Self-Consistent Green Function Embedding for Advanced Electronic Structure Methods Based on a Dynamical Mean-Field Concept

We present an embedding scheme for periodic systems that facilitates the treatment of the physically important part (here the unit cell) with advanced electronic-structure methods, that are computationally too expensive for periodic systems. The rest of the periodic system is treated with computationally less demanding approaches, e.g., Kohn-Sham density-functional theory, in a self- consistent manner. Our scheme is based on the concept of dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) formulated in terms of Green functions. In contrast to the original DMFT formulation for correlated model Hamiltonians, we here consider the unit cell as local embedded cluster in a first-principles way, that includes all electronic degrees of freedom. Our real-space dynamical mean-field embedding (RDMFE) scheme features two nested Dyson equations, one for the embedded cluster and another for the periodic surrounding. The total energy is computed from the resulting Green functions. The performance of our scheme is demonstrated by treating the embedded region with hybrid functionals and many-body perturbation theory in the GW approach for simple bulk systems. The total energy and the density of states converge rapidly with respect to the computational parameters and approach their bulk limit with increasing cluster (i.e., unit cell) size

Enhancement of protease production by Bacillus sp. and Micrococcus varians induced by UV-mutagenesis

Microbial proteases contribute nearly 40% of the total worldwide enzyme market. Hence, with the view of this significance, the main objective of the present study was to enhance protease production of two bacterial strains, Bcillus sp. and Micrococcus varians using UV mutagenesis. Induction of mutation in both strains was carried out at different exposure times: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 min at a distance of 10 between UV source and treated bacteria.Two best protease producer mutants for the two bacterial strains (UV-9 for Bcillus sp.and UV-18 forMicrococcus varians) were selected based on the clearance zone diameter of mutant colonies on 1% skimmed milk agar plates. UV-9 mutant showed 1.4 fold higher protease activity than the wild type in solid and liquid medium. However UV-18 mutant was found to produce 2.5 fold increases over the wild type on agar plates and 2.1 fold enhancement in liquid-medium assay.The two mutants were very effective in feather keratin-degrading in less than two days, UV- 18 was more efficient than UV-9

Deep HMResNet Model for Human Activity-Aware Robotic Systems

Endowing the robotic systems with cognitive capabilities for recognizing daily activities of humans is an important challenge, which requires sophisticated and novel approaches. Most of the proposed approaches explore pattern recognition techniques which are generally based on hand-crafted features or learned features. In this paper, a novel Hierarchal Multichannel Deep Residual Network (HMResNet) model is proposed for robotic systems to recognize daily human activities in the ambient environments. The introduced model is comprised of multilevel fusion layers. The proposed Multichannel 1D Deep Residual Network model is, at the features level, combined with a Bottleneck MLP neural network to automatically extract robust features regardless of the hardware configuration and, at the decision level, is fully connected with an MLP neural network to recognize daily human activities. Empirical experiments on real-world datasets and an online demonstration are used for validating the proposed model. Results demonstrated that the proposed model outperforms the baseline models in daily human activity recognition.Comment: Presented at AI-HRI AAAI-FSS, 2018 (arXiv:1809.06606

The effectiveness of online and on-to-one tutoring in the writing center on the students' achievement: a multiple case study

The Writing Center at Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) is a place where students can improve and develop their writing skills by working one-on-one with tutors. This study compares between the progress performance of students who come regularly to the Writing Center to work one-to-one with the same tutor and use the online tutorial services to students who don't visit the Writing Center, but only depend on the traditional classroom instructions and direct instructor's comments and feedback on the writing. This study is divided into two parts. As a start, 80 students were asked to write two in-class essays on two different days. Each of these essays was considered as draft one. Then, in the first part of the study, 58 students sat twice per week one-on-one with the same tutor in order to seek help before writing draft two for the two essays. 29 students met face-to-face with the tutors and the other 29 students worked on-line with the tutors. Whereas, the other 22 students were asked to write the second draft of the same two essays without any one-on-one or on-line tutoring sessions. Both qualitative and quantitative data analyses were conducted. Main results showed that the students who worked one-on-one and on-line with the same tutors in the Writing Center exhibited noticeable improvement than the students who relied only on the traditional classroom instruction and direct instructor's feedback on draft one. Moreover, the students who worked on-line with their tutors got the highest scores. The study concluded with recommendations addressed to universities, instructors, and students in order to enhance and motivate students to attend the Writing Center on regular basis

