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We present a study of the multiwavelength (MW) variability of the blazar AO 0235+164 based on the radio-to-$\gamma$-ray data covering a long time period from 1997 to 2023. The radio data are represented by the 1-22 GHz measurements from the RATAN-600 radio telescope, the 5 and 8 GHz data from the RT-32 telescopes, and the 37 GHz data from the RT-22 telescope. The optical measurements in the $R$-band were collected with the 1-m Zeiss-1000 and 0.5-m AS-500/2 telescopes. Additionally we used the archive data at 230~GHz from the SMA and the $\gamma$-ray data in the 0.1-100 GeV band from the Fermi-LAT point source 4FGL-DR2 catalogue. The variability properties during four epochs containing major flares and one epoch of relatively low activity were analysed. A significant correlation ($\geq\!2\sigma$) between the radio, optical, and $\gamma$-ray bands is found for all these periods with time delays from 0 to 1.7 yrs. The relation between time delay and frequency is described by a linear law with a negative slope of -10 day/GHz. The discovered properties of MW variability for the low activity period and for flaring states suggest that the mechanisms dominating the radio-$\gamma$-ray variations are not substantially different. The detected quasi-periodic oscillations of about 6 and 2 years are tentative, as the time span of the observations includes fewer than 4 full cycles for the radio and optical data and only about 3 cycles for the Fermi-LAT data. The physical parameters of the radio jet were obtained using the Hedgehog model applied to the average radio spectrum of AO 0235+164 in the range 0.1-300 GHz. The effectiveness of replacing electrons with protons in the synchrotron radio emission of relativistic jets is shown for describing the nature of blazars and the generation of high energy neutrinos., Comment: Accepted 2024 October 30 for publication in MNRAS

This work continues our research of connection between the long-term activity of stars and their planets. We analyze new data on the previously considered two dozen solar-type stars with identified cycles, adding the results of studying the long-term variability of two more solar-type G stars and 15 cooler M dwarfs with planets. If the cyclic activity is determined by a strong tidal influence of the planet, then the cycle duration of the star should be synchronized with the period of orbital revolution of the planet. We calculate the gravitational effect of planets on their parent stars. The results obtained confirm the earlier conclusion that exoplanets do not influence the formation of the stellar cycle. We examine the change in the position of the barycenter of the solar system relative to the center of the Sun over 420 years. A comparison of these data with the most reliable 120-year SSN (sunspot number) series as the index of solar activity has shown that they are not synchronized., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables

We present a catalog of 150 variable stars, including 13 stars with exoplanet candidates. 37 stars were identified as variables for the first time. As a result of a 2.5-year photometric survey of exoplanets, we have obtained and analyzed light curves for almost 50 thousand stars in fields around white dwarfs WD 0009+501 and GRW +708247. Here we describe observations and data processing, the search for variable stars, their cross-identification with other catalogs and classification. The catalog is published in open access and contains the primary classification of variability, light curves and their parameters., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables

We theoretically study how differential privacy interacts with both individual and group fairness in binary linear classification. More precisely, we focus on the output perturbation mechanism, a classic approach in privacy-preserving machine learning. We derive high-probability bounds on the level of individual and group fairness that the perturbed models can achieve compared to the original model. Hence, for individual fairness, we prove that the impact of output perturbation on the level of fairness is bounded but grows with the dimension of the model. For group fairness, we show that this impact is determined by the distribution of so-called angular margins, that is signed margins of the non-private model re-scaled by the norm of each example.

