484 research outputs found
Optimal eigenvalues estimate for the Dirac operator on domains with boundary
We give a lower bound for the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator on a compact
domain of a Riemannian spin manifold under the \MIT bag boundary condition.
The limiting case is characterized by the existence of an imaginary Killing
spinor.Comment: 10 page
Efficient Dynamic Compressor Optimization in Natural Gas Transmission Systems
The growing reliance of electric power systems on gas-fired generation to
balance intermittent sources of renewable energy has increased the variation
and volume of flows through natural gas transmission pipelines. Adapting
pipeline operations to maintain efficiency and security under these new
conditions requires optimization methods that account for transients and that
can quickly compute solutions in reaction to generator re-dispatch. This paper
presents an efficient scheme to minimize compression costs under dynamic
conditions where deliveries to customers are described by time-dependent mass
flow. The optimization scheme relies on a compact representation of gas flow
physics, a trapezoidal discretization in time and space, and a two-stage
approach to minimize energy costs and maximize smoothness. The resulting
large-scale nonlinear programs are solved using a modern interior-point method.
The proposed optimization scheme is validated against an integration of dynamic
equations with adaptive time-stepping, as well as a recently proposed
state-of-the-art optimal control method. The comparison shows that the
solutions are feasible for the continuous problem and also practical from an
operational standpoint. The results also indicate that our scheme provides at
least an order of magnitude reduction in computation time relative to the
state-of-the-art and scales to large gas transmission networks with more than
6000 kilometers of total pipeline
Seroprevalence of West Nile, Rift Valley, and sandfly arboviruses in Hashimiah, Jordan.
We conducted a serosurvey among patients of a health center in Hashimiah, a Jordanian town of 30,000 inhabitants located near a wastewater treatment plant and its effluent channel. Serum samples from 261 patients >/=5 years of age were assessed for immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM antibodies against West Nile, sandfly Sicilian, sandfly Naples, and Rift Valley viruses; the seroprevalence of IgG antibodies was 8%, 47%, 30%, and 0%, respectively. Female participants were more likely to have been infected than male. Persons living within 2 km of the treatment plant were more likely to have been infected with West Nile (p=0.016) and sandfly Sicilian (p=0.010) viruses. Raising domestic animals within the house was a risk factor for sandfly Sicilian (p=0.003) but not for sandfly Naples virus (p=0.148). All serum samples were negative for IgM antibodies against the tested viruses. Our study is the first documentation of West Nile and sandfly viruses in Jordan and calls attention to the possible health hazards of living close to wastewater treatment plants and their effluent channels
K\"ahlerian Twistor Spinors
On a K\"ahler spin manifold K\"ahlerian twistor spinors are a natural
analogue of twistor spinors on Riemannian spin manifolds. They are defined as
sections in the kernel of a first order differential operator adapted to the
K\"ahler structure, called K\"ahlerian twistor (Penrose) operator. We study
K\"ahlerian twistor spinors and give a complete description of compact K\"ahler
manifolds of constant scalar curvature admitting such spinors. As in the
Riemannian case, the existence of K\"ahlerian twistor spinors is related to the
lower bound of the spectrum of the Dirac operator.Comment: shorter version; to appear in Math.
