Automated construction of genetic networks from mutant data

Geneticists use mutations to investigate biological phenomena. Mutations cause changes of organism’s phenotype and may reveal which genes participate in a certain biological process and how. To represent these functional interactions between genes, a gene regulatory network is an often used formalism. We have developed a system called GenePath (1) for automated construction of genetic networks from mutant data

Generic Identity and Intertextuality

In his paper, Generic Identity and Intertextuality, Marko Juvan proposes that an anti-essentialist drive -- a characteristic of recent genology -- has led postmodern scholars to the conviction that genre is but a system of differences and that its matrix cannot be deduced from a particular set of apparently similar texts. Juvan argues that the concept of intertextuality may prove advantageous to explain genre identity in a different way: genres exist and function as far as they are embedded in social practices that frame intertextual and meta-textual links/references to prototypical texts or textual series. In Juvan\u27s view, genres are cognitive and pragmatic devices for intertextual pattern-matching and texts or textual sets become generic prototypes by virtue of intertextual and meta-textual interaction: on one side there is the working (influence) of semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic features of prototypical texts on their domestic and foreign literary offspring; on the other side we see meta-textual descriptions and intertextual derivations or references, which establish or revise retroactively the hard core of genre pattern. Any given text is, because of the generic and pragmatic component of the author\u27s communicative competence, dependent on existing genre patterns

Worlding Literatures between Dialogue and Hegemony

In his article Worlding Literatures between Dialogue and Hegemony Marko Juvan claims that during its late capitalist renaissance, the Goethean idea of Weltliteratur is interpreted either in terms of intercultural dialogism or hegemony embodied in the asymmetrical structure of the world literary system. Launching the concept of Weltliteratur during the emergence of the early industrial globalization, Goethe initiated a long-lasting transnational meta-discourse that influenced the development of transnational literary practices. In his aristocratic, cosmopolitan humanism, Goethe expected world literature to open up an equal dialogue between civilizations and languages encouraging cross-national networking of the educated elite. However, his notion of dialogue is marked by the hegemony of Western aesthetic and humanistic discourse based on the European classics. Marx and Engels exposed aesthetic and humanist cosmopolitanism as the ideology masking European bourgeoisie\u27s global economic hegemony and the worldwide expansion of Western geoculture. It is within this ambivalence of dialogism and hegemony that the process of worlding (Kadir) and nationalizing of European literatures has taken place since the early nineteenth century

Literariness as a Culturally Based Feature

Autor uważa, że pytanie o literackość dotyczy istoty i społecznej egzystencji teorii literatury jako autonomicznej dyscypliny. Teoretyk literacki nie tylko obserwuje literaturę, ale jest również jej uczestnikiem, który pośrednio - poprzez system nauki i edukacji zaangażowany jest w konstruowanie zarówno samego pojęcia jak i praktyki literackiej. Literackość nie jest inwariantnym zbiorem „obiektywnych" cech dystynktywnych wszystkich tekstów uznawanych za literackie, nie jest również wyłącznie funkcją społeczną. Może być zdefiniowana jako funkcjonowanie tekstu w systemie literackim, możliwe tylko w oparciu o trwałość i żywotność konwencji oraz istnienie wywiedzionego z paradygmatów kanonu literackiego. Jest więc literackość kulturowo i historycznie zmienna oraz zależna od szerszego społecznego i językowego kontekstu

International Community’s Approach to Western Balkans: In Search of Stability and Security

The article presents research on the international community’s engagement in the countries of the Western Balkans in the past and their possible approach in the future. The focus of our research is on the functioning of mechanisms through which the international community performs certain tasks in the region. These interventions are primarily political, in the form of conferences, political programmes, consultations, pressures and continuous persuasion. Economic initiatives follow afterwards. By using different reform approaches, international institutions try to improve cooperation with the European Union (EU) and countries such as the USA, Russia, Turkey and China. Our research attempts to identify possible methods and new solutions for individual cases of conflict in Western Balkans countries, especially where the international community is actively involved. On this basis, we created a more holistic approach. The application of these measures could make the necessary reforms of the future easier. Our approach emphasises all the elements of security that are essential to the stability of the region and for the prevention of conflicts in the future

Optimal Grid Drawings of Complete Multipartite Graphs and an Integer Variant of the Algebraic Connectivity

How to draw the vertices of a complete multipartite graph $G$ on different points of a bounded $d$-dimensional integer grid, such that the sum of squared distances between vertices of $G$ is (i) minimized or (ii) maximized? For both problems we provide a characterization of the solutions. For the particular case $d=1$, our solution for (i) also settles the minimum-2-sum problem for complete bipartite graphs; the minimum-2-sum problem was defined by Juvan and Mohar in 1992. Weighted centroidal Voronoi tessellations are the solution for (ii). Such drawings are related with Laplacian eigenvalues of graphs. This motivates us to study which properties of the algebraic connectivity of graphs carry over to the restricted setting of drawings of graphs with integer coordinates.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

Signs of strong Na and K absorption in the transmission spectrum of WASP-103b

Context: Transmission spectroscopy has become a prominent tool for characterizing the atmospheric properties on close-in transiting planets. Recent observations have revealed a remarkable diversity in exoplanet spectra, which show absorption signatures of Na, K and $\mathrm{H_2O}$, in some cases partially or fully attenuated by atmospheric aerosols. Aerosols (clouds and hazes) themselves have been detected in the transmission spectra of several planets thanks to wavelength-dependent slopes caused by the particles' scattering properties. Aims: We present an optical 550 - 960 nm transmission spectrum of the extremely irradiated hot Jupiter WASP-103b, one of the hottest (2500 K) and most massive (1.5 $M_J$) planets yet to be studied with this technique. WASP-103b orbits its star at a separation of less than 1.2 times the Roche limit and is predicted to be strongly tidally distorted. Methods: We have used Gemini/GMOS to obtain multi-object spectroscopy hroughout three transits of WASP-103b. We used relative spectrophotometry and bin sizes between 20 and 2 nm to infer the planet's transmission spectrum. Results: We find that WASP-103b shows increased absorption in the cores of the alkali (Na, K) line features. We do not confirm the presence of any strong scattering slope as previously suggested, pointing towards a clear atmosphere for the highly irradiated, massive exoplanet WASP-103b. We constrain the upper boundary of any potential cloud deck to reside at pressure levels above 0.01 bar. This finding is in line with previous studies on cloud occurrence on exoplanets which find that clouds dominate the transmission spectra of cool, low surface gravity planets while hot, high surface gravity planets are either cloud-free, or possess clouds located below the altitudes probed by transmission spectra.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&