God’s Life-Giving Character and the Double-Dimension of Sin in Paul's Romans

"In his letter to the Romans, Paul shows God’s character as life-giving. This premise suggests that the sufferings of the world that lead to decay as described in Rom 8:18–30 are not directly attributable to God. Thus, other elements in creational existence could also play a negative role. An understanding of Paul’s hamartiology in view of a double-dimension of sin could guide readers in discerning a meaning of Romans 8:20 in the context of ecological crisis." Paper delivered at the international consultation on "Resources and Best Practice Models for Ecotheology, Climate Justice and Food Security", held at the Academy of Volos, Demetriades Diocese of Church of Greece, 10-13 March, 201

Scattering Amplitudes and N-Body Post-Minkowskian Hamiltonians in General Relativity and Beyond

We present a general framework for calculating post-Minskowskian, classical, conservative Hamiltonians for $N$ non-spinning bodies in general relativity from relativistic scattering amplitudes. Novel features for $N>2$ are described including the subtraction of tree-like iteration contributions and the calculation of non-trivial many-body Fourier transform integrals needed to construct position space potentials. A new approach to calculating these integrals as an expansion in the hierarchical limit is described based on the method of regions. As an explicit example, we present the $\mathcal{O}\left(G^2\right)$ 3-body momentum space potential in general relativity as well as for charged bodies in Einstein-Maxwell. The result is shown to be in perfect agreement with previous post-Newtonian calculations in general relativity up to $\mathcal{O}\left(G^2 v^4\right)$. Furthermore, in appropriate limits the result is shown to agree perfectly with relativistic probe scattering in multi-center extremal black hole backgrounds and with the scattering of slowly-moving extremal black holes in the moduli space approximation.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figure

On the Actionability of Outcome Prediction

Predicting future outcomes is a prevalent application of machine learning in social impact domains. Examples range from predicting student success in education to predicting disease risk in healthcare. Practitioners recognize that the ultimate goal is not just to predict but to act effectively. Increasing evidence suggests that relying on outcome predictions for downstream interventions may not have desired results. In most domains there exists a multitude of possible interventions for each individual, making the challenge of taking effective action more acute. Even when causal mechanisms connecting the individual's latent states to outcomes is well understood, in any given instance (a specific student or patient), practitioners still need to infer -- from budgeted measurements of latent states -- which of many possible interventions will be most effective for this individual. With this in mind, we ask: when are accurate predictors of outcomes helpful for identifying the most suitable intervention? Through a simple model encompassing actions, latent states, and measurements, we demonstrate that pure outcome prediction rarely results in the most effective policy for taking actions, even when combined with other measurements. We find that except in cases where there is a single decisive action for improving the outcome, outcome prediction never maximizes "action value", the utility of taking actions. Making measurements of actionable latent states, where specific actions lead to desired outcomes, considerably enhances the action value compared to outcome prediction, and the degree of improvement depends on action costs and the outcome model. This analysis emphasizes the need to go beyond generic outcome prediction in interventional settings by incorporating knowledge of plausible actions and latent states.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

The Association Between Dental Coverage and Self-reported Health in Older Adults jGPHA

Background: For the older population of the United States, lack of dental insurance coverage is a substantial health problem. The purpose of the present study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between dental coverage and self-reported health among older adults. Methods: The Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative biennial cohort study of community-dwelling individuals, includes 19,595 adults (aged 50 and older) living in the United States. For the 2010, 2012, and 2014 waves, the independent variable of dental coverage and the outcome of self-reported health were examined. Results: At each time point, dental coverage for older adults had a positive association with self-reported health (parameter estimate, β=0.340, standard error (SE)=0.039, p\u3c0.0001), controlling for sociodemographic variables of age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, and the status of edentulism. There were no significant longitudinal effects for dental coverage associated with selfreported health. Conclusions: At each time point, the results show a positive association between having dental coverage and better self-reported health of older adults. This is relevant, because, in the United States, there is an increasing population of older people

Stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems using gold nanoparticles and phospholipid vesicles

In the near future, new pharmaceutical therapeutics will evolve to contain complicated protein molecules, gene therapies, SI-RNA etc., which must be transported in extremely specific environments such as a specific pH level or sodium concentration. The problem is that throughout the body there are many different environments that a drug could pass through. For example, gastric acid can have pH levels as low as 1 where blood is around 7.4. This is a problem because as the drugs pass through these harsh environments they may become rendered useless. Furthermore, these new therapeutics are not compatible with conventional drug delivery mechanisms and new strategies for drug delivery are required. To solve these problem DPPC/DPPG phospholipid vesicles are being used with Au nanoparticles to transport these drugs. The DPPC/DPPG vesicles encapsulate the drug of choice and protect it from the harsh environments of the body. The Au nanoparticles can be designed to either embedded in the lipid bilayer of the vesicles or decorate the vesicle exterior. When radiation is applied, the nanoparticles are excited and cause a disruption in the vesicle structure, leading to the release of the drug into the body. Our research is centered around how the stability of the lipid vesicles changes based on the size, surface chemistry, and distribution of the nanoparticles

