Characteristic Length Scale of Electric Transport Properties of Genomes

A tight-binding model together with a novel statistical method are used to investigate the relation between the sequence-dependent electric transport properties and the sequences of protein-coding regions of complete genomes. A correlation parameter $\Omega$ is defined to analyze the relation. For some particular propagation length $w_{max}$, the transport behaviors of the coding and non-coding sequences are very different and the correlation reaches its maximal value $\Omega_{max}$. $w_{max}$ and \omax are characteristic values for each species. The possible reason of the difference between the features of transport properties in the coding and non-coding regions is the mechanism of DNA damage repair processes together with the natural selection.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Understanding Rates of Marijuana Use and Consequences Among Adolescents in a Changing Legal Landscape.

Purpose of Review:There is not one answer to address whether marijuana use has increased, decreased, or stayed the same given changes in state legalization of medical and non-medical marijuana in the USA. Recent Findings:Evidence suggests some health benefits for medical marijuana; however, initiation of marijuana use is a risk factor for developing problem cannabis use. Though use rates have remained stable over recent years, about one in three 10th graders report marijuana use, most adolescents do not view the drug as harmful, and over 650,000 youth aged 12 to 17 struggle with cannabis use disorder. Summary:Although the health benefits of medical marijuana are becoming better understood, more research is needed. Intervention and prevention programs must better address effects of marijuana, acknowledging that while there may be some benefits medically, marijuana use can affect functioning during adolescence when the brain is still developing

The Unpredictability of the Most Energetic Solar Events

Observations over the past two solar cycles show a highly irregular pattern of occurrence for major solar flares, gamma-ray events, and solar energetic particle (SEP) fluences. Such phenomena do not appear to follow the direct indices of solar magnetic activity, such as the sunspot number. I show that this results from the non-Poisson occurrence for the most energetic events. This Letter also points out a particularly striking example of this irregularity in a comparison between the declining phases of the recent two solar cycles (1993-1995 and 2004-2006, respectively) and traces it through the radiated energies of the flares, the associated SEP fluences, and the sunspot areas. These factors suggest that processes in the solar interior involved with the supply of magnetic flux up to the surface of the Sun have strong correlations in space and time, leading to a complex occurrence pattern that is presently unpredictable on timescales longer than active region lifetimes (weeks) and not correlated well with the solar cycle itself.Comment: 4 page

Learning Temporal Transformations From Time-Lapse Videos

Based on life-long observations of physical, chemical, and biologic phenomena in the natural world, humans can often easily picture in their minds what an object will look like in the future. But, what about computers? In this paper, we learn computational models of object transformations from time-lapse videos. In particular, we explore the use of generative models to create depictions of objects at future times. These models explore several different prediction tasks: generating a future state given a single depiction of an object, generating a future state given two depictions of an object at different times, and generating future states recursively in a recurrent framework. We provide both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the generated results, and also conduct a human evaluation to compare variations of our models.Comment: ECCV201

Kinetic Inductance of Josephson Junction Arrays: Dynamic and Equilibrium Calculations

We show analytically that the inverse kinetic inductance $L^{-1}$ of an overdamped junction array at low frequencies is proportional to the admittance of an inhomogeneous equivalent impedance network. The $ij^{th}$ bond in this equivalent network has an inverse inductance $J_{ij}\cos(\theta_i^0-\theta_j^0-A_{ij})$, where $J_{ij}$ is the Josephson coupling energy of the $ij^{th}$ bond, $\theta_i^0$ is the ground-state phase of the grain $i$, and $A_{ij}$ is the usual magnetic phase factor. We use this theorem to calculate $L^{-1}$ for square arrays as large as $180\times 180$. The calculated $L^{-1}$ is in very good agreement with the low-temperature limit of the helicity modulus $\gamma$ calculated by conventional equilibrium Monte Carlo techniques. However, the finite temperature structure of $\gamma$, as a function of magnetic field, is \underline{sharper} than the zero-temperature $L^{-1}$, which shows surprisingly weak structure. In triangular arrays, the equilibrium calculation of $\gamma$ yields a series of peaks at frustrations $f = \frac{1}{2}(1-1/N)$, where $N$ is an integer $\geq 2$, consistent with experiment.Comment: 14 pages + 6 postscript figures, 3.0 REVTe

