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Problem definition: Drones, despite being acknowledged as a transformative force in the city logistics sector, are unable to execute the \textit{last-meter delivery} (unloading goods directly to customers' doorsteps) due to airspace restrictions and safety concerns. To leverage advancements and overcome the limitations of drones in providing intra-city express services, we introduce a coordinated drone-courier logistics system where drones operate within a closed network among vertiports, while couriers connect customers to the drone delivery system. This paper aims to shed light on this coordinated system in terms of system feasibility, network interactivity, and long-term sustainability. Methodology/Results: We develop an integrated optimization model to optimize the network planning of the coordinated logistics system. The interplay between network planning and tactical operations is mirrored by a queueing network model, resulting in the nonlinear and nonconvex (partially convex and partially concave) feasible region of the optimization model. An iterative exact algorithm that tightens lower and upper bounds by adaptively refining the linear approximations of nonlinear constraints is developed to provide optimality-guaranteed solutions with finite convergence. The computational experiments demonstrate the scalability and robustness of our algorithm across various network configurations and scenarios.Managerial implications: The case study, based on a real-world dataset from SF Express, a logistics giant in China, validates that the coordinated logistics system efficiently attains cost and time savings by leveraging the effective turnover of drones and the coordination between drones and couriers. The optimal network design features a concentrated structure, streamlining demand consolidation and reducing deadhead repositioning.

In this note, we give several characterizations of left pure-semisimple in terms of the (pre)envelope, (pre)cover, direct limits, direct sums, inverse limits and direct products properties of pure-projective modules or pure-injective modules.

Secure multiparty computation enables collaborative computations across multiple users while preserving individual privacy, which has a wide range of applications in finance, machine learning and healthcare. Secure multiparty computation can be realized using oblivious transfer as a primitive function. In this paper, we present an experimental implementation of a quantum-secure quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) protocol using an adapted quantum key distribution system combined with a bit commitment scheme, surpassing previous approaches only secure in the noisy storage model. We demonstrate the first practical application of the QOT protocol by solving the private set intersection, a prime example of secure multiparty computation, where two parties aim to find common elements in their datasets without revealing any other information. In our experiments, two banks can identify common suspicious accounts without disclosing any other data. This not only proves the experimental functionality of QOT, but also showcases its real-world commercial applications.

In recent years, numerous Transformer-based models have been applied to long-term time-series forecasting (LTSF) tasks. However, recent studies with linear models have questioned their effectiveness, demonstrating that simple linear layers can outperform sophisticated Transformer-based models. In this work, we review and categorize existing Transformer-based models into two main types: (1) modifications to the model structure and (2) modifications to the input data. The former offers scalability but falls short in capturing inter-sequential information, while the latter preprocesses time-series data but is challenging to use as a scalable module. We propose $\textbf{sTransformer}$, which introduces the Sequence and Temporal Convolutional Network (STCN) to fully capture both sequential and temporal information. Additionally, we introduce a Sequence-guided Mask Attention mechanism to capture global feature information. Our approach ensures the capture of inter-sequential information while maintaining module scalability. We compare our model with linear models and existing forecasting models on long-term time-series forecasting, achieving new state-of-the-art results. We also conducted experiments on other time-series tasks, achieving strong performance. These demonstrate that Transformer-based structures remain effective and our model can serve as a viable baseline for time-series tasks.

In this paper, we introduce and study the class of $\phi$-$w$-P-flat modules, which can be seen as generalizations of both $\phi$-P-flat modules and $w$-P-flat modules. In particular, we obtain that the class of $\phi$-$w$-P-flat modules is covering. We also utilize the class of $\phi$-$w$-P-flat modules to characterize $\phi$-von Neumann regular rings, strong $\phi$-rings and $\phi$-PvMRs.

