823 research outputs found
Self-adaptive video encoder: comparison of multiple adaptation strategies made simple
This paper presents an adaptive video encoder that can be used to compare the behavior of different adaptation strategies using multiple actuators to steer the encoder towards a global goal, composed of multiple conflicting objectives. A video camera produces frames that the encoder manipulates with the objective of matching some space requirement to fit a given communication channel. A second objective is to maintain a given similarity index between the manipulated frames and the original ones. To achieve the goal, the software can change three parameters: the quality of the encoding, the noise reduction filter radius and the sharpening filter radius. In most cases, the objectives - small encoded size and high quality - conflict, since a larger frame would have a higher similarity index to its original counterpart. This makes the problem difficult from the control perspective and makes the case study appealing to compare different adaptation strategies
Cover to Volume 3
The fibroblast mitogen platelet-derived growth factor -BB (PDGF-BB) induces a transient expression of the orphan nuclear receptor NR4A1 (also named Nur77, TR3 or NGFIB). The aim of the present study was to investigate the pathways through which NR4A1 is induced by PDGF-BB and its functional role. We demonstrate that in PDGF-BB stimulated NIH3T3 cells, the MEK1/2 inhibitor CI-1040 strongly represses NR4A1 expression, whereas Erk5 downregulation delays the expression, but does not block it. Moreover, we report that treatment with the NF-ÎşB inhibitor BAY11-7082 suppresses NR4A1 mRNA and protein expression. The majority of NR4A1 in NIH3T3 was found to be localized in the cytoplasm and only a fraction was translocated to the nucleus after continued PDGF-BB treatment. Silencing NR4A1 slightly increased the proliferation rate of NIH3T3 cells; however, it did not affect the chemotactic or survival abilities conferred by PDGF-BB. Moreover, overexpression of NR4A1 promoted anchorage-independent growth of NIH3T3 cells and the glioblastoma cell lines U-105MG and U-251MG. Thus, whereas NR4A1, induced by PDGF-BB, suppresses cell growth on a solid surface, it increases anchorage-independent growth
Conformal Quivers and Melting Molecules
Quiver quantum mechanics describes the low energy dynamics of a system of
wrapped D-branes. It captures several aspects of single and multicentered BPS
black hole geometries in four-dimensional supergravity such
as the presence of bound states and an exponential growth of microstates. The
Coulomb branch of an Abelian three node quiver is obtained by integrating out
the massive strings connecting the D-particles. It allows for a scaling regime
corresponding to a deep AdS throat on the gravity side. In this scaling
regime, the Coulomb branch is shown to be an invariant
multi-particle superconformal quantum mechanics. Finally, we integrate out the
strings at finite temperature---rather than in their ground state---and show
how the Coulomb branch `melts' into the Higgs branch at high enough
temperatures. For scaling solutions the melting occurs for arbitrarily small
temperatures, whereas bound states can be metastable and thus long lived.
Throughout the paper, we discuss how far the analogy between the quiver model
and the gravity picture, particularly within the AdS throat, can be taken.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figure
Towards multi-scale dynamics on the baryonic branch of Klebanov-Strassler
We construct explicitly a new class of backgrounds in type-IIB supergravity
which generalize the baryonic branch of Klebanov-Strassler. We apply a
solution-generating technique that, starting from a large class of solutions of
the wrapped-D5 system, yields the new solutions, and then proceed to study in
detail their properties, both in the IR and in the UV. We propose a simple
intuitive field theory interpretation of the rotation procedure and of the
meaning of our new solutions within the Papadopoulos-Tseytlin ansatz, in
particular in relation to the duality cascade in the Klebanov-Strassler
solution. The presence in the field theory of different VEVs for operators of
dimensions 2, 3 and 6 suggests that this is an important step towards the
construction of the string dual of a genuinely multi-scale (strongly coupled)
dynamical model.Comment: 37 pages, 7 figures. References added, version to appear in JHE
Distinguishing Asthma Phenotypes Using Machine Learning Approaches.
Asthma is not a single disease, but an umbrella term for a number of distinct diseases, each of which are caused by a distinct underlying pathophysiological mechanism. These discrete disease entities are often labelled as asthma endotypes. The discovery of different asthma subtypes has moved from subjective approaches in which putative phenotypes are assigned by experts to data-driven ones which incorporate machine learning. This review focuses on the methodological developments of one such machine learning technique-latent class analysis-and how it has contributed to distinguishing asthma and wheezing subtypes in childhood. It also gives a clinical perspective, presenting the findings of studies from the past 5 years that used this approach. The identification of true asthma endotypes may be a crucial step towards understanding their distinct pathophysiological mechanisms, which could ultimately lead to more precise prevention strategies, identification of novel therapeutic targets and the development of effective personalized therapies
Nonlinear Supersymmetry as a Hidden Symmetry
Ver abstrac
Control Strategies for Self-Adaptive Software Systems
The pervasiveness and growing complexity of software systems are challenging software engineering to design systems that can adapt their behavior to withstand unpredictable, uncertain, and continuously changing execution environments. Control theoretical adaptation mechanisms have received growing interest from the software engineering community in the last few years for their mathematical grounding, allowing formal guarantees on the behavior of the controlled systems. However, most of these mechanisms are tailored to specific applications and can hardly be generalized into broadly applicable software design and development processes. This article discusses a reference control design process, from goal identification to the verification and validation of the controlled system. A taxonomy of the main control strategies is introduced, analyzing their applicability to software adaptation for both functional and nonfunctional goals. A brief extract on how to deal with uncertainty complements the discussion. Finally, the article highlights a set of open challenges, both for the software engineering and the control theory research communities
Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS
has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions
at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection
criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined.
For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a
muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the
whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4,
while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The
efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than
90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall
momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The
transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity
for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be
better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions
of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
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