11,582 research outputs found
The future of bioethanol
Yeasts have been domesticated by mankind before horses. After the mastering of alcoholic fermentation for centuries, yeasts have become the protagonist of one of the most important biotechnological industries worldwide: the production of bioethanol. This chapter will initially present some important challenges to be overcome in this industry, both in first and second generation biofuel production. Then, it will briefly revisit some advances obtained in recent years. Finally, it will present and discuss some opportunities, in the scope of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, that will likely be present in the future of bioethanol
Time Scaling of Chaotic Systems: Application to Secure Communications
The paper deals with time-scaling transformations of dynamical systems. Such
scaling functions operate a change of coordinates on the time axis of the
system trajectories preserving its phase portrait. Exploiting this property, a
chaos encryption technique to transmit a binary signal through an analog
channel is proposed. The scheme is based on a suitable time-scaling function
which plays the role of a private key. The encoded transmitted signal is proved
to resist known decryption attacks offering a secure and reliable
communication.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
Current medical treatment of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer
Approximately 80% of breast cancers (BC) are estrogen receptor (ER)-positive and thus endocrine therapy (ET) should be considered complementary to surgery in the majority of patients. The advantages of oophorectomy, adrenalectomy and hypophysectomy in women with advanced BC have been demonstrated many years ago, and currently ET consist of (i) ovarian function suppression (OFS), usually obtained using gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa), (ii) selective estrogen receptor modulators or down-regulators (SERMs or SERDs), (iii) aromatase inhibitors (AIs), or a combination of two or more drugs. For patients aged less than 50 years and ER+ BC, there is no conclusive evidence that the combination of OFS and SERMs (i.e. tamoxifen) or chemotherapy is superior to OFS alone. Tamoxifen users exhibit a reduced risk of BC, both invasive and in situ, especially during the first 5 years of therapy, and extending the treatment to 10 years further reduced the risk of recurrences. SERDs (i.e. fulvestrant) are especially useful in the neoadjuvant treatment of advanced BC, alone or in combination with either cytotoxic agents or AIs. There are two types of AIs: type I are permanent steroidal inhibitors of aromatase, while type II are reversible nonsteroidal inhibitors. Several studies demonstrated the superiority of the third-generation AIs (i.e. anastrozole and letrozole) compared with tamoxifen, and adjuvant therapy with AIs reduces the recurrence risk especially in patients with advanced BC. Unfortunately, some cancers are or became ET-resistant, and thus other drugs have been suggested in combination with SERMs or AIs, including cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors (palbociclib) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors, such as everolimus. Further studies are required to confirm their real usefulness
Tree Level Unitarity Bounds for the Minimal B-L Model
We have derived the unitarity bounds in the high energy limit for the minimal
B-L extension of the Standard Model by analysing the full class of Higgs and
would-be Goldstone boson two-to-two scatterings at tree level. Moreover, we
have investigated how these limits could vary at some lower critical value of
the energy.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables; 1d figure modified, typos corrected,
bibliography augmented; published in PRD after minor adjustmen
The Z' boson of the minimal B-L model at future Linear Colliders in e+e- --> mu+mu-
We study the capabilities of future electron-positron Linear Colliders, with
centre-of-mass energy at the TeV scale, in accessing the parameter space of a
boson within the minimal model. We carry out a detailed comparison
between the discovery regions mapped over a two-dimensional configuration space
( mass and coupling) at the Large Hadron Collider and possible future
Linear Colliders for the case of di-muon production. As known in the literature
for other models, we confirm that leptonic machines, as compared to the
CERN hadronic accelerator, display an additional potential in discovering a
boson as well as in allowing one to study its properties at a level of
precision well beyond that of any of the existing colliders.Comment: 5 pages, proceeding of LC09 (Perugia), published by the Italian
Physical Society in the Nuovo Cimento C (Colloquia
Photon and Pomeron -- induced production of Dijets in , and collisions
In this paper we present a detailed comparison of the dijet production by
photon -- photon, photon -- pomeron and pomeron -- pomeron interactions in
, and collisions at the LHC energy. The transverse
momentum, pseudo -- rapidity and angular dependencies of the cross sections are
calculated at LHC energy using the Forward Physics Monte Carlo (FPMC), which
allows to obtain realistic predictions for the dijet production with two
leading intact hadrons. We obtain that \gamma \pom channel is dominant at
forward rapidities in collisions and in the full kinematical range in the
nuclear collisions of heavy nuclei. Our results indicate that the analysis of
dijet production at the LHC can be useful to test the Resolved Pomeron model as
well as to constrain the magnitude of the absorption effects.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Improved and enlarged version published
in European Physical Journal
Inclusive hadron and photon production at LHC in dipole momentum space
Using a momentum space model for the dipole scattering amplitude we present
an analysis of the saturation effects at LHC energies, describing the data on
proton-proton and proton-lead collisions. The model is based on the asymptotic
solutions of the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation, being ideal in the saturation
domain where the target wave function has a high occupation number. We also
make predictions for the nuclear modification ratios on charged hadron and
prompt photon production in the forward region, where the high parton density
effects are important.Comment: New section added and typos corrected. To be published in PR
Strengthening measurements from the edges: application-level packet loss rate estimation
Network users know much less than ISPs, Internet exchanges and content providers about what happens inside the network. Consequently users cannot either easily detect network neutrality violations or readily exercise their market power by knowledgeably switching ISPs. This paper contributes to the ongoing efforts to empower users by proposing two models to estimate -- via application-level measurements -- a key network indicator, i.e., the packet loss rate (PLR) experienced by FTP-like TCP downloads. Controlled, testbed, and large-scale experiments show that the Inverse Mathis model is simpler and more consistent across the whole PLR range, but less accurate than the more advanced Likely Rexmit model for landline connections and moderate PL
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