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Relative clinical benefits are often visually explored and formally analysed through a (cumulative) meta-analysis. In this manuscript, we introduce and further explore the moving average meta-analysis to aid towards the exploration and visualization of periodic stability in a meta-analysis., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 1 table

We propose PromptTTS++, a prompt-based text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis system that allows control over speaker identity using natural language descriptions. To control speaker identity within the prompt-based TTS framework, we introduce the concept of speaker prompt, which describes voice characteristics (e.g., gender-neutral, young, old, and muffled) designed to be approximately independent of speaking style. Since there is no large-scale dataset containing speaker prompts, we first construct a dataset based on the LibriTTS-R corpus with manually annotated speaker prompts. We then employ a diffusion-based acoustic model with mixture density networks to model diverse speaker factors in the training data. Unlike previous studies that rely on style prompts describing only a limited aspect of speaker individuality, such as pitch, speaking speed, and energy, our method utilizes an additional speaker prompt to effectively learn the mapping from natural language descriptions to the acoustic features of diverse speakers. Our subjective evaluation results show that the proposed method can better control speaker characteristics than the methods without the speaker prompt. Audio samples are available at https://reppy4620.github.io/demo.promptttspp/., Comment: Accepted to ICASSP 2024

The advance of generative models for images has inspired various training techniques for image recognition utilizing synthetic images. In semantic segmentation, one promising approach is extracting pseudo-masks from attention maps in text-to-image diffusion models, which enables real-image-and-annotation-free training. However, the pioneering training method using the diffusion-synthetic images and pseudo-masks, i.e., DiffuMask has limitations in terms of mask quality, scalability, and ranges of applicable domains. To overcome these limitations, this work introduces three techniques for diffusion-synthetic semantic segmentation training. First, reliability-aware robust training, originally used in weakly supervised learning, helps segmentation with insufficient synthetic mask quality. %Second, large-scale pretraining of whole segmentation models, not only backbones, on synthetic ImageNet-1k-class images with pixel-labels benefits downstream segmentation tasks. Second, we introduce prompt augmentation, data augmentation to the prompt text set to scale up and diversify training images with a limited text resources. Finally, LoRA-based adaptation of Stable Diffusion enables the transfer to a distant domain, e.g., auto-driving images. Experiments in PASCAL VOC, ImageNet-S, and Cityscapes show that our method effectively closes gap between real and synthetic training in semantic segmentation.

The dust size in protoplanetary disks is a crucial parameter for understanding planet formation, while the observational constraints on dust size distribution have large uncertainties. In this study, we present a new method to constrain the dust size distribution from the dust spatial distribution, utilizing the fact that larger dust grains are more spatially localized. We analyze the ALMA Band 6 (1.25 mm) and Band 4 (2.14 mm) high-resolution images and constrain the dust size distribution in the two rings of the HD 163296 disk. We find that the outer ring at 100 au appears narrower at the longer wavelengths, while the inner ring at 67 au appears to have similar widths across the two wavelengths. We model dust rings trapped at gas pressure maxima, where the dust grains follow a power-law size distribution, and the dust grains of a specific size follow a Gaussian spatial distribution with the width depending on the grain size. By comparing the observations with the models, we constrain the maximum dust size $a_{\mathrm{max}}$ and the exponent of the dust size distribution $p$. We constrain that $0.9 \ \mathrm{mm} < a_{\mathrm{max}} < 5 \ \mathrm{mm}$ and $p < 3.3$ in the inner ring, and $a_{\mathrm{max}} > 3 \times 10^1 \ \mathrm{mm}$ and $3.4 < p < 3.7$ in the outer ring. The larger maximum dust size in the outer ring implies a spatial dependency in dust growth, potentially influencing the formation location of the planetesimals. We further discuss the turbulence strength $\alpha$ derived from the constrained dust spatial distribution, assuming equilibrium between turbulent diffusion and accumulation of dust grains., Comment: 29 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

