cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Differential reinforcement encoding along the hippocampal long axis helps resolve the explore/exploit dilemma

When making decisions, should one exploit known good options or explore potentially better alternatives? Exploration of spatially unstructured options depends on the neocortex, striatum, and amygdala. In natural environments, however, better options often cluster together, forming structured value distributions. The hippocampus binds reward information into allocentric cognitive maps to support navigation and foraging in such spaces. Here we report that human posterior hippocampus (PH) invigorates exploration while anterior hippocampus (AH) supports the transition to exploitation on a reinforcement learning task with a spatially structured reward function. These dynamics depend on differential reinforcement representations in the PH and AH. Whereas local reward prediction error signals are early and phasic in the PH tail, global value maximum signals are delayed and sustained in the AH body. AH compresses reinforcement information across episodes, updating the location and prominence of the value maximum and displaying goal cell-like ramping activity when navigating toward it.
Solar PV Frequency Control in the U.S. EI and ERCOT Interconnections - Case Studies and Recommendations.

This paper studied the solar PV frequency control in the U.S. Eastern Interconnection (EI) and Texas Interconnection (ERCOT) systems. The studied frequency control approaches include droop frequency control, inertia control, and droop-inertia-combined frequency control. The control effects of different frequency controls of PV in the EI and ERCOT are studied using actual high PV penetration interconnection grid models to provide suggestions to the future revision of future PV frequency control standards.
A modeling framework for adaptive lifelong learning with transfer and savings through gating in the prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex encodes and stores numerous, often disparate, schemas and flexibly switches between them. Recent research on artificial neural networks trained by reinforcement learning has made it possible to model fundamental processes underlying schema encoding and storage. Yet how the brain is able to create new schemas while preserving and utilizing old schemas remains unclear. Here we propose a simple neural network framework that incorporates hierarchical gating to model the prefrontal cortex's ability to flexibly encode and use multiple disparate schemas. We show how gating naturally leads to transfer learning and robust memory savings. We then show how neuropsychological impairments observed in patients with prefrontal damage are mimicked by lesions of our network. Our architecture, which we call DynaMoE, provides a fundamental framework for how the prefrontal cortex may handle the abundance of schemas necessary to navigate the real world.
COLORING PLANAR GRAPHS VIA COLORED PATHS IN THE ASSOCIAHEDRA

Hassler Whitney's theorem of 1931 reduces the task of finding proper, vertex 4-colorings of triangulations of the 2-sphere to finding such colorings for the class ℌ of triangulations of the 2-sphere that have a Hamiltonian circuit. This has been used by Whitney and others from 1936 to the present to find equivalent reformulations of the 4 Color Theorem (4CT). Recently there has been activity to try to use some of these reformulations to find a shorter proof of the 4CT. Every triangulation in ℌ has a dual graph that is a union of two binary trees with the same number of leaves. Elements of a group known as Thompson's group F are equivalence classes of pairs of binary trees with the same number of leaves. This paper explores this resemblance and finds that some recent reformulations of the 4CT are essentially attempting to color elements of ℌ using expressions of elements of F as words in a certain generating set for F. From this, we derive information about not just the colorability of certain elements of ℌ, but also about all possible ways to color these elements. Because of this we raise (and answer some) questions about enumeration. We also bring in an extension E of the group F and ask whether certain elements "parametrize" the set of all colorings of the elements of ℌ that use all four colors.
Towards Plausible Differentially Private ADMM Based Distributed Machine Learning

The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) and its distributed version have been widely used in machine learning. In the iterations of ADMM, model updates using local private data and model exchanges among agents impose critical privacy concerns. Despite some pioneering works to relieve such concerns, differentially private ADMM still confronts many research challenges. For example, the guarantee of differential privacy (DP) relies on the premise that the optimality of each local problem can be perfectly attained in each ADMM iteration, which may never happen in practice. The model trained by DP ADMM may have low prediction accuracy. In this paper, we address these concerns by proposing a novel (Improved) Plausible differentially Private ADMM algorithm, called PP-ADMM and IPP-ADMM. In PP-ADMM, each agent approximately solves a perturbed optimization problem that is formulated from its local private data in an iteration, and then perturbs the approximate solution with Gaussian noise to provide the DP guarantee. To further improve the model accuracy and convergence, an improved version IPP-ADMM adopts sparse vector technique (SVT) to determine if an agent should update its neighbors with the current perturbed solution. The agent calculates the difference of the current solution from that in the last iteration, and if the difference is larger than a threshold, it passes the solution to neighbors; or otherwise the solution will be discarded. Moreover, we propose to track the total privacy loss under the zero-concentrated DP (zCDP) and provide a generalization performance analysis. Experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that under the same privacy guarantee, the proposed algorithms are superior to the state of the art in terms of model accuracy and convergence rate.
K-Orbit Closures on G/B as Universal Degeneracy Loci for Flagged Vector Bundles with Symmetric or Skew-Symmetric Bilinear Form

