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Many modern astronomical instruments rely on the optimal coupling of starlight into single-mode fibers (SMFs). For ground-based telescopes, this coupling is limited by atmospheric turbulence. We propose an integrated wavefront corrector based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonics, which samples the aberrated wavefront via a microlens array (MLA). The MLA focuses the sampled wavefront onto an array of grating couplers that inject the beamlets into the single-mode waveguides of the corrector. The beams in each waveguide are then shifted in phase using thermo-optic phase shifters before combining the co-phased beams into one single-mode waveguide. In this work, we analyze the external factors that we anticipate will impact the performance of the corrector. Specifically, we study the effects of the telescope pupil function with obscuration, determine whether the corrector requires tip/tilt pre-correction, and analyze the impact of scintillation on the correction quality., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to SPIE Adaptive Optics Systems IX

In recent years, Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations, Weak Lensing surveys, and $f(z)\sigma_8(z)$ measurements from Redshift-Space Distortions (RSD) have revealed a significant ($\sim$3$-$5$\sigma$) discrepancy in the inferred value of the matter clustering parameter $S_8$. In this work, we investigate the implications of RSD for a cosmological framework postulating an interaction between Dark Energy (DE) and Dark Matter (DM). We explore scenarios where DM can transfer energy-momentum to DE or vice versa. The energy-momentum flow is characterized by the strength and the sign of the coupling parameter $\xi$. Our baseline analysis combines RSD measurements with the latest data from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) observed by DESI, Type Ia Supernovae from the PantheonPlus sample, and CMB data from Planck. We demonstrate that RSD measurements provide significant additional information. When energy-momentum flows from DM to DE (i.e., $\xi < 0$), these measurements set stringent new bounds on the interaction strength. Conversely, when energy-momentum flows from DE to DM ($\xi > 0$), they favor interactions at more than the $2\sigma$ confidence level. Models with $\xi > 0$ can effectively resolve the tension in $S_8$, presenting them as compelling alternatives., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Comments welcome and appreciated

Adversarial training (AT) incurs significant computational overhead, leading to growing interest in designing inherently robust architectures. We demonstrate that a carefully designed first layer of the neural network can serve as an implicit adversarial noise filter (ANF). This filter is created using a combination of large kernel size, increased convolution filters, and a maxpool operation. We show that integrating this filter as the first layer in architectures such as ResNet, VGG, and EfficientNet results in adversarially robust networks. Our approach achieves higher adversarial accuracies than existing natively robust architectures without AT and is competitive with adversarial-trained architectures across a wide range of datasets. Supporting our findings, we show that (a) the decision regions for our method have better margins, (b) the visualized loss surfaces are smoother, (c) the modified peak signal-to-noise ratio (mPSNR) values at the output of the ANF are higher, (d) high-frequency components are more attenuated, and (e) architectures incorporating ANF exhibit better denoising in Gaussian noise compared to baseline architectures. Code for all our experiments are available at \url{https://github.com/janani-suresh-97/first-line-defence.git}.

The ground state of a one-dimensional spin-1/2 uniform antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain (AfHc) is a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid which is quantum-critical with respect to applied magnetic fields upto a saturation field Hs beyond which it transforms to a fully polarised state. Wilson ratio has been predicted to be a good indicator for demarcating these phases [Phys. Rev. B 96, 220401 (2017)]. From detailed temperature and magnetic field dependent magnetisation, magnetic susceptibility and specific heat measurements in a metalorganic complex and comparisons with field theory and quantum transfer matrix method calculations, the complex was found to be a very good realisation of a spin-1/2 AfHc. Wilson ratio obtained from experimentally obtained magnetic susceptibility and magnetic contribution of specific heat values was used to map the magnetic phase diagram of the uniform spin-1/2 AfHc over large regions of phase space demarcating Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid, saturation field quantum critical, and fully polarised states. Luttinger parameter and spinon velocity were found to match very well with the values predicted from conformal field theory., Comment: Accepted for publication in PNAS Nexus

Suppose Alice has a distribution $P$ and Bob has a distribution $Q$. Alice wants to generate a sample $a\sim P$ and Bob a sample $b \sim Q$ such that $a = b$ with has as high of probability as possible. It is well-known that, by sampling from an optimal coupling between the distributions, Alice and Bob can achieve $Pr[a = b] = 1 - D_{TV}(P,Q)$, where $D_{TV}(P,Q)$ is the total variation distance. What if Alice and Bob must solve this same problem without communicating at all? Perhaps surprisingly, with access to public randomness, they can still achieve $Pr[a=b] \geq \frac{1-D_{TV}(P,Q)}{1+D_{TV}(P,Q)} \geq 1-2D_{TV}(P,Q)$. In fact, this bound can be obtained using a simple protocol based on the Weighted MinHash algorithm. In this work, we explore the communication-free coupling problem in greater depth. First, we show that an equally simple protocol based on Gumbel sampling matches the worst-case guarantees of the Weighted MinHash approach, but tends to perform better in practice. Conversely, we prove that both approaches are actually sharp: no communication-free protocol can achieve $Pr[a=b]>\frac{1-D_{TV}(P,Q)}{1+D_{TV}(P,Q)}$ in the worst-case. Finally, we prove that, for distributions over $n$ items, there exists a scheme that uses just $O(\log(n/\epsilon))$ bits of communication to achieve $Pr[a = b] = 1 - D_{TV}(P,Q) - \epsilon$, i.e. to essentially match optimal coupling. Beyond our theoretical results, we demonstrate an application of communication-free coupling to speculative decoding, a recent method for accelerating autoregressive large language models [Leviathan, Kalman, Matias, ICML 2023]. We show that communication-free protocols yield a variant of speculative decoding that we call Drafter-Invariant Speculative Decoding, which has the desirable property that the output of the method is fixed given a fixed random seed, regardless of what drafter is used for speculation., Comment: 16 pages

