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We develop an estimation methodology for a factor model for high-dimensional matrix-valued time series, where common stochastic trends and common stationary factors can be present. We study, in particular, the estimation of (row and column) loading spaces, of the common stochastic trends and of the common stationary factors, and the row and column ranks thereof. In a set of (negative) preliminary results, we show that a projection-based technique fails to improve the rates of convergence compared to a "flattened" estimation technique which does not take into account the matrix nature of the data. Hence, we develop a three-step algorithm where: (i) we first project the data onto the orthogonal complement to the (row and column) loadings of the common stochastic trends; (ii) we subsequently use such "trend free" data to estimate the stationary common component; (iii) we remove the estimated common stationary component from the data, and re-estimate, using a projection-based estimator, the row and column common stochastic trends and their loadings. We show that this estimator succeeds in refining the rates of convergence of the initial, "flattened" estimator. As a by-product, we develop consistent eigenvalue-ratio based estimators for the number of stationary and nonstationary common factors.

We demonstrate a robust signal extraction method for X-ray speckle-based tensor tomography. We validate the effectiveness of the method for several carbon fiber composites, highlighting its potential for industrial applications. The proposed method can be adapted to various acquisition schemes and wavefront-marking optical elements, making it a versatile and robust tool for X-ray scattering tensor tomography., Comment: under review in Applied Physics Letters

The representations that can be defined starting from positive sesquilinear maps {\Phi} with values in an ordered Banach module are essentially of two types: if {\Phi} is positive, a natural generalization follows the path of the GNS construction; if {\Phi} is completely positive, one can move toward a possible generalization of the Stinespring dilation theorem. Both possibilities are explored in this paper providing representations of positive and completely positive ordered Banach bimodule-valued sesquilinear maps on a quasi *-algebra.

We study the Mabuchi functional associated to a big cohomology class. We define an invariant associated to transcendental Fujita approximations, whose vanishing is related to the Yau-Tian Donaldson conjecture. Assuming vanishing (finiteness) of this invariant we establish (almost) convexity along weak geodesics. As an application, we give an explicit expression of the distance $d_p$ in the big setting for finite entropy potentials., Comment: 37 pages

The paper proposes a moving sum methodology for detecting multiple change points in high-dimensional time series under a factor model, where changes are attributed to those in loadings as well as emergence or disappearance of factors. We establish the asymptotic null distribution of the proposed test for family-wise error control, and show the consistency of the procedure for multiple change point estimation. Simulation studies and an application to a large dataset of volatilities demonstrate the competitive performance of the proposed method.

We present a versatile method for full-field, X-ray scattering tensor tomography that is based on energy conservation and is applicable to data obtained using different wavefront modulators. Using this algorithm, we pave the way for speckle-based tensor tomography. The proposed model relies on a mathematical approach that allows tuning spatial resolution and signal sensitivity. We present the application of the algorithm to three different imaging modalities and demonstrate its potential for applications of X-ray directional dark-field imaging., Comment: Accepted by Physical Review Applied

Motivated by the work of Bryant on constant mean curvature (CMC) $1$-immersions of surfaces into the hyperbolic space H^3 and after the results of Tarantello (2023), we pursue a possible parametrization for the moduli space of (CMC) 1-immersions of a surface S (closed, orientable and of genus >1) into hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Those immersions enter as "critical" object in our analysis. In fact, they can be attained only as limits of the (CMC) c-immersions (as c tends to 1), obtained in Huang-Lucia-Tarantello (2022), for |c|<1. However, such passage to the limit can be prevented by possible blow-up phenomena, so that the pullback metrics of the (CMC) c-immersions may yield (at the limit) to a singular metric with conical singularities at finitely many points (the blow-up points). In case of genus g=2, blow up can occur only at a single point, and in Tarantello (2023) it was shown how it could be prevented and the passage to the limit ensured in terms of the Kodaira map. In this note we sharpen this result and for genus g=2, we obtaina condition (we believe sharp) which involves only the Kodaira map on the six Weierstrass points. In addition we tackle the case of higher genus, where multiple blow-up points occur. In this case, we need to identify a suitable replacement of the Kodaira map, now defined on the space of non-zero effective divisors. More importantly, we need to improve in a substantial way the asymptotic analysis of Tarantello (2023) limited to the case of "blow-up" with minimal mass. In this direction we give a contribution which best applies to the case of genus g=3, but also provides a relevant step and a convincing indication on what should happen in the general case.