The investigation of STEM Self-Efficacy and Professional Commitment to Engineering among female high school students

This study employed social cognitive theory and social cognitive career theory (SCCT) as foundations to explore the influence of high school  students’ beliefs about female gender roles and female engineer role models on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)self-efficacy and professional commitment to engineering. A total of 88 students from a national girls’ high school participated in STEM  project-based learning. A survey questionnaire named The STEM  Self-efficacy and Professional Commitment to Engineering Questionnaire, developed by the researchers, was administered to collect data, and a structured equation model was employed to confirm the multi-theoretical model developed in this study. The results of this study show that  enhancing the gender role beliefs and engineer role models of female students may increase their STEM self-efficacy and professional  commitment to engineering. In other words, the female high school  students’ professional commitment to engineering model can explain  students’ intentions for future engineering careers. Thus, this study  suggests integrating STEM project-based learning into the curricula of various schools and integrating female engineer role models into STEM project-based learning activities for female students, which can enhance female high school students’ STEM self-efficacy and professional  commitment to engineering.Keywords: female engineer role model; female gender role beliefs;  professional commitment to engineering; STEM project-based learning; STEM self-efficac

Fast divide-and-conquer algorithms for preemptive scheduling problems with controllable processing times – A polymatroid optimization approach

We consider a variety of preemptive scheduling problems with controllable processing times on a single machine and on identical/uniform parallel machines, where the objective is to minimize the total compression cost. In this paper, we propose fast divide-and-conquer algorithms for these scheduling problems. Our approach is based on the observation that each scheduling problem we discuss can be formulated as a polymatroid optimization problem. We develop a novel divide-and-conquer technique for the polymatroid optimization problem and then apply it to each scheduling problem. We show that each scheduling problem can be solved in O(Tfeas(n) log n) time by using our divide-and-conquer technique, where n is the number of jobs and Tfeas(n) denotes the time complexity of the corresponding feasible scheduling problem with n jobs. This approach yields faster algorithms for most of the scheduling problems discussed in this paper

Perturbative tests of non-perturbative counting

We observe that a class of quarter-BPS dyons in N=4 theories with charge vector (Q, P) and with nontrivial values of the arithmetic duality invariant I := gcd (Q wedge P) are nonperturbative in one frame but perturbative in another frame. This observation suggests a test of the recently computed nonperturbative partition functions for dyons with nontrivial values of the arithmetic invariant. For all values of I, we show that the nonperturbative counting yields vanishing indexed degeneracy for this class of states everywhere in the moduli space in precise agreement with the perturbative result.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figure

Evaluation of Boundary Conditions for the Gust-Cascade Problem

Using a high-order accuracy finite-difference time-domain algorithm, the acoustic scattering from a flat-plate cascade is computed. Keeping the grid and time step fixed, the effect of four different boundary conditions on the accuracy and stability of the computed solution is compared

Structure Space of Model Proteins --A Principle Component Analysis

We study the space of all compact structures on a two-dimensional square lattice of size $N=6\times6$. Each structure is mapped onto a vector in $N$-dimensions according to a hydrophobic model. Previous work has shown that the designabilities of structures are closely related to the distribution of the structure vectors in the $N$-dimensional space, with highly designable structures predominantly found in low density regions. We use principal component analysis to probe and characterize the distribution of structure vectors, and find a non-uniform density with a single peak. Interestingly, the principal axes of this peak are almost aligned with Fourier eigenvectors, and the corresponding Fourier eigenvalues go to zero continuously at the wave-number for alternating patterns ($q=\pi$). These observations provide a stepping stone for an analytic description of the distribution of structural points, and open the possibility of estimating designabilities of realistic structures by simply Fourier transforming the hydrophobicities of the corresponding sequences.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, Conclusion has been modifie