It has been observed in fossil tracks and experiments in the layered silicate mica muscovite the transport of charge through the cation layers sandwiched between the layers of tetrahedra-octahedra-tetrahedra. A classical model for the propagation of anharmonic vibrations along the cation chains has been proposed based on first principles and empirical functions. In that model, several propagating entities have been found as kinks or crowdions and breathers, both with or without wings, the latter for specific velocities and energies. Crowdions are equivalent to moving interstitials and transport electric charge if the moving particle is an ion, but they also imply the movement of mass, which was not observed in the experiments. Breathers, being just vibrational entities, do not transport charge. In this work, we present a semiclassical model obtained by adding a quantum particle, electron or hole to the previous model. We present the construction of the model based on the physics of the system. In particular, the strongly nonlinear vibronic interaction between the nuclei and the extra electron or hole is essential to explain the localized charge transport, which is not compatible with the adiabatic approximation. The formation of vibrational localized charge carriers breaks the lattice symmetry group in a similar fashion to the Jahn-Teller Effect, providing a new stable dynamical state. We study the properties and the coherence of the model through numerical simulations from initial conditions obtained by tail analysis and other means. We observe that although the charge spreads from an initial localization in a lattice at equilibrium, it can be confined basically to a single particle when coupled to a chaotic quasiperiodic breather. This is coherent with the observation that experiments imply that a population of charge is formed due to the decay of potassium unstable isotopes., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures

This study presents a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation model to investigate the process of oxidative aging in polymers. The chemical aging effect is attributed to the auto-oxidation mechanism, which is initiated by radicals, leading to the chain scission and crosslinking of polymer chains. In this study, we integrate a thermal oxidation kinetic model in the oxygen excess regime into the Kremer-Grest model, thereby enabling a reactive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation to capture the process of oxidative degradation. Our simulation reveals that when the timescale of the characteristic reaction step of oxidative degradation is shorter than the longest relaxation time of polymer chains, the scission sites exhibit spatial heterogeneity. This innovative simulation model possesses the potential to enhance our comprehension of polymer aging phenomena, thus making noteworthy contributions to the realm of polymer science and degradation chemistry., Comment: 32 pages, 16 figures

We consider a cylinder immersed in viscous fluid moving near a flat substrate covered by an incompressible viscoelastic fluid layer, and study the effect of the fluid viscoelasticity on the lift force exerted on the cylinder. The lift force is zero when the viscoelastic layer is not deformed, but becomes non-zero when it is deformed. We calculate the lift force by considering both the tangential stress and the normal stress applied at the surface of the viscoelastic layer. Our analysis indicates that as the layer changes from the elastic limit to the viscous limit, the lift force decreases with the decrease of the Deborah number (De). For small De, the effect of the layer elasticity is taken over by the surface tension and the lift force can become negative. We also show that the tangential stress and the interface slip velocity (the surface velocity relative to the substrate), which have been ignored in the previous analysis, give important contributions to the lift force. Especially for thin elastic layer, they give dominant contributions to the lift force.

Quantum computers are becoming practical for computing numerous applications. However, simulating quantum computing on classical computers is still demanding yet useful because current quantum computers are limited because of computer resources, hardware limits, instability, and noises. Improving quantum computing simulation performance in classical computers will contribute to the development of quantum computers and their algorithms. Quantum computing simulations on classical computers require long performance times, especially for quantum circuits with a large number of qubits or when simulating a large number of shots for noise simulations or circuits with intermediate measures. Graphical processing units (GPU) are suitable to accelerate quantum computer simulations by exploiting their computational power and high bandwidth memory and they have a large advantage in simulating relatively larger qubits circuits. However, GPUs are inefficient at simulating multi-shots runs with noises because the randomness prevents highly parallelization. In addition, GPUs have a disadvantage in simulating circuits with a small number of qubits because of the large overheads in GPU kernel execution. In this paper, we introduce optimization techniques for multi-shot simulations on GPUs. We gather multiple shots of simulations into a single GPU kernel execution to reduce overheads by scheduling randomness caused by noises. In addition, we introduce shot-branching that reduces calculations and memory usage for multi-shot simulations. By using these techniques, we speed up x10 from previous implementations.

