computations: we show a few experiments where we compute periodic patterns which minimize the anisotropy of the surface tension.
Classical two-sample permutation tests for equality of distributions have exact size in finite samples, but they fail to control size for testing equality of parameters that summarize each distribution. This paper proposes permutation tests for equality of parameters that are estimated at root-n or slower rates. Our general framework applies to both parametric and nonparametric models, with two samples or one sample split into two subsamples. Our tests have correct size asymptotically while preserving exact size in finite samples when distributions are equal. They have no loss in local-asymptotic power compared to tests that use asymptotic critical values. We propose confidence sets with correct coverage in large samples that also have exact coverage in finite samples if distributions are equal up to a transformation. We apply our theory to four commonly-used hypothesis tests of nonparametric functions evaluated at a point. Lastly, simulations show good finite sample properties of our tests.
The private simultaneous messages model is a non-interactive version of the multiparty secure computation, which has been intensively studied to examine the communication cost of the secure computation. We consider its quantum counterpart, the private simultaneous quantum messages (PSQM) model, and examine the advantages of quantum communication and prior entanglement of this model. In the PSQM model, $k$ parties $P_1,\ldots,P_k$ initially share a common random string (or entangled states in a stronger setting), and they have private classical inputs $x_1,\ldots, x_k$. Every $P_i$ generates a quantum message from the private input $x_i$ and the shared random string (entangled states), and then sends it to the referee $R$. Receiving the messages, $R$ computes $F(x_1,\ldots,x_k)$. Then, $R$ learns nothing except for $F(x_1,\ldots,x_k)$ as the privacy condition. We obtain the following results for this PSQM model. (1) We demonstrate that the privacy condition inevitably increases the communication cost in the two-party PSQM model as well as in the classical case presented by Applebaum, Holenstein, Mishra, and Shayevitz. In particular, we prove a lower bound $(3-o(1))n$ of the communication complexity in PSQM protocols with a shared random string for random Boolean functions of $2n$-bit input, which is larger than the trivial upper bound $2n$ of the communication complexity without the privacy condition. (2) We demonstrate a factor two gap between the communication complexity of PSQM protocols with shared entangled states and with shared random strings by designing a multiparty PSQM protocol with shared entangled states for a total function that extends the two-party equality function. (3) We demonstrate an exponential gap between the communication complexity of PSQM protocols with shared entangled states and with shared random strings for a two-party partial function.
Low-Rank Parity-Check (LRPC) codes are a class of rank metric codes that have many applications specifically in network coding and cryptography. Recently, LRPC codes have been extended to Galois rings which are a specific case of finite rings. In this paper, we first define LRPC codes over finite commutative local rings, which are bricks of finite rings, with an efficient decoder. We improve the theoretical bound of the failure probability of the decoder. Then, we extend the work to arbitrary finite commutative rings. Certain conditions are generally used to ensure the success of the decoder. Over finite fields, one of these conditions is to choose a prime number as the extension degree of the Galois field. We have shown that one can construct LRPC codes without this condition on the degree of Galois extension.
The isolated susceptibility $\chi_{\rm I}$ may be defined as a (non-thermodynamic) average over the canonical ensemble, but while it has often been discussed in the literature, it has not been clearly measured. Here, we demonstrate an unambiguous measurement of $\chi_{\rm I}$ at avoided nuclear-electronic level crossings in a dilute spin ice system, containing well-separated holmium ions. We show that $\chi_{\rm I}$ quantifies the superposition of quasi-classical spin states at these points, and is a direct measure of state concurrence and populations.
The econometric literature on program-evaluation and optimal treatment-choice takes functionals of outcome-distributions as target welfare, and ignores program-impacts on unobserved utilities, including utilities of those whose outcomes may be unaffected by the intervention. We show that in the practically important setting of discrete-choice, under general preference-heterogeneity and income-effects, the distribution of indirect-utility is nonparametrically identified from average demand. This enables cost-benefit analysis and treatment-targeting based on social welfare and planners' distributional preferences, while also allowing for general unobserved heterogeneity in individual preferences. We demonstrate theoretical connections between utilitarian social welfare and Hicksian compensation. An empirical application illustrates our results.
We demonstrate that multiple higher-order topological transitions can be triggered via the continuous change of the geometry in kagome photonic crystals composed of three dielectric rods. By tuning a single geometry parameter, the photonic corner and edge states emerge or disappear with the higher-order topological transitions. Two distinct higher-order topological insulator phases and a normal insulator phase are revealed. Their topological indices are obtained from symmetry representations. A photonic analog of fractional corner charge is introduced to distinguish the two higher-order topological insulator phases. Our predictions can be readily realized and verified in configurable dielectric photonic crystals.
A prototype neutron detector has been created through modification to a commercial non-volatile flash memory device. Studies are being performed to modify this prototype into a purpose-built device with greater performance and functionality. This paper describes a demonstration of this technology using a thermal neutron beam produced by a TRIGA research reactor. With a 4x4 array of 16 prototype devices, the full widths of the beam dimensions at half maximum are measured to be 2.2x2.1 cm2.
Mathematical modelling of ionic electrodiffusion and water movement is emerging as a powerful avenue of investigation to provide new physiological insight into brain homeostasis. However, in order to provide solid answers and resolve controversies, the accuracy of the predictions is essential. Ionic electrodiffusion models typically comprise non-trivial systems of non-linear and highly coupled partial and ordinary differential equations that govern phenomena on disparate time scales. Here, we study numerical challenges related to approximating these systems. We consider a homogenized model for electrodiffusion and osmosis in brain tissue and present and evaluate different associated finite element-based splitting schemes in terms of their numerical properties, including accuracy, convergence, and computational efficiency for both idealized scenarios and for the physiologically relevant setting of cortical spreading depression (CSD). We find that the schemes display optimal convergence rates in space for problems with smooth manufactured solutions. However, the physiological CSD setting is challenging: we find that the accurate computation of CSD wave characteristics (wave speed and wave width) requires a very fine spatial and fine temporal resolution.
The Chermak-Delgado lattice of a finite group $G$ is a self-dual sublattice of the subgroup lattice of $G$. In this paper, we focus on finite groups whose Chermak-Delgado lattice is a subgroup lattice of an elementary abelian $p$-group. We prove that such groups are nilpotent of class $2$. We also prove that, for any elementary abelian $p$-group $E$, there exists a finite group $G$ such that the Chermak-Delgado lattice of $G$ is a subgroup lattice of $E$.
Let $(X, H)$ be a polarized smooth projective algebraic surface and $E$ is globally generated, stable vector bundle on $X$. Then the Syzygy bundle $M_E$ associated to it is defined as the kernel bundle corresponding to the evaluation map. In this article we will study the stability property of $M_E$ with respect to $H$.
Contagion arising from clustering of multiple time series like those in the stock market indicators can further complicate the nature of volatility, rendering a parametric test (relying on asymptotic distribution) to suffer from issues on size and power. We propose a test on volatility based on the bootstrap method for multiple time series, intended to account for possible presence of contagion effect. While the test is fairly robust to distributional assumptions, it depends on the nature of volatility. The test is correctly sized even in cases where the time series are almost nonstationary. The test is also powerful specially when the time series are stationary in mean and that volatility are contained only in fewer clusters. We illustrate the method in global stock prices data.
The collateral choice option gives the collateral posting party the opportunity to switch between different collateral currencies which is well-known to impact the asset price. Quantification of the option's value is of practical importance but remains challenging under the assumption of stochastic rates, as it is determined by an intractable distribution which requires involved approximations. Indeed, many practitioners still rely on deterministic spreads between the rates for valuation. We develop a scalable and stable stochastic model of the collateral spreads under the assumption of conditional independence. This allows for a common factor approximation which admits analytical results from which further estimators are obtained. We show that in modelling the spreads between collateral rates, a second order model yields accurate results for the value of the collateral choice option. The model remains precise for a wide range of model parameters and is numerically efficient even for a large number of collateral currencies.
