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This work explores the use of Role Playing Games (RPG) as an active methodology in teaching Modern Physics, focusing on a game called Newton's Revenge. The game was developed with the aim of engaging students in collaborative and investigative learning processes, using gamification elements to increase motivation and involvement. Based on the constructivist theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, the RPG stimu-\newline lates cognitive and social development by placing students in the roles of historical science figures. Through contextualized physical challenges, such as understanding the Photoelectric Effect, participants actively construct knowledge. This study presents preliminary learning data obtained through pre- and post-tests, as well as evaluates students' perceptions of using educational games in science education. The results indicate that the use of RPG can be an effective tool for teaching Modern Physics, promoting greater engagement and understanding of scientific concepts., Comment: This article aims to detail and contextualize part of one of the authors' presentations at the 20th Matogrossense School of Physics, held in October 2024. In Portuguese. Accepted in "Jornal Mato-Grossense de F\'isica"

Two-Higgs-doublet models come with an augmented parameter space which allows them to possibly solve some of the shortcomings of the Standard Model, and opens the window to a plethora of new phenomena to be discovered. The introduction of scalar-mediated tree-level flavour-changing neutral currents may be tackled with the imposition of extra symmetries on the model or, alternatively, by demanding a strict proportionality between the flavour-changing couplings and fermion mass matrices. The latter is the very idea behind the Aligned-Two-Higgs-Doublet Model (A2HDM). The coefficients that govern such proportionality are, in general, complex and, therefore, possible new sources of CP violation, a calling card of this class of models. We present here the results of new state-of-the-art analyses of the A2HDM where, in particular, we ascertain whether current data allows the A2HDM to accommodate extra scalars lighter than the 125 GeV Higgs boson. To this effect, we make use of theoretical constraints, bounds from Higgs searches at the LHC and LEP, electroweak precision observables, and a set of flavour observables, all globally combined within HEPfit, a software with a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to statistical inference. Focusing on the light-pseudoscalar scenario, we find a region of parameter space compatible with all the constraints we impose., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, Proceedings of LHCP2024

Typically, point cloud encoders allocate a similar bitrate for geometry and attributes (usually RGB color components) information coding. This paper reports a quality study considering different coding bitrate tradeoff between geometry and attributes. A set of five point clouds, representing different characteristics and types of content was encoded with the MPEG standard Geometry Point Cloud Compression (G-PCC), using octree to encode geometry information, and both the Region Adaptive Hierarchical Transform and the Prediction Lifting transform for attributes. Furthermore, the JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Verification Model was also tested. Five different attributes/geometry bitrate tradeoffs were considered, notably 70%/30%, 60%/40%, 50%/50%, 40%/60%, 30%/70%. Three point cloud objective metrics were selected to assess the quality of the reconstructed point clouds, notably the PSNR YUV, the Point Cloud Quality Metric, and GraphSIM. Furthermore, for each encoder, the Bjonteegaard Deltas were computed for each tradeoff, using the 50%/50% tradeoff as a reference. The reported results indicate that using a higher bitrate allocation for attribute encoding usually yields slightly better results.

The magnetic textures generated by a perpendicularly applied magnetic field at the ferromagnetic layer of $Co/Al_{2}O_{3}/Nb$ thin film heterostructures are investigated using magneto-optical imaging and micromagnetic simulations. It is observed that the stray field caused by flux avalanches in the superconducting layer prints out a non-trivial in-plane texture in the cobalt layer, which remains stable up to temperatures much above the Nb critical temperature. These textures mimic quite closely the dendritic thermomagnetic flux avalanches that penetrate the Nb layer from its edges. For low cobalt thickness, the filamentary magnetic textures occur in pairs with opposite polarity. The previous in-plane magnetization determines the relative location of the magnetic filaments with respect to the avalanche position. Micromagnetic simulations solving the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation confirm the interpretation given for the experimental findings., Comment: 13 paginas, 5 figuras, supplementary material

As a recently-identified Mott system, PbCrO3 remains largely unexplored, especially for its band structure, leading to many contentious issues on its structural, electronic, and magnetic properties. Here we present a comprehensive study of two different Pb1-{\delta}CrO3 ({\delta} = 0 and 0.15) samples with involving atomic deficiency prepared under pressure. By means of the state-of-the-art diffraction techniques, crystal structure of PbCrO3 is definitively determined to adopt the pristine Pm-3m symmetry, rather than other previously misassigned structures of M2-Pm-3m and Pmnm. The two materials exhibit a similar charge-transfer-type insulating band structure, and the charge-transfer effect splits both Cr2p and Pb4f orbitals, rationalizing doublet splitting of the associated spectral lines. Nearly identical nominal cationic valence states of Cr4+ and Pb2+ are identified for this oxide system, hence calling into question the validity of recently-proposed charge disproportionation mechanisms. Besides, Pb0.85CrO3 exhibits an anomalously higher N\'eel temperature of ~240 K than that of PbCrO3 (i.e., ~200 K), likely due to the deficiency-induced enhancements of Cr: 3d-O:2p orbital overlap and magnetic exchange. These findings provide many solid evidences to look into the fundamental properties of this important material system.