The influence of node functionality (f) on the fracture of polymer networks remains unclear. While many studies have focused on multi-functional nodes with f>4, recent research suggests that networks with f=3 exhibit superior fracture properties compared to those with f=4. To clarify this discrepancy, we conducted phantom chain simulations for star-polymer networks varying f between 3 and 8. Our simulations utilized equimolar binary mixtures of star branch prepolymers with a uniform arm length. We employed a Brownian dynamics scheme to equilibrate sols and induce gelation through end-linking reactions. We prevented the formation of odd-order loops owing to the binary reaction and second-order loops algorithmically. We stored network structures at various conversion ratios ({\phi}_c) and minimized energy to reduce computation costs induced by structural relaxation. We subjected the networks to stretching until fracture to determine stress and strain at break and work for fracture, {\epsilon}_b, {\sigma}_b, and W_b. These fracture characteristics are highly dependent on {\phi}_c for networks with small f but relatively insensitive for those with large f. Thus, the networks with small f exhibit greater fracture properties than those with large f at high {\phi}_c, whereas the opposite relationship occurs at low {\phi}_c. We analyzed {\epsilon}_b, {\sigma}_b, and W_b concerning the cycle rank {\xi} and the broken strand fraction {\phi}_bb. We found {\epsilon}_b, {\sigma}_b/{\phi}_bb, and W_b/{\phi}_bb monotonically decrease with increasing {\xi}, and the data for various f and {\phi}_c superpose with each other to draw master curves. These results imply that the mechanical superiority of the networks with small f comes from their smaller {\xi} that gives higher {\epsilon}_b, {\sigma}_b/{\phi}_bb, and W_b/{\phi}_bb than the networks with large f., Comment: 21 pages including 12 figures

We analyze all the available Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array archival data of the nearby Type-II Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068, including new 100 GHz data with the angular resolution of 0\farcs05, which was not included in previous continuum spectral analysis. By combining with the literature data based on the Very Large Array, we investigate the broadband radio continuum spectrum of the central $\lesssim7$ pc region of NGC 1068. We found that the flux density is between $\approx$10-20 mJy at 5-700 GHz. Due to the inability of the model in previous studies to account for the newly added 100 GHz data point, we proceeded to update the models and make the necessary adjustments to the parameters. One possible interpretation of this broadband radio spectrum is a combination of emission from the jet base, the dusty torus, and the compact X-raying corona with the magnetic field strength of $\approx20$ G on scales of $\approx30$ Schwarzschild radii from the central black hole. In order to firmly identify the compact corona by omitting any other possible extended components (e.g., free-free emission from ionized gas around), high-resolution/sensitivity observations achieved by next-generation interferometers will be necessary., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in PASJ

We explored the parsec-scale nuclear regions of a sample of radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLSy1s) using the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astronomy (VERA) wideband (at a recording rate of $16\,\mathrm{Gbps}$) polarimetry at 22 and 43 GHz. Our targets include 1H 0323+342, SBS 0846+513, PMN J0948+0022, 1219+044, PKS 1502+036 and TXS 2116-077, which are all known to exhibit $\gamma$-ray emission indicative of possessing highly beamed jets similar to blazars. For the first time, we unambiguously detected Faraday rotation toward the parsec-scale radio core of NLSy1s, with a median observed core rotation measure (RM) of $2.7\times 10^3\,{\rm rad\,m^{-2}}$ (or $6.3\times 10^3\,{\rm rad\,m^{-2}}$ for redshift-corrected). This level of RM magnitude is significantly larger than those seen in the core of BL Lac objects (BLOs; a dominant subclass of blazars), suggesting that the nuclear environment of NLSy1s is more gas-rich than that in BLOs. Interestingly, the observed parsec-scale polarimetric properties of NLSy1s (low core fractional polarization, large core RM and jet-EVPA misalignment) are rather similar to those of flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). Our results are in accordance with the scenario that NLSy1s are in an early stage of AGN evolution with their central black hole masses being smaller than those of more evolved FSRQs., Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 $\mu$m from the L43 molecular cloud which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense ($N_{\rm H_2}\sim 10^{22}$-10$^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$) complex molecular cloud with a submillimetre-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to $\sim$160$\pm$30 $\mu$G in the main starless core and up to $\sim$90$\pm$40 $\mu$G in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and sub-critical values respectively and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfv\'enic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 23 pages, 9 figures (7 main text, 2 appendix)

