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Location-based services (LBSs) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) offer users numerous conveniences. However, the extensive use of LBSs raises concerns about the privacy of users' trajectories, as adversaries can exploit temporal correlations between different locations to extract personal information. Additionally, users have varying privacy requirements depending on the time and location. To address these issues, this paper proposes a personalized trajectory privacy protection mechanism (PTPPM). This mechanism first uses the temporal correlation between trajectory locations to determine the possible location set for each time instant. We identify a protection location set (PLS) for each location by employing the Hilbert curve-based minimum distance search algorithm. This approach incorporates the complementary features of geo-indistinguishability and distortion privacy. We put forth a novel Permute-and-Flip mechanism for location perturbation, which maps its initial application in data publishing privacy protection to a location perturbation mechanism. This mechanism generates fake locations with smaller perturbation distances while improving the balance between privacy and quality of service (QoS). Simulation results show that our mechanism outperforms the benchmark by providing enhanced privacy protection while meeting user's QoS requirements.

ChatGPT has shown its great power in text processing, including its reasoning ability from text reading. However, there has not been any direct comparison between human readers and ChatGPT in reasoning ability related to text reading. This study was undertaken to investigate how ChatGPTs (i.e., ChatGPT and ChatGPT Plus) and Chinese senior school students as ESL learners exhibited their reasoning ability from English narrative texts. Additionally, we compared the two ChatGPTs in the reasoning performances when commands were updated elaborately. The whole study was composed of three reasoning tests: Test 1 for commonsense inference, Test 2 for emotional inference, and Test 3 for causal inference. The results showed that in Test 1, the students outdid the two ChatGPT versions in local-culture-related inferences but performed worse than the chatbots in daily-life inferences. In Test 2, ChatGPT Plus excelled whereas ChatGPT lagged behind in accuracy. In association with both accuracy and frequency of correct responses, the students were inferior to the two chatbots. Compared with ChatGPTs' better performance in positive emotions, the students showed their superiority in inferring negative emotions. In Test 3, the students demonstrated better logical analysis, outdoing both chatbots. In updating command condition, ChatGPT Plus displayed good causal reasoning ability while ChatGPT kept unchanged. Our study reveals that human readers and ChatGPTs have their respective advantages and disadvantages in drawing inferences from text reading comprehension, unlocking a complementary relationship in text-based reasoning.

Coherent interaction between matter and periodic light field induces both optical Stark effect (OSE) and Bloch-Siegert shift (BSS). Observing the BSS has been historically challenging, not only because it is weak but it is often accompanied by a much stronger OSE. Herein, by controlling the light helicity, we can largely restrict the OSE and BSS to different spin-transitions in CsPbI3 perovskite quantum dots, achieving room-temperature BSS as strong as 4 meV with near-infrared pulses. The ratio between the BSS and OSE magnitudes is however systematically higher than the prediction by the non-interacting, quasi-particle picture. With a model that explicitly accounts for excitonic effects, we quantitatively reproduce the experimental observations. This model depicts a unified physical picture of the interplay between the OSE, biexcitonic OSE and BSS in low-dimensional materials displaying strong many-body interactions, forming the basis for the implementation of these effects to information processing, optical modulation and Floquet engineering.

Anisotropic exchange-splitting in semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) results in bright-exciton fine-structure-splitting (FSS) important for quantum information processing. Direct measurement of FSS usually requires single/few QDs at liquid-helium temperatures, because of its sensitivity to QD size and shape, whereas measuring and controlling FSS at an ensemble-level seem to be impossible unless all the dots are made to be nearly the same. Here we report strong bright-exciton FSS up to 1.6 meV in solution-processed CsPbI3 perovskite QDs, manifested as quantum beats in ensemble-level transient absorption at liquid-nitrogen to room temperatures. The splitting is robust to QD size and shape heterogeneity, and increases with decreasing temperature, pointing towards a mechanism associated with orthorhombic distortion of perovskite lattice. Effective-mass-approximation calculations reveal an intrinsic "fine-structure gap" that agrees well with the observed FSS. This gap stems from an avoided crossing of bright-excitons confined in orthorhombically-distorted QDs that are bounded by the pseudocubic {100} family of planes.

A well known conjecture in complex geometry states that a compact Hermitian manifold with constant holomorphic sectional curvature must be K\"ahler if the constant is non-zero and must be Chern flat if the constant is zero. The conjecture is confirmed in complex dimension $2$, by the work of Balas-Gauduchon in 1985 (when the constant is zero or negative) and by Apostolov-Davidov-Muskarov in 1996 (when the constant is positive). For higher dimensions, the conjecture is still largely unknown. In this article, we restrict ourselves to the class of complex nilmanifolds and confirm the conjecture in that case.