Extended Formulations in Mixed-integer Convex Programming
We present a unifying framework for generating extended formulations for the
polyhedral outer approximations used in algorithms for mixed-integer convex
programming (MICP). Extended formulations lead to fewer iterations of outer
approximation algorithms and generally faster solution times. First, we observe
that all MICP instances from the MINLPLIB2 benchmark library are conic
representable with standard symmetric and nonsymmetric cones. Conic
reformulations are shown to be effective extended formulations themselves
because they encode separability structure. For mixed-integer
conic-representable problems, we provide the first outer approximation
algorithm with finite-time convergence guarantees, opening a path for the use
of conic solvers for continuous relaxations. We then connect the popular
modeling framework of disciplined convex programming (DCP) to the existence of
extended formulations independent of conic representability. We present
evidence that our approach can yield significant gains in practice, with the
solution of a number of open instances from the MINLPLIB2 benchmark library.Comment: To be presented at IPCO 201
Clonal evolution of Candida albicans, Candida glabrata and Candida dubliniensis at oral niche level in health and disease
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordBackground:Candida species have long been recognised as aetiological agents of opportunistic infections of the oral mucosa, and more recently, as players of polymicrobial interactions driving caries, periodontitis and oral carcinogenesis. Methods: We studied the clonal structure of Candida spp. at oral niche resolution in patients (n = 20) with a range of oral health profiles over 22 months. Colonies from oral micro-environments were examined with multilocus sequencing typing. Results:Candida spp. identified were C. albicans, C. glabrata and C. dubliniensis. Increased propensity for micro-variations giving rise to multiple diploid strain types (DST), as a result of loss of heterozygosity, was observed among C. albicans clade 1 isolates compared to other clades. Micro-variations among isolates were also observed in C. dubliniensis contra to expectations of stable population structures for this species. Multiple sequence types were retrieved from patients without clinical evidence of oral candidosis, while single sequence types were isolated from oral candidosis patients. Conclusion: This is the first study to describe the clonal population structure, persistence and stability of Candida spp. at oral niche level. Future research investigating links between Candida spp. clonality and oral disease should recognise the propensity to micro-variations amongst oral niches in C. albicans and C. dubliniensis identified here.Medical Research Council (MRC)Wellcome Trus
Enhanced Canny edge detection for Covid-19 and pneumonia X-Ray images
In image processing, one of the most fundamental technique is edge detection. It is a process to detect edges from images by identifying discontinuities in brightness. In this research, we present an enhanced Canny edge detection technique. This method integrates local morphological contrast enhancement and Canny edge detection. Furthermore, the proposed edge detection technique was also applied for pneumonia and COVID-19 detection in digital x-ray images by utilising convolutional neural networks. Results show that this enhanced Canny edge detection technique is better than the traditional Canny technique. Also, we were able to produce classifiers that can classify edge x-ray images into COVID-19, normal, and pneumonia classes with high accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity
Myocardial infarction risk is increased by periodontal pathobionts : a cross-sectional study
Acknowledgements The authors thank the laboratory and administrative staff at the Institute of Dentistry and the Institute of Medical Sciences of the University of Aberdeen for their help. We are grateful to Dr Pirkko Pussinen (Institute of Dentistry, University of Turku, Finland) for sharing the P. gingivalis-antibody positive serum samples and a detailed ELISA protocol. We would like to thank all Consultant Cardiologists at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for identifying suitable patients during the acute on-call: Dr Andrew Hannah, Dr Andrew Stewart, Dr Adelle Dawson, Dr Deepak Garg, Dr Paul Broadhurst, Dr Nicola Ryan. Lastly, we are grateful to all the participating patients. Funding âPeriodontal health in patients acutely admitted for myocardial infarction studyâ was funded by the Elphinstone Award to Dr Hijazi. Dr Dawson is supported by the British Heart Foundation (FS/RTF/20/30009, NH/19/1/34595, PG/18/35/33786, CS/17/4/32960, PG/15/88/31780, ), Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland (19/53), Tenovus Scotland (G.18.01), Friends of Anchor and Grampian NHS-Endowments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Draft Whole-Genome Sequences of Periodontal Pathobionts Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, and Tannerella forsythia Contain Phase-Variable Restriction-Modification Systems.
Periodontal disease comprises mild to severe inflammatory host responses to oral bacteria that can cause destruction of the tooth-supporting tissue. We report genome sequences for 18 clinical isolates of Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, and Tannerella forsythia, Gram-negative obligate anaerobes that play a role in the periodontal disease process.This work was in part funded by a grant from the BBSRC (BB/N002903/1) to M.R.O
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