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This article explores Multimodal Analytics' use in assessing communication within agile software development, particularly through planning poker, to understand collaborative behavior. Multimodal Analytics examines verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal communication, crucial for effective collaboration in software engineering, which demands efficient communication, cooperation, and coordination. The study focuses on how planning poker influences speaking time and attention among team members by utilizing advanced audiovisual data analysis technologies. Results indicate that while planning poker doesn't significantly change total speaking or attention time, it leads to a more equitable speaking time distribution, highlighting its benefit in enhancing equitable team participation. These findings emphasize planning poker's role in improving software team collaboration and suggest multimodal analytics' potential to explore new aspects of team communication. This research contributes to better understanding coordination techniques' impact in software development and team education, proposing future investigations into optimizing team collaboration and performance through alternative coordination techniques and multimodal analysis across different collaborative settings.

We introduce a class of quantum non-Markovian processes -- dubbed process trees -- that exhibit polynomially decaying temporal correlations and memory distributed across time scales. This class of processes is described by a tensor network with tree-like geometry whose component tensors are (1) {causality-preserving} maps (superprocesses) and (2) {locality-preserving} temporal change of scale transformations. We show that the long-range correlations in this class of processes tends to originate almost entirely from memory effects, and can accommodate genuinely quantum power-law correlations in time. Importantly, this class allows efficient computation of multi-time correlation functions. To showcase the potential utility of this model-agnostic class for numerical simulation of physical models, we show how it can approximate the strong memory dynamics of the paradigmatic spin-boson model, in term of arbitrary multitime features. In contrast to an equivalently costly matrix product operator (MPO) representation, the ansatz produces a fiducial characterization of the relevant physics. Our work lays the foundation for the development of more efficient numerical techniques in the field of strongly interacting open quantum systems, as well as the theoretical development of a temporal renormalization group scheme., Comment: 19+8 pages, 10 figures, comments welcome!

In this paper we study properties of the Chow ring of rational homogeneous varieties of classical type, more concretely, effective zero divisors of low codimension, and a related invariant called effective good divisibility. This information is then used to study the question of (non)existence of nonconstant maps among these varieties, generalizing previous results for projective spaces and Grassmannians., Comment: 21 pages

We give an almost complete classification of non-big Ulrich vector bundles on fourfolds. This allows to classify them in the case of Picard rank one fourfolds, of Mukai fourfolds and in the case of Del Pezzo $n$-folds for $n \le 4$. We also classify Ulrich bundles with non-big determinant on Del Pezzo and Mukai $n$-folds, $n \ge 2$., Comment: The paper arXiv:2201.06019v1 has been split into two papers: arXiv:2201.06019v2 and the current paper. Together they supersede arXiv:2201.06019v1. v2: several changes according to referee's requests. Added two tables at the end of the paper

We present a study of the stellar populations of globular clusters (GCs) in the Virgo Cluster core with a homogeneous spectroscopic catalog of 692 GCs within a major axis distance $R_{\rm maj} = $ 840 kpc from M87. We investigate radial and azimuthal variations in the mean age, total metallicity, [Fe/H], and $\alpha$-element abundance, of blue (metal-poor) and red (metal-rich) GCs using their co-added spectra. We find that the blue GCs have a steep radial gradient in [Z/H] within $R_{\rm maj} =$ 165 kpc, with roughly equal contributions from [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe], and flat gradients beyond. By contrast, the red GCs show a much shallower gradient in [Z/H], which is entirely driven by [Fe/H]. We use GC-tagged Illustris simulations to demonstrate an accretion scenario where more massive satellites (with more metal- and $\alpha$-rich GCs) sink further into the central galaxy than less massive ones, and where the gradient flattening occurs because of the low GC occupation fraction of low-mass dwarfs disrupted at larger distances. The dense environment around M87 may also cause the steep [$\alpha$/Fe] gradient of the blue GCs, mirroring what is seen in the dwarf galaxy population. The progenitors of red GCs have a narrower mass range than those of blue GCs, which makes their gradients shallower. We also explore spatial inhomogeneity in GC abundances, finding that the red GCs to the northwest of M87 are slightly more metal-rich. Future observations of GC stellar population gradients will be useful diagnostics of halo merger histories., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

