An automatic adaptive method to combine summary statistics in approximate Bayesian computation

To infer the parameters of mechanistic models with intractable likelihoods, techniques such as approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) are increasingly being adopted. One of the main disadvantages of ABC in practical situations, however, is that parameter inference must generally rely on summary statistics of the data. This is particularly the case for problems involving high-dimensional data, such as biological imaging experiments. However, some summary statistics contain more information about parameters of interest than others, and it is not always clear how to weight their contributions within the ABC framework. We address this problem by developing an automatic, adaptive algorithm that chooses weights for each summary statistic. Our algorithm aims to maximize the distance between the prior and the approximate posterior by automatically adapting the weights within the ABC distance function. Computationally, we use a nearest neighbour estimator of the distance between distributions. We justify the algorithm theoretically based on properties of the nearest neighbour distance estimator. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm, we apply it to a variety of test problems, including several stochastic models of biochemical reaction networks, and a spatial model of diffusion, and compare our results with existing algorithms

The impact of temporal sampling resolution on parameter inference for biological transport models

Imaging data has become widely available to study biological systems at various scales, for example the motile behaviour of bacteria or the transport of mRNA, and it has the potential to transform our understanding of key transport mechanisms. Often these imaging studies require us to compare biological species or mutants, and to do this we need to quantitatively characterise their behaviour. Mathematical models offer a quantitative description of a system that enables us to perform this comparison, but to relate these mechanistic mathematical models to imaging data, we need to estimate the parameters of the models. In this work, we study the impact of collecting data at different temporal resolutions on parameter inference for biological transport models by performing exact inference for simple velocity jump process models in a Bayesian framework. This issue is prominent in a host of studies because the majority of imaging technologies place constraints on the frequency with which images can be collected, and the discrete nature of observations can introduce errors into parameter estimates. In this work, we avoid such errors by formulating the velocity jump process model within a hidden states framework. This allows us to obtain estimates of the reorientation rate and noise amplitude for noisy observations of a simple velocity jump process. We demonstrate the sensitivity of these estimates to temporal variations in the sampling resolution and extent of measurement noise. We use our methodology to provide experimental guidelines for researchers aiming to characterise motile behaviour that can be described by a velocity jump process. In particular, we consider how experimental constraints resulting in a trade-off between temporal sampling resolution and observation noise may affect parameter estimates.Comment: Published in PLOS Computational Biolog

Increased productivity of Clostridium acetobutylicum fermentation of acetone, butanol, and ethanol by pervaporation through supported ionic liquid membrane

Pervaporation proved to be one of the best methods to remove solvents out of a solvent producing Clostridium acetobutylicum culture. By using an ionic liquid (IL)-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) ultrafiltration membrane (pore size 60 nm), we could guarantee high stability and selectivity during all measurements carried out at 37C. Overall solvent productivity of fermentation connected with continuous product removal by pervaporation was 2.34 g l(-1) h(-1). The supported ionic liquid membrane (SILM) was impregnated with 15 wt% of a novel ionic liquid (tetrapropylammonium tetracyano-borate) and 85 wt% of polydimethylsiloxane. Pervaporation, accomplished with the optimized SILM, led to stable and efficient removal of the solvents butan-1-ol and acetone out of a C. acetobutylicum culture. By pervaporation through SILM, we removed more butan-1-ol than C. acetobutylicum was able to produce. Therefore, we added an extra dose of butan-1-ol to run fermentation on limiting values where the bacteria would still be able to survive its lethal concentration (15.82 g/l). After pervaporation was switched off, the bacteria died from high concentration of butan-1-ol, which they produced

Characteristics and causes of severe poverty and hunger:

Poverty reduction, Poverty, Hunger, Landlessness in rural areas, Poverty dynamics, Measuring severe poverty, Characteristics of poor and hungry, Women,

Nonthermal Radio Emission from Planetary Nebulae

In a recent analysis of the radio emission from the planetary nebula A30, Dgani, Evans & White (1998) claim that the emission, located in the inner region, is probably dominated by nonthermal emission. We propose a model to explain this. We assume that the fast wind, blown by the central star of A30 carries a very weak magnetic field. The interaction of this wind with a cluster of dense condensations traps the magnetic field lines for a long time and stretches them, leading to a strong magnetic field. If relativistic particles are formed as the fast wind is shocked, then the enhanced magnetic field will result in nonthermal radio emission. The typical nonthermal radio flux at 1 GHz can be up to several milli-Jansky. In order to detect the nonthermal emission, the emitting region should be spatially resolved from the main optical nebula. We list other planetary nebulae which may possess nonthermal radio emission.Comment: 11 page

Form factors for semi-leptonic B decays

We report on form factors for the B->K l^+ l^- semi-leptonic decay process. We use several lattice spacings from a=0.12 fm down to 0.06 fm and a variety of dynamical quark masses with 2+1 flavors of asqtad quarks provided by the MILC Collaboration. These ensembles allow good control of the chiral and continuum extrapolations. The b-quark is treated as a clover quark with the Fermilab interpretation. We update our results for f_\parallel and f_\perp, or, equivalently, f_+ and f_0. In addition, we present new results for the tensor form factor f_T. Model independent results are obtained based upon the z-expansion.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, presented at The XXXth International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - Lattice 2012, June 24-29, 2012 Cairns, Australia, to appear as PoS(Lattice 2012)12

Global monopoles in dilaton gravity

We analyse the gravitational field of a global monopole within the context of low energy string gravity, allowing for an arbitrary coupling of the monopole fields to the dilaton. Both massive and massless dilatons are considered. We find that, for a massless dilaton, the spacetime is generically singular, whereas when the dilaton is massive, the monopole generically induces a long range dilaton cloud. We compare and contrast these results with the literature.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, version to appear in Class Quant Gra

Family Distress and Eating Disorders among Undergraduate Students of University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

The study investigated the relative relationship between family distress and eating disorders among undergraduate students of University of Port Harcourt. The study was guided by three research questions and three null hypotheses to test the tenability of the independent variables on the dependent variable at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted correlation research design. A sample of 388 was drawn from a population of 14,000 undergraduate students of University of Port Harcourt (predominantly 100 and 200) level, using simple random and purposive sampling techniques. The instruments for data collection were Eating Attitude Test (EAT) and questionnaire for family distress which were validated by experts.  The reliability of the instruments was ascertained to be 0.73. Mean and Standard deviation statistics were used to answer the research questions while Pearson product moment correlation analysis was used to test the null hypothesis. The study revealed that there is a relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable while hypothesis 2 was not statistically significant. It was also revealed that, hypothesis 3 was statistically significant indicating an existence influence of the independent variable on the dependent variable. It was recommended that parents, educational institutions and the government should wake up to their responsibilities of teaching certain aspects of eating attitude in order to curb the danger inherent in eating disorders. Keywords: Family, Distress, Eating, Disorders, Anorexia, Bulimia, Bing