We use equivariant localization and divided difference operators to determine formulas for the torus-equivariant fundamental cohomology classes of K-orbit closures on the flag variety G/B, where G = GL(n, \( \mathbb{C} \)), and where K is one of the symmetric subgroups O(n, \( \mathbb{C} \)) or Sp(n, \( \mathbb{C} \)). We realize these orbit closures as universal degeneracy loci for a vector bundle over a variety equipped with a single flag of subbundles and a nondegenerate symmetric or skew-symmetric bilinear form taking values in the trivial bundle. We describe how our equivariant formulas can be interpreted as giving formulas for the classes of such loci in terms of the Chern classes of the various bundles.
F TURNOFF DISTRIBUTION IN THE GALACTIC HALO USING GLOBULAR CLUSTERS AS PROXIES

F turnoff stars are important tools for studying Galactic halo substructure because they are plentiful, luminous, and can be easily selected by their photometric colors from large surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We describe the absolute magnitude distribution of color-selected F turnoff stars, as measured from SDSS data, for 11 globular clusters in the Milky Way halo. We find that the Mg distribution of turnoff stars is intrinsically the same for all clusters studied, and is well fit by two half-Gaussian functions, centered at ? = 4.18, with a bright-side ? = 0.36, and with a faint-side ? = 0.76. However, the color errors and detection efficiencies cause the observed ? of the faint-side Gaussian to change with magnitude due to contamination from redder main-sequence stars (40% at 21st magnitude). We present a function that will correct for this magnitude-dependent change in selected stellar populations, when calculating stellar density from color-selected turnoff stars. We also present a consistent set of distances, ages, and metallicities for 11 clusters in the SDSS Data Release 7. We calculate a linear correction function to Padova isochrones so that they are consistent with SDSS globular cluster data from previous papers. We show that our cluster population falls along the Milky Way age-metallicity relationship (AMR), and further find that isochrones for stellar populations on the AMR have very similar turnoffs; increasing metallicity and decreasing age conspire to produce similar turnoff magnitudes and colors for all old clusters that lie on the AMR.
Zero-temperature coarsening in the 2d Potts model

We study the fate of the 2d kineticq-state Potts model after a sudden quench to zero temperature. Both ground states and complicated static states are reached with non-zero probabilities. These outcomes resemble those found in the quench of the 2d Ising model; however, the variety of static states in the q-state Potts model (with q 3) is much richer than in the Ising model, where static states are either ground or stripe states. Another possibility is that the Potts system gets trapped on a set of equal-energy blinker states, where a subset of spins can ip ad innitum ; these states are similar to those found in the quench of the 3d Ising model. The evolution towards the nal energy is also unusual|at long times, sudden and massive energy drops may occur that are accompanied by macroscopic reordering of the domain structure. This indeterminacy in the zero-temperature quench of the kinetic Potts model is at odds with basic predictions from the theory of phase-ordering kinetics. We also propose a continuum description of coarsening with more than two equivalent ground states. The resulting time- dependent Ginzburg{Landau equations reproduce the complex cluster patterns that arise in the quench of the kinetic Potts model.
Predicting Coronal Mass Ejections Using SDO/HMI Vector Magnetic Data Products and Recurrent Neural Networks

We present two recurrent neural networks (RNNs), one based on gated recurrent units and the other based on long short-term memory, for predicting whether an active region (AR) that produces an M- or X-class flare will also produce a coronal mass ejection (CME). We model data samples in an AR as time series and use the RNNs to capture temporal information of the data samples. Each data sample has 18 physical parameters, or features, derived from photospheric vector magnetic field data taken by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We survey M- and X-class flares that occurred from 2010 May to 2019 May using the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite's X-ray flare catalogs provided by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), and select those flares with identified ARs in the NCEI catalogs. In addition, we extract the associations of flares and CMEs from the Space Weather Database Of Notifications, Knowledge, Information (DONKI). We use the information gathered above to build the labels (positive versus negative) of the data samples at hand. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our RNNs over closely related machine learning methods in predicting the labels of the data samples. We also discuss an extension of our approach to predict a probabilistic estimate of how likely an M- or X-class flare will initiate a CME, with good performance results. To our knowledge this is the first time that RNNs have been used for CME prediction.
Mass Determination of Black Holes in LMC X-1 and Nova MUSCAE 1991 from Their High-Energy Spectra

We offer a brief description of the bulk motion Comptonization (BMC) model for accretion onto black holes, illustrated by its application to observational data for LMC X-1 and Nova Muscae 1991. We then extract some physical parameters of these systems from observables within the context of the BMC model, drawing from results on GRO J1655-40, for which we presented extensive analysis previously. We derive estimates of the mass, (16 ± 1) M☉ × [0.5/ cos(i)]1/2, and mass accretion rate in the disk in Eddington units (d 2) for LMC X-1 and (24 ± 1) M☉ × [0.5/ cos(i)]1/2d5.5 and (d 3) for Nova Muscae 1991, where cos(i) and d5.5 are the inclination angle cosine and distance in 5.5 kpc units, respectively. Differences between these estimates and previous estimates based on dynamical studies are discussed. It is further shown that the disk inner radius increases with the high-to-low-state transition in Nova Muscae 1991. Specifically, our analysis suggests that the inner disk radius increases to rin 17 Scwarzschild radii as the transition to the low-hard state occurs.
DYNAMICS OF PULSATILE FLOWS THROUGH ELASTIC MICROTUBES

