Renyi Entropy and Geometry

Entanglement entropy in even dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) contains well-known universal terms arising from the conformal anomaly. Renyi entropies are natural generalizations of the entanglement entropy that are much less understood. Above two spacetime dimensions, the universal terms in the Renyi entropies are unknown for general entangling geometries. We conjecture a new structure in the dependence of the four-dimensional Renyi entropies on the intrinsic and extrinsic geometry of the entangling surface. We provide evidence for this conjecture by direct numerical computations in the free scalar and fermion field theories. The computation involves relating the four-dimensional free massless Renyi entropies across cylindrical entangling surfaces to corresponding three-dimensional massive Renyi entropies across circular entangling surfaces. Our numerical technique also allows us to directly probe other interesting aspects of three-dimensional Renyi entropy, including the massless renormalized Renyi entropy and calculable contributions to the perimeter law.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures; v2 refs added, minor improvement

Lincoln at Gettysburg

This is an envelope enclosing four photograph reproductions. Produced for Eastern National Park & Monument Association. It’s front features a photograph image of President Abraham Lincoln. Its verso contains information about each photograph.https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/fvw-artifacts/5776/thumbnail.jp

GRIDCC: Real-time workflow system

The Grid is a concept which allows the sharing of resources between distributed communities, allowing each to progress towards potentially different goals. As adoption of the Grid increases so are the activities that people wish to conduct through it. The GRIDCC project is a European Union funded project addressing the issues of integrating instruments into the Grid. This increases the requirement of workflows and Quality of Service upon these workflows as many of these instruments have real-time requirements. In this paper we present the workflow management service within the GRIDCC project which is tasked with optimising the workflows and ensuring that they meet the pre-defined QoS requirements specified upon them

Are health-promoting prisons an impossibility? Lessons from England and Wales

Investigates 1999/2000 health promotion activities in prisons in England and Wales and documents the range and quality of health promotion occurring in prisons, against which future activity might be measured. Finds that health promotion is under-resourced and the concept and practice poorly understood. Health needs assessment tended to be analysis of and for health-care services and, except in a minority of cases, did not include consultation with staff, prisoners or their families. Where responsibility was shared and the work based on multi-disciplinary approaches, it seems more likely to have been reported accurately as health promotion activity. The official policy of a healthy settings/whole prison approach was not understood by many and its application was limited. The findings have informed the development of a new health promotion strategy for the prison service in England and Wales

Severity scoring of manganese health effects for categorical regression

Characterizing the U-shaped exposure response relationship for manganese (Mn) is necessary for estimating the risk of adverse health from Mn toxicity due to excess or deficiency. Categorical regression has emerged as a powerful tool for exposure-response analysis because of its ability to synthesize relevant information across multiple studies and species into a single integrated analysis of all relevant data. This paper documents the development of a database on Mn toxicity designed to support the application of categorical regression techniques. Specifically, we describe (i) the conduct of a systematic search of the literature on Mn toxicity to gather data appropriate for dose-response assessment; (ii) the establishment of inclusion/exclusion criteria for data to be included in the categorical regression modeling database; (iii) the development of a categorical severity scoring matrix for Mn health effects to permit the inclusion of diverse health outcomes in a single categorical regression analysis using the severity score as the outcome variable; and (iv) the convening of an international expert panel to both review the severity scoring matrix and assign severity scores to health outcomes observed in studies (including case reports, epidemiological investigations, and in vivo experimental studies) selected for inclusion in the categorical regression database. Exposure information including route, concentration, duration, health endpoint(s), and characteristics of the exposed population was abstracted from included studies and stored in a computerized manganese database (MnDB), providing a comprehensive repository of exposure-response information with the ability to support categorical regression modeling of oral exposure data

Should Aggressive Surgical Local Control Be Attempted in All Patients with Metastatic or Pelvic Ewing's Sarcoma?

