Incentive Stackelberg Mean-payoff Games

We introduce and study incentive equilibria for multi-player meanpayoff games. Incentive equilibria generalise well-studied solution concepts such as Nash equilibria and leader equilibria (also known as Stackelberg equilibria). Recall that a strategy profile is a Nash equilibrium if no player can improve his payoff by changing his strategy unilaterally. In the setting of incentive and leader equilibria, there is a distinguished player called the leader who can assign strategies to all other players, referred to as her followers. A strategy profile is a leader strategy profile if no player, except for the leader, can improve his payoff by changing his strategy unilaterally, and a leader equilibrium is a leader strategy profile with a maximal return for the leader. In the proposed case of incentive equilibria, the leader can additionally influence the behaviour of her followers by transferring parts of her payoff to her followers. The ability to incentivise her followers provides the leader with more freedom in selecting strategy profiles, and we show that this can indeed improve the payoff for the leader in such games. The key fundamental result of the paper is the existence of incentive equilibria in mean-payoff games. We further show that the decision problem related to constructing incentive equilibria is NP-complete. On a positive note, we show that, when the number of players is fixed, the complexity of the problem falls in the same class as two-player mean-payoff games. We also present an implementation of the proposed algorithms, and discuss experimental results that demonstrate the feasibility of the analysis of medium sized games.Comment: 15 pages, references, appendix, 5 figure

Understanding BL Lac objects Structural & kinematic mode changes in the BL Lac object PKS 0735+178

Context. We present evidence that parsec-scale jets in BL Lac objects may be significantly distinct in kinematics from their counterparts in quasars. We argued this previously for the BL lac sources 1803+784 and 0716+714, report here a similar pattern for another well-known BL Lac object, PKS 0735+178, whose nuclear jet is found to exhibit kinematics atypical of quasars. Aims. A detailed study of the jet components' motion reveals that the standard AGN paradigm of apparent superluminal motion does not always describe the kinematics in BL Lac objects. We study 0735+178 here to augment and improve the understanding of the peculiar motions in the jets of BL Lac objects as a class. Methods. We analyzed 15 GHz VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) observations (2cm/MOJAVE survey) performed at 23 epochs between 1995.27 and 2008.91. Results. We found a drastic structural mode change in the VLBI jet of 0735+178, between 2000.4 and 2001.8 when its twice sharply bent trajectory turned into a linear shape.We further found that this jet had undergone a similar transition sometime between December 1981 and June 1983. A mode change, occurring in the reverse direction (between mid-1992 and mid-1995) has already been reported in the literature. These structural mode changes are found to be reflected in changed kinematical behavior of the nuclear jet, manifested as an apparent superluminal motion and stationarity of the radio knots. In addition, we found the individual mode changes to correlate in time with the maxima in the optical light curve. The last two transitions occurred before a (modest) radio flare. The behavior of this pc-scale jet appears to favor a scenario involving non-ballistic motions of the radio knots, produced by the precession of a continuous jet within the ambient medium.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A (Abstract reduced for astro-ph

Comparative study of syndromic and etiological diagnosis of reproductive tract infections/sexually transmitted infections in women in Delhi

SummaryBackgroundThe adequacy of the World Health Organization's syndromic approach for the diagnosis and management of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially at primary health centers (PHCs) and at other levels, is still debatable in different settings in India and requires validation.ObjectivesA cross-sectional study was carried out in women attending the peripheral government clinics of Delhi in order to (1) enumerate their self-reported reproductive tract infection (RTI)/sexually transmitted infection (STI) symptoms; (2) assess their clinical status; (3) determine the syndromic diagnosis of RTI/STI in symptomatic women and etiological diagnosis in both symptomatic and asymptomatic women; and (4) compare the level of agreement between self-reporting of morbidity and syndromic and etiological diagnosis.Materials and methodsThe study was conducted over 26 months in 4090 women attending peripheral government healthcare centers, both rural and urban, in four zones of Delhi. They were recruited into four different study groups: group I, non-pregnant, reporting with symptoms of RTI/STI; group II, with a bad obstetric history or infertility; group III, pregnant women in any trimester attending the antenatal clinic; and group IV, the control group. Gynecological examination, followed by the collection of genital specimens and blood, were performed after informed and written consent was obtained. Every symptomatic patient was managed on the basis of algorithms of the syndromic approach as recommended by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), India. All specimens were transported to the STD Reference Laboratory, Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi and processed by standard methods to diagnose the various STDs. Laboratory reports were sent to the clinicians and appropriate treatment was instituted. Data were analyzed by applying statistical methods.ResultsOverall, self-reporting of morbidity was 65.0%. However, the percentage of women with some STD-related syndrome was 71.4%. The rural women were observed to have significantly more STD syndromes than their urban counterparts. The etiological diagnosis could be established in only 32.2% of cases.ConclusionsThis study highlights the wide variation between self-reporting of morbidity and syndromic- and etiology-based diagnosis in women from both rural and urban settings. This has implications for the syndromic approach to STI case management. These observations call for a review of the diagnostic policy for RTIs/STIs by national authorities in order to avoid the overuse of antimicrobials. The study also highlights the need for the introduction and/or strengthening of facilities for simple diagnostic tests for RTIs/STIs, especially at the peripheral healthcare level