We investigate the dynamics of pressure driven-transient flows of incompressible Newtonian fluids through circular microtubes having thin elastic walls under the long-wavelength and small deformation assumptions, which are valid for many industrial and biological processes. An analytical solution of the coupled fluid and solid equations is found using Navier slip boundary conditions and is shown to include some existing Womersley solutions as limiting cases. The effect of the slip length at the fluid–solid interface is analyzed for oscillatory pressure gradients using a range of slip ratio and frequency parameters. The solutions for elastic and rigid walls are compared for the cases with and without slip boundary conditions for a broad range of the relevant parameters. It is shown that the elastic behavior of the microtube couples nonlinearly with the slip velocity, which greatly enhances the achievable flow rate and pumping efficacy compared to the inelastic case. In addition, it is observed that increasing the slip length produces less shear stress, which is consistent with the nearly frictionless interfaces observed in many microscale experiments.
On the excitation of action potentials by protons and its potential implications for cholinergic transmission

One of the most conserved mechanisms for transmission of a nerve pulse across a synapse relies on acetylcholine (ACh). Ever since the Nobel Prize-winning works of Dale and Loewi, it has been assumed that ACh—subsequent to its action on a postsynaptic cell—is split into inactive by-products by acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Herein, the widespread assumption of inactivity of ACh’s hydrolysis products is falsified. Excitable cells (Chara braunii internodes), which had previously been unresponsive to ACh, became ACh-sensitive in the presence of AChE. The latter was evidenced by a striking difference in cell membrane depolarization upon exposure to 10 mM intact ACh (∆V = −2 ± 5 mV) and its hydrolysate (∆V = 81 ± 19 mV), respectively, for 60 s. This pronounced depolarization, which also triggered action potentials, was clearly attributed to one of the hydrolysis products: acetic acid (∆V = 87 ± 9 mV at pH 4.0; choline ineffective in the range 1–10 mM). In agreement with our findings, numerous studies in the literature have reported that acids excite gels, lipid membranes, plant cells, erythrocytes, as well as neurons. Whether excitation of the postsynaptic cell in a cholinergic synapse is due to protons or due to intact ACh is a most fundamental question that has not been addressed so far.
Testing Perturbative Results with Non-Perturbative Methods for the Hierarchical Model

We present non-perturbative methods to calculate accurately the renormalized quantities for Dyson's Hierarchical Model. We apply this method and calculate the critical exponent γ with 12 and 4 significant digits in the high and low temperature phases, respectively. We report accurate values for universal ratios of amplitudes and preliminary results concerning the comparison with perturbative results.
Rapid Mixing of Glauber Dynamics of Gibbs Ensembles via Aggregate Path Coupling and Large Deviations Methods

In this paper, we present a novel extension to the classical path coupling method to statistical mechanical models which we refer to as aggregate path coupling. In conjunction with large deviations estimates, we use this aggregate path coupling method to prove rapid mixing of Glauber dynamics for a large class of statistical mechanical models, including models that exhibit discontinuous phase transitions which have traditionally been more difficult to analyze rigorously. The parameter region for rapid mixing for the generalized Curie–Weiss–Potts model is derived as a new application of the aggregate path coupling method.
What is the shape of the initial state

We argue that a plausible operational definition for an initial state of the universe is the initial quantum state of the curvature perturbations generated during inflation. We provide a parametrization of this state and generalize the standard in–in formalism to incorporate the structures in this state into the computation of correlators of the perturbations. Measurements of these correlators using both the cosmic microwave background as well as large scale structure probe different structures in the initial state, as they give rise to bi- and tri-spectra peaked on different shapes of triangles and quadrilaterals in momentum space. In essence, the shapes implied by the correlators feed directly into information about the shape of the initial state and what physics could have preceded inflation to set this state up.
Persistence in fluctuating environments for interacting structured populations

Individuals within any species exhibit differences in size, developmental state, or spatial location. These differences coupled with environmental fluctuations in demographic rates can have subtle effects on population persistence and species coexistence. To understand these effects, we provide a general theory for coexistence of structured, interacting species living in a stochastic environment. The theory is applicable to nonlinear, multi species matrix models with stochastically varying para- meters. The theory relies on long-term growth rates of species corresponding to the dominant Lyapunov exponents of random matrix products. Our coexistence criterion requires that a convex combination of these long-term growth rates is positive with probability one whenever one or more species are at low density. When this condition holds, the community is stochastically persistent: the fraction of time that a species density goes below δ> 0 approaches zero as δ approaches zero. Applications to predator-prey interactions in an autocorrelated environment, a stochastic LPA model, and spatial lottery models are provided. These applications demonstrate that posi- tive autocorrelations in temporal fluctuations can disrupt predator-prey coexistence, fluctuations in log-fecundity can facilitate persistence in structured populations, and long-lived,relativelysedentarycompetingpopulationsarelikelytocoexistinspatially and temporally heterogenous environments.
Band structure and carrier effective masses of boron arsenide: Effects of quasiparticle and spin-orbit coupling corrections