In ground-based astronomy, the ability to couple light into single-mode fibers (SMFs) is limited by atmospheric turbulence, which prohibits the use of many astrophotonic instruments. We propose a silicon-on-insulator photonic chip capable of coherently coupling the out-of-phase beamlets from the subapertures of a telescope pupil into an SMF. The photonic integrated circuit (PIC) consists of an array of grating couplers that are used to inject light from free space into single-mode waveguides on the chip. Metallic heaters modulate the refractive index of a coiled section of the waveguides, facilitating the co-phasing of the propagating modes. The phased beamlets can then be coherently combined to efficiently deliver the light to an output SMF. In an adaptive optics (AO) system, the phase corrector acts as a deformable mirror (DM) commanded by a controller that takes phase measurements from a wavefront sensor (WFS). We present experimental results for the PIC tested on an AO testbed and compare the performance to simulations., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, submitted to SPIE Adaptive Optics Systems IX

With the commissioning of the refurbished adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) for the 6.5-meter MMT Observatory under way, special consideration had to be made to properly calibrate the mirror response functions to generate an interaction matrix (IM). The commissioning of the ASM is part of the MMT Adaptive optics exoPlanet characterization System (MAPS) upgrade the observatory's legacy adaptive optics (AO) system. Unlike most AO systems, MAPS employs a convex ASM which prevents the introduction of a calibration source capable of simultaneously illuminating its ASM and wavefront sensor (WFS). This makes calibration of the AO system a significant hurdle in commissioning. To address this, we have employed a hybrid calibration strategy we call the Efficient Synthesis of Calibrations for Adaptive Optics through Pseudo-synthetic and Empirical methods (ESCAPE). ESCAPE combines the DO-CRIME on-sky calibration method with the SPRINT method for computing pseudo-synthetic calibration matrices. To monitor quasi-static system change, the ESCAPE methodology rapidly and continuously generates pseudo-synthetic calibration matrices using continual empirical feedback in either open or closed-loop. In addition, by measuring the current IM in the background while in close-loop, we are also able to measure the optical gains for pyramid wavefront sensor (PyWFS) systems. In this paper, we will provide the mathematical foundation of the ESCAPE calibration strategy and on-sky results from its application in calibrating the MMT Observatory's ASM. Additionally, we will showcase the validation of our approach from our AO testbed and share preliminary on-sky results from MMT., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, Submission to SPIE Adaptive Optics Systems IX

In the limit where partons become collinear to each other, scattering amplitudes factorize into a product of universal, process-independent building blocks and scattering amplitudes involving fewer partons. We compute these universal building blocks -- known as splitting amplitudes -- for two collinear QCD partons up to third loop order in QCD. Our results describe arbitrary time-like splitting processes. Due to the violation of strict collinear factorization in space-like splitting processes, we specifically present space-like splitting amplitudes for three-parton QCD scattering amplitudes at third loop order. To achieve our results, we perform a collinear expansion of three-loop scattering amplitudes using a new expansion-by-subgraph technology, which is based on the method of regions., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures

This study aims to learn a translation from visible to infrared imagery, bridging the domain gap between the two modalities so as to improve accuracy on downstream tasks including object detection. Previous approaches attempt to perform bi-domain feature fusion through iterative optimization or end-to-end deep convolutional networks. However, we pose the problem as similar to that of image translation, adopting a two-stage training strategy with a Generative Adversarial Network and an object detection model. The translation model learns a conversion that preserves the structural detail of visible images while preserving the texture and other characteristics of infrared images. Images so generated are used to train standard object detection frameworks including Yolov5, Mask and Faster RCNN. We also investigate the usefulness of integrating a super-resolution step into our pipeline to further improve model accuracy, and achieve an improvement of as high as 5.3% mAP.

This paper proposes and evaluates a Multi-Reference Relaxation Enforced Neighborhood Search (MRENS) heuristic within the SCIP solver. This study marks the first integration and evaluation of MRENS in a full-fledged MILP solver, specifically coupled with the recently-introduced Lagromory separator for generating multiple reference solutions. Computational experiments on the MIPLIB 2017 benchmark set show that MRENS, with multiple reference solutions, improves the solver's ability to find higher-quality feasible solutions compared to single-reference approaches. This study highlights the potential of multi-reference heuristics in enhancing primal heuristics in MILP solvers., Comment: six pages, new primal heuristic in SCIP, mixed integer linear optimization

