This is the guest editors' general introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, dedicated to confidence distributions and related themes. Confidence distributions (CDs) are distributions for parameters of interest, constructed via a statistical model after analysing the data. As such they serve the same purpose for the frequentist statisticians as the posterior distributions for the Bayesians. There have been several attempts in the literature to put up a clear theory for such confidence distributions, from Fisher's fiducial inference and onwards. There are certain obstacles and difficulties involved in these attempts, both conceptually and operationally, which have contributed to the CDs being slow in entering statistical mainstream. Recently there is a renewed surge of interest in CDs and various related themes, however, reflected in both series of new methodological research, advanced applications to substantive sciences, and dissemination and communication via workshops and conferences. The present special issue of the JSPI is a collection of papers emanating from the {\it Inference With Confidence} workshop in Oslo, May 2015. Several of
Deepfakes are AI-synthesized content that are becoming popular on many social media platforms, meaning the use of deepfakes is increasing in society, regardless of its societal implications. Its implications are harmful if the moral intuitions behind deepfakes are problematic; thus, it is important to explore how the moral intuitions behind deepfakes unfold in communities at scale. However, understanding perceived moral viewpoints unfolding in digital contexts is challenging, due to the complexities in conversations. In this research, we demonstrate how Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) can be used as a lens through which to operationalize moral viewpoints in discussions about deepfakes on Reddit communities. Using the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD), we measured the strengths of moral intuition (moral loading) behind 101,869 Reddit posts. We present the discussions that unfolded on Reddit in 2018 to 2022 wherein intuitions behind some posts were found to be morally questionable to society. Our results may help platforms detect and take action against immoral activities related to deepfakes.
In this paper, we show that certain phrases although not present in a given question/query, play a very important role in answering the question. Exploring the role of such phrases in answering questions not only reduces the dependency on matching question phrases for extracting answers, but also improves the quality of the extracted answers. Here matching question phrases means phrases which co-occur in given question and candidate answers. To achieve the above discussed goal, we introduce a bigram-based word graph model populated with semantic and topical relatedness of terms in the given document. Next, we apply an improved version of ranking with a prior-based approach, which ranks all words in the candidate document with respect to a set of root words (i.e. non-stopwords present in the question and in the candidate document). As a result, terms logically related to the root words are scored higher than terms that are not related to the root words. Experimental results show that our devised system performs better than state-of-the-art for the task of answering Why-questions.
This paper presents and derives the interrelations between survival analysis and master equation. Survival analysis deals with modeling the transitions between succeeding states of a system in terms of hazard rates. Questions related with this are the timing and sequencing of the states of a time series. The frequency and characteristics of time series can be investigated by Monte-Carlo simulations. If one is interested in cross-sectional data connected with the stochastic process under consideration, one needs to know the temporal evolution of the distribution of states. This can be obtained by simulation of the associated master equation. Some new formulas allow the determination of path-related (i.e. longitudinal) quantities like the occurence probability, the occurence time distribution, or the effective cumulative life-time distribution of a certain sequencing of states (path). These can be efficiently evaluated with a recently developed simulation tool (EPIS). The effective cumulative life-time distribution facilitates the formulation of a hidden state concept of behavioral changes which allows an interpretation of the respective time-dependence of hazard rates. Hidden states
In a basic related-key attack against a block cipher, the adversary has access to encryptions under keys that differ from the target key by bit-flips. In this short note we show that for a quantum adversary such attacks are quite powerful: if the secret key is (i) uniquely determined by a small number of plaintext-ciphertext pairs, (ii) the block cipher can be evaluated efficiently, and (iii) a superposition of related keys can be queried, then the key can be extracted efficiently.
In this mostly expository paper, we present recent progress on infinite (weak) cluster categories that are related to triangulations of the disk, with and without a puncture. First we recall the notion of a cluster category. Then we move to the infinite setting and survey recent work on infinite cluster categories of types $\mathbb{A}$ and $\mathbb{D}$. We conclude with our contributions, two infinite families of infinite (weak) cluster categories of type $\mathbb{D}$. We first present a discrete, infinite version of Schiffler's combinatorial model of the punctured disk with marked points. We then produce each (weak) cluster category starting with representations of thread quivers, taking the derived category, and then taking the appropriate orbit category. We show that the combinatorics in the (weak) cluster categories match with the corresponding combinatorics of the punctured disk with countably-many marked points. We also state two conjectures concerning weak cluster structures inside our (weak) cluster categories.
We study various weaker forms of inverse shadowing property for discrete dynamical systems on a smooth compact manifold. First, we introduce the so-called Ergodic Inverse Shadowing property (Birhhoff averages of continuous functions along the exact trajectory and the approximating one are close). We demonstrate that this property implies continuity of the set of invariant measures in Hausdorff metrics. We show that the class of systems with Ergodic Inverse Shadowing is quite broad, it includes all diffeomorphisms with hyperbolic nonwandering sets. Secondly, we study the so-called Individual Inverse Shadowing (any exact trajectory can be traced by approximate ones but this shadowing is not uniform with respect to selection of the initial point of the trajectory). We demonstrate that this property is closely related to Structural Stability and $Ω$-stability of diffeomorphisms.
