Self-destructive percolation

Consider ordinary site percolation on an infinite graph in which the sites, independent of each other, are occupied with probability $p$ and vacant with probability $1-p$. Now suppose that, by some `catastrophe', all sites which are in an infinite occupied cluster become vacant. Finally, each vacant site gets an extra enhancement to become occupied. More precisely, each site that was already vacant or that was made vacant by the catastrophe, becomes occupied with probability $delta$ (independent of the other sites). When $p$ is larger than but close to the critical value $p_c$ one might believe (for `nice' graphs) that only a small $delta$ is needed to have an infinite occupied cluster in the final configuration. This appears to be indeed the case for the binary tree. However, on the square lattice we strongly conjecture that this is not true. We discuss the background for these problems and also show that the conjecture, if true, has some remarkable consequences

Self-Care in Cross-Cultural Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees

Social work has consistently recognized the need to deliver client-sensitive services, and building cross-cultural connections between workers and clients has remained a vital part of profession. Additionally, evidence in recent years shows that self-care is a helpful practice that guards against burnout in helping professions. This literature review will examine both cross-cultural practice and self-care in social work; discuss the history, methods, and importance of these topics; and explore the intersection of these two aspects of the profession. This review bridges the gap between cross-cultural practice and self-care, and reveals ways in which the two areas can be connected through increasing interprofessional discourse, emphasizing continued education for social work practitioners and students, exploring empathy, and further developing perspectives such as cultural humility

Intrinsically S1 3-Linked Graphs and Other Aspects of S1 Embeddings

A graph can be embedded in various spaces. This paper examines S1 embeddings of graphs. Just as links can be defined in spatial embeddings of graphs, links can be defined in S1 embeddings. Because linking properties are preserved under vertex expansion, there exists a finite complete set of minor minimal graphs such that every S1 embedding contains a non-split 3-link. This paper presents a list of minor minimal intrinsically S1 3-linked graphs, along with methods used to find and verify the list, in hopes of obtaining the complete minor minimal set. Other aspects of S1 embeddings are also examined.

Marketing authorization procedures for advanced cancer drugs: exploring the views of patients, oncologists, healthcare decision makers and citizens in France

International audienceBackground. The past decades have seen advances in cancer treatments in terms of toxicity and side effects but progress in the treatment of advanced cancer has been modest. New drugs have emerged improving progression free survival but with little impact on overall survival, raising questions about the criteria on which to base decisions to grant marketing authorizations and about the authorization procedure itself. For decisions to be fair, transparent and accountable, it is necessary to consider the views of those with relevant expertise and experience. Methods. We conducted a Q-study to explore the views of a range of stakeholders in France, involving: 54 patients (18 months after diagnosis); 50 members of the general population; 27 oncologists; 19 healthcare decision makers; and 2 individuals from the pharmaceutical industry. Results. Three viewpoints emerged, focussing on different dimensions entitled: 1) ‘Quality of life (QoL), opportunity cost and participative democracy’; 2)‘QoL and patient-centeredness’; and 3) ‘Length of life’. Respondents from all groups were associated with each viewpoint, except for healthcare decision makers, who were only associated with the first one. Conclusion. Our results highlight plurality in the views of stakeholders, emphasize the need for transparency in decision making processes, and illustrate the importance of a re-evaluation of treatments for all 3 viewpoints. In the context of advanced cancer, our results suggest that QoL should be more prominent amongst authorization criteria, as it is a concern for 2 of the 3 viewpoints