Community resilience refers to the ability to prepare for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to disruptive events, but specific definitions and measures for resilience can vary widely from researcher to researcher or from discipline to discipline. Community resilience is often measured using a set of indicators based on census, socioeconomic, and community organizational data, but these metrics and measures for community resilience provide little guidance for policymakers to determine how best to increase the community resilience. This article proposes to measure community resilience based on value focused thinking. We propose an objectives hierarchy that begins with a community decision makers' fundamental objective for resilience. Six high level objectives for community resilience, including social resilience, economic resilience, infrastructure resilience, environmental resilience, availability of resources, and functionality of critical services, are broken down into measurable attributes that focus on specific outcomes that a decision maker would like to achieve if a disruption occurs. This new way of assessing resilience is applied to measure the resilience of an illustrative community to an improvised explosive device, a cyberattack, a tornado, a flood, and a winter storm. Keywords: Community Resilience, Resiliency, Risk Analysis

Rapid advances in the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have raised widespread concerns regarding their potential for malicious use. Open-weight LLMs present unique challenges, as existing safeguards lack robustness to tampering attacks that modify model weights. For example, recent works have demonstrated that refusal and unlearning safeguards can be trivially removed with a few steps of fine-tuning. These vulnerabilities necessitate new approaches for enabling the safe release of open-weight LLMs. We develop a method, called TAR, for building tamper-resistant safeguards into open-weight LLMs such that adversaries cannot remove the safeguards even after thousands of steps of fine-tuning. In extensive evaluations and red teaming analyses, we find that our method greatly improves tamper-resistance while preserving benign capabilities. Our results demonstrate that tamper-resistance is a tractable problem, opening up a promising new avenue to improve the safety and security of open-weight LLMs., Comment: Website: https://www.tamper-resistant-safeguards.com

Gallium arsenide optical resonators have been identified as platforms for light-matter interactions ranging from optomechanics to quantum electrodynamics involving nonlinear optics. Here, we present a 5-mm-diameter whispering gallery mode resonator made of undoped gallium arsenide. The fabrication was done using single-point diamond turning followed by polishing with diamond solutions of varying grain size. The resulting resonator was optically characterized to have a quality factor of more than a million.

Due to their inherent capabilities of capturing non-local dependencies, Transformer neural networks have quickly been established as the paradigmatic architecture for large language models and image processing. Next to these traditional applications, machine learning methods have also been demonstrated to be versatile tools in the analysis of image-like data of quantum phases of matter, e.g. given snapshots of many-body wave functions obtained in ultracold atom experiments. While local correlation structures in image-like data of physical systems can reliably be detected, identifying phases of matter characterized by global, non-local structures with interpretable machine learning methods remains a challenge. Here, we introduce the correlator Transformer (CoTra), which classifies different phases of matter while at the same time yielding full interpretability in terms of physical correlation functions. The network's underlying structure is a tailored attention mechanism, which learns efficient ways to weigh local and non-local correlations for a successful classification. We demonstrate the versatility of the CoTra by detecting local order in the Heisenberg antiferromagnet, and show that local gauge constraints in one- and two-dimensional lattice gauge theories can be identified. Furthermore, we establish that the CoTra reliably detects non-local structures in images of correlated fermions in momentum space (Cooper pairs) and that it can distinguish percolating from non-percolating images.

The construction of highly coherent x-ray sources has enabled new research opportunities across the scientific landscape. The maximum raw data rate per beamline now exceeds 40 GB/s, posing unprecedented challenges for the online processing and offline storage of the big data. Such challenge is particularly prominent for x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), where real time analyses require simultaneous calculation on all the previously acquired data in the time series. We present a homomorphic compression scheme to effectively reduce the computational time and memory space required for XPCS analysis. Leveraging similarities in the mathematical expression between a matrix-based compression algorithm and the correlation calculation, our approach allows direct operation on the compressed data without their decompression. The lossy compression reduces the computational time by a factor of 10,000, enabling real time calculation of the correlation functions at kHz framerate. Our demonstration of a homomorphic compression of scientific data provides an effective solution to the big data challenge at coherent light sources. Beyond the example shown in this work, the framework can be extended to facilitate real-time operations directly on a compressed data stream for other techniques.

This paper proposes a Conflict-aware Resource-Efficient Decentralized Sequential planner (CREDS) for early wildfire mitigation using multiple heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Multi-UAV wildfire management scenarios are non-stationary, with spatially clustered dynamically spreading fires, potential pop-up fires, and partial observability due to limited UAV numbers and sensing range. The objective of CREDS is to detect and sequentially mitigate all growing fires as Single-UAV Tasks (SUT), minimizing biodiversity loss through rapid UAV intervention and promoting efficient resource utilization by avoiding complex multi-UAV coordination. CREDS employs a three-phased approach, beginning with fire detection using a search algorithm, followed by local trajectory generation using the auction-based Resource-Efficient Decentralized Sequential planner (REDS), incorporating the novel non-stationary cost function, the Deadline-Prioritized Mitigation Cost (DPMC). Finally, a conflict-aware consensus algorithm resolves conflicts to determine a global trajectory for spatiotemporal mitigation. The performance evaluation of the CREDS for partial and full observability conditions with both heterogeneous and homogeneous UAV teams for different fires-to-UAV ratios demonstrates a $100\%$ success rate for ratios up to $4$ and a high success rate for the critical ratio of $5$, outperforming baselines. Heterogeneous UAV teams outperform homogeneous teams in handling heterogeneous deadlines of SUT mitigation. CREDS exhibits scalability and $100\%$ convergence, demonstrating robustness against potential deadlock assignments, enhancing its success rate compared to the baseline approaches.

