Micro-CernVM: Slashing the Cost of Building and Deploying Virtual Machines

The traditional virtual machine building and and deployment process is centered around the virtual machine hard disk image. The packages comprising the VM operating system are carefully selected, hard disk images are built for a variety of different hypervisors, and images have to be distributed and decompressed in order to instantiate a virtual machine. Within the HEP community, the CernVM File System has been established in order to decouple the distribution from the experiment software from the building and distribution of the VM hard disk images. We show how to get rid of such pre-built hard disk images altogether. Due to the high requirements on POSIX compliance imposed by HEP application software, CernVM-FS can also be used to host and boot a Linux operating system. This allows the use of a tiny bootable CD image that comprises only a Linux kernel while the rest of the operating system is provided on demand by CernVM-FS. This approach speeds up the initial instantiation time and reduces virtual machine image sizes by an order of magnitude. Furthermore, security updates can be distributed instantaneously through CernVM-FS. By leveraging the fact that CernVM-FS is a versioning file system, a historic analysis environment can be easily re-spawned by selecting the corresponding CernVM-FS file system snapshot.Comment: Conference paper at the 2013 Computing in High Energy Physics (CHEP) Conference, Amsterda

Angle-resolved photoemission study of the role of nesting and orbital orderings in the antiferromagnetic phase of BaFe2As2

We present a detailed comparison of the electronic structure of BaFe2As2 in its paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic (AFM) phases, through angle-resolved photoemission studies. Using different experimental geometries, we resolve the full elliptic shape of the electron pockets, including parts of dxy symmetry along its major axis that are usually missing. This allows us to define precisely how the hole and electron pockets are nested and how the different orbitals evolve at the transition. We conclude that the imperfect nesting between hole and electron pockets explains rather well the formation of gaps and residual metallic droplets in the AFM phase, provided the relative parity of the different bands is taken into account. Beyond this nesting picture, we observe shifts and splittings of numerous bands at the transition. We show that the splittings are surface sensitive and probably not a reliable signature of the magnetic order. On the other hand, the shifts indicate a significant redistribution of the orbital occupations at the transition, especially within the dxz/dyz system, which we discuss

Educational differences in the validity of self-reported physical activity

BACKGROUND: The assessment of physical activity for surveillance or population based studies is usually done with self-report questionnaires. However, bias in self-reported physical activity may be greater in lower educated than in higher educated populations. The aim of the present study is to describe educational differences in the validity of self-reported physical activity. METHODS: We included 196 healthy adults (age 57 ± 15.4, of whom 17 % low, 24 % medium and 59 % high educated). Criterion validity of an adapted International Physical Activity Questionnaire was assessed against the ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometer. RESULTS: While criterion validity of self-reported physical activity was low to moderate in the total sample (Spearman rho ranged from 0.16 to 0.27, depending on the variables used), the validity in lower educated respondents was poor (-0.07 to 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm the hypothesis that self-report physical activity questionnaires are less valid in lower educated populations

New Horizons Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) Observations of the Solar Wind From 11-33 AU

The Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on NASA's New Horizon Pluto mission has collected solar wind observations en route from Earth to Pluto, and these observations continue beyond Pluto. Few missions have explored the solar wind in the outer heliosphere making this dataset a critical addition to the field. We created a forward model of SWAP count rates, which includes a comprehensive instrument response function based on laboratory and flight calibrations. By fitting the count rates with this model, the proton density (n), speed (V), and temperature (T) parameters are determined. Comparisons between SWAP parameters and both propagated 1 AU observations and prior Voyager 2 observations indicate consistency in both the range and mean wind values. These comparisons as well as our additional findings confirm that small and midsized solar wind structures are worn down with increasing distance due to dynamic interaction of parcels of wind with different speed. For instance, the T-V relationship steepens, as the range in V is limited more than the range in T with distance. At times the T-V correlation clearly breaks down beyond 20 AU, which may indicate wind currently expanding and cooling may have an elevated T reflecting prior heating and compression in the inner heliosphere. The power of wind parameters at shorter periodicities decreases with distance as the longer periodicities strengthen. The solar rotation periodicity is present in temperature beyond 20 AU indicating the observed parcel temperature may reflect not only current heating or cooling, but also heating occurring closer to the Sun.Comment: 55 pages, 29 Figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements (ApJS

Deep affect prediction in-the-wild: Aff-wild database and challenge, deep architectures, and beyond

