Local stability of cooperation in a continuous model of indirect reciprocity

Reputation is a powerful mechanism to enforce cooperation among unrelated individuals through indirect reciprocity, but it suffers from disagreement originating from private assessment, noise, and incomplete information. In this work, we investigate stability of cooperation in the donation game by regarding each player's reputation and behaviour as continuous variables. Through perturbative calculation, we derive a condition that a social norm should satisfy to give penalties to its close variants, provided that everyone initially cooperates with a good reputation, and this result is supported by numerical simulation. A crucial factor of the condition is whether a well-reputed player's donation to an ill-reputed co-player is appreciated by other members of the society, and the condition can be reduced to a threshold for the benefit-cost ratio of cooperation which depends on the reputational sensitivity to a donor's behaviour as well as on the behavioural sensitivity to a recipient's reputation. Our continuum formulation suggests how indirect reciprocity can work beyond the dichotomy between good and bad even in the presence of inhomogeneity, noise, and incomplete information.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Experimental and numerical investigation on the structural performance of the tensioning air beam system

An experimental and numerical study on the structural performance of the tensioning air beam system (TABS) is presented. TABS is a hybrid structural system consisting of a membrane air beam, steel frames and cable struts. This system has the advantage of reduced self-weight and is easy to construct while it can improve the load bearing capacity of membrane structures. It maximizes the structural capacities of individual elements, thus can be considered as a very effective system in terms of both structural and economical aspects. In this paper, a test was carried out to examine the structural performance of TABS under different membrane pressure conditions. The material properties of the air beam were obtained from the results of two membrane tensile strength tests, which were performed prior to the main test. A simple numerical model was proposed to predict the structural behavior of TABS and its validity was evaluated by comparing its results with the test values

GBParsy: A GenBank flatfile parser library with high speed

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>GenBank flatfile (GBF) format is one of the most popular sequence file formats because of its detailed sequence features and ease of readability. To use the data in the file by a computer, a parsing process is required and is performed according to a given grammar for the sequence and the description in a GBF. Currently, several parser libraries for the GBF have been developed. However, with the accumulation of DNA sequence information from eukaryotic chromosomes, parsing a eukaryotic genome sequence with these libraries inevitably takes a long time, due to the large GBF file and its correspondingly large genomic nucleotide sequence and related feature information. Thus, there is significant need to develop a parsing program with high speed and efficient use of system memory.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a library, GBParsy, which was C language-based and parses GBF files. The parsing speed was maximized by using content-specified functions in place of regular expressions that are flexible but slow. In addition, we optimized an algorithm related to memory usage so that it also increased parsing performance and efficiency of memory usage. GBParsy is at least 5 - 100× faster than current parsers in benchmark tests.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>GBParsy is estimated to extract annotated information from almost 100 Mb of a GenBank flatfile for chromosomal sequence information within a second. Thus, it should be used for a variety of applications such as on-time visualization of a genome at a web site.</p

Prompting Fab Yeast Surface Display Efficiency by ER Retention and Molecular Chaperon Co-expression.

For antibody discovery and engineering, yeast surface display (YSD) of antigen-binding fragments (Fabs) and coupled fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) provide intact paratopic conformations and quantitative analysis at the monoclonal level, and thus holding great promises for numerous applications. Using anti-TNFα mAbs Infliximab, Adalimumab, and its variants as model Fabs, this study systematically characterized complementary approaches for the optimization of Fab YSD. Results suggested that by using divergent promoter GAL1-GAL10 and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) signal peptides for co-expression of light chain and heavy chain-Aga2 fusion, assembled Fabs were functionally displayed on yeast cell surface with sigmoidal binding responses toward TNFα. Co-expression of a Hsp70 family molecular chaperone Kar2p and/or protein-disulfide isomerase (Pdi1p) significantly improved efficiency of functional display (defined as the ratio of cells displaying functional Fab over cells displaying assembled Fab). Moreover, fusing ER retention sequences (ERSs) with light chain also enhanced Fab display quality at the expense of display quantity, and the degree of improvements was correlated with the strength of ERSs and was more significant for Infliximab than Adalimumab. The feasibility of affinity maturation was further demonstrated by isolating a high affinity Fab clone from 1:103 or 1:105 spiked libraries

Comparison of longitudinal treatment effects with facemask and chincup therapy followed by fixed orthodontic treatment on Class III malocclusion

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the longitudinal treatment effects of facemask with rapid maxillary expansion (FM/RME) and chincup (CC) therapy followed by fixed orthodontic treatment (FOT) in Class III malocclusion (CIII) patients. Methods: The samples consisted of twenty-one CIII patients who had similar skeletal and dental characteristics before FM/RME or CC therapy and good retention results (Class I molar/canine relationship and positive overbite/overjet) after FOT (Group 1, FM/RME, n = 11; Group 2, CC, n = 10). Lateral cephalograms were taken before (T0) and after FM/RME or CC therapy (T1), and after FOT and retention (T2). Skeletal and dental variables were measured. Mann-Whitney U-test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for statistical analysis. Results: During T0-T1, FM/RME therapy induced forward movement of point A, and labioversion of the upper incisors. Both groups showed posterior repositioning of the mandible. FM/RME resulted in increase of the vertical dimension; however, CC caused an increase in articular angle and decrease in gonial angle. During T1-T2, both groups exhibited forward growth of point A. Group 1 showed forward growth and counterclockwise rotation of the mandible and increase of IMPA; however, Group 2, showed increase of ANS-Me/N-Me and decrease of overbite. Conclusions: The key factor for successful FM/RME and CC therapy and good retention results might be a harmonized forward growth of the maxilla that could keep pace with the growth and rotation of the mandible