In this work we investigate neutron stars (NS) in $f(\mathtt{R,L_m})$ theory of gravity for the case $f(\mathtt{R,L_m}) = \mathtt{R} + \mathtt{L_m} + \sigma\mathtt{R}\mathtt{L_m}$, where $\mathtt{R}$ is the Ricci scalar and $\mathtt{L_m}$ the Lagrangian matter density. In the term $\sigma\mathtt{R}\mathtt{L_m}$, $\sigma$ represents the coupling between the gravitational and particles fields. For the first time the hydrostatic equilibrium equations in the theory are solved considering realistic equations of state and NS masses and radii obtained are subject to joint constrains from massive pulsars, the gravitational wave event GW170817 and from the PSR J0030+0451 mass-radius from NASA's Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (${\it NICER}$) data. We show that in this theory of gravity, the mass-radius results can accommodate massive pulsars, while the general theory of relativity can hardly do it. The theory also can explain the observed NS within the radius region constrained by the GW170817 and PSR J0030+0451 observations for masses around $1.4~M_{\odot}$.
Let $B\subset A$ be a left or right bounded extension of finite dimensional algebras. We use the Jacobi-Zariski long nearly exact sequence to show that $B$ satisfies Han's conjecture if and only if $A$ does, regardless if the extension splits or not. We provide conditions ensuring that an extension by arrows and relations is left or right bounded. Finally we give a structure result for extensions of an algebra given by a quiver and admissible relations, and examples of non split left or right bounded extensions.
The genuine concurrence is a standard quantifier of multipartite entanglement, detection and quantification of which still remains a difficult problem from both theoretical and experimental point of view. Although many efforts have been devoted toward the detection of multipartite entanglement (e.g., using entanglement witnesses), measuring the degree of multipartite entanglement, in general, requires some knowledge about an exact shape of a density matrix of the quantum state. An experimental reconstruction of such density matrix can be done by full state tomography which amounts to having the distant parties share a common reference frame and well calibrated devices. Although this assumption is typically made implicitly in theoretical works, establishing a common reference frame, as well as aligning and calibrating measurement devices in experimental situations are never trivial tasks. It is therefore an interesting and important question whether the requirements of having a shared reference frame and calibrated devices can be relaxed. In this work we study both theoretically and experimentally the genuine concurrence for the generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states under randomly chosen measurements on a single qubits without a shared frame of reference and calibrated devices. We present the relation between genuine concurrence and so-called nonlocal volume, a recently introduced indicator of nonlocality.
This paper presents dEchorate: a new database of measured multichannel Room Impulse Responses (RIRs) including annotations of early echo timings and 3D positions of microphones, real sources and image sources under different wall configurations in a cuboid room. These data provide a tool for benchmarking recent methods in echo-aware speech enhancement, room geometry estimation, RIR estimation, acoustic echo retrieval, microphone calibration, echo labeling and reflectors estimation. The database is accompanied with software utilities to easily access, manipulate and visualize the data as well as baseline methods for echo-related tasks.
We present X-ray analysis of the ejecta of supernova remnant G350.1$-$0.3 observed with Chandra and Suzaku, and clarify the ejecta's kinematics over a decade and obtain a new observational clue to understanding the origin of the asymmetric explosion. Two images of Chandra X-ray Observatory taken in 2009 and 2018 are analyzed in several methods, and enable us to measure the velocities in the plane of the sky. A maximum velocity is 4640$\pm$290 km s$^{-1}$ (0.218$\pm$0.014 arcsec yr$^{-1}$) in the eastern region in the remnant. These findings trigger us to scrutinize the Doppler effects in the spectra of the thermal emission, and the velocities in the line-of-sight direction are estimated to be a thousand km s$^{-1}$. The results are confirmed by analyzing the spectra of Suzaku. Combining the proper motions and line-of-sight velocities, the ejecta's three-dimensional velocities are $\sim$3000-5000 km s$^{-1}$. The center of the explosion is more stringently constrained by finding the optimal time to reproduce the observed spatial expansion. Our findings that the age of the SNR is estimated at most to be 655 years, and the CCO is observed as a point source object against the SNR strengthen the 'hydrodynamical kick' hypothesis on the origin of the remnant.
We present a derivation-based Atiyah sequence for noncommutative principal bundles. Along the way we treat the problem of deciding when a given *-automorphism on the quantum base space lifts to a *-automorphism on the quantum total space that commutes with the underlying structure group.
We formulate the Lagrangian of the Newtonian cosmology where the cosmological constant is also introduced. Following the affine quantization procedure, the Hamiltonian operator is derived. The wave functions of the Newtonian universe and the corresponding eigenvalues for the case of matter dominated by a negative cosmological constant are given.
Learning effective representations in image-based environments is crucial for sample efficient Reinforcement Learning (RL). Unfortunately, in RL, representation learning is confounded with the exploratory experience of the agent -- learning a useful representation requires diverse data, while effective exploration is only possible with coherent representations. Furthermore, we would like to learn representations that not only generalize across tasks but also accelerate downstream exploration for efficient task-specific training. To address these challenges we propose Proto-RL, a self-supervised framework that ties representation learning with exploration through prototypical representations. These prototypes simultaneously serve as a summarization of the exploratory experience of an agent as well as a basis for representing observations. We pre-train these task-agnostic representations and prototypes on environments without downstream task information. This enables state-of-the-art downstream policy learning on a set of difficult continuous control tasks.
The paper discusses how robots enable occupant-safe continuous protection for students when schools reopen. Conventionally, fixed air filters are not used as a key pandemic prevention method for public indoor spaces because they are unable to trap the airborne pathogens in time in the entire room. However, by combining the mobility of a robot with air filtration, the efficacy of cleaning up the air around multiple people is largely increased. A disinfection co-robot prototype is thus developed to provide continuous and occupant-friendly protection to people gathering indoors, specifically for students in a classroom scenario. In a static classroom with students sitting in a grid pattern, the mobile robot is able to serve up to 14 students per cycle while reducing the worst-case pathogen dosage by 20%, and with higher robustness compared to a static filter. The extent of robot protection is optimized by tuning the passing distance and speed, such that a robot is able to serve more people given a threshold of worst-case dosage a person can receive.
We study orbit codes in the field extension ${\mathbb F}_{q^n}$. First we show that the automorphism group of a cyclic orbit code is contained in the normalizer of the Singer subgroup if the orbit is generated by a subspace that is not contained in a proper subfield of ${\mathbb F}_{q^n}$. We then generalize to orbits under the normalizer of the Singer subgroup. In that situation some exceptional cases arise and some open cases remain. Finally we characterize linear isometries between such codes.
Optimal design of distributed decision policies can be a difficult task, illustrated by the famous Witsenhausen counterexample. In this paper we characterize the optimal control designs for the vector-valued setting assuming that it results in an internal state that can be described by a continuous random variable which has a probability density function. More specifically, we provide a genie-aided outer bound that relies on our previous results for empirical coordination problems. This solution turns out to be not optimal in general, since it consists of a time-sharing strategy between two linear schemes of specific power. It follows that the optimal decision strategy for the original scalar Witsenhausen problem must lead to an internal state that cannot be described by a continuous random variable which has a probability density function.
A user generates n independent and identically distributed data random variables with a probability mass function that must be guarded from a querier. The querier must recover, with a prescribed accuracy, a given function of the data from each of n independent and identically distributed query responses upon eliciting them from the user. The user chooses the data probability mass function and devises the random query responses to maximize distribution privacy as gauged by the (Kullback-Leibler) divergence between the former and the querier's best estimate of it based on the n query responses. Considering an arbitrary function, a basic achievable lower bound for distribution privacy is provided that does not depend on n and corresponds to worst-case privacy. Worst-case privacy equals the logsum cardinalities of inverse atoms under the given function, with the number of summands decreasing as the querier recovers the function with improving accuracy. Next, upper (converse) and lower (achievability) bounds for distribution privacy, dependent on n, are developed. The former improves upon worst-case privacy and the latter does so under suitable assumptions; both converge to it as n grows. The converse and achievability proofs identify explicit strategies for the user and the querier.
