725 research outputs found
Taxonomy of lice and their endosymbiotic bacteria in the post-genomic era
AbstractRecent studies of molecular and genomic data from the parasitic lice of birds and mammals, as well as their mutualistic endosymbiotic bacteria, are changing the phylogenetic relationships and taxonomy of these organisms. Phylogenetic studies of lice suggest that vertebrate parasitism arose multiple times from free-living book and bark lice. Molecular clocks show that the major families of lice arose in the late Mesozoic and radiated in the early Cenozoic, following the radiation of mammals and birds. The recent release of the human louse genome has provided new opportunities for research. The genome is being used to find new genetic markers for phylogenetics and population genetics, to understand the complex evolutionary relationships of mitochondrial genes, and to study genome evolution. Genomes are informing us not only about lice, but also about their obligate endosymbiotic bacteria. In contrast to lice and their hosts, lice and their endosymbionts do not share common evolutionary histories, suggesting that endosymbionts are either replaced over time or that there are multiple independent origins of symbiosis in lice. Molecular phylogenetics and whole genome sequencing have recently provided the first insights into the phylogenetic placement and metabolic characteristics of these distantly related bacteria. Comparative genomics between distantly related louse symbionts can provide insights into conserved metabolic functions and can help to explain how distantly related species are fulfilling their role as mutualistic symbionts. In lice and their endosymbionts, molecular data and genome sequencing are driving our understanding of evolutionary relationships and classification, and will for the foreseeable future
Influence of radiative damping on the optical-frequency susceptibility
Motivated by recent discussions concerning the manner in which damping
appears in the electric polarizability, we show that (a) there is a dependence
of the nonresonant contribution on the damping and that (b) the damping enters
according to the "opposite sign prescription." We also discuss the related
question of how the damping rates in the polarizability are related to
energy-level decay rates
2022 Update of the consensus on the rational use of antithrombotics and thrombolytics in Veterinary Critical Care (CURATIVE) Domain 6: Defining rational use of thrombolytics
Objectives
To systematically review available evidence and establish guidelines related to the use of thrombolytics for the management of small animals with suspected or confirmed thrombosis.
Design
PICO (Population, Intervention, Control, and Outcome) questions were formulated, and worksheets completed as part of a standardized and systematic literature evaluation. The population of interest included dogs and cats (considered separately) and arterial and venous thrombosis. The interventions assessed were the use of thrombolytics, compared to no thrombolytics, with or without anticoagulants or antiplatelet agents. Specific protocols for recombinant tissue plasminogen activator were also evaluated. Outcomes assessed included efficacy and safety. Relevant articles were categorized according to level of evidence, quality, and as to whether they supported, were neutral to, or opposed the PICO questions. Conclusions from the PICO worksheets were used to draft guidelines, which were subsequently refined via Delphi surveys undertaken by the Consensus on the Rational Use of Antithrombotics and Thrombolytics in Veterinary Critical Care (CURATIVE) working group.
Results
Fourteen PICO questions were developed, generating 14 guidelines. The majority of the literature addressing the PICO questions in dogs is experimental studies (level of evidence 3), thus providing insufficient evidence to determine if thrombolysis improves patient-centered outcomes. In cats, literature was more limited and often neutral to the PICO questions, precluding strong evidence-based recommendations for thrombolytic use. Rather, for both species, suggestions are made regarding considerations for when thrombolytic drugs may be considered, the combination of thrombolytics with anticoagulant or antiplatelet drugs, and the choice of thrombolytic agent.
Conclusions
Substantial additional research is needed to address the role of thrombolytics for the treatment of arterial and venous thrombosis in dogs and cats. Clinical trials with patient-centered outcomes will be most valuable for addressing knowledge gaps in the field
2022 Update of the consensus on the rational use of antithrombotics and thrombolytics in Veterinary Critical Care (CURATIVE) Domain 1‐ Defining populations at risk
Objectives
To expand the number of conditions and interventions explored for their associations with thrombosis in the veterinary literature and to provide the basis for prescribing recommendations.
Design
A population exposure comparison outcome format was used to represent patient, exposure, comparison, and outcome. Population Exposure Comparison Outcome questions were distributed to worksheet authors who performed comprehensive searches, summarized the evidence, and created guideline recommendations that were reviewed by domain chairs. The revised guidelines then underwent the Delphi survey process to reach consensus on the final guidelines. Diseases evaluated in this iteration included heartworm disease (dogs and cats), immune-mediated hemolytic anemia (cats), protein-losing nephropathy (cats), protein-losing enteropathy (dogs and cats), sepsis (cats), hyperadrenocorticism (cats), liver disease (dogs), congenital portosystemic shunts (dogs and cats) and the following interventions: IV catheters (dogs and cats), arterial catheters (dogs and cats), vascular access ports (dogs and cats), extracorporeal circuits (dogs and cats) and transvenous pacemakers (dogs and cats).
Results
Of the diseases evaluated in this iteration, a high risk for thrombosis was defined as heartworm disease or protein-losing enteropathy. Low risk for thrombosis was defined as dogs with liver disease, cats with immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, protein-losing nephropathy, sepsis, or hyperadrenocorticism.
