1,021 research outputs found
Fibroblast Growth Factor 22 Is Not Essential for Skin Development and Repair but Plays a Role in Tumorigenesis
PMCID: PMC3380851This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Imaging the charge transport in arrays of CdSe nanocrystals
A novel method to image charge is used to measure the diffusion coefficient
of electrons in films of CdSe nanocrystals at room temperature. This method
makes possible the study of charge transport in films exhibiting high
resistances or very small diffusion coefficients.Comment: 4 pages, 4 jpg figure
Enforcement Penalties at the ITC
The U.S. International Trade Commission (âITCâ or âCommissionâ) has grown in importance as a venue for U.S. companies to pursue intellectual property (âIPâ) violators and to block the sale or importation of goods from overseas that infringe U.S. IP rights. Once a violation of the Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 is found, an order halting further infringement, including importation, is almost always entered. In theory, potentially sizeable penalties may be imposed on entities that do not comply with the terms of an import restriction. In practice, the terms of an import restriction are almost always honored, but when they are not, maximum enforcement penalties are rarely imposed. In fact, most penalties for non-defaulting respondents are one-third or less of the maximum penalty allowed by the law. Thus, non-compliance tends not to be too harshly punished.
Penalty determinations at the ITC are governed by a set of six factors, called âthe EPROMs factors,â which arose from the Commissionâs 1989 decision in Certain Erasable Programmable Read Only Memories (âEPROMsâ). To date, no scholarship has sought to examine how courts have treated these factors collectively or evaluated their relevance individually to the penalties ultimately adopted by the ITC. Without such an investigation, parties considering enforcement actions have been left with little guidance as to the merits of their case.
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the EPROMs factors as well as an economic analysis of the relationship between these six factors and enforcement penalties imposed on ITC respondents. We undertake a qualitative and quantitative review of all ITC cases to date in which penalties have been assessed either by an Administrative Law Judge (âALJâ) or by the Commission itself. In short, we find that maximum enforcement penalties are rarely imposed. Moreover, proof of the good faith or bad faith of respondentâs compliance with an import restriction (Factor 1) appears to be the most important of the EPROMs factors. Even proving respondentâs bad faith, however, rarely leads to imposition of the maximum penalty
Unitaries in banach spaces
We study the abstract geometric notion of unitaries in a Banach space characterized in terms of the equivalence of the norm determined by the state space
Summing free unitary random matrices
I use quaternion free probability calculus - an extension of free probability
to non-Hermitian matrices (which is introduced in a succinct but self-contained
way) - to derive in the large-size limit the mean densities of the eigenvalues
and singular values of sums of independent unitary random matrices, weighted by
complex numbers. In the case of CUE summands, I write them in terms of two
"master equations," which I then solve and numerically test in four specific
cases. I conjecture a finite-size extension of these results, exploiting the
complementary error function. I prove a central limit theorem, and its first
sub-leading correction, for independent identically-distributed zero-drift
unitary random matrices.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure
A Random Matrix Approach to VARMA Processes
We apply random matrix theory to derive spectral density of large sample
covariance matrices generated by multivariate VMA(q), VAR(q) and VARMA(q1,q2)
processes. In particular, we consider a limit where the number of random
variables N and the number of consecutive time measurements T are large but the
ratio N/T is fixed. In this regime the underlying random matrices are
asymptotically equivalent to Free Random Variables (FRV). We apply the FRV
calculus to calculate the eigenvalue density of the sample covariance for
several VARMA-type processes. We explicitly solve the VARMA(1,1) case and
demonstrate a perfect agreement between the analytical result and the spectra
obtained by Monte Carlo simulations. The proposed method is purely algebraic
and can be easily generalized to q1>1 and q2>1.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, submitted to New Journal of Physic
Characteristics of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Abkhazia (Georgia), a high-prevalence area in Eastern Europe