Active Selection of Classification Features

Some data analysis applications comprise datasets, where explanatory variables are expensive or tedious to acquire, but auxiliary data are readily available and might help to construct an insightful training set. An example is neuroimaging research on mental disorders, specifically learning a diagnosis/prognosis model based on variables derived from expensive Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, which often requires large sample sizes. Auxiliary data, such as demographics, might help in selecting a smaller sample that comprises the individuals with the most informative MRI scans. In active learning literature, this problem has not yet been studied, despite promising results in related problem settings that concern the selection of instances or instance-feature pairs. Therefore, we formulate this complementary problem of Active Selection of Classification Features (ASCF): Given a primary task, which requires to learn a model f: x-> y to explain/predict the relationship between an expensive-to-acquire set of variables x and a class label y. Then, the ASCF-task is to use a set of readily available selection variables z to select these instances, that will improve the primary task's performance most when acquiring their expensive features z and including them to the primary training set. We propose two utility-based approaches for this problem, and evaluate their performance on three public real-world benchmark datasets. In addition, we illustrate the use of these approaches to efficiently acquire MRI scans in the context of neuroimaging research on mental disorders, based on a simulated study design with real MRI data.Comment: Accepted for publication at the 19th Intelligent Data Analysis Symposium, 2021. The final authenticated publication will be made available online at springer.co

Constructing a fish metabolic network model

We report the construction of a genome-wide fish metabolic network model, MetaFishNet, and its application to analyzing high throughput gene expression data. This model is a stepping stone to broader applications of fish systems biology, for example by guiding study design through comparison with human metabolism and the integration of multiple data types. MetaFishNet resources, including a pathway enrichment analysis tool, are accessible at http://metafishnet.appspot.com

Genetic Influences on the Development of Cerebral Cortical Thickness During Childhood and Adolescence in a Dutch Longitudinal Twin Sample:The Brainscale Study

Previous studies have demonstrated that cortical thickness (CT) is under strong genetic control across the life span. However, little is known about genetic influences that cause changes in cortical thickness (ΔCT) during brain development. We obtained 482 longitudinal MRI scans at ages 9, 12, and 17 years from 215 twins and applied structural equation modeling to estimate genetic influences on (1) cortical thickness between regions and across time, and (2) changes in cortical thickness between ages. Although cortical thickness is largely mediated by the same genetic factor throughout late childhood and adolescence, we found evidence for influences of distinct genetic factors on regions across space and time. In addition, we found genetic influences for cortical thinning during adolescence that is mostly due to fluctuating influences from the same genetic factor, with evidence of local influences from a second emerging genetic factor. This fluctuating core genetic factor and emerging novel genetic factor might be implicated in the rapid cognitive and behavioral development during childhood and adolescence, and could potentially be targets for investigation into the manifestation of psychiatric disorders that have their origin in childhood and adolescence

Jean Leclant (dir.), Dictionnaire de l’Antiquité

Ce nouveau dictionnaire consacré à l’Antiquité est le fruit d’une collaboration entre 500 spécialistes, jeunes chercheurs ou savants confirmés, qui ont rédigé plus de 3 200 notices recensant lieux, personnages, realia et notions. Le travail a été dirigé par Jean Leclant, assisté d’un comité scientifique composé de Jean Andreau, Pierre Bordreuil, Luc Brisson, Monique Canto-Sperber, Michel Humbert, Anne Jacquemin, Luce Piétri, Olivier Rouault, Monique Trédé et Dominique Valbelle. L’ouvrage se d..

From representing views to representativeness of views: illustrating a new (Q2S) approach in the context of health care priority setting in nine European countries

Governments across Europe are required to make decisions about how best to allocate scarce health care resources. There are legitimate arguments for eliciting societal vales in relation to health care resource allocation given the roles of the general public as payers and potential patients. However, relatively little is known about the views of the general public on general principles which could guide these decisions. In this paper we present five societal viewpoints on principles for health care resources allocation and develop a new approach, Q2S, designed to investigate the extent to which these views are held across a range of European countries. An online survey was developed, based on a previously completed study Q methodology, and delivered between November 2009 and February 2010 across nine countries to 33,515 respondents. The largest proportion of our respondents (44%), were found to most associate themselves with an egalitarian perspective. Differences in views were more strongly associated with countries than with socio-demographic characteristics. These results provide information which could be useful for decision makers in understanding the pluralistic context in which they are making health care resource allocation decisions and how different groups in society may respond to such decisions