Proof of a conjecture by Gazeau et al. using the Gould Hopper polynomials

We prove the "strong conjecture" expressed by Gazeau et al. in arXiv:1203.3936v1 [math-ph] about the coefficients of the Taylor expansion of the exponential of a polynomial. This implies the "weak conjecture" as a special case. The proof relies mainly about properties of the Gould-Hopper polynomials

Adaptation “in the Wild”: Ontology-Based Personalization of Open-Corpus Learning Material

Abstract. Teacher and students can use WWW as a limitless source of learning material for nearly any subject. Yet, such abundance of content comes with the problem of finding the right piece at the right time. Conventional adaptive educational systems cannot support personalized access to open-corpus learning material as they rely on manually constructed content models. This paper presents an approach to this problem that does not require intervention from a human expert. The approach has been implemented in an adaptive system that recommends students supplementary reading material and adaptively annotates it. The results of the evaluation experiment have demonstrated several significant effects of using the system on students ’ learning

Adaptation “in the Wild”: Ontology-Based Personalization of Open-Corpus Learning Material

Teacher and students can use WWW as a limitless source of learning material for nearly any subject. Yet, such abundance of content comes with the problem of finding the right piece at the right time. Conventional adaptive educational systems cannot support personalized access to open-corpus learning material as they rely on manually constructed content models. This paper presents an approach to this problem that does not require intervention from a human expert. The approach has been implemented in an adaptive system that recommends students supplementary reading material and adaptively annotates it. The results of the evaluation experiment have demonstrated several significant effects of using the system on students’ learning.\u

The valuation of clean spread options: linking electricity, emissions and fuels

The purpose of the paper is to present a new pricing method for clean spread options, and to illustrate its main features on a set of numerical examples produced by a dedicated computer code. The novelty of the approach is embedded in the use of a structural model as opposed to reduced-form models which fail to capture properly the fundamental dependencies between the economic factors entering the production process

Dominant negative phenotype of Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ab, Cry11Aa and Cry4Ba mutants suggest hetero-oligomer formation among different Cry toxins.

Background - Bacillus thuringiensis Cry toxins are used worldwide in the control of different insect pests important in agriculture or in human health. The Cry proteins are pore-forming toxins that affect the midgut cell of target insects. It was shown that non-toxic Cry1Ab helix a-4 mutants had a dominant negative (DN) phenotype inhibiting the toxicity of wildtype Cry1Ab when used in equimolar or sub-stoichiometric ratios (1:1, 0.5:1, mutant:wt) indicating that oligomer formation is a key step in toxicity of Cry toxins. Methodology/Principal Findings - The DN Cry1Ab-D136N/T143D mutant that is able to block toxicity of Cry1Ab toxin, was used to analyze its capacity to block the activity against Manduca sexta larvae of other Cry1 toxins, such as Cry1Aa, Cry1Ac, Cry1Ca, Cry1Da, Cry1Ea and Cry1Fa. Cry1Ab-DN mutant inhibited toxicity of Cry1Aa, Cry1Ac and Cry1Fa. In addition, we isolated mutants in helix a-4 of Cry4Ba and Cry11Aa, and demonstrate that Cry4Ba-E159K and Cry11Aa-V142D are inactive and completely block the toxicity against Aedes aegypti of both wildtype toxins, when used at sub-stoichiometric ratios, confirming a DN phenotype. As controls we analyzed Cry1Ab-R99A or Cry11Aa-E97A mutants that are located in helix a-3 and are affected in toxin oligomerization. These mutants do not show a DN phenotype but were able to block toxicity when used in 10:1 or 100:1 ratios (mutant:wt) probably by competition of binding with toxin receptors. Conclusions/Significance - We show that DN phenotype can be observed among different Cry toxins suggesting that may interact in vivo forming hetero-oligomers. The DN phenotype cannot be observed in mutants affected in oligomerization, suggesting that this step is important to inhibit toxicity of other toxin

Evolving temporal fuzzy association rules from quantitative data with a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm

A novel method for mining association rules that are both quantitative and temporal using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is presented. This method successfully identifies numerous temporal association rules that occur more frequently in areas of a dataset with specific quantitative values represented with fuzzy sets. The novelty of this research lies in exploring the composition of quantitative and temporal fuzzy association rules and the approach of using a hybridisation of a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm with fuzzy sets. Results show the ability of a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (NSGA-II) to evolve multiple target itemsets that have been augmented into synthetic datasets

Caloric Curves for small systems in the Nuclear Lattice Gas Model

For pedagogical reasons we compute the caloric curve for 11 particles in a $3^3$ lattice. Monte-Carlo simulation can be avoided and exact results are obtained. There is no back-bending in the caloric curve and negative specific heat does not appear. We point out that the introduction of kinetic energy in the nuclear Lattice Gas Model modifies the results of the standard Lattice Gas Model in a profound way.Comment: 12 pages, Revtex, including 4 postscript figure

SDRDPy: An application to graphically visualize the knowledge obtained with supervised descriptive rule algorithms

SDRDPy is a desktop application that allows experts an intuitive graphic and tabular representation of the knowledge extracted by any supervised descriptive rule discovery algorithm. The application is able to provide an analysis of the data showing the relevant information of the data set and the relationship between the rules, data and the quality measures associated for each rule regardless of the tool where algorithm has been executed. All of the information is presented in a user-friendly application in order to facilitate expert analysis and also the exportation of reports in different formats

Transport Properties of a Chain of Anharmonic Oscillators with random flip of velocities

We consider the stationary states of a chain of $n$ anharmonic coupled oscillators, whose deterministic hamiltonian dynamics is perturbed by random independent sign change of the velocities (a random mechanism that conserve energy). The extremities are coupled to thermostats at different temperature $T_\ell$ and $T_r$ and subject to constant forces $\tau_\ell$ and $\tau_r$. If the forces differ $\tau_\ell \neq \tau_r$ the center of mass of the system will move of a speed $V_s$ inducing a tension gradient inside the system. Our aim is to see the influence of the tension gradient on the thermal conductivity. We investigate the entropy production properties of the stationary states, and we prove the existence of the Onsager matrix defined by Green-kubo formulas (linear response). We also prove some explicit bounds on the thermal conductivity, depending on the temperature.Comment: Published version: J Stat Phys (2011) 145:1224-1255 DOI 10.1007/s10955-011-0385-

Mars oxygen production system design

The design and construction phase is summarized of the Mars oxygen demonstration project. The basic hardware required to produce oxygen from simulated Mars atmosphere was assembled and tested. Some design problems still remain with the sample collection and storage system. In addition, design and development of computer compatible data acquisition and control instrumentation is ongoing