Two-dimensional systems with competing interactions: microphase formation under the effect of a disordered porous matrix

We have investigated the effect of a disordered porous matrix on the cluster microphase formation of a two dimensional system where particles interact via competing interactions. To this end we have performed extensive Monte Carlo simulations and have systematically varied the densities of the fluid and of the matrix as well as the interaction between the matrix particles and between the matrix and fluid particles. Our results provide evidence that the matrix does have a distinct effect on the microphase formation of the fluid particles: as long as the particles interact both among themselves as well as with the fluid particles via a simple hard sphere potential, they essentially reduce the available space, in which the fluid particles form a cluster microphase. On the other hand, if we turn on a long-range tail in the matrix-matrix and in the matrix-fluid interactions, the matrix particles become nucleation centers for the clusters formed by the fluid particles.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Relationships between synoptic-scale transport and interannual variability of inorganic cations in surface snow at Summit, Greenland: 1992-1996

To fully utilize the long-term chemical records retrieved from central Greenland ice cores, specific relationships between atmospheric circulation and the variability of chemical species in the records need to be better understood. This research examines associations between the variability of surface snow inorganic cation chemistry at Summit, Greenland (collected during 1992–1996 summer field seasons) and changes in air mass transport pathways and source regions, as well as variations in aerosol source strength. Transport patterns and source regions are determined through 10-day isentropic backward air mass trajectories during a 1 month (late May to late June) common season over the 5 years. Changes in the extent of exposed continental surfaces in source regions are evaluated to estimate aerosol-associated calcium and magnesium ion source strength, while forest fire activity in the circumpolar north is investigated to estimate aerosol ammonium ion source strength. During the 1995 common season, 3 times more calcium and magnesium accumulated in the snowpack than the other study years. Also, an increasing trend of ammonium concentration was noted throughout the 5 years. Anomalous transport pathways and velocities were observed during 1995, which likely contributed to the high levels of calcium and magnesium. Increased forest fire activity in North America was concurrent with increased levels of ammonium and potassium, except for 1996, when ion levels were above average and forest fire activity was below average. Because of the ubiquitous nature of soluble ions, we conclude that it is very difficult to establish a quantitative link between the ion content of snow and firn at Summit and changes in aerosol source regions and source strength

ShapeFit and ShapeKick for Robust, Scalable Structure from Motion

We introduce a new method for location recovery from pair-wise directions that leverages an efficient convex program that comes with exact recovery guarantees, even in the presence of adversarial outliers. When pairwise directions represent scaled relative positions between pairs of views (estimated for instance with epipolar geometry) our method can be used for location recovery, that is the determination of relative pose up to a single unknown scale. For this task, our method yields performance comparable to the state-of-the-art with an order of magnitude speed-up. Our proposed numerical framework is flexible in that it accommodates other approaches to location recovery and can be used to speed up other methods. These properties are demonstrated by extensively testing against state-of-the-art methods for location recovery on 13 large, irregular collections of images of real scenes in addition to simulated data with ground truth

Telomere Length and Its Relation to Human Health

Telomeres are complex nucleotide sequences that cap the end of chromosomes from degradation, unwanted recombination‐fusion, inappropriate activation of DNA damage response and play a critical role in cell division and chromosome stability. There is growing evidence that telomere stability can be affected by occupational and environmental exposure, as some of these factors have been correlated with increase in inflammation, oxidative stress, DNA damage, chromosome aberration, and epigenetic alterations. Both extremely short and long telomeres have been associated with neurodegenerative, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and cancer risk. Occupational and environmental exposure to several synthetic and natural chemicals has been found to be associated with changes in telomere length, although the molecular mechanism is not fully understood. Telomeric DNA is relatively less capable of repair, resulting in accelerated shortening during the cell cycle and replicative senescence. It is recognized that diet plays an important role in telomere maintenance. Prevention of exposure to environmental and occupational hazards as well as psychological stressors can reduce the risk of telomere instability. This review provides a broad evaluation of the associated mechanism between human health and environmental and occupational exposure with telomere length, including recent findings and future perspectives

Loncastuximab tesirine in relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: Long-term efficacy and safety from the phase II LOTIS-2 study

