841 research outputs found
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Preordering saddle-point systems for sparse LDLT factorization without pivoting
This paper focuses on efficiently solving large sparse symmetric indefinite systems of linear equations in saddleâpoint form using a fillâreducing ordering technique with a direct solver. Row and column permutations partition the saddleâpoint matrix into a block structure constituting a priori pivots of order 1 and 2. The partitioned matrix is compressed by treating each nonzero block as a single entry, and a fillâreducing ordering is applied to the corresponding compressed graph. It is shown that, provided the saddleâpoint matrix satisfies certain criteria, a block LDLT factorization can be computed using the resulting pivot sequence without modification. Numerical results for a range of problems from practical applications using a modern sparse direct solver are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach
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Can multi-function heat pumps with low-global warming potential refrigerant effectively decarbonize heating for low-income homes?
Electrification of homes is a critical part of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, space constraints, installation complexity, and the potential impact on energy costs slows the pace of retrofit electrification efforts. Also, the addition of electrical circuits for heat pumps and the increased household electrical demand often necessitates electrical panel upgrades, which increases costs and slows installation. Multi-Function Heat Pumps (MFHPs) use a single compressor to provide heating, cooling, and domestic hot water (DHW) âwhich represent the most intensive thermal loads of a home âand can ease the process of retrofit electrification. MFHPs are potentially more economical than typical split HVAC heat pumps (HPs) and heat pump water heaters(HPWHs), as they consolidate systems, require fewer circuits, streamline installation, and enable efficiency opportunities, such as recovering waste heat from cooling to heat DHW. The current study evaluates one MFHP product, a split HP with indirect water heater and ducted air handler, using a low-global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant (R454B). This MFHP has a unique defrost operation that pulls heat from the DHW tank instead of the indoor air, which avoids cold drafts on occupants. This allows for better thermal comfort without requiring an electrical resistance backup heater and costly panel upgrades. The MFHP was installed in two low-income apartments, evaluated for ease of installation, and monitored through the heating season to assess reliability, energy efficiency, and performance
Let's talk about varying G
It is possible that fundamental constants may not be constant at all. There
is a generally accepted view that one can only talk about variations of
dimensionless quantities, such as the fine structure constant . However, constraints on the strength of
gravity tend to focus on G itself, which is problematic. We stress that G needs
to be multiplied by the square of a mass, and hence, for example, one should be
constraining , where is
the proton mass. Failure to focus on such dimensionless quantities makes it
difficult to interpret the physical dependence of constraints on the variation
of G in many published studies. A thought experiment involving talking to
observers in another universe about the values of physical constants may be
useful for distinguishing what is genuinely measurable from what is merely part
of our particular system of units.Comment: 6 pages, Gravity Research Foundation essa
The tactical mimicry of social enterprise strategies: acting âas ifâ in the everyday life of third sector organizations
Using England as a paradigmatic case of the âenterprising up â of the third sector through social enterprise policies and programs, this article sheds light on resistance as enacted through dramaturgical identification with government strategies. Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative research study, which is interpreted via Michel de Certeauâs theory of the everyday, we present the case study of Teak, a charitable regeneration company, to illustrate how its Chief Executive Liam âacted as â a social entrepreneur in order to gain access to important resources. We establish âtactical mimicry â as a sensitizing concept to suggest that third sector practitioners â identification with the normative premises of âsocial enterprise â is part of a parasitical prosaics geared toward appropriating public money. While tactical mimicry conforms to strategies only in order to exploit them, its ultimate aim is to increase potentials of collective agency outside the direct influence of power. The contribution we make is threefold: first, we extend the recent debate on productive resistance by highlighting how âplaying the game â without changing existing relations of power can nevertheless produce largely favorable outcomes. Second, we suggest that recognition of the productive potential of tactical mimicry requires methodologies which pay attention to the spatial and temporal dynamics of resistance. And third, we argue that explaining âsocial enterpriseâ without consideration of the non-discursive, mainly financial resources made available to those who identify with it, necessarily risks overlooking a crucial element of the dramaturgical dynamic of discourse
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A comparative study of null-space factorizations for sparse symmetric saddle point systems
Null-space methods for solving saddle point systems of equations have long been used to transform an indefinite system into a symmetric positive definite one of smaller
dimension. A number of independent works in the literature have identified that we can interpret a null-space method as a matrix factorization. We review these findings, highlight links between them, and bring them into a unified framework.
We also investigate the suitability of using null-space factorizations to derive sparse direct methods, and present numerical results for both practical and academic problems
White matter connectivity, cognition, symptoms and genetic risk factors in Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a highly heritable complex neuropsychiatric disorder with a lifetime
prevalence of around 1%. It is often characterised by impaired white matter structural
dysconnectivity. In vivo and post-mortem alterations in white matter microstructure have been
reported, along with differences in the topology of the structural connectome; overall these
suggest a reduced communication between distal brain regions. Schizophrenia is characterised
by persistent cognitive impairments that predate the occurrence of symptoms and have been
shown to have a neural foundation reflecting aberrant brain connectivity. So far, 179
independent genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been
associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The high heritability and polygenicity of
schizophrenia, white matter parameters and cognitive functions provides a great opportunity
to investigate the potential relationships between them due to the genetic overlap shared
among these factors.
