206 research outputs found

    Recent Advances in Research on Island Phenomena

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    In natural languages, filler-gap dependencies can straddle across an unbounded distance. Since the 1960s, the term “island” has been used to describe syntactic structures from which extraction is impossible or impeded. While examples from English are ubiquitous, attested counterexamples in the Mainland Scandinavian languages have continuously been dismissed as illusory and alternative accounts for the underlying structure of such cases have been proposed. However, since such extractions are pervasive in spoken Mainland Scandinavian, these languages may not have been given the attention that they deserve in the syntax literature. In addition, recent research suggests that extraction from certain types of island structures in English might not be as unacceptable as previously assumed either. These findings break new empirical ground, question perceived knowledge, and may indeed have substantial ramifications for syntactic theory. This volume provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on island phenomena primarily in English and the Scandinavian languages, focusing on how languages compare to English, with the aim to shed new light on the nature of island constraints from different theoretical perspectives

    Resurgence in Deformed Integrable Models

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    Resurgence has been shown to be a powerful and even necessary technique to understand many physical system. The study of perturbative methods in general quantum field theories is hard, but progress is often possible in reduced settings, such as integrable models. In this thesis, we study resurgent effects in integrable deformations of two-dimensional σ-models in two settings.First, we study the integrable bi-Yang-Baxter deformation of the SU(2) principal chiral model (PCM) and find finite action uniton and complex uniton solutions. Under an adiabatic compactification on an S1, we obtain a quantum mechanical system with an elliptic Lam´e-like potential. We perform a perturbative calculation of the ground state energy of this quantum mechanical system to large orders obtaining an asymptotic series. Using the Borel-Pad´e technique, we determine that the locations of branch cuts in the Borel plane match the values of the uniton and complex uniton actions. Therefore, we can match the non-perturbative contributions to the energy with the uniton solutionswhich fractionate upon adiabatic compactification. An off-shoot of the WKB analysis, is to identify the quadratic differential of this deformed PCM with that of an N = 2 Seiberg-Witten theory. This can be done either as an Nf = 4 SU(2) theory or as an elliptic SU(2) × SU(2) quiver theory. The mass parameters of the gauge theory are given in terms of the bi-Yang-Baxter deformation parameters.Second, we perform a perturbative expansion of the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA) equations of the SU(N) λ-model with WZW level k in the presence of a chemical potential. This is done with its exact S-matrix and the recently developed techniques [1, 2] using a Wiener-Hopf decomposition, which involve a careful matching of bulk and edge ans¨atze. We determine the asymptotic expansion of this series and compute its renormalon ambiguities in the Borel plane. The analysis is supplemented by a parallel solution of the TBA equations that results in a transseries. The transseries comes with an ambiguity that is shown to precisely match the Borel ambiguity. It is shown that the leading IR renormalon vanishes when k is a divisor of N

    Differential evolution of non-coding DNA across eukaryotes and its close relationship with complex multicellularity on Earth

