Reentrant phenomenon in the exactly solvable mixed spin-1/2 and spin-1 Ising-Heisenberg model on diamond-like decorated planar lattices

Ground-state and finite-temperature behaviour of the mixed spin-1/2 and spin-1 Ising-Heisenberg model on decorated planar lattices consisting of inter-connected diamonds is investigated by means of the generalised decoration-iteration mapping transformation. The obtained exact results clearly point out that this model has a rather complex ground state composed of two unusual quantum phases, which is valid regardless of the lattice topology as well as the spatial dimensionality of the investigated system. It is shown that the diamond-like decorated planar lattices with a sufficiently high coordination number may exhibit a striking critical behaviour including reentrant phase transitions with two or three consecutive critical points.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Physica Status Solidi

Photon assisted Levy flights of minority carriers in n-InP

We study the photoluminescence spectra of n-doped InP bulk wafers, both in the reflection and the transmission geometries relative to the excitation beam. From the observed spectra we estimate the spatial distribution of minority carriers allowing for the spectral filtering due to re-absorption of luminescence in the wafer. This distribution unambiguously demonstrates a non-exponential drop-off with distance from the excitation region. Such a behavior evidences an anomalous photon-assisted transport of minority carriers enhanced owing to the high quantum efficiency of emission. It is shown that the transport conforms very well to the so-called Levy-flights process corresponding to a peculiar random walk that does not reduce to diffusion. The index gamma of the Levy flights distribution is found to be in the range gamma = 0.64 to 0.79, depending on the doping. Thus, we propose the high-efficiency direct-gap semiconductors as a remarkable laboratory system for studying the anomalous transport.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Cell circuits between B cell progenitors and IL-7+ mesenchymal progenitor cells control B cell development

B cell progenitors require paracrine signals such as interleukin-7 (IL-7) provided by bone marrow stromal cells for proliferation and survival. Yet, how B cells regulate access to these signals in vivo remains unclear. Here we show that proB and IL-

Generating Linked-Data based Domain-Specific Sentiment Lexicons from Legacy Language and Semantic Resources

We present a methodology for legacy language resource adaptation that generates domain-specific sentiment lexicons organized around domain entities described with lexical information and sentiment words described in the context of these entities. We explain the steps of the methodology and we give a working example of our initial results. The resulting lexicons are modelled as Linked Data resources by use of established formats for Linguistic Linked Data (lemon, NIF) and for linked sentiment expressions (Marl), thereby contributing and linking to existing Language Resources in the Linguistic Linked Open Data cloud

Amortized Bootstrapping Revisited: Simpler, Asymptotically-faster, Implemented

Micciancio and Sorrel (ICALP 2018) proposed a bootstrapping algorithm that can refresh many messages at once with sublinearly many homomorphic operations per message. However, despite the attractive asymptotic cost, it is unclear if their algorithm could ever be practical, which reduces the impact of their results. In this work, we follow their general framework, but propose an amortized bootstrapping that is conceptually simpler and asymptotically cheaper. We reduce the number of homomorphic operations per refreshed message from $O(3^\rho \cdot n^{1/\rho} \cdot \log n)$ to $O(\rho \cdot n^{1/\rho})$, and the noise overhead from $\tilde{O}(n^{2 + 3 \cdot \rho})$ to $\tilde{O}(n^{1 + \rho})$. We also make it more general, by handling non-binary messages and applying programmable bootstrapping. To obtain a concrete instantiation of our bootstrapping algorithm, we propose a double-CRT (aka RNS) version of the GSW scheme, including a new operation, called shrinking, used to speed-up homomorphic operations by reducing the dimension and ciphertext modulus of the ciphertexts. We also provide a C++ implementation of our algorithm, thus showing for the first time the practicability of the amortized bootstrapping. Moreover, it is competitive with existing bootstrapping algorithms, being even around 3.4 times faster than an equivalent non-amortized version of our bootstrapping

A Cross-Cultural Study of the Social Experience of Giftedness

The phenomenon of social coping among students with gifts and talents (SWGT) is not well understood. In interviews with elementary-, middle-, and high-school aged SWGT (N = 90; 50% female) from the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, Ireland, and France, the universality of awareness of visibility of their exceptional abilities, high expectations and pressure to achieve from adults and peers, and peer jealousy and rejection, was confirmed. In all countries, SWGT were concerned about peers’ upward social comparison and the effects of their outperformance on peers’ feelings. SWGT attempted to hide their abilities or conform to peers’ behaviors. Prosocial helping behaviors were found among SWGT in nearly all age groups and a focus on the self was a useful coping strategy to students in all countries except France. Parallels are drawn between these findings and Goffman’s (1963) stigma theory

Sources of excessive saturated fat, trans fat and sugar consumption in Brazil: an analysis of the first Brazilian nationwide individual dietary survey

To examine the patterns of consumption of foods high in Solid Fats and Added Sugars (SoFAS) in Brazil

Towards Emergent Microservices for Client-Tailored Design

Contemporary systems are increasingly complex, with both large codebases and constantly changing environments which make them challenging to develop, deploy and manage. We consider two recent efforts to tackle this complexity: microservices and emergent software. Microservices have gained recent popularity in industry, in which monoliths of software are broken down into compositions of single-objective, end-to-end services running on HTTP which can be scaled out on cloud hosting systems. From the research community, the emergent systems concept demonstrates promise in using real-time learning to autonomously compose and optimise software systems from small building blocks, rapidly finding the best behavioural composition to match the current deployment conditions. We argue that emergent software and microservice architectures have strong potential for synergy in complex systems, offering mutually compatible lessons in dealing with complexity via scale-out design and real-time client-tailored behaviour. We explore self-designing microservices, built with emergent software, to demonstrate the complementary boundaries of both concepts - and how future intersections may offer novel architectures that lie at a compelling point between human- and machine-designed systems. We present the conceptual synergy and demonstrate a specific microservice architecture for a smart city example where scoped microservices are continually self-composed according to the demands of the applications and operating environment. For the purpose of reproducibility of the study, we make available all the code used in the evaluation of the proposed approach

Modelling the tumour microenvironment in long-term microencapsulated 3D co-cultures recapitulates phenotypic features of disease progression

3D cell tumour models are generated mainly in non-scalable culture systems, using bioactive scaffolds. Many of these models fail to reflect the complex tumour microenvironment and do not allow long-term monitoring of tumour progression. To overcome these limitations, we have combined alginate microencapsulation with agitation-based culture systems, to recapitulate and monitor key aspects of the tumour microenvironment and disease progression. Aggregates of MCF-7 breast cancer cells were microencapsulated in alginate, either alone or in combination with human fibroblasts, then cultured for 15 days. In co-cultures, the fibroblasts arranged themselves around the tumour aggregates creating distinct epithelial and stromal compartments. The presence of fibroblasts resulted in secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines and deposition of collagen in the stromal compartment. Tumour cells established cell–cell contacts and polarised around small lumina in the interior of the aggregates. Over the culture period, there was a reduction in oestrogen receptor and membranous E-cadherin alongside loss of cell polarity, increased collective cell migration and enhanced angiogenic potential in co-cultures. These phenotypic alterations, typical of advanced stages of cancer, were not observed in the mono-cultures of MCF-7 cells. The proposed model system constitutes a new tool to study tumour-stroma crosstalk, disease progression and drug resistance mechanisms