Search

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) paradigm has emerged as a transformative force, revolutionizing industrial processes by integrating advanced wireless technologies into traditional procedures to enhance their efficiency. The importance of this paradigm shift has produced a massive, yet heterogeneous, proliferation of scientific contributions. However, these works lack a standardized and cohesive characterization of the IIoT framework coming from different entities, like the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) or the 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation (5G-ACIA), resulting in divergent perspectives and potentially hindering interoperability. To bridge this gap, this article offers a unified characterization of (i) the main IIoT application domains, (ii) their respective requirements, (iii) the principal technological gaps existing in the current literature, and, most importantly, (iv) we propose a systematic approach for assessing and addressing the identified research challenges. Therefore, this article serves as a roadmap for future research endeavors, promoting a unified vision of the IIoT paradigm and fostering collaborative efforts to advance the field.

Geometric effects in curvilinear nanomagnets can enable chiral, anisotropic and even magnetoelectric responses. Here, we study the effects of magnetic frustration in curvilinear (quasi-)1D magnets represented by spin chains arranged along closed space curves of constant torsion. Considering the cases of easy- and hard-axis anisotropy in ferro- and antiferromagnetic samples, we determine their ground states and analyze the related magnetoelectric multipoles. A constant torsion along the chain results in alternating regions of high and low curvature, facilitating the spin spiral state perturbed by the (anti)periodic boundary conditions on the magnetic order parameter. While easy-axis ferromagnetic chains develop a purely toroidal configuration with the magnetic toroidal moment oriented along the geometry symmetry axis, hard-axis antiferromagnetic chains support multiple magnetic toroidal domains. Our findings suggest that tailoring curvature and torsion of a spin chain enables a new physical mechanism for magnetic frustration, which can be observed in the inhomogeneity of the magnetic order parameter and in the local ferrotoroidic responses.

An increasing number of media streaming services have expanded their offerings to include entities of multiple content types. For instance, audio streaming services that started by offering music only, now also offer podcasts, merchandise items, and videos. Ranking items across different content types into a single slate poses a significant challenge for traditional learning-to-rank (LTR) algorithms due to differing user engagement patterns for different content types. We explore a simple method for cross-content-type ranking, called multinomial blending (MB), which can be used in conjunction with most existing LTR algorithms. We compare MB to existing baselines not only in terms of ranking quality but also from other industry-relevant perspectives such as interpretability, ease-of-use, and stability in dynamic environments with changing user behavior and ranking model retraining. Finally, we report the results of an A/B test from an Amazon Music ranking use-case., Comment: To appear in 18th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys24), Bari, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages

We present our numerical simulation approach for the End-to-End (E2E) model applied to various astronomical spectrographs, such as SOXS (ESO-NTT), CUBES (ESO-VLT), and ANDES (ESO-ELT), covering multiple wavelength regions. The E2E model aim at simulating the expected astronomical observations starting from the radiation of the scientific sources (or calibration sources) up to the raw-frame data produced by the detectors. The comprehensive description includes E2E architecture, computational models, and tools for rendering the simulated frames. Collaboration with Data Reduction Software (DRS) teams is discussed, along with efforts to meet instrument requirements. The contribution to the cross-correlation algorithm for the Active Flexure Compensation (AFC) system of CUBES is detailed., Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, Yokohama 2024. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2209.07185, arXiv:2012.12684

SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter) will be the new medium-resolution (R 4500 for 1 slit), high-efficiency, wide-band spectrograph for the ESO NTT at La Silla Observatory, Chile. It will be dedicated to the follow-up of any kind of transient events, ensuring fast time, high efficiency, and availability. It consists of a central structure (common path) that supports two spectrographs optimized for the UV-Visible and a Near-Infrared range. Attached to the common path is the Acquisition and Guiding Camera system (AC), equipped with a filter wheel that can provide science-grade imaging and moderate high-speed photometry. The AC Unit was integrated and aligned during the summer months of 2022 and has since been mounted in the NTTs telescope simulator. This work gives an update on the Acquisition Camera Unit status, describes the Image Quality Tests that were performed, and discusses the AC Optical Performance., Comment: SPIE Proceedings Volume 13096, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy X; 1309672 (2024)

SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter) is the new single object spectrograph for the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory, able to cover simultaneously both the UV-VIS and NIR bands (350-2000 nm). The instrument is currently in the integration and test phase, approaching the Preliminary Acceptance in Europe (PAE) before shipment to Chile for commissioning. After the assembly and preliminary test of the control electronics at INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte (Napoli), the two main control cabinets of SOXS are now hosted in Padova, connected to the real hardware. This contribution describes the final electronic cabinets layout, the control strategy and the different integration phases, waiting for the Preliminary Acceptance in Europe and the installation of the instrument in Chile.

The Son Of X-Shooter (SOXS) will be the specialized facility to observe any transient event with a flexible scheduler at the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla, Chile. SOXS is a single object spectrograph offering simultaneous spectral coverage in UV-VIS (350-850 nm) and NIR (800-2000 nm) wavelength regimes with an average of R~4500 for a 1arcsec slit. SOXS also has imaging capabilities in the visible wavelength regime. Currently, SOXS is being integrated at the INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova. Subsystem- and system-level tests and verification are ongoing to ensure and confirm that every requirement and performance are met. In this paper, we report on the integration and verification of SOXS as the team and the instrument prepare for the Preliminary Acceptance Europe (PAE).