We present a comprehensive study on the formation of micrometer-sized, textured hexagonal diamond silicon (hd-Si) crystals via nanoindentation followed by annealing. Utilizing advanced characterization techniques such as polarized Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy, we demonstrate the successful transformation of silicon into high-quality hd-Si. The experimental results are further supported by first-principles calculations and molecular dynamics simulations. Notably, the hd-Si phase consists of nanometer-sized grains with slight misorientations, organized into large micrometer-scale textured domains. These findings underscore the potential of nanoindentation as a precise and versatile tool for inducing pressure-driven phase transformations, particularly for the stabilization of hexagonal silicon. The textured nature of hd-Si also presents a unique opportunity to tailor its optical properties, opening new avenues for its application in semiconductor and optoelectronic devices.

Let $H$ and $K$ be two complex inner product spaces with dim$(X)\geq 2$. We prove that for each non-zero additive mapping $A:H \to K$ with dense image the following statements are equivalent: $(a)$ $A$ is (complex) linear or conjugate-linear mapping and there exists $\gamma >0$ such that $\| A (x) \| = \gamma \|x\|$, for all $x\in X$, that is, $A$ is a positive scalar multiple of a linear or a conjugate-linear isometry; $(b)$ There exists $\gamma_1 >0$ such that one of the next properties holds for all $x,y \in H$: $(b.1)$ $\langle A(x) |A(y)\rangle = \gamma_1 \langle x|y\rangle,$ $(b.2)$ $\langle A(x) |A(y)\rangle = \gamma_1 \langle y|x \rangle;$ $(c)$ $A$ is linear or conjugate-linear and preserves orthogonality in both directions; $(d)$ $A$ is linear or conjugate-linear and preserves orthogonality; $(e)$ $A$ is additive and preserves orthogonality in both directions; $(f)$ $A$ is additive and preserves orthogonality. This extends to the complex setting a recent generalization of the Koldobsky--Blanco--Turn\v{s}ek theorem obtained by W\'ojcik for real normed spaces.

Earth Observation (EO) has traditionally involved the transmission of a large volume of raw data to map the Earth surface. This results in congestion to the satellite network and delays in the availability of the results, invalidating the approach for timing-sensitive applications. Instead, the computation resources at the satellites can be used as an edge layer for compressing the data and/or doing inferences. In this paper, we investigate satellite edge computing for vessel detection with a LEO satellite constellation. First, we distribute the computation and inference load among the neighbouring satellites of the one taking the images, based on the VHRShips data set and YOLOv8. This semantic and fragmented information is then routed to a remote ground monitor through the whole constellation. The average and peak Age of Information (AoI) are reformulated to measure the freshness of the aggregated information at the receiver in this image-capture scenario. We then dimension the network (number of orbital planes and satellites per orbital plane) for a given target age and covered area that quantify the level of achievement of the task. The results show that 20 orbital planes with 20 satellites are necessary to keep the peak AoI below 60 seconds with a compression ratio > 23000, i.e., a size reduction of 99.996%, and for a approximately 100% probability of coverage., Comment: This paper was presented at the ComSoc Challenge on 'Future 6G NTN Systems' held at ICCSPA'24, where it was awarded second place

The minimum sum-of-squares clustering problem (MSSC), also known as $k$-means clustering, refers to the problem of partitioning $n$ data points into $k$ clusters, with the objective of minimizing the total sum of squared Euclidean distances between each point and the center of its assigned cluster. We propose an efficient algorithm for solving large-scale MSSC instances, which combines column generation (CG) with dynamic constraint aggregation (DCA) to effectively reduce the number of constraints considered in the CG master problem. DCA was originally conceived to reduce degeneracy in set partitioning problems by utilizing an aggregated restricted master problem obtained from a partition of the set partitioning constraints into disjoint clusters. In this work, we explore the use of DCA within a CG algorithm for MSSC exact solution. Our method is fine-tuned by a series of ablation studies on DCA design choices, and is demonstrated to significantly outperform existing state-of-the-art exact approaches available in the literature.

In this work we study characteristic classes of possibly singular varieties embedded as a closed subvariety of a nonsingular variety. In special, we express the Schwartz-MacPherson class in terms of the $\mu$-class and Chern class of the sheaves of logarithmic and multi-logarithmic differential forms. As an application we show an expression for Euler characteristic of a complement of a singular variety.

Understanding and predicting pedestrian crossing behavioral intention is crucial for autonomous vehicles driving safety. Nonetheless, challenges emerge when using promising images or environmental context masks to extract various factors for time-series network modeling, causing pre-processing errors or a loss in efficiency. Typically, pedestrian positions captured by onboard cameras are often distorted and do not accurately reflect their actual movements. To address these issues, GTransPDM -- a Graph-embedded Transformer with a Position Decoupling Module -- was developed for pedestrian crossing intention prediction by leveraging multi-modal features. First, a positional decoupling module was proposed to decompose the pedestrian lateral movement and simulate depth variations in the image view. Then, a graph-embedded Transformer was designed to capture the spatial-temporal dynamics of human pose skeletons, integrating essential factors such as position, skeleton, and ego-vehicle motion. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method achieves 92% accuracy on the PIE dataset and 87% accuracy on the JAAD dataset, with a processing speed of 0.05ms. It outperforms the state-of-the-art in comparison.

