cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Toward Operator-to-Waveform 5G Radio Access Network Slicing

RAN slicing refers to a vision where multiple MNOs are assigned virtual networks (i.e., slices) instantiated on top of the same physical network resources. Existing work in this area has addressed RAN slicing at different levels of network abstraction, but has often neglected the multitude of tightly intertwined inter-level operations involved in practical slicing systems. For this reason, this article discusses a novel framework for operator-to-waveform 5G RAN slicing. In the proposed framework, slicing operations are treated holistically, including MNOs' selection of base stations and maximum number of users, down to the waveform-level scheduling of resource blocks. Simulation results show that the proposed framework generates RAN slices where 95 percent of allocated resources can be used to perform coordination- based 5G transmission technologies, and facilitates the coexistence of multiple RAN slices providing up to 120 percent improvement in terms of SINR experienced by mobile users.
Corporate governance and cash holdings: Evidence from worldwide board reforms

Abstract Using staggered board reforms as a quasi-natural experiment and a difference-in-differences approach, this study examines the impact of corporate governance on cash holdings in 41 countries. We find that board reforms are followed by significant reductions in cash holdings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with weaker pre-reform corporate governance and for firms from countries with weaker institutional environments. Analysis of cash spending suggests that, following board reforms, firms are more likely to use cash to increase R&D expenditures, dividend payouts, and share repurchases, but not to increase capital or acquisition expenditures. Finally, the results indicate that enhanced corporate governance following board reforms leads to higher (lower) cash (dividend payouts) values, consistent with the view that board reforms strengthen corporate governance.
Antiproton Interaction Cross Sections

Using the 1.19-Bev/c antiproton beam recently discovered at the Berkeley Bevatron of the University of California, we have measured the attenuation cross section in beryllium and copper. These cross sections are compared to attenuation measurements made with the same geometry using positive protons of the same incident energy (497 Mev). The measurements were made at cut-off angles ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{c}$ of 12.7\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{} for copper, and at 18\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{} for beryllium. For both copper and beryllium the measured attenuation cross section for antiprotons is twice that for positive protons, with a statistical error of \ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}15%. In addition, for both elements, more than half the attenuation events resulted in one or more fast charged secondary particles ($\ensuremath{\beta}g~0.75$) --- probably indicating that annihilations had taken place.The cross section results are: for copper at ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{c}=12.7\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{p}^{\ensuremath{-}}=1.58\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.22$, ${{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{p}}^{+}=0.780\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.069$; and for beryllium at ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{c}=18\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{p}^{\ensuremath{-}}=0.365\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.059$, ${{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{p}}^{+}=0.178\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.013$, where the units are ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}24}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$. For copper and beryllium, respectively, the average energies in the absorbers were 430 and 455 Mev.
Extended natural language data base interactions

Abstract An oft-heard argument for Natural Language interfaces is their promise of reducing the effort an infrequent user would have to exert in using a computer system. This viewpoint has led to a research concentration on removing “artificial” constraints on a user's freedom of expression, allowing it to move closer to everyday speech. This paper discusses two complementary directions for extending Natural Language interfaces to data bases, which can make them more useful systems. These extensions make Natural Language interfaces less simply “windows” through which data can be called into view, and more “articulate experts” on the data base system and what it represents. The two directions involve (1) broadening the range of query types that can be handled and (2) extending the range of responses that can be provided.
Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances and bone mineral density: Results from the Bayesian weighted quantile sum regression.

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are chemicals, detected in 95% of Americans, that induce osteotoxicity and modulate hormones, thereby influencing bone health. Previous studies found associations between individual PFAS and bone mineral density in adults but did not analyze their combined effects. Objective To extend weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression to a Bayesian framework (Bayesian extension of the WQS regression [BWQS]) and determine the association between a mixture of serum PFAS and mineral density in lumbar spine, total, and neck femur in 499 adults from the 2013 to 2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Methods We used BWQS to assess the combined association of eight PFAS, as a mixture, with bone mineral density in adults. As secondary analyses, we focused on vulnerable populations (men over 50 years and postmenopausal women). Analyses were adjusted for sociodemographic factors. Sensitivity analyses included bone mineral density associations with individual compounds and results from WQS regressions. Results The mean age was 55 years old (SD = 1) with average spine, total, and neck femur mineral densities of 1.01 (SD = 0.01), 0.95 (SD = 0.01), and 0.78 (SD = 0.01) gm/cm2, respectively. PFAS mixture levels showed no evidence of association with mineral density (spine: β = -0.004; 95% credible interval [CrI] = -0.04, 0.04; total femur: β = 0.002; 95% CrI = -0.04, 0.05; femur neck: β = 0.005; 95%CrI = -0.03, 0.04) in the overall population. Results were also null in vulnerable populations. Findings were consistent across sensitivity analyses. Conclusions We introduced a Bayesian extension of WQS and found no evidence of the association between PFAS mixture and bone mineral density.
Structure of a single-chain H2A/H2B dimer.

