6,679 research outputs found
Exploiting the Parallelism Exposed by Partial Evaluation
We describe an approach to parallel compilation that seeks to harness the vast amount of fine-grain parallelism that is exposed through partial evaluation of numerically-intensive scientific programs. We have constructed a compiler for the Supercomputer Toolkit parallel processor that uses partial evaluation to break down data abstractions and program structure, producing huge basic blocks that contain large amounts of fine-grain parallelism. We show that this fine-grain prarllelism can be effectively utilized even on coarse-grain parallel architectures by selectively grouping operations together so as to adjust the parallelism grain-size to match the inter-processor communication capabilities of the target architecture
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Medical students as global citizens: a qualitative study of medical students' views on global health teaching within the undergraduate medical curriculum
Background: There is increasing interest in global health teaching among medical schools and their students. Schools in the UK and internationally are considering the best structure, methods and content of global health courses. Academic work in this area, however, has tended to either be normative (specifying what global health teaching ought to look like) or descriptive (of a particular intervention, new module, elective, etc.).
Methods: While a number of studies have explored student perspectives on global health teaching, these have often relied on tools such as questionnaires that generate little in-depth evidence. This study instead used qualitative methods to explore medical student perspectives on global health in the context of a new global health module established in the core medical curriculum at a UK medical school.
Results: Fifth year medical students participated in a structured focus group session and semi-structured interviews designed to explore their knowledge and learning about global health issues, as well as their wider perspectives on these issues and their relevance to professional development. While perspectives on global health ranged from global health âadvocateâ to âscepticâ, all of the students acknowledged the challenges of prioritising global health within a busy curriculum.
Conclusions: Students are highly alert to the diverse epistemological issues that underpin global health. For some students, such interdisciplinarity is fundamental to understanding contemporary health and healthcare. For others, global health is merely a topic of geographic relevance. Furthermore, some students appeared to accept global health as a specialist area only relevant to professionals working overseas, while others considered it to be an essential part of working in the globalised world and therefore relevant to all medical professionals. Students also clearly noted that including âsoftâ subjects and more discursive approaches to teaching and learning often sits awkwardly in a programme where âharderâ forms of knowledge and didactic methods tend to dominate. This suggests that more work needs to be done to explain the relevance of global health to medical students at the very beginning of their studies
DNA methylation profiling of the human major histocompatibility complex: A pilot study for the Human Epigenome Project
The Human Epigenome Project aims to identify, catalogue, and interpret genome-wide DNA methylation phenomena. Occurring naturally on cytosine bases at cytosine-guanine dinucleotides, DNA methylation is intimately involved in diverse biological processes and the aetiology of many diseases. Differentially methylated cytosines give rise to distinct profiles, thought to be specific for gene activity, tissue type, and disease state. The identification of such methylation variable positions will significantly improve our understanding of genome biology and our ability to diagnose disease. Here, we report the results of the pilot study for the Human Epigenome Project entailing the methylation analysis of the human major histocompatibility complex. This study involved the development of an integrated pipeline for high-throughput methylation analysis using bisulphite DNA sequencing, discovery of methylation variable positions, epigenotyping by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation mass spectrometry, and development of an integrated public database available at http://www.epigenome.org. Our analysis of DNA methylation levels within the major histocompatibility complex, including regulatory exonic and intronic regions associated with 90 genes in multiple tissues and individuals, reveals a bimodal distribution of methylation profiles (i.e., the vast majority of the analysed regions were either hypo- or hypermethylated), tissue specificity, inter-individual variation, and correlation with independent gene expression data
How much do we really lose?âYield losses in the proximity of natural landscape elements in agricultural landscapes
Natural landscape elements (NLEs) in agricultural landscapes contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem services, but are also regarded as an obstacle for largeâscale agricultural production. However, the effects of NLEs on crop yield have rarely been measured. Here, we investigated how different bordering structures, such as agricultural roads, fieldâtoâfield borders, forests, hedgerows, and kettle holes, influence agricultural yields. We hypothesized that (a) yield values at field borders differ from midâfield yields and that (b) the extent of this change in yields depends on the bordering structure.
We measured winter wheat yields along transects with logâscaled distances from the border into the agricultural field within two intensively managed agricultural landscapes in Germany (2014 near Göttingen, and 2015â2017 in the Uckermark).
