The CHARGE study: an epidemiologic investigation of genetic and environmental factors contributing to autism.

Causes and contributing factors for autism are poorly understood. Evidence suggests that prevalence is rising, but the extent to which diagnostic changes and improvements in ascertainment contribute to this increase is unclear. Both genetic and environmental factors are likely to contribute etiologically. Evidence from twin, family, and genetic studies supports a role for an inherited predisposition to the development of autism. Nonetheless, clinical, neuroanatomic, neurophysiologic, and epidemiologic studies suggest that gene penetrance and expression may be influenced, in some cases strongly, by the prenatal and early postnatal environmental milieu. Sporadic studies link autism to xenobiotic chemicals and/or viruses, but few methodologically rigorous investigations have been undertaken. In light of major gaps in understanding of autism, a large case-control investigation of underlying environmental and genetic causes for autism and triggers of regression has been launched. The CHARGE (Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and Environment) study will address a wide spectrum of chemical and biologic exposures, susceptibility factors, and their interactions. Phenotypic variation among children with autism will be explored, as will similarities and differences with developmental delay. The CHARGE study infrastructure includes detailed developmental assessments, medical information, questionnaire data, and biologic specimens. The CHARGE study is linked to University of California-Davis Center for Children's Environmental Health laboratories in immunology, xenobiotic measurement, cell signaling, genomics, and proteomics. The goals, study design, and data collection protocols are described, as well as preliminary demographic data on study participants and on diagnoses of those recruited through the California Department of Developmental Services Regional Center System

Relating the Entanglement and Optical Nonclassicality of Multimode States of a Bosonic Quantum Field

The quantum nature of the state of a bosonic quantum field manifests itself in its entanglement, coherence, or optical nonclassicality which are each known to be resources for quantum computing or metrology. We provide quantitative and computable bounds relating entanglement measures with optical nonclassicality measures. These bounds imply that strongly entangled states must necessarily be strongly optically nonclassical. As an application, we infer strong bounds on the entanglement that can be produced with an optically nonclassical state impinging on a beam splitter. For Gaussian states, we analyze the link between the logarithmic negativity and a specific nonclassicality witness called "quadrature coherence scale".Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, change of notation in v

Domain wall propagation and nucleation in a metastable two-level system

We present a dynamical description and analysis of non-equilibrium transitions in the noisy one-dimensional Ginzburg-Landau equation for an extensive system based on a weak noise canonical phase space formulation of the Freidlin-Wentzel or Martin-Siggia-Rose methods. We derive propagating nonlinear domain wall or soliton solutions of the resulting canonical field equations with superimposed diffusive modes. The transition pathways are characterized by the nucleations and subsequent propagation of domain walls. We discuss the general switching scenario in terms of a dilute gas of propagating domain walls and evaluate the Arrhenius factor in terms of the associated action. We find excellent agreement with recent numerical optimization studies.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, revtex styl

Experimental Validation of Contact Dynamics for In-Hand Manipulation

This paper evaluates state-of-the-art contact models at predicting the motions and forces involved in simple in-hand robotic manipulations. In particular it focuses on three primitive actions --linear sliding, pivoting, and rolling-- that involve contacts between a gripper, a rigid object, and their environment. The evaluation is done through thousands of controlled experiments designed to capture the motion of object and gripper, and all contact forces and torques at 250Hz. We demonstrate that a contact modeling approach based on Coulomb's friction law and maximum energy principle is effective at reasoning about interaction to first order, but limited for making accurate predictions. We attribute the major limitations to 1) the non-uniqueness of force resolution inherent to grasps with multiple hard contacts of complex geometries, 2) unmodeled dynamics due to contact compliance, and 3) unmodeled geometries dueto manufacturing defects.Comment: International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, ISER 2016, Tokyo, Japa

Von Neumann's expanding model on random graphs

Within the framework of Von Neumann's expanding model, we study the maximum growth rate r achievable by an autocatalytic reaction network in which reactions involve a finite (fixed or fluctuating) number D of reagents. r is calculated numerically using a variant of the Minover algorithm, and analytically via the cavity method for disordered systems. As the ratio between the number of reactions and that of reagents increases the system passes from a contracting (r1). These results extend the scenario derived in the fully connected model (D\to\infinity), with the important difference that, generically, larger growth rates are achievable in the expanding phase for finite D and in more diluted networks. Moreover, the range of attainable values of r shrinks as the connectivity increases.Comment: 20 page

Feasible edge colorings of trees with cardinality constraints

AbstractA variation of preemptive open shop scheduling corresponds to finding a feasible edge coloring in a bipartite multigraph with some requirements on the size of the different color classes. We show that for trees with fixed maximum degree, one can find in polynomial time an edge k-coloring where for i=1,…,k the number of edges of color i is exactly a given number hi, and each edge e gets its color from a set ϕ(e) of feasible colors, if such a coloring exists. This problem is NP-complete for general bipartite multigraphs. Applications to open shop problems with costs for using colors are described