Backward stochastic differential equation approach to modeling of gene expression

In this article, we introduce a novel backward method to model stochastic gene expression and protein level dynamics. The protein amount is regarded as a diffusion process and is described by a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE). Unlike many other SDE techniques proposed in the literature, the BSDE method is backward in time; that is, instead of initial conditions it requires the specification of endpoint ("final") conditions, in addition to the model parametrization. To validate our approach we employ Gillespie's stochastic simulation algorithm (SSA) to generate (forward) benchmark data, according to predefined gene network models. Numerical simulations show that the BSDE method is able to correctly infer the protein level distributions that preceded a known final condition, obtained originally from the forward SSA. This makes the BSDE method a powerful systems biology tool for time reversed simulations, allowing, for example, the assessment of the biological conditions (e.g. protein concentrations) that preceded an experimentally measured event of interest (e.g. mitosis, apoptosis, etc.).Comment: Accepted in Physical Review

Comparing and evaluating Data-driven Journalism: Data visualization performance from perspective of web analytics

Data journalism is one of the hottest trends in journalism. Although the practice of using numbers to tell stories is not particularly new to newsrooms, the interaction present in data visualizations allows the active participation of the user, rarely possible before. The production of data-driven and interactive pieces increases every year, as well as the number of studies in the field. However, there is still a lack of research on user behavior in interactive news pieces. This gap can be explained in part by researchers’ difficulty in accessing real quantitative data from media outlets since such data are considered sensitive and strategic. In this thesis, we compare the performance of interactive data journalism pieces with the most read news articles, and with news stories of the same topic published in the same period as the interactive ones. This analysis is based on 90 pieces of data journalism pieces and on the access to Google Analytics, an online web analytics tool, from three media outlets from three different countries: The Texas Tribune (United States), O Globo (Brazil) and Público (Portugal). The investigation begins by recalling important moments in the use of data in journalism in the three analyzed countries. Then, we present a brief history of media audience measurement and the relationship of journalists with the public. We present the individual results of each media outlet analyzed and all together to try to identify patterns and trends in the consumption of interactive news pieces. Among the key findings of this research are: data journalism pieces continue to be visited years after publication in a much higher proportion than other news on the same topic; users spend more time on interactive news than on the most read articles and related news stories; the recirculation rate in data journalism pieces is higher than the rate in the related news; the bounce rate is higher in the data visualization than in the most read news articles and the related news stories.O jornalismo de dados é definitivamente uma das principais tendências do jornalismo atualmente. Apesar de a prática de usar dados para contar histórias não ser algo particularmente novo nas redações, o recurso da interação nas visualizações de dados permite uma participação ativa do usuário, como poucas vezes foi possível anteriormente. A produção de peças orientadas por dados e interativas aumenta a cada ano, assim como o número de estudos na área. Todavia, ainda há uma ausência de investigações sobre o comportamento do usuário em notícias interativas de jornalismo de dados. Essa lacuna pode ser explicada em parte pela dificuldade dos investigadores em aceder a dados quantitativos reais dos meios de comunicação social, uma vez que esses dados são considerados sensíveis e estratégicos. Nesta tese, comparamos o desempenho de notícias interativas de jornalismo de dados com as notícias mais lidas e com notícias do mesmo tópico publicadas no mesmo período em que as matérias interativas. Essa análise é realizada com base em 90 peças de jornalismo de dados e no acesso ao Google Analytics, ferramenta online de análise de métricas, de três veículos de comunicação de três países diferentes: The Texas Tribune (Estados Unidos), O Globo (Brasil) e Público (Portugal). A investigação começa por recontar momentos importantes do uso de dados no jornalismo nos três países analisados. Em seguida é realizado um breve histórico da mensuração da audiência nos meios de comunicação social e da relação dos jornalistas com o público. Apresentamos os resultados individuais de cada veículo de comunicação e em conjunto para tentar identificar padrões e tendências no consumo de notícias interativas de jornalismo de dados. Entre as principais descobertas dessa investigação estão: visualizações de dados seguem sendo visitadas anos após a publicação em uma proporção muito superior do que outras notícias do mesmo tópico; os usuários passam mais tempo nas visualizações interativas do que nas notícias mais lidas e nas notícias relacionadas; a taxa de “recirculation” nas peças de jornalismo de dados é superior à taxa das notícias relacionadas; a taxa de rejeição é maior nas matérias com visualização de dados do que nas notícias mais lidas e nas notícias relacionadas

On the temperature dependence of the absorption cross section for black holes in string theory

We study the low frequency absorption cross section of spherically symmetric nonextremal d-dimensional black holes. In the presence of α′ corrections, this quantity must have an explicit dependence on the Hawking temperature of the form 1/TH. This property of the low frequency absorption cross section is shared by the D1-D5 system from type IIB superstring theory already at the classical level, without α′ corrections. We apply our formula to the simplest example, the classical d-dimensional Reissner-Nordstr¨om solution, checking that the obtained formula for the cross section has a smooth extremal limit. We also apply it for a d-dimensional Tangherlini-like solution with α′3 corrections.This work has been supported by FEDER funds through Programa Operacional Fatores de Competitividade – COMPETE and by Funda¸c˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia through projects Est-C/MAT/UI0013/2011 and CERN/FP/123609/2011