We determine the fundamental electronic and optical properties of the high-thermal-conductivity III–V semiconductor boron arsenide (BAs) using density functional and many body perturbation theory including quasiparticle and spin-orbit coupling corrections. We find that the fundamental bandgap is indirect with a value of 2.049 eV, while the minimum direct gap has a value of 4.135 eV. We calculate the carrier effective masses and report smaller values for the holes than the electrons, indicating higher hole mobility and easier p-type doping. The small difference between the static and high frequency dielectric constants indicates that BAs is only weakly ionic. We also observe that the imaginary part of the dielectric function exhibits a strong absorption peak, which corresponds to parallel bands in the band structure. Our estimated exciton binding energy of 43 meV indicates that excitons are relatively stable against thermal dissociation at room temperature. Our work provides theoretical insights into the fundamental electronic properties of BAs to guide experimental characterization and device applications.
Mind Your POV: Convergence of Articles and Editors Towards Wikipedia's Neutrality Norm

Wikipedia has a strong norm of writing in a "neutral point of view" (NPOV). Articles that violate this norm are tagged, and editors are encouraged to make corrections. But the impact of this tagging system has not been quantitatively measured. Does NPOV tagging help articles to converge to the desired style? Do NPOV corrections encourage editors to adopt this style? We study these questions using a corpus of NPOV-tagged articles and a set of lexicons associated with biased language. An interrupted time series analysis shows that after an article is tagged for NPOV, there is a significant decrease in biased language in the article, as measured by several lexicons. However, for individual editors, NPOV corrections and talk page discussions yield no significant change in the usage of words in most of these lexicons, including Wikipedia's own list of "words to watch." This suggests that NPOV tagging and discussion does improve content, but has less success enculturating editors to the site's linguistic norms.
Intrinsic Shapes of Elliptical Galaxies

Tests for the intrinsic shape of the luminosity distribution in elliptical galaxies are discussed, with an emphasis on the uncertainties. Recent determinations of the ellipticity frequency function imply a paucity of nearly spherical galaxies, and may be inconsistent with the oblate hypothesis. Statistical tests based on the correlation of surface brightness, isophotal twisting, and minor axis rotation with ellipticity have so far not provided strong evidence in favor of the nearly oblate or nearly prolate hypotheses, but are at least qualitatively consistent with triaxiality. The possibility that the observed deviations of elliptical galaxy isophotes from ellipses are due to projection effects is evaluated. Dynamical instabilities may explain the absence of elliptical galaxies flatter than about E6, and may also play a role in the (apparent) lack of nearly-spherical galaxies.
Tunable transverse spin-motion coupling for quantum information processing

Laser-controlled entanglement between atomic qubits (`spins') and collective motion in trapped ion Coulomb crystals requires conditional momentum transfer from the laser. Since the spin-dependent force is derived from a spatial gradient in the spin-light interaction, this force is typically longitudinal --- parallel and proportional to the average laser $k$-vector (or two beams' $k$-vector difference), which constrains both the direction and relative magnitude of the accessible spin-motion coupling. Here, we show how momentum can also be transferred perpendicular to a single laser beam due to the gradient in its transverse profile. By controlling the transverse gradient at the position of the ion through beam shaping, the relative strength of the sidebands and carrier can be tuned to optimize the desired interaction and suppress undesired, off-resonant effects that can degrade gate fidelity. We also discuss how this effect may already be playing an unappreciated role in recent experiments.
DETERMINISTIC INITIALIZATION OF THE K-MEANS ALGORITHM USING HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING

K-means is undoubtedly the most widely used partitional clustering algorithm. Unfortunately, due to its gradient descent nature, this algorithm is highly sensitive to the initial placement of the cluster centers. Numerous initialization methods have been proposed to address this problem. Many of these methods, however, have superlinear complexity in the number of data points, making them impractical for large data sets. On the other hand, linear methods are often random and/or order-sensitive, which renders their results unrepeatable. Recently, Su and Dy proposed two highly successful hierarchical initialization methods named Var-Part and PCA-Part that are not only linear, but also deterministic (nonrandom) and order-invariant. In this paper, we propose a discriminant analysis based approach that addresses a common deficiency of these two methods. Experiments on a large and diverse collection of data sets from the UCI machine learning repository demonstrate that Var-Part and PCA-Part are highly competitive with one of the best random initialization methods to date, i.e. k-means++, and that the proposed approach significantly improves the performance of both hierarchical methods.
BAYESIAN PROTEIN STRUCTURE ALIGNMENT