We consider the problem of assigning agents to programs in the presence of two-sided preferences, commonly known as the Hospital Residents problem. In the standard setting each program has a rigid upper-quota which cannot be violated. Motivated by applications where quotas are governed by resource availability, we propose and study the problem of computing optimal matchings with cost-controlled quotas -- denoted as the CCQ setting. In the CCQ setting we have a cost associated with every program which denotes the cost of matching a single agent to the program and these costs control the quotas. Our goal is to compute a matching that matches all agents, respects the preference lists of agents and programs and is optimal with respect to the cost criteria. We study two optimization problems with respect to the costs -- minimize the total cost (MINSUM) and minimize the maximum cost at a program (MINMAX). We show that there is a sharp contrast in the complexity status of these two problems -- MINMAX is polynomial time solvable whereas MINSUM is NP-hard and hard to approximate within a constant factor unless P = NP even under severe restrictions. On the positive side, we present approximation algorithms for the MINSUM for the general case and a special hard case. The special hard case is theoretically challenging as well as practically motivated and we present a Linear Programming based algorithm for this case. We also establish the connection of our model with the stable extension problem in an apparently different two-round setting of the stable matching problem [Gajulapalli et al. FSTTCS 2020]. We show that our results in the CCQ setting generalize the stable extension problem.
One-shot semantic image segmentation aims to segment the object regions for the novel class with only one annotated image. Recent works adopt the episodic training strategy to mimic the expected situation at testing time. However, these existing approaches simulate the test conditions too strictly during the training process, and thus cannot make full use of the given label information. Besides, these approaches mainly focus on the foreground-background target class segmentation setting. They only utilize binary mask labels for training. In this paper, we propose to leverage the multi-class label information during the episodic training. It will encourage the network to generate more semantically meaningful features for each category. After integrating the target class cues into the query features, we then propose a pyramid feature fusion module to mine the fused features for the final classifier. Furthermore, to take more advantage of the support image-mask pair, we propose a self-prototype guidance branch to support image segmentation. It can constrain the network for generating more compact features and a robust prototype for each semantic class. For inference, we propose a fused prototype guidance branch for the segmentation of the query image. Specifically, we leverage the prediction of the query image to extract the pseudo-prototype and combine it with the initial prototype. Then we utilize the fused prototype to guide the final segmentation of the query image. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our proposed approach.
Digital contents have grown dramatically in recent years, leading to increased attention to copyright. Image watermarking has been considered one of the most popular methods for copyright protection. With the recent advancements in applying deep neural networks in image processing, these networks have also been used in image watermarking. Robustness and imperceptibility are two challenging features of watermarking methods that the trade-off between them should be satisfied. In this paper, we propose to use an end-to-end network for watermarking. We use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to control the embedding strength based on the image content. Dynamic embedding helps the network to have the lowest effect on the visual quality of the watermarked image. Different image processing attacks are simulated as a network layer to improve the robustness of the model. Our method is a blind watermarking approach that replicates the watermark string to create a matrix of the same size as the input image. Instead of diffusing the watermark data into the input image, we inject the data into the feature space and force the network to do this in regions that increase the robustness against various attacks. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed method in terms of imperceptibility and robustness compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.
This paper examines a continuous time intertemporal consumption and portfolio choice problem with a stochastic differential utility preference of Epstein-Zin type for a robust investor, who worries about model misspecification and seeks robust decision rules. We provide a verification theorem which formulates the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman-Isaacs equation under a non-Lipschitz condition. Then, with the verification theorem, the explicit closed-form optimal robust consumption and portfolio solutions to a Heston model are given. Also we compare our robust solutions with the non-robust ones, and the comparisons shown in a few figures coincide with our common sense.
We study transmission in a system consisting of a curved graphene surface as an arc (ripple) of circle connected to two flat graphene sheets on the left and right sides. We introduce a mass term in the curved part and study the effect of a generated band gap in spectrum on transport properties for spin-up/-down. The tunneling analysis allows us to find all transmission and reflections channels modeled by the band gap. This later acts by decreasing the transmissions with spin-up/-down but increasing with spin opposite, which exhibit some behaviors look like bell-shaped curve. We find resonances appearing in reflection with the same spin, thus backscattering with a spin-up/-down is not null in ripple. We observe huge spatial shifts for the total conduction in our model and the magnitudes of these shifts can be efficiently controlled by adjusting the band gap. This high order tunability of the tunneling effect can be used to design highly accurate devises based on graphene.
The cells and their spatial patterns in the tumor microenvironment (TME) play a key role in tumor evolution, and yet the latter remains an understudied topic in computational pathology. This study, to the best of our knowledge, is among the first to hybridize local and global graph methods to profile orchestration and interaction of cellular components. To address the challenge in hematolymphoid cancers, where the cell classes in TME may be unclear, we first implemented cell-level unsupervised learning and identified two new cell subtypes. Local cell graphs or supercells were built for each image by considering the individual cell's geospatial location and classes. Then, we applied supercell level clustering and identified two new cell communities. In the end, we built global graphs to abstract spatial interaction patterns and extract features for disease diagnosis. We evaluate the proposed algorithm on H&E slides of 60 hematolymphoid neoplasms and further compared it with three cell level graph-based algorithms, including the global cell graph, cluster cell graph, and FLocK. The proposed algorithm achieved a mean diagnosis accuracy of 0.703 with the repeated 5-fold cross-validation scheme. In conclusion, our algorithm shows superior performance over the existing methods and can be potentially applied to other cancer types.
Research in the Vision and Language area encompasses challenging topics that seek to connect visual and textual information. When the visual information is related to videos, this takes us into Video-Text Research, which includes several challenging tasks such as video question answering, video summarization with natural language, and video-to-text and text-to-video conversion. This paper reviews the video-to-text problem, in which the goal is to associate an input video with its textual description. This association can be mainly made by retrieving the most relevant descriptions from a corpus or generating a new one given a context video. These two ways represent essential tasks for Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing communities, called text retrieval from video task and video captioning/description task. These two tasks are substantially more complex than predicting or retrieving a single sentence from an image. The spatiotemporal information present in videos introduces diversity and complexity regarding the visual content and the structure of associated language descriptions. This review categorizes and describes the state-of-the-art techniques for the video-to-text problem. It covers the main video-to-text methods and the ways to evaluate their performance. We analyze twenty-six benchmark datasets, showing their drawbacks and strengths for the problem requirements. We also show the progress that researchers have made on each dataset, we cover the challenges in the field, and we discuss future research directions.
We study static magnetic susceptibility $\chi(T, \mu)$ in $SU(2)$ lattice gauge theory with $N_f = 2$ light flavours of dynamical fermions at finite chemical potential $\mu$. Using linear response theory we find that $SU(2)$ gauge theory exhibits paramagnetic behavior in both the high-temperature deconfined regime and the low-temperature confining regime. Paramagnetic response becomes stronger at higher temperatures and larger values of the chemical potential. For our range of temperatures $0.727 \leq T/T_c \leq 2.67$, the first coefficient of the expansion of $\chi(T, \mu)$ in even powers of $\mu/T$ around $\mu=0$ is close to that of free quarks and lies in the range $(2 \ldots 5) \cdot 10^{-3}$. The strongest paramagnetic response is found in the diquark condensation phase at $\mu > m_{\pi}/2$.
We consider the problem of estimation and structure learning of high dimensional signals via a normal sequence model, where the underlying parameter vector is piecewise constant, or has a block structure. We develop a Bayesian fusion estimation method by using the Horseshoe prior to induce a strong shrinkage effect on successive differences in the mean parameters, simultaneously imposing sufficient prior concentration for non-zero values of the same. The proposed method thus facilitates consistent estimation and structure recovery of the signal pieces. We provide theoretical justifications of our approach by deriving posterior convergence rates and establishing selection consistency under suitable assumptions. We also extend our proposed method to signal de-noising over arbitrary graphs and develop efficient computational methods along with providing theoretical guarantees. We demonstrate the superior performance of the Horseshoe based Bayesian fusion estimation method through extensive simulations and two real-life examples on signal de-noising in biological and geophysical applications. We also demonstrate the estimation performance of our method on a real-world large network for the graph signal de-noising problem.
