An Operational Semantics of CommUnity Based on Graph Transformation Systems

AbstractWe propose an operational semantics, based on graph transformation, of CommUnity, a simple program design language. Each action of a single CommUnity design is modeled by a synchronized hyperedge replacement rule. Synchronized actions of several interconnected designs in a configuration result automatically from the individual rules thanks to the rule synchronization mechanism

The Surrender to God Scale: Psychometric Validation and Psychological Correlates

(1) Surrender to God (STG), is a construct which quantifies the extent to which an individual willingly relinquishes control to God. (2) An STG scale has been developed, yet remains unvalidated, as it relates to psychological constructs. (3) Utilizing undergraduate participants (N=249), we conducted a psychometric validation of the STG scale, and examined its potential relation with depression, anxiety, stress, and suicide ris

Regularity of area minimizing currents mod pp

We establish a first general partial regularity theorem for area minimizing currents $\mathrm{mod}(p)$, for every $p$, in any dimension and codimension. More precisely, we prove that the Hausdorff dimension of the interior singular set of an $m$-dimensional area minimizing current $\mathrm{mod}(p)$ cannot be larger than $m-1$. Additionally, we show that, when $p$ is odd, the interior singular set is $(m-1)$-rectifiable with locally finite $(m-1)$-dimensional measure.Comment: 96 pages. Second part of a two-papers work aimed at establishing a first general partial regularity theory for area minimizing currents modulo p, for any p and in any dimension and codimension. v3 is the final version, to appear on Geom. Funct. Ana

Perceived Health in Lung Cancer Patients: The Role of Positive and Negative Affect

Purpose: To examine the association of affective experience and health-related quality of life in lung cancer patients, we hypothesized that negative affect would be positively, and positive affect would be negatively, associated with perceived health. Methods: A sample of 133 English-speaking lung cancer patients (33% female; mean age = 63.68 years old, SD = 9.37) completed a battery of self-report surveys. Results: Results of our secondary analysis indicate that trait negative affect was significantly associated with poor physical and social functioning, greater role limitations due to emotional problems, greater bodily pain, and poor general health. Positive affect was significantly associated with adaptive social functioning, fewer emotion-based role limitations, and less severe bodily pain. In a full model, positive affect was significantly associated with greater levels of social functioning and general health, over and above the effects of negative affect. Conclusions: Reduction of negative affect is an important therapeutic goal, but the ability to maintain positive affect may result in greater perceived health. Indeed, engagement in behaviors that result in greater state positive affect may, over time, result in dispositional changes and enhancement of quality of life

Molecular locks and keys: the role of small molecules in phytohormone research

Plant adaptation, growth and development rely on the integration of many environmental and endogenous signals that collectively determine the overall plant phenotypic plasticity. Plant signaling molecules, also known as phytohormones, are fundamental to this process. These molecules act at low concentrations and regulate multiple aspects of plant fitness and development via complex signaling networks. By its nature, phytohormone research lies at the interface between chemistry and biology. Classically, the scientific community has always used synthetic phytohormones and analogs to study hormone functions and responses. However, recent advances in synthetic and combinational chemistry, have allowed a new field, plant chemical biology, to emerge and this has provided a powerful tool with which to study phytohormone function. Plant chemical biology is helping to address some of the most enduring questions in phytohormone research such as: Are there still undiscovered plant hormones? How can we identify novel signaling molecules? How can plants activate specific hormone responses in a tissue-specific manner? How can we modulate hormone responses in one developmental context without inducing detrimental effects on other processes? The chemical genomics approaches rely on the identification of small molecules modulating different biological processes and have recently identified active forms of plant hormones and molecules regulating many aspects of hormone synthesis, transport and response. We envision that the field of chemical genomics will continue to provide novel molecules able to elucidate specific aspects of hormone-mediated mechanisms. In addition, compounds blocking specific responses could uncover how complex biological responses are regulated. As we gain information about such compounds we can design small alterations to the chemical structure to further alter specificity, enhance affinity or modulate the activity of these compounds.This work was partially funded by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant RGPIN-2014-06468 to Abel Rosado and funding from the Canada Research Chairs program. John Vaughan-Hirsch is funded through the BBSRC Doctoral Training Programme. Anthony Bishopp is supported by the Royal Society through a University Research Fellowship. Andrea Chini is supported by a “Ramon y Cajal” fellowship (RYC-2010-05680) and this work was partially funded the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad project BIO2013-44407-R, the AECID AP/040886/11 and the CSIC i-COOP060. This project was supported by NSTIP strategic technologies programs, number (11-BIO-2119-02) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Andrea Chini.Peer reviewedPeer Reviewe

