Evolution of Non-linear Fluctuations in Preheating after Inflation

We investigate the evolution of the non-linear long wavelength fluctuations during preheating after inflation. By using the separate universe approach, the temporal evolution of the power spectrum of the scalar fields and the curvature variable is obtained numerically. We found that the amplitude of the large scale fluctuations is suppressed after non-linear evolution during preheating.Comment: To be published in Class. Quantum Gra

Service user leadership: training and development for service users to take the lead

Purpose – This paper outlines the concept of service user leadership and both describes and reflects on an accredited training programme that enables mental health service users to take a leadership role. Design/methodology/approach – The authors argue for a service user leadership approach and the training programme is reviewed by previous participants Findings – Service users can take on a leadership role if they are given suitable and relevant training and development opportunities. Service user led training can be transformational. Practical implications – Commissioners of mental health services should consider how to support service user leadership programmes, which can reach places and achieve outcomes that traditional mental health services are unable to attain. Originality/value – The concept of service user leadership is relatively new and the training programme described in this paper is both original and highly valued by participants with many significant outcomes. Keywords Service user leadership, Peer support, Empowerment, Service user involvement, Confidence, Wellbeing, Leadership, Trainin

Spin orbit coupling at the level of a single electron

We utilize electron counting techniques to distinguish a spin conserving fast tunneling process and a slower process involving spin flips in AlGaAs/GaAs-based double quantum dots. By studying the dependence of the rates on the interdot tunnel coupling of the two dots, we find that as many as 4% of the tunneling events occur with a spin flip related to spin-orbit coupling in GaAs. Our measurement has a fidelity of 99 % in terms of resolving whether a tunneling event occurred with a spin flip or not

Value of DNA mixture-to-mixture comparisons within an operational context.

Since 1995, national forensic DNA databases have used a maximum number of contributors, and a minimum number of loci to reduce the risk of providing false leads. DNA profiles of biological traces that do not meet these criteria cannot be loaded into these databases. In 2023, about 10 % of more than 15,000 trace DNA profiles analyzed in western Switzerland were not compared at the national level, even though they were considered to be interpretable, mainly because they contained the DNA from more than two persons. In this situation, police services can request local comparisons with DNA profiles of known persons and/or with other traces, but this occurs in only a small proportion of cases, so that DNA mixtures are rarely used to help detect potential series. The development of probabilistic genotyping software and its associated tools have made possible the efficient performance of this type of comparison, which is based on likelihood ratios (LR) rather than on the number of shared alleles. To highlight potential common contributors for investigation and intelligence purposes, the present study used the mixture-to-mixture tool of the software STRmix v2.7 to compare 235 DNA profiles that cannot be searched the Swiss DNA database. These DNA profiles originated from traces collected by six different police services in 2021 and 2022. Traces were selected by the police based on information that indicated that they were from potential series. Associations between profiles were compared with expected investigative associations to define the value of this approach. Among the 27,495 pairwise comparisons of DNA profiles, 88 pairs (0.3 %) showed at least one potential common contributor when using a LR threshold of 1000. Of these 88 pairs, 60 (68.2 %) were qualified by the police services as "expected" (60/88), 22 (25.0 %) as "possible", and six (6.8 %) as "unexpected". Although it is important to consider the limits of this approach (e.g., adventitious or missed associations, cost/benefit evaluation, integration of DNA mixture comparison in the process), these findings indicate that non CODIS loadable DNA mixtures could provide police agencies with information concerning potential series at both the local and national level

Decidability Results for Multi-objective Stochastic Games

We study stochastic two-player turn-based games in which the objective of one player is to ensure several infinite-horizon total reward objectives, while the other player attempts to spoil at least one of the objectives. The games have previously been shown not to be determined, and an approximation algorithm for computing a Pareto curve has been given. The major drawback of the existing algorithm is that it needs to compute Pareto curves for finite horizon objectives (for increasing length of the horizon), and the size of these Pareto curves can grow unboundedly, even when the infinite-horizon Pareto curve is small. By adapting existing results, we first give an algorithm that computes the Pareto curve for determined games. Then, as the main result of the paper, we show that for the natural class of stopping games and when there are two reward objectives, the problem of deciding whether a player can ensure satisfaction of the objectives with given thresholds is decidable. The result relies on intricate and novel proof which shows that the Pareto curves contain only finitely many points. As a consequence, we get that the two-objective discounted-reward problem for unrestricted class of stochastic games is decidable.Comment: 35 page