Let $G$ be a finite group and ${\rm cd}(G)$ will be the set of the degrees of the complex irreducible characters of $G$. Also let ${\rm cod}(G)$ be the set of codegrees of the irreducible characters of $G$. The Taketa problem conjectures if $G$ is solvable, then ${\rm dl}(G) \leq |{\rm cd}(G)|$, where ${\rm dl}(G)$ is the derived length of $G$. In this note, we show that ${\rm dl}(G) \leq |{\rm cod}(G)|$ in some cases and we conjecture that this inequality holds if $G$ is a finite solvable group.
In this article, we model Earth's lower small-scale eddies motion in the atmosphere as a compressible neutral fluid flow on a rotating sphere. To justify the model, we carried out a numerical computation of the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties of the viscous atmospheric motion in two dimensions using Naiver-Stokes dynamics, conservation of atmospheric energy, and continuity equation. The dynamics of the atmosphere, governed by a partial differential equation without any approximation , and without considering latitude-dependent acceleration due to gravity. The numerical solution for those governed equations was solved by applying the finite difference method with applying some sort of horizontal air mass density as a perturbation to the atmosphere at a longitude of $5\Delta\lambda$ . Based on this initial boundary condition with taking temperature-dependent transport coefficient into account, we obtain the propagation for each atmospheric parameter and presented it graphically as a function of geometrically position and time. All of the parameters oscillating with respect to time and satisfy the characteristics of an atmospheric waves. Finally, the effect of the Coriolis force on resultant velocity was also discussed by plotting contour lines for the resultant velocity for the different magnitude of Coriolis force, then we also obtain an interesting wave phenomena for the respective rotation of the Coriolis force. ~~~~Keywords: Naiver-Stokes Equations; Finite difference method; Viscous atmospheric motion; Viscous dissipation; convective motion.
Microbiota profiles measure the structure of microbial communities in a defined environment (known as microbiomes). In the past decade, microbiome research has focused on health applications as a result of which the gut microbiome has been implicated in the development of a broad range of diseases such as obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and major depressive disorder. A key goal of many microbiome experiments is to characterise or describe the microbial community. High-throughput sequencing is used to generate microbiota profiles, but data gathered via this method are extremely challenging to analyse, as the data violate multiple strong assumptions of standard models. Rough Set Theory (RST) has weak assumptions that are less likely to be violated, and offers a range of attractive tools for extracting knowledge from complex data. In this paper we present the first application of RST for characterising microbiomes. We begin with a demonstrative benchmark microbiota profile and extend the approach to gut microbiomes gathered from depressed subjects to enable knowledge discovery. We find that RST is capable of excellent characterisation of the gut microbiomes in depressed subjects and identifying previously undescribed alterations to the microbiome-gut-brain axis. An important aspect of the application of RST is that it provides a possible solution to an open research question regarding the search for an optimal normalisation approach for microbiome census data, as one does not currently exist.
Multistability is a common phenomenon which naturally occurs in complex networks. If coexisting attractors are numerous and their basins of attraction are complexly interwoven, the long-term response to a perturbation can be highly uncertain. We examine the uncertainty in the outcome of perturbations to the synchronous state in a Kuramoto-like representation of the British power grid. Based on local basin landscapes which correspond to single-node perturbations, we demonstrate that the uncertainty shows strong spatial variability. While perturbations at many nodes only allow for a few outcomes, other local landscapes show extreme complexity with more than a hundred basins. Particularly complex domains in the latter can be related to unstable invariant chaotic sets of saddle type. Most importantly, we show that the characteristic dynamics on these chaotic saddles can be associated with certain topological structures of the network. We find that one particular tree-like substructure allows for the chaotic response to perturbations at nodes in the north of Great Britain. The interplay with other peripheral motifs increases the uncertainty in the system response even further.
Ginzburg algebras associated to triangulated surfaces provide a means to categorify the cluster algebras of these surfaces. As shown by Ivan Smith, the finite derived category of such a Ginzburg algebra can be embedded into the Fukaya category of the total space of a Lefschetz fibration over the surface. Inspired by this perspective we provide a description of the full derived category in terms of a perverse schober. The main novelty is a gluing formalism describing the Ginzburg algebra as a colimit of certain local Ginzburg algebras associated to discs. As a first application we give a new proof of the derived invariance of these Ginzburg algebras under flips of an edge of the triangulation. Finally, we note that the perverse schober as well as the resulting gluing construction can also be defined over the sphere spectrum.
Fourth-order interference is an information processing primitive for photonic quantum technologies. When used in conjunction with post-selection, it forms the basis of photonic controlled logic gates, entangling measurements, and can be used to produce quantum correlations. Here, using classical weak coherent states as inputs, we study fourth-order interference in novel $4 \times 4$ multi-port beam splitters built within multi-core optical fibers. Using two mutually incoherent weak laser pulses as inputs, we observe high-quality fourth order interference between photons from different cores, as well as self-interference of a two-photon wavepacket. In addition, we show that quantum correlations, in the form of quantum discord, can be maximized by controlling the intensity ratio between the two input weak coherent states. This should allow for the exploitation of quantum correlations in future telecommunication networks.
Plant phenotyping, that is, the quantitative assessment of plant traits including growth, morphology, physiology, and yield, is a critical aspect towards efficient and effective crop management. Currently, plant phenotyping is a manually intensive and time consuming process, which involves human operators making measurements in the field, based on visual estimates or using hand-held devices. In this work, methods for automated grapevine phenotyping are developed, aiming to canopy volume estimation and bunch detection and counting. It is demonstrated that both measurements can be effectively performed in the field using a consumer-grade depth camera mounted onboard an agricultural vehicle.
Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) methods for person re-identification (re-ID) aim at transferring re-ID knowledge from labeled source data to unlabeled target data. Although achieving great success, most of them only use limited data from a single-source domain for model pre-training, making the rich labeled data insufficiently exploited. To make full use of the valuable labeled data, we introduce the multi-source concept into UDA person re-ID field, where multiple source datasets are used during training. However, because of domain gaps, simply combining different datasets only brings limited improvement. In this paper, we try to address this problem from two perspectives, \ie{} domain-specific view and domain-fusion view. Two constructive modules are proposed, and they are compatible with each other. First, a rectification domain-specific batch normalization (RDSBN) module is explored to simultaneously reduce domain-specific characteristics and increase the distinctiveness of person features. Second, a graph convolutional network (GCN) based multi-domain information fusion (MDIF) module is developed, which minimizes domain distances by fusing features of different domains. The proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art UDA person re-ID methods by a large margin, and even achieves comparable performance to the supervised approaches without any post-processing techniques.
We provide high-precision predictions for muon-pair and tau-pair productions in a photon-photon collision by considering a complete set of one-loop-level scattering amplitudes, i.e., electroweak (EW) corrections together with soft and hard QED radiation. Accordingly, we present a detailed numerical discussion with particular emphasis on the pure QED corrections as well as genuinely weak corrections. The effects of angular and initial beam polarisation distributions on production rates are also discussed. An improvement is observed by a factor of two with oppositely polarized photons. Our results indicate that the one-loop EW radiative corrections enhance the Born cross section and the total relative correction is typically about ten percent for both production channels. It appears that the full EW corrections to $\gamma \gamma \to \ell^- \ell^+$ are required to match a percent level accuracy.
The program-over-monoid model of computation originates with Barrington's proof that the model captures the complexity class $\mathsf{NC^1}$. Here we make progress in understanding the subtleties of the model. First, we identify a new tameness condition on a class of monoids that entails a natural characterization of the regular languages recognizable by programs over monoids from the class. Second, we prove that the class known as $\mathbf{DA}$ satisfies tameness and hence that the regular languages recognized by programs over monoids in $\mathbf{DA}$ are precisely those recognizable in the classical sense by morphisms from $\mathbf{QDA}$. Third, we show by contrast that the well studied class of monoids called $\mathbf{J}$ is not tame. Finally, we exhibit a program-length-based hierarchy within the class of languages recognized by programs over monoids from $\mathbf{DA}$.
We show that in analytic sub-Riemannian manifolds of rank 2 satisfying a commutativity condition spiral-like curves are not length minimizing near the center of the spiral. The proof relies upon the delicate construction of a competing curve.
