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We investigate the space of consistent tree-level extensions of the maximal supergravities in ten dimensions. We parametrize theory space by the first few EFT coefficients and by the on-shell coupling of the lightest massive state, and impose on these data the constraints that follow from $2 \to 2$ supergraviton scattering. While Type II string theory lives strictly inside the allowed region, we uncover a novel extremal solution of the bootstrap problem, which appears to contain a single linear Regge trajectory, with the same slope as string theory. We repeat a similar analysis for supergluon scattering, where we find instead a continuous family of extremal solutionswith a single Regge trajectory of varying slope., Comment: 44+6 pages, 23 figures

We present the MOST Hosts survey (Multi-Object Spectroscopy of Transient Hosts). The survey is planned to run throughout the five years of operation of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and will generate a spectroscopic catalog of the hosts of most transients observed to date, in particular all the supernovae observed by most public, untargeted, wide-field, optical surveys (PTF/iPTF, SDSS II, ZTF, DECAT, DESIRT). Scientific questions for which the MOST Hosts survey will be useful include Type Ia supernova cosmology, fundamental plane and peculiar velocity measurements, and the understanding of the correlations between transients and their host galaxy properties. Here, we present the first release of the MOST Hosts survey: 21,931 hosts of 20,235 transients. These numbers represent 36% of the final MOST Hosts sample, consisting of 60,212 potential host galaxies of 38,603 transients (a transient can be assigned multiple potential hosts). Of these galaxies, 40% do not appear in the DESI primary target list and therefore require a specific program like MOST Hosts. Of all the transients in the MOST Hosts list, only 26.7% have existing classifications, and so the survey will provide redshifts (and luminosities) for nearly 30,000 transients. A preliminary Hubble diagram and a transient luminosity-duration diagram are shown as examples of future potential uses of the MOST Hosts survey. The survey will also provide a training sample of spectroscopically observed transients for photometry-only classifiers, as we enter an era when most newly observed transients will lack spectroscopic classification. The MOST Hosts DESI survey data will be released through the Wiserep platform on a rolling cadence and updated to match the DESI releases. Dates of future releases and updates are available through the https://mosthosts.desi.lbl.gov website., Comment: Submitted to ApJS

We study the Equitable Connected Partition (ECP for short) problem, where we are given a graph G=(V,E) together with an integer p, and our goal is to find a partition of V into p parts such that each part induces a connected sub-graph of G and the size of each two parts differs by at most 1. On the one hand, the problem is known to be NP-hard in general and W[1]-hard with respect to the path-width, the feedback-vertex set, and the number of parts p combined. On the other hand, fixed-parameter algorithms are known for parameters the vertex-integrity and the max leaf number. As our main contribution, we resolve a long-standing open question [Enciso et al.; IWPEC '09] regarding the parameterisation by the tree-depth of the underlying graph. In particular, we show that ECP is W[1]-hard with respect to the 4-path vertex cover number, which is an even more restrictive structural parameter than the tree-depth. In addition to that, we show W[1]-hardness of the problem with respect to the feedback-edge set, the distance to disjoint paths, and NP-hardness with respect to the shrub-depth and the clique-width. On a positive note, we propose several novel fixed-parameter algorithms for various parameters that are bounded for dense graphs.

In the recently introduced topological distance games, strategic agents need to be assigned to a subset of vertices of a topology. In the assignment, the utility of an agent depends on both the agent's inherent utilities for other agents and its distance from them on the topology. We study the computational complexity of finding individually rational outcomes; this notion is widely assumed to be the very minimal stability requirement and requires that the utility of every agent in a solution is non-negative. We perform a comprehensive study of the problem's complexity, and we prove that even in very basic cases, deciding whether an individually rational solution exists is intractable. To reach at least some tractability, one needs to combine multiple restrictions of the input instance, including the number of agents and the topology and the influence of distant agents on the utility., Comment: A preliminary version appeared in IJCAI '24

Let $X=G/H$ be a spherical variety over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p\ge0$. We compute the $p'$-parts of $\pi_0(H)$ and $\pi_1(X)$ from the spherical system of $X$., Comment: v1: 8 pages; v2: 8 pages, minor changes

