"Intangible Victory" is an audiovisual installation in the form of the intangible being of the Victory of Samothrace that uses interactive digital media. Specifically, through this installation, we redefine the visual symbolism of the ancient sculpture, paying attention to time as a wear factor (entropy) and the special importance of the void as an absence of the sculptural form. Emptiness completes the intangible essence of the sculpture in the field of symbolism as well as in that of artistic significance for the interpretation of the work today. The function of the void and the interaction of the viewer with the work, causes the emergence of a new experience-dialogue between space and time. The use of digital media and technology reveals the absence of the sculptural form as it is visualized in the Victory of Samothrace. The sculptural form is reconstructed from fibers in space in a cylindrical arrangement. The form is rendered with colored strings - conductive sensors, that allow the visitor to interact with the work, creating a sound environment through movement. The sound completely replaces the volume, as the void of the sculptural form together with the viewer in unison pre
We study a finite form of the classical interval discrepancy problem. Starting from the unit interval, one repeatedly splits an existing interval into two until $n$ intervals have been produced. The discrepancy of such a process is the maximum, over all intermediate stages, of the ratio between the longest interval and the shortest interval. A theorem of de Bruijn and Erdős from 1949 shows that this ratio must approach $2$ as $n\to\infty$, and they give a sharp construction achieving this bound. For fixed $n$, their construction gives the upper bound $\text{disc}(n)\leq 2-\frac{3}{2n}+O(1/n^2)$. In this paper, we improve the first-order term of this bound. Specifically, we construct a strategy, called \emph{lex-merge}, with $\text{disc}(n)\leq 2-\frac{4\ln 2}{n}+O(1/n^2)$. We prove also the lower bound $\text{disc}(n)\geq 2-\frac{6\ln 2}{n}-O(1/n^2)$, showing that the first-order term in this improvement over the de Bruijn--Erdős construction has the correct order of magnitude. We conjecture that the lex-merge strategy is optimal for every $n$.
Knowledge of accurate relative skills in any competitive system is essential, but foundational approaches such as ELO discard extremely relevant performance data by concentrating exclusively on binary outcomes. While margin of victory (MOV) extensions exist, they often lack a definitive method for incorporating this information. We introduce Margin of Victory Differential Analysis (MOVDA), a framework that enhances traditional rating systems by using the deviation between the true MOV and a $\textit{modeled expectation}$. MOVDA learns a domain-specific, non-linear function (a scaled hyperbolic tangent that captures saturation effects and home advantage) to predict expected MOV based on rating differentials. Crucially, the $\textit{difference}$ between the true and expected MOV provides a subtle and weighted signal for rating updates, highlighting informative deviations in all levels of contests. Extensive experiments on professional NBA basketball data (from 2013 to 2023, with 13,619 games) show that MOVDA significantly outperforms standard ELO and Bayesian baselines. MOVDA reduces Brier score prediction error by $1.54\%$ compared to TrueSkill, increases outcome accuracy by $0.58\%
Determining how close a winner of an election is to becoming a loser, or distinguishing between different possible winners of an election, are major problems in computational social choice. We tackle these problems for so-called weighted tournament solutions by generalizing the notion of margin of victory (MoV) for tournament solutions by Brill et. al to weighted tournament solutions. For these, the MoV of a winner (resp. loser) is the total weight that needs to be changed in the tournament to make them a loser (resp. winner). We study three weighted tournament solutions: Borda's rule, the weighted Uncovered Set, and Split Cycle. For all three rules, we determine whether the MoV for winners and non-winners is tractable and give upper and lower bounds on the possible values of the MoV. Further, we axiomatically study and generalize properties from the unweighted tournament setting to weighted tournaments.
The margin of victory of an election is a useful measure to capture the robustness of an election outcome. It also plays a crucial role in determining the sample size of various algorithms in post election audit, polling etc. In this work, we present efficient sampling based algorithms for estimating the margin of victory of elections. More formally, we introduce the \textsc{$(c, ε, δ)$--Margin of Victory} problem, where given an election $\mathcal{E}$ on $n$ voters, the goal is to estimate the margin of victory $M(\mathcal{E})$ of $\mathcal{E}$ within an additive factor of $c MoV(\mathcal{E})+εn$. We study the \textsc{$(c, ε, δ)$--Margin of Victory} problem for many commonly used voting rules including scoring rules, approval, Bucklin, maximin, and Copeland$^α.$ We observe that even for the voting rules for which computing the margin of victory is NP-Hard, there may exist efficient sampling based algorithms, as observed in the cases of maximin and Copeland$^α$ voting rules.
