Hydraulic Model Study: Genesee County Northeast Extension Sewer Contract 2B Pumping Station

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154201/1/39015101405333.pd

Contextuality and inductive bias in quantum machine learning

Generalisation in machine learning often relies on the ability to encode structures present in data into an inductive bias of the model class. To understand the power of quantum machine learning, it is therefore crucial to identify the types of data structures that lend themselves naturally to quantum models. In this work we look to quantum contextuality -- a form of nonclassicality with links to computational advantage -- for answers to this question. We introduce a framework for studying contextuality in machine learning, which leads us to a definition of what it means for a learning model to be contextual. From this, we connect a central concept of contextuality, called operational equivalence, to the ability of a model to encode a linearly conserved quantity in its label space. A consequence of this connection is that contextuality is tied to expressivity: contextual model classes that encode the inductive bias are generally more expressive than their noncontextual counterparts. To demonstrate this, we construct an explicit toy learning problem -- based on learning the payoff behaviour of a zero-sum game -- for which this is the case. By leveraging tools from geometric quantum machine learning, we then describe how to construct quantum learning models with the associated inductive bias, and show through our toy problem that they outperform their corresponding classical surrogate models. This suggests that understanding learning problems of this form may lead to useful insights about the power of quantum machine learning.Comment: comments welcom

The effects of insects, nutrients, and plant invasion on community structure and function above- and belowground

Soil nutrient availability, invasive plants, and insect presence can directly alter ecosystem structure and function, but less is known about how these factors may interact. In this 6-year study in an old-field ecosystem, we manipulated insect abundance (reduced and control), the propagule pressure of an invasive nitrogen-fixing plant (propagules added and control), and soil nutrient availability (nitrogen added, nitrogen reduced and control) in a fully crossed, completely randomized plot design. We found that nutrient amendment and, occasionally, insect abundance interacted with the propagule pressure of an invasive plant to alter above- and belowground structure and function at our site. Not surprisingly, nutrient amendment had a direct effect on aboveground biomass and soil nutrient mineralization. The introduction of invasive nitrogen-fixing plant propagules interacted with nutrient amendment and insect presence to alter soil bacterial abundance and the activity of the microbial community. While the larger-scale, longer-term bulk measurements such as biomass production and nutrient mineralization responded to the direct effects of our treatments, the shorter-term and dynamic microbial communities tended to respond to interactions among our treatments. Our results indicate that soil nutrients, invasive plants, and insect herbivores determine both above- and belowground responses, but whether such effects are independent versus interdependent varies with scale

Do Automated Legal Threats Reduce Freedom of Expression Online? Results from a Natural Experiment

Automated law enforcement systems support privately-operated enforcement bots to take legal action in hundreds of millions of cases a year. In the area of copyright, legal scholars have hypothesized the existence of “chilling effects” that harm public discourse by influencing people to self-censor protected speech. We test this hypothesis in a large-scale quasi-experiment with 9,818 accounts on Twitter that made 5,171,111 tweets. In a confirmatory interrupted time-series analysis, we find evidence that people reduce how much they post online after receiving a take-down notice from a copyright enforcement bot. On average, accounts sent fewer tweets after enforcement (p\u3c0.001). Accounts also changed from a daily increase in public tweets to a decline on average (p\u3c0.001). We also report on novel software that conducts third-party monitoring of the behavioral outcomes of automated law-enforcement systems. Since automated law enforcement can influence public discourse, third-party monitoring like this report will be essential to governing the power of enforcement algorithms in society

Divergent drivers of leaf trait variation within species, among species, and among functional groups.

Understanding variation in leaf functional traits-including rates of photosynthesis and respiration and concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus-is a fundamental challenge in plant ecophysiology. When expressed per unit leaf area, these traits typically increase with leaf mass per area (LMA) within species but are roughly independent of LMA across the global flora. LMA is determined by mass components with different biological functions, including photosynthetic mass that largely determines metabolic rates and contains most nitrogen and phosphorus, and structural mass that affects toughness and leaf lifespan (LL). A possible explanation for the contrasting trait relationships is that most LMA variation within species is associated with variation in photosynthetic mass, whereas most LMA variation across the global flora is associated with variation in structural mass. This hypothesis leads to the predictions that (i) gas exchange rates and nutrient concentrations per unit leaf area should increase strongly with LMA across species assemblages with low LL variance but should increase weakly with LMA across species assemblages with high LL variance and that (ii) controlling for LL variation should increase the strength of the above LMA relationships. We present analyses of intra- and interspecific trait variation from three tropical forest sites and interspecific analyses within functional groups in a global dataset that are consistent with the above predictions. Our analysis suggests that the qualitatively different trait relationships exhibited by different leaf assemblages can be understood by considering the degree to which photosynthetic and structural mass components contribute to LMA variation in a given assemblage

Time of Day-Dependent Alterations in Hippocampal Kynurenic Acid, Glutamate, and GABA in Adult Rats Exposed to Elevated Kynurenic Acid During Neurodevelopment

