cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
A possibilistic no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox
Creators: name: Haddara, Marwan
name: Cavalcanti, Eric G.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: In a recent work, Bong et al. [Nature Physics 16, 1199 (2020)] proved a no-go theorem demonstrating a contradiction between a set of assumptions called "Local Friendliness" (LF) and certain quantum phenomena on an extended version of the "Wigner's friend" paradox. The LF assumptions can be understood as the conjunction of two independent assumptions: Absoluteness of Observed Events (AOE) requires that events observed by any observer have absolute, rather than relative, values; Local Agency (LA) encodes the assumption that an intervention cannot influence events outside its future light cone. The proof of the LF no-go theorem, however, implicitly assumes the validity of standard probability theory. Here we present a probability-free version of the Local Friendliness theorem, building upon Hardy's no-go theorem for local hidden variables. The argument is phrased in the language of possibilities, which we make formal by using a modal logical approach. It relies on a weaker version of Local Agency, which we call "Possibilistic Local Agency": the assumption that an intervention cannot influence the possibilities of events outside its future light cone.
description: 7 pages, 3 figures. V2: Main results unchanged. Changed overall appearance. Added discussion on the Wigner's friend scenario and expanded on the motivation underlying the assumptions. Added a figure. Updated reference list and acknowledgements section. Minor notational changes
Inverse problems for the perturbed polyharmonic operator with coefficients in Sobolev spaces with non-positive order
Creators: name: Assylbekov, Yernat M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 35R30

description: We show that the knowledge of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map on the boundary of a bounded open set in $\mathbb R^n$, $n\ge 3$, for the perturbed polyharmonic operator $(-Δ)^m+A\cdot D+q$, $m\ge 2$, with $n>m$, $A\in W^{-\frac{m-2}{2},\frac{2n}{m}}$ and $q\in W^{-\frac{m}{2}+δ,\frac{2n}{m}}$, with $0
description: 24 pages, statement of main result was incorrect in the earlier version and has been corrected and modified
Normalized solutions for the Klein Gordon-Dirac system
Creators: name: Zelati, Vittorio Coti
name: Nolasco, Margherita
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP)
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: We prove the existence of a stationary solution for the system describing the interaction between an electron coupled with a massless scalar field (a photon). We find a solution, with fixed $L^{2}$-norm, by variational methods, as a critical point of an energy functional.
Computational assessment of environmental hazards of nitroaromatic compounds: influence of the type and position of aromatic ring substituents on toxicity
Creators: name: Tinkov, Oleg V.
name: Muratov, Nail N.
name: Muratov, Eugene N.
name: Leszczynski, Jerzy
name: Ognichenko, Luidmila N.
name: Hill, Frances C.
name: Kuz'Min, Victor E.
name: Gorb, Leonid G.
name: Kosinskaya, Anna P.
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2016

description: This study summarizes the results of our recent QSAR and QSPR investigations on prediction of numerous aspects of environmental behavior of nitro compounds. In this study, we applied the QSAR/QSPR models previously developed by our group for virtual screening of energetic compounds, their precursors and other compounds containing nitro groups. To make predictions on the environmental impact of nitro compounds, we analyzed the trends in the change of the experimentally obtained and QSAR/QSPR-predicted values of aqueous solubility, lipophilicity, Ames mutagenicity, bioavailability, blood–brain barrier penetration, aquatic toxicity on T. pyriformis and acute oral toxicity on rats as a function of chemical structure of nitro compounds. All the models were developed using simplex descriptors in combination with random forest (RF) modeling techniques. We interpreted the possible environmental impact (different toxicological properties) in terms of dividing considered nitro compounds based on hydrophobic and hydrophilic characteristics and in terms of the influence of their molecular fragments that promote and interfere with toxicity. In particular, we found that, in general, the presence of amide or tertiary amine groups leads to an increase in toxicity. Also, it was predicted that compounds containing a NO2 group in the para-position of a benzene ring are more toxic than meta-isomers, which, in turn, are more toxic than ortho-isomers. In general, we concluded that hydrophobic nitroaromatic compounds, especially the ones with electron-accepting substituents, halogens and amino groups, are the most environmentally hazardous.
Race, racism, and covid-19 in the US: lessons not learnt
Creators: name: Adisa, Olanrewaju
name: Robinson, Whitney R
name: Ruff, Kennedy E
name: Bentley-Edwards, Keisha L
name: McClure, Elizabeth S
Publisher: name: BMJ
Year: 2024

