The Effect of absorbing sites on the one-dimensional cellular automaton traffic flow with open boundaries

The effect of the absorbing sites with an absorbing rate $\beta_{0}$, in both one absorbing site (one way out) and two absorbing sites (two ways out) in a road, on the traffic flow phase transition is investigated using numerical simulations in the one-dimensional cellular automaton traffic flow model with open boundaries using parallel dynamics.In the case of one way out, there exist a critical position of the way out $i_{c1}$ below which the current is constant for $\beta_{0}$$<$$\beta_{0c2}$ and decreases when increasing $\beta_{0}$ for $\beta_{0}$$>$$\beta_{0c2}$. When the way out is located at a position greater than $i_{c2}$, the current increases with $\beta_{0}$ for $\beta_{0}$$<$$\beta_{0c1}$ and becomes constant for any value of $\beta_{0}$ greater than $\beta_{0c1}$. While, when the way out is located at any position between $i_{c1}$ and $i_{c2}$ ($i_{c1}$$<$$i_{c2}$), the current increases, for $\beta_{0}$$<$$\beta_{0c1}$, with $\beta_{0}$ and becomes constant for $\beta_{0c1}$$<$$\beta_{0}$$<$$\beta_{0c2}$ and decreases with $\beta_{0}$ for $\beta_{0}$$>$$\beta_{0c2}$. In the later case the density undergoes two successive first order transitions; from high density to maximal current phase at $\beta_{0}$$=$$\beta_{0c1}$ and from intermediate density to the low one at $\beta_{0}$$=$$\beta_{0c2}$. In the case of two ways out located respectively at the positions $i_{1}$ and $i_{2}$, the two successive transitions occur only when the distance $i_{2}$-$i_{1}$ separating the two ways is smaller than a critical distance $d_{c}$. Phase diagrams in the ($\alpha,\beta_{0}$), ($\beta,\beta_{0}$) and ($i_{1},\beta_{0}$) planes are established. It is found that the transitions between Free traffic, Congested traffic and maximal current phase are first order

Cloning, recombinant expression and characterization of a new glucoamylase gene from Aureobasidium pullulans NRRL 12974 and its potential application in raw potato starch degradation

A new amylase gene APGA1 was cloned from Aureobasidium pullulans NRRL 12974 and expressed in Pichia pastoris. This is the first report on cloning and expression of amylolytic gene from the industrially important microorganism A. pullulans. The purified recombinant protein with MW of 66 kDa and specific activity of 298.02 Umg-1 protein was verified as a glucoamylase by its hydrolytic mode. This recombinant glucoamylase with optimal pH of 4.5, and temperature of 60°C, showed good hydrolytic activity against raw potato starch. At 60°C, 83.1% of raw potato starch slurry (150 gl-1) was hydrolysed into glucose by 0.1 U mg-1 starch purified recombinant glucoamylase in less than 2.5 h. This is the highest raw starch hydrolysis efficiency report about recombinant fungal glucoamylase. This useful property indicated that this glucoamylase may find important applications in the starch saccharification industry and in bioethanol production.Key words: Glucoamylase, Aureobasidium pullulans, expression, raw starch degradation

Combined In Silico, In Vivo, and In Vitro Studies Shed Insights into the Acute Inflammatory Response in Middle-Aged Mice

We combined in silico, in vivo, and in vitro studies to gain insights into age-dependent changes in acute inflammation in response to bacterial endotoxin (LPS). Time-course cytokine, chemokine, and NO2-/NO3- data from "middle-aged" (6-8 months old) C57BL/6 mice were used to re-parameterize a mechanistic mathematical model of acute inflammation originally calibrated for "young" (2-3 months old) mice. These studies suggested that macrophages from middle-aged mice are more susceptible to cell death, as well as producing higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, vs. macrophages from young mice. In support of the in silico-derived hypotheses, resident peritoneal cells from endotoxemic middle-aged mice exhibited reduced viability and produced elevated levels of TNF-α, IL-6, IL-10, and KC/CXCL1 as compared to cells from young mice. Our studies demonstrate the utility of a combined in silico, in vivo, and in vitro approach to the study of acute inflammation in shock states, and suggest hypotheses with regard to the changes in the cytokine milieu that accompany aging. © 2013 Namas et al

Emotional persistence in online chatting communities

How do users behave in online chatrooms, where they instantaneously read and write posts? We analyzed about 2.5 million posts covering various topics in Internet relay channels, and found that user activity patterns follow known power-law and stretched exponential distributions, indicating that online chat activity is not different from other forms of communication. Analysing the emotional expressions (positive, negative, neutral) of users, we revealed a remarkable persistence both for individual users and channels. I.e. despite their anonymity, users tend to follow social norms in repeated interactions in online chats, which results in a specific emotional "tone" of the channels. We provide an agent-based model of emotional interaction, which recovers qualitatively both the activity patterns in chatrooms and the emotional persistence of users and channels. While our assumptions about agent's emotional expressions are rooted in psychology, the model allows to test different hypothesis regarding their emotional impact in online communication.Comment: 34 pages, 4 main and 12 supplementary figure

Increasing Dominance - the Role of Advertising, Pricing and Product Design

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level - that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising

Hydrodynamics of galactic dark matter

We consider simple hydrodynamical models of galactic dark matter in which the galactic halo is a self-gravitating and self-interacting gas that dominates the dynamics of the galaxy. Modeling this halo as a sphericaly symmetric and static perfect fluid satisfying the field equations of General Relativity, visible barionic matter can be treated as ``test particles'' in the geometry of this field. We show that the assumption of an empirical ``universal rotation curve'' that fits a wide variety of galaxies is compatible, under suitable approximations, with state variables characteristic of a non-relativistic Maxwell-Boltzmann gas that becomes an isothermal sphere in the Newtonian limit. Consistency criteria lead to a minimal bound for particle masses in the range $30 \hbox{eV} \leq m \leq 60 \hbox{eV}$ and to a constraint between the central temperature and the particles mass. The allowed mass range includes popular supersymmetric particle candidates, such as the neutralino, axino and gravitino, as well as lighter particles ($m\approx$ keV) proposed by numerical N-body simulations associated with self-interactive CDM and WDM structure formation theories.Comment: LaTeX article style, 16 pages including three figures. Final version to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

A hyperbolic slicing condition adapted to Killing fields and densitized lapses

We study the properties of a modified version of the Bona-Masso family of hyperbolic slicing conditions. This modified slicing condition has two very important features: In the first place, it guarantees that if a spacetime is static or stationary, and one starts the evolution in a coordinate system in which the metric coefficients are already time independent, then they will remain time independent during the subsequent evolution, {\em i.e.} the lapse will not evolve and will therefore not drive the time lines away from the Killing direction. Second, the modified condition is naturally adapted to the use of a densitized lapse as a fundamental variable, which in turn makes it a good candidate for a dynamic slicing condition that can be used in conjunction with some recently proposed hyperbolic reformulations of the Einstein evolution equations.Comment: 11 page

An Intelligent Decision Support System for the Detection of Meat Spoilage using Multispectral Images

In food industry, quality and safety are considered important issues worldwide that are directly related to health and social progress. The use of vision technology for quality testing of food production has the obvious advantage of being able to continuously monitor a production using non-destructive methods, thus increasing the quality and minimizing cost. The performance of an intelligent decision support system has been evaluated in monitoring the spoilage of minced beef stored either aerobically or under modified atmosphere packaging, at different storage temperatures (0, 5, 10, and 15 °C) utilising multispectral imaging information. This paper utilises a neuro-fuzzy model which incorporates a clustering pre-processing stage for the definition of fuzzy rules, while its final fuzzy rule base is determined by competitive learning. Initially, meat samples are classified according to their storage conditions, while identification models are then utilised for the prediction of the Total Viable Counts of bacteria. The innovation of the proposed approach is further extended to the identification of the temperature used for storage, utilizing only imaging spectral information. Results indicated that spectral information in combination with the proposed modelling scheme could be considered as an alternative methodology for the accurate evaluation of meat spoilage

Influence of Sex on Stroke Prognosis: A Demographic, Clinical, and Molecular Analysis

Identifying the complexities of the effect of sex on stroke risk, etiology, and lesion progression may lead to advances in the treatment and care of ischemic stroke (IS) and non-traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage patients (ICH). We studied the sex-related discrepancies on the clinical course of patients with IS and ICH, and we also evaluated possible molecular mechanisms involved. The study's main variable was the patient's functional outcome at 3-months. Logistic regression models were used in order to study the influence of sex on different inflammatory, endothelial and atrial dysfunction markers. We recruited 5,021 patients; 4,060 IS (54.8% male, 45.2% female) and 961 ICH (57.1% male, 42.9% female). Women were on average 5.7 years older than men (6.4 years in IS, 5.1 years in ICH), and more likely to have previous poor functional status, to suffer atrial fibrillation and to be on anticoagulants. IS patients showed sex-related differences at 3-months regarding poorer outcome (55.6% women, 43.6% men, p < 0.0001), but this relationship was not found in ICH (56.8% vs. 61.9%, p = 0.127). In IS, women had higher levels of NT-proBNP and 3-months worse outcome in both cardioembolic and non-cardioembolic stroke patients. Stroke patients showed sex-related differences in pre-hospital data, clinical variables and molecular markers, but only IS patients presented independent sex-related differences in 3-months poor outcome and mortality. There was a relationship between the molecular marker of atrial dysfunction NT-proBNP and worse functional outcome in women, resulting in a possible indicator of increased dysfunction

Intra- and extra-hospital improvement in ischemic stroke patients: influence of reperfusion therapy and molecular mechanisms

Neuroprotective treatments in ischemic stroke are focused to reduce the pernicious effect of excitotoxicity, oxidative stress and inflammation. However, those cellular and molecular mechanisms may also have beneficial effects, especially during the late stages of the ischemic stroke. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between the clinical improvement of ischemic stroke patients and the time-dependent excitotoxicity and inflammation. We included 4295 ischemic stroke patients in a retrospective study. The main outcomes were intra and extra-hospital improvement. High glutamate and IL-6 levels at 24 hours were associated with a worse intra-hospital improvement (OR:0.993, 95%CI: 0.990-0.996 and OR:0.990, 95%CI: 0.985-0.995). High glutamate and IL-6 levels at 24 hours were associated with better extra-hospital improvement (OR:1.13 95%CI, 1.07-1.12 and OR:1.14, 95%CI, 1.09-1.18). Effective reperfusion after recanalization showed the best clinical outcome. However, the long term recovery is less marked in patients with an effective reperfusion. The variations of glutamate and IL6 levels in the first 24 hours clearly showed a relationship between the molecular components of the ischemic cascade and the clinical outcome of patients. Our findings suggest that the rapid reperfusion after recanalization treatment blocks the molecular response to ischemia that is associated with restorative processes