The nearby radio galaxy M87 is a prime target for studying black hole accretion and jet formation^{1,2}. Event Horizon Telescope observations of M87 in 2017, at a wavelength of 1.3 mm, revealed a ring-like structure, which was interpreted as gravitationally lensed emission around a central black hole^3. Here we report images of M87 obtained in 2018, at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, showing that the compact radio core is spatially resolved. High-resolution imaging shows a ring-like structure of 8.4_{-1.1}^{+0.5} Schwarzschild radii in diameter, approximately 50% larger than that seen at 1.3 mm. The outer edge at 3.5 mm is also larger than that at 1.3 mm. This larger and thicker ring indicates a substantial contribution from the accretion flow with absorption effects in addition to the gravitationally lensed ring-like emission. The images show that the edge-brightened jet connects to the accretion flow of the black hole. Close to the black hole, the emission profile of the jet-launching region is wider than the expected profile of a black-hole-driven jet, suggesting the possible presence of a wind associated with the accretion flow., Comment: 50 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables, author's version of the paper published in Nature

It remains a question that how simultaneous interpretation (SI) data affects simultaneous machine translation (SiMT). Research has been limited due to the lack of a large-scale training corpus. In this work, we aim to fill in the gap by introducing NAIST-SIC-Aligned, which is an automatically-aligned parallel English-Japanese SI dataset. Starting with a non-aligned corpus NAIST-SIC, we propose a two-stage alignment approach to make the corpus parallel and thus suitable for model training. The first stage is coarse alignment where we perform a many-to-many mapping between source and target sentences, and the second stage is fine-grained alignment where we perform intra- and inter-sentence filtering to improve the quality of aligned pairs. To ensure the quality of the corpus, each step has been validated either quantitatively or qualitatively. This is the first open-sourced large-scale parallel SI dataset in the literature. We also manually curated a small test set for evaluation purposes. Our results show that models trained with SI data lead to significant improvement in translation quality and latency over baselines. We hope our work advances research on SI corpora construction and SiMT. Our data can be found at https://github.com/mingzi151/AHC-SI., Comment: LREC-Coling 2024

We present here the East Asia to Italy Nearly Global VLBI (EATING VLBI) project. How this project started and the evolution of the international collaboration between Korean, Japanese, and Italian researchers to study compact sources with VLBI observations is reported. Problems related to the synchronization of the very different arrays and technical details of the telescopes involved are presented and discussed. The relatively high observation frequency (22 and 43 GHz) and the long baselines between Italy and East Asia produced high-resolution images. We present example images to demonstrate the typical performance of the EATING VLBI array. The results attracted international researchers and the collaboration is growing, now including Chinese and Russian stations. New in progress projects are discussed and future possibilities with a larger number of telescopes and a better frequency coverage are briefly discussed herein., Comment: 15 pages and 6 figures. This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges in Understanding Black Hole Powered Jets with VLBI

Xtend is a soft X-ray imaging telescope developed for the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM). XRISM is scheduled to be launched in the Japanese fiscal year 2022. Xtend consists of the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI), an X-ray CCD camera, and the X-ray Mirror Assembly (XMA), a thin-foil-nested conically approximated Wolter-I optics. The SXI uses the P-channel, back-illuminated type CCD with an imaging area size of 31 mm on a side. The four CCD chips are arranged in a 2$\times$2 grid and can be cooled down to $-120$ $^{\circ}$C with a single-stage Stirling cooler. The XMA nests thin aluminum foils coated with gold in a confocal way with an outer diameter of 45~cm. A pre-collimator is installed in front of the X-ray mirror for the reduction of the stray light. Combining the SXI and XMA with a focal length of 5.6m, a field of view of $38^{\prime}\times38^{\prime}$ over the energy range from 0.4 to 13 keV is realized. We have completed the fabrication of the flight model of both SXI and XMA. The performance verification has been successfully conducted in a series of sub-system level tests. We also carried out on-ground calibration measurements and the data analysis is ongoing., Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures. Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022