description: Keisha Bentley-Edwards and colleagues argue that systemic racism and economic inequality are at the root of disparity in covid-19 outcomes and suggest how to distribute resources more equitably.
A complete model of the CR spectrum and composition across the Galactic to Extragalactic transition
Creators: name: Globus, Noemie
name: Allard, Denis
name: Parizot, Etienne
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present a complete phenomenological model accounting for the evolution of the cosmic-ray spectrum and composition with energy, based on the available data over the entire spectrum. We show that there is no need to postulate any additional component, other than one single Galactic component depending on rigidity alone, and one extragalactic component, whose characteristics are similar to those derived from a study of particle acceleration at mildly relativistic shocks in a GRB environment (Globus et al., 2015). In particular, we show that the resulting cosmic ray spectrum and composition satisfy the various constraints derived from the current data in the Galactic/extragalactic transition region, notably from the measurements of KASCADE Grande and Auger. Finally, we derive some generic features that a working phenomenological scenario may exhibit to give a global account of the cosmic ray data with a minimum number of free parameters.
description: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D Rapid Communications
title: Schritte Richtung Digitalisierung: Wer kommt mit? Soziale Ungleichheiten im digitalen Bereich
Creators: name: Bollag, Jessica
name: Fischer, Evelyn
name: Heierle, Daniela
name: Zaugg, Pascal
Publisher: name: Waxmann
Year: 2022

description: Der vorliegende Artikel stellt das didaktische Set Schritte Richtung Digitalisierung: Wer kommt mit? Soziale Ungleichheiten im digitalen Bereich vor, welches von der interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppe Digital Equality der Pädagogischen Hochschule Bern konzipiert wurde. Das Set hat die Sensibilisierung für soziale Ungleichheiten im Zusammenhang mit der Digitalisierung zum Ziel. Es eignet sich für die Durchführung mit Lehrpersonen aller Stufen und weiteren Fachpersonen aus dem Bildungsbereich.
Explaining the 'outliers' track in Black Hole X-ray Binaries with the BZ-jet and inner-disk coupling
Creators: name: Chang, Ning
name: Liu, Xiang
name: Xie, Fu-Guo
name: Cui, Lang
name: Shan, Hao
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: In this paper, we investigate the black hole (BH) spin contribution to jet power, especially for the magnetic arrested disk (MAD), where only inner accretion disk luminosity is closely coupled with the spin-jet power, and try to explain the `outliers' track of the radio $L_{\rm R}$ to X-ray luminosity $L_{\rm X}$ in two black hole X-ray binaries (BHXBs). Our results suggest that the BZ-jet and the inner-disk coupling could account for the `outliers' track of the radio/X-ray correlation in two BHXBs, H1743-322 and MAXI J1348-630. Although the accretion disk of H1743-322 in the outburst could be in the MAD state, there is a lower probability that MAXI J1348-630 is in the MAD state due to its low jet production efficiency. The difference in the inner-disk bolometric luminosity ratio of the two sources implies that these two BHXBs are in different inner-disk accretion states. We further investigate the phase-changing regime of MAXI J1348-630 and find that there is a phase transition around $L_{\rm X}/L_{\rm Edd}\sim 10^{-3}$. The assumption of sub-MAD is discussed as well.
description: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Universe
Association of Premorbid GLP-1RA and SGLT-2i Prescription Alone and in Combination with COVID-19 Severity
Creators: name: Buse, John B.
name: Abrahamsen, Trine J.
name: Chute, Christopher G.
name: Moffitt, Richard
name: Mehta, Hemalkumar
name: Alexander, G. Caleb
name: Hong, Stephanie S.
name: Kvist, Kajsa
name: Haendel, Melissa
name: Klein, Klara R.
name: Stürmer, Til
name: Kahkoska, Anna R.
Publisher: name: Springer Nature
Year: 2024

description: Introduction People with type 2 diabetes are at heightened risk for severe outcomes related to COVID-19 infection, including hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, and mortality. This study was designed to examine the impact of premorbid use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) monotherapy, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor (SGLT-2i) monotherapy, and concomitant GLP1-RA/SGLT-2i therapy on the severity of outcomes in individuals with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Methods Utilizing observational data from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative through September 2022, we compared outcomes in 78,806 individuals with a prescription of GLP-1RA and SGLT-2i versus a prescription of  dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP-4i) within 24 months of a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test. We also compared concomitant GLP-1RA/SGLT-2i therapy to GLP-1RA and SGLT-2i monotherapy. The primary outcome was 60-day mortality, measured from the positive test date. Secondary outcomes included emergency room (ER) visits, hospitalization, and mechanical ventilation within 14 days. Using a super learner approach and accounting for baseline characteristics, associations were quantified with odds ratios (OR) estimated with targeted maximum likelihood estimation (TMLE). Results Use of GLP-1RA (OR 0.64, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.56–0.72) and SGLT-2i (OR 0.62, 95% CI 0.57–0.68) were associated with lower odds of 60-day mortality compared to DPP-4i use. Additionally, the OR of ER visits and hospitalizations were similarly reduced with GLP1-RA and SGLT-2i use. Concomitant GLP-1RA/SGLT-2i use showed similar odds of 60-day mortality when compared to GLP-1RA or SGLT-2i use alone (OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.81–1.05 and OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.76–1.01, respectively). However, lower OR of all secondary outcomes were associated with concomitant GLP-1RA/SGLT-2i use when compared to SGLT-2i use alone. Conclusion Among adults who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, premorbid use of either GLP-1RA or SGLT-2i is associated with lower odds of mortality compared to DPP-4i. Furthermore, concomitant use of GLP-1RA and SGLT-2i is linked to lower odds of other severe COVID-19 outcomes, including ER visits, hospitalizations, and mechanical ventilation, compared to SGLT-2i use alone.
Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll: February 2014
Creators: name: Asbury Park Press
name: Monmouth University Polling Institute
Publisher: name: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
Year: 2019