Holy Time and Popular Invented Rituals in Islam: Structures and Symbolism

This paper tackles three popular invented rituals in the early centuries of Islam performed in the seventh and eighth months of the Islamic calendar; Rajab and Shacbān, namely the sacrifices of faraca and catīra, fasting and prayers. In the light of sociocultural and psycho-cultural perspectives, the paper discusses the cultural and spiritual perceptions of time and space in Islam, and the reasons that make specific settings fertile soils suitable for inventing new rituals. Then, it analyses the structures and symbolism of these rituals as a means of dialogical relationship with the self, the other, and the group. The paper also sheds light on the piety folk developed by Sufism as a response to spiritual void and psychological needs that lead Muslims to invent new forms of worship. The paper will, then, analyze the scholarly debate over the legitimacy of these invented rituals and the festivities associated with them, and tackle the interpretative strategies to approve them in a long dialectical process with ‘puritan’ Muslims. In the end, it discusses the relationship of invented rituals to the embedded structure of power and it sheds light on the reasons behind the escalation of practicing these invented rituals in recent decades in the Arab Islamic world.[Tulisan ini mengkaji tiga ritus ibadah di awal abad perkembangan Islam yaitu perayaan bulan Rajab dan Sha’ban, puasa dan shalat. Dengan pendekatan sosial budaya dan psikologi budaya, tulisan ini membahas persepsi budaya dan spiritual mengenai waktu dan ruang dalam Islam, serta menjelaskan setting khusus yang membuat reka cipta ritual baru. Disamping itu tulisan ini juga membahas struktur dan simbol ritual teresebut sebagai  perangkat dialog dengan diri sendiri, pihak lain dan kelompok. Tulisan ini juga membahas pengembangan bentuk kesalehan kaum sufi sebagai respon kebutuhan psikologis dan pemenuhan spiritual yang menuntun umat muslim  mereka cipta bentuk persembahan baru. Termasuk perdebatan para ulama  mengenai legitimasi perayaan tersebut dan proses dialog dengan kelompok puritan. Di bagian akhir akan dijelaskan hubungan ritual tersebut dengan struktur kekuasaan yang melekat dan menguatnya praktik tersebut beberapa dekade terakhir terutama di dunia muslim Arab.]

Petroleum-hydrocarbons biodegradation by Pseudomonas strains isolated from hydrocarbon-contaminated soil

Many indigenous microorganisms in water and soil are capable of degrading hydrocarbon contaminants. In this study, two bacterial strains were isolated from a contaminated soil of a refinery of Arzew (Oran). The isolated strains were identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P3) and Pseudomonas fluoresens (P4). The capability of these isolates to degrade petroleum was performed by measuring the optical density, colony forming unit counts (CFU/ml) and concentration of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH). Degradation of Isomerate by these isolates was analyzed by gas chromatography with flame ionization detector (FID). Results indicated that the isolates can use petroleum as carbon source. Isolates P3 has the highest capability of hydrocarbons degradation (80.86% of biodegradation).Keywords: Biodegradation, contaminated soil, Petroleum, Isomerate, Pseudomonas sp

Antiresonance phase shift in strongly coupled cavity QED

We investigate phase shifts in the strong coupling regime of single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). On the light transmitted through the system, we observe a phase shift associated with an antiresonance and show that both its frequency and width depend solely on the atom, despite the strong coupling to the cavity. This shift is optically controllable and reaches 140 degrees - the largest ever reported for a single emitter. Our result offers a new technique for the characterization of complex integrated quantum circuits.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Phagentaxonomie in der Next Generation Sequencing-Ära

Phages are the biggest known biological entity on earth (about 1031 particles). Due to next generation sequencing methods applied on environmental samples an unpreceeded amount of phage genome data is available. Due to their extreme diversity and the lack of monophyly a sequence based taxonomy is challenging. However, within the phages there are monophyletic subgroups that can be classified based on their genome sequence. A method that combines the shared gene content with taxon specific similarities enables a reliable identification of the phage family based exclusively on the corresponding genome sequence

A Geometrical Recording Applied in a CT scan

This paper deals with a geometrical method for registration of CT (Computed Tomography)scanners cuts. Acquired images concern a patient who pains from a right parietal epiduralhematoma. Acquisition was made in Emergency Department or Service at a Tunisian hospitallocated in Sfax named "Habib Bourguiba Hospital”. Among the most popular algorithms, ouridea has reset selected ICP algorithm that solves the very important problem in computer visionknown as 3D registration