3,757 research outputs found
Transients of platoons with asymmetric and different Laplacians
We consider an asymmetric control of platoons of identical vehicles with
nearest-neighbor interaction. Recent results show that if the vehicle uses
different asymmetries for position and velocity errors, the platoon has a short
transient and low overshoots. In this paper we investigate the properties of
vehicles with friction. To achieve consensus, an integral part is added to the
controller, making the vehicle a third-order system. We show that the
parameters can be chosen so that the platoon behaves as a wave equation with
different wave velocities. Simulations suggest that our system has a better
performance than other nearest-neighbor scenarios. Moreover, an
optimization-based procedure is used to find the controller properties
Bayesian DNA copy number analysis
BACKGROUND: Some diseases, like tumors, can be related to chromosomal aberrations, leading to
changes of DNA copy number. The copy number of an aberrant genome can be represented as a
piecewise constant function, since it can exhibit regions of deletions or gains. Instead, in a healthy
cell the copy number is two because we inherit one copy of each chromosome from each our
parents.
Bayesian Piecewise Constant Regression (BPCR) is a Bayesian regression method for data that are
noisy observations of a piecewise constant function. The method estimates the unknown segment
number, the endpoints of the segments and the value of the segment levels of the underlying
piecewise constant function. The Bayesian Regression Curve (BRC) estimates the same data with
a smoothing curve. However, in the original formulation, some estimators failed to properly
determine the corresponding parameters. For example, the boundary estimator did not take into
account the dependency among the boundaries and succeeded in estimating more than one
breakpoint at the same position, losing segments.
RESULTS: We derived an improved version of the BPCR (called mBPCR) and BRC, changing the
segment number estimator and the boundary estimator to enhance the fitting procedure. We also
proposed an alternative estimator of the variance of the segment levels, which is useful in case of
data with high noise. Using artificial data, we compared the original and the modified version of
BPCR and BRC with other regression methods, showing that our improved version of BPCR
generally outperformed all the others. Similar results were also observed on real data.
CONCLUSION: We propose an improved method for DNA copy number estimation, mBPCR, which
performed very well compared to previously published algorithms. In particular, mBPCR was more
powerful in the detection of the true position of the breakpoints and of small aberrations in very
noisy data. Hence, from a biological point of view, our method can be very useful, for example, to
find targets of genomic aberrations in clinical cancer samples
Neutrinos from type Ia supernovae: the deflagration-to-detonation transition scenario
It has long been recognized that the neutrinos detected from the next
core-collapse supernova in the Galaxy have the potential to reveal important
information about the dynamics of the explosion and the nucleosynthesis
conditions as well as allowing us to probe the properties of the neutrino
itself. The neutrinos emitted from thermonuclear - type Ia - supernovae also
possess the same potential, although these supernovae are dimmer neutrino
sources. For the first time, we calculate the time, energy, line of sight, and
neutrino-flavor-dependent features of the neutrino signal expected from a
three-dimensional delayed-detonation explosion simulation, where a
deflagration-to-detonation transition triggers the complete disruption of a
near-Chandrasekhar mass carbon-oxygen white dwarf. We also calculate the
neutrino flavor evolution along eight lines of sight through the simulation as
a function of time and energy using an exact three-flavor transformation code.
