Automated Evaluation of One-Loop Six-Point Processes for the LHC

In the very near future the first data from LHC will be available. The searches for the Higgs boson and for new physics will require precise predictions both for the signal and the background processes. Tree level calculations typically suffer from large renormalization scale uncertainties. I present an efficient implementation of an algorithm for the automated, Feynman diagram based calculation of one-loop corrections to processes with many external particles. This algorithm has been successfully applied to compute the virtual corrections of the process $u\bar{u}\to b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$ in massless QCD and can easily be adapted for other processes which are required for the LHC.Comment: 232 pages, PhD thesi

LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volum

Spatial and temporal features of neutrophils in homeostasis from the perspective of computational biology

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología Molecular. Fecha de Lectura: 22-07-2022Neutrophils are myeloid cells that originate in the Bone Marrow and enter circulation to patrol for infectious agents. An important part of the “nonspecific” immune system consists on Neutrophils infiltrating challenged tissues, and the established belief was that they stay away from steady-state organs to avoid the risk of exposing them to their cytotoxic content. In the papers presented in this thesis, we show that neutrophils can in fact be found in almost all tissues under homeostasis. We further present proof that they undergo shifts in DNA accessibility, RNA expression and protein content in the infiltrated tissues. Using functional annotation we predict distinct roles depending on the tissue. While in hematopoietic organs the transcriptomic signatures of neutrophils align with canonical functions like immune response and migration, in other tissues such as the skin we find non-canonical functions i.e, epithelial and connective tissue growth or pro-angiogenic roles in the gut and the lung. This predicted pro-angiogenic role was indeed confirmed for the lung. We finally describe that infiltration in tissues follows circadian dynamics, and that once it has occurred, neutrophils experience changes in transcription depending on the time of the day. The analyses of circadian rhythms on mammalian models are often hindered by the inherent difficulty of performing exhaustive sampling (i.e.: every hour for at least 48h). Hence, I implemented CircaN as an R package, which outperforms existing tools in most scenarios. To provide the most complete analysis possible, we provide a full mode analysis option, in which we run CircaN and the two most used algorithms and provide integrated results. We present proof-of-concept results showing that combining various tools yields the best true positive to false positive ratio for most purposesEsta Tesis ha sido financiada por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICINN

Engines of Order

Over the last decades, and in particular since the widespread adoption of the Internet, encounters with algorithmic procedures for ‘information retrieval’ – the activity of getting some piece of information out of a col-lection or repository of some kind – have become everyday experiences for most people in large parts of the world

Twining

Hypertext is now commonplace: links and linking structure nearly all of our experiences online. Yet the literary, as opposed to commercial, potential of hypertext has receded. One of the few tools still focused on hypertext as a means for digital storytelling is Twine, a platform for building choice-driven stories without relying heavily on code. In Twining, Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop lead readers on a journey at once technical, critical, contextual, and personal. The book’s chapters alternate careful, stepwise discussion of adaptable Twine projects, offer commentary on exemplary Twine works, and discuss Twine’s technological and cultural background. Beyond telling the story of Twine and how to make Twine stories, Twining reflects on the ongoing process of making

Into Complexity. A Pattern-oriented Approach to Stakeholder Communities

The NWO-programme ”the societal aspects of genomics”, has called for stronger means of collaboration and deliberative involvement between the various stakeholders of genomics research. Within the project group assembled at the University for Humanistics, this call was translated to the ‘lingua democratica’, in which the prerequisites of such deliberative efforts were put to scrutiny. The contribution of this thesis has taken a more or less abstract angle to this task, and sought to develop a vocabulary that can be shared amongst various stakeholders with different backgrounds, interests and stakes for any complex theme, although genomics has more or less been in focus throughout the research. As ‘complexity thinking’ is currently a theme in both the ‘hard’ sciences as the social sciences and the humanities, and has always been an issue for professionals, this concept was pivotal in achieving such an inclusive angle. However, in order to prevent that complexity would become fragmented due to disciplinary boundaries, it is essential that those aspects of complexity that seem to return in many discussions would be made clear, and stand out with respect to the complexities of specialisation. The thesis has argued that the concept of ‘patterns’ applies for these aspects, and they form the backbone of the vocabulary that has been developed. Especially patterns of feedback have been given much attention, as this concept is pivotal for many complex themes. However, although patterns are implicitly or explicitly used in many areas, there is little methodological (and philosophical) underpinning of what they are and why they are able to do what they do. As a result, quite some attention has been given to these issues, and how they relate to concepts such as ‘information’,‘order’ and complexity itself. From these explorations, the actual vocabulary was developed, including the methodological means to use this vocabulary. This has taken the shape of a recursive development of a so-called pattern-library, which has crossed disciplinary boundaries, from technological areas, through biology, psychology and the social sciences, to a topic that is typical of the humanities. This journey across the divide of C.P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ is both a test for a lingua democratica, as well as aimed to demonstrate how delicate, and balanced such a path must be in order to be effective, especially if one aims to retain certain coherence along the way. Finally, the methodology has been applied in a very practical way, to a current development that hinges strongly on research in genomics, which is trans-humanist movement

Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries

`Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries' examines the increasingly complex rhetorical intersections between narrative and media (`old' and `new') in the creation of transmedia fictions, loosely defined as multisensory and multimodal stories told extensively across a diverse media set. In order to locate the `language' of transmedia expressions, this project calls attention to the formally locatable network structures placed by transmedia producers in disparate media like film, the print novel and video games. Using network visualization software and computational metrics, these structures can be used as data to graph these fictions for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. This study also, however, examines the limits to this approach, arguing that the process of transremediation, where redundancy and multiformity take precedence over networked connection, forms a second axis for understanding transmedia practices, one equally bound to the formation of new modes of meaning and literacy

Practices of Speculation: Modeling, Embodiment, Figuration

This volume offers innovative ways to think about speculation at a time when anticipation of catastrophe in an apocalyptic mode is the order of the day and shapes public discourse on a global scale. It maps an interdisciplinary field of investigation: the chapters interrogate hegemonic ways of shaping the present through investments in the future, while also looking at speculative practices that reveal transformative potential. The twelve contributions explore concrete instances of envisioning the open unknown and affirmative speculative potentials in history, literature, comics, computer games, mold research, ecosystem science and artistic practice

FinBook: literary content as digital commodity

This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be