In this article, we study the complexity of the upgrading version of the maximal covering location problem with edge length modifications on networks. This problem is NP-hard on general networks. However, in some particular cases, we prove that this problem is solvable in polynomial time. The cases of star and path networks combined with different assumptions for the model parameters are analysed. In particular, we obtain that the problem on star networks is solvable in O(nlogn) time for uniform weights and NP-hard for non-uniform weights. On paths, the single facility problem is solvable in O(n^3) time, while the p-facility problem is NP-hard even with uniform costs and upper bounds (maximal upgrading per edge), as well as, integer parameter values. Furthermore, a pseudo-polynomial algorithm is developed for the single facility problem on trees with integer parameters.

We study the upgrading version of the maximal covering location problem with edge length modifications on networks. This problem aims at locating p facilities on the vertices (of the network) so as to maximise coverage, considering that the length of the edges can be reduced at a cost, subject to a given budget. Hence, we have to decide on: the optimal location of p facilities and the optimal edge length reductions. This problem is NP-hard on general graphs. To solve it, we propose three different mixed-integer formulations and a preprocessing phase for fixing variables and removing some of the constraints. Moreover, we strengthen the proposed formulations including valid inequalities. Finally, we compare the three formulations and their corresponding improvements by testing their performance over different datasets.

This paper addresses a version of the single-facility Maximal Covering Location Problem on a network where the demand is: (i) distributed along the edges and (ii) uncertain with only a known interval estimation. To deal with this problem, we propose a minmax regret model where the service facility can be located anywhere along the network. This problem is called Minmax Regret Maximal Covering Location Problem with demand distributed along the edges (MMR-EMCLP). Furthermore, we present two polynomial algorithms for finding the location that minimises the maximal regret assuming that the demand realisation is an unknown constant or linear function on each edge. We also include two illustrative examples as well as a computational study for the unknown constant demand case to illustrate the potential and limits of the proposed methodology.

Let $\mathfrak{M}$ and $\mathfrak{J}$ be JBW$^*$-algebras admitting no central summands of type $I_1$ and $I_2,$ and let $\Phi: \mathfrak{M} \rightarrow \mathfrak{J}$ be a linear bijection preserving operator commutativity in both directions, that is, $$[x,\mathfrak{M},y] = 0 \Leftrightarrow [\Phi(x),\mathfrak{J},\Phi(y)] = 0,$$ for all $x,y\in \mathfrak{M}$, where the associator of three elements $a,b,c$ in $\mathfrak{M}$ is defined by $[a,b,c]:=(a\circ b)\circ c - (c\circ b)\circ a$. We prove that under these conditions there exist a unique invertible central element $z_0$ in $\mathfrak{J}$, a unique Jordan isomorphism $J: \mathfrak{M} \rightarrow \mathfrak{J}$, and a unique linear mapping $\beta$ from $\mathfrak{M}$ to the centre of $\mathfrak{J}$ satisfying $$ \Phi(x) = z_0 \circ J(x) + \beta(x), $$ for all $x\in \mathfrak{M}.$ Furthermore, if $\Phi$ is a symmetric mapping (i.e., $\Phi (x^*) = \Phi (x)^*$ for all $x\in \mathfrak{M}$), the element $z_0$ is self-adjoint, $J$ is a Jordan $^*$-isomorphism, and $\beta$ is a symmetric mapping too. In case that $\mathfrak{J}$ is a JBW$^*$-algebra admitting no central summands of type $I_1$, we also address the problem of describing the form of all symmetric bilinear mappings $B : \mathfrak{J}\times \mathfrak{J}\to \mathfrak{J}$ whose trace is associating (i.e., $[B(a,a),b,a] = 0,$ for all $a, b \in \mathfrak{J})$ providing a complete solution to it. We also determine the form of all associating linear maps on $\mathfrak{J}$.

One way to study the spread of disease is through mathematical models. The most successful models compartmentalize the host population according to their infectious stage, e.g., susceptible (S), infected (I), exposed (E), and recovered (R). The composition of these compartments leads to the SI, SIS, SIR, and SEIR models. In this Chapter, we present and compare three formulations of SI, SIS, SIR, and SEIR models in the framework of standard (integer operators), fractional (Caputo sense), and fractal derivatives (Hausdorff sense). As an application of the SI model, we study the evolution of AIDS cases in Bangladesh from 2001 to 2021. For this case, our simulations suggest that fractal formulation describes the data well. For the SIS model, we consider syphilis data from Brazil from 2006 to 2017. In this case, the three frameworks describe the data with good accuracy. We used data from Influenza A to adjust the SIR model in previous approaches and observed that the fractional formulation was better. The last application considers the COVID-19 data from India in the range 2020-04-10 to 2020-12-31 to adjust the parameters of the SEIR model. The standard formulation fits the data better than the other approaches. As a common result, all models exhibit steady solutions in the different formulations. The time to reach a steady solution is correlated to the considered approach. The standard and fractal formulations reach the steady state earlier when compared with the fractional formulation.