Indexing weighted sequences: Neat and efficient

In a weighted sequence, for every position of the sequence and every letter of the alphabet a probability of occurrence of this letter at this position is specified. Weighted sequences are commonly used to represent imprecise or uncertain data, for example in molecular biology, where they are known under the name of Position Weight Matrices. Given a probability threshold 1/z , we say that a string P of length m occurs in a weighted sequence X at position i if the product of probabilities of the letters of P at positions i, . . . , i+m−1 in X is at least 1/z . In this article, we consider an indexing variant of the problem, in which we are to pre-process a weighted sequence to answer multiple pattern matching queries. We present an O(nz)-time construction of an O(nz)-sized index for a weighted sequence of length n that answers pattern matching queries in the optimal O(m+Occ) time, where Occ is the number of occurrences reported. The cornerstone of our data structure is a novel construction of a family of [z] strings that carries the information about all the strings that occur in the weighted sequence with a sufficient probability. We thus improve the most efficient previously known index by Amir et al. (Theor. Comput. Sci., 2008) with size and construction time O(nz2 log z), preserving optimal query time. On the way we develop a new, more straightforward index for the so-called property matching problem. We provide an open-source implementation of our data structure and present experimental results using both synthetic and real data. Our construction allows us also to obtain a significant improvement over the complexities of the approximate variant of the weighted index presented by Biswas et al. at EDBT 2016 and an improvement of the space complexity of their general index. We also present applications of our index

E-Gov.Br

Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra. 004:35(81) E11pOs autores analisam experiências internacionais e brasileiras de e-governo. Descrevem experiências que acreditam ser de sucesso e que podem ser referência em outras situações; ao final, há, ainda, informações sobre os autores, os colaboradores, um glossário de termos técnicos e acrônimos e um índice na análise de experiências brasileiras

Effects of comorbidities on quality of life in Filipino people with tuberculosis.

BACKGROUND: We investigated health-related quality of life (HrQoL) in Filipino people undergoing TB treatment, and whether HrQoL was negatively impacted by comorbidity with undernutrition, diabetes (DM) and anaemia.METHODS: Adult participants were enrolled in public facilities in Metro Manila (three sites) and Negros Occidental (two sites). Multivariate linear regression was used to model the four correlated domain scores from a WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire (physical, psychological, social, environmental). A forward-stepwise approach was used to select a final multivariable model with inclusion based on global tests of significance at P < 0.1.RESULTS: In 446 people on drug-susceptible TB treatment, DM and moderate/severe anaemia were not associated with HrQoL. After adjustment for age, sex, education, food insecurity, treatment adherence, inflammation, Category I or II TB treatment, treatment phase, current side effects and inhibited ability to work, moderate/severe undernutrition (body mass index < 17 kg/m²) was associated with lower HrQoL (P = 0.003) with reduced psychological (coefficient: -1.02, 95% CI -1.54 to -0.51), physical (-0.62, 95% CI -1.14 to -0.09) and environmental domain scores (-0.45, 95% CI -0.88 to -0.01). In 225 patients with known HIV status in Metro Manila, HIV was associated with modestly reduced HrQoL (P = 0.014).CONCLUSION: Nutritional status and food insecurity represent modifiable risk factors for poor HrQoL that may be alleviated through interventions

Faster algorithms for longest common substring

In the classic longest common substring (LCS) problem, we are given two strings S and T, each of length at most n, over an alphabet of size σ, and we are asked to find a longest string occurring as a fragment of both S and T. Weiner, in his seminal paper that introduced the suffix tree, presented an (n log σ)-time algorithm for this problem [SWAT 1973]. For polynomially-bounded integer alphabets, the linear-time construction of suffix trees by Farach yielded an (n)-time algorithm for the LCS problem [FOCS 1997]. However, for small alphabets, this is not necessarily optimal for the LCS problem in the word RAM model of computation, in which the strings can be stored in (n log σ/log n) space and read in (n log σ/log n) time. We show that, in this model, we can compute an LCS in time (n log σ / √{log n}), which is sublinear in n if σ = 2^{o(√{log n})} (in particular, if σ = (1)), using optimal space (n log σ/log n). We then lift our ideas to the problem of computing a k-mismatch LCS, which has received considerable attention in recent years. In this problem, the aim is to compute a longest substring of S that occurs in T with at most k mismatches. Flouri et al. showed how to compute a 1-mismatch LCS in (n log n) time [IPL 2015]. Thankachan et al. extended this result to computing a k-mismatch LCS in (n log^k n) time for k = (1) [J. Comput. Biol. 2016]. We show an (n log^{k-1/2} n)-time algorithm, for any constant integer k > 0 and irrespective of the alphabet size, using (n) space as the previous approaches. We thus notably break through the well-known n log^k n barrier, which stems from a recursive heavy-path decomposition technique that was first introduced in the seminal paper of Cole et al. [STOC 2004] for string indexing with k errors. </p

String Sanitization Under Edit Distance: Improved and Generalized

Let W be a string of length n over an alphabet Σ, 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 Σ 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(n2−δ) 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