Covering the face and all body parts, sometimes the only evidence to identify a person is their hand geometry, and not the whole hand- only two fingers (the index and the middle fingers) while showing the victory sign, as seen in many terrorists videos. This paper investigates for the first time a new way to identify persons, particularly (terrorists) from their victory sign. We have created a new database in this regard using a mobile phone camera, imaging the victory signs of 50 different persons over two sessions. Simple measurements for the fingers, in addition to the Hu Moments for the areas of the fingers were used to extract the geometric features of the shown part of the hand shown after segmentation. The experimental results using the KNN classifier were encouraging for most of the recorded persons; with about 40% to 93% total identification accuracy, depending on the features, distance metric and K used.
The main objective of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the margin of victory can be predicted solely by the rankings of the opposing teams in NCAA Division I men's basketball games. Several past studies have modeled this relationship for the games played during the March Madness tournament, and this work aims at verifying if the models advocated in these papers still perform well for regular season games. Indeed, most previous articles have shown that a simple quadratic regression model provides fairly accurate predictions of the margin of victory when team rankings only range from 1 to 16. Does that still hold true when team rankings can go as high as 351? Do the model assumptions hold? Can we find semi- or non-parametric methods that yield even better results (i.e. predicted margins of victory that more closely resemble actual results)? The analyses presented in this paper suggest that the answer is "yes" on all three counts!
Static benchmarks capture only part of how large language models behave in practice. Real systems place models inside repeated loops with time limits, formatting constraints, and failure modes. We study this setting in a timed multi-phase Risk environment with explicit victory targets and repeated planning and execution cycles. In a replicated 32-game cross-provider championship under frozen rules, gemini-3.1-pro-preview won 20 of 32 games against gpt-5.1, claude-opus-4-7, and kimi-k2.6, and the pooled winner distribution differs strongly from an equal-strength null (p approx 1.5 x 10^-5). We then separate planning from execution by standardizing execution on a cheaper Gemini Flash scaffold. Under this design, a pooled 32-game planner bakeoff is consistent with near-equality (p approx 0.821), which indicates that much of the earlier provider spread came from end-to-end system behavior rather than planning alone. To study mechanism, we analyze saved planning and execution traces from the provider championship. Gemini refers to the terminal objective far more often than the other models and increases that focus as victory approaches. Gemini also converts more turns into deep conquest
Nominal techniques provide a mathematically principled approach to dealing with names and variable binding in programming languages. This paper explores an attempt to make nominal techniques accessible as an Agda library. We aim for a technical victory of implementing nominal ideas; we further require a moral victory that the overhead be acceptable for practical systems. The results of this paper have been mechanised and are publicly accessible at https://omelkonian.github.io/nominal-agda/.