The analysis of the three-dimensional structure of proteins is an important topic in molecular biochemistry. Structure plays a critical role in defining the function of proteins and is more strongly conserved than amino acid sequence over evolutionary timescales. A key challenge is the identification and evaluation of structural similarity between proteins; such analysis can aid in understanding the role of newly discovered proteins and help elucidate evolutionary relationships between organisms. Computational biologists have developed many clever algorithmic techniques for comparing protein structures, however, all are based on heuristic optimization criteria, making statistical interpretation somewhat difficult. Here we present a fully probabilistic framework for pairwise structural alignment of proteins. Our approach has several advantages, including the ability to capture alignment uncertainty and to estimate key "gap" parameters which critically affect the quality of the alignment. We show that several existing alignment methods arise as maximum a posteriori estimates under specific choices of prior distributions and error models. Our probabilistic framework is also easily extended to incorporate additional information, which we demonstrate by including primary sequence information to generate simultaneous sequence-structure alignments that can resolve ambiguities obtained using structure alone. This combined model also provides a natural approach for the difficult task of estimating evolutionary distance based on structural alignments. The model is illustrated by comparison with well-established methods on several challenging protein alignment examples.
Unknown Sparsity in Compressed Sensing: Denoising and Inference

The theory of compressed sensing (CS) asserts that an unknown signal $x\in \mathbb {R} ^{p}$ can be accurately recovered from an underdetermined set of $n$ linear measurements with $n\ll p$ provided that $x$ is sufficiently sparse. However, in applications, the degree of sparsity $\|x\|_{0}$ is typically unknown, and the problem of directly estimating $\|x\|_{0}$ has been a longstanding gap between theory and practice. A closely related issue is that $\|x\|_{0}$ is a highly idealized measure of sparsity, and for real signals with entries not equal to 0, the value $\|x\|_{0}=p$ is not a useful description of compressibility. In our previous conference paper [1] that examined these problems, we considered an alternative measure of soft sparsity, $\|x\|_{1}^{2}/\|x\|_{2}^{2}$ , and designed a procedure to estimate $\|x\|_{1}^{2}/\|x\|_{2}^{2}$ that does not rely on sparsity assumptions. This paper offers a new deconvolution-based method for estimating unknown sparsity, which has wider applicability and sharper theoretical guarantees. In particular, we introduce a family of entropy-based sparsity measures $s_{q}(x)=\big ({\|x\|_{q}}/{\|x\|_{1}}\big )^{({q}/{1-q})}$ parameterized by $q\in [0,\infty ]$ . This family interpolates between $\|x\|_{0}=s_{0}(x)$ and $\|x\|_{1}^{2}/\|x\|_{2}^{2}=s_{2}(x)$ as $q$ ranges over [0, 2]. For any $q\in (0,2]\setminus \{1\}$ , we propose an estimator $\hat {s}_{q}(x)$ whose relative error converges at the dimension-free rate of $1/\sqrt {n}$ , even when $p/n\to \infty $ . Our main results also describe the limiting distribution of $\hat {s}_{q}(x)$ , as well as some connections to basis pursuit denosing, the Lasso, deterministic measurement matrices, and inference problems in CS.
Probabilistic quantitative precipitation field forecasting using a two-stage spatial model

Short-range forecasts of precipitation fields are needed in a wealth of agricultural, hydrological, ecological and other applications. Forecasts from numerical weather prediction models are often biased and do not provide uncertainty information. Here we present a postprocessing technique for such numerical forecasts that produces correlated probabilistic forecasts of precipitation accumulation at multiple sites simultaneously. The statistical model is a spatial version of a two-stage model that represents the distribution of precipitation by a mixture of a point mass at zero and a Gamma density for the continuous distribution of precipitation accumulation. Spatial correlation is captured by assuming that two Gaussian processes drive precipitation occurrence and precipitation amount, respectively. The first process is latent and drives precipitation occurrence via a threshold. The second process explains the spatial correlation in precipitation accumulation. It is related to precipitation via a site-specific transformation function, so as to retain the marginal right-skewed distribution of precipitation while modeling spatial dependence. Both processes take into account the information contained in the numerical weather forecast and are modeled as stationary isotropic spatial processes with an exponential correlation function. The two-stage spatial model was applied to 48-hour-ahead forecasts of daily precipitation accumulation over the Pacific Northwest in 2004. The predictive distributions from the two-stage spatial model were calibrated and sharp, and outperformed reference forecasts for spatially composite and areally averaged quantities.
Acoustic scattering from a fluid cylinder with Willis constitutive properties

A material that exhibits Willis coupling has constitutive equations that couple the pressurestrain and momentumvelocity relationships. This coupling arises from subwavelength asymmetry and non-loca...
Statistical Signatures of Panspermia in Exoplanet Surveys

