722 research outputs found
Strings, Matrix Models, and Meanders
I briefly review the present status of bosonic strings and discretized random
surfaces in D>1 which seem to be in a polymer rather than stringy phase. As an
explicit example of what happens, I consider the Kazakov-Migdal model with a
logarithmic potential which is exactly solvable for any D (at large D for an
arbitrary potential). I discuss also the meander problem and report some new
results on its representation via matrix models and the relation to the
Kazakov-Migdal model. A supersymmetric matrix model is especially useful for
describing the principal meanders.Comment: 12 pages, 4 Latex figures, uses espcrc2.sty Talk at the 29th
Ahrenshoop Symp., Buckow, Germany, Aug.29 - Sep.2, 199
An inequality for relative entropy and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in Euclidean spaces
Let and denote density functions on the -dimensional
Euclidean space, and let and
denote their local
specifications. For a class of density functions we prove an inequality
between the relative entropy and a weighted sum of the conditional
relative entropies that holds for any . The
weights are proportional to the logarithmic Sobolev constants of the local
specifications of . Thereby we derive a logarithmic Sobolev inequality for a
weighted Gibbs sampler governed by the local specifications of . Moreover,
this inequality implies a classical logarithmic Sobolev inequality for , as
defined for Gaussian distribution by L. Gross. This strengthens a result by F.
Otto and M. Reznikoff. The proof is based on ideas developed by F. Otto and C.
Villani in their paper on the connection between Talagrand's
transportation-cost inequality and logarithmic Sobolev inequality.Comment: 29 pages (in PDF format) Submitted to Journal of Functional Analysis.
This paper tackles the same problem as arXiv:0907.4491, but gives a more
satisfactory result, and makes arXiv:0907.4491 superfluou
A Perceptual Shape Loss for Monocular 3D Face Reconstruction
Monocular 3D face reconstruction is a wide-spread topic, and existing
approaches tackle the problem either through fast neural network inference or
offline iterative reconstruction of face geometry. In either case
carefully-designed energy functions are minimized, commonly including loss
terms like a photometric loss, a landmark reprojection loss, and others. In
this work we propose a new loss function for monocular face capture, inspired
by how humans would perceive the quality of a 3D face reconstruction given a
particular image. It is widely known that shading provides a strong indicator
for 3D shape in the human visual system. As such, our new 'perceptual' shape
loss aims to judge the quality of a 3D face estimate using only shading cues.
Our loss is implemented as a discriminator-style neural network that takes an
input face image and a shaded render of the geometry estimate, and then
predicts a score that perceptually evaluates how well the shaded render matches
the given image. This 'critic' network operates on the RGB image and geometry
render alone, without requiring an estimate of the albedo or illumination in
the scene. Furthermore, our loss operates entirely in image space and is thus
agnostic to mesh topology. We show how our new perceptual shape loss can be
combined with traditional energy terms for monocular 3D face optimization and
deep neural network regression, improving upon current state-of-the-art
results.Comment: Accepted to PG 2023. Project page:
https://studios.disneyresearch.com/2023/10/09/a-perceptual-shape-loss-for-monocular-3d-face-reconstruction/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYdyoIZEuU
Dimension dependent hypercontractivity for Gaussian kernels
We derive sharp, local and dimension dependent hypercontractive bounds on the
Markov kernel of a large class of diffusion semigroups. Unlike the dimension
free ones, they capture refined properties of Markov kernels, such as trace
estimates. They imply classical bounds on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup and
a dimensional and refined (transportation) Talagrand inequality when applied to
the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Hypercontractive bounds on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck
semigroup driven by a non-diffusive L\'evy semigroup are also investigated.
Curvature-dimension criteria are the main tool in the analysis.Comment: 24 page
Software Newsroom – an approach to automation of news search and editing
We have developed tools and applied methods for automated identification of potential news from textual data for an automated news search system called Software Newsroom. The purpose of the tools is to analyze data collected from the internet and to identify information that has a high probability of containing new information. The identified information is summarized in order to help understanding the semantic contents of the data, and to assist the news editing process. It has been demonstrated that words with a certain set of syntactic and semantic properties are effective when building topic models for English. We demonstrate that words with the same properties in Finnish are useful as well. Extracting such words requires knowledge about the special characteristics of the Finnish language, which are taken into account in our analysis. Two different methodological approaches have been applied for the news search. One of the methods is based on topic analysis and it applies Multinomial Principal Component Analysis (MPCA) for topic model creation and data profiling. The second method is based on word association analysis and applies the log-likelihood ratio (LLR). For the topic mining, we have created English and Finnish language corpora from Wikipedia and Finnish corpora from several Finnish news archives and we have used bag-of-words presentations of these corpora as training data for the topic model. We have performed topic analysis experiments with both the training data itself and with arbitrary text parsed from internet sources. The results suggest that the effectiveness of news search strongly depends on the quality of the training data and its linguistic analysis. In the association analysis, we use a combined methodology for detecting novel word associations in the text. For detecting novel associations we use the background corpus from which we extract common word associations. In parallel, we collect the statistics of word co-occurrences from the documents of interest and search for associations with larger likelihood in these documents than in the background. We have demonstrated the applicability of these methods for Software Newsroom. The results indicate that the background-foreground model has significant potential in news search. The experiments also indicate great promise in employing background-foreground word associations for other applications. A combined application of the two methods is planned as well as the application of the methods on social media using a pre-translator of social media language.Peer reviewe