Marshall University Department of Music presents a Faculty Recital - Julio Alves

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1004/thumbnail.jp

Inflation forecasts using the tips yield curve

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsIn this paper month-on-month inflation is forecasted using information on expected inflation by participants in financial markets as an additional regressor to a direct autoregressive method and the results are compared to those of the most commonly used univariate forecasting methods. These forecasts are then used to forecast quarterly inflation and the results are compared to those of the SPF and iterated autoregressive with fixed number of lags

The relationship between trust and economic growth

Mestrado Bolonha em EconomiaThis dissertation examines the relationship between Trust in Government and Economic Development in 41 countries between 2010 and 2020. For this purpose, OLS and Random Effects (RE) models are estimated. The literature explains, together with other factors, that trust is a crucial aspect to define the behaviours of individuals, since in the daily life of each one there are different relationships between agents. When there is a breach of trust (distrust), whether between individuals (Interpersonal Trust), or trust in institutions such as the Government, Banks, Schools, among others (Institutional Trust), it will have repercussions on Economic Development. For this reason, this study analyses the assumption that the robust relationship between Trust in Government and Economic Growth depicts the well- working of institutions. The findings of this study, when examining two regressions (OLS and RE), shown that there is a positive and statistically relationship between Trust in Government and Economic Development, which means that when there is greater Trust in Government it is verifiable Economic Development. Although the notion of Trustworthiness is similar to Trust, since it is the condition of a person/ institution's capacity to be worthy of trust, does not verify the same results as it is observable in the case of Trust in Government. In the case of the relationship between Trustworthiness and Confidence with Economic Growth, there was not found any relationship since there was no statistical significance when both concepts were examined. Just as important, it was found that there are no differences in the results when the incomes of the countries are different, in this way, both the Middle Income countries and the High Income countries have as evidence that the higher levels of Trust in Government is associated with higher levels of Economic Development.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Esporte proletário no Brasil (1928-1935) : A organização esportiva da Federação da Juventude Comunista

Trata da organizaçao esportiva proletária engendrada pela Federaçao da juventude Comunista no Brasil (FJCB) entre os anos de 1928 a 1935. Busca interrogar as referências e significados da organizaçao do esporte na dinâmica do movimento dos trabalhadores, bem como suas características, suas definiçoes e os limites de sua aceitaçao e negaçao vinculados aos ideais que representaram o esforço de reflexao de parte do proletariado organizado sobre aquele contexto crítico da sociedade brasileira. Aponta que a FJCB levou em consideraçao o alcance do esporte entre os trabalhadores, principalmente os jovens, e o revestiu de um discurso classista a favor do partido comunista. Destaca que a organizaçao de práticas corporais proposta pelos jovens comunistas privilegia o futebol e também considera que as associaçoes de classe, como sociedades recreativas, clubes dançantes e associaçoes esportivas, foram espaços de partilha de experiências e ideais de classe heterogêneos. Usa como fonte a documentaçao oficial da FJCB com o partido comunista e jornais, concluindo que nao houve por parte dos comunistas a construçao de uma crítica ao conteúdo interno do esporte e aos seus códigos. A utilidade dos espaços esportivos, caracterizados como proletários, nao serviu apenas para usufruto da prática, mas, também, como doutrinaçao política. Entretanto, sem questionar os conteúdos e as formas de uso do esporte, aproveitando dele a aceitaçao e inserçao entre os trabalhadores joven

EDUCAÇÃO DE JOVENS E ADULTOS PRIVADOS DE LIBERDADE: PERSPECTIVAS E DESAFIOS

Neste artigo, aborda-se a Educação de Jovens e Adultos (EJA) no contexto das prisões. ressaltam-se os principais avanços no campo dessa modalidade de ensino, principalmente no que se refere à efetivação do direito à educação para todos e ao reconhecimento da diversidade do público que compõe a EJA, hoje, no Brasil. destacam-se os jovens e adultos privados de liberdade como sujeitos de direitos e apontam-se os principais desafios para a oferta de EJA em espaços de privação de liberdade

On the Utility of Word Embeddings for Enriching OpenWordNet-PT

The maintenance of wordnets and lexical knwoledge bases typically relies on time-consuming manual effort. In order to minimise this issue, we propose the exploitation of models of distributional semantics, namely word embeddings learned from corpora, in the automatic identification of relation instances missing in a wordnet. Analogy-solving methods are first used for learning a set of relations from analogy tests focused on each relation. Despite their low accuracy, we noted that a portion of the top-given answers are good suggestions of relation instances that could be included in the wordnet. This procedure is applied to the enrichment of OpenWordNet-PT, a public Portuguese wordnet. Relations are learned from data acquired from this resource, and illustrative examples are provided. Results are promising for accelerating the identification of missing relation instances, as we estimate that about 17% of the potential suggestions are good, a proportion that almost doubles if some are automatically invalidated

Genetic control growth, wood density and stem characteristics of Pinus pinaster in Portugal

A Pinus pinaster Ait. progeny trial involving 46 open pollinated families was established at two locations in Portugal (Leiria and Escaroupim). Height, diameter, Pilodyn and stem characteristics (straightness, branch size and number of whorls) were assessed at age 5 and 12 and were used to estimate variance components, heritability, phenotypic and genetic correlations between traits. Estimates varied considerably between the two sites. However, this study indicates that the heritability for height followed the general pattern of increasing with the age of the trees. A strong and favourable genetic correlation between the stem form and branching was also found. Heritability of Pilodyn was very low, suggesting that measurements taken at age 12 were not a reliable measure of wood density, probably due to the high proportion of juvenile woo