An in-host model of HIV incorporating latent infection and viral mutation

We construct a seven-component model of the in-host dynamics of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type-1 (i.e, HIV) that accounts for latent infection and the propensity of viral mutation. A dynamical analysis is conducted and a theorem is presented which characterizes the long time behavior of the model. Finally, we study the effects of an antiretroviral drug and treatment implications.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of AIMS Conference on Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems (2015

Confinement induced by fermion damping in three-dimensional QED

The three-dimensional non-compact QED is known to exhibit weak confinement when fermions acquire a finite mass via the mechanism of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. In this paper, we study the effect of fermion damping caused by elastic scattering on the classical potential between fermions. By calculating the vacuum polarization function that incorporates the fermion damping effect, we show that fermion damping can induce a weak confinement even when the fermions are massless and the chiral symmetry is not broken.Comment: 4 pages, no figur

The Nonlinear Permittivity Including Non-Abelian Self-interaction of Plasmons in Quark-Gluon Plasma

By decomposing the distribution functions and color field to regular and fluctuation parts, the solution of the semi-classical kinetic equations of quark-gluon plasma is analyzed. Through expanding the kinetic equations of the fluctuation parts to third order, the nonlinear permittivity including the self-interaction of gauge field is obtained and a rough numerical estimate is given out for the important \vk =0 modes of the pure gluon plasma.Comment: 7 pages, shortened version accepted by Chin.Phys.Let

Competition of crystal field splitting and Hund's rule coupling in two-orbital magnetic metal-insulator transitions

Competition of crystal field splitting and Hund's rule coupling in magnetic metal-insulator transitions of half-filled two-orbital Hubbard model is investigated by multi-orbital slave-boson mean field theory. We show that with the increase of Coulomb correlation, the system firstly transits from a paramagnetic (PM) metal to a {\it N\'{e}el} antiferromagnetic (AFM) Mott insulator, or a nonmagnetic orbital insulator, depending on the competition of crystal field splitting and the Hund's rule coupling. The different AFM Mott insulator, PM metal and orbital insulating phase are none, partially and fully orbital polarized, respectively. For a small $J_{H}$ and a finite crystal field, the orbital insulator is robust. Although the system is nonmagnetic, the phase boundary of the orbital insulator transition obviously shifts to the small $U$ regime after the magnetic correlations is taken into account. These results demonstrate that large crystal field splitting favors the formation of the orbital insulating phase, while large Hund's rule coupling tends to destroy it, driving the low-spin to high-spin transition.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Whisper-to-speech conversion using restricted Boltzmann machine arrays

Whispers are a natural vocal communication mechanism, in which vocal cords do not vibrate normally. Lack of glottal-induced pitch leads to low energy, and an inherent noise-like spectral distribution reduces intelligibility. Much research has been devoted to processing of whispers, including conversion of whispers to speech. Unfortunately, among several approaches, the best reconstructed speech to date still contains obviously artificial muffles and suffers from an unnatural prosody. To address these issues, the novel use of multiple restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) is reported as a statistical conversion model between whisper and speech spectral envelopes. Moreover, the accuracy of estimated pitch is improved using machine learning techniques for pitch estimation within only voiced (V) regions. Both objective and subjective evaluations show that this new method improves the quality of whisper-reconstructed speech compared with the state-of-the-art approaches

Exact Cover with light

We suggest a new optical solution for solving the YES/NO version of the Exact Cover problem by using the massive parallelism of light. The idea is to build an optical device which can generate all possible solutions of the problem and then to pick the correct one. In our case the device has a graph-like representation and the light is traversing it by following the routes given by the connections between nodes. The nodes are connected by arcs in a special way which lets us to generate all possible covers (exact or not) of the given set. For selecting the correct solution we assign to each item, from the set to be covered, a special integer number. These numbers will actually represent delays induced to light when it passes through arcs. The solution is represented as a subray arriving at a certain moment in the destination node. This will tell us if an exact cover does exist or not.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, New Generation Computing, accepted, 200

Solving the subset-sum problem with a light-based device

We propose a special computational device which uses light rays for solving the subset-sum problem. The device has a graph-like representation and the light is traversing it by following the routes given by the connections between nodes. The nodes are connected by arcs in a special way which lets us to generate all possible subsets of the given set. To each arc we assign either a number from the given set or a predefined constant. When the light is passing through an arc it is delayed by the amount of time indicated by the number placed in that arc. At the destination node we will check if there is a ray whose total delay is equal to the target value of the subset sum problem (plus some constants).Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, Natural Computing, 200

Depth-resolved rhodopsin molecular contrast imaging for functional assessment of photoreceptors

Rhodopsin, the light-sensing molecule in the outer segments of rod photoreceptors, is responsible for converting light into neuronal signals in a process known as phototransduction. Rhodopsin is thus a functional biomarker for rod photoreceptors. Here we report a novel technology based on visible-light optical coherence tomography (VIS-OCT) for in vivo molecular imaging of rhodopsin. The depth resolution of OCT allows the visualization of the location where the change of optical absorption occurs and provides a potentially accurate assessment of rhodopsin content by segmentation of the image at the location. Rhodopsin OCT can be used to quantitatively image rhodopsin distribution and thus assess the distribution of functional rod photoreceptors in the retina. Rhodopsin OCT can bring significant impact into ophthalmic clinics by providing a tool for the diagnosis and severity assessment of a variety of retinal conditions

Thermodynamic Geometry and Critical Behavior of Black Holes

Based on the observations that there exists an analogy between the Reissner-Nordstr\"om-anti-de Sitter (RN-AdS) black holes and the van der Waals-Maxwell liquid-gas system, in which a correspondence of variables is $(\phi, q) \leftrightarrow (V,P)$, we study the Ruppeiner geometry, defined as Hessian matrix of black hole entropy with respect to the internal energy (not the mass) of black hole and electric potential (angular velocity), for the RN, Kerr and RN-AdS black holes. It is found that the geometry is curved and the scalar curvature goes to negative infinity at the Davies' phase transition point for the RN and Kerr black holes. Our result for the RN-AdS black holes is also in good agreement with the one about phase transition and its critical behavior in the literature.Comment: Revtex, 18 pages including 4 figure