A fundamental astrobiological question is whether life can be transported between extrasolar systems. We propose a new strategy to answer this question based on the principle that life which arose via spreading will exhibit more clustering than life which arose spontaneously. We develop simple statistical models of panspermia to illustrate observable consequences of these excess correlations. Future searches for biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets could test these predictions: a smoking gun signature of panspermia would be the detection of large regions in the Milky Way where life saturates its environment interspersed with voids where life is very uncommon. In a favorable scenario, detection of as few as ~25 biologically active exoplanets could yield a 5σ detection of panspermia. Detectability of position-space correlations is possible unless the timescale for life to become observable once seeded is longer than the timescale for stars to redistribute in the Milky Way.
Local cohomology with support in generic determinantal ideals

For positive integers m n p, we compute the GLm GLn-equivariant description of the local cohomology modules of the polynomial ring SD Sym.C m C n / with support in the ideal of p p minors of the generic m n matrix. Our techniques allow us to explicitly compute all the modules Ext S .S=Ix; S/, for x a partition and Ix the ideal generated by the irreducible subrepresentation of S indexed by x. In particular we determine the regularity of the ideals Ix, and we deduce that the only ones admitting a linear free resolution are the powers of the ideal of maximal minors of the generic matrix, as well as the products between such powers and the maximal ideal of S.
THE TRENDS HIGH-CONTRAST IMAGING SURVEY. I. THREE BENCHMARK M DWARFS ORBITING SOLAR-TYPE STARS

We present initial results from a new high-contrast imaging program dedicated to stars that exhibit long-term Doppler radial velocity accelerations (or "trends"). The goal of the TRENDS (TaRgetting bENchmark-objects with Doppler Spectroscopy) imaging survey is to directly detect and study the companions responsible for accelerating their host star. In this first paper of the series, we report the discovery of low-mass stellar companions orbiting HD 53665, HD 68017, and HD 71881 using NIRC2 adaptive optics (AO) observations at Keck. Follow-up imaging demonstrates association through common proper motion. These comoving companions have red colors with estimated spectral types of K7-M0, M5, and M3-M4, respectively. We determine a firm lower limit to their mass from Doppler and astrometric measurements. In the near future, it will be possible to construct three-dimensional orbits and calculate the dynamical mass of HD 68017 B and possibly HD 71881 B. We already detect astrometric orbital motion of HD 68017 B, which has a projected separation of 13.0 AU. Each companion is amenable to AO-assisted direct spectroscopy. Further, each companion orbits a solar-type star, making it possible to infer metallicity and age from the primary. Such benchmark objects are essential for testing theoretical models of cool dwarf atmospheres.
Quantum Fields on the Groenewold-Moyal Plane

We give an introductory review of quantum physics on the noncommutative space–time called the Groenewold–Moyal plane. Basic ideas like star products, twisted statistics, second quantized fields and discrete symmetries are discussed. We also outline some of the recent developments in these fields and mention where one can search for experimental signals.
Problem Formulation and Fairness

Formulating data science problems is an uncertain and difficult process. It requires various forms of discretionary work to translate high-level objectives or strategic goals into tractable problems, necessitating, among other things, the identification of appropriate target variables and proxies. While these choices are rarely self-evident, normative assessments of data science projects often take them for granted, even though different translations can raise profoundly different ethical concerns. Whether we consider a data science project fair often has as much to do with the formulation of the problem as any property of the resulting model. Building on six months of ethnographic fieldwork with a corporate data science team---and channeling ideas from sociology and history of science, critical data studies, and early writing on knowledge discovery in databases---we describe the complex set of actors and activities involved in problem formulation. Our research demonstrates that the specification and operationalization of the problem are always negotiated and elastic, and rarely worked out with explicit normative considerations in mind. In so doing, we show that careful accounts of everyday data science work can help us better understand how and why data science problems are posed in certain ways---and why specific formulations prevail in practice, even in the face of what might seem like normatively preferable alternatives. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings, arguing that effective normative interventions will require attending to the practical work of problem formulation.
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE HUBBLE SEQUENCE: I. INSIGHTS ON GALAXY COLOR MIGRATION FROM COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS

An analysis of more than 3000 galaxies resolved at better than 114 h–1 pc at z = 0.62 in a "LAOZI" cosmological adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic simulation is performed and insights are gained on star formation quenching and color migration. The vast majority of red galaxies are found to be within three virial radii of a larger galaxy at the onset of quenching, when the specific star formation rate experiences the sharpest decline to fall below ~10–2-10–1 Gyr–1 (depending on the redshift). Thus, we shall call this mechanism "environment quenching," which encompasses satellite quenching. Two physical processes are largely responsible: Ram pressure stripping first disconnects the galaxy from the cold gas supply on large scales, followed by a longer period of cold gas starvation taking place in a high velocity-dispersion environment, in which during the early part of the process, the existing dense cold gas in the central region (≤10 kpc) is consumed by in situ star formation. On average, quenching is found to be more efficient (i.e., a larger fraction of galaxies being quenched) but not faster (i.e., the duration being weakly dependent on the environment) in a denser environment. Throughout this quenching period and the ensuing one in the red sequence, galaxies follow nearly vertical tracks in the color-stellar mass diagram. In contrast, individual galaxies of all masses grow most of their stellar masses in the blue cloud, prior to the onset of quenching, and progressively more massive blue galaxies with already relatively older mean stellar ages continue to enter the red sequence. Consequently, correlations among observables of red galaxies—such as the age-mass relation— are largely inherited from their blue progenitors at the onset of quenching. While the color makeup of the entire galaxy population strongly depends on the environment, which is a direct result of environment quenching, physical properties of blue galaxies as a subpopulation show little dependence on the environment. A variety of predictions from the simulation are shown to be in accordance with extant observations.
Integrated high quality factor lithium niobate microdisk resonators.

