Metadata Augmentation for Semantic- and Context- Based Retrieval of Digital Cultural Objects

Cultural objects are increasingly stored and generated in digital form, yet effective methods for their indexing and retrieval still remain an open area of research. The main problem arises from the disconnection between the content-based indexing approach used by computer scientists and the description-based approach used by information scientists. There is also a lack of representational schemes that allow the alignment of the semantics and context with keywords and low-level features that can be automatically extracted from the content of these cultural objects. This paper presents an integrated approach to address these problems, taking advantage of both computer science and information science approaches. The focus is on the rationale and conceptual design of the system and its various components. In particular, we discuss techniques for augmenting commonly used metadata with visual features and domain knowledge to generate high-level abstract metadata which in turn can be used for semantic and context-based indexing and retrieval. We use a sample collection of Vietnamese traditional woodcuts to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach

Hydrocarbon molar water solubility predicts NMDA vs. GABAA receptor modulation.

BackgroundMany anesthetics modulate 3-transmembrane (such as NMDA) and 4-transmembrane (such as GABAA) receptors. Clinical and experimental anesthetics exhibiting receptor family specificity often have low water solubility. We hypothesized that the molar water solubility of a hydrocarbon could be used to predict receptor modulation in vitro.MethodsGABAA (α1β2γ2s) or NMDA (NR1/NR2A) receptors were expressed in oocytes and studied using standard two-electrode voltage clamp techniques. Hydrocarbons from 14 different organic functional groups were studied at saturated concentrations, and compounds within each group differed only by the carbon number at the ω-position or within a saturated ring. An effect on GABAA or NMDA receptors was defined as a 10% or greater reversible current change from baseline that was statistically different from zero.ResultsHydrocarbon moieties potentiated GABAA and inhibited NMDA receptor currents with at least some members from each functional group modulating both receptor types. A water solubility cut-off for NMDA receptors occurred at 1.1 mM with a 95% CI = 0.45 to 2.8 mM. NMDA receptor cut-off effects were not well correlated with hydrocarbon chain length or molecular volume. No cut-off was observed for GABAA receptors within the solubility range of hydrocarbons studied.ConclusionsHydrocarbon modulation of NMDA receptor function exhibits a molar water solubility cut-off. Differences between unrelated receptor cut-off values suggest that the number, affinity, or efficacy of protein-hydrocarbon interactions at these sites likely differ

Effective Results on the Waring Problem for Finite Simple Groups

Let G be a finite quasisimple group of Lie type. We show that there are regular semisimple elements x,y in G, x of prime order, and |y| is divisible by at most two primes, such that the product of the conjugacy classes of x and y contain all non-central elements of G. In fact in all but four cases, y can be chosen to be of square-free order. Using this result, we prove an effective version of one of the main results of Larsen, Shalev and Tiep by showing that, given any positive integer m, if the order of a finite simple group S is at least f(m) for a specified function f, then every element in S is a product of two mth powers. Furthermore, the verbal width of the mth power word on any finite simple group S is at most g(m) for a specified function g. We also show that, given any two non-trivial words v, w, if G is a finite quasisimple group of large enough order, then v(G)w(G) contains all non-central elements of G.Comment: Note title change from version

Adequate groups of low degree

The notion of adequate subgroups was introduced by Jack Thorne [42]. It is a weakening of the notion of big subgroups used in generalizations of the Taylor-Wiles method for proving the automorphy of certain Galois representations. Using this idea, Thorne was able to strengthen many automorphy lifting theorems. It was shown in [22] that if the dimension is small compared to the characteristic then all absolutely irreducible representations are adequate. Here we extend the result by showing that, in almost all cases, absolutely irreducible kG-modules in characteristic p, whose irreducible G+-summands have dimension less than p (where G+ denotes the subgroup of G generated by all p-elements of G), are adequate.Comment: 60 page

Representation Growth in positive characteristic and conjugacy classes of maximal subgroups

We study the representation growth of alternating and symmetric groups in positive characteristic and restricted representation growth for the finite groups of Lie type. We show that the the number of representations of dimension at most n is bounded by a low degree polynomial in n. As a consequence, we show that the number of conjugacy classes of maximal subgroups of a finite almost simple group G is at most O(log|G|).Comment: 25 page