The exploitation of Mayor Island obsidian in prehistoric New Zealand

Obsidian in New Zealand was exploited from a variety of sources, and has been found in the majority of New Zealand archaeological sites. The presence of obsidian from the Mayor Island sources in most sites has been noted by archaeologists, and it has been assumed that a complex exchange system was responsible for its distribution. The purpose of the present thesis has been to evaluate the importance of Mayor Island as the· main supply source of obsidian in prehistoric New Zealand, and to study the pattern of exploitation and distribution of the obsidian. The analysis employed two separate approaches: site-oriented and regional. On a site-oriented basis, the quarries on Mayor Island were examined, particularly the production and procurement strategies. Ethnographic and comparable archaeological data on quarry exploitation were reviewed in order to test for evidence of access restrictions to the resources. For the regional analysis, archaeological obsidian assemblages from 58 sites were sourced using energy dispersive XRF spectroscopy. Sourcing results indicate a changing pattern of source utilization throughout the temporal depth of New Zealand prehistory. The pattern of source utilization also varied according to site function. The regional analysis of Mayor Island obsidian investigated further the importance of the Mayor Island obsidian in in the total lithic assemblages of the sites studied, and the nature of· the manufacturing techniques in relation to geographical distance from the source, by means of fall-off curves. Using this combined methodological approach it was possible to conclude that the exploitation of Mayor Island obsidian varied between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. While direct access seems to be the most probable way of acquiring the raw materials in the North Island, down-the-line exchange seems to be indicated for the South Island

The Writing on the Wall: Celebrating National Day on Writing at Hostos Community College

Since its participation in the 1999 CUNY Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) Initiative, Hostos has sought to foster a campus-wide recognition of the value of writing and its place in the academic, professional and personal lives of both faculty and students. Today, with over 75 Writing Intensive (WI) sections, an appreciation of the connection between reading and writing, ongoing professional development, and WAC principles and practices incorporated into both Englishlanguage and Spanish-language courses across a wide range of disciplines, Hostos has made great strides in fulfilling the CUNY Board of Trustees mandate to provide students with frequent and meaningful opportunities to write. As we move forward, the Hostos WAC Initiative is guided by the views outlined in the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) report, “Writing in the 21st Century,” by Kathleen Yancey. This pivotal report recognizes the shifting roles and demands of writing in the 21st century and points to the prevalence of blogs, wikis, text messages and social networking sites such as Facebook which have changed the ways students learn to write and the ways in which they use writing both inside and outside of the academic setting

Processing unambiguous verbal passives in German

Passivization played a central role in shaping both linguistic theory and psycholinguistic approaches to sentence processing, language acquisition and impairment. We present the results of two experiments that simultaneously test online processing (self-paced reading) and offline comprehension (through comprehension questions) of passives in German while also manipulating the event structure of the predicates used. In contrast to English, German passives are unambiguously verbal, allowing for the study of passivization independent of a confound in the degree of interpretive ambiguity (verbal/adjectival). In English, this ambiguity interacts with event structure, with passives of stative predicates naturally receiving an adjectival interpretation. In a recent study, Paolazzi et al. (2015, 2016) showed that in contrast to the mainstream theoretical perspective, passive sentences are not inherently harder to process than actives. Complexity of passivization in English is tied to the aspectual class of the verbal predicate passivized: With eventive predicates, passives are read faster (as hinted at in previous literature) and generate no comprehension difficulties (in contrast to previous findings with mixed predicates). Complexity effects with passivization, in turn, are only found with stative predicates. The asymmetry is claimed to stem from the temporary adjectival/verbal ambiguity of stative passives in English. We predict that the observed difficulty with English stative passives disappears in German, given that in this language the passive construction under investigation is unambiguously verbal. The results support this prediction: Both offline and online there was no difficulty with passivization, under either eventive or stative predicates. In fact, passives and their rich morphology eased parsing across both types of predicates

Excess decay for minimizing hypercurrents mod 2Q2Q

We consider codimension $1$ area-minimizing $m$-dimensional currents $T$ mod an even integer $p=2Q$ in a $C^2$ Riemannian submanifold $\Sigma$ of the Euclidean space. We prove a suitable excess-decay estimate towards the unique tangent cone at every point $q\in \mathrm{spt} (T)\setminus \mathrm{spt}^p (\partial T)$ where at least one such tangent cone is $Q$ copies of a single plane. While an analogous decay statement was proved in arXiv:2111.11202 as a corollary of a more general theory for stable varifolds, in our statement we strive for the optimal dependence of the estimates upon the second fundamental form of $\Sigma$. This technical improvement is in fact needed in arXiv:2201.10204 to prove that the singular set of $T$ can be decomposed into a $C^{1,\alpha}$ $(m-1)$-dimensional submanifold and an additional closed remaining set of Hausdorff dimension at most $m-2$.Comment: 74 pages, 1 figure. Comments are welcome

A Straightforward approach to multifunctional graphene

Graphene has been covalently functionalized through a one‐pot reductive pathway using graphite intercalation compounds (GICs), in particular KC8, with three different orthogonally protected derivatives of 4‐aminobenzylamine. This novel multifunctional platform exhibits excellent bulk functionalization homogeneity (Hbulk) and degree of addition while preserving the chemical functionalities of the organic addends through different protecting groups, namely: tert‐butyloxycarbonyl (Boc), benzyloxycarbonyl (Cbz) and phthalimide (Pht). We have employed (temperature‐dependent) statistical Raman spectroscopy (SRS), X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), magic angle spinning solid state 13C NMR (MAS‐NMR), and a characterization tool consisting of thermogravimetric analysis coupled with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (TG‐GC‐MS) to unambiguously demonstrate the covalent binding and the chemical nature of the different molecular linkers. This work paves the way for the development of smart graphene‐based materials of great interest in biomedicine or electronics, to name a few, and will serve as a guide in the design of new 2D multifunctional materials