Factorization properties of genus-two bosonic and fermionic string partition functions

The genus-two bosonic and fermionic string partition functions factorize, in the separating pinching limit, into genus-one partition functions after integrating out the supermoduli with super-Beltrami support on the puncture points in the fermionic and heterotic case

Chain configurations in light nuclei

The model of nuclear matter built from alpha-particles is proposed. The strong deformed shape for doubly even N=Z nuclides from carbon to magnesium has been determined according to this model. In this paper we undertake very simple approach, which assumes the existence of low lying chain configurations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Creation of a brane world with Gauss-Bonnet term

We study a creation of a brane world using an instanton solution. We analyze a brane model with a Gauss-Bonnet term in a bulk spacetime. The curvature of 3-brane is assumed to be closed, flat, or open. We construct instanton solutions with branes for those models, and calculate the value of the actions to discuss an initial state of a brane universe.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Review: Consumption-stage food waste reduction interventions - What works and how to design better interventions

Food waste prevention has become an issue of international concern, with Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 aiming to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030. However there is no review that has considered the effectiveness of interventions aimed at preventing food waste in the consumption stages of the food system. This significant gap, if filled, could help support those working to reduce food waste in the developed world, providing knowledge of what interventions are specifically effective at preventing food waste. This paper fills this gap, identifying and summarizing food-waste prevention interventions at the consumption/consumer stage of the supply chain via a rapid review of global academic literature from 2006 to 2017. We identify 17 applied interventions that claim to have achieved food waste reductions. Of these, 13 quantified food waste reductions. Interventions that changed the size or type of plates were shown to be effective (up to 57% food waste reduction) in hospitality environments. Changing nutritional guidelines in schools were reported to reduce vegetable waste by up to 28%, indicating that healthy diets can be part of food waste reduction strategies. Information campaigns were also shown to be effective with up to 28% food waste reduction in a small sample size intervention. Cooking classes, fridge cameras, food sharing apps, advertising and information sharing were all reported as being effective but with little or no robust evidence provided. This is worrying as all these methods are now being proposed as approaches to reduce food waste and, except for a few studies, there is no reproducible quantified evidence to assure credibility or success. To strengthen current results, a greater number of longitudinal and larger sample size intervention studies are required. To inform future intervention studies, this paper proposes a standardised guideline, which consists of: (1) intervention design; (2) monitoring and measurement; (3) moderation and mediation; (4) reporting; (5) systemic effects. Given the importance of food-waste reduction, the findings of this review highlight a significant evidence gap, meaning that it is difficult to make evidence-based decisions to prevent or reduce consumption-stage food waste in a cost-effective manner

HIPAD - A Hybrid Interior-Point Alternating Direction algorithm for knowledge-based SVM and feature selection

We consider classification tasks in the regime of scarce labeled training data in high dimensional feature space, where specific expert knowledge is also available. We propose a new hybrid optimization algorithm that solves the elastic-net support vector machine (SVM) through an alternating direction method of multipliers in the first phase, followed by an interior-point method for the classical SVM in the second phase. Both SVM formulations are adapted to knowledge incorporation. Our proposed algorithm addresses the challenges of automatic feature selection, high optimization accuracy, and algorithmic flexibility for taking advantage of prior knowledge. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm and compare it with existing methods on a collection of synthetic and real-world data.Comment: Proceedings of 8th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN (LION8) Conference, 201