Conclusions
Associations with thrombosis are outlined for various conditions and interventions and provide the basis for management recommendations. Numerous knowledge gaps were identified that represent opportunities for future studies
A 750 mW, continuous-wave, solid-state laser source at 313 nm for cooling and manipulating trapped 9Be+ ions
We present a solid-state laser system that generates 750 mW of
continuous-wave single-frequency output at 313 nm. Sum-frequency generation
with fiber lasers at 1550 nm and 1051 nm produces up to 2 W at 626 nm. This
visible light is then converted to UV by cavity-enhanced second-harmonic
generation. The laser output can be tuned over a 495 GHz range, which includes
the 9Be+ laser cooling and repumping transitions. This is the first report of a
narrow-linewidth laser system with sufficient power to perform fault-tolerant
quantum-gate operations with trapped 9Be+ ions by use of stimulated Raman
transitions.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Templates for Convex Cone Problems with Applications to Sparse Signal Recovery
This paper develops a general framework for solving a variety of convex cone
problems that frequently arise in signal processing, machine learning,
statistics, and other fields. The approach works as follows: first, determine a
conic formulation of the problem; second, determine its dual; third, apply
smoothing; and fourth, solve using an optimal first-order method. A merit of
this approach is its flexibility: for example, all compressed sensing problems
can be solved via this approach. These include models with objective
functionals such as the total-variation norm, ||Wx||_1 where W is arbitrary, or
a combination thereof. In addition, the paper also introduces a number of
technical contributions such as a novel continuation scheme, a novel approach
for controlling the step size, and some new results showing that the smooth and
unsmoothed problems are sometimes formally equivalent. Combined with our
framework, these lead to novel, stable and computationally efficient
algorithms. For instance, our general implementation is competitive with
state-of-the-art methods for solving intensively studied problems such as the
LASSO. Further, numerical experiments show that one can solve the Dantzig
selector problem, for which no efficient large-scale solvers exist, in a few
hundred iterations. Finally, the paper is accompanied with a software release.
This software is not a single, monolithic solver; rather, it is a suite of
programs and routines designed to serve as building blocks for constructing
complete algorithms.Comment: The TFOCS software is available at http://tfocs.stanford.edu This
version has updated reference
Variable Ticket Pricing in Major League Baseball
Sport teams historically have been reluctant to change ticket prices during the season. Recently, however, numerous sport organizations have implemented variable ticket pricing in an effort to maximize revenues. In Major League Baseball variable pricing results in ticket price increases or decreases depending on factors such as quality of the opponent, day of the week, month of the year, and for special events such as opening day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day. Using censored regression and elasticity analysis, this article demonstrates that variable pricing would have yielded approximately 1.4 million in revenue. The largest percentage revenue gain would have been the San Francisco Giants. The Giants would have seen an estimated 6.7% increase in revenue had they used optimal variable pricing
Changes in inflammatory mediators in experimental periodontitis in the rhesus monkey.
Ligature-induced periodontitis was monitored for 6 months in eight Macaca mulatta monkeys to examine clinical status, radiographic bone level, and crevicular fluid (CF) levels of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), thromboxane B2 (TxB2), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta), tumor necrosis factor alpha, and leukotriene B4 (LTB4). A split-mouth design was used, with eight ligated teeth and eight contralateral nonligated teeth which develop soft-chow-promoted (spontaneous) disease. Ligated sites experienced an average attachment loss of 0.94 mm per site and linear bone loss of 0.88 mm per site, with spontaneous-periodontitis sites experiencing approximately half the loss of ligated sites. The CF mediator levels showed increased levels of PGE2 and TxB2 at the ligated sites, as compared with the spontaneous sites, with no significant contralateral differences in the IL-1 beta or LTB4 responses. The concentrations of LTB4 in CF reached an early threefold peak over the baseline level at 1 month. By 2 months there was a statistically significant threefold elevation in CF-PGE2 in the ligated sites and a twofold elevation in the spontaneous sites as compared to the baseline level (P = 0.041 and 0.008, respectively). The monocyte product IL-1 beta increased sharply at 2 months and returned to the baseline level by 6 months at both ligated and nonligated sites. Tumor necrosis factor alpha in CF was below the limit of detection at all sites throughout the experiment (i.e., < 2 ng/ml). The selective elevation of both PGE2 and TxB2 in ligated sites, compared with levels in spontaneous sites, in the presence of similar levels of LTB4 and IL-1 beta provides further evidence that these molecules regulate the magnitude of the tissue-destructive response in progressive periodontitis
Low Complexity Regularization of Linear Inverse Problems
Inverse problems and regularization theory is a central theme in contemporary
signal processing, where the goal is to reconstruct an unknown signal from
partial indirect, and possibly noisy, measurements of it. A now standard method
for recovering the unknown signal is to solve a convex optimization problem
that enforces some prior knowledge about its structure. This has proved
efficient in many problems routinely encountered in imaging sciences,
statistics and machine learning. This chapter delivers a review of recent
advances in the field where the regularization prior promotes solutions
conforming to some notion of simplicity/low-complexity. These priors encompass
as popular examples sparsity and group sparsity (to capture the compressibility
of natural signals and images), total variation and analysis sparsity (to
promote piecewise regularity), and low-rank (as natural extension of sparsity
to matrix-valued data). Our aim is to provide a unified treatment of all these
regularizations under a single umbrella, namely the theory of partial
smoothness. This framework is very general and accommodates all low-complexity
regularizers just mentioned, as well as many others. Partial smoothness turns
out to be the canonical way to encode low-dimensional models that can be linear
spaces or more general smooth manifolds. This review is intended to serve as a
one stop shop toward the understanding of the theoretical properties of the
so-regularized solutions. It covers a large spectrum including: (i) recovery
guarantees and stability to noise, both in terms of -stability and
model (manifold) identification; (ii) sensitivity analysis to perturbations of
the parameters involved (in particular the observations), with applications to
unbiased risk estimation ; (iii) convergence properties of the forward-backward
proximal splitting scheme, that is particularly well suited to solve the
corresponding large-scale regularized optimization problem
Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events
The - oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of
23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II
asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B
mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the
flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference
distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives ps.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter
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