Kernel conditional quantile estimation via reduction revisited

Quantile regression refers to the process of estimating the quantiles of a conditional distribution and has many important applications within econometrics and data mining, among other domains. In this paper, we show how to estimate these conditional quantile functions within a Bayes risk minimization framework using a Gaussian process prior. The resulting non-parametric probabilistic model is easy to implement and allows non-crossing quantile functions to be enforced. Moreover, it can directly be used in combination with tools and extensions of standard Gaussian Processes such as principled hyperparameter estimation, sparsification, and quantile regression with input-dependent noise rates. No existing approach enjoys all of these desirable properties. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that our method is competitive with state-of-the-art approaches.

EurOcean 2014. Connecting Science, Policy and People. Conference report and Rome Declaration 7-9 October 2014, Rome, Italy

This publication presents the Conference Report from EurOCEAN 2014 – a major European marine science policy conference which took place on 7-9 October 2014 in Rome, Italy. The report provides the key messages from the Conference including the Rome Declaration, a consensus view of some 340 participants spanning science, policy and industry. The Declaration sets a vision for seas and ocean science to achieve an ecosystem approach to the management of Europe’s marine resources as a fundamental requirement for sustainable Blue Growth whilst driving European leadership in marine science and technology. EurOCEAN 2014 was an official event of the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, co-organized by the European Marine Board (EMB), the European Commission (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation), the Italian National Research Council (CNR), National Inter-university Consortium for Ocean Science (CoNISMa), and the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (OGS

Reversible Inactivation of Rat Premotor Cortex Impairs Temporal Preparation, but not Inhibitory Control, During Simple Reaction-Time Performance

Previous studies by our lab and others have established a role for medial areas of the prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in the top–down control of action during simple reaction-time (RT) tasks. However, the neural circuits that allow mPFC to influence activity in the motor system have remained unclear. In the present study, we used a combination of tract-tracing and reversible inactivation methods to examine the role of a motor-related area in the rat frontal cortex, called the rostral forelimb area (RFA), in the top–down control of action. Neural tracing studies involved used electrical microstimulation to identify RFA and injections of biotinylated dextran amines (BDA) to map out connections of RFA with other parts of the frontal cortex. Connections were found between RFA and mPFC, the agranular insular cortex, and the primary motor cortex. Reversible inactivations using muscimol infusions into RFA increased response times and eliminated delay-dependent speeding, but did not increase premature responding. These results are markedly different from what is obtained when muscimol is infused into mPFC, which leads to excessive premature responding and a reduction of RTs to stimuli at short delays (Narayanan et al., 2006). We also tested animals during the RT task after inactivating the agranular insular cortex, which contains neurons that projects to and receives from RFA and mPFC, and found no effects on RT performance. Together, these studies suggest that RFA is a premotor region in the rat frontal cortex that competes with mPFC to control action selection. We suggest that RFA controls the threshold that is used to initiate responding and generates prepotent excitation over responding that is crucial for temporal preparation

COLD FLOW NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF GAS MICROTURBINE COMBUSTION CHAMBER THROUGH CFD TOOL

Gas turbines are equipment used mainly in the generation of electric energy. They have as one of their main components the combustion chamber. Therefore, it is relevant to study the characteristics of this component, in order to reach a satisfactory operation. In this context, this paper presents an analysis of a combustion chamber applied to a gas turbine with a cold flow approach using the numerical theoretical method, through the computational fluid dynamics technique. In this experiment, the software Abaqus CFD (computational fluid dynamics) – present in the 3DExperience platform – and the finite volume method are used. The objective was to evaluate the flow, pressure and velocity profiles during the single-phase flow. The gas turbine prototype is configured using a combustion chamber of reverse flow type in order to decrease flow velocity and increase the combustion efficiency. Based on input data obtained from practical experiments, the calculation of the number and Reynolds confirmed – according to the literature of fluid mechanics – the occurrence of a flow classified as turbulent, with chaotic and random motion, what allows defining the ideal point of injection from analysis of velocity plots with stream lines. In addition, a Mach number smaller than 0.3 confirms the theory of having an incompressible flow, in which compressibility effects can be disregarded. The analysis of mass flow rates of the combustion zones made it possible to evaluate maximum differences of 3% between the design data and the one found in the study. To determine the inherent error of the mesh in the CFD study was calculated through the grid conference method, the value found was around 2.68%