Chromatin is the complex assembly of nucleic acids and proteins that makes up the physiological form of the eukaryotic genome. The nucleosome is the fundamental repeating unit of chromatin, and is composed of ∼147 bp of DNA wrapped around a histone octamer formed by two copies of each core histone: H2A, H2B, H3 and H4. Prior to nucleosome assembly, and during histone eviction, histones are typically assembled into soluble H2A/H2B dimers and H3/H4 dimers and tetramers. A multitude of factors interact with soluble histone dimers and tetramers, including chaperones, importins, histone-modifying enzymes and chromatin-remodeling enzymes. It is still unclear how many of these proteins recognize soluble histones; therefore, there is a need for new structural tools to study non-nucleosomal histones. Here, a single-chain, tailless Xenopus H2A/H2B dimer was created by directly fusing the C-terminus of H2B to the N-terminus of H2A. It is shown that this construct (termed scH2BH2A) is readily expressed in bacteria and can be purified under non-denaturing conditions. A 1.31 A resolution crystal structure of scH2BH2A shows that it adopts a conformation that is nearly identical to that of nucleosomal H2A/H2B. This new tool is likely to facilitate future structural studies of many H2A/H2B-interacting proteins.
How Alfven’s theorem explains the Meissner effect

Alfven’s theorem states that in a perfectly conducting fluid magnetic field lines move with the fluid without dissipation. When a metal becomes superconducting in the presence of a magnetic field, ...
Suffering in Silence: How COVID-19 School Closures Inhibit the Reporting of Child Maltreatment

To combat the spread of COVID-19, many primary and secondary schools in the United States canceled classes and moved instruction online. This study examines an unexplored consequence of COVID-19 school closures: the broken link between child maltreatment victims and the number one source of reported maltreatment allegations-school personnel. Using current, county-level data from Florida, we estimate a counterfactual distribution of child maltreatment allegations for March and April 2020, the first two months in which Florida schools closed. While one would expect the financial, mental, and physical stress due to COVID-19 to result in additional child maltreatment cases, we find that the actual number of reported allegations was approximately 15,000 lower (27%) than expected for these two months. We leverage a detailed dataset of school district staffing and spending to show that the observed decline in allegations was largely driven by school closures. Finally, we discuss policy implications of our findings for the debate surrounding school reopenings and suggest a number of responses that may mitigate this hidden cost of school closures.
Pitch Inverted Songs as Affirmation of Panpsychism Based on a Theoretical Mirror Universe

Every song that carries a melody can be pitch inverted to uncover a dual song that is different to the original song and where the pitch-inverted melody also relates to our emotions. This is creating music for the minor cost of pitch inversion, and without a lot of creativity beyond technical skills. The principle is demonstrated on 50 songs, with 100% success. As a general principle this implicates a reflective property that is necessarily part of human psychology. Moreover, this discovery affirms the belief in panpsychism where the reflexive property is active as part of a broader mirror universe.
SURF: integrative analysis of a compendium of RNA-seq and CLIP-seq datasets highlights complex governing of alternative transcriptional regulation by RNA-binding proteins.

Advances in high-throughput profiling of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) have resulted inCLIP-seq datasets coupled with transcriptome profiling by RNA-seq. However, analysis methods that integrate both types of data are lacking. We describe SURF, Statistical Utility for RBP Functions, for integrative analysis of large collections of CLIP-seq and RNA-seq data. We demonstrate SURF’s ability to accurately detect differential alternative transcriptional regulation events and associate them to local protein-RNA interactions. We apply SURF to ENCODE RBP compendium and carry out downstream analysis with additional reference datasets. The results of this application are browsable at http://www.statlab.wisc.edu/shiny/surf/ .
Tiny Eats: Eating Detection on a Microcontroller

There is a growing interest in low power highly efficient wearable devices for automatic dietary monitoring (ADM) [1]. The success of deep neural networks in audio event classification problems makes them ideal for this task. Deep neural networks are, however, not only computationally intensive and energy inefficient but also require a large amount of memory. To address these challenges, we propose a shallow gated recurrent unit (GRU) architecture suitable for resource-constrained applications. This paper describes the implementation of the Tiny Eats GRU, a shallow GRU neural network, on a low power microcontroller, Arm Cortex M0 +, to classify eating episodes. Tiny Eats GRU is a hybrid of the traditional GRU [2] and eGRU [3] which makes it small and fast enough to fit on the Arm Cortex M0 + with comparable accuracy to the traditional GRU. The Tiny Eats GRU utilizes only 4% of the Arm Cortex M0 + memory and identifies eating or non-eating episodes with 6 ms latency and accuracy of 95.15%.
Learning Longterm Representations for Person Re-Identification Using Radio Signals

