792 research outputs found
Resummed Photon Spectra for WIMP Annihilation
We construct an effective field theory (EFT) description of the hard photon
spectrum for heavy WIMP annihilation. This facilitates precision predictions
relevant for line searches, and allows the incorporation of non-trivial energy
resolution effects. Our framework combines techniques from non-relativistic
EFTs and soft-collinear effective theory (SCET), as well as its multi-scale
extensions that have been recently introduced for studying jet substructure. We
find a number of interesting features, including the simultaneous presence of
SCET and SCET modes, as well as collinear-soft modes
at the electroweak scale. We derive a factorization formula that enables both
the resummation of the leading large Sudakov double logarithms that appear in
the perturbative spectrum, and the inclusion of Sommerfeld enhancement effects.
Consistency of this factorization is demonstrated to leading logarithmic order
through explicit calculation. Our final result contains both the exclusive and
the inclusive limits, thereby providing a unifying description of these two
previously-considered approximations. We estimate the impact on experimental
sensitivity, focusing for concreteness on an SU(2) triplet fermion dark
matter - the pure wino - where the strongest constraints are due to a search
for gamma-ray lines from the Galactic Center. We find numerically significant
corrections compared to previous results, thereby highlighting the importance
of accounting for the photon spectrum when interpreting data from current and
future indirect detection experiments.Comment: 55+25 pages, 11+2 figures; v3, updated an expression in the appendix
to make it applicable at higher order - no impact on the results in this wor
Designing Fair Ranking Schemes
Items from a database are often ranked based on a combination of multiple
criteria. A user may have the flexibility to accept combinations that weigh
these criteria differently, within limits. On the other hand, this choice of
weights can greatly affect the fairness of the produced ranking. In this paper,
we develop a system that helps users choose criterion weights that lead to
greater fairness.
We consider ranking functions that compute the score of each item as a
weighted sum of (numeric) attribute values, and then sort items on their score.
Each ranking function can be expressed as a vector of weights, or as a point in
a multi-dimensional space. For a broad range of fairness criteria, we show how
to efficiently identify regions in this space that satisfy these criteria.
Using this identification method, our system is able to tell users whether
their proposed ranking function satisfies the desired fairness criteria and, if
it does not, to suggest the smallest modification that does. We develop
user-controllable approximation that and indexing techniques that are applied
during preprocessing, and support sub-second response times during the online
phase. Our extensive experiments on real datasets demonstrate that our methods
are able to find solutions that satisfy fairness criteria effectively and
efficiently
Impact of Salvage Surgery and Re-irradiation for Radiation Failed Recurrent Skull Base Meningiomas
View full abstracthttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/leading-edge/1052/thumbnail.jp
Microbiological quality of Brazil nuts milk submitted to different dehulling methods.
Bertholletia excelsa Bonpl populaly known as Brazil nut, is considered one of the noblest species of the Amazon rainforest, being found throughout this territory. Its fruit represents a high economic value due to its use in both human and animal feeding, presenting about 60 to 70% of lipids, polyunsaturated fatty acids and 15 to 20% of protein. There are many uses of Brazil nuts, and the "milk" extracted from the nuts, is usually consumed pure and used by the natives as typical food. Due to the high content of unsaturated fatty acids in its composition, the nuts becomes very perishable, due oxidative processes, reduction of nutritional value, appearance of smell and rancid flavor, leading to a product with low quality, besides the susceptibility to colonization by pathogenic microorganisms due poorly handled. The process for obtaining Brazil nuts milk involves the stages of degumming of the nuts, extraction, separation of the insoluble residue, formulation and packaging. The most common form of degumming is manual. The objective of the work was to evaluate the microbiological quality of Brazil nuts and its milk obtained through the processes of manual or NaOH dehulling. The count of aerobic bacteria in the standard agar for counting (PCA), total coliforms and E. coli, presence of Salmonella sp., and counting of molds and yeasts using Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) were counted
Equality of opportunity and educational achievement in Portugal
Portugal has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe, and low wages and unemployment are concentrated among low skill individuals. Education is an important determinant of inequality. However, there are large differences in the educational attainment of different individuals in the population, and the sources of these differences emerge early in the life-cycle when families play a central role in individual development. We estimate that most of the variance of school achievement at age 15 is explained by family characteristics. Observed school inputs explain very little of adolescent performance. Children from highly educated parents benefit of rich cultural environments in the home and become highly educated adults. Education policy needs to be innovative: (1) it needs to explicitly recognize the fundamental long run role of families on child development; (2) it needs to acknowledge the failure of traditional input based policies
Kinetic regulation of coated vesicle secretion
The secretion of vesicles for intracellular transport often rely on the
aggregation of specialized membrane-bound proteins into a coat able to curve
cell membranes. The nucleation and growth of a protein coat is a kinetic
process that competes with the energy-consuming turnover of coat components
between the membrane and the cytosol. We propose a generic kinetic description
of coat assembly and the formation of coated vesicles, and discuss its
implication to the dynamics of COP vesicles that traffic within the Golgi and
with the Endoplasmic Reticulum. We show that stationary coats of fixed area
emerge from the competition between coat growth and the recycling of coat
components, in a fashion resembling the treadmilling of cytoskeletal filaments.