This paper addresses early wildfire management using a team of UAVs for the mitigation of fires. The early detection and mitigation systems help in alleviating the destruction with reduced resource utilization. A Genetic Algorithm-based Routing and Scheduling with Time constraints (GARST) is proposed to find the shortest schedule route to mitigate the fires as Single UAV Tasks (SUT). The objective of GARST is to compute the route and schedule of the UAVs so that the UAVS reach the assigned fire locations before the fire becomes a Multi UAV Task (MUT) and completely quench the fire using the extinguisher. The fitness function used for the genetic algorithm is the total quench time for mitigation of total fires. The selection, crossover, mutation operators, and elitist strategies collectively ensure the exploration and exploitation of the solution space, maintaining genetic diversity, preventing premature convergence, and preserving high-performing individuals for the effective optimization of solutions. The GARST effectively addresses the challenges posed by the NP-complete problem of routing and scheduling for growing tasks with time constraints. The GARST is able to handle infeasible scenarios effectively, contributing to the overall optimization of the wildfire management system.

NH$_{3}$(ammonia) plays a critical role in the chemistry of star and planet formation, yet uncertainties in its binding energy (BE) values complicate accurate estimates of its abundances. Recent research suggests a multi-binding energy approach, challenging the previous single-value notion. In this work, we use different values of NH$_{3}$ binding energy to examine its effects on the NH$_{3}$ abundances and, consequently, in the early evolution of protostellar cores. Using a gas-grain chemical network, we systematically vary the values of NH$_{3}$ binding energies in a model Class 0 protostellar core and study the effects of these binding energies on the NH$_{3}$ abundances. Our simulations indicate that abundance profiles of NH$_{3}$ are highly sensitive to the binding energy used, particularly in the warmer inner regions of the core. Higher binding energies lead to lower gas-phase NH$_{3}$ abundances, while lower values of binding energy have the opposite effect. Furthermore, this BE-dependent abundance variation of NH$_{3}$ significantly affects the formation pathways and abundances of key species such as HNC, HCN, and CN. Our tests also reveal that the size variation of the emitting region due to binding energy becomes discernible only with beam sizes of 10 arcsec or less. These findings underscore the importance of considering a range of binding energies in astrochemical models and highlight the need for higher resolution observations to better understand the subtleties of molecular cloud chemistry and star formation processes.

The development of an IT strategy and ensuring that it is the best possible one for business is a key problem many organizations face. This problem is that of linking business architecture to IT architecture in general and application architecture specifically. In our earlier work we proposed Category theory as the formal language to unify the business and IT worlds with the ability to represent the concepts and relations between the two in a unified way. We used rCOS as the underlying model for the specification of interfaces, contracts, and components. The concept of pseudo-category was then utilized to represent the business and application architecture specifications and the relationships contained within. Contracts are used for the specification of both IT and Business architecture components. The linkages between them is now established using the matching of the business component contracts with the application component contracts. Typically, the matching was based on manual process, in this paper we extend the work by considering automated component matching process. In this paper we provide implementation of the matching process using graph matching., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2406.05483

Prompt Tuning has emerged as a prominent research paradigm for adapting vision-language models to various downstream tasks. However, recent research indicates that prompt tuning methods often lead to overfitting due to limited training samples. In this paper, we propose a Cross-modal Aligned Feature Tuning (Craft) method to address this issue. Cross-modal alignment is conducted by first selecting anchors from the alternative domain and deriving relative representations of the embeddings for the selected anchors. Optimizing for a feature alignment loss over anchor-aligned text and image modalities creates a more unified text-image common space. Overfitting in prompt tuning also deteriorates model performance on out-of-distribution samples. To further improve the prompt model's robustness, we propose minimizing Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) over the anchor-aligned feature spaces to mitigate domain shift. The experiment on four different prompt tuning structures consistently shows the improvement of our method, with increases of up to $6.1\%$ in the Base-to-Novel generalization task, $5.8\%$ in the group robustness task, and $2.7\%$ in the out-of-distribution tasks. The code will be available at https://github.com/Jingchensun/Craft, Comment: 15pages

We present new near-ultraviolet (NUV, $\lambda$ = 2479 $-$ 3306 $\r{A}$) transmission spectroscopy of KELT-9b, the hottest known exoplanet, obtained with the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment ($CUTE$) CubeSat. Two transits were observed on September 28th and September 29th 2022, referred to as Visits 1 and 2 respectively. Using a combined transit and systematics model for each visit, the best-fit broadband NUV light curves are R$_{\text{p}}$/R$_{\star}$ $=$ 0.136$_{0.0146}^{0.0125}$ for Visit 1 and R$_{\text{p}}$/R$_{\star}$ $=$ 0.111$_{0.0190}^{0.0162}$ for Visit 2, appearing an average of 1.54$\times$ larger in the NUV than at optical wavelengths. While the systematics between the two visits vary considerably, the two broadband NUV light curves are consistent with each other. A transmission spectrum with 25 $\r{A}$ bins suggests a general trend of excess absorption in the NUV, consistent with expectations for ultra-hot Jupiters. Although we see an extended atmosphere in the NUV, the reduced data lack the sensitivity to probe individual spectral lines.