Person Re-Identification (ReID) aims to recognize a person-of-interest across different places and times. Existing ReID methods rely on images or videos collected using RGB cameras. They extract appearance features like clothes, shoes, hair, etc. Such features, however, can change drastically from one day to the next, leading to inability to identify people over extended time periods. In this paper, we introduce RF-ReID, a novel approach that harnesses radio frequency (RF) signals for longterm person ReID. RF signals traverse clothes and reflect off the human body; thus they can be used to extract more persistent human-identifying features like body size and shape. We evaluate the performance of RF-ReID on longitudinal datasets that span days and weeks, where the person may wear different clothes across days. Our experiments demonstrate that RF-ReID outperforms state-of-the-art RGB-based ReID approaches for long term person ReID. Our results also reveal two interesting features: First since RF signals work in the presence of occlusions and poor lighting, RF-ReID allows for person ReID in such scenarios. Second, unlike photos and videos which reveal personal and private information, RF signals are more privacy-preserving, and hence can help extend person ReID to privacy-concerned domains, like healthcare.
Rotational- and Spin-State Distributions: NO Thermally Desorbed from Ru(001)

Rotational-state distributions have been measured for the first time in molecules thermally desorbed from a metal single crystal. Laser-excited fluorescence has been used to monitor, under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions, the desorption of NO from Ru(001). The population distribution for those states with less than 400 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ of rotational energy (including spin) can be represented by a single Boltzmann factor, ${T}_{\mathrm{rot}}=235\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}35$ K, significantly lower than the surface temperature at the desorption maximum, ${T}_{S}=455\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}20$ K.
Zinc Dynamics during Drosophila Oocyte Maturation and Egg Activation.

Summary Temporal fluctuations in zinc concentration are essential signals, including during oogenesis and early embryogenesis. In mammals, zinc accumulation and release are required for oocyte maturation and egg activation, respectively. Here, we demonstrate that zinc flux occurs in Drosophila oocytes and activated eggs, and that zinc is required for female fertility. Our synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy reveals zinc as the most abundant transition metal in Drosophila oocytes. Its levels increase during oocyte maturation, accompanied by the appearance of zinc-enriched intracellular granules in the oocyte, which depend on transporters. Subsequently, in egg activation, which mediates the transition from oocyte to embryo, oocyte zinc levels decrease significantly, as does the number of zinc-enriched granules. This pattern of zinc dynamics in Drosophila oocytes follows a similar trajectory to that in mammals, extending the parallels in female gamete processes between Drosophila and mammals and establishing Drosophila as a model for dissecting reproductive roles of zinc.
Reachability analysis using dissipation inequalities for uncertain nonlinear systems

Abstract We propose a method to outer bound forward reachable sets on finite horizons for uncertain nonlinear systems with polynomial dynamics. This method makes use of time-dependent polynomial storage functions that satisfy appropriate dissipation inequalities that account for time-varying uncertain parameters, L 2 disturbances, and perturbations Δ characterized by integral quadratic constraints (IQCs) with both hard and soft factorizations. The use of IQCs in forward reachability analysis allows for various types of uncertainty, including unmodeled dynamics. The generalized S-procedure and Sum-of-Squares techniques are used to derive algorithms with the goal of finding the tightest outer bound with a desired shape. Both pedagogical and practically motivated examples are presented, including a 7-state F-18 aircraft model.
Calculating Cultural Ecosystem Services as part of Greenspace Management

Lake related greenspace provides many benefits to residents and visitors, which often get unnoticed. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project (2005) proposed the valuation of ecosystem services, defined as regulatory, provisional, ecosystem support, providing cultural services from natural resources, free of charge. The challenge here is: How can we use cultural ecosystem services derived from scenic landscapes for Greenspace management and assessment? Cultural ecosystem services received international recognition as part of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project (2005). Also, ecosystems services encompass regulatory, provisional and ecosystem support. For this article, we are particularly concerned with cultural services, which include recreation, science and education, spiritual/historical as well as aesthetic functions. De Groot (2002) and Farber (2006) provided descriptions of cultural Ecosystem services. De Groot (2002) describes Information functions as comprising of; aesthetic information, recreation, cultural-artistic information and spiritual/historical information. Farber (2005) description of cultural services includes; aesthetic, recreation, science/education, and spiritual/historical functions. This article examines the existing literature with the objective of assessing ecosystem cultural services related to water-based scenic landscape resources and applies it to an Upstate New York lake landscape. Careful accounting of greenspace ecosystem services is presented as applied to lakeshore residents, village residents and town/watershed residents and other lake greenspace users utilizing the US Environmental Protection Agencyâ€™s user benefit calculations to yield over 10.6 million dollars of benefits per year (Smardon 2018).
The Stretch Factor of Hexagon-Delaunay Triangulations