CodY, a pleiotropic regulator, influences multicellular behaviour and efficient production of virulence factors in Bacillus cereus

In response to nutrient limitation in the environment, the global transcriptional regulator CodY modulates various pathways in low G+C Gram-positive bacteria. In Bacillus subtilis CodY triggers adaptation to starvation by secretion of proteases coupled to the expression of amino acid transporters. Furthermore, it is involved in modulating survival strategies like sporulation, motility, biofilm formation, and CodY is also known to affect virulence factor production in pathogenic bacteria. In this study, the role of CodY in Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579, the enterotoxin-producing type strain, is investigated. A marker-less deletion mutant of codY (?codY) was generated in B. cereus and the transcriptome changes were surveyed using DNA microarrays. Numerous genes involved in biofilm formation and amino acid transport and metabolism were upregulated and genes associated with motility and virulence were repressed upon deletion of codY. Moreover, we found that CodY is important for efficient production of toxins and for adapting from nutrient-rich to nutrient-limited growth conditions of B. cereus. In contrast, biofilm formation is highly induced in the ?codY mutant, suggesting that CodY represses biofilm formation. Together, these results indicate that CodY plays a crucial role in the growth and persistence of B. cereus in different environments such as soil, food, insect guts and the human body

Multi-objective Robust Strategy Synthesis for Interval Markov Decision Processes

Interval Markov decision processes (IMDPs) generalise classical MDPs by having interval-valued transition probabilities. They provide a powerful modelling tool for probabilistic systems with an additional variation or uncertainty that prevents the knowledge of the exact transition probabilities. In this paper, we consider the problem of multi-objective robust strategy synthesis for interval MDPs, where the aim is to find a robust strategy that guarantees the satisfaction of multiple properties at the same time in face of the transition probability uncertainty. We first show that this problem is PSPACE-hard. Then, we provide a value iteration-based decision algorithm to approximate the Pareto set of achievable points. We finally demonstrate the practical effectiveness of our proposed approaches by applying them on several case studies using a prototypical tool.Comment: This article is a full version of a paper accepted to the Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems (QEST) 201

Automatic ROI detection and classification of the Achilles tendon ultrasound images

Ultrasound (US) imaging plays an important role in medical imaging technologies. It is widely used because of its ease of use and low cost compared to other imaging techniques. Specifically, ultrasound imaging is used in the detection of the Achilles Tendon (AT) pathologies as it detects important details. For example, US imaging is used for AT rupture that affects about 1 in 5,000 people worldwide. Decision support systems are important in medical imaging, as they assist radiologist in detecting probable diagnoses and lesions. The work presented in this paper concerns the development of a software application to detect changes in the AT ultrasound images and subsequently classify them into normal or abnormal. We propose an approach that fully automates the detection for the Region of Interest (ROI) in ultrasound AT images. The original image is divided into six blocks with 1 cm size in each direction. The blocks lie inside the vulnerable area considered as our ROI. The proposed system achieved an accuracy of 97.21%

Interruption of torus doubling bifurcation and genesis of strange nonchaotic attractors in a quasiperiodically forced map : Mechanisms and their characterizations

A simple quasiperiodically forced one-dimensional cubic map is shown to exhibit very many types of routes to chaos via strange nonchaotic attractors (SNAs) with reference to a two-parameter $(A-f)$ space. The routes include transitions to chaos via SNAs from both one frequency torus and period doubled torus. In the former case, we identify the fractalization and type I intermittency routes. In the latter case, we point out that atleast four distinct routes through which the truncation of torus doubling bifurcation and the birth of SNAs take place in this model. In particular, the formation of SNAs through Heagy-Hammel, fractalization and type--III intermittent mechanisms are described. In addition, it has been found that in this system there are some regions in the parameter space where a novel dynamics involving a sudden expansion of the attractor which tames the growth of period-doubling bifurcation takes place, giving birth to SNA. The SNAs created through different mechanisms are characterized by the behaviour of the Lyapunov exponents and their variance, by the estimation of phase sensitivity exponent as well as through the distribution of finite-time Lyapunov exponents.Comment: 27 pages, RevTeX 4, 16 EPS figures. Phys. Rev. E (2001) to appea