Optical beams and starlight distorted by atmospheric turbulence can be corrected with adaptive optics systems to enable efficient coupling into single-mode fibers. Deformable mirrors, used to flatten the wavefront in astronomical telescopes, are costly, sensitive, and complex mechanical components that require careful calibration to enable high-quality imaging in astronomy, microscopy, and vision science. They are also impractical to deploy in large numbers for non-imaging applications like free-space optical communication. Here, we propose a photonic integrated c rcuit capable of spatially sampling the wavefront collected by the telescope and co-phasing the subapertures to maximize the flux delivered to an output single-mode fiber as the integrated photonic implementation of a deformable mirror. We present the results of end-to-end simulations to quantify the performance of the proposed photonic solution under varying atmospheric conditions toward realizing an adaptive optics system without a deformable mirror for free-space optical receivers., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, to be published in Optics Express. Corresponding author: Momen Diab (momen.diab@utoronto.ca)

We present results from a search for X-ray/gamma-ray counterparts of gravitational-wave (GW) candidates from the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) network using the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (Swift-BAT). The search includes 636 GW candidates received in low latency, 86 of which have been confirmed by the offline analysis and included in the third cumulative Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogs (GWTC-3). Targeted searches were carried out on the entire GW sample using the maximum--likelihood NITRATES pipeline on the BAT data made available via the GUANO infrastructure. We do not detect any significant electromagnetic emission that is temporally and spatially coincident with any of the GW candidates. We report flux upper limits in the 15-350 keV band as a function of sky position for all the catalog candidates. For GW candidates where the Swift-BAT false alarm rate is less than 10$^{-3}$ Hz, we compute the GW--BAT joint false alarm rate. Finally, the derived Swift-BAT upper limits are used to infer constraints on the putative electromagnetic emission associated with binary black hole mergers., Comment: 50 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables

Autonomous Vehicle (AV) decision making in urban environments is inherently challenging due to the dynamic interactions with surrounding vehicles. For safe planning, AV must understand the weightage of various spatiotemporal interactions in a scene. Contemporary works use colossal transformer architectures to encode interactions mainly for trajectory prediction, resulting in increased computational complexity. To address this issue without compromising spatiotemporal understanding and performance, we propose the simple Deep Attention Driven Reinforcement Learning (DADRL) framework, which dynamically assigns and incorporates the significance of surrounding vehicles into the ego's RL driven decision making process. We introduce an AV centric spatiotemporal attention encoding (STAE) mechanism for learning the dynamic interactions with different surrounding vehicles. To understand map and route context, we employ a context encoder to extract features from context maps. The spatiotemporal representations combined with contextual encoding provide a comprehensive state representation. The resulting model is trained using the Soft Actor Critic (SAC) algorithm. We evaluate the proposed framework on the SMARTS urban benchmarking scenarios without traffic signals to demonstrate that DADRL outperforms recent state of the art methods. Furthermore, an ablation study underscores the importance of the context-encoder and spatio temporal attention encoder in achieving superior performance., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly employed in diverse real-world applications, there has been significant interest in regulating these tools. To this end, several regulatory frameworks have been introduced by different countries worldwide. For example, the European Union recently passed the AI Act, the White House issued an Executive Order on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights (AI BoR). Many of these frameworks emphasize the need for auditing and improving the trustworthiness of AI tools, underscoring the importance of safety, privacy, explainability, fairness, and human fallback options. Although these regulatory frameworks highlight the necessity of enforcement, practitioners often lack detailed guidance on implementing them. Furthermore, the extensive research on operationalizing each of these aspects is frequently buried in technical papers that are difficult for practitioners to parse. In this write-up, we address this shortcoming by providing an accessible overview of existing literature related to operationalizing regulatory principles. We provide easy-to-understand summaries of state-of-the-art literature and highlight various gaps that exist between regulatory guidelines and existing AI research, including the trade-offs that emerge during operationalization. We hope that this work not only serves as a starting point for practitioners interested in learning more about operationalizing the regulatory guidelines outlined in the Blueprint for an AI BoR but also provides researchers with a list of critical open problems and gaps between regulations and state-of-the-art AI research. Finally, we note that this is a working paper and we invite feedback in line with the purpose of this document as described in the introduction., Comment: 15 pages

Learning rate schedulers have shown great success in speeding up the convergence of learning algorithms in practice. However, their convergence to a minimum has not been proven theoretically. This difficulty mainly arises from the fact that, while traditional convergence analysis prescribes to monotonically decreasing (or constant) learning rates, schedulers opt for rates that often increase and decrease through the training epochs. In this work, we aim to bridge the gap by proposing a probabilistic learning rate scheduler (PLRS), that does not conform to the monotonically decreasing condition, with provable convergence guarantees. In addition to providing detailed convergence proofs, we also show experimental results where the proposed PLRS performs competitively as other state-of-the-art learning rate schedulers across a variety of datasets and architectures.

