Blind Mans Buff Galop

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-ps/1410/thumbnail.jp

Voices Of The Night : Reverie

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-ps/1706/thumbnail.jp

Verification of Hierarchical Artifact Systems

Data-driven workflows, of which IBM's Business Artifacts are a prime exponent, have been successfully deployed in practice, adopted in industrial standards, and have spawned a rich body of research in academia, focused primarily on static analysis. The present work represents a significant advance on the problem of artifact verification, by considering a much richer and more realistic model than in previous work, incorporating core elements of IBM's successful Guard-Stage-Milestone model. In particular, the model features task hierarchy, concurrency, and richer artifact data. It also allows database key and foreign key dependencies, as well as arithmetic constraints. The results show decidability of verification and establish its complexity, making use of novel techniques including a hierarchy of Vector Addition Systems and a variant of quantifier elimination tailored to our context.Comment: Full version of the accepted PODS pape

Linguistics

Contains reports on four research projects.U. S. Air Force (Electronics Systems Division) under Contract AF 19(628)-2487Joint Services Electronics Programs (U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E)National Science Foundation (Grant GK-835)National Institutes of Health (Grant 2 PO1 MH-04737-06)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496

Dietary Methionine Restriction Regulates Liver Protein Synthesis and Gene Expression Independently of Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 2 Phosphorylation in Mice

Background: The phosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (p-eIF2) during dietary amino acid insufficiency reduces protein synthesis and alters gene expression via the integrated stress response (ISR).Objective: We explored whether a Met-restricted (MR) diet activates the ISR to reduce body fat and regulate protein balance.Methods: Male and female mice aged 3-6 mo with either whole-body deletion of general control nonderepressible 2 (Gcn2) or liver-specific deletion of protein kinase R-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (Perk) alongside wild-type or floxed control mice were fed an obesogenic diet sufficient in Met (0.86%) or an MR (0.12% Met) diet for ≤5 wk. Ala enrichment with deuterium was measured to calculate protein synthesis rates. The guanine nucleotide exchange factor activity of eIF2B was measured alongside p-eIF2 and hepatic mRNA expression levels at 2 d and 5 wk. Metabolic phenotyping was conducted at 4 wk, and body composition was measured throughout. Results were evaluated with the use of ANOVA (P < 0.05).Results: Feeding an MR diet for 2 d did not increase hepatic p-eIF2 or reduce eIF2B activity in wild-type or Gcn2-/- mice, yet many genes transcriptionally regulated by the ISR were altered in both strains in the same direction and amplitude. Feeding an MR diet for 5 wk increased p-eIF2 and reduced eIF2B activity in wild-type but not Gcn2-/- mice, yet ISR-regulated genes altered in both strains similarly. Furthermore, the MR diet reduced mixed and cytosolic but not mitochondrial protein synthesis in both the liver and skeletal muscle regardless of Gcn2 status. Despite the similarities between strains, the MR diet did not increase energy expenditure or reduce body fat in Gcn2-/- mice. Finally, feeding the MR diet to mice with Perk deleted in the liver increased hepatic p-eIF2 and altered body composition similar to floxed controls.Conclusions: Hepatic activation of the ISR resulting from an MR diet does not require p-eIF2. Gcn2 status influences body fat loss but not protein balance when Met is restricted

Legal Issues about Metadata: Data Privacy vs Information Security

International audienceFor the purposes of our work we use the concept of metadata to implement enterprise digital right management mechanisms in an intelligent document environment. Such metadata allow us to firstly define contextual security rules and secondly to ensure the information traceability. However, its use may have legal implications, especially with regard to metadata that can be stored (see personal data, privacy), how it should be stored (see probative value in case of litigation, digital forensics) or computer processing in which it may be involved. Another topical issue is the storage and the processing of data using a service provider: the cloud. We must ensure, however, that this solution does not lead to a loss of information controllability for the company. This article aims to position our work with respect to these legal issues

Thermodynamical fingerprints of fractal spectra

We investigate the thermodynamics of model systems exhibiting two-scale fractal spectra. In particular, we present both analytical and numerical studies on the temperature dependence of the vibrational and electronic specific heats. For phonons, and for bosons in general, we show that the average specific heat can be associated to the average (power law) density of states. The corrections to this average behavior are log-periodic oscillations which can be traced back to the self-similarity of the spectral staircase. In the electronic case, even if the thermodynamical quantities exhibit a strong dependence on the particle number, regularities arise when special cases are considered. Applications to substitutional and hierarchical structures are discussed.Comment: 8 latex pages, 9 embedded PS figure

Velocity-selective direct frequency-comb spectroscopy of atomic vapors

We present an experimental and theoretical investigation of two-photon direct frequency-comb spectroscopy performed through velocity-selective excitation. In particular, we explore the effect of repetition rate on the $\textrm{5S}_{1/2}\rightarrow \textrm{5D}_{3/2, 5/2}$ two-photon transitions excited in a rubidium atomic vapor cell. The transitions occur via step-wise excitation through the $\textrm{5P}_{1/2, 3/2}$ states by use of the direct output of an optical frequency comb. Experiments were performed with two different frequency combs, one with a repetition rate of $\approx 925$ MHz and one with a repetition rate of $\approx 250$ MHz. The experimental spectra are compared to each other and to a theoretical model.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Optical implementation of the wavelet transform by using a bacteriorhodopsin film as an optically addressed spatial light modulator

An optical system utilizing the photoinduced dichroism in a bacteriorhodopsin film has been demonstrated for the optical implementation of wavelet transforms. The dichroism, induced by the image of a wavelet filter on a bacteriorhodopsin film leads to polarization rotation of the Fourier components of an image. The polarization-rotated Fourier components of an input scene are analyzed with a polarizer to give the wavelet transform components. The dichroism is induced with beams whose profiles are determined by wavelet filters in order to perform the optical wavelet transform