On the Stability of Fundamental Couplings in the Galaxy

Astrophysical tests of the stability of Nature's fundamental couplings are a key probe of the standard paradigms in fundamental physics and cosmology. In this report we discuss updated constraints on the stability of the fine-structure constant $\alpha$ and the proton-to-electron mass ratio $\mu=m_p/m_e$ within the Galaxy. We revisit and improve upon the analysis by Truppe {\it et al.} by allowing for the possibility of simultaneous variations of both couplings and also by combining them with the recent measurements by Levshakov {\it et al.} By considering representative unification scenarios we find no evidence for variations of $\alpha$ at the 0.4 ppm level, and of $\mu$ at the 0.6 ppm level; if one uses the Levshakov bound on $\mu$ as a prior, the$\alpha$ bound is improved to 0.1 ppm. We also highlight how these measurements can constrain (and discriminate among) several fundamental physics paradigms.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Local arrangement of Fibronectin by myofibroblasts governs peripheral nuclear positioning in muscle cells

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)Skeletal muscle cells (myofibers) are rod-shaped multinucleated cells surrounded by an extracellular matrix (ECM) basal lamina. In contrast to other cell types, nuclei in myofibers are positioned just below the plasma membrane at the cell periphery. Peripheral nuclear positioning occurs during myogenesis and is driven by myofibril crosslinking and contraction. Here we show that peripheral nuclear positioning is triggered by local accumulation of fibronectin secreted by myofibroblasts. We demonstrate that fibronectin via α5-integrin mediates peripheral nuclear positioning dependent on FAK and Src activation. Finally, we show that Cdc42, downstream of restricted fibronectin activation, is required for myofibril crosslinking but not myofibril contraction. Thus we identify that local activation of integrin by fibronectin secreted by myofibroblasts activates peripheral nuclear positioning in skeletal myofibers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Key Phrase Extraction of Lightly Filtered Broadcast News

This paper explores the impact of light filtering on automatic key phrase extraction (AKE) applied to Broadcast News (BN). Key phrases are words and expressions that best characterize the content of a document. Key phrases are often used to index the document or as features in further processing. This makes improvements in AKE accuracy particularly important. We hypothesized that filtering out marginally relevant sentences from a document would improve AKE accuracy. Our experiments confirmed this hypothesis. Elimination of as little as 10% of the document sentences lead to a 2% improvement in AKE precision and recall. AKE is built over MAUI toolkit that follows a supervised learning approach. We trained and tested our AKE method on a gold standard made of 8 BN programs containing 110 manually annotated news stories. The experiments were conducted within a Multimedia Monitoring Solution (MMS) system for TV and radio news/programs, running daily, and monitoring 12 TV and 4 radio channels.Comment: In 15th International Conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue (TSD 2012

Eutectic mixtures based on polyalcohols as sustainable solvents: screening and characterization

Despite some promising potential applications of eutectic systems containing choline chloride ([Ch]Cl) and a polyalcohol, a detailed investigation of the thermodynamic behavior of these systems is still missing. In this work, the solid-liquid equilibria phase diagrams of binary systems containing [Ch]Cl and one from six different polyalcohols (ethylene glycol (EG), 1,3-propanediol, glycerol (Gly), meso-erythritol, xylitol, and sorbitol) were measured in the full composition. Except for the mixtures with Gly or EG, a quasi-ideal behavior in the [Ch]Cl solubility curve is observed. In the polyalcohol solubility curve, the mixtures present small negative deviations from ideality, except for [Ch]Cl + EG, which is slightly positive. The solid-liquid phase diagrams show a large liquid composition window, and not a fixed stoichiometry for the eutectic points, where the mixtures can be used as solvents close to, or below, room temperature. Aiming at their application, viscosities and densities were measured at the eutectic point in the temperature range from 278.15 to 373.15 K. All systems present densities and viscosities higher than water, which is directly related to the strong interactions between the components. Solvatochromic parameters were measured to characterize the solvents, and they show that solvent tunability can be achieved by varying the polyalcohol mole fraction.This work was developed within the scope of the project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, UIDB/50011/2020 & UIDP/50011/2020, and CIMO-Mountain Research Center, UIDB/00690/2020, both financed by national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology/MCTES. The NMR spectrometers are part of the National NMR Network (PTNMR) and are partially supported by Infrastructure Project Nº 022161 (cofinanced by FEDER through COMPETE 2020, POCI and PORL and FCT through PIDDAC). L.P.S. acknowledges FCT for her PhD grant (SFRH/BD/135976/2018).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A web portal for the certification of open source software

Abstract. This paper presents a web portal for the certification of open source software. The portal aims at helping programmers in the internet age, when there are (too) many open source reusable libraries and tools available. Our portal offers programmers a web-based and easy setting to analyze and certify open source software, which is a crucial step to help programmers choosing among many available alternatives, and to get some guarantees before using one piece of software. The paper presents our first prototype of such web portal. It also describes in detail a domain specific language that allows programmers to describe with a high degree of abstraction specific open source software certifications. The design and implementation of this language is the core of the web portal

Correction: Ferreira, P.M., et al. A neural network based intelligent predictive sensor for cloudiness, solar radiation and air temperature. Sensors 2012, 12, 15750–15777

Accurate measurements of global solar radiation and atmospheric temperature, as well as the availability of the predictions of their evolution over time, are important for different areas of applications, such as agriculture, renewable energy and energy management, or thermal comfort in buildings. For this reason, an intelligent, light-weight and portable sensor was developed, using artificial neural network models as the time-series predictor mechanisms. These have been identified with the aid of a procedure based on the multi-objective genetic algorithm. As cloudiness is the most significant factor affecting the solar radiation reaching a particular location on the Earth surface, it has great impact on the performance of predictive solar radiation models for that location. This work also represents one step towards the improvement of such models by using ground-to-sky hemispherical colour digital images as a means to estimate cloudiness by the fraction of visible sky corresponding to clouds and to clear sky. The implementation of predictive models in the prototype has been validated and the system is able to function reliably, providing measurements and four-hour forecasts of cloudiness, solar radiation and air temperature

accuracy and precision of statistical descriptors obtained from multidimensional diffusion signal inversion algorithms

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