Over-luminous type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) show peculiar observational features, for which an explosion of a super-massive white dwarf (WD) beyond the classical Chandrasekhar-limiting mass has been suggested, largely based on their high luminosities and slow light-curve evolution. However, their observational features are diverse, with a few extremely peculiar features whose origins have not been clarified; strong and persisting C II lines, late-time accelerated luminosity decline and red spectra, and a sub-day time-scale initial flash clearly identified so far at least for three over-luminous SNe Ia. In the present work, we suggest a scenario that provides a unified solution to these peculiarities, through hydrodynamic and radiation transfer simulations together with analytical considerations; a C+O-rich envelope (~0.01 - 0.1 Msun) attached to an exploding WD. Strong C II lines are created within the shocked envelope. Dust formation is possible in the late phase, providing a sufficient optical depth thereafter. The range of the envelope mass considered here predicts an initial flash with time-scale of ~0.5 - 3 days. The scenario thus can explain some of the key diverse observational properties by a different amount of the envelope, but additional factors are also required; we argue that the envelope is distributed in a disc-like structure, and also the ejecta properties, e.g., the mass of the WD, plays a key role. Within the context of the hypothesized super-Chandrasekhar-mass WD scenario, we speculatively suggest a progenitor WD evolution including a spin-up accretion phase followed by a spin-down mass-ejection phase., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Typos corrected and references updated

We present BISTRO Survey 850 {\mu}m dust emission polarisation observations of the L1495A-B10 region of the Taurus molecular cloud, taken at the JCMT. We observe a roughly triangular network of dense filaments. We detect 9 of the dense starless cores embedded within these filaments in polarisation, finding that the plane-of-sky orientation of the core-scale magnetic field lies roughly perpendicular to the filaments in almost all cases. We also find that the large-scale magnetic field orientation measured by Planck is not correlated with any of the core or filament structures, except in the case of the lowest-density core. We propose a scenario for early prestellar evolution that is both an extension to, and consistent with, previous models, introducing an additional evolutionary transitional stage between field-dominated and matter-dominated evolution, observed here for the first time. In this scenario, the cloud collapses first to a sheet-like structure. Uniquely, we appear to be seeing this sheet almost face-on. The sheet fragments into filaments, which in turn form cores. However, the material must reach a certain critical density before the evolution changes from being field-dominated to being matter-dominated. We measure the sheet surface density and the magnetic field strength at that transition for the first time and show consistency with an analytical prediction that had previously gone untested for over 50 years (Mestel 1965)., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. ApJ accepted

We define a new complex-valued measure of information called the timelike entanglement entropy (EE) which in the boundary theory can be viewed as a Wick rotation that changes a spacelike boundary subregion to a timelike one. An explicit definition of the timelike EE in 2d field theories is provided followed by numerical computations which agree with the analytic continuation of the replica method for CFTs. We argue that timelike EE should be correctly interpreted as another measure previously considered, the pseudo entropy, which is the von Neumann entropy of a reduced transition matrix. Our results strongly imply that the imaginary part of the pseudo entropy describes an emergent time which generalizes the notion of an emergent space from quantum entanglement. For holographic systems we define the timelike EE as the total complex valued area of a particular stationary combination of both space and timelike extremal surfaces which are homologous to the boundary region. For the examples considered we find explicit matching of our optimization procedure and the careful implementation of the Wick rotation in the boundary CFT. We also make progress on higher dimensional generalizations and relations to holographic pseudo entropy in de Sitter space., Comment: 61 pages, 25 figures