This article introduces the analytical approach of practice mapping, using vector embeddings of network actions and interactions to map commonalities and disjunctures in the practices of social media users, as a framework for methodological advancement beyond the limitations of conventional network analysis and visualisation. In particular, the methodological framework we outline here has the potential to incorporate multiple distinct modes of interaction into a single practice map, can be further enriched with account-level attributes such as information gleaned from textual analysis, profile information, available demographic details, and other features, and can be applied even to a cross-platform analysis of communicative patterns and practices. The article presents practice mapping as an analytical framework and outlines its key methodological considerations. Given its prominence in past social media research, we draw on examples and data from the platform formerly known as Twitter in order to enable experienced scholars to translate their approaches to a practice mapping paradigm more easily, but point out how data from other platforms may be used in equivalent ways in practice mapping studies. We illustrate the utility of the approach by applying it to a dataset where the application of conventional network analysis and visualisation approaches has produced few meaningful insights.

The spin-exotic hybrid meson $\pi_{1}(1600)$ is predicted to have a large decay rate to the $\omega\pi\pi$ final state. Using 76.6~pb$^{-1}$ of data collected with the GlueX detector, we measure the cross sections for the reactions $\gamma p \to \omega \pi^+ \pi^- p$, $\gamma p \to \omega \pi^0 \pi^0 p$, and $\gamma p\to\omega\pi^-\pi^0\Delta^{++}$ in the range $E_\gamma =$ 8-10 GeV. Using isospin conservation, we set the first upper limits on the photoproduction cross sections of the $\pi^{0}_{1}(1600)$ and $\pi^{-}_{1}(1600)$. We combine these limits with lattice calculations of decay widths and find that photoproduction of $\eta'\pi$ is the most sensitive two-body system to search for the $\pi_1(1600)$., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures plus supplemental materials

Let F be the function field of a curve over a complete discretely valued field K. Let G be a semisimple simply connected linear algebraic group over F of type An. We give a description of the obstruction to local global principle for principal homogeneous spaces under G over F with respect to discrete valuations of F in terms of R-equivalence classes of G over some suitable over fields. Using this description we prove that this obstruction vanishes under some conditions on the residue field K., Comment: 32 pages

We investigate a two-parameter extension of the $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM model by allowing variations in the effective number of neutrino species $N_{\rm eff}$ and their total mass $\sum m_\nu$. Our motivation is twofold: (i) to examine whether $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM retains its success in fitting the data and addressing major cosmological tensions, without suggesting a need for a deviation from the standard model of particle physics, and (ii) to determine whether the data indicate new physics that could potentially address cosmological tensions, either in the post-recombination universe through the late-time mirror AdS-dS transition, or in the pre-recombination universe through modifications in the standard values of $N_{\rm eff}$ and $\sum m_\nu$, or both. Within the extended $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM model, referred to as $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM+$N_{\rm eff}$+$\sum m_{\rm \nu}$, we find no significant tension when considering the Planck-alone analysis. We observe that incorporating BAO data limits the further success of the $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM extension. However, the weakly model-dependent BAOtr data, along with Planck and Planck+PP\&SH0ES, favor $H_0\sim 73\,{\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}}$. In cases where BAOtr dataset is used, the mirror AdS-dS transition is very effective in providing enhanced $H_0$ values, and thus the model requires no significant deviation from the standard value of $N_{\rm eff} = 3.044$. Both the $H_0$ and $S_8$ tensions are effectively addressed, with some compromise in the case of the Planck+BAO dataset. Finally, the upper bounds obtained on $\sum m_\nu \lesssim 0.5$~eV are fully compatible with neutrino oscillation experiments. Our findings provide evidence that late-time physics beyond $\Lambda$CDM, such as $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM, without altering the standard pre-recombination universe, can suffice to alleviate the major cosmological tensions., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables

Self-supervised learning models have revolutionized the field of speech processing. However, the process of fine-tuning these models on downstream tasks requires substantial computational resources, particularly when dealing with multiple speech-processing tasks. In this paper, we explore the potential of adapter-based fine-tuning in developing a unified model capable of effectively handling multiple spoken language processing tasks. The tasks we investigate are Automatic Speech Recognition, Phoneme Recognition, Intent Classification, Slot Filling, and Spoken Emotion Recognition. We validate our approach through a series of experiments on the SUPERB benchmark, and our results indicate that adapter-based fine-tuning enables a single encoder-decoder model to perform multiple speech processing tasks with an average improvement of 18.4% across the five target tasks while staying efficient in terms of parameter updates., Comment: ICASSP 2024

We measure the spin-density matrix elements (SDMEs) of the $\Delta^{++}(1232)$ in the photoproduction reaction $\gamma p \to \pi^-\Delta^{++}(1232)$ with the GlueX experiment in Hall D at Jefferson Lab. The measurement uses a linearly--polarized photon beam with energies from $8.2$ to $8.8$~GeV and the statistical precision of the SDMEs exceeds the previous measurement by three orders of magnitude for the momentum transfer squared region below $1.4$ GeV$^2$. The data are sensitive to the previously undetermined relative sign between couplings in existing Regge-exchange models. Linear combinations of the extracted SDMEs allow for a decomposition into natural and unnatural--exchange amplitudes. We find that the unnatural exchange plays an important role in the low momentum transfer region.