It is known that the momentum operator canonically conjugated to the position operator for a particle moving in some bounded interval of the line {(with Dirichlet boundary conditions) is not essentially self-adjoint}: it has a continuous set of self-adjoint extensions. We prove that essential self-adjointness can be recovered by symmetrically weighting the momentum operator with a positive bounded function approximating the indicator function of the considered interval. This weighted momentum operator is consistently obtained from a similarly weighted classical momentum through the so-called Weyl-Heisenberg covariant integral quantization of functions or distributions., Comment: in press in Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications

We show that a compact K\"ahler manifold bimeromorphic to a weakly K\"ahler hyperbolic manifold is weakly K\"ahler hyperbolic, providing an answer to a problem raised by J. Koll\'ar in his 1995 book "Shafarevic maps and automorphic forms", Comment: 16 pages, no figures, comments are very welcome! v2: fixed some typos (including in the title), Corollary 1.3 and Theorem 5.1 are improved, and Corollary 1.4 is new

In this paper, we develop two families of sequential monitoring procedure to (timely) detect changes in a GARCH(1,1) model. Whilst our methodologies can be applied for the general analysis of changepoints in GARCH(1,1) sequences, they are in particular designed to detect changes from stationarity to explosivity or vice versa, thus allowing to check for volatility bubbles. Our statistics can be applied irrespective of whether the historical sample is stationary or not, and indeed without prior knowledge of the regime of the observations before and after the break. In particular, we construct our detectors as the CUSUM process of the quasi-Fisher scores of the log likelihood function. In order to ensure timely detection, we then construct our boundary function (exceeding which would indicate a break) by including a weighting sequence which is designed to shorten the detection delay in the presence of a changepoint. We consider two types of weights: a lighter set of weights, which ensures timely detection in the presence of changes occurring early, but not too early after the end of the historical sample; and a heavier set of weights, called Renyi weights which is designed to ensure timely detection in the presence of changepoints occurring very early in the monitoring horizon. In both cases, we derive the limiting distribution of the detection delays, indicating the expected delay for each set of weights. Our theoretical results are validated via a comprehensive set of simulations, and an empirical application to daily returns of individual stocks.

The GNS construction for positive invariant sesquilinear forms on quasi *-algebras is generalized to a class of positive C*-valued sesquilinear maps on quasi *-algebras. The result is a *-representation taking values in a space of operators acting on a certain quasi-normed C-module., Comment: This preprint has not undergone peer review (when applicable) or any post-submission improvements or corrections. The Version of the Record of this article is published in Mediterranean Journal of Mathematics and is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00009-024-02704-2

Building embodied AI systems that can follow arbitrary language instructions in any 3D environment is a key challenge for creating general AI. Accomplishing this goal requires learning to ground language in perception and embodied actions, in order to accomplish complex tasks. The Scalable, Instructable, Multiworld Agent (SIMA) project tackles this by training agents to follow free-form instructions across a diverse range of virtual 3D environments, including curated research environments as well as open-ended, commercial video games. Our goal is to develop an instructable agent that can accomplish anything a human can do in any simulated 3D environment. Our approach focuses on language-driven generality while imposing minimal assumptions. Our agents interact with environments in real-time using a generic, human-like interface: the inputs are image observations and language instructions and the outputs are keyboard-and-mouse actions. This general approach is challenging, but it allows agents to ground language across many visually complex and semantically rich environments while also allowing us to readily run agents in new environments. In this paper we describe our motivation and goal, the initial progress we have made, and promising preliminary results on several diverse research environments and a variety of commercial video games.

We study online changepoint detection in the context of a linear regression model. We propose a class of heavily weighted statistics based on the CUSUM process of the regression residuals, which are specifically designed to ensure timely detection of breaks occurring early on during the monitoring horizon. We subsequently propose a class of composite statistics, constructed using different weighing schemes; the decision rule to mark a changepoint is based on the largest statistic across the various weights, thus effectively working like a veto-based voting mechanism, which ensures fast detection irrespective of the location of the changepoint. Our theory is derived under a very general form of weak dependence, thus being able to apply our tests to virtually all time series encountered in economics, medicine, and other applied sciences. Monte Carlo simulations show that our methodologies are able to control the procedure-wise Type I Error, and have short detection delays in the presence of breaks.

