Potential impact of a microarray-based nucleic acid assay for rapid detection of gram-negative bacteria and resistance markers in positive blood cultures

We evaluated the Verigene Gram-negative blood culture (BC-GN) test, a microarray that detects Gram-negative bacteria and several resistance genes. A total of 102 positive blood cultures were tested, and the BC-GN test correctly identified 97.9% of the isolates within its panel. Resistance genes (CTX-M, KPC, VIM, and OXA genes) were detected in 29.8% of the isolates, with positive predictive values of 95.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 87.7% to 98.9%) in Enterobacteriaceae and 100% (95% CI, 75.9% to 100%) in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and negative predictive values of 100% (95% CI, 93.9% to 100%) and 78.6% (95% CI, 51.0% to 93.6%), respectively

Consensus Needs Broadcast in Noiseless Models but can be Exponentially Easier in the Presence of Noise

Consensus and Broadcast are two fundamental problems in distributed computing, whose solutions have several applications. Intuitively, Consensus should be no harder than Broadcast, and this can be rigorously established in several models. Can Consensus be easier than Broadcast? In models that allow noiseless communication, we prove a reduction of (a suitable variant of) Broadcast to binary Consensus, that preserves the communication model and all complexity parameters such as randomness, number of rounds, communication per round, etc., while there is a loss in the success probability of the protocol. Using this reduction, we get, among other applications, the first logarithmic lower bound on the number of rounds needed to achieve Consensus in the uniform GOSSIP model on the complete graph. The lower bound is tight and, in this model, Consensus and Broadcast are equivalent. We then turn to distributed models with noisy communication channels that have been studied in the context of some bio-inspired systems. In such models, only one noisy bit is exchanged when a communication channel is established between two nodes, and so one cannot easily simulate a noiseless protocol by using error-correcting codes. An $\Omega(\epsilon^{-2} n)$ lower bound on the number of rounds needed for Broadcast is proved by Boczkowski et al. [PLOS Comp. Bio. 2018] in one such model (noisy uniform PULL, where $\epsilon$ is a parameter that measures the amount of noise). In such model, we prove a new $\Theta(\epsilon^{-2} n \log n)$ bound for Broadcast and a $\Theta(\epsilon^{-2} \log n)$ bound for binary Consensus, thus establishing an exponential gap between the number of rounds necessary for Consensus versus Broadcast

Factors influencing on Job decision of Management Undergraduates in North and East Universities of Sri Lanka

This paper attempts to investigate the preferences on taking the decision of Job and to find out the factors influencing on Job decision of the management undergraduate in North and East Universities of Sri Lanka. A closed ended questionnaire was developed as tool for data collection. A total number of 400 third and final year management students from 3 Universities and 2 Campuses located in North and East of Sri Lanka have been responded to the questionnaire. The quantitative analyses were conducted with the help of SPSS. The result reveals that majority of the respondents’ preferred for future career developments are public sector and private sector organizations. One third of the total respondents plan to seek employment in their chosen field specially after obtaining the bachelor's degree. Further Salary, interesting job, job security and educational opportunity are the major factors for the management graduates in Job decision. Keywords: Job decision, Management, Undergraduate, Universit

A nonlinear drift which leads to κ\kappa-generalized distributions

We consider a system described by a Fokker-Planck equation with a new type of momentum-dependent drift coefficient which asymptotically decreases as $-1/p$ for a large momentum $p$. It is shown that the steady-state of this system is a $\kappa$-generalized Gaussian distribution, which is a non-Gaussian distribution with a power-law tail.Comment: Submitted to EPJB. 8 pages, 2 figures, dedicated to the proceedings of APFA

The Coulomb Interaction between Pion-Wavepackets: The piplus-piminus Puzzle

The time dependent Schr\"odinger equation for $\pi^+$--$\pi^-$ pairs, which are emitted from the interaction zone in relativistic nuclear collisions, is solved using wavepacket states. It is shown that the Coulomb enhancement in the momentum correlation function of such pairs is smaller than obtained in earlier calculations based on Coulomb distorted plane waves. These results suggest that the experimentally observed positive correlation signal cannot be caused by the Coulomb interaction between pions emitted from the interaction zone. But other processes which involve long-lived resonances and the related extended source dimensions could provide a possible explanation for the observed signal.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX, 1 figur