description: New Jersey as place to live (1); Governor Chris Christie job performance (1); NJ State Legislature job performance (1); President Barack Obama job performance (1); Senator Bob Menendez job performance (1); Senator Cory Booker job performance (1); Christie favorability (1); favorability of various people (6); Cory Booker vs. Murray Sabrin for U.S. Senate (1); Cory Booker should be re-elected/time to have someone else in office (1); Christie more concerned about governing state/his political future (1); Christie is/is not planning to run for president in 2016 (1); Christie does/does not have right temperament to be president (1); George Washington Bridge toll lane closures in Fort Lee (5); claims that Christie administration withheld Superstorm Sandy relief money for Hoboken (2); likelihood of Christie administration using Sandy relief funding to exercise political power over local officials (1); respondent's town, city as place to live (1); local environmental quality (1); local school quality (1); neighborhood safety (1); applicability of skills learned by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in variety of work settings (1); Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and the workforce (3); post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.) in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans (5); knows someone who served in the military in Iraq or Afghanistan (1); Superstorm Sandy recovery in New Jersey (3).
Equitable Instructor Assessment Changes Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
Creators: name: Ballen, Cissy J.
name: McCoy, Sophie J.
name: Thompson, Seth
name: Lane, A. Kelly
name: Larson, Erin
name: Driessen, Emily P.
name: Beatty, Abby E.
name: Lamb, Todd
name: Hobbs, Kristen S.
name: Fagbodun, Sheritta
name: Creech, Catherine
name: Drake, Abby Grace
name: Esco, Abby
name: Cotner, Sehoya
name: Youngblood, Rachel
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2024

description: The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak mandated a rapid transition to online classes with little warning. Previous literature studying the effects of this sudden shift demonstrated enormous impacts on instructors and students. However, the details concerning science instructor assessment choices during this time are less clear. We asked biology instructors to reflect on the changes they made to their assessments of student learning during the emergency transition to remote instruction in spring 2020 and whether the potential changes were motivated by equity concerns. We also asked instructors to describe the assessment changes they intended to keep in future semesters. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found that instructors removed forms of assessment more often than they added them, and the most common changes included how instructors administered exams and engaged students through participation. Instructors reported that equity concerns motivated their decision-making, particularly their concern over students’ ability to access learning resources. Instructors indicated they would keep many of the changes they made in response to the shift to online learning. Our research shows that the pandemic dramatically altered how instructors assessed students in biology, but equity-based decisions leading to lasting change may be one positive outcome for future students.
$MC^2$: Rigorous and Efficient Directed Greybox Fuzzing
Creators: name: Shah, Abhishek
name: She, Dongdong
name: Sadhu, Samanway
name: Singal, Krish
name: Coffman, Peter
name: Jana, Suman
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Directed greybox fuzzing is a popular technique for targeted software testing that seeks to find inputs that reach a set of target sites in a program. Most existing directed greybox fuzzers do not provide any theoretical analysis of their performance or optimality. In this paper, we introduce a complexity-theoretic framework to pose directed greybox fuzzing as a oracle-guided search problem where some feedback about the input space (e.g., how close an input is to the target sites) is received by querying an oracle. Our framework assumes that each oracle query can return arbitrary content with a large but constant amount of information. Therefore, we use the number of oracle queries required by a fuzzing algorithm to find a target-reaching input as the performance metric. Using our framework, we design a randomized directed greybox fuzzing algorithm that makes a logarithmic (wrt. the number of all possible inputs) number of queries in expectation to find a target-reaching input. We further prove that the number of oracle queries required by our algorithm is optimal, i.e., no fuzzing algorithm can improve (i.e., minimize) the query count by more than a constant factor. We implement our approach in MC$^2$ and outperform state-of-the-art directed greybox fuzzers on challenging benchmarks (Magma and Fuzzer Test Suite) by up to two orders of magnitude (i.e., $134\times$) on average. MC$^2$ also found 15 previously undiscovered bugs that other state-of-the-art directed greybox fuzzers failed to find.
description: To Appear in Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '22)
Roadmap to resource efficient urban agriculture
Creators: name: Fox-Kämper Runrid
name: Specht Kathrin
name: Caputo Silvio
name: Hawes Jason, K.
name: Lélièvre  Agnès
name: Cohen Nevin
name: Poniży  Lidia
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Urban agriculture
Food-Water-Energy Nexus
future scenarios
resources efficiency
allotment garden
community garden
urban farm
urban development