We observed a yield loss adjacent to every investigated bordering structure of 11%â38% in comparison with midâfield yields. However, depending on the bordering structure, this yield loss disappeared at different distances. While the proximity of kettle holes did not affect yields more than neighboring agricultural fields, woody landscape elements had strong effects on winter wheat yields. Notably, 95% of midâfield yields could already be reached at a distance of 11.3 m from a kettle hole and at a distance of 17.8 m from hedgerows as well as forest borders.
Our findings suggest that yield losses are especially relevant directly adjacent to woody landscape elements, but not adjacent to inâfield water bodies. This highlights the potential to simultaneously counteract yield losses close to the field border and enhance biodiversity by combining different NLEs in agricultural landscapes such as creating strips of extensive grassland vegetation between woody landscape elements and agricultural fields. In conclusion, our results can be used to quantify ecocompensations to find optimal solutions for the delivery of productive and regulative ecosystem services in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes
Arendt and political realism: towards a realist account of political judgement
This article argues that Hannah Arendtâs thought can offer significant insights on political judgement for realism in political theory. We identify a realist position which emphasises the need to account for how humans judge politically, contra moralist tendencies to limit its exercise to rational standards, but which fails to provide a sufficient conception of its structure and potential. Limited appeals to political judgement render the realist defence of the political elusive, and compromise the endeavour to offer a meaningful alternative to the moralist tendency to displace politics. The potential and limitations of realist discussions on judgement are made visible in relation to proto-realists Judith Shklar and Isaiah Berlin.
In seeking to enrich the realist conception of the political, the article introduces the displacement critique found in the neglected Arendtian ârealismâ. It also provides the foundations for a distinctly realist account of political judgement which, we argue, requires elaboration along two dimensions: the social coding of political judgement and the political capacities that help judgement build a suitable political sphere
Exact norm-conserving stochastic time-dependent Hartree-Fock
We derive an exact single-body decomposition of the time-dependent
Schroedinger equation for N pairwise-interacting fermions. Each fermion obeys a
stochastic time-dependent norm-preserving wave equation. As a first test of the
method we calculate the low energy spectrum of Helium. An extension of the
method to bosons is outlined.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX fil
Why my photos look sideways or upside down? Detecting Canonical Orientation of Images using Convolutional Neural Networks
Image orientation detection requires high-level scene understanding. Humans
use object recognition and contextual scene information to correctly orient
images. In literature, the problem of image orientation detection is mostly
confronted by using low-level vision features, while some approaches
incorporate few easily detectable semantic cues to gain minor improvements. The
vast amount of semantic content in images makes orientation detection
challenging, and therefore there is a large semantic gap between existing
methods and human behavior. Also, existing methods in literature report highly
discrepant detection rates, which is mainly due to large differences in
datasets and limited variety of test images used for evaluation. In this work,
for the first time, we leverage the power of deep learning and adapt
pre-trained convolutional neural networks using largest training dataset
to-date for the image orientation detection task. An extensive evaluation of
our model on different public datasets shows that it remarkably generalizes to
correctly orient a large set of unconstrained images; it also significantly
outperforms the state-of-the-art and achieves accuracy very close to that of
humans
Exactly solvable model of a quantum spin glass
A mean field spherical model with random couplings between pairs, quartets,
and possibly higher multiplets of spins is considered. It has the same critical
behavior as the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. It thus exhibits replica
symmetry breaking. The order parameter function is solved exactly in the whole
low temperature phase. The zero field cooled susceptibility remains finite at
low . Next a quantum version of the system is considered. Whereas the
magnetic properties are not altered qualitatively, the thermodynamics is now
regular at small temperatures.Comment: 4 pages postscript. Revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Condensation vs. phase-ordering in the dynamics of first order transitions
The origin of the non commutativity of the limits and in the dynamics of first order transitions is investigated. In the
large-N model, i.e. taken first, the low temperature phase is
characterized by condensation of the large wave length fluctuations rather than
by genuine phase-ordering as when is taken first. A detailed
study of the scaling properties of the structure factor in the large-N model is
carried out for quenches above, at and below T_c. Preasymptotic scaling is
found and crossover phenomena are related to the existence of components in the
order parameter with different scaling properties. Implications for
phase-ordering in realistic systems are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev.
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