Existing operations research (OR) models and tools play indispensable roles in smart-city operations, yet their practical implementation is limited by the complexity of modeling and deficiencies in optimization proficiency. To generate more relevant and accurate solutions to users' requirements, we propose a large language model (LLM)-based agent ("City-LEO") that enhances the efficiency and transparency of city management through conversational interactions. Specifically, to accommodate diverse users' requirements and enhance computational tractability, City-LEO leverages LLM's logical reasoning capabilities on prior knowledge to scope down large-scale optimization problems efficiently. In the human-like decision process, City-LEO also incorporates End-to-end (E2E) model to synergize the prediction and optimization. The E2E framework be conducive to coping with environmental uncertainties and involving more query-relevant features, and then facilitates transparent and interpretable decision-making process. In case study, we employ City-LEO in the operations management of e-bike sharing (EBS) system. The numerical results demonstrate that City-LEO has superior performance when benchmarks against the full-scale optimization problem. With less computational time, City-LEO generates more satisfactory and relevant solutions to the users' requirements, and achieves lower global suboptimality without significantly compromising accuracy. In a broader sense, our proposed agent offers promise to develop LLM-embedded OR tools for smart-city operations management., Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables

Let $R$ be a commutative ring. An $R$-module $M$ is said to be almost projective if ${\rm Ext}^1_R(M, N) = 0$ for any $R_{\mathfrak{m}}$-module $N$ and any maximal ideal $\mathfrak{m}$ of $R$. In this paper, we investigate rings $R$ over which every $R$-module has an almost projective envelope. We also characterize rings $R$ over which every $R$-module has an almost projective envelope with some special properties.

Real-world scenarios are usually accompanied by continuously appearing classes with scare labeled samples, which require the machine learning model to incrementally learn new classes and maintain the knowledge of base classes. In this Few-Shot Class-Incremental Learning (FSCIL) scenario, existing methods either introduce extra learnable components or rely on a frozen feature extractor to mitigate catastrophic forgetting and overfitting problems. However, we find a tendency for existing methods to misclassify the samples of new classes into base classes, which leads to the poor performance of new classes. In other words, the strong discriminability of base classes distracts the classification of new classes. To figure out this intriguing phenomenon, we observe that although the feature extractor is only trained on base classes, it can surprisingly represent the semantic similarity between the base and unseen new classes. Building upon these analyses, we propose a simple yet effective Training-frEE calibratioN (TEEN) strategy to enhance the discriminability of new classes by fusing the new prototypes (i.e., mean features of a class) with weighted base prototypes. In addition to standard benchmarks in FSCIL, TEEN demonstrates remarkable performance and consistent improvements over baseline methods in the few-shot learning scenario. Code is available at: https://github.com/wangkiw/TEEN, Comment: Accepted to NeurIPS 2023. Code is available at: https://github.com/wangkiw/TEEN

The charge equilibration of laser-accelerated carbon ion beams in 2 mg/cm3 foam target was investigated experimentally. The ions were generated through target normal sheath acceleration mechanism in laser-foil interaction scheme. This allows to get the equilibrium charge state in wide energy range near Bragg peak within a single shot. By using foam, the charge equilibration measurement in density regime between gas and solid state was firstly reached out experimentally. It was found that the theoretical predictions with tabulated cross section data for gas target greatly underestimated the charge states. The experimental data are in close agreement with both semi-empirical formula as well as rate equation predictions based on ion-solid interactions. The important role of target density effects that increase the ionization probability and decrease the electron capture probability through frequent multi-collisions in foam are demonstrated. The double electron processes are shown to have little influence on the average charge states. The findings are essential for high energy density physics research where the foams are widely used, and have impacts on a broad range of applications in medical, biological and material fields. The method also provides a new approach to investigate the interaction mechanism of swift heavy ions in matter by taking advantage of the laser-accelerated short-pulse wide-energy range ions.

A novel intense beam-driven scheme for high yield of the tri-alpha reaction 11B(p,{\alpha})2{\alpha} was investigated. We used a foam target made of cellulose triacetate (TAC, C_9H_{16}O_8) doped with boron. It was then heated volumetrically by soft X-ray radiation from a laser heated hohlraum and turned into a homogenous, and long living plasma. We employed a picosecond laser pulse to generate a high-intensity energetic proton beam via the well-known Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) mechanism. We observed up to 10^{10}/sr {\alpha} particles per laser shot. This constitutes presently the highest yield value normalized to the laser energy on target. The measured fusion yield per proton exceeds the classical expectation of beam-target reactions by up to four orders of magnitude under high proton intensities. This enhancement is attributed to the strong electric fields and nonequilibrium thermonuclear fusion reactions as a result of the new method. Our approach shows opportunities to pursue ignition of aneutronic fusion.