We introduce a thermodynamically consistent, minimal stochastic model for complementary logic gates built with field-effect transistors. We characterize the performance of such gates with tools from information theory and study the interplay between accuracy, speed, and dissipation of computations. With a few universal building blocks, such as the NOT and NAND gates, we are able to model arbitrary combinatorial and sequential logic circuits, which are modularized to implement computing tasks. We find generically that high accuracy can be achieved provided sufficient energy consumption and time to perform the computation. However, for low-energy computing, accuracy and speed are coupled in a way that depends on the device architecture and task. Our work bridges the gap between the engineering of low dissipation digital devices and theoretical developments in stochastic thermodynamics, and provides a platform to study design principles for low dissipation digital devices.
A low complexity frequency offset estimation algorithm based on all-phase FFT for M-QAM is proposed. Compared with two-stage algorithms such as FFT+CZT and FFT+ZoomFFT, our algorithm can lower computational complexity by 73% and 30% respectively, without loss of the estimation accuracy.
While self-supervised pretraining has proven beneficial for many computer vision tasks, it requires expensive and lengthy computation, large amounts of data, and is sensitive to data augmentation. Prior work demonstrates that models pretrained on datasets dissimilar to their target data, such as chest X-ray models trained on ImageNet, underperform models trained from scratch. Users that lack the resources to pretrain must use existing models with lower performance. This paper explores Hierarchical PreTraining (HPT), which decreases convergence time and improves accuracy by initializing the pretraining process with an existing pretrained model. Through experimentation on 16 diverse vision datasets, we show HPT converges up to 80x faster, improves accuracy across tasks, and improves the robustness of the self-supervised pretraining process to changes in the image augmentation policy or amount of pretraining data. Taken together, HPT provides a simple framework for obtaining better pretrained representations with less computational resources.
Currently, every 1 in 54 children have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which is 178% higher than it was in 2000. An early diagnosis and treatment can significantly increase the chances of going off the spectrum and making a full recovery. With a multitude of physical and behavioral tests for neurological and communication skills, diagnosing ASD is very complex, subjective, time-consuming, and expensive. We hypothesize that the use of machine learning analysis on facial features and social behavior can speed up the diagnosis of ASD without compromising real-world performance. We propose to develop a hybrid architecture using both categorical data and image data to automate traditional ASD pre-screening, which makes diagnosis a quicker and easier process. We created and tested a Logistic Regression model and a Linear Support Vector Machine for Module 1, which classifies ADOS categorical data. A Convolutional Neural Network and a DenseNet network are used for module 2, which classifies video data. Finally, we combined the best performing models, a Linear SVM and DenseNet, using three data averaging strategies. We used a standard average, weighted based on number of training data, and weighted based on the number of ASD patients in the training data to average the results, thereby increasing accuracy in clinical applications. The results we obtained support our hypothesis. Our novel architecture is able to effectively automate ASD pre-screening with a maximum weighted accuracy of 84%.
With the Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) as a powerful function approximator, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has been excellently demonstrated on robotic control tasks. Compared to DNNs with vanilla artificial neurons, the biologically plausible Spiking Neural Network (SNN) contains a diverse population of spiking neurons, making it naturally powerful on state representation with spatial and temporal information. Based on a hybrid learning framework, where a spike actor-network infers actions from states and a deep critic network evaluates the actor, we propose a Population-coding and Dynamic-neurons improved Spiking Actor Network (PDSAN) for efficient state representation from two different scales: input coding and neuronal coding. For input coding, we apply population coding with dynamically receptive fields to directly encode each input state component. For neuronal coding, we propose different types of dynamic-neurons (containing 1st-order and 2nd-order neuronal dynamics) to describe much more complex neuronal dynamics. Finally, the PDSAN is trained in conjunction with deep critic networks using the Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic policy gradient algorithm (TD3-PDSAN). Extensive experimental results show that our TD3-PDSAN model achieves better performance than state-of-the-art models on four OpenAI gym benchmark tasks. It is an important attempt to improve RL with SNN towards the effective computation satisfying biological plausibility.
Mode-locking operation and multimode instabilities in Terahertz (THz) quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) have been intensively investigated during the last decade. These studies have unveiled a rich phenomenology, owing to the unique properties of these lasers, in particular their ultrafast gain medium. Thanks to this, in QCLs a modulation of the intracavity field intensity gives rise to a strong modulation of the population inversion, directly affecting the laser current. In this work we show that this property can be used to study the real-time dynamics of multimode THz QCLs, using a self-detection technique combined with a 60GHz real-time oscilloscope. To demonstrate the potential of this technique we investigate a free-running 4.2THz QCL, and observe a self-starting periodic modulation of the laser current, producing trains of regularly spaced, ~100ps-long pulses. Depending on the drive current we find two regimes of oscillation with dramatically different properties: a first regime at the fundamental repetition rate, characterised by large amplitude and phase noise, with coherence times of a few tens of periods; a much more regular second-harmonic-comb regime, with typical coherence times of ~105 oscillation periods. We interpret these measurements using a set of effective semiconductor Maxwell-Bloch equations that qualitatively reproduce the fundamental features of the laser dynamics, indicating that the observed carrier-density and optical pulses are in antiphase, and appear as a rather shallow modulation on top of a continuous wave background. Thanks to its simplicity and versatility, the demonstrated technique is a powerful tool for the study of ultrafast dynamics in THz QCLs.
We study the renormalization of Entanglement Entropy in holographic CFTs dual to Lovelock gravity. It is known that the holographic EE in Lovelock gravity is given by the Jacobson-Myers (JM) functional. As usual, due to the divergent Weyl factor in the Fefferman-Graham expansion of the boundary metric for Asymptotically AdS spaces, this entropy functional is infinite. By considering the Kounterterm renormalization procedure, which utilizes extrinsic boundary counterterms in order to renormalize the on-shell Lovelock gravity action for AAdS spacetimes, we propose a new renormalization prescription for the Jacobson-Myers functional. We then explicitly show the cancellation of divergences in the EE up to next-to-leading order in the holographic radial coordinate, for the case of spherical entangling surfaces. Using this new renormalization prescription, we directly find the $C-$function candidates for odd and even dimensional CFTs dual to Lovelock gravity. Our results illustrate the notable improvement that the Kounterterm method affords over other approaches, as it is non-perturbative and does not require that the Lovelock theory has limiting Einstein behavior.
We study identification of linear systems with multiplicative noise from multiple trajectory data. A least-squares algorithm, based on exploratory inputs, is proposed to simultaneously estimate the parameters of the nominal system and the covariance matrix of the multiplicative noise. The algorithm does not need prior knowledge of the noise or stability of the system, but requires mild conditions of inputs and relatively small length for each trajectory. Identifiability of the noise covariance matrix is studied, showing that there exists an equivalent class of matrices that generate the same second-moment dynamic of system states. It is demonstrated how to obtain the equivalent class based on estimates of the noise covariance. Asymptotic consistency of the algorithm is verified under sufficiently exciting inputs and system controllability conditions. Non-asymptotic estimation performance is also analyzed under the assumption that system states and noise are bounded, providing vanishing high-probability bounds as the number of trajectories grows to infinity. The results are illustrated by numerical simulations.
Yield farming has been an immensely popular activity for cryptocurrency holders since the explosion of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) in the summer of 2020. In this Systematization of Knowledge (SoK), we study a general framework for yield farming strategies with empirical analysis. First, we summarize the fundamentals of yield farming by focusing on the protocols and tokens used by aggregators. We then examine the sources of yield and translate those into three example yield farming strategies, followed by the simulations of yield farming performance, based on these strategies. We further compare four major yield aggregrators -- Idle, Pickle, Harvest and Yearn -- in the ecosystem, along with brief introductions of others. We systematize their strategies and revenue models, and conduct an empirical analysis with on-chain data from example vaults, to find a plausible connection between data anomalies and historical events. Finally, we discuss the benefits and risks of yield aggregators.