Muse Spark is the latest large language model developed by Meta. In this report, we first present evaluations for catastrophic risk domains under Meta's Advanced AI Scaling Framework, along with the evidence that informed our launch decision. We then discuss additional considerations, such as Muse Spark's broader content safety and behavioral profile, that are relevant to overall safety but fall outside the catastrophic risk domains governed by the Framework. Our preparedness results covering Chemical and Biological, Cybersecurity, and Loss of Control risks assess Muse Spark's deployment within Meta AI as presenting acceptable levels of residual risks under our Advanced AI Scaling Framework. We conducted a broad set of evaluations targeting dual-use and high-risk capabilities across these catastrophic risk domains. Those evaluations identified elevated risks prior to mitigations, with Chemical and Biological capabilities assessed as likely reaching the "high risk" category under the Advanced AI Scaling Framework before safeguards were applied. We have implemented a multi-layered set of mitigations that address the identified risks, and Muse Spark demonstrates state-of-the-art refus
We consider the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation on two-dimensional flat tori with varying aspect ratios. In this formulation, the choice of aspect ratio governs the Fourier resonance structure, so rational and irrational geometries can exhibit different high-frequency cascade behaviors. We present a geometry-conditioned Fourier neural operator (FNO) for the cubic defocusing NLS equation, where the input consists of the real and imaginary parts of the solution together with the aspect-ratio parameter \(ω^2\). The model is trained to approximate the one-step solution operator and is evaluated on unseen trajectories generated from random-phase initial data using Fourier pseudospectral method. Our numerical experiments show that the learned operator captures the main solution dynamics on both tori and reproduces the distinct Sobolev norm behavior of the two geometries, with stronger \(H^2\)-growth on the rational torus and more constrained behavior on the irrational torus, consistent with the findings of \cite{hrabski2021energy}. We perform ablation studies to examine the roles of retained Fourier modes, activation functions, Fourier-layer depth, and explicit geometry condit
We develop a structure-preserving ADMM method, denoted SP-ADMM, for learning energy-stable spatial derivative stencils for Maxwell equations from noisy data. Starting from the source-free Maxwell system, we focus on a one-dimensional reduction whose energy conservation depends on the skew-adjointness of the spatial derivative operator. The learned derivative is represented by a compact periodic convolution stencil. Unlike standard constrained ADMM, which learns the full stencil and imposes skew-adjointness through equality constraints, SP-ADMM enforces skew-adjointness by construction through a reduced parameterization using only the independent positive-side stencil coefficients. Numerical experiments show that SP-ADMM is especially effective in hidden operator and noisy-data regimes. Across clean data, noisy derivative data, multiple initial conditions, different hidden skew-adjoint operators, training-set sizes, regularization parameters, constraint ablations, and long-time simulations, SP-ADMM achieves the smallest final-time electric-field error while preserving energy to roundoff accuracy. A layered-medium Maxwell propagation test further shows that the learned structure-pres
Hamiltonian partial differential equations (PDEs) often exhibit long-time dynamics governed by conserved quantities such as mass, momentum, and Hamiltonian energy. Standard Fourier neural operators (FNOs) provide efficient data-driven approximations of solution operators, but may not preserve these invariants during autoregressive rollout, and can develop drift in conserved quantities, phase error, and loss of qualitative accuracy. We propose an energy-projection Fourier neural operator (EP-FNO), a structure-informed operator learning architecture that combines a residual FNO time-stepping update with an invariant projection for long-time prediction of parametric Hamiltonian PDEs. We also provide a theoretical analysis showing that EP-FNO can approximate operators associated with PDEs efficiently, we also suggest a stability estimate. We evaluate the approach on the Zakharov--Kuznetsov, Kadomtsev--Petviashvili, and sine--Gordon equations. Numerical experiments show that the projected model improves long-time stability, and gives more accurate propagation of soliton and coherent wave structures compared with a standard FNO baseline. Our results demonstrate that invariant projection
Elections, the cornerstone of democratic societies, are usually regarded as unpredictable due to the complex interactions that shape them at different levels. In this work, we show that voter turnouts contain crucial information that can be leveraged to predict several key electoral statistics with remarkable accuracy. Using the recently proposed random voting model, we analytically derive the scaled distributions of votes secured by winners, runner-ups, and margins of victory, and demonstrating their strong correlation with turnout distributions. By analyzing Indian election data -- spanning multiple decades and electoral scales -- we validate these predictions empirically across all scales, from large parliamentary constituencies to polling booths. Further, we uncover a surprising scale-invariant behavior in the distributions of scaled margins of victory, a characteristic signature of Indian elections. Finally, we demonstrate a robust universality in the distribution of the scaled margin-to-turnout ratios.