The development of a corrector for low-frequency variations in the star image at the input of ESPriF, the echelle spectropolarimeter of the BTA primary focus, is reported. New technical solutions have made it possible to extend the operating frequency range to 10Hz for stars brighter than 13^m., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures

We present an optical-to-radio study of the BL Lac object S4 0954+658 observations during 1998-2023. The measurements were obtained with the SAO RAS Zeiss-1000 1-m and AS-500/2 0.5-m telescopes in 2003-2023, with the RATAN-600 radio telescope at 1.25 (0.96, 1.1), 2.3, 4.7 (3.7, 3.9), 8.2 (7.7), 11.2, 22.3 (21.7) GHz in 1998-2023, with the IAA RAS RT-32 Zelenchukskaya and Badary telescopes at 5.05 and 8.63 GHz in 2020--2023, and with the RT-22 single-dish telescope of CrAO RAS at 36.8 GHz in 2009-2023. In this period the blazar had been showing extremely high broadband activity with the variability amplitude of flux densities up to 70-100% both in the optical and radio domains. In the period of 2014-2023 the blazar had been showing the historically highest activity in the radio wavelengths, and we detected multiple radio flares of varying amplitude and duration. The large flares last on average from 0.3 to 1 year at 22-36.8 GHz and slightly longer at 5-11.2 GHz. The optical flares are shorter and last 7-50 days. In the most active epoch of 2018-2023 the characteristic time scale $\tau$ of variation at 5-22 GHz is about 100 days and about 1000 days for the state with lower activity in 2009-2014. We found a general correlation between the optical, radio, and $\gamma$-ray flux variations, which suggests that we observe the same photon population from different emission regions. We estimated linear size of this region as 0.5-2 pc for different epochs. A broadband two components radio spectrum of S4 0954+658 jet was modelled by using both electrons and protons as emitting particles. It is shown that the synchrotron radio waves in this AGN may be generated by relativistic protons., Comment: Published in Astrophysical Bulletin Vol.78, N4 (2023)

Many real systems exhibit the processes of growth and shrink. In this paper, we propose a network evolution model based on the simultaneous application of both node addition and deletion rules. To obtain a higher clustering that is present in real social networks, the model employs the triadic formation step at each iteration. The results show that the degree distribution in the networks generated based on this model follows a power law.

Here we present eight new candidates for exoplanets detected by the transit method at the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Photometric observations were performed with a 50-cm robotic telescope during the second half of 2020. We detected transits with depths of $\Delta m = 0.056-0.173^m$ and periods $P = 18.8^h-8.3^d$ in the light curves of stars with magnitudes of $m = 14.3-18.8^m$. All considered stars are classified as dwarfs with radii of $R_* = 0.4-0.6 R_{sun}$ (with the uncertainty for one star up to $1.1 R_{sun}$). We estimated the candidate radii (all are greater than 1.4 times the Jovian radius), semi-major axes of their orbits ($0.012-0.035 AU$), and other orbital parameters by modelling. We report the light curves with transits for two stars obtained in 2022 based on individual observations., Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables

We used the 0.5-m robotic telescopes located at the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences for monitoring two square degrees of the sky with the aim of detecting new exoplanets. A dimming of the visible brightness is expected due to the exoplanets transiting their host stars. We analyzed about 25000 raw images of stars taken in the period between August 2020 and January 2021 and plotted the light curves for about 30000 stars on a half-year timescale. Five newly discovered exoplanet candidates are being investigated to determine their transit event parameters. We also present the light curves for dozens of binary stars., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences

To better understand discriminations and the effect of affirmative actions in selection problems (e.g., college admission or hiring), a recent line of research proposed a model based on differential variance. This model assumes that the decision-maker has a noisy estimate of each candidate's quality and puts forward the difference in the noise variances between different demographic groups as a key factor to explain discrimination. The literature on differential variance, however, does not consider the strategic behavior of candidates who can react to the selection procedure to improve their outcome, which is well-known to happen in many domains. In this paper, we study how the strategic aspect affects fairness in selection problems. We propose to model selection problems with strategic candidates as a contest game: A population of rational candidates compete by choosing an effort level to increase their quality. They incur a cost-of-effort but get a (random) quality whose expectation equals the chosen effort. A Bayesian decision-maker observes a noisy estimate of the quality of each candidate (with differential variance) and selects the fraction $\alpha$ of best candidates based on their posterior expected quality; each selected candidate receives a reward $S$. We characterize the (unique) equilibrium of this game in the different parameters' regimes, both when the decision-maker is unconstrained and when they are constrained to respect the fairness notion of demographic parity. Our results reveal important impacts of the strategic behavior on the discrimination observed at equilibrium and allow us to understand the effect of imposing demographic parity in this context. In particular, we find that, in many cases, the results contrast with the non-strategic setting., Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of the Twenty-Third ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'22)