The problem of computing the exact stretch factor (i.e., the tight bound on the worst case stretch factor) of a Delaunay triangulation is one of the longstanding open problems in computational geometry. Over the years, a series of upper and lower bounds on the exact stretch factor have been obtained but the gap between them is still large. An alternative approach to solving the problem is to develop techniques for computing the exact stretch factor of "easier" types of Delaunay triangulations, in particular those defined using regular-polygons instead of a circle. Tight bounds exist for Delaunay triangulations defined using an equilateral triangle and a square. In this paper, we determine the exact stretch factor of Delaunay triangulations defined using a regular hexagon: It is 2. We think that the main contribution of this paper are the two techniques we have developed to compute tight upper bounds for the stretch factor of Hexagon-Delaunay triangulations.
Contextual Online False Discovery Rate Control

Multiple hypothesis testing, a situation when we wish to consider many hypotheses, is a core problem in statistical inference that arises in almost every scientific field. In this setting, controlling the false discovery rate (FDR), which is the expected proportion of type I error, is an important challenge for making meaningful inferences. In this paper, we consider the problem of controlling FDR in an online manner. Concretely, we consider an ordered, possibly infinite, sequence of hypotheses, arriving one at each timestep, and for each hypothesis we observe a p-value along with a set of features specific to that hypothesis. The decision whether or not to reject the current hypothesis must be made immediately at each timestep, before the next hypothesis is observed. The model of multi-dimensional feature set provides a very general way of leveraging the auxiliary information in the data which helps in maximizing the number of discoveries. We propose a new class of powerful online testing procedures, where the rejections thresholds (significance levels) are learnt sequentially by incorporating contextual information and previous results. We prove that any rule in this class controls online FDR under some standard assumptions. We then focus on a subclass of these procedures, based on weighting significance levels, to derive a practical algorithm that learns a parametric weight function in an online fashion to gain more discoveries. We also theoretically prove, in a stylized setting, that our proposed procedures would lead to an increase in the achieved statistical power over a popular online testing procedure proposed by Javanmard & Montanari (2018). Finally, we demonstrate the favorable performance of our procedure, by comparing it to state-of-the-art online multiple testing procedures, on both synthetic data and real data generated from different applications.
Representation theory of the algebra generated by a pair of complex structures

The objective of this paper is to determine the finite-dimensional, indecomposable representations of the algebra that is generated by two complex structures over the real numbers. Since the genera...
Awareness Is Not Enough: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effects of Providing Discipline Disproportionality Data Reports to School Administrators:

One commonly used strategy used in attempts to decrease racial disproportionality in school discipline across the country is sharing data with school administrators that discipline disparities are ...
Fatty acid sentinels as covalently bound randomization standards for triacylglycerol (TAG) quantitative analysis

RATIONALE Quantitative analysis of triacylglycerols (TAG) is impeded by a lack of standards and the huge number of potential TAG molecular species that may be present due to the combinatorial nature of glycerolipids. Randomization of acyl groups yields TAG mixtures with profiles predictable from fatty acid profiles; however, their use as calibration mixtures has been limited. METHODS We introduce here the principle of fatty acid isotopic sentinels that are quantitatively added prior to randomization to enable verification that randomization is complete, and that can be used as internal standards. A mixture of two isotopically labeled fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) is prepared at a ratio of 2:1 and the exact ratio is carefully measured by gas chromatography flame ionization detection (GC-FID) and randomized covalently into the acyl groups of TAG mixtures. RESULTS Reaction with catalytic amounts of NaOCH3 yields complete randomization, such that the product FAME and TAG have the same fatty acid profile. TAG mixture analysis reveals that the isotopic sentinels have been covalently incorporated into the TAG molecular species at <1% deviation from the expected proportions, thus verifying randomization within experimental error. CONCLUSIONS The sentinel principle demonstrated here as covalently incorporated internal standards verifies that randomization chemistry went to completion. It applies in general to use of combinatorial chemistry for quantitative standards.
When showing your hand pays off: Announcing strategic intentions in Colonel Blotto games

In competitive adversarial environments, it is often advantageous to obfuscate one's strategies or capabilities. However, revealing one's strategic intentions may shift the dynamics of the competition in complex ways. Can it ever be advantageous to reveal strategic intentions to an opponent? In this paper, we consider three-stage Colonel Blotto games in which one player can choose whether or not to pre-commit resources to a single battlefield before play begins. This pre-commitment is public knowledge. In response, the opponent can either secure the battlefield by matching the pre-commitment with its own forces, or withdraw. In a two-player setting, we show that a weaker player never has an incentive to pre-commit any amount of resources to a battlefield regardless of how valuable it is. We then consider a three-player setting in which two players fight against a common adversary on separate fronts. Only one of the two players facing the adversary has the option of pre-committing. We find there are instances where this player benefits from pre-committing. The analysis indicates that under non-cooperative team settings and no possibility of forming alliances, there can be incentives to publicly announce one's strategic intentions to an adversary.
The SecA motor generates mechanical force during protein translocation

