Notes on bordered Floer homology

This is a survey of bordered Heegaard Floer homology, an extension of the Heegaard Floer invariant HF-hat to 3-manifolds with boundary. Emphasis is placed on how bordered Heegaard Floer homology can be used for computations.Comment: 73 pages, 29 figures. Based on lectures at the Contact and Symplectic Topology Summer School in Budapest, July 2012. v2: Fixed many small typo

Quadratic Word Equations with Length Constraints, Counter Systems, and Presburger Arithmetic with Divisibility

Word equations are a crucial element in the theoretical foundation of constraint solving over strings, which have received a lot of attention in recent years. A word equation relates two words over string variables and constants. Its solution amounts to a function mapping variables to constant strings that equate the left and right hand sides of the equation. While the problem of solving word equations is decidable, the decidability of the problem of solving a word equation with a length constraint (i.e., a constraint relating the lengths of words in the word equation) has remained a long-standing open problem. In this paper, we focus on the subclass of quadratic word equations, i.e., in which each variable occurs at most twice. We first show that the length abstractions of solutions to quadratic word equations are in general not Presburger-definable. We then describe a class of counter systems with Presburger transition relations which capture the length abstraction of a quadratic word equation with regular constraints. We provide an encoding of the effect of a simple loop of the counter systems in the theory of existential Presburger Arithmetic with divisibility (PAD). Since PAD is decidable, we get a decision procedure for quadratic words equations with length constraints for which the associated counter system is \emph{flat} (i.e., all nodes belong to at most one cycle). We show a decidability result (in fact, also an NP algorithm with a PAD oracle) for a recently proposed NP-complete fragment of word equations called regular-oriented word equations, together with length constraints. Decidability holds when the constraints are additionally extended with regular constraints with a 1-weak control structure.Comment: 18 page

Ultrasonic attenuation measurements at very high SNR: correlation, information theory and performance

This paper describes a system for ultrasonic wave attenuation measurements which is based on pseudo-random binary codes as transmission signals combined with on-the-fly correlation for received signal detection. The apparatus can receive signals in the nanovolt range against a noise background in the order of hundreds of microvolts and an analogue to digital convertor (ADC) bit-step also in the order of hundreds of microvolts. Very high signal to noise ratios (SNRs) are achieved without recourse to coherent averaging with its associated requirement for high sampling times. The system works by a process of dithering – in which very low amplitude received signals enter the dynamic range of the ADC by 'riding' on electronic noise at the system input. The amplitude of this 'useful noise' has to be chosen with care for an optimised design. The process of optimisation is explained on the basis of classical information theory and is achieved through a simple noise model. The performance of the system is examined for different transmitted code lengths and gain settings in the receiver chain. Experimental results are shown to verify the expected operation when the system is applied to a very highly attenuating material – an aerated slurry

Clinical Study Arteriovenous Passage Times and Visual Field Progression in Normal Tension Glaucoma

properly cited. Purpose. Fluorescein angiographic studies revealed prolonged arteriovenous passage (AVP) times and increased fluorescein filling defects in normal tension glaucoma (NTG) compared to healthy controls. The purpose of this study was to correlate baseline AVP and fluorescein filling defects with visual field progression in patients with NTG. Patients and Methods. Patients with a follow-up period of at least 3 years and at least 4 visual field examinations were included in this retrospective study. Fluorescein angiography was performed at baseline using a confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO, Rodenstock Instr.); fluorescein filling defects and AVP were measured by digital image analysis and dye dilution curves (25 Hz). Visual field progression was evaluated using regression analysis of the MD (Humphrey-Zeiss, SITA-24-2, MD progression per year (dB/year)). 72 patients with NTG were included, 44 patients in study 1 (fluorescein filling defects) and 28 patients in study 2 (AVP). Results. In study 1 (mean followup 6.6 ± 1.9 years, 10 ± 5 visual field tests), MD progression per year (−0.51 ± 0.59 dB/year) was significantly correlated to the age ( = 0.04, = −0.29) but not to fluorescein filling defects, IOP, or MD at baseline. In study 2 (mean follow-up 6.6 ± 2.2 years, 10 ± 5 visual field tests), MD progression per year (−0.45 ± 0.51 dB/year) was significantly correlated to AVP ( = 0.03, = 0.39) but not to age, IOP, or MD at baseline. Conclusion. Longer AVP times at baseline are correlated to visual field progression in NTG. Impaired retinal blood flow seems to be an important factor for glaucoma progression

Identification of the human factors contributing to maintenance failures in a petroleum operation