Discrimination in selection problems such as hiring or college admission is often explained by implicit bias from the decision maker against disadvantaged demographic groups. In this paper, we consider a model where the decision maker receives a noisy estimate of each candidate's quality, whose variance depends on the candidate's group -- we argue that such differential variance is a key feature of many selection problems. We analyze two notable settings: in the first, the noise variances are unknown to the decision maker who simply picks the candidates with the highest estimated quality independently of their group; in the second, the variances are known and the decision maker picks candidates having the highest expected quality given the noisy estimate. We show that both baseline decision makers yield discrimination, although in opposite directions: the first leads to underrepresentation of the low-variance group while the second leads to underrepresentation of the high-variance group. We study the effect on the selection utility of imposing a fairness mechanism that we term the $\gamma$-rule (it is an extension of the classical four-fifths rule and it also includes demographic parity). In the first setting (with unknown variances), we prove that under mild conditions, imposing the $\gamma$-rule increases the selection utility -- here there is no trade-off between fairness and utility. In the second setting (with known variances), imposing the $\gamma$-rule decreases the utility but we prove a bound on the utility loss due to the fairness mechanism., Comment: Accepted for publication in the Artificial Intelligence Journal. This paper is an extended version of our paper arXiv:2006.13699: we added a Bayesian-optimal baseline (in addition to the group-oblivious baseline) and generalized the model by assuming a group-dependent distribution of quality and an implicit bias; but we removed the part on two-stage selection

We briefly present the history of technical solutions aimed at improving the efficiency of spectroscopy on small- and moderate-diameter telescopes. We assess the current state of spectroscopy techniques and some of the perspectives., Comment: 36 pages, 2 tables, 199 references, will be published in Astrophysical Bulletin, vol 76, No 2, 2021

Mycotoxins comprise a frequent type of toxins present in food and feed. The problem of mycotoxin contamination has been recently aggravated due to the increased complexity of the farm-to-fork chains, resulting in negative effects on human and animal health and, consequently, economics. The easy-to-use, on-site, on-demand, and rapid monitoring of mycotoxins in food/feed is highly desired. In this work, we report on an advanced mycotoxin biosensor based on an array of graphene field-effect transistors integrated on a single silicon chip. A specifically designed aptamer against Ochratoxin A (OTA) was used as a recognition element, where it was covalently attached to graphene surface via pyrenebutanoic acid, succinimidyl ester (PBASE) chemistry. Namely, an electric field stimulation was used to promote more efficient {\pi}-{\pi} stacking of PBASE to graphene. The specific G-rich aptamer strand suggest its {\pi}-{\pi} stacking on graphene in free-standing regime and reconfiguration in G-quadruplex during binding an OTA molecule. This realistic behavior of the aptamer is sensitive to the ionic strength of the analyte solution, demonstrating a 10-fold increase in sensitivity at low ionic strengths. The graphene-aptamer sensors reported here demonstrate fast assay with the lowest detection limit of 1.4 pM for OTA within a response time as low as 10 s, which is more than 30 times faster compared to any other reported aptamer-based methods for mycotoxin detection. The sensors hold comparable performance when operated in real-time within a complex matrix of wine without additional time-consuming pre-treatment.