The Sec translocon moves proteins across lipid bilayers in all cells. The Sec channel enables passage of unfolded proteins through the bacterial plasma membrane, driven by the cytosolic ATPase SecA. Whether SecA generates mechanical force to overcome barriers to translocation posed by structured substrate proteins is unknown. Here, we kinetically dissect Sec-dependent translocation by monitoring translocation of a folded substrate protein with tunable stability at high time resolution. We find that substrate unfolding constitutes the rate-limiting step during translocation. Using single-molecule force spectroscopy, we also define the response of the protein to mechanical force. Relating the kinetic and force measurements reveals that SecA generates at least 10 piconewtons of mechanical force to actively unfold translocating proteins, comparable to cellular unfoldases. Combining biochemical and single-molecule measurements thus allows us to define how the SecA motor ensures efficient and robust export of proteins that contain stable structure.
The effect of odor enrichment on olfactory acuity: Olfactometric testing in mice using two mirror-molecular pairs

Intelligent systems in nature like the mammalian nervous system benefit from adaptable inputs that can tailor response profiles to their environment that varies in time and space. Study of such plasticity, in all its manifestations, forms a pillar of classical and modern neuroscience. This study is concerned with a novel form of plasticity in the olfactory system referred to as induction. In this process, subjects unable to smell a particular odor, or unable to differentiate similar odors, gain these abilities through mere exposure to the odor(s) over time without the need for attention or feedback (reward or punishment). However, few studies of induction have rigorously documented changes in olfactory threshold for the odor(s) used for "enrichment." We trained 36 CD-1 mice in an operant-olfactometer (go/no go task) to discriminate a mixture of stereoisomers from a lone stereoisomer using two enantiomeric pairs: limonene and carvone. We also measured each subject's ability to detect one of the stereoisomers of each odor. In order to assess the effect of odor enrichment on enantiomer discrimination and detection, mice were exposed to both stereoisomers of limonene or carvone for 2 to 12 weeks. Enrichment was effected by adulterating a subject's food (passive enrichment) with one pair of enantiomers or by exposing a subject to the enantiomers in daily operant discrimination testing (active enrichment). We found that neither form of enrichment altered discrimination nor detection. And this result pertained using either within-subject or between-subject experimental designs. Unexpectedly, our threshold measurements were among the lowest ever recorded for any species, which we attributed to the relatively greater amount of practice (task replication) we allowed our mice compared to other reports. Interestingly, discrimination thresholds were no greater (limonene) or only modestly greater (carvone) from detection thresholds suggesting chiral-specific olfactory receptors determine thresholds for these compounds. The super-sensitivity of mice, shown in this study, to the limonene and carvone enantiomers, compared to the much lesser acuity of humans for these compounds, reported elsewhere, may resolve the mystery of why the former group with four-fold more olfactory receptors have tended, in previous studies, to have similar thresholds to the latter group. Finally, our results are consistent with the conclusion that supervised-perceptual learning i.e. that involving repeated feedback for correct and incorrect decisions, rather than induction, is the form of plasticity that allows animals to fully realize the capabilities of their olfactory system.
Learning-Based Optimization of the Under-Sampling Pattern in MRI

Acquisition of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans can be accelerated by under-sampling in k-space (i.e., the Fourier domain). In this paper, we consider the problem of optimizing the sub-sampling pattern in a data-driven fashion. Since the reconstruction model’s performance depends on the sub-sampling pattern, we combine the two problems. For a given sparsity constraint, our method optimizes the sub-sampling pattern and reconstruction model, using an end-to-end learning strategy. Our algorithm learns from full-resolution data that are under-sampled retrospectively, yielding a sub-sampling pattern and reconstruction model that are customized to the type of images represented in the training data. The proposed method, which we call LOUPE (Learning-based Optimization of the Under-sampling PattErn), was implemented by modifying a U-Net, a widely-used convolutional neural network architecture, that we append with the forward model that encodes the under-sampling process. Our experiments with T1-weighted structural brain MRI scans show that the optimized sub-sampling pattern can yield significantly more accurate reconstructions compared to standard random uniform, variable density or equispaced under-sampling schemes. The code is made available at: https://github.com/cagladbahadir/LOUPE.
Strongly automorphic mappings and Julia sets of uniformly quasiregular mappings