We propose a Point-Voxel DeConvolution (PVDeConv) module for 3D data autoencoder. To demonstrate its efficiency we learn to synthesize high-resolution point clouds of 10k points that densely describe the underlying geometry of Computer Aided Design (CAD) models. Scanning artifacts, such as protrusions, missing parts, smoothed edges and holes, inevitably appear in real 3D scans of fabricated CAD objects. Learning the original CAD model construction from a 3D scan requires a ground truth to be available together with the corresponding 3D scan of an object. To solve the gap, we introduce a new dedicated dataset, the CC3D, containing 50k+ pairs of CAD models and their corresponding 3D meshes. This dataset is used to learn a convolutional autoencoder for point clouds sampled from the pairs of 3D scans - CAD models. The challenges of this new dataset are demonstrated in comparison with other generative point cloud sampling models trained on ShapeNet. The CC3D autoencoder is efficient with respect to memory consumption and training time as compared to stateof-the-art models for 3D data generation.
We investigate quantitative aspects of the LEF property for subgroups of the topological full group $[[ \sigma ]]$ of a two-sided minimal subshift over a finite alphabet, measured via the LEF growth function. We show that the LEF growth of $[[ \sigma ]]^{\prime}$ may be bounded from above and below in terms of the recurrence function and the complexity function of the subshift, respectively. As an application, we construct groups of previously unseen LEF growth types, and exhibit a continuum of finitely generated LEF groups which may be distinguished from one another by their LEF growth.
Riordan arrays, denoted by pairs of generating functions (g(z), f(z)), are infinite lower-triangular matrices that are used as combinatorial tools. In this paper, we present Riordan and stochastic Riordan arrays that have connections to the Fibonacci and modified Lucas numbers. Then, we present some pseudo-involutions in the Riordan group that are based on constructions starting with a certain generating function g(z). We also present a theorem that shows how to construct pseudo-involutions in the Riordan group starting with a certain generating function f(z) whose additive inverse has compositional order 2. The theorem is then used to construct more pseudo-involutions in the Riordan group where some arrays have connections to the Fibonacci and modified Lucas numbers. A MATLAB algorithm for constructing the pseudo-involutions is also given.
The measurement of bias in machine learning often focuses on model performance across identity subgroups (such as man and woman) with respect to groundtruth labels. However, these methods do not directly measure the associations that a model may have learned, for example between labels and identity subgroups. Further, measuring a model's bias requires a fully annotated evaluation dataset which may not be easily available in practice. We present an elegant mathematical solution that tackles both issues simultaneously, using image classification as a working example. By treating a classification model's predictions for a given image as a set of labels analogous to a bag of words, we rank the biases that a model has learned with respect to different identity labels. We use (man, woman) as a concrete example of an identity label set (although this set need not be binary), and present rankings for the labels that are most biased towards one identity or the other. We demonstrate how the statistical properties of different association metrics can lead to different rankings of the most "gender biased" labels, and conclude that normalized pointwise mutual information (nPMI) is most useful in practice. Finally, we announce an open-sourced nPMI visualization tool using TensorBoard.
Usually, in mechanics, we obtain the trajectory of a particle in a given force field by solving Newton's second law with chosen initial conditions. In contrast, through our work here, we first demonstrate how one may analyse the behaviour of a suitably defined family of trajectories of a given mechanical system. Such an approach leads us to develop a mechanics analog following the well-known Raychaudhuri equation largely studied in Riemannian geometry and general relativity. The idea of geodesic focusing, which is more familiar to a relativist, appears to be analogous to the meeting of trajectories of a mechanical system within a finite time. Applying our general results to the case of simple pendula, we obtain relevant quantitative consequences. Thereafter, we set up and perform a straightforward experiment based on a system with two pendula. The experimental results on this system are found to tally well with our proposed theoretical model. In summary, the simple theory, as well as the related experiment, provides us with a way to understand the essence of a fairly involved concept in advanced physics from an elementary standpoint.
Recently it has become essential to search for and retrieve high-resolution and efficient images easily due to swift development of digital images, many present annotation algorithms facing a big challenge which is the variance for represent the image where high level represent image semantic and low level illustrate the features, this issue is known as semantic gab. This work has been used MPEG-7 standard to extract the features from the images, where the color feature was extracted by using Scalable Color Descriptor (SCD) and Color Layout Descriptor (CLD), whereas the texture feature was extracted by employing Edge Histogram Descriptor (EHD), the CLD produced high dimensionality feature vector therefore it is reduced by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The features that have extracted by these three descriptors could be passing to the classifiers (Naive Bayes and Decision Tree) for training. Finally, they annotated the query image. In this study TUDarmstadt image bank had been used. The results of tests and comparative performance evaluation indicated better precision and executing time of Naive Bayes classification in comparison with Decision Tree classification.
According to the O'Nan--Scott Theorem, a finite primitive permutation group either preserves a structure of one of three types (affine space, Cartesian lattice, or diagonal semilattice), or is almost simple. However, diagonal groups are a much larger class than those occurring in this theorem. For any positive integer $m$ and group $G$ (finite or infinite), there is a diagonal semilattice, a sub-semilattice of the lattice of partitions of a set $\Omega$, whose automorphism group is the corresponding diagonal group. Moreover, there is a graph (the diagonal graph), bearing much the same relation to the diagonal semilattice and group as the Hamming graph does to the Cartesian lattice and the wreath product of symmetric groups. Our purpose here, after a brief introduction to this semilattice and graph, is to establish some properties of this graph. The diagonal graph $\Gamma_D(G,m)$ is a Cayley graph for the group~$G^m$, and so is vertex-transitive. We establish its clique number in general and its chromatic number in most cases, with a conjecture about the chromatic number in the remaining cases. We compute the spectrum of the adjacency matrix of the graph, using a calculation of the M\"obius function of the diagonal semilattice. We also compute some other graph parameters and symmetry properties of the graph. We believe that this family of graphs will play a significant role in algebraic graph theory.
Many Riordan arrays play a significant role in algebraic combinatorics. We explore the inversion of Riordan arrays in this context. We give a general construct for the inversion of a Riordan array, and study this in the case of various subgroups of the Riordan group. For instance, we show that the inversion of an ordinary Bell matrix is an exponential Riordan array in the associated subgroup. Examples from combinatorics and algebraic combinatorics illustrate the usefulness of such inversions. We end with a brief look at the inversion of exponential Riordan arrays. A final example places Airey's convergent factor in the context of a simple exponential Riordan array.
Unveiling point defects concentration in transition metal oxide thin films is essential to understand and eventually control their functional properties, employed in an increasing number of applications and devices. Despite this unquestionable interest, there is a lack of available experimental techniques able to estimate the defect chemistry and equilibrium constants in such oxides at intermediate-to-low temperatures. In this study, the defect chemistry of a relevant material such as La1-xSrxFeO3-d (LSF) with (x = 0.2, 0.4 and 0.5 (LSF20, LSF40 and LSF50 respectively) is obtained by using a novel in situ spectroscopic ellipsometry approach applied to thin films. Through this technique, the concentration of holes in LSF is correlated to measured optical properties and its evolution with temperature and oxygen partial pressure is determined. In this way, a systematic description of defect chemistry in LSF thin films in the temperature range from 350dC to 500dC is obtained for the first time, which represents a step forward in the understanding of LSF20, LSF40 and LSF50 for emerging low temperature applications.
We use a theorem of P. Berger and D. Turaev to construct an example of a Finsler geodesic flow on the 2-torus with a transverse section, such that its Poincar\'e return map has positive metric entropy. The Finsler metric generating the flow can be chosen to be arbitrarily $C^\infty$-close to a flat metric.
In this paper, we characterize the performance of a three-dimensional (3D) two-hop cellular network in which terrestrial base stations (BSs) coexist with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to serve a set of ground user equipment (UE). In particular, a UE connects either directly to its serving terrestrial BS by an access link or connects first to its serving UAV which is then wirelessly backhauled to a terrestrial BS (joint access and backhaul). We consider realistic antenna radiation patterns for both BSs and UAVs using practical models developed by the third generation partnership project (3GPP). We assume a probabilistic channel model for the air-to-ground transmission, which incorporates both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) links. Assuming the max-power association policy, we study the performance of the network in both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying protocols. Using tools from stochastic geometry, we analyze the joint distribution of distance and zenith angle of the closest (and serving) UAV to the origin in a 3D setting. Further, we identify and extensively study key mathematical constructs as the building blocks of characterizing the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) distribution. Using these results, we obtain exact mathematical expressions for the coverage probability in both AF and DF relaying protocols. Furthermore, considering the fact that backhaul links could be quite weak because of the downtilted antennas at the BSs, we propose and analyze the addition of a directional uptilted antenna at the BS that is solely used for backhaul purposes. The superiority of having directional antennas with wirelessly backhauled UAVs is further demonstrated via simulation.