This work investigates the psychopathology of schizophrenia from a neurobiological,
psychological and genetic perspective. The datasets used here include data from the Scottish
Family Mental Health (SFMH) study, the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936) and UK
Biobank. The main goal of this thesis was to study white matter microstructure in
schizophrenia using diffusion MRI (dMRI) data. Our first aim was to examine whether
processing speed mediated the association between white matter structure and general
intelligence in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in the SFMH study. Secondly, we
investigated specific networks from the structural connectome and their topological properties
in both healthy controls and patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in the SFMH study. These
networks were studied alongside cognition, clinical symptoms and polygenic risk factor for
schizophrenia (szPGRS). The third aim of this thesis was to study the effects of szPGRS on
the longitudinal trajectories of white matter connectivity (measured using tractography and
graph theory metrics) in the LBC1936 over a period of three-years. Finally, we derived the
salience network which has been previously associated with schizophrenia and examined the
effect of szPGRS on the grey matter nodes associated with this network and their connecting
white matter tracts in UK Biobank.
With regards to the first aim, we found that processing speed significantly mediates
the association between a general factor of white matter structure and general intelligence in
schizophrenia. These results suggest that, as in healthy controls, processing speed acts as a
key cognitive resource facilitating higher order cognition by allowing multiple cognitive
processes to be simultaneously available. Secondly, we found that several graph theory
metrics were significantly impaired in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia compared with
healthy controls. Moreover, these metrics were significantly associated with intelligence.
There was a strong tendency towards significance for a correlation between intelligence and
szPGRS that was significantly mediated by graph theory metrics in both healthy controls and
schizophrenia patients of the SFMH study. These results are consistent with the hypothesis
that intelligence deficits are associated with a genetic risk for schizophrenia, which is mediated
via the disruption of distributed brain networks. In the LBC1936 we found that higher szPGRS
showed significant associations with longitudinal increases in MD in several white matter
tracts. Significant declines over time were observed in graph theory metrics. Overall these
findings suggest that szPGRS confer risk for ageing-related degradation of some aspects of
structural connectivity. Moreover, we found significant associations between higher szPGRS
and decreases in cortical thickness, in particular, in a latent factor for cortical thickness of the
salience network.
Taken together, our findings suggest that white matter connectivity plays a significant
role in the disorder and its psychopathology. The computation of the structural connectome
has improved our understanding of the topological characteristics of the brainâs networks in
schizophrenia and how it relates to the microstructural level. In particular, the data suggests
that white matter structure provides a neuroanatomical substrate for cognition and that
structural connectivity mediates the relationship between szPGRS and intelligence.
Additionally, these results suggest that szPGRS may have a role in age-related changes in
brain structural connectivity, even among individuals who are not diagnosed with
schizophrenia. Further work will be required to validate these results and will hopefully
examine additional risk factors and biomarkers, with the ultimate aims of improving scientific
knowledge about schizophrenia and conceivably of improving clinical practice
Artificial limb representation in amputees
The human brain contains multiple hand-selective areas, in both the sensorimotor and visual systems. Could our brain repurpose neural resources, originally developed for supporting hand function, to represent and control artificial limbs? We studied individuals with congenital or acquired hand-loss (hereafter one-handers) using functional MRI. We show that the more one-handers use an artificial limb (prosthesis) in their everyday life, the stronger visual hand-selective areas in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex respond to prosthesis images. This was found even when one-handers were presented with images of active prostheses that share the functionality of the hand but not necessarily its visual features (e.g. a \u27hook\u27 prosthesis). Further, we show that daily prosthesis usage determines large-scale inter-network communication across hand-selective areas. This was demonstrated by increased resting state functional connectivity between visual and sensorimotor hand-selective areas, proportional to the intensiveness of everyday prosthesis usage. Further analysis revealed a 3-fold coupling between prosthesis activity, visuomotor connectivity and usage, suggesting a possible role for the motor system in shaping use-dependent representation in visual hand-selective areas, and/or vice versa. Moreover, able-bodied control participants who routinely observe prosthesis usage (albeit less intensively than the prosthesis users) showed significantly weaker associations between degree of prosthesis observation and visual cortex activity or connectivity. Together, our findings suggest that altered daily motor behaviour facilitates prosthesis-related visual processing and shapes communication across hand-selective areas. This neurophysiological substrate for prosthesis embodiment may inspire rehabilitation approaches to improve usage of existing substitutionary devices and aid implementation of future assistive and augmentative technologies
Squirrelpox virus: assessing prevalence, transmission and environmental degradation
Red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) declined in Great Britain and Ireland during the last century, due to habitat loss and the introduction of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), which competitively exclude the red squirrel and act as a reservoir for squirrelpox virus (SQPV). The disease is generally fatal to red squirrels and their ecological replacement by grey squirrels is up to 25 times faster where the virus is present. We aimed to determine: (1) the seropositivity and prevalence of SQPV DNA in the invasive and native species at a regional scale; (2) possible SQPV transmission routes; and, (3) virus degradation rates under differing environmental conditions. Grey (n = 208) and red (n = 40) squirrel blood and tissues were sampled. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) techniques established seropositivity and viral DNA presence, respectively. Overall 8% of squirrels sampled (both species combined) had evidence of SQPV DNA in their tissues and 22% were in possession of antibodies. SQPV prevalence in sampled red squirrels was 2.5%. Viral loads were typically low in grey squirrels by comparison to red squirrels. There was a trend for a greater number of positive samples in spring and summer than in winter. Possible transmission routes were identified through the presence of viral DNA in faeces (red squirrels only), urine and ectoparasites (both species). Virus degradation analyses suggested that, after 30 days of exposure to six combinations of environments, there were more intact virus particles in scabs kept in warm (25°C) and dry conditions than in cooler (5 and 15°C) or wet conditions. We conclude that SQPV is present at low prevalence in invasive grey squirrel populations with a lower prevalence in native red squirrels. Virus transmission could occur through urine especially during warm dry summer conditions but, more notably, via ectoparasites, which are shared by both species
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