308 research outputs found
Analysis of extreme rainfall in the Ebre Observatory (Spain)
The relationship between maximum rainfall rates for time intervals between 5 min and 24 h has been studied from almost a century (1905-2003) of rainfall data registered in the Ebre Observatory (Tarragona, Spain). Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves and their master equation for every return period in the location have been obtained, as well as the probable maximum precipitation (PMP) for all the considered durations. In particular, the value of the 1-day PMP has resulted to be 415 mm, very similar to previous estimations of this variable for the same location. Extreme rainfall events recorded in this period have been analyzed and classified according to their temporal scale. Besides the three main classes of cases corresponding to the main meteorological scales, local, mesoscale, and synoptic, a fourth group constituted by complex events with high-intensity rates for a large range of durations has been identified also, indicating the contribution of different scale meteorological processes acting together in the origin of the rainfall. A weighted intensity index taking into account the maximum rainfall rate in representative durations of every meteorological scale has been calculated for every extreme rainfall event in order to reflect their complexity
Persistent homology based characterization of the breast cancer immune microenvironment: a feasibility study
International audiencePersistent homology is a powerful tool in topological data analysis. The main output, persistence diagrams, encode the geometry and topology of given datasets. We present a novel application of persistent homology to characterize the biological environment surrounding breast cancers, known as the tumor microenvironment. Specifically, we will characterize the spatial arrangement of immune and malignant epithelial (tumor) cells within the breast cancer immune microenvironment. Quantitative and robust characterizations are built by computing persistence diagrams from quantitative multiplex immunofluorescence, which is a technology which allows us to obtain spatial coordinates and protein intensities on individual cells. The resulting persistence diagrams are evaluated as characteristic biomarkers predictive of cancer subtype and prognostic of overall survival. For a cohort of approximately 700 breast cancer patients with median 8.5-year clinical follow-up, we show that these persistence diagrams outperform and complement the usual descriptors which capture spatial relationships with nearest neighbor analysis. Our results thus suggest new methods which can be used to build topology-based biomarkers which are characteristic and predictive of cancer subtype and response to therapy as well as prognostic of overall survival
Spectral Signatures of Photon-Particle Oscillations from Celestial Objects
We give detailed predictions for the spectral signatures arising from
photon-particle oscillations in astrophysical objects. The calculations include
quantum electrodynamic effects as well as those due to active relativistic
plasma. We show that, by studying the spectra of compact sources, it may be
possible to directly detect (pseudo-)scalar particles, such as the axion, with
much greater sensitivity, by roughly three orders of magnitude, than is
currently achievable by other methods. In particular, if such particles exist
with masses m_a<0.01[eV] and coupling constant to the electromagnetic field,
g>1e-13[1/GeV], then their oscillation signatures are likely to be lurking in
the spectra of magnetars, pulsars, and quasars.Comment: 29 pages (reduced resolution for figs. 3, 4b, 7
Topology identifies emerging adaptive mutations in SARS-CoV-2
The COVID-19 pandemic has lead to a worldwide effort to characterize its evolution through the mapping of mutations in the genome of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. As the virus spreads and evolves it acquires new mutations that could have important public health consequences, including higher transmissibility, morbidity, mortality, and immune evasion, among others. Ideally, we would like to quickly identify new mutations that could confer adaptive advantages to the evolving virus by leveraging the large number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes. One way of identifying adaptive mutations is by looking at convergent mutations, mutations in the same genomic position that occur independently. The large number of currently available genomes, more than a million at this moment, however precludes the efficient use of phylogeny-based techniques. Here, we establish a fast and scalable Topological Data Analysis approach for the early warning and surveillance of emerging adaptive mutations of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Our method relies on a novel topological tool for the analysis of viral genome datasets based on persistent homology. It systematically identifies convergent events in viral evolution merely by their topological footprint and thus overcomes limitations of current phylogenetic inference techniques. This allows for an unbiased and rapid analysis of large viral datasets. We introduce a new topological measure for convergent evolution and apply it to the complete GISAID dataset as of February 2021, comprising 303,651 high-quality SARS-CoV-2 isolates taken from patients all over the world since the beginning of the pandemic. A complete list of mutations showing topological signals of convergence is compiled. We find that topologically salient mutations on the receptor-binding domain appear in several variants of concern and are linked with an increase in infectivity and immune escape. Moreover, for many adaptive mutations the topological signal precedes an increase in prevalence. We demonstrate the capability of our method to effectively identify emerging adaptive mutations at an early stage. By localizing topological signals in the dataset, we are able to extract geo-temporal information about the early occurrence of emerging adaptive mutations. The identification of these mutations can help to develop an alert system to monitor mutations of concern and guide experimentalists to focus the study of specific circulating variants
Complex structure moduli stability in toroidal compactifications
In this paper we present a classification of possible dynamics of closed
string moduli within specific toroidal compactifications of Type II string
theories due to the NS-NS tadpole terms in the reduced action. They appear as
potential terms for the moduli when supersymmetry is broken due to the presence
of D-branes. We particularise to specific constructions with two, four and
six-dimensional tori, and study the stabilisation of the complex structure
moduli at the disk level. We find that, depending on the cycle on the compact
space where the brane is wrapped, there are three possible cases: i) there is a
solution inside the complex structure moduli space, and the configuration is
stable at the critical point, ii) the moduli fields are driven towards the
boundary of the moduli space, iii) there is no stable solution at the minimum
of the potential and the system decays into a set of branes.Comment: 24 pages, JHEP3.cls, 19 figures. A few references adde
Non-perturbative orientifold transitions at the conifold
After orientifold projection, the conifold singularity in hypermultiplet
moduli space of Calabi-Yau compactifications cannot be avoided by geometric
deformations. We study the non-perturbative fate of this singularity in a local
model involving O6-planes and D6-branes wrapping the deformed conifold in Type
IIA string theory. We classify possible A-type orientifolds of the deformed
conifold and find that they cannot all be continued to the small resolution.