We present a novel multimodal preference dataset for creative tasks, consisting of over 250 million human ratings on more than 2.2 million captions, collected through crowdsourcing rating data for The New Yorker's weekly cartoon caption contest over the past eight years. This unique dataset supports the development and evaluation of multimodal large language models and preference-based fine-tuning algorithms for humorous caption generation. We propose novel benchmarks for judging the quality of model-generated captions, utilizing both GPT4 and human judgments to establish ranking-based evaluation strategies. Our experimental results highlight the limitations of current fine-tuning methods, such as RLHF and DPO, when applied to creative tasks. Furthermore, we demonstrate that even state-of-the-art models like GPT4 and Claude currently underperform top human contestants in generating humorous captions. As we conclude this extensive data collection effort, we release the entire preference dataset to the research community, fostering further advancements in AI humor generation and evaluation.

The idea of a rapid sign-switching cosmological constant (mirror AdS-dS transition) in the late universe at $z\sim1.7$, known as the $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM model, has significantly improved the fit to observational data and provides a promising scenario for alleviating major cosmological tensions, such as the $H_0$ and $S_8$ tensions. However, in the absence of a fully predictive model, implementing this fit required conjecturing that the dynamics of the linear perturbations are governed by general relativity. Recent work embedding the $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM model with the Lagrangian of a type-II minimally modified gravity known as VCDM has propelled $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM to a fully predictive model, removing the uncertainty related to the aforementioned assumption; we call this new model $\Lambda_{\rm s}$VCDM. In this work, we demonstrate that not only does $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM fit the data better than the standard $\Lambda$CDM model, but the new model, $\Lambda_{\rm s}$VCDM, performs even better in alleviating cosmological tensions while also providing a better fit to the data, including CMB, BAO, SNe Ia, and Cosmic Shear measurements. Our findings highlight the $\Lambda_{\rm s}$CDM framework, particularly the $\Lambda_{\rm s}$VCDM model, as a compelling alternative to the standard $\Lambda$CDM model, especially by successfully alleviating the $H_0$ tension. Additionally, these models predict higher values for $\sigma_8$, indicating enhanced structuring, albeit with lower present-day matter density parameter values and consequently reduced $S_8$ values, alleviating the $S_8$ tension as well. This demonstrates that the data are well fit by a combination of background and linear perturbations, both having dynamics differing from those of $\Lambda$CDM. This paves the way for further exploration of new ways for embedding the sign-switching cosmological constant into other models., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables

The development of an IT strategy and ensuring that it is the best possible one for business is a key problem many organizations face. This problem is that of linking business architecture to IT architecture in general and application architecture specifically. In our earlier work we proposed Category theory as the formal language to unify the business and IT worlds with the ability to represent the concepts and relations between the two in a unified way. We used rCOS as the underlying model for the specification of interfaces, contracts, and components. The concept of pseudo-category was then utilized to represent the business and application architecture specifications and the relationships contained within. The linkages between them now can be established using the matching of the business component contracts with the application component contracts. However the matching was based on manual process and in this paper we extend the work by considering automated component matching process. The ground work for a tool to support the matching process is laid out in this paper., Comment: 8 pages, one figure

Voice conversion (VC) research traditionally depends on scripted or acted speech, which lacks the natural spontaneity of real-life conversations. While natural speech data is limited for VC, our study focuses on filling in this gap. We introduce a novel data-sourcing pipeline that makes the release of a natural speech dataset for VC, named NaturalVoices. The pipeline extracts rich information in speech such as emotion and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from raw podcast data, utilizing recent deep learning methods and providing flexibility and ease of use. NaturalVoices marks a large-scale, spontaneous, expressive, and emotional speech dataset, comprising over 3,800 hours speech sourced from the original podcasts in the MSP-Podcast dataset. Objective and subjective evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of using our pipeline for providing natural and expressive data for VC, suggesting the potential of NaturalVoices for broader speech generation tasks.

Recent advances in style transfer text-to-speech (TTS) have improved the expressiveness of synthesized speech. Despite these advancements, encoding stylistic information from diverse and unseen reference speech remains challenging. This paper introduces StyleMoE, an approach that divides the embedding space, modeled by the style encoder, into tractable subsets handled by style experts. The proposed method replaces the style encoder in a TTS system with a Mixture of Experts (MoE) layer. By utilizing a gating network to route reference speeches to different style experts, each expert specializes in aspects of the style space during optimization. Our experiments objectively and subjectively demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method in increasing the coverage of the style space for diverse and unseen styles. This approach can enhance the performance of existing state-of-the-art style transfer TTS models, marking the first study of MoE in style transfer TTS to our knowledge.

Text-driven image synthesis has made significant advancements with the development of diffusion models, transforming how visual content is generated from text prompts. Despite these advances, text-driven image editing, a key area in computer graphics, faces unique challenges. A major challenge is making simultaneous edits across multiple objects or attributes. Applying these methods sequentially for multi-aspect edits increases computational demands and efficiency losses. In this paper, we address these challenges with significant contributions. Our main contribution is the development of MultiEdits, a method that seamlessly manages simultaneous edits across multiple attributes. In contrast to previous approaches, MultiEdits not only preserves the quality of single attribute edits but also significantly improves the performance of multitasking edits. This is achieved through an innovative attention distribution mechanism and a multi-branch design that operates across several processing heads. Additionally, we introduce the PIE-Bench++ dataset, an expansion of the original PIE-Bench dataset, to better support evaluating image-editing tasks involving multiple objects and attributes simultaneously. This dataset is a benchmark for evaluating text-driven image editing methods in multifaceted scenarios. Dataset and code are available at https://mingzhenhuang.com/projects/MultiEdits.html.