A theorem of Ritt states the Poincare linearizer L of a rational map f at a repelling fixed point is periodic only if f is conjugate to a power of z, a Chebyshev polynomial or a Lattes map. The converse, except for the case where the fixed pointis an endpoint of the interval Julia set for a Chebyshev polynomial, is also true. In this paper, we prove the analogous statement in the setting of strongly automorphic quasiregular mappings and uniformly quasiregular mappings in ℝn. Along the way, we characterize the possible automorphy groups that can arise via crystallographic orbifolds and a use of the Poincare conjecture. We further give a classification of the behaviour of uniformly quasiregular mappings on their Julia set when the Julia set is a quasisphere, quasidisk or all of ℝn and the Julia set coincides with the set of conical points. Finally, we prove an analogue of the Denjoy-Wolff Theorem for uniformly quasiregular mappings in $${\mathbb{B}^3}$$ , the first such generalization of the Denjoy—Wolff Theorem where there is no guarantee of non-expansiveness with respect to a metric.
Oxygen Transport Parameter in Plasma Membrane of Eye Lens Fiber Cells by Saturation Recovery EPR

A probability distribution of rate constants contained within an exponential-like saturation recovery (SR) electron paramagnetic resonance signal can be constructed using stretched exponential function fitting parameters. Previously (Stein et al. Appl. Magn. Reson. 2019.), application of this method was limited to the case where only one relaxation process, namely spin–lattice relaxations due to the rotational diffusion of the spin labels in the intact eye-lens membranes, contributed to an exponential-like SR signal. These conditions were achieved for thoroughly deoxygenated samples. Here, the case is described where the second relaxation process, namely Heisenberg exchange between the spin label and molecular oxygen that occurs during bimolecular collisions, contributes to the decay of SR signals. We have further developed the theory for application of stretched exponential function to analyze SR signals involving these two processes. This new approach allows separation of stretched exponential parameters, namely characteristic stretched rates and heterogeneity parameters for both processes. Knowing these parameters allowed us to separately construct the probability distributions of spin–lattice relaxation rates determined by the rotational diffusion of spin labels and the distribution of relaxations induced strictly by collisions with molecular oxygen. The later distribution is determined by the distribution of oxygen diffusion concentration products within the membrane, which forms a sensitive new way to describe membrane fluidity and heterogeneity. This method was validated in silico and by fitting SR signals from spin-labeled intact nuclear fiber cell plasma membranes extracted from porcine eye lenses equilibrated with different fractions of air.
Cohomological dimension of ideals defining Veronese subrings

Given a standard graded polynomial ring over a commutative Noetherian ring $A$, we prove that the cohomological dimension and the height of the ideals defining any of its Veronese subrings are equal. This result is due to Ogus when $A$ is a field of characteristic zero, and follows from a result of Peskine and Szpiro when $A$ is a field of positive characteristic; our result applies, for example, when $A$ is the ring of integers.
Metagenomic Alterations in Gut Microbiota Precede and Predict Onset of Colitis in the IL10 Gene-Deficient Murine Model.

Background & Aims Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are chronic inflammatory disorders where predictive biomarkers for the disease development and clinical course are sorely needed for development of prevention and early intervention strategies that can be implemented to improve clinical outcomes. Since gut microbiome alterations can reflect and/or contribute to impending host health changes, we examined whether gut microbiota metagenomic profiles would provide more robust measures for predicting disease outcomes in colitis-prone hosts. Methods Using the interleukin (IL) 10 gene-deficient (IL10 KO) murine model where early life dysbiosis from antibiotic (cefoperozone [CPZ]) treated dams vertically transferred to pups increases risk for colitis later in life, we investigated temporal metagenomic profiles in the gut microbiota of post-weaning offspring and determined their relationship to eventual clinical outcomes. Results Compared to controls, offspring acquiring maternal CPZ-induced dysbiosis exhibited a restructuring of intestinal microbial membership in both bacteriome and mycobiome that was associated with alterations in specific functional subsystems. Furthermore, among IL10 KO offspring from CPZ-treated dams, several functional subsystems, particularly nitrogen metabolism, diverged between mice that developed spontaneous colitis (CPZ-colitis) versus those that did not (CPZ-no-colitis) at a time point prior to eventual clinical outcome. Conclusions Our findings provide support that functional metagenomic profiling of gut microbes has potential and promise meriting further study for development of tools to assess risk and manage human IBD.
Data Deduplication with Random Substitutions

Data deduplication saves storage space by identifying and removing repeats in the data stream. In this paper, we provide an information-theoretic analysis of the performance of deduplication algorithms with data streams where repeats are not exact. We introduce a source model in which probabilistic substitutions are considered. Two modified versions of fixed-length deduplication are studied and proven to have performance within a constant factor of optimal with the knowledge of repeat length. We also study the variable-length scheme and show that as entropy becomes smaller, the size of the compressed string vanishes relative to the length of the uncompressed string.
New robust confidence intervals for the mean under dependence

Abstract The goal of this paper is to indicate a new method for constructing normal confidence intervals for the mean, when the data is coming from stochastic structures with possibly long memory, especially when the dependence structure is not known or even the existence of the density function. More precisely we introduce a random smoothing suggested by the kernel estimators for the regression function. The normal confidence intervals are constructed under the sole condition that the sequence is ergodic and has finite second moments and a mild condition on the sample variance. Applications are presented for linear processes and reversible Markov chains with long memory.
Evolved Differences in cis and trans Regulation Between the Maternal and Zygotic mRNA Complements in the Drosophila Embryo.