Using Higher Moments of Fluctuations and their Ratios in the Search for the QCD Critical Point

The QCD critical point can be found in heavy ion collision experiments via the non-monotonic behavior of many fluctuation observables as a function of the collision energy. The event-by-event fluctuations of various particle multiplicities are enhanced in those collisions that freeze out near the critical point. Higher, non-Gaussian, moments of the event-by-event distributions of such observables are particularly sensitive to critical fluctuations, since their magnitude depends on the critical correlation length to a high power. We present quantitative estimates of the contribution of critical fluctuations to the third and fourth moments of the pion, proton and net proton multiplicities, as well as estimates of various measures of pion-proton correlations, all as a function of the same five non-universal parameters, one of which is the correlation length that parametrizes proximity to the critical point. We show how to use nontrivial but parameter independent ratios among these more than a dozen fluctuation observables to discover the critical point. We also construct ratios that, if the critical point is found, can be used to overconstrain the values of the non-universal parameters.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Version to appear in PRD. Footnote and reference adde

A smart polymer for sequence-selective binding, pulldown, and release of DNA targets

Selective isolation of DNA is crucial for applications in biology, bionanotechnology, clinical diagnostics and forensics. We herein report a smart methanol-responsive polymer (MeRPy) that can be programmed to bind and separate single- as well as double-stranded DNA targets. Captured targets are quickly isolated and released back into solution by denaturation (sequence-agnostic) or toehold-mediated strand displacement (sequence-selective). The latter mode allows 99.8% efficient removal of unwanted sequences and 79% recovery of highly pure target sequences. We applied MeRPy for the depletion of insulin, glucagon, and transthyretin cDNA from clinical next-generation sequencing (NGS) libraries. This step improved the data quality for low-abundance transcripts in expression profiles of pancreatic tissues. Its low cost, scalability, high stability and ease of use make MeRPy suitable for diverse applications in research and clinical laboratories, including enhancement of NGS libraries, extraction of DNA from biological samples, preparative-scale DNA isolations, and sorting of DNA-labeled non-nucleic acid targets. © 2020, The Author(s)

AUTOLOGOUS OSTEOCHONDRAL GRAFTING FOR OSTEOCHONDRITIS DESSICANS A CASE REPORT

Osteochondral defects are common injuries among the young population. Athletes are more prone to these injuries given the amount the stress and strain they put on their lower limbs. The viscoelastic nature of cartilage, which allows load bearing, is disrupted. Early recognition and treatment is needed to prevent Early Osteoarthritis. We are presenting one such case, where a 25 year old male patient with Grade 4 OCD was treated with Autologous osteochondral graft taken from the Non weight bearing part of the femur

Machine Learning Based Classification Model for Network Traffic Anomaly Detection

In current days, cloud environments are facing a huge challenge from the attackers in terms of various attacks thrown to the cloud service providers. In both industry and academics, the problem of detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks is now a challenging issue. Detecting Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) threats is mainly a classification problem that can be addressed using data mining, machine learning and deep learning techniques. DDoS attacks can occur in any of the seven-layer OSI model's network. Hence, detecting the DDoS attacks is an important task for cloud service providers to overcome dangerous attacks and loss incurred to stake holders and also the provider

AUTOLOGOUS OSTEOCHONDRAL GRAFTING FOR OSTEOCHONDRITIS DESSICANS A CASE REPORT

Osteochondral defects are common injuries among the young population. Athletes are more prone to these injuries given the amount the stress and strain they put on their lower limbs. The viscoelastic nature of cartilage, which allows load bearing, is disrupted. Early recognition and treatment is needed to prevent Early Osteoarthritis. We are presenting one such case, where a 25 year old male patient with Grade 4 OCD was treated with Autologous osteochondral graft taken from the Non weight bearing part of the femur

Podophyllum hexandrum-Mediated Survival Protection and Restoration of Other Cellular Injuries in Lethally Irradiated Mice

This study aims at the development of a safe and effective formulation to counter the effects of lethal irradiation. The sub-fraction (G-001M), prepared from Podophyllum hexandrum has rendered high degree of survival (>90%) at a dose of 6 mg kg−1 body weight (intramuscular) in lethally irradiated mice. Therapeutic dose of G-001M, at about 20 times lower concentration than its LD100, has revealed a DRF of 1.62. Comet assay studies in peripheral blood leukocytes have reflected that, treatment of G-001M before irradiation has significantly reduced DNA tail length (P < .001) and DNA damage score (P < .001), as compared to radiation-only group. Spleen cell counts in irradiated animals had declined drastically at the very first day of exposure, and the fall continued till the 5th day (P < .001). In the treated irradiated groups, there was a steep reduction in the counts initially, but this phase did not prolong. More than 60% decline in thymocytes of irradiated group animals was registered at 5 h of irradiation when compared with controls, and the fall progressed further downwards with the similar pace till 5th day of exposure (P < .001). At later intervals, thymus was found fully regressed. In G-001M pre-treated irradiated groups also, thymocytes decreased till the 5th day but thereafter rejuvenated and within 30 days of treatment the values were close to normal. Current studies have explicitly indicated that, G-001M in very small doses has not only rendered high survivability in lethally irradiated mice, but also protected their cellular DNA, besides supporting fast replenishment of the immune system