We propose a family of weighted statistics based on the CUSUM process of the WLS residuals for the online detection of changepoints in a Random Coefficient Autoregressive model, using both the standard CUSUM and the Page-CUSUM process. We derive the asymptotics under the null of no changepoint for all possible weighing schemes, including the case of the standardised CUSUM, for which we derive a Darling-Erdos-type limit theorem; our results guarantee the procedure-wise size control under both an open-ended and a closed-ended monitoring. In addition to considering the standard RCA model with no covariates, we also extend our results to the case of exogenous regressors. Our results can be applied irrespective of (and with no prior knowledge required as to) whether the observations are stationary or not, and irrespective of whether they change into a stationary or nonstationary regime. Hence, our methodology is particularly suited to detect the onset, or the collapse, of a bubble or an epidemic. Our simulations show that our procedures, especially when standardising the CUSUM process, can ensure very good size control and short detection delays. We complement our theory by studying the online detection of breaks in epidemiological and housing prices series.

In this note we prove that a finite family $\{X_1,\dots,X_d\}$ of real r.v.'s that is exchangeable and such that $(X_1,\dots,X_d)$ is invariant with respect to a subgroup of $SO(d)$ acting irreducibly, is actually invariant with respect to the action of the full group $SO(d)$. Three immediate consequences are deduced: a characterization of isotropic spherical random eigenfunctions whose Fourier coefficients are exchangeable, an extension of Bernstein's characterization of the Gaussian and a characterization of the Lebesgue measure on the sphere.

In this note, we generalize the notion of entropy for potentials in a relative full Monge-Amp\`ere mass $\mathcal{E}(X, \theta, \phi)$, for a model potential $\phi$. We then investigate stability properties of this condition with respect to blow-ups and perturbation of the cohomology class. We also prove a Moser-Trudinger type inequality with general weight and we show that functions with finite entropy lie in a relative energy class $\mathcal{E}^{\frac{n}{n-1}}(X, \theta, \phi)$ (provided $n>1$), while they have the same singularities of $\phi$ when $n=1$.

We propose a novel family of test statistics to detect the presence of changepoints in a sequence of dependent, possibly multivariate, functional-valued observations. Our approach allows to test for a very general class of changepoints, including the "classical" case of changes in the mean, and even changes in the whole distribution. Our statistics are based on a generalisation of the empirical energy distance; we propose weighted functionals of the energy distance process, which are designed in order to enhance the ability to detect breaks occurring at sample endpoints. The limiting distribution of the maximally selected version of our statistics requires only the computation of the eigenvalues of the covariance function, thus being readily implementable in the most commonly employed packages, e.g. R. We show that, under the alternative, our statistics are able to detect changepoints occurring even very close to the beginning/end of the sample. In the presence of multiple changepoints, we propose a binary segmentation algorithm to estimate the number of breaks and the locations thereof. Simulations show that our procedures work very well in finite samples. We complement our theory with applications to financial and temperature data.

We solve the time-dependent Fokker-Planck equation for a two-dimensional active Brownian particle exploring a circular region with an absorbing boundary. Using the passive Brownian particle as basis states and dealing with the activity as a perturbation, we provide a matrix representation of the Fokker-Planck operator and we express the propagator in terms of the perturbed eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. Alternatively, we show that the propagator can be expressed as a combination of the equilibrium eigenstates with weights depending only on time and on the initial conditions, and obeying exact iterative relations. Our solution allows also obtaining the survival probability and the first-passage time distribution. These latter quantities exhibit peculiarities induced by the non-equilibrium character of the dynamics, in particular, they display a strong dependence on the activity of the particle and, to a less extent, also on its rotational diffusivity., Comment: 11pages, 6 figures

Quasi *-algebras possessing a sufficient family $\mathcal{M}$ of invariant positive sesquilinear forms carry several topologies related to $\mathcal{M}$ which make every *-representation continuous. This leads to define the class of locally convex quasi GA*-algebras whose main feature consists in the fact that the family of their bounded elements, with respect to the family $\mathcal{M}$, is a dense C*-algebra.