Solving linear systems of equations is an important problem in science and engineering. Many quantum algorithms, such as the Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd (HHL) algorithm (for quantum-gate computers) and the box algorithm (for quantum-annealing machines), have been proposed for solving such systems. The focus of this paper is on improving the efficiency of the box algorithm. The basic principle behind this algorithm is to transform the linear system into a series of quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems, which are then solved on annealing machines. The computational efficiency of the box algorithm is entirely determined by the number of iterations, which, in turn, depends on the box contraction ratio, typically set to 0.5. Here, we show through theory that a contraction ratio of 0.5 is sub-optimal and that we can achieve a speed-up with a contraction ratio of 0.2. This is confirmed through numerical experiments where a speed-up between $20 \%$ to $60 \%$ is observed when the optimal contraction ratio is used.

Grain boundaries (GBs) govern critical properties of polycrystals. Although significant advancements have been made in characterizing minimum energy GBs, real GBs are seldom found in such states, making it challenging to establish structure-property relationships. This diversity of atomic arrangements in metastable states motivates using data-driven methods to establish these relationships. In this study, we utilize a vast atomistic database (~5000) of minimum energy and metastable states of symmetric tilt copper GBs, combined with physically-motivated local atomic environment (LAE) descriptors (Strain Functional Descriptors, SFDs) to predict GB properties. Our regression models exhibit robust predictive capabilities using only 19 descriptors, generalizing to atomic environments in nanocrystals. A significant highlight of our work is integration of an unsupervised method with SFDs to elucidate LAEs at GBs and their role in determining properties. Our research underscores the role of a physics-based representation of LAEs and efficacy of data-driven methods in establishing GB structure-property relationships.

The ability to shop independently, especially in grocery stores, is important for maintaining a high quality of life. This can be particularly challenging for people with visual impairments (PVI). Stores carry thousands of products, with approximately 30,000 new products introduced each year in the US market alone, presenting a challenge even for modern computer vision solutions. Through this work, we present a proof-of-concept socially assistive robotic system we call ShelfHelp, and propose novel technical solutions for enhancing instrumented canes traditionally meant for navigation tasks with additional capability within the domain of shopping. ShelfHelp includes a novel visual product locator algorithm designed for use in grocery stores and a novel planner that autonomously issues verbal manipulation guidance commands to guide the user during product retrieval. Through a human subjects study, we show the system's success in locating and providing effective manipulation guidance to retrieve desired products with novice users. We compare two autonomous verbal guidance modes achieving comparable performance to a human assistance baseline and present encouraging findings that validate our system's efficiency and effectiveness and through positive subjective metrics including competence, intelligence, and ease of use., Comment: 8 pages, 14 figures and charts

Growing interest and investment in the capabilities of foundation models has positioned such systems to impact a wide array of public services. Alongside these opportunities is the risk that these systems reify existing power imbalances and cause disproportionate harm to marginalized communities. Participatory approaches hold promise to instead lend agency and decision-making power to marginalized stakeholders. But existing approaches in participatory AI/ML are typically deeply grounded in context - how do we apply these approaches to foundation models, which are, by design, disconnected from context? Our paper interrogates this question. First, we examine existing attempts at incorporating participation into foundation models. We highlight the tension between participation and scale, demonstrating that it is intractable for impacted communities to meaningfully shape a foundation model that is intended to be universally applicable. In response, we develop a blueprint for participatory foundation models that identifies more local, application-oriented opportunities for meaningful participation. In addition to the "foundation" layer, our framework proposes the "subfloor'' layer, in which stakeholders develop shared technical infrastructure, norms and governance for a grounded domain, and the "surface'' layer, in which affected communities shape the use of a foundation model for a specific downstream task. The intermediate "subfloor'' layer scopes the range of potential harms to consider, and affords communities more concrete avenues for deliberation and intervention. At the same time, it avoids duplicative effort by scaling input across relevant use cases. Through three case studies in clinical care, financial services, and journalism, we illustrate how this multi-layer model can create more meaningful opportunities for participation than solely intervening at the foundation layer., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures. Appeared at FAccT '24

The market for domestic robots made to perform household chores is growing as these robots relieve people of everyday responsibilities. Domestic robots are generally welcomed for their role in easing human labor, in contrast to industrial robots, which are frequently criticized for displacing human workers. But before these robots can carry out domestic chores, they need to become proficient in several minor activities, such as recognizing their surroundings, making decisions, and picking up on human behaviors. Reinforcement learning, or RL, has emerged as a key robotics technology that enables robots to interact with their environment and learn how to optimize their actions to maximize rewards. However, the goal of Deep Reinforcement Learning is to address more complicated, continuous action-state spaces in real-world settings by combining RL with Neural Networks. The efficacy of DeepRL can be further augmented through interactive feedback, in which a trainer offers real-time guidance to expedite the robot's learning process. Nevertheless, the current methods have drawbacks, namely the transient application of guidance that results in repeated learning under identical conditions. Therefore, we present a novel method to preserve and reuse information and advice via Deep Interactive Reinforcement Learning, which utilizes a persistent rule-based system. This method not only expedites the training process but also lessens the number of repetitions that instructors will have to carry out. This study has the potential to advance the development of household robots and improve their effectiveness and efficiency as learners.