How gene expression can evolve depends on the mechanisms driving gene expression. Gene expression is controlled in different ways in different developmental stages; here we ask whether different developmental stages show different patterns of regulatory evolution. To explore the mode of regulatory evolution, we used the early stages of embryonic development controlled by two different genomes, that of the mother and that of the zygote. During embryogenesis in all animals, initial developmental processes are driven entirely by maternally provided gene products deposited into the oocyte. The zygotic genome is activated later, when developmental control is handed off from maternal gene products to the zygote during the maternal-to-zygotic transition. Using hybrid crosses between sister species of Drosophila (D. simulans, D. sechellia, and D. mauritiana) and transcriptomics, we find that the regulation of maternal transcript deposition and zygotic transcription evolve through different mechanisms. We find that patterns of transcript level inheritance in hybrids, relative to parental species, differ between maternal and zygotic transcripts, and maternal transcript levels are more likely to be conserved. Changes in transcript levels occur predominantly through differences in trans regulation for maternal genes, while changes in zygotic transcription occur through a combination of both cis and trans regulatory changes. Differences in the underlying regulatory landscape in the mother and the zygote are likely the primary determinants for how maternal and zygotic transcripts evolve.
Improving biomass and lipid yields of Desmodesmus armatus and Chlorella vulgaris through mutagenesis and high-throughput screening

Abstract Advancement of microalgae for use as biofuel feedstock depends on bioprospecting novel strains and then applying classical strain improvement techniques to enhance desirable traits. Here we successfully demonstrate this approach using two novel strains of green algae, identified as Desmodesmus armatus and Chlorella vulgaris, to improve biomass and lipid yields. UV irradiation was utilized to generate random mutations and the resulting populations were analyzed via flow cytometry to quantify lipid fluorescence while enriching for high lipid variants using fluorescence activated cell sorting. Secondary screening was performed via in situ fluorescence staining to identify the single highest lipid producing mutants from each strain. This approach produced a Desmodesmus armatus mutant that exhibited both increased biomass productivity and higher lipid content, which doubled lipid yield from the culture. The resulting Chlorella vulgaris mutant exhibited an increase in growth only, resulting in a 33% increase in lipid yield.
Identification and Estimation of Causal Effects Defined by Shift Interventions

Causal inference quantifies cause effect relationships by means of counterfactual responses had some variable been artificially set to a constant. A more refined notion of manipulation, where a variable is artificially set to a fixed function of its natural value is also of interest in particular domains. Examples include increases in financial aid, changes in drug dosing, and modifying length of stay in a hospital. We define counterfactual responses to manipulations of this type, which we call shift interventions. We show that in the presence of multiple variables being manipulated, two types of shift interventions are possible. Shift interventions on the treated (SITs) are defined with respect to natural values, and are connected to effects of treatment on the treated. Shift interventions as policies (SIPs) are defined recursively with respect to values of responses to prior shift interventions, and are connected to dynamic treatment regimes. We give sound and complete identification algorithms for both types of shift interventions, and derive efficient semi-parametric estimators for the mean response to a shift intervention in a special case motivated by a healthcare problem. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our method by using an electronic health record dataset to estimate the effect of extending the length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) in a hospital by an extra day on patient ICU readmission probability.
Real-time Data Driven Precision Estimator for RAVEN-II Surgical Robot End Effector Position

Surgical robots have been introduced to operating rooms over the past few decades due to their high sensitivity, small size, and remote controllability. The cable-driven nature of many surgical robots allows the systems to be dexterous and lightweight, with diameters as low as 5mm. However, due to the slack and stretch of the cables and the backlash of the gears, inevitable uncertainties are brought into the kinematics calcu-lation [1]. Since the reported end effector position of surgical robots like RAVEN-II [2] is directly calculated using the motor encoder measurements and forward kinematics, it may contain relatively large error up to 10mm, whereas semi-autonomous functions being introduced into abdominal surgeries require position inaccuracy of at most 1mm. To resolve the problem, a cost-effective, real-time and data-driven pipeline for robot end effector position precision estimation is proposed and tested on RAVEN-II. Analysis shows an improved end effector position error of around 1mm RMS traversing through the entire robot workspace without high-resolution motion tracker. The open source code, data sets, videos, and user guide can be found at //github.com/HaonanPeng/RAVEN Neural Network Estimator.
Set-Convergence and Its Application: A Tutorial