description: This roadmap identifies policy recommendations for a desirable future for urban agriculture in 2050
 based on policy reviews, interviews and workshops. In particular, this work assesses how and to
 what degree policy can be developed to create synergies between urban agriculture and cities’ food,
 energy and water nexus. This work is based on the existing policies in five city regions in France,
 Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. This report is designed for use by
 policy makers, public authorities and other stakeholders who want to support a shift towards an
 urban agriculture in which the nexus between food production, water and energy use, and social
 benefits is optimised.
 To construct scenarios for analysis, seven key factors were identified (from 24 original drivers
 emerging from analysis) and intersected with three potential trends (positive, negative and a
 continuation of the status quo). Recommendations in this roadmap are based on the most positive
 outcomes for urban agriculture, cities, and citizens.
A randomized double-blinded trial to assess recurrence of systemic allergic reactions following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination
Creators: name: Feener, Edward P
name: Brittain, Erica
name: Le, Quang
name: Zektser, Ellen
name: Utoh, Joanna
name: Harb, Roa
name: Holland, Steven M
name: Chatman, Lindsay
name: Lyons, Jonathan J
name: Sun, Guangping
name: Lai, Samuel K
name: Schwartz, Lawrence B
name: Khalid, Muhammad B
name: Raza, Haniya
name: Loving, Hanna S
name: Li, Min
name: Zhou, Zhao-Hua
name: Claudio-Etienne, Estefania
name: Li, Zhongbo
name: Komarow, Hirsh
name: Pao, Maryland
name: Laky, Karen
name: Chu, Eric
name: Ryan, Patrick
name: Kattappuram, Robbie
name: Hartono, Stella
name: Frischmeyer-Guerrerio, Pamela A
Publisher: name: Elsevier
Year: 2024

description: BACKGROUND: Systemic allergic reactions (sARs) following coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccines were initially reported at a higher rate than after traditional vaccines.
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate the safety of revaccination in these individuals and to interrogate mechanisms underlying these reactions.
METHODS: In this randomized, double-blinded, phase 2 trial, participants aged 16 to 69 years who previously reported a convincing sAR to their first dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine were randomly assigned to receive a second dose of BNT162b2 (Comirnaty) vaccine and placebo on consecutive days in a blinded, 1:1 crossover fashion at the National Institutes of Health. An open-label BNT162b2 booster was offered 5 months later if the second dose did not result in severe sAR. None of the participants received the mRNA-1273 (Spikevax) vaccine during the study. The primary end point was recurrence of sAR following second dose and booster vaccination; exploratory end points included biomarker measurements.
RESULTS: Of 111 screened participants, 18 were randomly assigned to receive study interventions. Eight received BNT162b2 second dose followed by placebo; 8 received placebo followed by BNT162b2 second dose; 2 withdrew before receiving any study intervention. All 16 participants received the booster dose. Following second dose and booster vaccination, sARs recurred in 2 participants (12.5%; 95% CI, 1.6 to 38.3). No sAR occurred after placebo. An anaphylaxis mimic, immunization stress-related response (ISRR), occurred more commonly than sARs following both vaccine and placebo and was associated with higher predose anxiety scores, paresthesias, and distinct vital sign and biomarker changes.
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support revaccination of individuals who report sARs to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Distinct clinical and laboratory features may distinguish sARs from ISRRs.
Spectral emissivity of copper and nickel in the mid-infrared range between 250 and 900 $^{\circ}$C
Creators: name: Setién-Fernández, Iñigo
name: Echániz, Telmo
name: González-Fernández, Luis
name: Pérez-Sáez, Raúl Benjamín
name: Tello, Manuel José
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A study on the radiative properties of two pure metals, copper and nickel, using a high accuracy radiometer is carried out. Their spectral emissivity between 3 and 21 μm and its dependence on emission angle and temperature between 250 and 900 $^{\circ}$C is measured. An evolution of the samples emissivity associated to the surface stress relaxation is observed, which is relieved after two or three heating cycles. Spectral emissivity of metals usually decreases as wavelength increases, but in the case of copper an irregular behaviour has been found. Its spectral emissivity shows a broad plateau around 10 μm, which can be due to the anomalous skin effect. On the other hand, the emissivity usually increases with temperature, but in the case of nickel the emissivity changes little and even slightly decreases for T > 700 $^{\circ}$C. The exper-imental directional emissivity of both metals shows the dependence on the emission angle predicted by the electromagnetic theory for metallic samples. By increasing the emission angle, the emissivity dependence on the wavelength strongly decreases. Furthermore, in the case of nickel, an emissivity increase with wavelength is observed for k > 20 μm. The electrical resistivity for both metals is obtained by fitting the experimental emissivity curves with the Hagen Rubens equation. The results agree fairly well with direct electrical resistivity measurements for copper but show a poor agreement in the case of nickel.
description: 6 pages, 8 figures
Hyperon Puzzle, Hadron-Quark Crossover and Massive Neutron Stars
Creators: name: Masuda, Kota
name: Hatsuda, Tetsuo
name: Takatsuka, Tatsuyuki
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Bulk properties of cold and hot neutron stars (NSs) are studied on the basis of the hadron-quark crossover picture where a smooth transition from the hadronic phase to the quark phase takes place at finite baryon density. By using a phenomenological equation of state (EOS) "CRover" which interpolates the two phases at around 3 times the nuclear matter density, it is found that the cold NSs with the gravitational mass larger than 2-solarmass can be sustained. This is in sharp contrast to the case of the first-order hadron-quark transition. The radii of the cold NSs with the CRover EOS are in the narrow range which is insensitive to the NS masses. Due to the stiffening of the EOS induced by the hadron-quark crossover, the central density of the NSs is at most 4 times the nuclear matter density and the hyperon-mixing barely occurs inside the NS core. This constitutes a solution of the long-standing hyperon puzzle. The effect of color superconductivity (CSC) on the NS structures is also examined with the hadron-quark crossover. For the typical strength of the diquark attraction, a slight softening of the EOS due to two-flavor CSC (2SC) takes place and the maximum mass is reduced by about 0.2-solarmass. The CRover EOS is generalized to the supernova matter at finite temperature to describe the hot NSs at birth. The hadron-quark crossover is found to decrease the central temperature of the hot NSs under isentropic condition. The gravitational energy release and the spin-up rate during the contraction from the hot NS to the cold NS are also estimated.
description: 15 pages, 13 figures; prepared for the 2015 EPJA Topical Issue on "Exotic Matter in Neutron Stars"
title: Thermoset biocomposites for industrial applications
Creators: name: Ton-That, Minh Tan
name: Legros, Nathalie
name: James, Byron
name: Slaski, Jan
name: Duckett, Mike
name: Graham, Lori-Jo
Publisher: name: National Research Council Canada
Year: 2015