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    Here, I elaborate on the hypothesis that complex multicellularity (CM, sensu Knoll) is a major evolutionary transition (sensu Szathmary), which has convergently evolved a few times in Eukarya only: within red and brown algae, plants, animals, and fungi. Paradoxically, CM seems to correlate with the expansion of non-coding DNA (ncDNA) in the genome rather than with genome size or the total number of genes. Thus, I investigated the correlation between genome and organismal complexities across 461 eukaryotes under a phylogenetically controlled framework. To that end, I introduce the first formal definitions and criteria to distinguish ‘unicellularity’, ‘simple’ (SM) and ‘complex’ multicellularity. Rather than using the limited available estimations of unique cell types, the 461 species were classified according to our criteria by reviewing their life cycle and body plan development from literature. Then, I investigated the evolutionary association between genome size and 35 genome-wide features (introns and exons from protein-coding genes, repeats and intergenic regions) describing the coding and ncDNA complexities of the 461 genomes. To that end, I developed ‘GenomeContent’, a program that systematically retrieves massive multidimensional datasets from gene annotations and calculates over 100 genome-wide statistics. R-scripts coupled to parallel computing were created to calculate >260,000 phylogenetic controlled pairwise correlations. As previously reported, both repetitive and non-repetitive DNA are found to be scaling strongly and positively with genome size across most eukaryotic lineages. Contrasting previous studies, I demonstrate that changes in the length and repeat composition of introns are only weakly or moderately associated with changes in genome size at the global phylogenetic scale, while changes in intron abundance (within and across genes) are either not or only very weakly associated with changes in genome size. Our evolutionary correlations are robust to: different phylogenetic regression methods, uncertainties in the tree of eukaryotes, variations in genome size estimates, and randomly reduced datasets. Then, I investigated the correlation between the 35 genome-wide features and the cellular complexity of the 461 eukaryotes with phylogenetic Principal Component Analyses. Our results endorse a genetic distinction between SM and CM in Archaeplastida and Metazoa, but not so clearly in Fungi. Remarkably, complex multicellular organisms and their closest ancestral relatives are characterized by high intron-richness, regardless of genome size. Finally, I argue why and how a vast expansion of non-coding RNA (ncRNA) regulators rather than of novel protein regulators can promote the emergence of CM in Eukarya. As a proof of concept, I co-developed a novel ‘ceRNA-motif pipeline’ for the prediction of “competing endogenous” ncRNAs (ceRNAs) that regulate microRNAs in plants. We identified three candidate ceRNAs motifs: MIM166, MIM171 and MIM159/319, which were found to be conserved across land plants and be potentially involved in diverse developmental processes and stress responses. Collectively, the findings of this dissertation support our hypothesis that CM on Earth is a major evolutionary transition promoted by the expansion of two major ncDNA classes, introns and regulatory ncRNAs, which might have boosted the irreversible commitment of cell types in certain lineages by canalizing the timing and kinetics of the eukaryotic transcriptome.:Cover page Abstract Acknowledgements Index 1. The structure of this thesis 1.1. Structure of this PhD dissertation 1.2. Publications of this PhD dissertation 1.3. Computational infrastructure and resources 1.4. Disclosure of financial support and information use 1.5. Acknowledgements 1.6. Author contributions and use of impersonal and personal pronouns 2. Biological background 2.1. The complexity of the eukaryotic genome 2.2. The problem of counting and defining “genes” in eukaryotes 2.3. The “function” concept for genes and “dark matter” 2.4. Increases of organismal complexity on Earth through multicellularity 2.5. Multicellularity is a “fitness transition” in individuality 2.6. The complexity of cell differentiation in multicellularity 3. Technical background 3.1. The Phylogenetic Comparative Method (PCM) 3.2. RNA secondary structure prediction 3.3. Some standards for genome and gene annotation 4. What is in a eukaryotic genome? GenomeContent provides a good answer 4.1. Background 4.2. Motivation: an interoperable tool for data retrieval of gene annotations 4.3. Methods 4.4. Results 4.5. Discussion 5. The evolutionary correlation between genome size and ncDNA 5.1. Background 5.2. Motivation: estimating the relationship between genome size and ncDNA 5.3. Methods 5.4. Results 5.5. Discussion 6. The relationship between non-coding DNA and Complex Multicellularity 6.1. Background 6.2. Motivation: How to define and measure complex multicellularity across eukaryotes? 6.3. Methods 6.4. Results 6.5. Discussion 7. The ceRNA motif pipeline: regulation of microRNAs by target mimics 7.1. Background 7.2. A revisited protocol for the computational analysis of Target Mimics 7.3. Motivation: a novel pipeline for ceRNA motif discovery 7.4. Methods 7.5. Results 7.6. Discussion 8. Conclusions and outlook 8.1. Contributions and lessons for the bioinformatics of large-scale comparative analyses 8.2. Intron features are evolutionarily decoupled among themselves and from genome size throughout Eukarya 8.3. “Complex multicellularity” is a major evolutionary transition 8.4. Role of RNA throughout the evolution of life and complex multicellularity on Earth 9. Supplementary Data Bibliography Curriculum Scientiae Selbständigkeitserklärung (declaration of authorship