We further show that the turnover of coat components allows for a highly
sensitive switching mechanism between a quiescent and a vesicle producing
membrane, upon a slowing down of the exchange kinetics. We claim that the
existence of this switching behaviour, also triggered by factors such as the
presence of cargo and variation of the membrane mechanical tension, allows for
efficient regulation of vesicle secretion. We propose a model, supported by
different experimental observations, in which vesiculation of secretory
membranes is impaired by the energy consuming desorption of coat proteins,
until the presence of cargo or other factors triggers a dynamical switch into a
vesicle producing state.Comment: 6 pages 4 figures accepted at PNA
Common polymorphic variation in the genetically diverse African insulin gene and its association with size at birth.
The insulin variable number of tandem repeats (INS VNTR) has been variably associated with size at birth in non-African populations. Small size at birth is a major determinant of neonatal mortality, so the INS VNTR may influence survival. We tested the hypothesis, therefore, that genetic variation around the INS VNTR in a rural Gambian population, who experience seasonal variation in nutrition and subsequently birth weight, may be associated with foetal and early growth. Six polymorphisms flanking the INS VNTR were genotyped in over 2,500 people. Significant associations were detected between the maternally inherited SNP 27 (rs689) allele and birth length [effect size 17.5 (5.2-29.8) mm; P = 0.004; n = 361]. Significant associations were also found between the maternally inherited African-specific SNP 28 (rs5506) allele and post-natal weight gain [effect size 0.19 (0.05-0.32) z score points/year; P = 0.005; n = 728). These results suggest that in the Gambian population studied there are associations between polymorphic variation in the genetically diverse INS gene and foetal and early growth characteristics, which contribute to overall polygenic associations with these traits
String Sanitization Under Edit Distance: Improved and Generalized
Let W be a string of length n over an alphabet ÎŁ, k be a positive integer, and S be a set of length-k substrings of W. The ETFS problem asks us to construct a string XED such that: (i) no string of S occurs in XED; (ii) the order of all other length-k substrings over ÎŁ is the same in W and in XED; and (iii) XED has minimal edit distance to W. When W represents an individual's data and S represents a set of confidential patterns, the ETFS problem asks for transforming W to preserve its privacy and its utility [Bernardini et al., ECML PKDD 2019].
ETFS can be solved in O(n2k) time [Bernardini et al., CPM 2020]. The same paper shows that ETFS cannot be solved in O(n2âδ) time, for any δ>0, unless the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) is false. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) an O(n2log2k)-time algorithm to solve ETFS; and (ii) an O(n2log2n)-time algorithm to solve AETFS, a generalization of ETFS in which the elements of S can have arbitrary lengths. Our algorithms are thus optimal up to polylogarithmic factors, unless SETH fails. Let us also stress that our algorithms work under edit distance with arbitrary weights at no extra cost. As a bonus, we show how to modify some known techniques, which speed up the standard edit distance computation, to be applied to our problems. Beyond string sanitization, our techniques may inspire solutions to other problems related to regular expressions or context-free grammars
String Sanitization Under Edit Distance: Improved and Generalized
Let W be a string of length n over an alphabet ÎŁ, k be a positive integer, and S be a set of length-k substrings of W. The ETFS problem asks us to construct a string XED such that: (i) no string of S occurs in XED; (ii) the order of all other length-k substrings over ÎŁ is the same in W and in XED; and (iii) XED has minimal edit distance to W. When W represents an individual's data and S represents a set of confidential patterns, the ETFS problem asks for transforming W to preserve its privacy and its utility [Bernardini et al., ECML PKDD 2019].
ETFS can be solved in O(n2k) time [Bernardini et al., CPM 2020]. The same paper shows that ETFS cannot be solved in O(n2âδ) time, for any δ>0, unless the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) is false. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) an O(n2log2k)-time algorithm to solve ETFS; and (ii) an O(n2log2n)-time algorithm to solve AETFS, a generalization of ETFS in which the elements of S can have arbitrary lengths. Our algorithms are thus optimal up to polylogarithmic factors, unless SETH fails. Let us also stress that our algorithms work under edit distance with arbitrary weights at no extra cost. As a bonus, we show how to modify some known techniques, which speed up the standard edit distance computation, to be applied to our problems. Beyond string sanitization, our techniques may inspire solutions to other problems related to regular expressions or context-free grammars
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