In previous reports, patients with Ewing's sarcoma received radiation therapy (XRT) for definitive local control because metastatic disease and pelvic location were thought to preclude aggressive local treatment. We sought to determine if single-site metastatic disease should be treated differently from multicentric-metastatic disease. We also wanted to reinvestigate the impact of XRT, pelvic location, and local recurrence on outcomes. Our results demonstrated a significant difference in overall survival (OS) between patients with either localized disease or a single-metastatic site and patients with multicentric-metastatic disease (P = 0.004). Local control was also found to be an independent predictor of outcomes as demonstrated by a significant difference in OS between those with and without local recurrence (P = 0.001). Axial and pelvic location did not predict a decreased OS. Based on these results, we concluded that pelvic location and the diagnosis of metastatic disease at diagnosis should not preclude aggressive local control, except in cases of multicentric-metastatic disease

Massively parallel landscape-evolution modelling using general purpose graphical processing units

As our expectations of what computer systems can do and our ability to capture data improves, the desire to perform ever more computationally intensive tasks increases. Often these tasks, comprising vast numbers of repeated computations, are highly interdependent on each other – a closely coupled problem. The process of Landscape-Evolution Modelling is an example of such a problem. In order to produce realistic models it is necessary to process landscapes containing millions of data points over time periods extending up to millions of years. This leads to non-tractable execution times, often in the order of years. Researchers therefore seek multiple orders of magnitude reduction in the execution time of these models. The massively parallel programming environment offered through General Purpose Graphical Processing Units offers the potential for multiple orders of magnitude speedup in code execution times. In this paper we demonstrate how the time dominant parts of a Landscape-Evolution Model can be recoded for a massively parallel architecture providing two orders of magnitude reduction in execution time

Thermodynamic mapping of effector protein interfaces with RalA and RalB.

RalA and RalB are members of the Ras family of small G proteins and are activated downstream of Ras via RalGEFs. The RalGEF-Ral axis represents one of the major effector pathways controlled by Ras and as such is an important pharmacological target. RalA and RalB are approximately 80% identical at the amino acid level; despite this, they have distinct roles both in normal cells and in the disease state. We have used our structure of RalB-RLIP76 to guide an analysis of Ral-effector interaction interfaces, creating panels of mutant proteins to probe the energetics of these interactions. The data provide a physical mechanism that underpins the effector selective mutations commonly employed to dissect Ral G protein function. Comparing the energetic landscape of the RalB-RLIP76 and RalB-Sec5 complexes reveals mutations in RalB that lead to differential binding of the two effector proteins. A panel of RLIP76 mutants was used to probe the interaction between RLIP76 and RalA and -B. Despite 100% sequence identity in the RalA and -B contact residues with RLIP76, differences still exist in the energetic profiles of the two complexes. Therefore, we have revealed properties that may account for some of the functional separation observed with RalA and RalB at the cellular level. Our mutations, in both the Ral isoforms and RLIP76, provide new tools that can be employed to parse the complex biology of Ral G protein signaling networks. The combination of these thermodynamic and structural data can also guide efforts to ablate RalA and -B activity with small molecules and peptides.Captain Stephanos FoundationThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Chemical Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/bi501530

Integral equations for simple fluids in a general reference functional approach

The integral equations for the correlation functions of an inhomogeneous fluid mixture are derived using a functional Taylor expansion of the free energy around an inhomogeneous equilibrium distribution. The system of equations is closed by the introduction of a reference functional for the correlations beyond second order in the density difference from the equilibrium distribution. Explicit expressions are obtained for energies required to insert particles of the fluid mixture into the inhomogeneous system. The approach is illustrated by the determination of the equation of state of a simple, truncated Lennard--Jones fluid and the analysis of the behavior of this fluid near a hard wall. The wall--fluid integral equation exhibits complete drying and the corresponding coexisting densities are in good agreement with those obtained from the standard (Maxwell) construction applied to the bulk fluid. Self--consistency of the approach is examined by analyzing the virial/compressibility routes to the equation of state and the Gibbs--Duhem relation for the bulk fluid, and the contact density sum rule and the Gibbs adsorption equation for the hard wall problem. For the bulk fluid, we find good self--consistency for stable states outside the critical region. For the hard wall problem, the Gibbs adsorption equation is fulfilled very well near phase coexistence where the adsorption is large.For the contact density sum rule, we find some deviationsnear coexistence due to a slight disagreement between the coexisting density for the gas phase obtained from the Maxwell construction and from complete drying at the hard wall.Comment: 29 page