In this study, a new $\Delta$-evaluation method is introduced for solving a column permutation problem defined on a sparse binary matrix with the consecutive ones property. This problem models various $\mathcal{NP}$-hard problems in graph theory and industrial manufacturing contexts. The computational experiments compare the processing time of the $\Delta$-evaluation method with two other methods used in well-known local search procedures. The study considers a comprehensive set of instances of well-known problems, such as Gate Matrix Layout and Minimization of Open Stacks. The proposed evaluation method is generally competitive and particularly useful for large and dense instances. It can be easily integrated into local search and metaheuristic algorithms to improve solutions without significantly increasing processing time., Comment: technical report

Simulating physical systems with variational quantum algorithms is a well-studied approach, but it is challenging to implement in current devices due to demands in qubit number and circuit depth. We show how limited knowledge of the system, namely the entropy of its subsystems, its entanglement structure or certain symmetries, can be used to reduce the cost of these algorithms with entanglement forging. To do so, we simulate a Fermi-Hubbard one-dimensional chain with a parametrized hopping term, as well as atomic nuclei ${}^{28}$Ne and ${}^{60}$Ti with the nuclear shell model. Using an adaptive variational quantum eigensolver we find significant reductions in both the maximum number of qubits (up to one fourth) and the amount of two-qubit gates (over an order of magnitude) required in the quantum circuits. Our findings indicate that our method, entropy-driven entanglement forging, can be used to adjust quantum simulations to the limitations of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.

In this work, effects of constant and time-dependent vaccination rates on the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered-Susceptible (SEIRS) seasonal model are studied. Computing the Lyapunov exponent, we show that typical complex structures, such as shrimps, emerge for given combinations of constant vaccination rate and another model parameter. In some specific cases, the constant vaccination does not act as a chaotic suppressor and chaotic bands can exist for high levels of vaccination (e.g., $> 0.95$). Moreover, we obtain linear and non-linear relationships between one control parameter and constant vaccination to establish a disease-free solution. We also verify that the total infected number does not change whether the dynamics is chaotic or periodic. The introduction of a time-dependent vaccine is made by the inclusion of a periodic function with a defined amplitude and frequency. For this case, we investigate the effects of different amplitudes and frequencies on chaotic attractors, yielding low, medium, and high seasonality degrees of contacts. Depending on the parameters of the time-dependent vaccination function, chaotic structures can be controlled and become periodic structures. For a given set of parameters, these structures are accessed mostly via crisis and in some cases via period-doubling. After that, we investigate how the time-dependent vaccine acts in bi-stable dynamics when chaotic and periodic attractors coexist. We identify that this kind of vaccination acts as a control by destroying almost all the periodic basins. We explain this by the fact that chaotic attractors exhibit more desirable characteristics for epidemics than periodic ones in a bi-stable state.

The integration of Semantic Communications (SemCom) and edge computing in space networks enables the optimal allocation of the scarce energy, computing, and communication resources for data-intensive applications. We use Earth Observation (EO) as a canonical functionality of satellites and review its main characteristics and challenges. We identify the potential of the space segment, represented by a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, to serve as an edge layer for distributed intelligence. Based on that, propose a system architecture that supports semantic and goal-oriented applications for image reconstruction and object detection and localization. The simulation results show the intricate trade-offs among energy, time, and task-performance using a real dataset and State-of-the-Art (SoA) processing and communication parameters., Comment: Submitted for publication to IEEE Communications Magazine

This paper presents the work carried out by the ASASVIcomtech team, made up of researchers from Vicomtech and University of Granada, for the ASVspoof5 Challenge. The team has participated in both Track 1 (speech deepfake detection) and Track 2 (spoofing-aware speaker verification). This work started with an analysis of the challenge available data, which was regarded as an essential step to avoid later potential biases of the trained models, and whose main conclusions are presented here. With respect to the proposed approaches, a closed-condition system employing a deep complex convolutional recurrent architecture was developed for Track 1, although, unfortunately, no noteworthy results were achieved. On the other hand, different possibilities of open-condition systems, based on leveraging self-supervised models, augmented training data from previous challenges, and novel vocoders, were explored for both tracks, finally achieving very competitive results with an ensemble system., Comment: This paper was accepted at ASVspoof Workshop 2024

The last mile of unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) for semantic segmentation is the challenge of solving the syn-to-real domain gap. Recent UDA methods have progressed significantly, yet they often rely on strategies customized for synthetic single-source datasets (e.g., GTA5), which limits their generalisation to multi-source datasets. Conversely, synthetic multi-source datasets hold promise for advancing the last mile of UDA but remain underutilized in current research. Thus, we propose DEC, a flexible UDA framework for multi-source datasets. Following a divide-and-conquer strategy, DEC simplifies the task by categorizing semantic classes, training models for each category, and fusing their outputs by an ensemble model trained exclusively on synthetic datasets to obtain the final segmentation mask. DEC can integrate with existing UDA methods, achieving state-of-the-art performance on Cityscapes, BDD100K, and Mapillary Vistas, significantly narrowing the syn-to-real domain gap., Comment: Accepted by TIV