    Simplicity of AdS Super Yang-Mills at One Loop

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    We perform a systematic bootstrap analysis of four-point one-loop Mellin amplitudes for super gluons in AdS5×S3\mathrm{AdS}_5\times\mathrm{S}^3 with arbitrary Kaluza-Klein weights. The analysis produces the general expressions for these amplitudes at extremalities two and three, as well as analytic results for many other special cases. From these results we observe remarkable simplicity. We find that the Mellin amplitudes always contain only simultaneous poles in two Mellin-Mandelstam variables, extending a previous observation in the simplest case with the lowest Kaluza-Klein weights. Moreover, we discover a substantial extension of the implication of the eight-dimensional hidden conformal symmetry, which goes far beyond the Mellin poles associated with the leading logarithmic singularities. This leaves only a small finite set of poles which can be determined on a case-by-case basis from the contributions of protected operators in the OPE.Comment: 62 pages, 9 figures and 1 auxiliary fil

    Geometric aspects of linear programming : shadow paths, central paths, and a cutting plane method

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    Most everyday algorithms are well-understood; predictions made theoretically about them closely match what we observe in practice. This is not the case for all algorithms, and some algorithms are still poorly understood on a theoretical level. This is the case for many algorithms used for solving optimization problems from operations reserach. Solving such optimization problems is essential in many industries and is done every day. One important example of such optimization problems are Linear Programming problems. There are a couple of different algorithms that are popular in practice, among which is one which has been in use for almost 80 years. Nonetheless, our theoretical understanding of these algorithms is limited. This thesis makes progress towards a better understanding of these key algorithms for lineair programming, among which are the simplex method, interior point methods, and cutting plane methods

    Invariant manifolds and transport in a Sun-perturbed Earth-Moon system

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    [eng] This dissertation is devoted to the analysis of the motion of small bodies, like asteroids, in the neighbourhood of the Earth-Moon system from a celestial mechanics approach. This is an extensive area of research where probably, the most extended simplified mathematical model is the well-known autonomous Hamiltonian system the Restricted Three-Body Problem (RTBP). Many modifications to this model have been proposed, looking for a more accurate description of the system. One of the simplest ways of introducing additional physical effects is through time-periodic perturbations, such that such that the new non-autonomous system is close to the autonomous one, and it has many periodic or quasi-periodic solutions. If these solutions are hyperbolic, they have stable/unstable invariant manifolds, such that stable manifolds approach the quasi-periodic solutions forward in time, meanwhile unstable manifolds do it backward in time, constituting the skeleton for the dynamical transport phenomena we are interested in. Notice that one dimension can be reduced by defining a suitable temporal Poincar´e map. Therefore, our aim is to compute the quasi-periodic solutions and their manifolds in this map. Most of the effort of this dissertation is addressed to the Bicircular Problem (BCP), in which the Earth and Moon are treated as the primaries in the RTBP and the gravitational field of the Sun is introduced as a time-periodic forcing of the RTBP. In particular, we have extensively analysed the horizontal family of two dimensional quasi-periodic solutions in the neighbourhood of the collinear unstable equilibrium point L3. We found that diverse trajectories connecting the Earth, the Moon and the outside Earth-Moon system are governed by L3 dynamics. Big attention is paid to the trajectories coming from the Moon towards the Earth, since they may give an insight of the travel that lunar meteorites perform before landing in our planet. These results have been translated and compared with those of a realistic model based on JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) ephemeris, showing a good agreement between the results obtained. We also have proposed and carried out a strategy for capturing a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) using the stable invariant manifolds of the horizontal family of quasi-periodic orbits around L3 in the BCP. To this aim the high order parametrization of the stable/unstable invariant manifolds is introduced, for which computation we have employed the jet transport technique. Finally, the strategy is applied to the NEA 2006 RH120. The contributions to the BCP presented in this dissertation include two other applications. The first one is devoted to the study of the unstable behaviour near the triangular points, meanwhile the second is devoted to a family of stable invariant curves around the Moon that are close to a resonance, promoting the appearance of chaotic motion. The last part of the dissertation is focused on the effective computation of the high or- der parametrization of the stable and unstable invariant manifolds associated with reducible invariant tori of any high dimension. To this aim, we resort on the reducible system, that offers a high degree of parallelization of the computations. Besides, we explain how to com- bine the presented methods with multiple shooting techniques to accurately compute highly unstable invariant objects. Finally, we apply the developed algorithms to compute the high order parametrization of the manifolds associated to L1 and L2 in an Earth-Moon system that includes five time-periodic forcings regarded to four physical features of the system, besides the solar gravitational field.[spa] Esta tesis analiza el movimiento de pequeños cuerpos, como asteroides, en el sistema Tierra­ Luna desde el marco de la mecánica celeste. El modelo que hemos empleado en mayor profundidad es el Problema Bicircular (PBC), el cual se puede entender como una perturbación periódica en el tiempo del conocido Problema Restringido de Tres Cuerpos (PRTC), dado que en el PBC se incluye el campo gravitatorio de un tercer cuerpo masivo que rota en movimiento circular alrededor de la configuración del PRTC. El cuerpo que causa la perturbación es para nosotros el Sol de tal forma que los objetos invariantes del PRTC adquieren una dimensión angular debida a la frecuencia del movimiento relativo entre el Sol y el baricentro Tierra-Luna. En el marco del PBC hemos analizado los fenómenos de transporte gobernados por la familia horizontal de soluciones cuasi-periódicas dos dimensionales (toros 2D) alrededor punto inestable colinear L3. Estas soluciones tienen asociadas variedades invariantes estables e inestables que constituyen el esqueleto de los fenómenos que queremos estudiar. Las trayectorias encontradas conectan la Tierra y la Luna y también el exterior/interior del sistema Tierra-Luna. Hemos prestado especial atención a las trayectorias que van de la Luna a la Tierra ya que podrían explicar el viaje que realizan los meteoritos lunares encontrados en nuestro planeta. Estos resultados han sido testeados en un modelo más realista basado en las efemérides del JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Otra de las aplicaciones propuestas es la de capturar un asteroide cercano a la Tierra usando la parametrización a orden alto de las variedades invariantes asociadas a los toros 2D alrededor de L3. La parte final trata del desarrollo de algoritmos para el cálculo preciso de la parametrización a orden alto de variedades invariantes estables/inestables asociadas a toros reducibles de cualquier dimensión alta. Además, se explica cómo combinar dichos algoritmos con métodos de tiro múltiple para aquellos objetos invariantes que sean muy inestables. Finalmente, aplicamos la metodología al cálculo de las variedades asociadas a L1 y L2 de un sistema Tierra-Luna que incluye cinco perturbaciones periódicas en el tiempo