Ultra-light-weight microwave X-band EMI shielding or RAM material made from sustainable pyrolysed cork templates

Cork is a renewable and sustainable material, highly porous and lightweight. We valorised waste cork and recycled wine stoppers to make pyrolysed/carbonised solid cork, for use as economic and sustainable microwave (MW) absorbers at the microwave X-band (8-12 GHz), without binder or additives. Although cork is already a very lightweight material (0.16 g/cm3), the pyrolysed cork is five-times less dense at 0.031 g/cm3, was amorphous graphitic carbon, and had an excellent shielding effectiveness (SET) of -18 to -38 dB, depending on thickness, with attenuation of the electromagnetic energy through internal reflection within the cellular cork structure. Furthermore, this ultra-light-weight material has an extremely high MW specific shielding effectiveness or efficiency (SSE), between -640 to -1235 dB g-1 cm3 over the entire X-band range, depending on thickness (3.0-8.6 mm), one of the highest reported for any pure carbon material. this upper value being more than twice that of any previously reported graphite-based foams

Editorial: Biomass, Bioenergy and Biofuels for Circular Bioeconomy

The huge demand for energy and products, mostly based on fossil fuels, have caused severe environmental impacts, that are based on pollution, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and finally of climate changes. While energy can be supplied from different renewable sources, such as solar, wind or hydro energy, they are intrinsically impossible or hard to control, or dependent on climatic conditions that are becoming more and more unpredictable. In this context, biomass has come, once more, as one of the potential solutions to add to the renewable energy mix.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Development and optimization of a fluorescent differential display PCR system for studying bovine embryo development in vitro.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-31T00:36:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ID261651.pdf: 1081430 bytes, checksum: fc8628c4161084f55c7b1e099a9c338b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-12-1

Re-localization due to finite response times in a nonlinear Anderson chain

We study a disordered nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with an additional relaxation process having a finite response time $\tau$. Without the relaxation term, $\tau=0$, this model has been widely studied in the past and numerical simulations showed subdiffusive spreading of initially localized excitations. However, recently Caetano et al.\ (EPJ. B \textbf{80}, 2011) found that by introducing a response time $\tau > 0$, spreading is suppressed and any initially localized excitation will remain localized. Here, we explain the lack of subdiffusive spreading for $\tau>0$ by numerically analyzing the energy evolution. We find that in the presence of a relaxation process the energy drifts towards the band edge, which enforces the population of fewer and fewer localized modes and hence leads to re-localization. The explanation presented here is based on previous findings by the authors et al.\ (PRE \textbf{80}, 2009) on the energy dependence of thermalized states.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Análise tecnológica, nutricional e sensorial de massa de lasanha sem glúten à base de farinha pré-gelatinizada de arroz com diferentes teores de amilose.

O objetivo deste estudo foi desenvolver uma massa de lasanha de arroz, a partir de farinhas cruas e extrusadas de cultivares de arroz com diferentes teores de amilose, avaliando-se a qualidade tecnológica, nutricional e sensorial

Equine protease inhibitor system as a marker for the diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Polymorphism in programming languages enables code reuse. Here, we show that polymorphism has broad applicability far beyond computations for technical computing: parallelism in distributed computing, presentation of visualizations of runtime data flow, and proofs for formal verification of correctness. The ability to reuse a single codebase for all these purposes provides new ways to understand and verify parallel programs.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Proceedings of HPTCDL, the 1st Workshop on High Performance Technical Computing in Dynamic Languages, November 17, 2014, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Supporting Information available at http://jiahao.github.io/parallel-prefi