Therapies that demonstrate durable, long-term responses with manageable safety and tolerability are needed for patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (R/R DLBCL). Loncastuximab tesirine (loncastuximab tesirine-lpyl [Lonca]), an anti-CD19 antibody conjugated to a potent pyrrolobenzodiazepine dimer, demonstrated single-agent antitumor activity in the pivotal phase II LOTIS-2 study in heavily pretreated patients with R/R DLBCL. Here we present updated efficacy and safety analyses from LOTIS-2, performed for all patients and in subsets of patients with a complete response (CR), including patients with CR who were event-free (no progressive disease or death) for ≥1 year and ≥2 years from cycle 1, day 1 of treatment. Lonca was administered every 3 weeks (0.15 mg/kg for 2 cycles; 0.075 mg/kg for subsequent cycles). As of the final data cutoff (September 15, 2022; median follow-up: 7.8 months [range, 0.3-42.6]), 70 of 145 (48.3%) patients achieved an overall response. Thirty-six (24.8%) patients achieved CR, of which 16 (44%) and 11 (31%) were event-free for ≥1 year and ≥2 years, respectively. In the all-treated population, the median overall survival was 9.5 months; the median progression-free survival was 4.9 months. Among patients with CR, median overall survival and progression-free survival were not reached, with 24-month overall and progression-free survival rates of 68.2% (95% CI: 50.0-81.0) and 72.5% (95% CI: 48.2-86.8), respectively. No new safety concerns were detected. With additional follow-up, Lonca continued to demonstrate durable, long-term responses with manageable safety and tolerability in patients with CR (clinicaltrials gov. Identifier: NCT03589469)

Services and the Business Models of Product Firms: An Empirical Analysis of the Software Industry

Some product firms increasingly rely on service revenues as part of their business models. One possible explanation is that they turn to services to generate additional profits when their product industries mature and product revenues and profits decline. We explore this assumption by examining the role of services in the financial performance of firms in the prepackaged software products industry (Standard Industrial Classification code 7372) from 1990 to 2006. We find a convex, nonlinear relationship between a product firm's fraction of total sales coming from services and its overall operating margins. As expected, firms with a very high level of product sales are most profitable, and rising services are associated with declining profitability. We find, however, that additional services start to have a positive marginal effect on the firm's overall profits when services reach a majority of a product firm's sales. We show that traditional industry maturity arguments cannot fully explain our data. It is likely that changes in both strategy and the business environment lead product firms to place more emphasis on services

Definition, Sicherung und Kommunikation Ökologischer Produktqualität - Betrachtungen am Beispiel des Tafelapfels

Organic production standards are used by actors along the organic production and supply chain as measures for quality assurance and tools for communication and differentiation of organic product and process quality. The results of a literature review show that the main aspects of organic product quality are not considered by the most significant standards for organic production in Germany and hence, these standards are not appropriate measures for the above mentioned purposes

A QCQP Approach to Triangulation

Triangulation of a three-dimensional point from at least two noisy 2-D images can be formulated as a quadratically constrained quadratic program. We propose an algorithm to extract candidate solutions to this problem from its semidefinite programming relaxations. We then describe a sufficient condition and a polynomial time test for certifying when such a solution is optimal. This test has no false positives. Experiments indicate that false negatives are rare, and the algorithm has excellent performance in practice. We explain this phenomenon in terms of the geometry of the triangulation problem.Comment: 14 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the 12th European Conference of Computer Vision, Firenze, Italy, 7-13 October 201

My Clara

Oval illustration of woman with flowershttps://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/9420/thumbnail.jp

Optimized random phase approximations for arbitrary reference systems: extremum conditions and thermodynamic consistence

The optimized random phase approximation (ORPA) for classical liquids is re-examined in the framework of the generating functional approach to the integral equations. We show that the two main variants of the approximation correspond to the addition of the same correction to two different first order approximations of the homogeneous liquid free energy. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to consistently use the ORPA with arbitrary reference systems described by continuous potentials and that the same approximation is equivalent to a particular extremum condition for the corresponding generating functional. Finally, it is possible to enforce the thermodynamic consistence between the thermal and the virial route to the equation of state by requiring the global extremum condition on the generating functional.Comment: 8 pages, RevTe