Lithium Niobate (LN) is an important nonlinear optical material. Here we demonstrate LN microdisk resonators that feature optical quality factor ~105, realized using robust and scalable fabrication techniques, that operate over a wide wavelength range spanning visible and near infrared. Using our resonators, and leveraging LN’s large second order optical nonlinearity, we demonstrate on-chip second harmonic generation with a conversion efficiency of 0.109 W−1.
Trajectories of Blocked Community Members: Redemption, Recidivism and Departure

Community norm violations can impair constructive communication and collaboration online. As a defense mechanism, community moderators often address such transgressions by temporarily blocking the perpetrator. Such actions, however, come with the cost of potentially alienating community members. Given this tradeoff, it is essential to understand to what extent, and in which situations, this common moderation practice is effective in reinforcing community rules. In this work, we introduce a computational framework for studying the future behavior of blocked users on Wikipedia. After their block expires, they can take several distinct paths: they can reform and adhere to the rules, but they can also recidivate, or straight-out abandon the community. We reveal that these trajectories are tied to factors rooted both in the characteristics of the blocked individual and in whether they perceived the block to be fair and justified. Based on these insights, we formulate a series of prediction tasks aiming to determine which of these paths a user is likely to take after being blocked for their first offense, and demonstrate the feasibility of these new tasks. Overall, this work builds towards a more nuanced approach to moderation by highlighting the tradeoffs that are in play.
Estimation of CD4+ T Cell Count Parameters in HIV/AIDS Patients Based on Real-time Nonlinear Receding Horizon Control

An increasing number of control techniques are introduced to HIV infection problem to explore the options of helping clinical testing, optimizing drug treatments and to study the drug resistance. In such cases, complete/accurate knowledge of the HIV model and/or parameters is critical not only to monitor the dynamics of the system, but also to adjust the therapy accordingly. In those studies, existence of any type of unknown parameters imposes severe set-backs and becomes problematic for the treatment of the patients. In this work, we develop a real-time nonlinear receding horizon control approach to aid such scenarios and to estimate unknown constant/time-varying parameters of nonlinear HIV system models. For this purpose, the estimation procedure is reduced to a series of finite-time optimization problem which can be solved by backwards sweep Riccati method in real time without employing any iterative techniques. The simulation results demonstrate that proposed algorithm is able to estimate, effectively, unknown constant/time-varying parameters of HIV/AIDS model with disturbance and provide a unique, adaptive solution to an important open problem.
Diffuse Ionized Gas in Simulations of Multiphase, Star-forming Galactic Disks

It has been hypothesized that photons from young, massive star clusters are responsible for maintaining the ionization of diffuse warm ionized gas seen in both the Milky Way and other disk galaxies. For a theoretical investigation of the warm ionized medium (WIM), it is crucial to solve radiation transfer equations where the ISM and clusters are modeled self-consistently. To this end, we employ a Solar neighborhood model of TIGRESS, a magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the multiphase, star-forming ISM, and post-process the simulation with an adaptive ray tracing method to transfer UV radiation from star clusters. We find that the WIM volume filling factor is highly variable, and sensitive to the rate of ionizing photon production and ISM structure. The mean WIM volume filling factor rises to ~0.15 at |z|~1 kpc. Approximately half of ionizing photons are absorbed by gas and half by dust; the cumulative ionizing photon escape fraction is 1.1%. Our time-averaged synthetic H$\alpha$ line profile matches WHAM observations on the redshifted (outflowing) side, but has insufficient intensity on the blueshifted side. Our simulation matches the Dickey-Lockman neutral density profile well, but only a small fraction of snapshots have high-altitude WIM density consistent with Reynolds Layer estimates. We compute a clumping correction factor C = /sqrt ~0.2 that is remarkably constant with distance from the midplane and time; this can be used to improve estimates of ionized gas mass and mean electron density from observed H$\alpha$ surface brightness profiles in edge-on galaxies.
Surface tension and negative pressure interior of a non-singular ‘black hole’