Serious weaknesses in two very closely related group authentication and group key establishment schemes are described. Simple attacks against the group key establishment part of the schemes are described, which strongly suggest that the schemes should not be used.
We introduce the so-called Clifford-Hermite polynomials in the framework of Dunkl operators, based on the theory of Clifford analysis. Several properties of these polynomials are obtained, such as a Rodrigues formula, a differential equation and an explicit relation connecting them with the generalized Laguerre polynomials. A link is established with the generalized Hermite polynomials related to the Dunkl operators (see [Rösler M., Comm. Math. Phys. 192 (1998), 519-542, q-alg/9703006]) as well as with the basis of the weighted $L^{2}$ space introduced by Dunkl.
We bound several quantities related to the packing density of the patterns 1(L+1)L...2. These bounds sharpen results of Bóna, Sagan, and Vatter and give a new proof of the packing density of these patterns, originally computed by Stromquist in the case L=2 and by Price for larger L. We end with comments and conjectures.
Contrary to the theory of Markov processes, no general theory exists for the so called nonlinear Markov processes. We study an example of "nonlinear Markov process" related to classical probability theory, merely to random walks. This model provides interesting phenomena (absent in classical Markov chains): continuum of stationary measures, conserved quantities, convergence to stationary classical random walks etc.
Along with some other researches we have realised that the true origin of high-temperature superconductivity should be found in the strong Coulomb repulsion combined with a significant electronphonon interaction. Both interactions are strong (on the order of 1 eV) compared with the low Fermi energy of doped carries which makes the conventional BCS-Eliashberg theory inapplicable in cuprates and related doped insulators. Based on our recent analytical and numerical results I argue that high-temperature superconductivity from repulsion is impossible for any strength of the Coulomb interaction. Major steps of our alternative polaronic theory are outlined starting from the generic Hamiltonian with the unscreened (bare) Coulomb and electron-phonon interactions accounting for critical temperatures of high-temperature superconductors without any adjustable parameters.
We survey results on the topological complexity of classical configuration spaces of distinct ordered points in orientable surfaces and related spaces, including certain orbit configuration spaces and Eilenberg-Mac Lane spaces associated to certain discrete groups.
In one of the papers, El-Maaref et al. [J. Elect. Spectrosc. Related Phen. 215 (2017) 22] have reported results for energy levels, oscillator strengths (f-values), radiative rates (A-values), collision strengths ($Ω$), and excitation rates for transitions in S-like Mn~X. However, except for energy levels their results are restricted to only a few transitions and hence have limited application. Furthermore, most of their results have scope for improvement, but for $Ω$ are not correct as these have been found to be overestimated by an order of magnitude. In this comment we discuss the discrepancies and deficiencies of their results and recommend that a fresh calculation should be performed for this ion.
The work describes a multidimensional latent class Rasch model and its application to data about the measurement of some aspects of Health-related Quality of Life and Anxiety and Depression in oncological patients.
Since the subject of traffic dynamics has captured the interest of physicists, many astonishing effects have been revealed and explained. Some of the questions now understood are the following: Why are vehicles sometimes stopped by so-called ``phantom traffic jams'', although they all like to drive fast? What are the mechanisms behind stop-and-go traffic? Why are there several different kinds of congestion, and how are they related? Why do most traffic jams occur considerably before the road capacity is reached? Can a temporary reduction of the traffic volume cause a lasting traffic jam? Under which conditions can speed limits speed up traffic? Why do pedestrians moving in opposite directions normally organize in lanes, while similar systems are ``freezing by heating''? Why do self-organizing systems tend to reach an optimal state? Why do panicking pedestrians produce dangerous deadlocks? All these questions have been answered by applying and extending methods from statistical physics and non-linear dynamics to self-driven many-particle systems. This review article on traffic introduces (i) empirically data, facts, and observations, (ii) the main approaches to pedestrian, highway,
This article describes the design of a common syntactic description for the core grammar of a group of related dialects. The common description does not rely on an abstract sub-linguistic structure like a metagrammar: it consists in a single FS-LTAG where the actual specific language is included as one of the attributes in the set of attribute types defined for the features. When the lang attribute is instantiated, the selected subset of the grammar is equivalent to the grammar of one dialect. When it is not, we have a model of a hybrid multidialectal linguistic system. This principle is used for a group of creole languages of the West-Atlantic area, namely the French-based Creoles of Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana.
We have performed the bulk-sensitive high-resolution soft x-ray photoemission study of a Kondo semiconductor CeRhAs and related compounds CeNiSn and CePdSn. The comparison of the spectra of polycrystalline CePdSn on the fractured and scraped surfaces shows that the fracturing of the samples is much better than the scraping in order to obtain intrinsic photoemission spectra. The Ce 4d core-level spectra show clear differences in the electronic states among the materials.
We review results about $G_2$-structures in relation to the existence of special metrics, such as Einstein metrics and Ricci solitons, and the evolution under the Laplacian flow on non-compact homogeneous spaces. We also discuss some examples in detail.
We make use of the recent proof that the critical probability for percolation on random Voronoi tessellations is 1/2 to prove the corresponding result for random Johnson-Mehl tessellations, as well as for two-dimensional slices of higher dimensional Voronoi tessellations. Surprisingly, the proof is a little simpler for these more complicated models.