Automatic understanding of human affect using visual signals is of great importance in everyday human–machine interac- tions. Appraising human emotional states, behaviors and reactions displayed in real-world settings, can be accomplished using latent continuous dimensions (e.g., the circumplex model of affect). Valence (i.e., how positive or negative is an emo- tion) and arousal (i.e., power of the activation of the emotion) constitute popular and effective representations for affect. Nevertheless, the majority of collected datasets this far, although containing naturalistic emotional states, have been captured in highly controlled recording conditions. In this paper, we introduce the Aff-Wild benchmark for training and evaluating affect recognition algorithms. We also report on the results of the First Affect-in-the-wild Challenge (Aff-Wild Challenge) that was recently organized in conjunction with CVPR 2017 on the Aff-Wild database, and was the first ever challenge on the estimation of valence and arousal in-the-wild. Furthermore, we design and extensively train an end-to-end deep neural architecture which performs prediction of continuous emotion dimensions based on visual cues. The proposed deep learning architecture, AffWildNet, includes convolutional and recurrent neural network layers, exploiting the invariant properties of convolutional features, while also modeling temporal dynamics that arise in human behavior via the recurrent layers. The AffWildNet produced state-of-the-art results on the Aff-Wild Challenge. We then exploit the AffWild database for learning features, which can be used as priors for achieving best performances both for dimensional, as well as categorical emo- tion recognition, using the RECOLA, AFEW-VA and EmotiW 2017 datasets, compared to all other methods designed for the same goal. The database and emotion recognition models are available at http://ibug.doc.ic.ac.uk/resources/first-affect-wild-challenge

Experimental study of the incoherent spectral weight in the photoemission spectra of the misfit cobaltate [Bi2Ba2O4][CoO2]2

Previous ARPES experiments in NaxCoO2 reported both a strongly renormalized bandwidth near the Fermi level and moderately renormalized Fermi velocities, leaving it unclear whether the correlations are weak or strong and how they could be quantified. We explain why this situation occurs and solve the problem by extracting clearly the coherent and incoherent parts of the band crossing the Fermi level. We show that one can use their relative weight to estimate self-consistently the quasiparticle weight Z, which turns out to be very small Z=0.15 +/- 0.05. We suggest this method could be a reliable way to study the evolution of correlations in cobaltates and for comparison with other strongly correlated systems

Highly efficient synthesis of the tricyclic core of Taxol by cascade metathesis

An efficient enantioselective synthesis of the ABC tricyclic core of the anticancer drug Taxol is reported. The key step of this synthesis is a cascade metathesis reaction, which leads in one operation to the required tricycle if appropriate fine-tuning of the dienyne precursor is performed

Evolutionary Multi-Objective Design of SARS-CoV-2 Protease Inhibitor Candidates

Computational drug design based on artificial intelligence is an emerging research area. At the time of writing this paper, the world suffers from an outbreak of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. A promising way to stop the virus replication is via protease inhibition. We propose an evolutionary multi-objective algorithm (EMOA) to design potential protease inhibitors for SARS-CoV-2's main protease. Based on the SELFIES representation the EMOA maximizes the binding of candidate ligands to the protein using the docking tool QuickVina 2, while at the same time taking into account further objectives like drug-likeliness or the fulfillment of filter constraints. The experimental part analyzes the evolutionary process and discusses the inhibitor candidates.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PPSN 202

New electronic orderings observed in cobaltates under the influence of misfit periodicities

We study with ARPES the electronic structure of CoO2 slabs, stacked with rock-salt (RS) layers exhibiting a different (misfit) periodicity. Fermi Surfaces (FS) in phases with different doping and/or periodicities reveal the influence of the RS potential on the electronic structure. We show that these RS potentials are well ordered, even in incommensurate phases, where STM images reveal broad stripes with width as large as 80\AA. The anomalous evolution of the FS area at low dopings is consistent with the localization of a fraction of the electrons. We propose that this is a new form of electronic ordering, induced by the potential of the stacked layers (RS or Na in NaxCoO2) when the FS becomes smaller than the Brillouin Zone of the stacked structure

Interventionally implanted port catheter systems for hepatic arterial infusion of chemotherapy in patients with primary liver cancer: a phase II-study (NCT00356161)

BACKGROUND: Hepatic arterial infusion (HAI) of chemotherapy requires the implantation of a transcatheter application system which is traditionally performed by surgery. This procedure, but particularly the adjacent drug application via pump or port is often hampered by specific complications and device failure. Interventionally implanted port catheter systems (IIPCS) facilitate the commencement of HAI without need for laparatomy, and are associated with favorable complication rates. We here present an evaluation of the most important technical endpoints associated with the use of IIPCS for HAI in patients with primary liver cancers. METHODS: 70 patients (pts) with hepatocellular (HCC, n=33) and biliary tract cancer (BTC, n=37) were enrolled into a phase II -study. Of those, n=43 had recurrent disease and n=31 suffered from liver-predominant UICC-stage IVb. All pts were provided with IIPCSs before being treated with biweekly, intraarterial chemotherapy (oxaliplatin, 5-Flourouracil, folinic acid). The primary objective of the trial was defined as evaluation of device-related complications and port duration. RESULTS: Implantation of port catheters was successful in all patients. Mean treatment duration was 5,8 months, and median duration of port patency was not reached. Disease-progression was the most common reason for treatment discontinuation (44 pts., 63%), followed by chemotherapy-related toxicity (12 pts., 17%), and irreversible device failure (5 pts., 7%). A total of 28 port complications occurred in 21 pts (30%). No unexpected complications were observed. CONCLUSIONS: HAI via interventionally implanted port catheters can be safely applied to patients with primary liver tumors far advanced or/and pretreated