Reconstruction of protein structures from a vectorial representation

We show that the contact map of the native structure of globular proteins can be reconstructed starting from the sole knowledge of the contact map's principal eigenvector, and present an exact algorithm for this purpose. Our algorithm yields a unique contact map for all 221 globular structures of PDBselect25 of length $N \le 120$. We also show that the reconstructed contact maps allow in turn for the accurate reconstruction of the three-dimensional structure. These results indicate that the reduced vectorial representation provided by the principal eigenvector of the contact map is equivalent to the protein structure itself. This representation is expected to provide a useful tool in bioinformatics algorithms for protein structure comparison and alignment, as well as a promising intermediate step towards protein structure prediction.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Three-dimensional N=4 supersymmetry in harmonic N=3 superspace

We consider the map of three-dimensional N=4 superfields to N=3 harmonic superspace. The left and right representations of the N=4 superconformal group are constructed on N=3 analytic superfields. These representations are convenient for the description of N=4 superconformal couplings of the Abelian gauge superfields with hypermultiplets. We analyze the N=4 invariance in the non-Abelian N=3 Yang-Mills theory.Comment: Latex file, 22 pages; v2 two references adde

Cosmological perturbations in a healthy extension of Horava gravity

In Horava's theory of gravity, Lorentz symmetry is broken in exchange for renormalizability, but the original theory has been argued to be plagued with problems associated with a new scalar mode stemming from the very breaking of Lorentz symmetry. Recently, Blas, Pujolas, and Sibiryakov have proposed a healthy extension of Horava gravity, in which the behavior of the scalar mode is improved. In this paper, we study scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in extended Horava gravity. The evolution of metric and density perturbations is addressed analytically and numerically. It is shown that for vanishing non-adiabatic pressure of matter the large scale evolution of cosmological perturbations converges to that described by a single constant, $\zeta$, which is an analog of a curvature perturbation on the uniform-density slicing commonly used in usual gravitational theories. The subsequent evolution is thus determined completely by the value of $\zeta$.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; v2: published versio

Intelligent Financial Fraud Detection Practices: An Investigation

Financial fraud is an issue with far reaching consequences in the finance industry, government, corporate sectors, and for ordinary consumers. Increasing dependence on new technologies such as cloud and mobile computing in recent years has compounded the problem. Traditional methods of detection involve extensive use of auditing, where a trained individual manually observes reports or transactions in an attempt to discover fraudulent behaviour. This method is not only time consuming, expensive and inaccurate, but in the age of big data it is also impractical. Not surprisingly, financial institutions have turned to automated processes using statistical and computational methods. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation on financial fraud detection practices using such data mining methods, with a particular focus on computational intelligence-based techniques. Classification of the practices based on key aspects such as detection algorithm used, fraud type investigated, and success rate have been covered. Issues and challenges associated with the current practices and potential future direction of research have also been identified.Comment: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm 2014

Constraining the Detailed Balance Condition in Horava Gravity with Cosmic Accelerating Expansion

In 2009 Ho\v{r}ava proposed a power-counting renormalizable quantum gravity theory. Afterwards a term in the action that softly violates the detailed balance condition has been considered with the attempt of obtaining a more realistic theory in its IR-limit. This term is proportional to $\omega R^{(3)}$, where $\omega$ is a constant parameter and $R^{(3)}$ is the spatial Ricci scalar. In this paper we derive constraints on this IR-modified Ho\v{r}ava theory using the late-time cosmic accelerating expansion observations. We obtain a lower bound of $|\omega|$ that is nontrivial and depends on $\Lambda_W$, the cosmological constant of the three dimensional spatial action in the Ho\v{r}ava gravity. We find that to preserve the detailed balance condition, one needs to fine-tune $\Lambda_W$ such that - 2.29\times 10^{-4}< (c^2 \Lambda_W)/(H^2_0 \currentDE) - 2 < 0 , where $H_0$ and \currentDE are the Hubble parameter and dark energy density fraction in the present epoch, respectively. On the other hand, if we do not insist on the detailed balance condition, then the valid region for $\Lambda_W$ is much relaxed to -0.39< (c^2 \Lambda_W)/(H^2_0 \currentDE) - 2 < 0.12. We find that although the detailed balance condition cannot be ruled out, it is strongly disfavored.Comment: 22 pages with 7 figures, references adde

Trends in Tissue Engineering for Blood Vessels

Over the years, cardiovascular diseases continue to increase and affect not only human health but also the economic stability worldwide. The advancement in tissue engineering is contributing a lot in dealing with this immediate need of alleviating human health. Blood vessel diseases are considered as major cardiovascular health problems. Although blood vessel transplantation is the most convenient treatment, it has been delimited due to scarcity of donors and the patient's conditions. However, tissue-engineered blood vessels are promising alternatives as mode of treatment for blood vessel defects. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of the advancement on biofabrication technology for treatment of soft tissue defects particularly for vascular tissues. This will also provide an overview and update on the current status of tissue reconstruction especially from autologous stem cells, scaffolds, and scaffold-free cellular transplantable constructs. The discussion of this paper will be focused on the historical view of cardiovascular tissue engineering and stem cell biology. The representative studies featured in this paper are limited within the last decade in order to trace the trend and evolution of techniques for blood vessel tissue engineering

Background field formalism and construction of effective action for N=2, d=3 supersymmetric gauge theories

We review the background field method for three-dimensional Yang-Mills and Chern-Simons models in N=2 superspace. Superfield proper time (heat kernel) techniques are developed and exact expressions of heat kernels for constant backgrounds are presented. The background field method and heat kernel techniques are applied for evaluating the low-energy effective actions in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills and Chern-Simons models as well as in N=4 and N=8 SYM theories.Comment: 1+30 pages, dedicated to the 60 year Jubilee of Professor D.I. Kazakov; references added. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1010.496

Ultrafast supercontinuum spectroscopy of carrier multiplication and biexcitonic effects in excited states of PbS quantum dots

We examine the multiple exciton population dynamics in PbS quantum dots by ultrafast spectrally-resolved supercontinuum transient absorption (SC-TA). We simultaneously probe the first three excitonic transitions over a broad spectral range. Transient spectra show the presence of first order bleach of absorption for the 1S_h-1S_e transition and second order bleach along with photoinduced absorption band for 1P_h-1P_e transition. We also report evidence of the one-photon forbidden 1S_{h,e}-1P_{h,e} transition. We examine signatures of carrier multiplication (multiexcitons for the single absorbed photon) from analysis of the first and second order bleaches, in the limit of low absorbed photon numbers (~ 10^-2), at pump energies from two to four times the semiconductor band gap. The multiexciton generation efficiency is discussed both in terms of a broadband global fit and the ratio between early- to long-time transient absorption signals.. Analysis of population dynamics shows that the bleach peak due to the biexciton population is red-shifted respect the single exciton one, indicating a positive binding energy.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Kaluza-Klein Higher Derivative Induced Gravity

The existence and stability analysis of an inflationary solution in a $D+4$-dimensional anisotropic induced gravity is presented in this paper. Nontrivial conditions in the field equations are shown to be compatible with a cosmological model in which the 4-dimension external space evolves inflationary, while, the D-dimension internal one is static. In particular, only two additional constraints on the coupling constants are derived from the abundant field equations and perturbation equations. In addition, a compact formula for the non-redundant 4+D dimensional Friedmann equation is also derived for convenience. Possible implications are also discussed in this paper.Comment: 13 pages, typos/errors corrected, three additional appendices adde