Optimization problems, generalized equations, and a multitude of other variational problems invariably lead to the analysis of sets and set-valued mappings as well as their approximations. We review the central concept of set-convergence and explain its role in defining a notion of proximity between sets, especially for epigraphs of functions and graphs of set-valued mappings. The development leads to an approximation theory for optimization problems and generalized equations with profound consequences for the construction of algorithms. We also introduce the role of set-convergence in variational geometry and subdifferentiability with applications to optimality conditions. Examples illustrate the importance of set-convergence in stability analysis, error analysis, construction of algorithms, statistical estimation, and probability theory.
MEASURING COLLISIONLESS DAMPING in HELIOSPHERIC PLASMAS USING FIELD-PARTICLE CORRELATIONS

An innovative field–particle correlation technique is proposed that uses single-point measurements of the electromagnetic fields and particle velocity distribution functions to investigate the net transfer of energy from fields to particles associated with the collisionless damping of turbulent fluctuations in weakly collisional plasmas, such as the solar wind. In addition to providing a direct estimate of the local rate of energy transfer between fields and particles, it provides vital new information about the distribution of that energy transfer in velocity space. This velocity-space signature can potentially be used to identify the dominant collisionless mechanism responsible for the damping of turbulent fluctuations in the solar wind. The application of this novel field–particle correlation technique is illustrated using the simplified case of the Landau damping of Langmuir waves in an electrostatic 1D-1V Vlasov–Poisson plasma, showing that the procedure both estimates the local rate of energy transfer from the electrostatic field to the electrons and indicates the resonant nature of this interaction. Modifications of the technique to enable single-point spacecraft measurements of fields and particles to diagnose the collisionless damping of turbulent fluctuations in the solar wind are discussed, yielding a method with the potential to transform our ability to maximize the scientific return from current and upcoming spacecraft missions, such as the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) and Solar Probe Plus missions.
ON IMPROVING ROTH’S THEOREM IN THE PRIMES

Let $A\subset\left\{ 1,\dots,N\right\} $ be a set of prime numbers containing no non-trivial arithmetic progressions. Suppose that $A$ has relative density $\alpha=|A|/\pi(N)$, where $\pi(N)$ denotes the number of primes in the set $\left\{ 1,\dots,N\right\} $. By modifying Helfgott and De Roton's work, we improve their bound and show that $$\alpha\ll\frac{\left(\log\log\log N\right)^{6}}{\log\log N}.$$
Improved GUT and SUSY breaking by the same field

Abstract In a previous paper [hep-ph/9809421; Phys. Lett. B 444 (1998) 61], we presented a model in which the same modulus field breaks SUSY and a simple GUT gauge group, and which has dynamical origins for both SUSY breaking and GUT scales. In this model, the supergravity (SUGRA) and gauge mediated contributions to MSSM scalar and gaugino masses are comparable — this enables a realistic spectrum to be attained since the gauge mediated contribution to the right-handed (RH) slepton (mass) 2 (at the weak scale) by itself (i.e., neglecting SUGRA contribution to sfermion and gaugino masses) is negative. But, in general, the SUGRA contribution to sfermion masses (from non-renormalizable contact Kahler terms) leads to flavor violation. In this paper, we use the recently proposed idea of gaugino mediated SUSY breaking ( g MSB) to improve the above model. With MSSM matter and SUSY breaking fields localized on separate branes in an extra dimension of size R∼5M −1 Pl (in which gauge fields propagate), the SUGRA contribution to sfermion masses (which violates flavor) is suppressed. As in 4 dimensions, MSSM gauginos acquire non-universal masses from both SUGRA and gauge mediation — gaugino masses (in particular the SUGRA contribution to gaugino masses), in turn, generate acceptable sfermion masses through renormalization group evolution; the phenomenology is discussed briefly. We also point out that (a) in models where SUSY is broken by a GUT non-singlet field, there is, in general, a contribution to MSSM gaugino (and scalar) masses from the coupling to heavy gauge multiplet which might be comparable to the SUGRA contribution and (b) models of gauge mediation proposed earlier which also have negative RH slepton (mass) 2 can be rendered viable using the g MSB idea.
Inertial migration of a rigid sphere in three-dimensional Poiseuille flow

Inertial lift forces are exploited within inertial microfluidic devices to position, segregate and sort particles or droplets. However, the forces and their focusing positions can currently only be predicted by numerical simulations, making rational device design very difficult. Here we develop theory for the forces on particles in microchannel geometries. We use numerical experiments to dissect the dominant balances within the Navier–Stokes equations and derive an asymptotic model to predict the lateral force on the particle as a function of particle size. Our asymptotic model is valid for a wide array of particle sizes and Reynolds numbers, and allows us to predict how focusing position depends on particle size.