Kappa-deformed random-matrix theory based on Kaniadakis statistics

We present a possible extension of the random-matrix theory, which is widely used to describe spectral fluctuations of chaotic systems. By considering the Kaniadakis non-Gaussian statistics, characterized by the index {\kappa} (Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy is recovered in the limit {\kappa}\rightarrow0), we propose the non-Gaussian deformations ({\kappa} \neq 0) of the conventional orthogonal and unitary ensembles of random matrices. The joint eigenvalue distributions for the {\kappa}-deformed ensembles are derived by applying the principle maximum entropy to Kaniadakis entropy. The resulting distribution functions are base invarient as they depend on the matrix elements in a trace form. Using these expressions, we introduce a new generalized form of the Wigner surmise valid for nearly-chaotic mixed systems, where a basis-independent description is still expected to hold. We motivate the necessity of such generalization by the need to describe the transition of the spacing distribution from chaos to order, at least in the initial stage. We show several examples about the use of the generalized Wigner surmise to the analysis of the results of a number of previous experiments and numerical experiments. Our results suggest the entropic index {\kappa} as a measure for deviation from the state of chaos. We also introduce a {\kappa}-deformed Porter-Thomas distribution of transition intensities, which fits the experimental data for mixed systems better than the commonly-used gamma-distribution.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure

Random walks on randomly evolving graphs

A random walk is a basic stochastic process on graphs and a key primitive in the design of distributed algorithms. One of the most important features of random walks is that, under mild conditions, they converge to a stationary distribution in time that is at most polynomial in the size of the graph. This fundamental property, however, only holds if the graph does not change over time; on the other hand, many distributed networks are inherently dynamic, and their topology is subjected to potentially drastic changes. In this work we study the mixing (i.e., convergence) properties of random walks on graphs subjected to random changes over time. Specifically, we consider the edge-Markovian random graph model: for each edge slot, there is a two-state Markov chain with transition probabilities p (add a non-existing edge) and q (remove an existing edge). We derive several positive and negative results that depend on both the density of the graph and the speed by which the graph changes

HCV Proteins and Immunoglobulin Variable Gene (IgV) Subfamilies in HCV-Induced Type II Mixed Cryoglobulinemia: A Concurrent Pathogenetic Role

The association between hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and type II mixed cryoglobulinemia (MCII) is well established, but the role played by distinct HCV proteins and by specific components of the anti-HCV humoral immune response remains to be clearly defined. It is widely accepted that HCV drives the expansion of few B-cell clones expressing a restricted pool of selected immunoglobulin variable (IgV) gene subfamilies frequently endowed with rheumatoid factor (RF) activity. Moreover, the same IgV subfamilies are frequently observed in HCV-transformed malignant B-cell clones occasionally complicating MCII. In this paper, we analyze both the humoral and viral counterparts at the basis of cryoglobulins production in HCV-induced MCII, with particular attention reserved to the single IgV subfamilies most frequently involved

Hamiltonian dynamics of homopolymer chain models

The Hamiltonian dynamics of chains of nonlinearly coupled particles is numerically investigated in two and three dimensions. Simple, off-lattice homopolymer models are used to represent the interparticle potentials. Time averages of observables numerically computed along dynamical trajectories are found to reproduce results given by the statistical mechanics of homopolymer models. The dynamical treatment, however, indicates a nontrivial transition between regimes of slow and fast phase space mixing. Such a transition is inaccessible to a statistical mechanical treatment and reflects a bimodality in the relaxation of time averages to corresponding ensemble averages. It is also found that a change in the energy dependence of the largest Lyapunov exponent indicates the theta-transition between filamentary and globular polymer configurations, clearly detecting the transition even for a finite number of particles.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Zero-variance principle for Monte Carlo algorithms

We present a general approach to greatly increase at little cost the efficiency of Monte Carlo algorithms. To each observable to be computed we associate a renormalized observable (improved estimator) having the same average but a different variance. By writing down the zero-variance condition a fundamental equation determining the optimal choice for the renormalized observable is derived (zero-variance principle for each observable separately). We show, with several examples including classical and quantum Monte Carlo calculations, that the method can be very powerful.Comment: 9 pages, Latex, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let