The development of Autonomous Driving (AD) systems in simulated environments like CARLA is crucial for advancing real-world automotive technologies. To drive innovation, CARLA introduced Leaderboard 2.0, significantly more challenging than its predecessor. However, current AD methods have struggled to achieve satisfactory outcomes due to a lack of sufficient ground truth data. Human driving logs provided by CARLA are insufficient, and previously successful expert agents like Autopilot and Roach, used for collecting datasets, have seen reduced effectiveness under these more demanding conditions. To overcome these data limitations, we introduce PRIBOOT, an expert agent that leverages limited human logs with privileged information. We have developed a novel BEV representation specifically tailored to meet the demands of this new benchmark and processed it as an RGB image to facilitate the application of transfer learning techniques, instead of using a set of masks. Additionally, we propose the Infraction Rate Score (IRS), a new evaluation metric designed to provide a more balanced assessment of driving performance over extended routes. PRIBOOT is the first model to achieve a Route Completion (RC) of 75% in Leaderboard 2.0, along with a Driving Score (DS) and IRS of 20% and 45%, respectively. With PRIBOOT, researchers can now generate extensive datasets, potentially solving the data availability issues that have hindered progress in this benchmark.

Virtual engines can generate dense depth maps for various synthetic scenes, making them invaluable for training depth estimation models. However, discrepancies between synthetic and real-world colors pose significant challenges for depth estimation in real-world scenes, especially in complex and uncertain environments encountered in unsupervised monocular depth estimation tasks. To address this issue, we propose Back2Color, a framework that predicts realistic colors from depth using a model trained on real-world data, thus transforming synthetic colors into their real-world counterparts. Additionally, we introduce the Syn-Real CutMix method for joint training with both real-world unsupervised and synthetic supervised depth samples, enhancing monocular depth estimation performance in real-world scenes. Furthermore, to mitigate the impact of non-rigid motions on depth estimation, we present an auto-learning uncertainty temporal-spatial fusion method (Auto-UTSF), which leverages the strengths of unsupervised learning in both temporal and spatial dimensions. We also designed VADepth, based on the Vision Attention Network, which offers lower computational complexity and higher accuracy than transformers. Our Back2Color framework achieves state-of-the-art performance on the Kitti dataset, as evidenced by improvements in performance metrics and the production of fine-grained details. This is particularly evident on more challenging datasets such as Cityscapes for unsupervised depth estimation.

The battle for a more secure Internet is waged on many fronts, including the most basic of networking protocols. Our focus is the IPv4 Identifier (IPID), an IPv4 header field as old as the Internet with an equally long history as an exploited side channel for scanning network properties, inferring off-path connections, and poisoning DNS caches. This article taxonomizes the 25-year history of IPID-based exploits and the corresponding changes to IPID selection methods. By mathematically analyzing these methods' correctness and security and empirically evaluating their performance, we reveal recommendations for best practice as well as shortcomings of current operating system implementations, emphasizing the value of systematic evaluations in network security., Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, 1 algorithm

Background: An important aspect of reducing nuclear many-body problems to few-body models is the presence of Pauli forbidden (PF) states, which are excluded in fully antisymmetrized calculations. Insufficient treatments of PF states in deformed halo nuclei underscore the need for model refinement. Purpose: We propose a new method utilizing Nilsson states as PF states in the orthogonality condition model, and investigate the impact of PF states on the properties of resonant states. Method: We investigate the scattering states of ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ within the Particle Rotor Model (PRM) framework based on a deformed ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ core and $p$ two-body model. We compare several methods for eliminating PF states and test them with the experimental data. Results: Our model successfully reproduces the experimental excitation function for elastic scattering cross section by properly eliminating PF states. The same calculation predicts the presence of a low-energy bump in the inelastic scattering excitation function, although its position is overestimated by about 1 MeV compared to experimental data. Conclusion: This study extends the applicability of the PRM, offering a comprehensive approach for exploring structures and reactions of loosely bound nuclei like ${}^8$B. Future integration with the continuum discretized coupled channels (CDCC) method promises to further advance the research., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

We identify a time crystal phase characterized by a frequency half of the driving frequency in disordered superconductors by employing the time dependent Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism at zero temperature with a periodically driven coupling constant. After a period of exponential increase of spatial inhomogeneities and exponential suppression of the order parameter amplitude, the time crystal develops islands of different sizes. Each of these islands is a time crystal with the same frequency albeit with a phase shift $\pi$ with respect to the homogeneous time crystal. After its emergence, the island gradually becomes smaller, though the phase shift persists, until it is abruptly synchronized at a time that it depends on its initial size. We find a critical disorder strength, still deep in the metallic phase, at which the time crystal phase terminates. For even stronger disorder, the order parameter oscillates with the driving frequency in regions where localization effects are not important., Comment: 30 pages, 23 figures