We identify a characteristic spectral peak at MeV as a signature of
electron captures on copper. This peak is a potentially distinguishing feature
of explosion models since it reflects the nucleosynthesis conditions early in
the explosion. We simulate the event rates in the Super-K, Hyper-K, JUNO, and
DUNE neutrino detectors with the SNOwGLoBES event rate calculation software and
also compute the IceCube signal. Hyper-K will be able to detect neutrinos from
our model out to a distance of kpc. At 1 kpc, JUNO, Super-K, and DUNE
would register a few events while IceCube and Hyper-K would register several
tens of events.Comment: 44 pages, 29 figures & 2 tables. Updated to match Phys. Rev. D
version, including a new event channel discussion and improved IceCube
result
Sensing risk, fearing uncertainty: systems science approach to change
Background: Medicine devotes its primary focus to understanding change, from cells to network relationships; observations of non-linearity are inescapable. Recent events provide extraordinary examples of major non-linear surprises within the societal system: human genome-from anticipated 100,000+ genes to only 20,000+; junk DNA-initially ignored but now proven to control genetic processes; economic reversals-bursting of bubbles in technology, housing, finance; foreign wars; relentless rise in obesity, neurodegenerative diseases. There are two attributes of systems science that are especially relevant to this research: One—it offers a method for creating a structural context with a guiding path to pragmatic knowledge; and, two—it gives pre-eminence to sensory input capable to register, evaluate, and react to change. Materials/Methods: Public domain records of change, during the last 50 years, have been studied in the context of systems science, the dynamic systems model, and various cycles. Results/Conclusions: Change is dynamic, ever-present, never isolated, and of variable impact; it reflects innumerable relationships among contextual systems; change can be perceived as risk or uncertainty depending upon how the assessment is made; risk is quantifiable by sensory input and generates a degree of rational optimism; uncertainty is not quantifiable and evokes fear; trust is key to sharing risk; the measurable financial credit can be a proxy for societal trust; expanding credit dilutes trust; when a credit bubble bursts, so will trust; absence of trust paralyzes systems' relationships leading to disorganized complexity which prevents value creation and heightens the probability of random events; disappearance of value, accompanied by chaos, threatens all systems. From personal health to economic sustainability and collective rationality, most examined components of the societal system were found not to be optimized and trust was not in evidence
Cancer control through principles of systems science, complexity, and chaos theory: A model
Cancer is a significant medical and societal problem. This reality arises from the fact that an exponential and an unrestricted cellular growth destabilizes human body as a system. From this perspective, cancer is a manifestation of a system-in-failing
Spitzer IRAC confirmation of z_850-dropout galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: stellar masses and ages at z~7
Using Spitzer IRAC mid-infrared imaging from the Great Observatories Origins
Deep Survey, we study z_850-dropout sources in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
After carefully removing contaminating flux from foreground sources, we clearly
detect two z_850-dropouts at 3.6 micron and 4.5 micron, while two others are
marginally detected. The mid-infrared fluxes strongly support their
interpretation as galaxies at z~7, seen when the Universe was only 750 Myr old.
The IRAC observations allow us for the first time to constrain the rest-frame
optical colors, stellar masses, and ages of the highest redshift galaxies.
Fitting stellar population models to the spectral energy distributions, we find
photometric redshifts in the range 6.7-7.4, rest-frame colors U-V=0.2-0.4,
V-band luminosities L_V=0.6-3 x 10^10 L_sun, stellar masses 1-10 x 10^9 M_sun,
stellar ages 50-200 Myr, star formation rates up to ~25 M_sun/yr, and low
reddening A_V<0.4. Overall, the z=7 galaxies appear substantially less massive
and evolved than Lyman break galaxies or Distant Red Galaxies at z=2-3, but
fairly similar to recently identified systems at z=5-6. The stellar mass
density inferred from our z=7 sample is rho* = 1.6^{+1.6}_{-0.8} x 10^6 M_sun
Mpc^-3 (to 0.3 L*(z=3)), in apparent agreement with recent cosmological
hydrodynamic simulations, but we note that incompleteness and sample variance
may introduce larger uncertainties. The ages of the two most massive galaxies
suggest they formed at z>8, during the era of cosmic reionization, but the star
formation rate density derived from their stellar masses and ages is not nearly
sufficient to reionize the universe. The simplest explanation for this
deficiency is that lower-mass galaxies beyond our detection limit reionized the
universe.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, emulateapj, Accepted for publication in ApJ
Letter
Intensity correlations, entanglement properties and ghost imaging in multimode thermal-seeded parametric downconversion: Theory
We address parametric-downconversion seeded by multimode pseudo-thermal
fields. We show that this process may be used to generate multimode pairwise
correlated states with entanglement properties that can be tuned by controlling
the seed intensities. Multimode pseudo-thermal fields seeded
parametric-downconversion represents a novel source of correlated states, which
allows one to explore the classical-quantum transition in pairwise correlations
and to realize ghost imaging and ghost diffraction in regimes not yet explored
by experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure
The quantum-classical transition in thermally seeded parametric downconversion
We address the pair of conjugated field modes obtained from
parametric-downconversion as a convenient system to analyze the
quantum-classical transition in the continuous variable regime. We explicitly
evaluate intensity correlations, negativity and entanglement for the system in
a thermal state and show that a hierarchy of nonclassicality thresholds
naturally emerges in terms of thermal and downconversion photon number. We show
that the transition from quantum to classical regime may be tuned by
controlling the intensities of the seeds and detected by intensity
measurements. Besides, we show that the thresholds are not affected by losses,
which only modify the amount of nonclassicality. The multimode case is also
analyzed in some detail.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
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