Quota-based fairness mechanisms like the so-called Rooney rule or four-fifths rule are used in selection problems such as hiring or college admission to reduce inequalities based on sensitive demographic attributes. These mechanisms are often viewed as introducing a trade-off between selection fairness and utility. In recent work, however, Kleinberg and Raghavan showed that, in the presence of implicit bias in estimating candidates' quality, the Rooney rule can increase the utility of the selection process. We argue that even in the absence of implicit bias, the estimates of candidates' quality from different groups may differ in another fundamental way, namely, in their variance. We term this phenomenon implicit variance and we ask: can fairness mechanisms be beneficial to the utility of a selection process in the presence of implicit variance (even in the absence of implicit bias)? To answer this question, we propose a simple model in which candidates have a true latent quality that is drawn from a group-independent normal distribution. To make the selection, a decision maker receives an unbiased estimate of the quality of each candidate, with normal noise, but whose variance depends on the candidate's group. We then compare the utility obtained by imposing a fairness mechanism that we term $\gamma$-rule (it includes demographic parity and the four-fifths rule as special cases), to that of a group-oblivious selection algorithm that picks the candidates with the highest estimated quality independently of their group. Our main result shows that the demographic parity mechanism always increases the selection utility, while any $\gamma$-rule weakly increases it. We extend our model to a two-stage selection process where the true quality is observed at the second stage. We discuss multiple extensions of our results, in particular to different distributions of the true latent quality., Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, Economics and Computation (EC'20)

The rise of algorithmic decision making led to active researches on how to define and guarantee fairness, mostly focusing on one-shot decision making. In several important applications such as hiring, however, decisions are made in multiple stage with additional information at each stage. In such cases, fairness issues remain poorly understood. In this paper we study fairness in $k$-stage selection problems where additional features are observed at every stage. We first introduce two fairness notions, local (per stage) and global (final stage) fairness, that extend the classical fairness notions to the $k$-stage setting. We propose a simple model based on a probabilistic formulation and show that the locally and globally fair selections that maximize precision can be computed via a linear program. We then define the price of local fairness to measure the loss of precision induced by local constraints; and investigate theoretically and empirically this quantity. In particular, our experiments show that the price of local fairness is generally smaller when the sensitive attribute is observed at the first stage; but globally fair selections are more locally fair when the sensitive attribute is observed at the second stage---hence in both cases it is often possible to have a selection that has a small price of local fairness and is close to locally fair., Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures

The results obtained using the temperature monitoring systems of the 6-m BTA telescope primary mirror, dome space, and external environment are reported. We consider the factors that affect the development of microturbulence in the near-mirror air layer and inside the dome space, variation of the telescope focal length with the temperature of its structures, variation of seeing due to temperature gradients inside the primary mirror of the 6-m telescope. The methods used in various observatories for reducing microturbulence are analyzed. We formulate suggestions concerning the improvement of the temperature monitoring system currently in operation and the system of automatic adjustment of the telescope focal length to compensate the thermal drift of the focus during observations.

We introduce a project of new cooled infrared spectrometer-photometer for 6-m telescope BTA (Special Astrophysical Observatory of Russian Science Academy). The device would extend the wavelength range accessible for observations on the 6-m BTA telescope toward near infrared (0.8-2.5 um).

We present measurements of net charge fluctuations in $Au + Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = $ 19.6, 62.4, 130, and 200 GeV, $Cu + Cu$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = $ 62.4, 200 GeV, and $p + p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = $ 200 GeV using the dynamical net charge fluctuations measure $\nu_{+-{\rm,dyn}}$. We observe that the dynamical fluctuations are non-zero at all energies and exhibit a modest dependence on beam energy. A weak system size dependence is also observed. We examine the collision centrality dependence of the net charge fluctuations and find that dynamical net charge fluctuations violate $1/N_{ch}$ scaling, but display approximate $1/N_{part}$ scaling. We also study the azimuthal and rapidity dependence of the net charge correlation strength and observe strong dependence on the azimuthal angular range and pseudorapidity widths integrated to measure the correlation., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, STAR Collaboration

We report the measurements of $\Sigma (1385)$ and $\Lambda (1520)$ production in $p+p$ and $Au+Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV from the STAR collaboration. The yields and the $p_{T}$ spectra are presented and discussed in terms of chemical and thermal freeze-out conditions and compared to model predictions. Thermal and microscopic models do not adequately describe the yields of all the resonances produced in central $Au+Au$ collisions. Our results indicate that there may be a time-span between chemical and thermal freeze-out during which elastic hadronic interactions occur., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 132301 (2006)