Let $\{C_i\}_{i\in \Gamma_1},$ and $\{D_j\}_{j\in \Gamma_2},$ be two families of Cartan factors such that all of them have dimension at least $2$, and consider the atomic JBW$^*$-triples $A=\bigoplus\limits_{i\in \Gamma_1}^{\ell_{\infty}} C_i$ and $B=\bigoplus\limits_{j\in \Gamma_2}^{\ell_{\infty}} D_j$. Let $\Delta :A \to B$ be a {\rm(}non-necessarily linear nor continuous{\rm)} bijection preserving the truncation of triple products in both directions, that is, $$\begin{aligned} \boxed{a \mbox{ is a truncation of } \{b,c,b\}} \Leftrightarrow \boxed{\Delta(a) \mbox{ is a truncation of } \{\Delta(b),\Delta(c),\Delta(b)\}} \end{aligned}$$ Assume additionally that the restriction of $\Delta$ to each rank-one Cartan factor in $A$, if any, is a continuous mapping. Then we show that $\Delta$ is an isometric real linear triple isomorphism. We also study some general properties of bijections preserving the truncation of triple products in both directions between general JB$^*$-triples.

Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) aims to transfer knowledge learned from a labeled source domain to an unlabeled target domain. While UDA methods for synthetic to real-world domains (synth-to-real) show remarkable performance in tasks such as semantic segmentation and object detection, very few were proposed for instance segmentation in the field of vision-based autonomous driving, and the existing ones are based on a suboptimal baseline, which severely limits the performance. In this paper, we introduce UDA4Inst, a strong baseline of synth-to-real UDA for instance segmentation. UDA4Inst adopts cross-domain bidirectional data mixing at the instance level to effectively utilize data from both source and target domains. Rare-class balancing and category module training are also employed to further improve the performance. It is worth noting that we are the first to demonstrate results on two new synth-to-real instance segmentation benchmarks, with 39.0 mAP on UrbanSyn->Cityscapes and 35.7 mAP on Synscapes->Cityscapes. Our method outperforms the source-only Mask2Former model by +7 mAP and +7.6 mAP, respectively. On SYNTHIA->Cityscapes, our method improves the source-only Mask2Former by +6.7 mAP, achieving state-of-the-art results.Our code will be released soon.

In a recent paper we showed that a subspace of a real JBW*-triple is an M-summand if and only if it is a weak*-closed triple ideal. As a consequence, M-ideals of real JB*-triples, including real C*-algebras, real JB*-algebras and real TROs, correspond to norm-closed triple ideals. In the present paper we extend this result to (possibly non-selfadjoint) real operator algebras and Jordan operator algebras, where the argument is necessarily different. We also give simple characterizations of one-sided M-ideals in real operator algebras, and give some applications to that theory., Comment: 17 pages

Vision-based end-to-end driving models trained by imitation learning can lead to affordable solutions for autonomous driving. However, training these well-performing models usually requires a huge amount of data, while still lacking explicit and intuitive activation maps to reveal the inner workings of these models while driving. In this paper, we study how to guide the attention of these models to improve their driving quality and obtain more intuitive activation maps by adding a loss term during training using salient semantic maps. In contrast to previous work, our method does not require these salient semantic maps to be available during testing time, as well as removing the need to modify the model's architecture to which it is applied. We perform tests using perfect and noisy salient semantic maps with encouraging results in both, the latter of which is inspired by possible errors encountered with real data. Using CIL++ as a representative state-of-the-art model and the CARLA simulator with its standard benchmarks, we conduct experiments that show the effectiveness of our method in training better autonomous driving models, especially when data and computational resources are scarce., Comment: Accepted for publication at the 35th IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV 2024)

This work presents a theoretical analysis of the motion of a tracer colloid driven by a time-dependent force through a viscoelastic fluid. The recoil of the colloid after application of a strong force is determined. It provides insights into the elastic forces stored locally in the fluid and their weakening by plastic processes. We generalize the mode coupling theory of microrheology to include time-dependent forces. After deriving the equations of motion for the tracer correlator and simplifying to a schematic model we apply the theory to a switch-off force protocol that features the recoiling of the tracer after cessation of the driving. We also include Langevin dynamics simulations to compare to the results of the theory. A non-monotonic trend of the recoil amplitude is found in the theory and confirmed in the simulations. The linear-response approximation is also verified in the small-force regime. While the overall agreement between simulation and theory is good, simulation shows that the theory predicts a too strong non-monotonous dependence of the recoil distance on the applied force., Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures

We study the shape coexistence in the nucleus $^{28}$Si with the nuclear shell model using numerical diagonalizations complemented with variational calculations based on the projected generator-coordinate method. The theoretical electric quadrupole moments and transitions as well as the collective wavefunctions indicate that the standard USDB interaction in the $sd$ shell describes well the ground-state oblate rotational band, but misses the experimental prolate band. Guided by the quasi-SU(3) model, we show that the prolate band can be reproduced in the $sd$ shell by reducing the energy of the $0d_{3/2}$ orbital. Alternatively, in the extended $sdpf$ configuration space a modification of the SDPF-NR interaction that accommodates cross-shell excitations also reproduces the oblate and prolate bands. Finally, we address the possibility of superdeformation in $^{28}$Si within the $sdpf$ space. Our results indicate that superdeformed structures appear at about $18$-$20$~MeV., Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Improved version following the reviewer's comments

