75 research outputs found
Causation, Measurement Relevance and No-conspiracy in EPR
In this paper I assess the adequacy of no-conspiracy conditions employed in
the usual derivations of the Bell inequality in the context of EPR
correlations. First, I look at the EPR correlations from a purely
phenomenological point of view and claim that common cause explanations of
these cannot be ruled out. I argue that an appropriate common cause explanation
requires that no-conspiracy conditions are re-interpreted as mere common
cause-measurement independence conditions. In the right circumstances then,
violations of measurement independence need not entail any kind of conspiracy
(nor backwards in time causation). To the contrary, if measurement operations
in the EPR context are taken to be causally relevant in a specific way to the
experiment outcomes, their explicit causal role provides the grounds for a
common cause explanation of the corresponding correlations.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur
Statistical methods of automatic spectral classification and their application to the Hamburg/ESO Survey
We employ classical statistical methods of multivariate classification for
the exploitation of the stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO objective prism
survey (HES). In a simulation study we investigate the precision of a
three-dimensional classification (Teff, log g, [Fe/H]) achievable in the HES
for stars in the effective temperature range 5200<Teff<6800K, using Bayes
classification. The accuracy in temperature determination is better than 400K
for HES spectra with S/N>10 (typically corresponding to B_J<16.5). The
accuracies in log g and [Fe/H] are better than 0.68dex in the same S/N range.
These precisions allow for a very efficient selection of metal-poor stars in
the HES. We present a minimum cost rule for compilation of complete samples of
objects of a given class, and a rejection rule for identification of corrupted
or peculiar spectra. The algorithms we present are being used for the
identification of other interesting objects in the HES data base as well, and
they are applicable to other existing and future large data sets, such as those
to be compiled by the DIVA and GAIA missions.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; A&A in pres
Autoantibodies targeting GPCRs and RAS-related molecules associate with COVID-19 severity
COVID-19 shares the feature of autoantibody production with systemic autoimmune diseases. In order to understand the role of these immune globulins in the pathogenesis of the disease, it is important to explore the autoantibody spectra. Here we show, by a cross-sectional study of 246 individuals, that autoantibodies targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) and RAS-related molecules associate with the clinical severity of COVID-19. Patients with moderate and severe disease are characterized by higher autoantibody levels than healthy controls and those with mild COVID-19 disease. Among the anti-GPCR autoantibodies, machine learning classification identifies the chemokine receptor CXCR3 and the RAS-related molecule AGTR1 as targets for antibodies with the strongest association to disease severity. Besides antibody levels, autoantibody network signatures are also changing in patients with intermediate or high disease severity. Although our current and previous studies identify anti-GPCR antibodies as natural components of human biology, their production is deregulated in COVID-19 and their level and pattern alterations might predict COVID-19 disease severity
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