The Son Of X-Shooter (SOXS) is a single object spectrograph, built by an international consortium for the 3.58-m ESO New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory [1]. It offers a simultaneous spectral coverage over 350-2000 nm, with two separate spectrographs. In this paper we present the status of the Near InfraRed (NIR) cryogenic echelle cross-dispersed spectrograph [1], in the range 0.80-2.00 {\mu}m with 15 orders, equipped with an 2k x 2k Hawaii H2RG IR array from Teledyne, working at 40K, that is currently assembled and tested on the SOXS instrument, in the premises of INAF in Padova. We describe the different tests and results of the cryo, vacuum, opto-mechanics and detector subsystems that finally will be part of the PAE by ESO., Comment: 8 Pages, 7 Figures, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, SPIE Proceedings 2024

We present the advancements in the development of the scheduler for the Son Of X-shooter instrument at the ESO-NTT 3.58-m telescope in La Silla, Chile. SOXS is designed as a single-object spectroscopic facility and features a high-efficiency spectrograph with two arms covering the spectral range of 350-2000 nm and a mean resolving power of approximately R=4500. It will conduct UV-visible and near-infrared follow-up observations of astrophysical transients, drawing from a broad pool of targets accessible through the streaming services of wide-field telescopes, both current and future, as well as high-energy satellites. The instrument will cater to various scientific objectives within the astrophysical community, each entailing specific requirements for observation planning. SOXS will operate at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla, without the presence of astronomers on the mountain. This poses a unique challenge for the scheduling process, demanding a fully automated algorithm that is autonomously interacting with the appropriate databases and the La Silla Weather API, and is capable of presenting the operator not only with an ordered list of optimal targets (in terms of observing constraints) but also with optimal backups in the event of changing weather conditions. This imposes the necessity for a scheduler with rapid-response capabilities without compromising the optimization process, ensuring the high quality of observations and best use of the time at the telescope. We thus developed a new highly available and scalable architecture, implementing API Restful applications like Docker Containers, API Gateway, and Python-based Flask frameworks. We provide an overview of the current state of the scheduler, which is now ready for the approaching on-site testing during Commissioning phase, along with insights into its web interface and preliminary performance tests.

The SOXS spectrograph, designed for the ESO NTT telescope, operates in both the optical (UV-VIS: 350-850 nm) and NIR (800-2000 nm) bands. This article provides an overview of the final tests conducted on the UV-VIS camera system using a telescope simulator. It details the system's performance evaluation, including key metrics such as gain, readout noise, and linearity, and highlights the advancements made in the upgraded acquisition system. The testing process, conducted in the Padua laboratory, involved comprehensive simulations of the telescope environment to ensure the results closely resemble those expected at the ESO-NTT telescope. The successful completion of these tests confirms the system's readiness for deployment to Chile, where it will be installed on the NTT telescope, marking a significant milestone in the SOXS project., Comment: SPIE Proceedings Volume 13096, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy X; 130962U (2024)

This paper presents the opto-mechanical integration and alignment, functional and optical performance verification of the NIR arm of Son Of X-Shooter (SOXS) instrument. SOXS will be a single object spectroscopic facility for the ESO-NTT 3.6-m telescope, made by two arms high efficiency spectrographs, able to cover the spectral range 350 2050 nm with a mean resolving power R~4500. In particular the NIR arm is a cryogenic echelle cross-dispersed spectrograph spanning the 780-2050 nm range. We describe the integration and alignment method performed to assemble the different opto-mechanical elements and their installation on the NIR vacuum vessel, which mostly relies on mechanical characterization. The tests done to assess the image quality, linear dispersion and orders trace in laboratory conditions are summarized. The full optical performance verification, namely echellogram format, image quality and resulting spectral resolving power in the whole NIR arm (optical path and science detector) is detailed. Such verification is one of the most relevant prerequisites for the subsequent full instrument assembly and provisional acceptance in Europe milestone, foreseen in 2024., Comment: SPIE Proceedings Volume 13096, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy X; 130962T (2024)

SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter) is the new ESO instrument that is going to be installed on the 3.58-m New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory. SOXS is a single object spectrograph offering a wide simultaneous spectral coverage from U- to H-band. Although such an instrument may have potentially a large variety of applications, the consortium designed it with a clear science case: it is going to provide the spectroscopic counterparts to the ongoing and upcoming imaging surveys, becoming one of the main follow-up instruments in the Southern hemisphere for the classification and characterization of transients. The NTT+SOXS system is specialized to observe all transients and variable sources discovered by imaging surveys with a flexible schedule maintained by the consortium, based on a remote scheduler which will interface with the observatory software infrastructure. SOXS is realized timely to be highly synergic with transients discovery machines like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The instrument has been integrated and tested in Italy, collecting and assembling subsystems coming from all partners spread over six countries in three continents. The first preparatory activities in Chile have been completed at the telescope. This article gives an updated status of the project before the shipping of the instrument to Chile., Comment: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2024, Yokohama, Japan