Dengue is a viral vector-borne infectious disease that affects many countries worldwide, infecting around 390 million people per year. The main outbreaks occur in subtropical and tropical countries. We study here the influence of climate on dengue in Natal (2016-2019), Brazil, Iquitos (2001-2012), Peru, and Barranquilla (2011-2016), Colombia. For the analysis and simulations, we apply Machine Learning (ML) techniques, especially the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. In addition, regarding a feature in the ML technique, we analyze three possibilities: only dengue cases (D); climate and dengue cases (CD); humidity and dengue cases (HD). Depending on the city, our results show that the climate data can improve or not the forecast. For instance, for Natal, D induces a better forecast. For Iquitos, it is better to use CD. Nonetheless, for Barranquilla, the forecast is better, when we include cases and humidity data. For Natal, when we use more than 64\% and less than 80\% of the time series for training, we obtain results with correlation coefficients ($r$) among 0.917 and 0.949 and mean absolute errors (MAE) among 57.783 and 71.768 for the D case in forecasting. The optimal range for Iquitos is obtained when 79\% up to 88\% of the time series is considered for training. For this case, the best case is CD, having a minimum $r$ equal to 0.850 and maximum 0.887, while values of MAE oscillate among 2.780 and 4.156. For Barranquilla, the optimal range occurs between 72\% until 82\% of length training. In this case, the better approach is HD, where the measures exhibit a minimum $r$ equal to 0.942 and a maximum 0.953, while the minimum and maximum MAE vary between 6.085 and 6.669. We show that the forecast of dengue cases is a challenging problem and climate variables do not always help. However, when we include the mentioned climate variables, the most important one is humidity.

This paper introduces a new hierarchical facility location model with three levels: first-level facilities which manufacture different products, second-level facilities which act as warehouses and a third-level consisting of the clients who demand the products that have been manufactured in the first level and stored in the second level. In this model, called multi-product maximal covering second-level facility location problem (SL-MCFLP), the aim is to decide the location of the second-level facilities and the products to be stored in each of them maximizing the overall clients' satisfaction with respect their coverage. To deal with this model, we introduce a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) which is reinforced by some families of valid inequalities. Since some of these families have an exponential number of constraints, separation algorithms are proposed. In addition, three variants of a matheuristic procedure are developed. Computational studies are included, showing the potentials and limits of the formulation and the effectiveness of the heuristic.

This paper deals with an extension of the hub line location problem considering demand elasticity with respect to travel times. The proposed model aims to capture the impact the hub network topology has on demand. The objective is to maximize the total revenue generated by each unit of demand using the hub line. We propose mixed-integer nonlinear formulations to model this problem. We study some properties of the nonlinear objective function associated with these formulations. Due to the inherent complexity involved in solving these nonlinear formulations with state-of-the-art solvers, we also present alternative mixed-integer linear programming formulations. Computational results compare the proposed formulations and the benefits of the presented model using benchmark instances commonly used in hub location. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis study is carried out with real data from the city of Montreal, Canada, to demonstrate the added value of incorporating demand elasticity when using the proposed model for public transportation planning.

Let $\mathcal{M}$ be a Banach bimodule over an associative Banach algebra $\mathcal{A}$, and let $F: \mathcal{A}\to \mathcal{M}$ be a linear mapping. Three main uses of the term \emph{generalized derivation} are identified in the available literature, namely, ($\checkmark$) $F$ is a generalized derivation of the first type if there exists a derivation $ d : \mathcal{A}\to \mathcal{M}^{**}$ satisfying $F(a b ) = F(a) b + a d(b),$ for all $a,b\in \mathcal{A}$. ($\checkmark$) $F$ is a generalized derivation of the second type if there exists an element $\xi\in \mathcal{M}^{**}$ satisfying $F(a b ) = F(a) b + a F(b) - a \xi b,$ for all $a,b\in \mathcal{A}$. ($\checkmark$) $F$ is a generalized derivation of the third type if there exist two (non-necessarily linear) mappings $G,H : \mathcal{A}\to \mathcal{M}$ satisfying $F(a b ) = G(a) b + a H(b),$ for all $a,b\in \mathcal{A}$. These three types of maps are not, in general, equivalent. Although the first two notions are well studied when $\mathcal{A}$ is a C$^*$-algebra, their connections with the third one have not yet been explored. In this note we prove that every generalized derivation of the third type from a C$^*$-algebra $\mathcal{A}$ to a Banach $\mathcal{A}$-bimodule $\mathcal{M}$ is automatically continuous. We also show that every (continuous) generalized derivation of the third type from $\mathcal{A}$ to $\mathcal{M}$ is a generalized derivation of the first and second type. Consequently, the three notions coincide in this case. We also explore some concepts of generalized Jordan derivations on a C$^*$-algebra and establish some continuity properties for them.