We consider (robust) inference in the context of a factor model for tensor-valued sequences. We study the consistency of the estimated common factors and loadings space when using estimators based on minimising quadratic loss functions. Building on the observation that such loss functions are adequate only if sufficiently many moments exist, we extend our results to the case of heavy-tailed distributions by considering estimators based on minimising the Huber loss function, which uses an $L_{1}$ -norm weight on outliers. We show that such class of estimators is robust to the presence of heavy tails, even when only the second moment of the data exists. We also propose a modified version of the eigenvalue-ratio principle to estimate the dimensions of the core tensor and show the consistency of the resultant estimators without any condition on the relative rates of divergence of the sample size and dimensions. Extensive numerical studies are conducted to show the advantages of the proposed methods over the state-of-the-art ones especially under the heavy-tailed cases. An import/export dataset of a variety of commodities across multiple countries is analyzed to show the practical usefulness of the proposed robust estimation procedure. An R package ``RTFA" implementing the proposed methods is available on R CRAN.

This report provides an overview of science and engineering (S&E) higher education in the United States, including trends over time and comparisons with other nations. S&E fields, as defined in this report, include astronomy, chemistry, physics, atmospheric sciences, earth sciences, ocean sciences, mathematics and statistics, computer sciences, agricultural sciences, biological sciences, psychology, social sciences, and engineering. At the doctoral level, the medical and health sciences are included under S&E because the doctoral-level data correspond to the doctor's-research/scholarship degree level, which includes research-focused degrees but excludes professional practice degrees such as Doctor of Medicine. The first section of this report provides overall information on the U.S. higher education system, with special emphasis on several types of institutions: research universities, minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and community colleges. It includes a sidebar focused on preliminary data on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education. This section also provides information on sources of aid for undergraduate S&E education, with a focus on the federal government's role. The second section looks at national trends over time in S&E degree awards at the undergraduate and graduate levels, highlighting patterns by field. The third section focuses on the demographic attributes of S&E degree recipients, including sex, race, and ethnicity. It examines trends by degree level and field. The final section focuses on international S&E higher education. This section provides data on students on temporary visas who study or earn degrees in the United States, with special emphasis on the sharp decline in international students that resulted from the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also benchmarks the United States with other nations in terms of S&E degrees awarded. [SRI International, Center for Innovation Strategy and Policy, assisted with preparation of this report.]

Wavefront-marking X-ray imaging techniques use e.g., sandpaper or a grating to generate intensity fluctuations, and analyze their distortion by the sample in order to retrieve attenuation, phase-contrast, and dark-field information. Phase contrast yields an improved visibility of soft-tissue specimens, while dark-field reveals small-angle scatter from sub-resolution structures. Both have found many biomedical and engineering applications. The previously developed Unified Modulated Pattern Analysis (UMPA) model extracts these modalities from wavefront-marking data. We here present a new UMPA implementation, capable of rapidly processing large datasets and featuring capabilities to greatly extend the field of view. We also discuss possible artifacts and additional new features., Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Optics Express

Tensor Factor Models (TFM) are appealing dimension reduction tools for high-order large-dimensional tensor time series, and have wide applications in economics, finance and medical imaging. In this paper, we propose a projection estimator for the Tucker-decomposition based TFM, and provide its least-square interpretation which parallels to the least-square interpretation of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for the vector factor model. The projection technique simultaneously reduces the dimensionality of the signal component and the magnitudes of the idiosyncratic component tensor, thus leading to an increase of the signal-to-noise ratio. We derive a convergence rate of the projection estimator of the loadings and the common factor tensor which are faster than that of the naive PCA-based estimator. Our results are obtained under mild conditions which allow the idiosyncratic components to be weakly cross- and auto- correlated. We also provide a novel iterative procedure based on the eigenvalue-ratio principle to determine the factor numbers. Extensive numerical studies are conducted to investigate the empirical performance of the proposed projection estimators relative to the state-of-the-art ones.

We introduce the notion of weakly K\"ahler hyperbolic manifold which generalizes that of K\"ahler hyperbolic manifold given in the early '90s by M. Gromov, and establish its basic features. We then investigate its spectral properties and show a spectral gap result (on a suitable modification). As applications, we prove that weakly K\"ahler hyperbolic manifolds are of general type and we study the geometry of their subvarieties and entire curves, verifying -- among other things -- various aspects of the Lang and the Green--Griffiths conjectures for this class of manifolds., Comment: 46 pages, no figures, comments are very welcome! V3: fixed some typos, and some minor modifications done following referee's suggestions. Final version, to appear on J. Reine Angew. Math