The Instrument Control Software of SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter), the forthcoming spectrograph for the ESO New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory, has reached a mature state of development and is approaching the crucial Preliminary Acceptance in Europe phase. Now that all the subsystems have been integrated in the laboratories of the Padova Astronomical Observatory, the team operates for testing purposes with the whole instrument at both engineering and scientific level. These activities will make use of a set of software peculiarities that will be discussed in this contribution. In particular, we focus on the synoptic panel, the co-rotator system special device, on the Active Flexure Compensation system which controls two separate piezo tip-tilt devices., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, SPIE conference

SBND is the near detector of the Short-Baseline Neutrino program at Fermilab. Its location near to the Booster Neutrino Beam source and relatively large mass will allow the study of neutrino interactions on argon with unprecedented statistics. This paper describes the expected performance of the SBND photon detection system, using a simulated sample of beam neutrinos and cosmogenic particles. Its design is a dual readout concept combining a system of 120 photomultiplier tubes, used for triggering, with a system of 192 X-ARAPUCA devices, located behind the anode wire planes. Furthermore, covering the cathode plane with highly-reflective panels coated with a wavelength-shifting compound recovers part of the light emitted towards the cathode, where no optical detectors exist. We show how this new design provides a high light yield and a more uniform detection efficiency, an excellent timing resolution and an independent 3D-position reconstruction using only the scintillation light. Finally, the whole reconstruction chain is applied to recover the temporal structure of the beam spill, which is resolved with a resolution on the order of nanoseconds., Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures

Flat bands (FBs) are energy bands with zero group velocity, which in electronic systems were shown to favor strongly correlated phenomena. Indeed, a FB can be spanned with a basis of strictly localized states, the so called "compact localized states" (CLSs), which are yet generally non-orthogonal. Here, we study emergent dipole-dipole interactions between emitters dispersively coupled to the photonic analogue of a FB, a setup within reach in state-of the-art experimental platforms. We show that the strength of such photon-mediated interactions decays exponentially with distance with a characteristic localization length which, unlike typical behaviours with standard bands, saturates to a finite value as the emitter's energy approaches the FB. Remarkably, we find that the localization length grows with the overlap between CLSs according to an analytically-derived universal scaling law valid for a large class of FBs both in 1D and 2D. Using giant atoms (non-local atom-field coupling) allows to tailor interaction potentials having the same shape of a CLS or a superposition of a few of these., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures

We study linear massive scalar charged perturbations of Topological Stars in the fuzzball and in the black hole (Black String) regimes. The objects that naturally couple to the electric 3-form field strength of these solutions are charged strings, wound around the compact direction. We explore the possibility of instabilities of these solutions, in analogy with the charge instability already highlighted for other non-BPS geometries like JMaRT. This issue is addressed by calculating quasi-normal mode frequencies with a variety of techniques: WKB approximation, direct integration, Leaver method and by exploiting the recently discovered correspondence between black hole-fuzzball perturbation theory and quantum Seiberg-Witten curves. All mode frequencies we find have negative imaginary parts, implying an exponential decay in time. This suggests a linear stability of Topological Stars also in this new scenario. In addition, we study the charge superradiance for the Black String. We compute the amplification factor with the numerical integration method and a quantum Seiberg-Witten motivated definition including instantonic corrections., Comment: 32 pages, 2 figures

Climate policy has become increasingly politicized in many countries including the US, with some political parties unwilling to pursue strong measures. Therefore, to be successful in mitigation, climate policies must be politically feasible. Currently, climate mitigation pathways are explored in so-called Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) which evaluate climate policies from an economic perspective, typically focusing on cost-effectiveness and overlooking transition costs. However, the economy is intertwined with the political system, in which policymakers impose economic policies, but are (in democracies) dependent on public opinion, which in turn can be influenced by economic performance. In cases where some parties are much less ambitious in climate mitigation than others, climate policy can be abruptly disrupted, influencing voting behaviour. In this study, we analyze the political feasibility of a set of green policies in case some parties are strongly unwilling to protect the climate. We show that this simple additional social layer of complexity largely affects the outcome of the abatement measures. In particular, we conclude that a (high) pure carbon tax is particularly vulnerable to abrupt interruptions and its economic side effects discourage votes for green parties. Nevertheless, a strategically selected combination of policies can reduce political uncertainty, resulting in a more feasible and effective mitigation measure.

"Clipping" (a.k.a. importance weight truncation) is a widely used variance-reduction technique for counterfactual off-policy estimators. Like other variance-reduction techniques, clipping reduces variance at the cost of increased bias. However, unlike other techniques, the bias introduced by clipping is always a downward bias (assuming non-negative rewards), yielding a lower bound on the true expected reward. In this work we propose a simple extension, called $\textit{double clipping}$, which aims to compensate this downward bias and thus reduce the overall bias, while maintaining the variance reduction properties of the original estimator., Comment: Presented at CONSEQUENCES '23 workshop at RecSys 2023 conference in Singapore