A distinct feature of Hermitian quantum chaotic dynamics is the exponential increase of certain out-of-time-order-correlation (OTOC) functions around the Ehrenfest time with a rate given by a Lyapunov exponent. Physically, the OTOCs describe the growth of quantum uncertainty that crucially depends on the nature of the quantum motion. Here, we employ the OTOC in order to provide a precise definition of dissipative quantum chaos. For this purpose, we compute analytically the Lyapunov exponent for the vectorized formulation of the large $q$-limit of a $q$-body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model coupled to a Markovian bath. These analytic results are confirmed by an explicit numerical calculation of the Lyapunov exponent for several values of $q \geq 4$ based on the solutions of the Schwinger-Dyson and Bethe-Salpeter equations. We show that the Lyapunov exponent decreases monotonically as the coupling to the bath increases and eventually becomes negative at a critical value of the coupling signaling a transition to a dynamics which is no longer quantum chaotic. Therefore, a positive Lyapunov exponent is a defining feature of dissipative many-body quantum chaos. The observation of the breaking of the exponential growth for sufficiently strong coupling suggests that dissipative quantum chaos may require in certain cases a sufficiently weak coupling to the environment., Comment: 32 pages, 4 figures, we have added references and made minor corrections

Biclustering, also called co-clustering, block clustering, or two-way clustering, involves the simultaneous clustering of both the rows and columns of a data matrix into distinct groups, such that the rows and columns within a group display similar patterns. As a model problem for biclustering, we consider the $k$-densest-disjoint biclique problem, whose goal is to identify $k$ disjoint complete bipartite subgraphs (called bicliques) of a given weighted complete bipartite graph such that the sum of their densities is maximized. To address this problem, we present a tailored branch-and-cut algorithm. For the upper bound routine, we consider a semidefinite programming relaxation and propose valid inequalities to strengthen the bound. We solve this relaxation in a cutting-plane fashion using a first-order method. For the lower bound, we design a maximum weight matching rounding procedure that exploits the solution of the relaxation solved at each node. Computational results on both synthetic and real-world instances show that the proposed algorithm can solve instances approximately 20 times larger than those handled by general-purpose solvers.

This paper introduces a very general discrete covering location model that accounts for uncertainty and time-dependent aspects. A MILP formulation is proposed for the problem. Afterwards, it is observed that most of the models existing in the literature related with covering location can be considered as particular cases of this formulation. In order to tackle large instances of this problem a Lagrangian relaxation based heuristic is developed. A computational study is addressed to check the potentials and limits of the formulation and some variants proposed for the problem, as well as to evaluate the heuristic. Finally, different measures to report the relevance of considering a multi-period stochastic setting are studied.

This work deals with the probabilistic p-center problem, which aims at minimizing the expected maximum distance between any site with demand and its center, considering that each site has demand with a specific probability. The problem is of interest when emergencies may occur at predefined sites with known probabilities. For this problem we propose and analyze different formulations as well as a Variable Neighborhood Search heuristic. Computational tests are reported, showing the potentials and limits of each formulation, the impact of their enhancements, and the effectiveness of the heuristic.

This paper proposes a robust classification model, based on support vector machine (SVM), which simultaneously deals with outliers detection and feature selection. The classifier is built considering the ramp loss margin error and it includes a budget constraint to limit the number of selected features. The search of this classifier is modeled using a mixed-integer formulation with big M parameters. Two different approaches (exact and heuristic) are proposed to solve the model. The heuristic approach is validated by comparing the quality of the solutions provided by this approach with the exact approach. In addition, the classifiers obtained with the heuristic method are tested and compared with existing SVM-based models to demonstrate their efficiency.

This paper considers various models of support vector machines with ramp loss, these being an efficient and robust tool in supervised classification for the detection of outliers. The exact solution approaches for the resulting optimization problem are of high demand for large datasets. Hence, the goal of this paper is to develop algorithms that provide efficient methodologies to exactly solve these optimization problems. These approaches are based on three strategies for obtaining tightened values of the big M parameters included in the formulation of the problem. Two of them require solving a sequence of continuous problems, while the third uses the Lagrangian relaxation to tighten the bounds. The proposed resolution methods are valid for the l1-norm and l2-norm ramp loss formulations. They were tested and compared with existing solution methods in simulated and real-life datasets, showing the efficiency of the developed methodology.

Spiral waves are spatial-temporal patterns that can emerge in different systems as heart tissues, chemical oscillators, ecological networks and the brain. These waves have been identified in the neocortex of turtles, rats, and humans, particularly during sleep-like states. Although their functions in cognitive activities remain until now poorly understood, these patterns are related to cortical activity modulation and contribute to cortical processing. In this work, we construct a neuronal network layer based on the spatial distribution of pyramidal neurons. Our main goal is to investigate how local connectivity and coupling strength are associated with the emergence of spiral waves. Therefore, we propose a trustworthy method capable of detecting different wave patterns, based on local and global phase order parameters. As a result, we find that the range of connection radius (R) plays a crucial role in the appearance of spiral waves. For R < 20 {\mu}m, only asynchronous activity is observed due to small number of connections. The coupling strength (gsyn ) greatly influences the pattern transitions for higher R, where spikes and bursts firing patterns can be observed in spiral and non-spiral waves. Finally, we show that for some values of R and gsyn bistable states of wave patterns are obtained.