The constant density interior Schwarzschild solution for a static, spherically symmetric collapsed star has a divergent pressure when its radius $R\le\frac{9}{8}R_s=\frac{9}{4}GM$. We show that this divergence is integrable, and induces a non-isotropic transverse stress with a finite redshifted surface tension on a spherical surface of radius $R_0=3R\sqrt{1-\frac{8}{9}\frac{R}{R_s}}$. For $r < R_0$ the interior Schwarzschild solution exhibits negative pressure. When $R=R_s$, the surface is localized at the Schwarzschild radius itself, $R_0=R_s$, and the solution has constant negative pressure $p =-\bar\rho$ everywhere in the interior $r<R_s$, thereby describing a gravitational condensate star, a fully collapsed non-singular state already inherent in and predicted by classical General Relativity. The redshifted surface tension of the condensate star surface is given by $\tau_s=\Delta\kappa/8\pi G$, where $\Delta\kappa=\kappa_+-\kappa_-=2\kappa_+=1/R_s$ is the difference of equal and opposite surface gravities between the exterior and interior Schwarzschild solutions. The First Law, $dM=dE_v+\tau_s dA$ is recognized as a purely mechanical classical relation at zero temperature and zero entropy, describing the volume energy and surface energy change respectively. Since there is no event horizon, the Schwarzschild time t of such a non-singular gravitational condensate star is a global time, fully consistent with unitary time evolution in quantum theory. The $p=-\bar\rho$ interior acts as a defocusing lens for light passing through the condensate, leading to imaging characteristics distinguishable from a classical black hole. A further observational test of gravitational condensate stars with a physical surface vs. black holes is the discrete surface modes of oscillation which should be detectable by their gravitational wave signatures.
STABILITY OF GALACTIC GAS DISKS AND THE FORMATION OF MASSIVE CLUSTERS

We study gravitational instabilities in disks, with special attention to the most massive clumps that form because they are expected to be the progenitors of globular-type clusters. The maximum unstable mass is set by rotation and depends only on the surface density and orbital frequency of the disk. We propose that the formation of massive clusters is related to this largest scale in galaxies not stabilized by rotation. Using data from the literature, we predict that globular-like clusters can form in nuclear starburst disks and protogalactic disks but not in typical spiral galaxies, in agreement with observations.
Mixing and transport by ciliary carpets: a numerical study

We use a three-dimensional computational model to study the fluid transport and mixing due to the beating of an infinite array of cilia. In accord with recent experiments, we observe two distinct regions: a fluid transport region above the cilia and a fluid mixing region below the cilia tip. The metachronal wave due to phase differences between neighbouring cilia is known to enhance the fluid transport above the ciliary tip. In this work, we show that the metachronal wave also enhances the mixing rates in the sub-ciliary region, often simultaneously with the flow rate enhancement. Our results suggest that this simultaneous enhancement in transport and mixing is due to an enhancement in shear flow. As the flow above the cilia increases, the shear rate in the fluid increases and this shear enhances stretching, which is an essential ingredient for mixing. Estimates of the mixing time scale indicate that, compared to diffusion, the mixing due to the cilia beat may be significant and sometimes dominates chemical diffusion.
Supersymmetry Without Prejudice

We begin an exploration of the physics associated with the general CP-conserving MSSM with Minimal Flavor Violation, the pMSSM. The 19 soft SUSY breaking parameters in this scenario are chosen so as to satisfy all existing experimental and theoretical constraints assuming that the WIMP is a conventional thermal relic, i.e., the lightest neutralino. We scan this parameter space twice using both flat and log priors for the soft SUSY breaking mass parameters and compare the results which yield similar conclusions. Detailed constraints from both LEP and the Tevatron searches play a particularly important role in obtaining our final model samples. We find that the pMSSM leads to a much broader set of predictions for the properties of the SUSY partners as well as for a number of experimental observables than those found in any of the conventional SUSY breaking scenarios such as mSUGRA. This set of models can easily lead to atypical expectations for SUSY signals at the LHC.
A test of local Lorentz invariance with Compton scattering asymmetry

We report on a measurement of the constancy and anisotropy of the speed of light relative to the electrons in photon–electron scattering. We used the Compton scattering asymmetry measured by the new Compton polarimeter in Hall C at Jefferson Lab (JLab) to test for deviations from unity of the vacuum refractive index (n). For photon energies in the range of 9–46 MeV, we obtain a new limit of 1 − n < 1.4 × 10−8. In addition, the absence of sidereal variation over the six-month period of the measurement constrains any anisotropies in the speed of light. These constitute the first study of Lorentz invariance (LI) using Compton asymmetry. Within the minimal Standard Model extension (MSME) framework, our result yield limits on the photon and electron coefficients κ0+Y Z, cTX, κ0+ZX and cTY. Although these limits are several orders of magnitude larger than the current best limits, they demonstrate the feasibility of using Compton asymmetry for tests of LI. Future parity-violating electron-scattering experiments at JLab will use higher energy electrons enabling better constraints.
Advances in Basis Light-front Quantization

Basis light-front quantization has been developed as a first-principles nonperturbative approach to quantum field theory. In this article we report our recent progress on the applications to the single electron and the positronium system in QED. We focus on the renormalization procedure in this method.