description: World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology, July 19-22, 2015, Montreal, QC, Canada
Ultrafast charge carrier and exciton dynamics in an excitonic insulator probed by time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
Creators: name: Mor, Selene
name: Herzog, Marc
name: Monney, Claude
name: Stähler, Julia
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
subject: Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: An excitonic insulator phase is expected to arise from the spontaneous formation of electron-hole pairs (excitons) in semiconductors where the exciton binding energy exceeds the size of the electronic band gap. At low temperature, these ground state excitons stabilize a new phase by condensing at lower energy than the electrons at the valence band top, thereby widening the electronic band gap. The envisioned opportunity to explore many-boson phenomena in an excitonic insulator system is triggering a very active debate on how ground state excitons can be experimentally evidenced. Here, we employ a nonequilibrium approach to spectrally disentangle the photoinduced dynamics of an exciton condensate from the entwined signature of the valence band electrons. By means of time-and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of the occupied and unoccupied electronic states, we follow the complementary dynamics of conduction and valence band electrons in the photoexcited low-temperature phase of Ta2 NiSe5 , the hitherto most promising single-crystal candidate to undergo a semiconductor-to-excitonic-insulator phase transition. The photoexcited conduction electrons are found to relax within less than 1 ps. Their relaxation time is inversely proportional to their excess energy, a dependence that we attribute to the reduced screening of Coulomb interaction and the low dimensionality of Ta2NiSe5 . Long after (> 10 ps) the conduction band has emptied, the photoemission intensity below the Fermi energy has not fully recovered the equilibrium value. Notably, this seeming carrier imbalance cannot be rationalized simply by the relaxation of photoexcited electrons and holes across the semiconducting band gap. [...]
A Response to the United Nations CITES Blockchain Challenge: Incremental and Integrative PoA-based Permit Exchange
Creators: name: Busse, Anselm
name: Eberhardt, Jacob
name: Frost, Sebastian
name: Kim, Dong-Ha
name: Weilbier, Thore
name: Renner, Lukas
name: Roth, Matthias
name: Tai, Stefan
Publisher: name: Technische Universität Berlin
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: 000 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke
subject: blockchains
subject: CITES
subject: smart contracts
subject: permits
subject: provenance
subject: supply-chain