Due to their short timescale, stellar flares are a challenging target for the most modern synoptic sky surveys. The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a project designed to collect more data than any precursor survey, is unlikely to detect flares with more than one data point in its main survey. We developed a methodology to enable LSST studies of stellar flares, with a focus on flare temperature and temperature evolution, which remain poorly constrained compared to flare morphology. By leveraging the sensitivity expected from the Rubin system, Differential Chromatic Refraction can be used to constrain flare temperature from a single-epoch detection, which will enable statistical studies of flare temperatures and constrain models of the physical processes behind flare emission using the unprecedentedly high volume of data produced by Rubin over the 10-year LSST. We model the refraction effect as a function of the atmospheric column density, photometric filter, and temperature of the flare, and show that flare temperatures at or above ~4,000K can be constrained by a single g-band observation at airmass X > 1.2, given the minimum specified requirement on single-visit relative astrometric accuracy of LSST, and that a surprisingly large number of LSST observations is in fact likely be conducted at X > 1.2, in spite of image quality requirements pushing the survey to preferentially low X. Having failed to measure flare DCR in LSST precursor surveys, we make recommendations on survey design and data products that enable these studies in LSST and other future surveys., Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, 1 table. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

In the Multiagent Path Finding problem (MAPF for short), we focus on efficiently finding non-colliding paths for a set of $k$ agents on a given graph $G$, where each agent seeks a path from its source vertex to a target. An important measure of the quality of the solution is the length of the proposed schedule $\ell$, that is, the length of a longest path (including the waiting time). In this work, we propose a systematic study under the parameterized complexity framework. The hardness results we provide align with many heuristics used for this problem, whose running time could potentially be improved based on our fixed-parameter tractability results. We show that MAPF is W[1]-hard with respect to $k$ (even if $k$ is combined with the maximum degree of the input graph). The problem remains NP-hard in planar graphs even if the maximum degree and the makespan$\ell$ are fixed constants. On the positive side, we show an FPT algorithm for $k+\ell$. As we delve further, the structure of~$G$ comes into play. We give an FPT algorithm for parameter $k$ plus the diameter of the graph~$G$. The MAPF problem is W[1]-hard for cliquewidth of $G$ plus $\ell$ while it is FPT for treewidth of $G$ plus $\ell$., Comment: Accepted by AAAI'24

Social distance games have been extensively studied as a coalition formation model where the utilities of agents in each coalition were captured using a utility function $u$ that took into account distances in a given social network. In this paper, we consider a non-normalized score-based definition of social distance games where the utility function $u^s$ depends on a generic scoring vector $s$, which may be customized to match the specifics of each individual application scenario. As our main technical contribution, we establish the tractability of computing a welfare-maximizing partitioning of the agents into coalitions on tree-like networks, for every score-based function $u^s$. We provide more efficient algorithms when dealing with specific choices of $u^s$ or simpler networks, and also extend all of these results to computing coalitions that are Nash stable or individually rational. We view these results as a further strong indication of the usefulness of the proposed score-based utility function: even on very simple networks, the problem of computing a welfare-maximizing partitioning into coalitions remains open for the originally considered canonical function $u$., Comment: Short version appeared at TARK 2023. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2307.05061

Microscope objectives achieve near diffraction-limited performance only when used under the conditions they are designed for. In non-standard geometries, such as thick cover slips or curved surfaces, severe aberrations arise, inevitably impairing high-resolution imaging. Correcting such large aberrations using standard adaptive optics can be challenging: existing solutions are either not suited for strong aberrations, or require extensive feedback measurements, consequently taking a significant portion of the photon budget. We demonstrate that it is possible to pre-compute the corrections needed for high-resolution imaging inside a glass tube based on a priori information only. Our ray-tracing based method achieved over an order of magnitude increase in image contrast without the need for a feedback signal., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Optics Express

We study the problem of counting the number of distinct elements in a dataset subject to the constraint of differential privacy. We consider the challenging setting of person-level DP (a.k.a. user-level DP) where each person may contribute an unbounded number of items and hence the sensitivity is unbounded. Our approach is to compute a bounded-sensitivity version of this query, which reduces to solving a max-flow problem. The sensitivity bound is optimized to balance the noise we must add to privatize the answer against the error of the approximation of the bounded-sensitivity query to the true number of unique elements.

