1,621 research outputs found
Hide and seek on complex networks
Signaling pathways and networks determine the ability to communicate in
systems ranging from living cells to human society. We investigate how the
network structure constrains communication in social-, man-made and biological
networks. We find that human networks of governance and collaboration are
predictable on teat-a-teat level, reflecting well defined pathways, but
globally inefficient. In contrast, the Internet tends to have better overall
communication abilities, more alternative pathways, and is therefore more
robust. Between these extremes the molecular network of Saccharomyces cerevisea
is more similar to the simpler social systems, whereas the pattern of
interactions in the more complex Drosophilia melanogaster, resembles the robust
Internet.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Aging in coherent noise models and natural time
Event correlation between aftershocks in the coherent noise model is studied
by making use of natural time, which has recently been introduced in complex
time-series analysis. It is found that the aging phenomenon and the associated
scaling property discovered in the observed seismic data are well reproduced by
the model. It is also found that the scaling function is given by the
-exponential function appearing in nonextensive statistical mechanics,
showing power-law decay of event correlation in natural time.Comment: 4 pages and 5 figure
Efficient Bitrate Ladder Construction for Content-Optimized Adaptive Video Streaming
One of the challenges faced by many video providers is the heterogeneity of
network specifications, user requirements, and content compression performance.
The universal solution of a fixed bitrate ladder is inadequate in ensuring a
high quality of user experience without re-buffering or introducing annoying
compression artifacts. However, a content-tailored solution, based on
extensively encoding across all resolutions and over a wide quality range is
highly expensive in terms of computational, financial, and energy costs.
Inspired by this, we propose an approach that exploits machine learning to
predict a content-optimized bitrate ladder. The method extracts spatio-temporal
features from the uncompressed content, trains machine-learning models to
predict the Pareto front parameters, and, based on that, builds the ladder
within a defined bitrate range. The method has the benefit of significantly
reducing the number of encodes required per sequence. The presented results,
based on 100 HEVC-encoded sequences, demonstrate a reduction in the number of
encodes required when compared to an exhaustive search and an
interpolation-based method, by 89.06% and 61.46%, respectively, at the cost of
an average Bj{\o}ntegaard Delta Rate difference of 1.78% compared to the
exhaustive approach. Finally, a hybrid method is introduced that selects either
the proposed or the interpolation-based method depending on the sequence
features. This results in an overall 83.83% reduction of required encodings at
the cost of an average Bj{\o}ntegaard Delta Rate difference of 1.26%
Efficient chemo-enzymatic transformation of animal biomass waste for eco-friendly leather production
Enzymatically processed animal biomass derived from treated bovine hides (wet blue scraps) is herein used as building block for the synthesis of a novel biopolymer. An enzymatic hydrolysis process allows to produce water-soluble lower molecular weight proteins (Bio-A), which are then reacted with glycerol and maleic anhydride (MA) in order to obtain a new intermediate (Bio-IA). With Bio-IA in hand, co-polymerization in the presence of acrylic acid is then carried out. Hydrolysed biomass, intermediates and the final biopolymer (Bio-Ac) have been characterized by means of NMR, FTIR and GPC analysis. Bio-Ac shows good performance when used as retanning agent to produce leather. Physical and mechanical properties of the leather treated with Bio-Ac have been compared with acrylic resin retanned leather, showing similar performance. The reported protocol represents an environmental-friendly interesting alternative to traditional petrochemical based retanning agents, commonly used by the leather industry
Sustainable Triazine-Based Dehydro-Condensation Agents for Amide Synthesis
Conventional methods employed today for the synthesis of amides often lack of economic and environmental sustainability. Triazine-derived quaternary ammonium salts, e.g., 4-(4,6-dimethoxy-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)-4-methylmorpholinium chloride (DMTMM(Cl)), emerged as promising dehydro-condensation agents for amide synthesis, although suffering of limited stability and high costs. In the present work, a simple protocol for the synthesis of amides mediated by 2-chloro-4,6-dimethoxy-1,3,5-triazine (CDMT) and a tert-amine has been described and data are compared to DMTMM(Cl) and other CDMT-derived quaternary ammonium salts (DMT-Ams(X), X: Cl- or ClO4-). Different tert-amines (Ams) were tested for the synthesis of various DMT-Ams(Cl), but only DMTMM(Cl) could be isolated and employed for dehydro-condensation reactions, while all CDMT/tert-amine systems tested were efficient as dehydro-condensation agents. Interestingly, in best reaction conditions, CDMT and 1,4-dimethylpiperazine gave N-phenethyl benzamide in 93% yield in 15 min, with up to half the amount of tert-amine consumption. The efficiency of CDMT/tert-amine was further compared to more stable triazine quaternary ammonium salts having a perchlorate counter anion (DMT-Ams(ClO4)). Overall CDMT/tert-amine systems appear to be a viable and more economical alternative to most dehydro-condensation agents employed today
Preferential attachment in the protein network evolution
The Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein-protein interaction map, as well as many
natural and man-made networks, shares the scale-free topology. The preferential
attachment model was suggested as a generic network evolution model that yields
this universal topology. However, it is not clear that the model assumptions
hold for the protein interaction network. Using a cross genome comparison we
show that (a) the older a protein, the better connected it is, and (b) The
number of interactions a protein gains during its evolution is proportional to
its connectivity. Therefore, preferential attachment governs the protein
network evolution. The evolutionary mechanism leading to such preference and
some implications are discussed.Comment: Minor changes per referees requests; to appear in PR
Exploring the randomness of Directed Acyclic Networks
The feed-forward relationship naturally observed in time-dependent processes
and in a diverse number of real systems -such as some food-webs and electronic
and neural wiring- can be described in terms of so-called directed acyclic
graphs (DAGs). An important ingredient of the analysis of such networks is a
proper comparison of their observed architecture against an ensemble of
randomized graphs, thereby quantifying the {\em randomness} of the real systems
with respect to suitable null models. This approximation is particularly
relevant when the finite size and/or large connectivity of real systems make
inadequate a comparison with the predictions obtained from the so-called {\em
configuration model}. In this paper we analyze four methods of DAG
randomization as defined by the desired combination of topological invariants
(directed and undirected degree sequence and component distributions) aimed to
be preserved. A highly ordered DAG, called \textit{snake}-graph and a
Erd\:os-R\'enyi DAG were used to validate the performance of the algorithms.
Finally, three real case studies, namely, the \textit{C. elegans} cell lineage
network, a PhD student-advisor network and the Milgram's citation network were
analyzed using each randomization method. Results show how the interpretation
of degree-degree relations in DAGs respect to their randomized ensembles depend
on the topological invariants imposed. In general, real DAGs provide disordered
values, lower than the expected by chance when the directedness of the links is
not preserved in the randomization process. Conversely, if the direction of the
links is conserved throughout the randomization process, disorder indicators
are close to the obtained from the null-model ensemble, although some
deviations are observed.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures and 5 table
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