Objective: This research aimed to identify the most frequently occurring human factors contributing to maintenance-related failures within a petroleum industry organization. Commonality between failures will assist in understanding reliability in maintenance processes, thereby preventing accidents in high-hazard domains. Background: Methods exist for understanding the human factors contributing to accidents. Their application in a maintenance context mainly has been advanced in aviation and nuclear power. Maintenance in the petroleum industry provides a different context for investigating the role that human factors play in influencing outcomes. It is therefore worth investigating the contributing human factors to improve our understanding of both human factors in reliability and the factors specific to this domain. Method: Detailed analyses were conducted of maintenance- related failures (N = 38) in a petroleum company using structured interviews with maintenance technicians. The interview structure was based on the Human Factor Investigation Tool (HFIT), which in turn was based on Rasmussen’s model of human malfunction .Results: A mean of 9.5 factors per incident was identified across the cases investigated. The three most frequent human factors contributing to the maintenance failures were found to be assumption (79% of cases), design and maintenance (71%), and communication (66%).Conclusion: HFIT proved to be a useful instrument for identifying the pattern of human factors that recurred most frequently in maintenance-related failures. Application: The high frequency of failures attributed to assumptions and communication demonstrated the importance of problem-solving abilities and organizational communication in a domain where maintenance personnel have a high degree of autonomy and a wide geographical distribution

Vgl1, a multi-KH domain protein, is a novel component of the fission yeast stress granules required for cell survival under thermal stress

Multiple KH-domain proteins, collectively known as vigilins, are evolutionarily highly conserved proteins that are present in eukaryotic organisms from yeast to metazoa. Proposed roles for vigilins include chromosome segregation, messenger RNA (mRNA) metabolism, translation and tRNA transport. As a step toward understanding its biological function, we have identified the fission yeast vigilin, designated Vgl1, and have investigated its role in cellular response to environmental stress. Unlike its counterpart in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we found no indication that Vgl1 is required for the maintenance of cell ploidy in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Instead, Vgl1 is required for cell survival under thermal stress, and vgl1Δ mutants lose their viability more rapidly than wild-type cells when incubated at high temperature. As for Scp160 in S. cerevisiae, Vgl1 bound polysomes accumulated at endoplasmic reticulum (ER) but in a microtubule-independent manner. Under thermal stress, Vgl1 is rapidly relocalized from the ER to cytoplasmic foci that are distinct from P-bodies but contain stress granule markers such as poly(A)-binding protein and components of the translation initiation factor eIF3. Together, these observations demonstrated in S. pombe the presence of RNA granules with similar composition as mammalian stress granules and identified Vgl1 as a novel component that required for cell survival under thermal stress

Jewish Immigrants in Israel: Disintegration Within Integration?

In her chapter, ‘Disintegration within integration’, Amandine Desille examines more recent transformations of Israel’s Law of Return – the Israeli immigration policy which provides the (imagined) repatriation of Diaspora Jews to Israel – in a context of liberalisation of the Israeli economy and the devolution of power to local authorities. Today, new immigrants follow two paths of ‘integration’: ‘direct absorp-tion’, where immigrants are granted benefits while being free to settle wherever they find fit; and ‘community absorption’, where immigrants are placed in ‘absorption centres’ and see their entitlements conditioned by residence, religious observance and more. Those two paths are ‘ethnicised’ in the sense that they depend on country of origin – Western immigrants, considered as economically useful, benefit from direct absorption and a more pluralist attitude of local governments, while immi-grants from Africa and Asia are the objects of an assimilationist policy. This situa-tion of ‘(dis)integration’ within what is supposed to be an inclusive immigrant policy for all Jews, shows the extent to which new criteria of perceived economic performance limit the integration of specific segments of newcomers. The rescaling of immigration and immigrant policies to subnational governments, although it has introduced a more multicultural approach, antagonist to the assimilationist ideology at work in Israel, has not enabled an alternative policy framework which is more accommodating to all.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

GPs' decisions on drug treatment for patients with high cholesterol values: A think-aloud study

BACKGROUND: The purpose was to examine how General Practitioners (GPs) use clinical information and rules from guidelines in their decisions on drug treatment for high cholesterol values. METHODS: Twenty GPs were presented with six case vignettes and were instructed to think aloud while successively more information about a case was presented, and finally to decide if a drug should be prescribed or not. The statements were coded for the clinical information to which they referred and for favouring or not favouring prescription. RESULTS: The evaluation of clinical information was compatible with decision-making as a search for reasons or arguments. Lifestyle-related information like smoking and overweight seemed to be evaluated from different perspectives. A patient's smoking favoured treatment for some GPs and disfavoured treatment for others. CONCLUSIONS: The method promised to be useful for understanding why doctors differ in their decisions on the same patient descriptions and why rules from the guidelines are not followed strictly

A Survey on Continuous Time Computations

We provide an overview of theories of continuous time computation. These theories allow us to understand both the hardness of questions related to continuous time dynamical systems and the computational power of continuous time analog models. We survey the existing models, summarizing results, and point to relevant references in the literature

abd-A Regulation by the iab-8 Noncoding RNA

The homeotic genes in Drosophila melanogaster are aligned on the chromosome in the order of the body segments that they affect. The genes affecting the more posterior segments repress the more anterior genes. This posterior dominance rule must be qualified in the case of abdominal-A (abd-A) repression by Abdominal-B (Abd-B). Animals lacking Abd-B show ectopic expression of abd-A in the epidermis of the eighth abdominal segment, but not in the central nervous system. Repression in these neuronal cells is accomplished by a 92 kb noncoding RNA. This “iab-8 RNA” produces a micro RNA to repress abd-A, but also has a second, redundant repression mechanism that acts only “in cis.” Transcriptional interference with the abd-A promoter is the most likely mechanism