Although multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in Eastern Europe, the factors contributing to emergence, spread and containment of MDR-TB are not well defined. Here, we analysed the characteristics of drug-resistant TB in a cross-sectional study in Abkhazia (Georgia) between 2003 and 2005, where standard short-course chemotherapy is supplemented with individualized drug-resistance therapy. Drug susceptibility testing (DST) and molecular typing were carried out for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex strains from consecutive smear-positive TB patients. Out of 366 patients, 60.4% were resistant to any first-line drugs and 21% had MDR-TB. Overall, 25% of all strains belong to the Beijing genotype, which was found to be strongly associated with the risk of MDR-TB (OR 25.9, 95% CI 10.2-66.0) and transmission (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.6-5.0). One dominant MDR Beijing clone represents 23% of all MDR-TB cases. The level of MDR-TB did not decline during the study period, coinciding with increasing levels of MDR Beijing strains among previously treated cases. Standard chemotherapy plus individualized drug-resistance therapy, guided by conventional DST, might be not sufficient to control MDR-TB in Eastern Europe in light of the spread of "highly transmissible" MDR Beijing strains circulating in the community
Demography, trade and state power: a tripartite model of medieval farming/language dispersals in the Ryukyu Islands
Hunter-gatherer occupations of small islands are rare in world prehistory and it is widely accepted that island settlement is facilitated by agriculture. The Ryukyu Islands contradict that understanding on two counts: not only did they have a long history of hunter-gatherer settlement, they also have a very late date for the onset of agriculture, which only reached the archipelago between the 8th and 13th centuries AD. Here, we combine archaeology and linguistics to propose a tripartite model for the spread of agriculture and Ryukyuan languages to the Ryukyu Islands. Employing demographic growth, trade/piracy and the political influence of neighbouring states, this model provides a synthetic yet flexible understanding of farming/language dispersals in the Ryukyus within the complex historical background of medieval East Asia.Introduction Methods Results - Archaeological Approach -- Demographic growth -- Trade/piracy -- State intervention - Linguistic Approach -- Linguistic inferences about the most probable tree structure -- Linguistic inferences about the most probable homeland of Proto-Ryukyuan -- Linguistic inferences about the most probable break-up time of Proto-Kyushu-Ryukyuan -- Inferences about the most probable linguistic outcome of the migration Discussion Conclusion
Treatment of tuberculosis in a region with high drug resistance: Outcomes, drug resistance amplification and re-infection
Introduction: Emerging antituberculosis drug resistance is a serious threat for tuberculosis (TB) control, especially in Eastern
European countries.
Methods: We combined drug susceptibility results and molecular strain typing data with treatment outcome reports to
assess the influence of drug resistance on TB treatment outcomes in a prospective cohort of patients from Abkhazia
(Georgia). Patients received individualized treatment regimens based on drug susceptibility testing (DST) results. Definitions
for antituberculosis drug resistance and treatment outcomes were in line with current WHO recommendations. First and
second line DST, and molecular typing were performed in a supranational laboratory for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)
strains from consecutive sputum smear-positive TB patients at baseline and during treatment.
Results: At baseline, MTB strains were fully drug-susceptible in 189/326 (58.0%) of patients. Resistance to at least H or R
(PDR-TB) and multidrug-resistance (MDR-TB) were found in 69/326 (21.2%) and 68/326 (20.9%) of strains, respectively. Three
MDR-TB strains were also extensively resistant (XDR-TB). During treatment, 3/189 (1.6%) fully susceptible patients at baseline
were re-infected with a MDR-TB strain and 2/58 (3.4%) PDR-TB patients became MDR-TB due to resistance amplification. 5/
47 (10.6%) MDR- patients became XDR-TB during treatment. Treatment success was observed in 161/189 (85.2%), 54/69
(78.3%) and 22/68 (32.3%) of patients with fully drug susceptible, PDR- and MDR-TB, respectively. Development of ofloxacin
resistance was significantly associated with a negative treatment outcome.
Conclusion: In Abkhazia, a region with high prevalence of drug resistant TB, the use of individualized MDR-TB treatment
regimens resulted in poor treatment outcomes and XDR-TB amplification. Nosocomial transmission of MDR-TB emphasizes
the importance of infection control in hospitals
Quasilocality of joining/splitting strings from coherent states
Using the coherent state formalism we calculate matrix elements of the
one-loop non-planar dilatation operator of SYM between operators
dual to folded Frolov-Tseytlin strings and observe a curious scaling behavior.
We comment on the {\it qualitative} similarity of our matrix elements to the
interaction vertex of a string field theory. In addition, we present a solvable
toy model for string splitting and joining. The scaling behaviour of the matrix
elements suggests that the contribution to the genus one energy shift coming
from semi-classical string splitting and joining is small.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures in 11 file
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