description: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) negotiated and administered by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) regulates the international trade of endangered species and derived products through a permit-based system. Currently, the permit process is paper-based and hence highly prone to manipulations and errors. Being aware of blockchains' potential, the CITES Secretariat defined a challenge to determine whether a blockchain-based system can address the aforementioned issues and serve as a secure, efficient, and affordable permit processing system. In this paper, we respond to the CITES Blockchain Challenge. First, we analyze the permit process and discuss how blockchain systems can improve that process in a way traditional systems cannot. Building on these results, we design a blockchain-based system that enables secure, manipulation resistant permit validation, produces an immutable record of processed permits, and is in compliance with the CITES agreement. To evaluate this design, we developed a proof-of-concept implementation compatible with the paper-based permit process and deployed it to a Proof-of-Authority-based blockchain network. This allows incremental adoption and integration with the existing process, thereby increasing acceptance and addressing affordability. Finally, we describe how a blockchain- based system could disruptively improve the established permit process by enforcing quotas and tracking provenance.
Maximal $k$-Edge-Colorable Subgraphs, Vizing's Theorem, and Tuza's Conjecture
Creators: name: Puleo, Gregory J.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Combinatorics (math.CO)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 05C15

description: We prove that if $M$ is a maximal $k$-edge-colorable subgraph of a multigraph $G$ and if $F = \{v \in V(G) : d_M(v) \leq k-μ(v)\}$, then $d_F(v) \leq d_M(v)$ for all $v \in F$. (When $G$ is a simple graph, the set $F$ is just the set of vertices having degree less than $k$ in $M$.) This implies Vizing's Theorem as well as a special case of Tuza's Conjecture on packing and covering of triangles. A more detailed version of our result also implies Vizing's Adjacency Lemma for simple graphs.
description: 11 pages, 1 figure. Fixed some inaccurate references to "Vizing's Theorem" (the stronger version cited here is in fact due to Ore), cleared up some muddled results in the section about forests, simplified some notation, and made other various readability improvements
The Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination on Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression before and after COVID-19 Vaccines Were Universally Available for Adults in the United States
Creators: name: You, William
name: Nash, Denis
name: Shen, Jenny
name: Robertson, McKaylee M.
name: Berry, Amanda
name: Grov, Christian
name: Kulkarni, Sarah G.
name: Piltch-Loeb, Rachael
name: Zimba, Rebecca
name: Parcesepe, Angela M.
name: Fleary, Sasha A.
name: Stanton, Eva
Publisher: name: Hindawi
Year: 2024

description:  Our objective was to examine the influence of COVID-19 vaccination on recent (i.e., past month) moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety (GAD‐7 ≥ 10) or depression (PHQ‐8 ≥10) before and after the COVID-19 vaccine became universally available for adults in the U.S. Participants belonged to the Communities, Households, and SARS-CoV-2 Epidemiology Cohort (CHASING COVID), a national longitudinal study. Our analytic population included 4,832 participants who reported vaccination status from December 2020 to December 2021 with follow-up outcomes assessed through March 2022. We emulated a hypothetical randomized experiment, a target trial, to estimate the effect of COVID-19 vaccination on symptoms of anxiety or depression. Before vaccines were universally available, participants who were vaccinated versus not had significantly lower adjusted odds of symptoms of moderate or severe anxiety (aOR: 0.79; 95% CI: 0.70-0.89). In the universal vaccine era, vaccination was associated with marginally higher adjusted odds of symptoms of moderate or severe anxiety (aOR: 1.23; 95% CI: 1.00-1.50). Vaccination did not influence subsequent moderate or severe depressive symptoms in the preuniversal vaccine era (aOR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.82-1.03) or universal vaccine era (aOR: 1.11; 95% CI: 0.91-1.36). Research into the longitudinal relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and symptoms of depression and anxiety is warranted, with a focus on advancing understanding of potential mediators on the pathway between vaccination and mental health as well as modifiable factors, such as vaccine hesitancy or vaccine beliefs, that may help identify populations for whom vaccination may be particularly beneficial to their mental health.
Efficiently Leveraging Multi-level User Intent for Session-based Recommendation via Atten-Mixer Network
Creators: name: Zhang, Peiyan
name: Guo, Jiayan
name: Li, Chaozhuo
name: Xie, Yueqi
name: Kim, Jaeboum
name: Zhang, Yan
name: Xie, Xing
name: Wang, Haohan
name: Kim, Sunghun
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Information Retrieval (cs.IR)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: H.3.3