When passing through the singularity on the deformed side, the O-plane charge
generally jumps by the class of the vanishing cycle. To decide which classical
configurations are dynamically connected, we construct the quantum moduli space
by lifting the orientifold to M-theory as well as by looking at the
superpotential. We find a rich pattern of smooth and phase transitions
depending on the total sixbrane charge. Non-BPS states from branes wrapped on
non-supersymmetric bolts are responsible for a phase transition. We also
clarify the nature of a Z_2 valued D0-brane charge in the 6-brane background.
Along the way, we obtain a new metric of G_2 holonomy corresponding to an
O6-plane on the three sphere of the deformed conifold.Comment: 76 pages, references adde
Inflationary Scenarios from Branes at Angles
We describe a simple mechanism that can lead to inflation within string-based
brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration
with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry
conditions to produce a very flat potential for the field that parametrises the
distance between the branes, i.e. the inflaton field. This breaking can be
achieved in various ways: by slight relative rotations of the branes with small
angles, by considering small relative velocities between the branes, etc. If
the breaking parameter is sufficiently small, a large number of e-folds can be
produced within the D-brane, for small changes of the configuration in the
compactified directions. Such a process is local, i.e. it does not depend very
strongly on the compactification space nor on the initial conditions. Moreover,
the breaking induces a very small velocity and acceleration, which ensures very
small slow-roll parameters and thus an almost scale invariant spectrum of
metric fluctuations, responsible for the observed temperature anisotropies in
the microwave background. Inflation ends as in hybrid inflation, triggered by
the negative curvature of the string tachyon potential. In this paper we
elaborate on one of the simplest examples: two almost parallel D4-branes in a
flat compactified space.Comment: 29 pages, 9 eps figures, using JHEP3.cls, published in JHE
(Re)constructing Dimensions
Compactifying a higher-dimensional theory defined in R^{1,3+n} on an
n-dimensional manifold {\cal M} results in a spectrum of four-dimensional
(bosonic) fields with masses m^2_i = \lambda_i, where - \lambda_i are the
eigenvalues of the Laplacian on the compact manifold. The question we address
in this paper is the inverse: given the masses of the Kaluza-Klein fields in
four dimensions, what can we say about the size and shape (i.e. the topology
and the metric) of the compact manifold? We present some examples of
isospectral manifolds (i.e., different manifolds which give rise to the same
Kaluza-Klein mass spectrum). Some of these examples are Ricci-flat, complex and
K\"{a}hler and so they are isospectral backgrounds for string theory. Utilizing
results from finite spectral geometry, we also discuss the accuracy of
reconstructing the properties of the compact manifold (e.g., its dimension,
volume, and curvature etc) from measuring the masses of only a finite number of
Kaluza-Klein modes.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, 2 references adde
M-theory lift of brane-antibrane systems and localised closed string tachyons
We discuss the lift of certain D6-antiD6-brane systems to M-theory. These are
purely gravitational configurations with a bolt singularity. When reduced along
a trivial circle, and for large bolt radius, the bolt is related to a
non-supersymmetric orbifold type of singularity where some closed string
tachyons are expected in the twisted sectors. This is a kind of open-closed
string duality that relates open string tachyons on one side and localised
tachyons in the other. We consider the evolution of the system of branes from
M-theory point of view. This evolution gives rise to a brane-antibrane
annihilation on the brane side. On the gravity side, the evolution is related
to a reduction of the order of the orbifold and to a contraction of the bolt to
a nut or flat space if the system has non-vanishing or vanishing charge,
respectively. We also consider the inverse process of reducing a
non-supersymmetric orbifold to a D6-brane system. For , the
reduced system is a fractional D6-brane at an orbifold singularity .Comment: 1+22 pages, 5 figures; v2 comments on the M-theory geometry and
further references adde
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