    Modelling complex systems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemics

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    Systems biology is an interdisciplinary approach investigating complex biological systems at different levels by combining experimental and modelling approaches to understand underlying mechanisms of health and disease. Complex systems including biological systems are affected by a plethora of interactions and dynamic processes often with the aim to ensure robustness to emer- gent system properties. The need for interdisciplinary approaches became very evident in the recent COVID-19 pandemic spreading around the globe since the end of 2019. This pandemic came with a bundle of urgent epidemiological open questions including the infection and transmis- sion mechanisms of the virus, its pathogenicity and the relation to clinical symptoms. During the pandemic, mathematical modelling became an essential tool to integrate biological and healthcare data into mechanistic frameworks for projections of future developments and the assessment of different mitigation strategies. In this regard, systems biology with its interdisciplinary approach was a widely applied framework to support society in the COVID-19 crisis. In my thesis, I applied different mathematical modelling approaches as a tool to identify underlying mechanisms of the complex dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic with a specific focus on the situation in Luxembourg. For this purpose, I analysed the COVID-19 pandemic at its different phases and from various perspectives by investigating mitigation strategies, consequences in the healthcare and economical system, and pandemic preparedness in terms of early-warning signals for re-emergence of new COVID-19 outbreaks by extended and adapted epidemiological Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) models

    Automatic Geospatial Data Conflation Using Semantic Web Technologies

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    Duplicate geospatial data collections and maintenance are an extensive problem across Australia government organisations. This research examines how Semantic Web technologies can be used to automate the geospatial data conflation process. The research presents a new approach where generation of OWL ontologies based on output data models and presenting geospatial data as RDF triples serve as the basis for the solution and SWRL rules serve as the core to automate the geospatial data conflation processes
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