12,615 research outputs found
History of art paintings through the lens of entropy and complexity
Art is the ultimate expression of human creativity that is deeply influenced
by the philosophy and culture of the corresponding historical epoch. The
quantitative analysis of art is therefore essential for better understanding
human cultural evolution. Here we present a large-scale quantitative analysis
of almost 140 thousand paintings, spanning nearly a millennium of art history.
Based on the local spatial patterns in the images of these paintings, we
estimate the permutation entropy and the statistical complexity of each
painting. These measures map the degree of visual order of artworks into a
scale of order-disorder and simplicity-complexity that locally reflects
qualitative categories proposed by art historians. The dynamical behavior of
these measures reveals a clear temporal evolution of art, marked by transitions
that agree with the main historical periods of art. Our research shows that
different artistic styles have a distinct average degree of entropy and
complexity, thus allowing a hierarchical organization and clustering of styles
according to these metrics. We have further verified that the identified groups
correspond well with the textual content used to qualitatively describe the
styles, and that the employed complexity-entropy measures can be used for an
effective classification of artworks.Comment: 10 two-column pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in PNAS
[supplementary information available at
http://www.pnas.org/highwire/filestream/824089/field_highwire_adjunct_files/0/pnas.1800083115.sapp.pdf
Thrombus aspiration in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction: results of a national registry of interventional cardiology.
BACKGROUND:
We aimed to evaluate the impact of thrombus aspiration (TA) during primary percutaneous coronary intervention (P-PCI) in 'real-world' settings.
METHODS:
We performed a retrospective study, using data from the National Registry of Interventional Cardiology (RNCI 2006-2012, Portugal) with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients treated with P-PCI. The primary outcome, in-hospital mortality, was analysed through adjusted odds ratio (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).
RESULTS:
We assessed data for 9458 STEMI patients that undergone P-PCI (35% treated with TA). The risk of in-hospital mortality with TA (aOR 0.93, 95%CI:0.54-1.60) was not significantly decreased. After matching patients through the propensity score, TA reduced significantly the risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 0.58, 95%CI:0.35-0.98; 3500 patients).
CONCLUSIONS:
The whole cohort data does not support the routine use of TA in P-PCI, but the results of the propensity-score matched cohort suggests that the use of selective TA may improve the short-term risks of STEMI.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Metal-Insulator Transition in a Disordered Two-Dimensional Electron Gas in GaAs-AlGaAs at zero Magnetic Field
A metal-insulator transition in two-dimensional electron gases at B=0 is
found in Ga(Al)As heterostructures, where a high density of self-assembled InAs
quantum dots is incorporated just 3 nm below the heterointerface. The
transition occurs at resistances around h/e^2 and critical carrier densities of
1.2 10^11cm^-2. Effects of electron-electron interactions are expected to be
rather weak in our samples, while disorder plays a crucial role.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 21 reference
A conjugate for the Bargmann representation
In the Bargmann representation of quantum mechanics, physical states are
mapped into entire functions of a complex variable z*, whereas the creation and
annihilation operators and play the role of
multiplication and differentiation with respect to z*, respectively. In this
paper we propose an alternative representation of quantum states, conjugate to
the Bargmann representation, where the roles of and
are reversed, much like the roles of the position and momentum operators in
their respective representations. We derive expressions for the inner product
that maintain the usual notion of distance between states in the Hilbert space.
Applications to simple systems and to the calculation of semiclassical
propagators are presented.Comment: 15 page
Exploring bioactive compounds present in international patents targeting brain functions
The interest in nervous system disorders is an evident fact with more than 60 000
articles published on PUBMED only in the year of 2016. Actually, in our daily life
we are constantly exposed to different environmental factors known to be
prejudicial to the health of our nervous system. In this context, a holistic view of
food consumption is gaining increasing importance with the perspective of using
functional components of specific foods to improve our health or diminish the risk
of disease.
The aim of our work is to evaluate the use of nutritional food components of
traditional Portuguese diet in international patents of dietary supplements or the so
called functional foods described to improve brain functions.
The WIPO platform was used to collect data of these patents, and from the last 3
years we identified 35 patents using more than 150 different components. We
selected the most frequent components and the indications described in the patents,
and then examined the possible bioactive compounds for each component. The
prevalent functional components described were walnuts, peanuts, wolfberries,
mulberries, dates, jujube, creatine, carnitine, ginseng and soybean. Other
components rich in omega-3, such as docosahexaenoic acid and superba oil, were
also identified. These patents were described to target brain functions such as
intelligence, memory, concentration and in some cases compounds are indicated to
traumatic brain injury.
Regarding local sources, we found several nutritional components of traditional
Portuguese diet that have similar compounds of those found in the international
components described in patents. We believe this information will help in the
valorisation of national products.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Production, breeding and potential of cowpea crop in Brazil.
About 50 years ago cowpea was reported as a relatively minor tropical legume. However, in the last years, it has been emerging as one of the most important food legume of the 21st century (SINGH, 2010). Brazil is not out of this panorama. Brazilian agriculture is undergoing major technological changes and, in addition, globalization in agribusiness has caused impacts on the production chain of several crops, particularly those heavily dependent on the use of a large volume of agricultural inputs, mainly fertilizers and pesticides. Such crops have had a higher production cost each year. On the other hand, this situation has brought new opportunities. Business farmers have sought new alternatives for their production arrangements. In this context cowpea constitutes one of the best options.bitstream/item/85620/1/Doc-216-Production.pd
Prototype 9.7 m Schwarzschild-Couder telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: status of the optical system
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a
next-generation ground-based gamma ray observatory, aiming to improve on the
sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and
provide energy coverage from 30 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The 9.7m
Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) candidate medium-size telescope for CTA exploits a
novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design that provides a large field of view
of 8 degrees and substantially improves the off-axis performance giving better
angular resolution across all of the field of view with respect to
single-mirror telescopes. The realization of the SC optical design implies the
challenging production of large aspherical mirrors accompanied by a
submillimeter-precision custom alignment system. In this contribution we report
on the status of the implementation of the optical system on a prototype 9.7 m
SC telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern
Arizona.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC
2017), Busan, Korea. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1709.0348
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