description: Session-based recommendation (SBR) aims to predict the user's next action based on short and dynamic sessions. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in utilizing various elaborately designed graph neural networks (GNNs) to capture the pair-wise relationships among items, seemingly suggesting the design of more complicated models is the panacea for improving the empirical performance. However, these models achieve relatively marginal improvements with exponential growth in model complexity. In this paper, we dissect the classical GNN-based SBR models and empirically find that some sophisticated GNN propagations are redundant, given the readout module plays a significant role in GNN-based models. Based on this observation, we intuitively propose to remove the GNN propagation part, while the readout module will take on more responsibility in the model reasoning process. To this end, we propose the Multi-Level Attention Mixture Network (Atten-Mixer), which leverages both concept-view and instance-view readouts to achieve multi-level reasoning over item transitions. As simply enumerating all possible high-level concepts is infeasible for large real-world recommender systems, we further incorporate SBR-related inductive biases, i.e., local invariance and inherent priority to prune the search space. Experiments on three benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposal. We also have already launched the proposed techniques to a large-scale e-commercial online service since April 2021, with significant improvements of top-tier business metrics demonstrated in the online experiments on live traffic.
Importance of the spectral emissivity measurements at working temperature to determine the efficiency of a solar selective coating
Creators: name: Echániz, Telmo
name: Setién-Fernández, Iñigo
name: Pérez-Sáez, Raúl Benjamín
name: Prieto, Carlos
name: Galindo, Ramón Escobar
name: Tello, Manuel José
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The total emissivity of the absorbing surfaces is a critical parameter in the calculation of the radiative thermal losses in solar thermal collectors. This is because the radiative heat losses have a significant economic impact on the final cost of the electricity produced in a solar thermal plant. This paper demonstrates the need to calculate the total emissivity from spectral emissivity measurements at the working temperature of the solar thermal collector, instead of using extrapolated values from spectral emissivities measured at room temperature. Usual uncertainties produced by the estimation of the total emissivity, in which its temperature dependence is only introduced by the Planck function, are analyzed.
description: 4 pages, 6 figures
How Readable is Model-generated Code? Examining Readability and Visual Inspection of GitHub Copilot
Creators: name: Madi, Naser Al
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Software Engineering (cs.SE)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Background: Recent advancements in large language models have motivated the practical use of such models in code generation and program synthesis. However, little is known about the effects of such tools on code readability and visual attention in practice. Objective: In this paper, we focus on GitHub Copilot to address the issues of readability and visual inspection of model generated code. Readability and low complexity are vital aspects of good source code, and visual inspection of generated code is important in light of automation bias. Method: Through a human experiment (n=21) we compare model generated code to code written completely by human programmers. We use a combination of static code analysis and human annotators to assess code readability, and we use eye tracking to assess the visual inspection of code. Results: Our results suggest that model generated code is comparable in complexity and readability to code written by human pair programmers. At the same time, eye tracking data suggests, to a statistically significant level, that programmers direct less visual attention to model generated code. Conclusion: Our findings highlight that reading code is more important than ever, and programmers should beware of complacency and automation bias with model generated code.
Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability approach to the statistics of incompatible observables
Creators: name: Lostaglio, Matteo
name: Belenchia, Alessio
name: Levy, Amikam
name: Hernández-Gómez, Santiago
name: Fabbri, Nicole
name: Gherardini, Stefano
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Recent work has revealed the central role played by the Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability (KDQ) as a tool to properly account for non-classical features in the context of condensed matter physics (scrambling, dynamical phase transitions) metrology (standard and post-selected), thermodynamics (power output and fluctuation theorems), foundations (contextuality, anomalous weak values) and more. Given the growing relevance of the KDQ across the quantum sciences, our aim is two-fold: First, we highlight the role played by quasiprobabilities in characterizing the statistics of quantum observables and processes in the presence of measurement incompatibility. In this way, we show how the KDQ naturally underpins and unifies quantum correlators, quantum currents, Loschmidt echoes, and weak values. Second, we provide novel theoretical and experimental perspectives by discussing a wide variety of schemes to access the KDQ and its non-classicality features.
description: 31+4 pages, 6 figures. V3 accepted for publication in Quantum
A modified PATH algorithm rapidly generates transition states comparable to those found by other well established algorithms
Creators: name: Das, Jhuma
name: Carter, Charles W.
name: Dokholyan, Nikolay V.
name: Chandrasekaran, Srinivas Niranj
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2016

description: PATH rapidly computes a path and a transition state between crystal structures by minimizing the Onsager-Machlup action. It requires input parameters whose range of values can generate different transition-state structures that cannot be uniquely compared with those generated by other methods. We outline modifications to estimate these input parameters to circumvent these difficulties and validate the PATH transition states by showing consistency between transition-states derived by different algorithms for unrelated protein systems. Although functional protein conformational change trajectories are to a degree stochastic, they nonetheless pass through a well-defined transition state whose detailed structural properties can rapidly be identified using PATH.
Solid-state amorphization of Cu nanolayers embedded in a Cu64Zr36 glass
Creators: name: Brink, Tobias
name: Şopu, Daniel
name: Albe, Karsten
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Solid-state amorphization of crystalline copper nanolayers embedded in a Cu64Zr36 metallic glass is studied by molecular dynamics simulations for different orientations of the crystalline layer. We show that solid-state amorphization is driven by a reduction of interface energy, which compensates the bulk excess energy of the amorphous nanolayer with respect to the crystalline phase up to a critical layer thickness. A simple thermodynamic model is derived, which describes the simulation results in terms of orientation-dependent interface energies. Detailed analysis reveals the structure of the amorphous nanolayer and allows a comparison to a quenched copper melt, providing further insights into the origin of excess and interface energy.
description: 16 pages, 18 figures
Homogeneous spaces of nonreductive type locally modelling no compact manifold
Creators: name: Morita, Yosuke
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Differential Geometry (math.DG)
subject: Group Theory (math.GR)
subject: Geometric Topology (math.GT)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: Primary 53C15, Secondary 17B08, 17B56, 22F30, 57S30

