Infra-Red Surface-Plasmon-Resonance technique for biological studies

We report on a Surface-Plasmon-Resonance (SPR) technique based on Fourier -Transform - Infra - Red (FTIR) spectrometer. In contrast to the conventional surface plasmon technique, operating at a fixed wavelength and a variable angle of incidence, our setup allows the wavelength and the angle of incidence to be varied simultaneously. We explored the potential of the SPR technique in the infrared for biological studies involving aqueous solutions. Using computer simulations, we found the optimal combination of parameters (incident angle, wavelength) for performing this task. Our experiments with physiologically important glucose concentrations in water and in human plasma verified our computer simulations. Importantly, we demonstrated that the sensitivity of the SPR technique in the infrared range is not lower and in fact is even higher than that for visible light. We emphasize the advantages of infra red SPR for studying glucose and other biological molecules in living cells.Comment: 8 pages,8 figure

Tripartite Graph Clustering for Dynamic Sentiment Analysis on Social Media

The growing popularity of social media (e.g, Twitter) allows users to easily share information with each other and influence others by expressing their own sentiments on various subjects. In this work, we propose an unsupervised \emph{tri-clustering} framework, which analyzes both user-level and tweet-level sentiments through co-clustering of a tripartite graph. A compelling feature of the proposed framework is that the quality of sentiment clustering of tweets, users, and features can be mutually improved by joint clustering. We further investigate the evolution of user-level sentiments and latent feature vectors in an online framework and devise an efficient online algorithm to sequentially update the clustering of tweets, users and features with newly arrived data. The online framework not only provides better quality of both dynamic user-level and tweet-level sentiment analysis, but also improves the computational and storage efficiency. We verified the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approaches on the November 2012 California ballot Twitter data.Comment: A short version is in Proceeding of the 2014 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of dat

Detecting Sarcasm in Multimodal Social Platforms

Sarcasm is a peculiar form of sentiment expression, where the surface sentiment differs from the implied sentiment. The detection of sarcasm in social media platforms has been applied in the past mainly to textual utterances where lexical indicators (such as interjections and intensifiers), linguistic markers, and contextual information (such as user profiles, or past conversations) were used to detect the sarcastic tone. However, modern social media platforms allow to create multimodal messages where audiovisual content is integrated with the text, making the analysis of a mode in isolation partial. In our work, we first study the relationship between the textual and visual aspects in multimodal posts from three major social media platforms, i.e., Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, and we run a crowdsourcing task to quantify the extent to which images are perceived as necessary by human annotators. Moreover, we propose two different computational frameworks to detect sarcasm that integrate the textual and visual modalities. The first approach exploits visual semantics trained on an external dataset, and concatenates the semantics features with state-of-the-art textual features. The second method adapts a visual neural network initialized with parameters trained on ImageNet to multimodal sarcastic posts. Results show the positive effect of combining modalities for the detection of sarcasm across platforms and methods.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, final version published in the Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 201

Hormonal adaptations to different training intensities during the preparation of elite judokas for competition

Many efforts are made to quantify objectively the balance between training load and the athlete’s tolerance. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the balance between anabolic (i.e. testosterone and IGF-I) and catabolic (i.e. cortisol) hormones in elite judokas during their preparations (4 months) for the European championships. Five healthy elite Israeli judokas (four male, one female, age range 17–26 years) were tested at baseline, after two months of moderate training, after another one month of intense training, after one month of tapering down prior to the competition, and during the week after the championships. Hormonal level remained relatively unchanged during period of moderate training. Circulating levels of IGF-I and testosterone decreased and the cortisol/testosterone ratio increased during intense training. However, only the decrease in circulating IGF-I level reached statistical significance. Both levels of IGF-I and testosterone increased significantly, and the cortisol/testosterone ratio decreased significantly following tapering down, prior to the championships, compared to the levels during intense training. Changes in the balance of anabolic and catabolic hormones during the training season may help elite athletes and assist their coaches in their preparation for the competition

Current relaxation in nonlinear random media

We study the current relaxation of a wave packet in a nonlinear random sample coupled to the continuum and show that the survival probability decays as $P(t) \sim 1/t^{\alpha}$. For intermediate times $t<t^*$, the exponent $\alpha$ satisfies a scaling law $\alpha =f(\Lambda=\chi/l_{\infty})$ where $\chi$ is the nonlinearity strength and $l_{\infty}$ is the localization length of the corresponding random system with $\chi=0$. For $t\gg t^*$ and $\chi>\chi_{\rm cr}$ we find a universal decay with $\alpha=2/3$ which is a signature of the {\it nonlinearity-induced delocalization}. Experimental evidence should be observable in coupled nonlinear optical waveguides.Comment: revised version, PRL in press, 4 pages, 4 figs (fig 3 with reduced quality

Some integrability conditions for almost K\"ahler manifolds

Among other results, a compact almost K\"ahler manifold is proved to be K\"ahler if the Ricci tensor is semi-negative and its length coincides with that of the star Ricci tensor or if the Ricci tensor is semi-positive and its first order covariant derivatives are Hermitian. Moreover, it is shown that there are no compact almost K\"ahler manifolds with harmonic Weyl tensor and non-parallel semi-positive Ricci tensor. Stronger results are obtained in dimension 4.Comment: Latex2e, 13 page

Effects of Pairing in the Pseudo-SU(3) Model

An extended version of the pseudo-SU(3) model which includes both spin and proton-neutron degrees of freedom is used to study the influence of the pairing interaction on K-band mixing, B(E2) values and quadrupole moments. Using the asymmetric rotor model as a backdrop, specific consequences of a many-particle shell-model based description of these collective properties are demonstrated and fundamental limits of the collective model's approach are investigated. Finally, the pseudo-SU(3) model, including representation mixing induced by pairing, is used to calculate the energies of 140Ce and the results are compared to experimental data and other theories.Comment: 21 pages, Latex, 11 figures available on request via mail or fax, accepted by Nucl. Phys.

Predatory Bacteria: A Potential Ally against Multidrug-Resistant Gram-Negative Pathogens

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacteria have emerged as a serious threat to human and animal health. Bdellovibrio spp. and Micavibrio spp. are Gram-negative bacteria that prey on other Gram-negative bacteria. In this study, the ability of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus and Micavibrio aeruginosavorus to prey on MDR Gram-negative clinical strains was examined. Although the potential use of predatory bacteria to attack MDR pathogens has been suggested, the data supporting these claims is lacking. By conducting predation experiments we have established that predatory bacteria have the capacity to attack clinical strains of a variety of ß-lactamase-producing, MDR Gram-negative bacteria. Our observations indicate that predatory bacteria maintained their ability to prey on MDR bacteria regardless of their antimicrobial resistance, hence, might be used as therapeutic agents where other antimicrobial drugs fail. © 2013 Kadouri et al