We study the following model of disease spread in a social network. At first, all individuals are either infected or healthy. Next, in discrete rounds, the disease spreads in the network from infected to healthy individuals such that a healthy individual gets infected if and only if a sufficient number of its direct neighbors are already infected. We represent the social network as a graph. Inspired by the real-world restrictions in the current epidemic, especially by social and physical distancing requirements, we restrict ourselves to networks that can be represented as geometric intersection graphs. We show that finding a minimal vertex set of initially infected individuals to spread the disease in the whole network is computationally hard, already on unit disk graphs. Hence, to provide some algorithmic results, we focus ourselves on simpler geometric graph classes, such as interval graphs and grid graphs., Comment: This is an extended and revised version of a preliminary conference report that was presented in WAW 2023

We propose a novel model for refugee housing respecting the preferences of accepting community and refugees themselves. In particular, we are given a topology representing the local community, a set of inhabitants occupying some vertices of the topology, and a set of refugees that should be housed on the empty vertices of graph. Both the inhabitants and the refugees have preferences over the structure of their neighbourhood. We are specifically interested in the problem of finding housings such that the preferences of every individual are met; using game-theoretical words, we are looking for housings that are stable with respect to some well-defined notion of stability. We investigate conditions under which the existence of equilibria is guaranteed and study the computational complexity of finding such a stable outcome. As the problem is NP-hard even in very simple settings, we employ the parameterised complexity framework to give a finer-grained view on the problem's complexity with respect to natural parameters and structural restrictions of the given topology., Comment: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS '23

In this paper, we give a very simple proof that Treewidth is NP-complete; this proof also shows NP-completeness on the class of co-bipartite graphs. We then improve the result by Bodlaender and Thilikos from 1997 that Treewidth is NP-complete on graphs with maximum degree at most 9, by showing that Treewidth is NP-complete on cubic graphs.

Analysts seldom include interaction terms in meta-regression model, what can introduce bias if an interaction is present. We illustrate this in the current paper by re-analyzing an example from research on acute heart failure, where neglecting an interaction might have led to erroneous inference and conclusions. Moreover, we perform a brief simulation study based on this example highlighting the effects caused by omitting or unnecessarily including interaction terms. Based on our results, we recommend to always include interaction terms in mixed-effects meta-regression models, when such interactions are plausible., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2201.05491

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on health, everyday life and economics around the world. An important complication that can arise in connection with a COVID-19 infection is acute kidney injury. A recent observational cohort study of COVID-19 patients treated at multiple sites of a tertiary care center in Berlin, Germany identified risk factors for the development of (severe) acute kidney injury. Since inferring results from a single study can be tricky, we validate these findings and potentially adjust results by including external information from other studies on acute kidney injury and COVID-19. Methods: We synthesize the results of the main study with other trials via a Bayesian meta-analysis. The external information is used to construct a predictive distribution and to derive posterior estimates for the study of interest. We focus on various important potential risk factors for acute kidney injury development such as mechanical ventilation, use of vasopressors, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, gender and smoking. Results: Our results show that depending on the degree of heterogeneity in the data the estimated effect sizes may be refined considerably with inclusion of external data. Our findings confirm that mechanical ventilation and use of vasopressors are important risk factors for the development of acute kidney injury in COVID-19 patients. Hypertension also appears to be a risk factor that should not be ignored. Shrinkage weights depended to a large extent on the estimated heterogeneity in the model. Conclusions: Our work shows how external information can be used to adjust the results from a primary study, using a Bayesian meta-analytic approach. How much information is borrowed from external studies will depend on the degree of heterogeneity present in the model., Comment: 20 pages (including Appendix), 2 Tables, 8 figures

This paper presents a new optical imaging survey of four deep drilling fields (DDFs), two Galactic and two extragalactic, with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4 meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). During the first year of observations in 2021, $>$4000 images covering 21 square degrees (7 DECam pointings), with $\sim$40 epochs (nights) per field and 5 to 6 images per night per filter in $g$, $r$, $i$, and/or $z$, have become publicly available (the proprietary period for this program is waived). We describe the real-time difference-image pipeline and how alerts are distributed to brokers via the same distribution system as the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). In this paper, we focus on the two extragalactic deep fields (COSMOS and ELAIS-S1), characterizing the detected sources and demonstrating that the survey design is effective for probing the discovery space of faint and fast variable and transient sources. We describe and make publicly available 4413 calibrated light curves based on difference-image detection photometry of transients and variables in the extragalactic fields. We also present preliminary scientific analysis regarding Solar System small bodies, stellar flares and variables, Galactic anomaly detection, fast-rising transients and variables, supernovae, and active galactic nuclei., Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, 2 tables. Accepted to MNRAS