description: We give necessary conditions for the existence of a compact manifold locally modelled on a given homogeneous space, which generalize some earlier results, in terms of relative Lie algebra cohomology. Applications include both reductive and nonreductive cases. For example, we prove that there does not exist a compact manifold locally modelled on a positive dimensional coadjoint orbit of a real linear solvable algebraic group.
description: 11 pages
Low Emission Building Control with Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learning
Creators: name: Jeen, Scott R.
name: Abate, Alessandro
name: Cullen, Jonathan M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: Systems and Control (eess.SY)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: Heating and cooling systems in buildings account for 31% of global energy use, much of which are regulated by Rule Based Controllers (RBCs) that neither maximise energy efficiency nor minimise emissions by interacting optimally with the grid. Control via Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been shown to significantly improve building energy efficiency, but existing solutions require access to building-specific simulators or data that cannot be expected for every building in the world. In response, we show it is possible to obtain emission-reducing policies without such knowledge a priori--a paradigm we call zero-shot building control. We combine ideas from system identification and model-based RL to create PEARL (Probabilistic Emission-Abating Reinforcement Learning) and show that a short period of active exploration is all that is required to build a performant model. In experiments across three varied building energy simulations, we show PEARL outperforms an existing RBC once, and popular RL baselines in all cases, reducing building emissions by as much as 31% whilst maintaining thermal comfort. Our source code is available online via https://enjeeneer.io/projects/pearl/
description: Accepted at AAAI 2023. Code available via https://enjeeneer.io/projects/pearl/
Thermal emissivity spectra and structural phase transitions of the eutectic Mg-51%Zn alloy: A candidate for thermal energy storage
Creators: name: Echániz, Telmo
name: Pérez-Sáez, Raúl Benjamín
name: Risueño, Elena
name: González-Fernández, Luis
name: Faik, Absessamad
name: Rodríguez-Aseguinolaza, Javier
name: Blanco-Rodríguez, Pablo
name: Doppiu, Steffania
name: Tello, Manuel José
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
subject: Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The thermal emissivity spectrum in the mid infrared range (3 to 21 $μ$m) as well as its dependence on temperature between 225 and 320 $^{\circ}$C has been obtained for the Mg-51%Zn (weight %) eutectic alloy, a candidate for thermal storage. The spectral curves show the typical behaviour of metals and alloys, with emissivity values between 0.05 and 0.2. It was also found that the emissivity spectrum shows variations in each heating cycle during the first few cycles. These changes are associated with the presence of metastable phases in the solid solid phase transition, present in the alloy below the melting point. The absence of signs of oxidation in air is very favourable for the use of this alloy in thermal energy storage systems. Moreover, the total normal emissivity curves obtained from dynamic spectral measurements have allowed analysing the behaviour phase transition sequence present in this alloy. These experimental results indicate that accurate emissivity measurements can be sensitive enough to account for the structural phase transitions in metals and alloys.
Toric degenerations of partial flag varieties and combinatorial mutations of matching field polytopes
Creators: name: Clarke, Oliver
name: Mohammadi, Fatemeh
name: Zaffalon, Francesca
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Algebraic Geometry (math.AG)
subject: Commutative Algebra (math.AC)
subject: Combinatorics (math.CO)
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: We study toric degenerations arising from Gröbner degenerations or the tropicalization of partial flag varieties. We produce a new family of toric degenerations of partial flag varieties whose combinatorics are governed by matching fields and combinatorial mutations of polytopes. We provide an explicit description of the polytopes associated with the resulting toric varieties in terms of matching field polytopes. These polytopes encode the combinatorial data of monomial degenerations of Plücker forms for the Grassmannians. We give a description of matching field polytopes of flag varieties as Minkowski sums and show that all such polytopes are normal. The polytopes we obtain are examples of Newton-Okounkov bodies for particular full-rank valuations for flag varieties. Furthermore, we study a certain explicitly-defined large family of matching field polytopes and prove that all polytopes in this family are connected by combinatorial mutations. Finally, we apply our methods to explicitly compute toric degenerations of small Grassmannians and flag varieties and obtain new families of toric degenerations.