On any smooth $n$-dimensional variety we give a pretty precise picture of rank $r$ Ulrich vector bundles with numerical dimension at most $\frac{n}{2}+r-1$. Also, we classify non-big Ulrich vector bundles on quadrics and on the Del Pezzo fourfold of degree $6$., Comment: The previous version of arXiv:2201.06019 has been split into two papers. This version supersedes the first part, the second part will appear soon. v3: a few small improvements, as suggested by anonymous referee

The photoluminescence intermittency (blinking) of quantum dots is interesting because it is an easily-measured quantum process whose transition statistics cannot be explained by Fermi's Golden Rule. Commonly, the transition statistics are power-law distributed, implying that quantum dots possess at least trivial memories. By investigating the temporal correlations in the blinking data, we demonstrate with high statistical confidence that quantum dot blinking data has non-trivial memory, which we define to be statistical complexity greater than one. We show that this memory cannot be discovered using the transition distribution. We show by simulation that this memory does not arise from standard data manipulations. Finally, we conclude that at least three physical mechanisms can explain the measured non-trivial memory: 1) Storage of state information in the chemical structure of a quantum dot; 2) The existence of more than two intensity levels in a quantum dot; and 3) The overlap in the intensity distributions of the quantum dot states, which arises from fundamental photon statistics., Comment: Added supplementary quantum dot plots in source directory

We classify Ulrich vector bundles that are not big on smooth complex surfaces and threefolds., Comment: v2: minor correction in a proof. Result unchanged

We present a study of ultra compact dwarf (UCD) galaxies in the Virgo cluster based mainly on imaging from the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS). Using $\sim$100 deg$^{2}$ of $u^*giz$ imaging, we have identified more than 600 candidate UCDs, from the core of Virgo out to its virial radius. Candidates have been selected through a combination of magnitudes, ellipticities, colors, surface brightnesses, half-light radii and, when available, radial velocities. Candidates were also visually validated from deep NGVS images. Subsamples of varying completeness and purity have been defined to explore the properties of UCDs and compare to those of globular clusters and the nuclei of dwarf galaxies with the aim of delineating the nature and origins of UCDs. From a surface density map, we find the UCDs to be mostly concentrated within Virgo's main subclusters, around its brightest galaxies. We identify several subsamples of UCDs -- i.e., the brightest, largest, and those with the most pronounced and/or asymmetric envelopes -- that could hold clues to the origin of UCDs and possible evolutionary links with dwarf nuclei. We find some evidence for such a connection from the existence of diffuse envelopes around some UCDs, and comparisons of radial distributions of UCDs and nucleated galaxies within the cluster., Comment: 70 pages, 24 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in ApJS

We study the subvariety of singular sections, the discriminant, of a base point free linear system $|L|$ on a smooth toric variety $X$. On one hand we describe pairs $(X,L)$ for which the discriminant is of low dimension. Precisely, we collect some bounds on this dimension and classify those pairs whose dimension differs the bound less than or equal to two. On the other hand we study the degree of the discriminant for some relevant families on polarized toric varieties, describing their minimal values and the region of the ample cone where this minimal is attained., Comment: Final version. To appear in Communications in Algebra

The successful application of titanium oxide-graphene hybrids in the fields of photocatalysis, photovoltaics and photodetection strongly depends on the interfacial contact between both materials. The need to provide a good coupling between the enabling conductor and the photoactive phase prompted us to directly grow conducting graphenic structures on TiO2 crystals. We here report on the direct synthesis of tailored graphenic structures by using Plasma Assisted Chemical Vapour Deposition that present a clean junction with the prototypical titanium oxide (110) surface. Chemical analysis of the interface indicates chemical bonding between both materials. Photocurrent measurements under UV light illumination manifest that the charge transfer across the interface is efficient. Moreover, the influence of the synthesis atmosphere, gas precursor (C2H2) and diluents (Ar, O2), on the interface and on the structure of the as-grown graphenic material is assessed. The inclusion of O2 promotes vertical growth of partially oxidized carbon nanodots/rods with controllable height and density. The deposition with Ar results in continuous graphenic films with low resistivity (6.8x10-6 ohm x m). The synthesis protocols developed here are suitable to produce tailored carbon-semiconductor structures on a variety of practical substrates as thin films, pillars or nanoparticles., Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, original research paper