1,419 research outputs found
The physical determinants of the thickness of lamellar polymer crystals
Based upon kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization in a simple
polymer model we present a new picture of the mechanism by which the thickness
of lamellar polymer crystals is constrained to a value close to the minimum
thermodynamically stable thickness. This description contrasts with those given
by the two dominant theoretical approaches.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, revte
Tree decompositions with small cost
The f-cost of a tree decomposition ({Xi | i e I}, T = (I;F))
for a function f : N -> R+ is defined as EieI f(|Xi|). This measure
associates with the running time or memory use of some algorithms
that use the tree decomposition. In this paper we investigate the
problem to find tree decompositions of minimum f-cost.
A function f : N -> R+ is fast, if for every i e N: f(i+1) => 2*f(i).
We show that for fast functions f, every graph G has a tree decomposition
of minimum f-cost that corresponds to a minimal triangulation
of G; if f is not fast, this does not hold. We give polynomial time
algorithms for the problem, assuming f is a fast function, for graphs
that has a polynomial number of minimal separators, for graphs of
treewidth at most two, and for cographs, and show that the problem
is NP-hard for bipartite graphs and for cobipartite graphs.
We also discuss results for a weighted variant of the problem derived
of an application from probabilistic networks
The IBMAP approach for Markov networks structure learning
In this work we consider the problem of learning the structure of Markov
networks from data. We present an approach for tackling this problem called
IBMAP, together with an efficient instantiation of the approach: the IBMAP-HC
algorithm, designed for avoiding important limitations of existing
independence-based algorithms. These algorithms proceed by performing
statistical independence tests on data, trusting completely the outcome of each
test. In practice tests may be incorrect, resulting in potential cascading
errors and the consequent reduction in the quality of the structures learned.
IBMAP contemplates this uncertainty in the outcome of the tests through a
probabilistic maximum-a-posteriori approach. The approach is instantiated in
the IBMAP-HC algorithm, a structure selection strategy that performs a
polynomial heuristic local search in the space of possible structures. We
present an extensive empirical evaluation on synthetic and real data, showing
that our algorithm outperforms significantly the current independence-based
algorithms, in terms of data efficiency and quality of learned structures, with
equivalent computational complexities. We also show the performance of IBMAP-HC
in a real-world application of knowledge discovery: EDAs, which are
evolutionary algorithms that use structure learning on each generation for
modeling the distribution of populations. The experiments show that when
IBMAP-HC is used to learn the structure, EDAs improve the convergence to the
optimum
Fish intake, erythrocyte n-3 fatty acid status and metabolic health in Danish adolescent girls and boys
Marinen-3 long-chain PUFA (n-3 LCPUFA) may have a beneficial effect on several aspects of the metabolic syndrome (dyslipidaemia, insulin resistance, hypertension and abdominal obesity). The metabolic syndrome is increasing in prevalence during adolescence, but only few studies have investigated the effects ofn-3 LCPUFA in adolescence. The present study examines associations between fish intake (assessed by a 7 d pre-coded food diary), erythrocyte (RBC) DHA status (analysed by GC) and metabolic syndrome measures (anthropometry, blood pressure and plasma lipids, insulin and glucose) in 109 17-year-old children from the Copenhagen Birth Cohort Study. Of the children, 8 % were overweight or obese and few showed signs of the metabolic syndrome, but all the metabolic syndrome variables were correlated. Median fish intake was 10·7 (interquartile range 3·6–21·2) g/d. Boys tended to have a higher fish intake (P = 0·052), but girls had significantly higher RBC levels of DHA (P = 0·001). Sex and fish intake explained 37 % of the variance in RBC-DHA (P < 0·001). After adjusting for confounders, high DHA status was found to be significantly correlated with higher systolic blood pressure (P = 0·014) and increased fasting insulin (P = 0·018), but no adverse association was observed with the mean metabolic syndromez-score. Overall, the present study showed the expected association between fish intake and RBC-DHA, which in contrast to our expectations tended to be associated with a poorer metabolic profile. Whether these results reflect the physiological function ofn-3 LCPUFA, lifestyle factors associated with fish intake in Denmark, or mere chance remains to be investigated.</jats:p
A Bayesian Approach to Inverse Quantum Statistics
A nonparametric Bayesian approach is developed to determine quantum
potentials from empirical data for quantum systems at finite temperature. The
approach combines the likelihood model of quantum mechanics with a priori
information over potentials implemented in form of stochastic processes. Its
specific advantages are the possibilities to deal with heterogeneous data and
to express a priori information explicitly, i.e., directly in terms of the
potential of interest. A numerical solution in maximum a posteriori
approximation was feasible for one--dimensional problems. Using correct a
priori information turned out to be essential.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, revte
Fish oil supplementation from 9 to 18 months of age affects the insulin-like growth factor axis in a sex-specific manner in Danish infants
AbstractSeveral studies have investigated the effects of fish oil (FO) on infant growth, but little is known about the effects of FO and sex on insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), the main regulator of growth in childhood. We explored whether FOv. sunflower oil (SO) supplementation from 9 to 18 months of age affected IGF-1 and its binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) and whether the potential effects were sex specific. Danish infants (n115) were randomly allocated to 5 ml/d FO (1·2 g/dn-3 long-chain PUFA (n-3 LCPUFA)) or SO. We measured growth, IGF-1, IGFBP-3 and erythrocyte EPA, a biomarker ofn-3 LCPUFA intake and status, at 9 and 18 months. Erythrocyte EPA increased strongly with FO compared with SO (P<0·001). There were no effects of FO compared with SO on IGF-1 in the total population, but a sex×group interaction (P=0·02). Baseline-adjusted IGF-1 at 18 months was 11·1 µg/l (95 % CI 0·4, 21·8;P=0·04) higher after FO compared with SO supplementation among boys only. The sex×group interaction was borderline significant in the model of IGFBP-3 (P=0·09), with lower IGFBP-3 with FO compared with SO among girls only (P=0·03). The results were supported by sex-specific dose–response associations between changes in erythrocyte EPA and changes in IGF-1 and IGFBP-3 (bothP<0·03). Moreover, IGF-1 was sex specifically associated with BMI and length. In conclusion, FO compared with SO resulted in higher IGF-1 among boys and lower IGFBP-3 among girls. The potential long-term implications for growth and body composition should be investigated further.</jats:p
Chaotic wave functions and exponential convergence of low-lying energy eigenvalues
We suggest that low-lying eigenvalues of realistic quantum many-body
hamiltonians, given, as in the nuclear shell model, by large matrices, can be
calculated, instead of the full diagonalization, by the diagonalization of
small truncated matrices with the exponential extrapolation of the results. We
show numerical data confirming this conjecture. We argue that the exponential
convergence in an appropriate basis may be a generic feature of complicated
("chaotic") systems where the wave functions are localized in this basis.Comment: 4 figure
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