Hypofunction of glutamatergic signaling is causally linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, including psychotic disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Kynurenic acid (KYNA) has been found to be elevated in postmortem brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid of patients with psychotic illnesses and may be involved in the hypoglutamatergia and cognitive dysfunction experienced by these patients. As insults during the prenatal period are hypothesized to be linked to the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders, we presently utilized the embryonic kynurenine (EKyn) paradigm to induce a prenatal hit. Pregnant Wistar dams were fed chow laced with kynurenine to stimulate fetal brain KYNA elevation from embryonic day 15 to embryonic day 22. Control dams (ECon) were fed unlaced chow. Plasma and hippocampal tissue from young adult (postnatal day 56) ECon and EKyn male and female offspring were collected at the beginning of the light (Zeitgeber time, ZT 0) and dark (ZT 12) phases to assess kynurenine pathway metabolites. Hippocampal tissue was also collected at ZT 6 and ZT 18. In separate animals, in vivo microdialysis was conducted in the dorsal hippocampus to assess extracellular KYNA, glutamate, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Biochemical analyses revealed no changes in peripheral metabolites, yet hippocampal tissue KYNA levels were significantly impacted by EKyn treatment, and increased in male EKyn offspring at ZT 6. Interestingly, extracellular hippocampal KYNA levels were only elevated in male EKyn offspring during the light phase. Decreases in extracellular glutamate levels were found in the dorsal hippocampus of EKyn male and female offspring, while decreased GABA levels were present only in males during the dark phase. The current findings suggest that the EKyn paradigm may be a useful tool for investigation of sex- and time-dependent changes in hippocampal neuromodulation elicited by prenatal KYNA elevation, which may influence behavioral phenotypes and have translational relevance to psychotic disorders

Single-chain Fv phage display propensity exhibits strong positive correlation with overall expression levels

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Single chain Fvs (scFvs) are widely applied in research, diagnostics and therapeutic settings. Display and selection from combinatorial libraries is the main route to their discovery and many factors influence the success of this process. They exhibit low thermodynamic stability, resulting in low levels of premature cytosolic folding or aggregation which facilitates <it>sec </it>YEG-mediated translocation and phage in <it>E. coli</it>. However, there is little data analysing how this is related to and influenced by scFv protein expression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We characterised the relationship between overall scFv expression and display propensity for a panel of 15 anti-tetanus toxin scFvs and found a strong positive correlation (Rho = 0.88, p < 0.005) between the two parameters. Display propensity, overall expression and soluble localisation to the periplasm and extracellular fractions were clone specific characteristics which varied despite high levels of sequence homology. There was no correlation between display of scFv or its expression in non-fused (free) form with soluble scFv localisation to the periplasm or culture supernatant. This suggests that divergence in the fate of scFv-pIII and non-fused scFv after translocation to the periplasm accounts for the observed disparity. Differential degrees of periplasmic aggregation of non-fused scFv between clones may affect the partitioning of scFv in the periplasm and culture supernatant abrogating any correlation. We suggest that these factors do not apply to the scFv-pIII fusion since it remains anchored to the bacterial inner membrane as part of the innate phage packaging and budding process.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that in the absence of premature cytosolic aggregation or folding, the propensity of a scFv to be displayed on phage is directly related to its overall expression level and is thus indirectly influenced by factors such as codon bias, mRNA abundance or putative DNA motifs affecting expression. This suggests that scFvs capable of high overall expression and display levels may not produce high yields of non phage-fused soluble protein in either the periplasmic or extracellular fractions of <it>E. coli</it>. This should be considered when screening clones selected from combinatorial libraries for further study.</p> <p>The nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the anti-tetanus toxin scFvs have been deposited in the EMBL data base: accession numbers-C1: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749134">AM749134</ext-link>, C2: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749135">AM749135</ext-link>, C3: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749136">AM749136</ext-link>, C4: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749137">AM749137</ext-link>, C5: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749138">AM749138</ext-link>, N1: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749139">AM749139</ext-link>, N2: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749140">AM749140</ext-link>, N3: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749141">AM749141</ext-link>, N4: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749142">AM749142</ext-link>, N5: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749143">AM749143</ext-link> J1; <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749144">AM749144</ext-link>, J2: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749145">AM749145</ext-link>, J3: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749146">AM749146</ext-link>, J4: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749147">AM749147</ext-link>, J5: <ext-link ext-link-type="embl" ext-link-id="AM749148">AM749148</ext-link>.</p

Severe Brain Injury, Disability, and the Law: Achieving Justice for a Marginalized Population

Thousands of persons with severe brain injury who are minimally conscious or locked in are wrongly treated as if they are unconscious. Such individuals are unable to advocate for themselves and are typically segregated from society in hospitals or nursing homes. As a result, they constitute a class of persons who often lack access to adequate medical care, rehabilitation, and assistive devices that could aid them in communication and recovery. While this problem is often approached from a medical or scientific point of view, here we frame it as a legal issue amenable to legal remedies. This Article comprehensively explores and analyzes sources of federal, state, and international human rights law that can be leveraged- both in traditional and novel ways-to improve the lives and protect the rights of persons with severe brain injury. We argue that state laws may be the most promising basis for legal action to ameliorate the clinical marginalization and societal neglect faced by persons with severe brain injury, and to promote their recovery and reintegration into their communities

Woodland modification in Bronze and Iron Age central Anatolia: an anthracological signature for the Hittite state?

The Bronze and Iron Ages of central Anatolia encompass a period of significant social and political change. In contrast to the well-documented changes in the social landscape, the environmental landscape for the region at this time is poorly understood. The limited temporal and spatial coverage from environmental records means it is difficult to understand the finer details of environmental change, especially in relation to the archaeology of specific sites. This paper offers a complete and continuous diachronic wood charcoal assemblage for the Middle Bronze Age to Late Iron Age from Kaman-Kalehöyük in central Anatolia. Results show a significant decline in taxa richness from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age, particularly during the Hittite Empire period. The decline in richness is followed by a dramatic increase in pine use from the beginning of the Iron Age. The timing and exploitation of key taxa in the Kaman-Kalehöyük assemblage do not match that indicated in the regional pollen data but rather show a clear local signature chronologically matched to the Hittite Empire