Positron emission tomography detects evidence of viability in rest technetium-99m sestamibi defects
AbstractObjectives. The purpose of this study was to determine the relative value of single-photon emission computed tomographic (SPECT) imaging at rest using technetium-99m methoxyisobutyl isonitrile (technetium-99m sestamibi) with positron emission tomography for detection of viable myocardium.Background. Recent studies comparing positron emission tomography and thallium-201 reinjection with rest technetium-99m sestamibi imaging have suggested that the latter technique underestimates myocardial viability.Methods. Twenty patients with a previous myocardial infarction underwent rest technetium-99m sestamibi imaging and positron emission tomography using fluorine (F)-18 deoxyglucose and nitrogen (N)-13 ammonia. In each patient, circumferential profile analysis was used to determine technetium-99m sestamibi, F-18 deoxyglucose and N-13 ammonia activity (expressed as percent of peak activity) in nine cardiac segments and in the perfusion defect defined by the area having technetium-99m sestamibi activity <60%. Technetium-99m sestamibi defects were graded as moderate (50% to 59% of peak activity) and severe (<50% of peak activity). Estimates of perfusion defect size were compared between technetium-99m sestamibi and N-13 ammonia.Results. Sixteen (53%) of 30 segments with moderate defects and 16 (47%) of 34 segments with severe defects had ≥60% F-18 deoxyglocose activity considered indicative of viability. Fluorine-18 deoxyglucose evidence of viability was still present in 50% of segments with technetium-99m sestamibi activity <40%. There was no significant difference in the mean (± SD) technetium-99m sestamibi activity in segments with viable (40 ± 7%) and nonviable segments (49 ± 7%, p = 0.84). Of the 18 patients who had adequate F-18 deoxyglucose studies, the area of the technetium-99m sestamibi defect was viable in 5 (28%). In 16 patients (80%), perfusion defect size determined by technetium-99m sestamibi exceeded that measured by N-13 ammonia. The difference in defect size between technetium-99m sestamibi and N-13 ammonia was significantly greater in patients with viable (21 ± 9%) versus nonviable segments (7 ± 9%, p = 0.007).Conclusions. Moderate and severe rest technetium-99m sestamibi defects frequently have metabolic evidence of viability. Technetium-99m sestamibi SPECT yields larger perfusion defects than does N-13 ammonia positron emission tomography when the same threshold values are used
d-Methionine protects against cisplatin-induced neurotoxicity in cortical networks
Article discussing D-Methionine protecting against cisplatin-induced neurotoxicity in cortical networks
Transference Principles for Log-Sobolev and Spectral-Gap with Applications to Conservative Spin Systems
We obtain new principles for transferring log-Sobolev and Spectral-Gap
inequalities from a source metric-measure space to a target one, when the
curvature of the target space is bounded from below. As our main application,
we obtain explicit estimates for the log-Sobolev and Spectral-Gap constants of
various conservative spin system models, consisting of non-interacting and
weakly-interacting particles, constrained to conserve the mean-spin. When the
self-interaction is a perturbation of a strongly convex potential, this
partially recovers and partially extends previous results of Caputo,
Chafa\"{\i}, Grunewald, Landim, Lu, Menz, Otto, Panizo, Villani, Westdickenberg
and Yau. When the self-interaction is only assumed to be (non-strongly) convex,
as in the case of the two-sided exponential measure, we obtain sharp estimates
on the system's spectral-gap as a function of the mean-spin, independently of
the size of the system.Comment: 57 page
A subset of cancer cell lines is acutely sensitive to the Chk1 inhibitor MK-8776 as monotherapy due to CDK2 activation in S phase
DNA damage activates Checkpoint kinase 1 (Chk1) to halt cell cycle progression thereby preventing further DNA replication and mitosis until the damage has been repaired. Consequently, Chk1 inhibitors have emerged as promising anticancer therapeutics in combination with DNA damaging drugs, but their single agent activity also provides a novel approach that may be particularly effective in a subset of patients. From analysis of a large panel of cell lines, we demonstrate that 15% are very sensitive to the Chk1 inhibitor MK-8776. Upon inhibition of Chk1, sensitive cells rapidly accumulate DNA double-strand breaks in S phase in a CDK2- and cyclin A-dependent manner. In contrast, resistant cells can continue to grow for at least 7 days despite continued inhibition of Chk1. Resistance can be circumvented by inhibiting Wee1 kinase and thereby directly activating CDK2. Hence, sensitivity to Chk1 inhibition is regulated upstream of CDK2 and correlates with accumulation of CDC25A. We conclude that cells poorly tolerate CDK2 activity in S phase and that a major function of Chk1 is to ensure it remains inactive. Indeed, inhibitors of CDK1 and CDK2 arrest cells in G1 or G2, respectively, but do not prevent progression through S phase demonstrating that neither kinase is required for S phase progression. Inappropriate activation of CDK2 in S phase underlies the sensitivity of a subset of cell lines to Chk1 inhibitors, and this may provide a novel therapeutic opportunity for appropriately stratified patients
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