Resource estimation is a significant challenge in evaluating fault tolerant quantum computers. Existing approaches often rely on either fixed architectural assumptions or coarse analytical models that fail to capture the interaction between hardware constraints and circuit compilation. This challenge is particularly acute for neutral atom quantum computers, where architectural features such as atom movement, measurement zones, and multi-species arrays introduce a broad design space for implementing fault tolerant computation. Addressing the need for a tighter feedback loop between hardware design and practical application development, we present a compilation-driven framework for quantum resource estimation that translates arbitrary quantum circuits into logical primitive operations with known physical resource costs. This framework allows for easily configurable hardware assumptions that enable rapid comparison of different architectural design choices. We apply our approach to two early fault tolerant quantum simulation and optimization workloads, assuming the use of the surface code, revealing several architectural trends. While the production of magic states continues to be the
In this paper we describe a communication-strategy study for multi-GPU three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain computation with convolutional perfectly matched layer boundary conditions using CUDA. The metrics used to determine the most effective implementation include runtime, throughput in millions of output points per second, strong-scaling efficiency, CPML overhead, host-staged versus direct GPU-to-GPU exchange speedup, and enlarged-ghost speedup. On a single NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU, the CPML implementation sustains 2,889--3,290 million output points per second with less than 1\% boundary-layer overhead, providing the single-GPU baseline for the multi-GPU study. The results show that direct GPU-to-GPU peer exchange is the dominant optimization with a 2.46--2.76$\times$ speedup over host-staged exchange, while enlarged ghost regions give only modest benefits because the reduced communication frequency is partly offset by redundant computation and additional memory traffic. On NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 GPUs, the implementation gives up to a 1.51$\times$ speedup on two GPUs for the tested strong-scaling cases, while four GPUs enable larger grids that approach or exceed sin
When $n$ teams play in a football league with home and away matches against every opponent there are $M = n \cdot (n-1)$ matches. There are 3 possible match results: a victory is awarded 3 points, a draw 1 point and 0 points for a defeat. Hence we have $3^M$ possible outcomes. In this paper the number of ways is determined that a football league can complete with all teams having the same number of points. An algorithm that works until $n=8$ is presented.
Algorithms for resolving majority cycles in preference aggregation have been studied extensively in computational social choice. Several sophisticated cycle-resolving methods, including Tideman's Ranked Pairs, Schulze's Beat Path, and Heitzig's River, are refinements of the Split Cycle (SC) method that resolves majority cycles by discarding the weakest majority victories in each cycle. Recently, Holliday and Pacuit proposed a new refinement of Split Cycle, dubbed Stable Voting, and a simplification thereof, called Simple Stable Voting (SSV). They conjectured that SSV is a refinement of SC whenever no two majority victories are of the same size. In this paper, we prove the conjecture up to 6 alternatives and refute it for more than 6 alternatives. While our proof of the conjecture for up to 5 alternatives uses traditional mathematical reasoning, our 6-alternative proof and 7-alternative counterexample were obtained with the use of SAT solving. The SAT encoding underlying this proof and counterexample is applicable far beyond SC and SSV: it can be used to test properties of any voting method whose choice of winners depends only on the ordering of margins of victory by size.
The well-being of older adults relies significantly on maintaining balance and mobility. As physical ability declines, older adults often accept the need for assistive devices. However, existing walkers frequently fail to consider user preferences, leading to perceptions of imposition and reduced acceptance. This research explores the challenges faced by older adults, caregivers, and healthcare professionals when using walkers, assesses their perceptions, and identifies their needs and preferences. A holistic approach was employed, using tailored perception questionnaires for older adults (24 participants), caregivers (30 participants), and healthcare professionals (27 participants), all of whom completed the survey. Over 50% of caregivers and healthcare professionals displayed good knowledge, positive attitudes, and effective practices regarding walkers. However, over 30% of participants perceived current designs as fall risks, citing the need for significant upper body strength, potentially affecting safety and movement. More than 50% highlighted the importance of incorporating fall detection, ergonomic designs, noise reduction, and walker ramps to better meet user needs and pref
Tail dependence plays an essential role in the characterization of joint extreme events in multivariate data. However, most standard tail dependence parameters assume continuous margins. This note presents a form of tail dependence suitable for non-continuous and discrete margins. We derive a representation of tail dependence based on the volume of a copula and prove its properties. We utilize a bivariate regular variation to show that our new metric is consistent with the standard tail dependence parameters on continuous margins. We further define tail dependence on autocorrelated margins where the tail dependence parameter examine lagged correlation on the sample.