Edge computing has become one of the key enablers for ultra-reliable and low-latency communications in the industrial Internet of Things in the fifth generation communication systems, and is also a promising technology in the future sixth generation communication systems. In this work, we consider the application of edge computing to smart factories for mission-critical task offloading through wireless links. In such scenarios, although high end-to-end delays from the generation to completion of tasks happen with low probability, they may incur severe casualties and property loss, and should be seriously treated. Inspired by the risk management theory widely used in finance, we adopt the Conditional Value at Risk to capture the tail of the delay distribution. An upper bound of the Conditional Value at Risk is derived through analysis of the queues both at the devices and the edge computing servers. We aim to find out the optimal offloading policy taking into consideration both the average and the worst case delay performance of the system. Given that the formulated optimization problem is a non-convex mixed integer non-linear programming problem, a decomposition into sub-problems is performed and a two-stage heuristic algorithm is proposed. Simulation results validate our analysis and indicate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the risk in both the queuing and end-to-end delay.
For many years, the image databases used in steganalysis have been relatively small, i.e. about ten thousand images. This limits the diversity of images and thus prevents large-scale analysis of steganalysis algorithms. In this paper, we describe a large JPEG database composed of 2 million colour and grey-scale images. This database, named LSSD for Large Scale Steganalysis Database, was obtained thanks to the intensive use of \enquote{controlled} development procedures. LSSD has been made publicly available, and we aspire it could be used by the steganalysis community for large-scale experiments. We introduce the pipeline used for building various image database versions. We detail the general methodology that can be used to redevelop the entire database and increase even more the diversity. We also discuss computational cost and storage cost in order to develop images.
Machine-Learning-as-a-Service providers expose machine learning (ML) models through application programming interfaces (APIs) to developers. Recent work has shown that attackers can exploit these APIs to extract good approximations of such ML models, by querying them with samples of their choosing. We propose VarDetect, a stateful monitor that tracks the distribution of queries made by users of such a service, to detect model extraction attacks. Harnessing the latent distributions learned by a modified variational autoencoder, VarDetect robustly separates three types of attacker samples from benign samples, and successfully raises an alarm for each. Further, with VarDetect deployed as an automated defense mechanism, the extracted substitute models are found to exhibit poor performance and transferability, as intended. Finally, we demonstrate that even adaptive attackers with prior knowledge of the deployment of VarDetect, are detected by it.
Fog computing can be used to offload computationally intensive tasks from battery powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Although it reduces energy required for computations in an IoT device, it uses energy for communications with the fog. This paper analyzes when usage of fog computing is more energy efficient than local computing. Detailed energy consumption models are built in both scenarios with the focus set on the relation between energy consumption and distortion introduced by a Power Amplifier (PA). Numerical results show that task offloading to a fog is the most energy efficient for short, wideband links.
The geometric properties of sigma models with target space a Jacobi manifold are investigated. In their basic formulation, these are topological field theories - recently introduced by the authors - which share and generalise relevant features of Poisson sigma models, such as gauge invariance under diffeomorphisms and finite dimension of the reduced phase space. After reviewing the main novelties and peculiarities of these models, we perform a detailed analysis of constraints and ensuing gauge symmetries in the Hamiltonian approach. Contact manifolds as well as locally conformal symplectic manifolds are discussed, as main instances of Jacobi manifolds.
Using symmetrization techniques, we show that, for every $N \geq 2$, any second eigenfunction of the fractional Laplacian in the $N$-dimensional unit ball with homogeneous Dirichlet conditions is nonradial, and hence its nodal set is an equatorial section of the ball.
In March 2020 the United Kingdom (UK) entered a nationwide lockdown period due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the atmosphere dropped. In this work, we use 550,134 NO2 data points from 237 stations in the UK to build a spatiotemporal Gaussian process capable of predicting NO2 levels across the entire UK. We integrate several covariate datasets to enhance the model's ability to capture the complex spatiotemporal dynamics of NO2. Our numerical analyses show that, within two weeks of a UK lockdown being imposed, UK NO2 levels dropped 36.8%. Further, we show that as a direct result of lockdown NO2 levels were 29-38% lower than what they would have been had no lockdown occurred. In accompaniment to these numerical results, we provide a software framework that allows practitioners to easily and efficiently fit similar models.
Locally-rotationally-symmetric Bianchi type-I viscous and non -viscous cosmological models are explored in general relativity (GR) and in f(R,T) gravity. Solutions are obtained by assuming that the expansion scalar is proportional to the shear scalar which yields a constant value for the deceleration parameter (q=2). Constraints are obtained by requiring the physical viability of the solutions. A comparison is made between the viscous and non-viscous models, and between the models in GR and in f(R,T) gravity. The metric potentials remain the same in GR and in f(R,T) gravity. Consequently, the geometrical behavior of the $f(R,T)$ gravity models remains the same as the models in GR. It is found that f(R,T) gravity or bulk viscosity does not affect the behavior of effective matter which acts as a stiff fluid in all models. The individual fluids have very rich behavior. In one of the viscous models, the matter either follows a semi-realistic EoS or exhibits a transition from stiff matter to phantom, depending on the values of the parameter. In another model, the matter describes radiation, dust, quintessence, phantom, and the cosmological constant for different values of the parameter. In general, f(R,T) gravity diminishes the effect of bulk viscosity.
We propose TubeR: a simple solution for spatio-temporal video action detection. Different from existing methods that depend on either an off-line actor detector or hand-designed actor-positional hypotheses like proposals or anchors, we propose to directly detect an action tubelet in a video by simultaneously performing action localization and recognition from a single representation. TubeR learns a set of tubelet-queries and utilizes a tubelet-attention module to model the dynamic spatio-temporal nature of a video clip, which effectively reinforces the model capacity compared to using actor-positional hypotheses in the spatio-temporal space. For videos containing transitional states or scene changes, we propose a context aware classification head to utilize short-term and long-term context to strengthen action classification, and an action switch regression head for detecting the precise temporal action extent. TubeR directly produces action tubelets with variable lengths and even maintains good results for long video clips. TubeR outperforms the previous state-of-the-art on commonly used action detection datasets AVA, UCF101-24 and JHMDB51-21.
We prove the existence of an extremal function in the Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality for the energy associated to an stable operator. To this aim we obtain a concentration-compactness principle for stable processes in $\mathbb{R}^N$.
Smooth interfaces of topological systems are known to host massive surface states along with the topologically protected chiral one. We show that in Weyl semimetals these massive states, along with the chiral Fermi arc, strongly alter the form of the Fermi-arc plasmon, Most saliently, they yield further collective plasmonic modes that are absent in a conventional interfaces. The plasmon modes are completely anisotropic as a consequence of the underlying anisotropy in the surface model and expected to have a clear-cut experimental signature, e.g. in electron-energy loss spectroscopy.
A two-class Processor-Sharing queue with one impatient class is studied. Local exponential decay rates for its stationary distribution (N, M) are established in the heavy traffic regime where the arrival rate of impatient customers grows proportionally to a large factor A. This regime is characterized by two time-scales, so that no general Large Deviations result is applicable. In the framework of singular perturbation methods, we instead assume that an asymptotic expansion of the solution of associated Kolmogorov equations exists for large A and derive it in the form P(N = Ax, M = Ay) ~ g(x,y)/A exp(-A H(x,y)) for x > 0 and y > 0 with explicit functions g and H. This result is then applied to the model of mobile networks proposed in a previous work and accounting for the spatial movement of users. We give further evidence of a unusual growth behavior in heavy traffic in that the stationary mean queue length E(N') and E(M') of each customer-class increases proportionally to E(N') ~ E(M') ~ -log(1-rho) with system load rho tending to 1, instead of the usual 1/(1-rho) growth behavior.
