Primordial black holes from an inflationary potential valley

Primordial black holes (PBHs) could be formed if large perturbations are generated on small scales in inflation. We study a toy inflation model with a local minimum. The curvature perturbations are enhanced when the inflaton passes through the local minimum, with more efficient amplification rate than that of quasi-inflection point inflation, leading to the production of PBHs on small scales. The PBHs could comprise the total dark matter in the mass window $10^{16}$--$10^{20}$g.Comment: 7 pages,4 figure

Using inductive Energy Participation Ratio for Superconducting Quantum Chip Characterization

We have developed an inductive energy participation ratio (iEPR) method and a concise procedure for superconducting quantum chip layout simulation and verification that is increasingly indispensable in large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing. It can be utilized to extract the characteristic parameters and the bare Hamiltonian of the layout in an efficient way. In theory, iEPR sheds light on the deep-seated relationship between energy distribution and representation transformation. As a stirring application, we apply it to a typical quantum chip layout, obtaining all the crucial characteristic parameters in one step that would be extremely challenging through the existing methods. Our work is expected to significantly improve the simulation and verification techniques and takes an essential step toward quantum electronic design automation

DeNoising-MOT: Towards Multiple Object Tracking with Severe Occlusions

Multiple object tracking (MOT) tends to become more challenging when severe occlusions occur. In this paper, we analyze the limitations of traditional Convolutional Neural Network-based methods and Transformer-based methods in handling occlusions and propose DNMOT, an end-to-end trainable DeNoising Transformer for MOT. To address the challenge of occlusions, we explicitly simulate the scenarios when occlusions occur. Specifically, we augment the trajectory with noises during training and make our model learn the denoising process in an encoder-decoder architecture, so that our model can exhibit strong robustness and perform well under crowded scenes. Additionally, we propose a Cascaded Mask strategy to better coordinate the interaction between different types of queries in the decoder to prevent the mutual suppression between neighboring trajectories under crowded scenes. Notably, the proposed method requires no additional modules like matching strategy and motion state estimation in inference. We conduct extensive experiments on the MOT17, MOT20, and DanceTrack datasets, and the experimental results show that our method outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods by a clear margin.Comment: ACM Multimedia 202

Bimanual Microincision Cataract Surgery versus Coaxial Microincision Cataract Surgery: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials and Cohort Studies

Purpose. This meta-analysis was conducted to compare the intraoperative and postoperative outcomes of bimanual microincision cataract surgery (B-MICS) and coaxial microincision cataract surgery (C-MICS). Methods. Three databases were searched for papers that compared B-MICS and C-MICS from inception to June 2016. The following intraoperative and postoperative outcomes were included in the final meta-analysis: ultrasound time (UST), effective phacoemulsification time (EPT), balanced salt solution use (BSS use), mean surgery time, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central corneal thickness (CCT), and increased CCT. Results. There were no statistically significant differences in mean surgery time, UST, BSS use, BCVA, CCT, or increased CCT (one subgroup at postoperative day 7-8 and another subgroup at postoperative day 30). However, there was less EPT needed during surgery (p<0.01) and lower levels of increased CCT at postoperative day 1 (p=0.02) in the B-MICS group compared with the C-MICS group. Conclusions. The EPT was shorter and increased CCT was less at postoperative day 1 in the B-MICS group. There were no statistically significant differences in other intraoperative and postoperative outcomes between the B-MICS group and the C-MICS group. B-MICS is an efficient and safe cataract surgery procedure