Loosely bound van der Waals dimers of lanthanide atoms, as might be obtained in ultracold atom experiments, are investigated. These molecules are known to exhibit a degree of quantum chaos, due to the strong anisotropic mixing of their angular spin and rotation degrees of freedom. Within a model of these molecules, we identify different realms of this anisotropic mixing, depending on whether the spin, the rotation, or both, are significantly mixed by the anisotropy. These realms are in turn generally correlated with the resulting magnetic moments of the states.
We have investigated the structural, magnetic and dielectric properties of Pb-based langasite compound Pb$_3$TeMn$_3$P$_2$O$_{14}$ both experimentally and theoretically in the light of metal-oxygen covalency, and the consequent generation of multiferroicity. It is known that large covalency between Pb 6$p$ and O 2$p$ plays instrumental role behind stereochemical lone pair activity of Pb. The same happens here but a subtle structural phase transition above room temperature changes the degree of such lone pair activity and the system becomes ferroelectric below 310 K. Interestingly, this structural change also modulates the charge densities on different constituent atoms and consequently the overall magnetic response of the system while maintaining global paramagnetism behavior of the compound intact. This single origin of modulation in polarity and paramagnetism inherently connects both the functionalities and the system exhibits mutiferroicity at room temperature.
We present a series of models of three-dimensional rotation-symmetric fragile topological insulators in class AI (time-reversal symmetric and spin-orbit-free systems), which have gapless surface states protected by time-reversal ($T$) and $n$-fold rotation ($C_n$) symmetries ($n=2,4,6$). Our models are generalizations of Fu's model of a spinless topological crystalline insulator, in which orbital degrees of freedom play the role of pseudo-spins. We consider minimal surface Hamiltonian with $C_n$ symmetry in class AI and discuss possible symmetry-protected gapless surface states, i.e., a quadratic band touching and multiple Dirac cones with linear dispersion. We characterize topological structure of bulk wave functions in terms of two kinds of topological invariants obtained from Wilson loops: $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariants protected by $C_n$ ($n=4,6$) and time-reversal symmetries, and $C_2T$-symmetry-protected $\mathbb{Z}$ invariants (the Euler class) when the number of occupied bands is two. Accordingly, our models realize two kinds of fragile topological insulators. One is a fragile $\mathbb{Z}$ topological insulator whose only nontrivial topological index is the Euler class that specifies the number of surface Dirac cones. The other is a fragile $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological insulator having gapless surface states with either a quadratic band touching or four (six) Dirac cones, which are protected by time-reversal and $C_4$ ($C_6$) symmetries. Finally, we discuss the instability of gapless surface states against the addition of $s$-orbital bands and demonstrate that surface states are gapped out through hybridization with surface-localized $s$-orbital bands.
Complexity of products, volatility in global markets, and the increasingly rapid pace of innovations may make it difficult to know how to approach challenging situations in mechatronic design and production. Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor that describes the practical bargain of exchanging short-term benefits for long-term negative consequences. Oftentimes, the scope and impact of TD, as well as the cost of corrective measures, are underestimated. Especially for mechatronic teams in the mechanical, electrical, and software disciplines, the adverse interdisciplinary ripple effects of TD incidents are passed on throughout the life cycle. The analysis of the first comprehensive survey showed that not only do the TD types differ in cross-disciplinary comparisons, but different characteristics can also be observed depending on whether a discipline is studied in isolation or in combination with others. To validate the study results and to report on a general consciousness of TD in the disciplines, this follow-up study involves 15 of the 50 experts of the predecessor study and reflects the frequency and impact of technical debt in industrial experts' daily work using a questionnaire. These experts rate 14 TD types, 47 TD causes, and 33 TD symptoms in terms of their frequency and impact. Detailed analyses reveal consistent results for the most frequent TD types and causes, yet they show divergent characteristics in a profound exploration of discipline-specific phenomena. Thus, this study has the potential to set the foundations for future automated TD identification analyses in mechatronics.
Defect detection at commit check-in time prevents the introduction of defects into software systems. Current defect detection approaches rely on metric-based models which are not very accurate and whose results are not directly useful for developers. We propose a method to detect bug-inducing commits by comparing the incoming changes with all past commits in the project, considering both those that introduced defects and those that did not. Our method considers individual changes in the commit separately, at the method-level granularity. Doing so helps developers as they are informed of specific methods that need further attention instead of being told that the entire commit is problematic. Our approach represents source code as abstract syntax trees and uses tree kernels to estimate the similarity of the code with previous commits. We experiment with subtree kernels (STK), subset tree kernels (SSTK), or partial tree kernels (PTK). An incoming change is then classified using a K-NN classifier on the past changes. We evaluate our approach on the BigCloneBench benchmark and on the Technical Debt dataset, using the NiCad clone detector as the baseline. Our experiments with the BigCloneBench benchmark show that the tree kernel approach can detect clones with a comparable MAP to that of NiCad. Also, on defect detection with the Technical Debt dataset, tree kernels are least as effective as NiCad with MRR, F-score, and Accuracy of 0.87, 0.80, and 0.82 respectively.
Particle-In-Cell codes are widely used for plasma physics simulations. It is often the case that particles within a computational cell need to be split to improve the statistics or, in the case of non-uniform meshes, to avoid the development of fictitious self-forces. Existing particle splitting methods are largely empirical and their accuracy in preserving the distribution function has not been evaluated in a quantitative way. Here we present a new method specifically designed for codes using adaptive mesh refinement. Although we point out that an exact, distribution function preserving method does exist, it requires a large number of split particles and its practical use is limited. We derive instead a method that minimizes the cost function representing the distance between the assignment function of the original particle and that of the sum of split particles. Depending on the interpolation degree and the dimension of the problem, we provide tabulated results for the weight and position of the split particles. This strategy represents no overhead in computing time and for a large enough number of split-particles it asymptotically tends to the exact solution.
Lettericity is a graph parameter introduced by Petkov\v{s}ek in 2002 in order to study well-quasi-orderability under the induced subgraph relation. In the world of permutations, geometric griddability was independently introduced in 2013 by Albert, Atkinson, Bouvel, Ru\v{s}kuc and Vatter, partly as an enumerative tool. Despite their independent origins, those two notions share a connection: they highlight very similar structural features in their respective objects. The fact that those structural features arose separately on two different occasions makes them very interesting to study in their own right. In the present paper, we explore the notion of lettericity through the lens of "minimal obstructions", i.e., minimal classes of graphs of unbounded lettericity, and identify an infinite collection of such classes. We also discover an intriguing structural hierarchy that arises in the study of lettericity and that of griddability.
Deuterated molecules are good tracers of the evolutionary stage of star-forming cores. During the star formation process, deuterated molecules are expected to be enhanced in cold, dense pre-stellar cores and to deplete after protostellar birth. In this paper we study the deuteration fraction of formaldehyde in high-mass star-forming cores at different evolutionary stages to investigate whether the deuteration fraction of formaldehyde can be used as an evolutionary tracer. Using the APEX SEPIA Band 5 receiver, we extended our pilot study of the $J$=3$\rightarrow$2 rotational lines of HDCO and D$_2$CO to eleven high-mass star-forming regions that host objects at different evolutionary stages. High-resolution follow-up observations of eight objects in ALMA Band 6 were performed to reveal the size of the H$_2$CO emission and to give an estimate of the deuteration fractions HDCO/H$_2$CO and D$_2$CO/HDCO at scales of $\sim$6" (0.04-0.15 pc at the distance of our targets). Our observations show that singly- and doubly deuterated H$_2$CO are detected toward high-mass protostellar objects (HMPOs) and ultracompact HII regions (UCHII regions), the deuteration fraction of H$_2$CO is also found to decrease by an order of magnitude from the earlier HMPO phases to the latest evolutionary stage (UCHII), from $\sim$0.13 to $\sim$0.01. We have not detected HDCO and D$_2$CO emission from the youngest sources (high-mass starless cores, HMSCs). Our extended study supports the results of the previous pilot study: the deuteration fraction of formaldehyde decreases with evolutionary stage, but higher sensitivity observations are needed to provide more stringent constraints on the D/H ratio during the HMSC phase. The calculated upper limits for the HMSC sources are high, so the trend between HMSC and HMPO phases cannot be constrained.