Fractional diffusion models of cardiac electrical propagation: role of structural heterogeneity in dispersion of repolarization

Structural heterogeneity constitutes one of the main substrates influencing impulse propagation in living tissues. In cardiac muscle, improved understanding on its role is key to advancing our interpretation of cell-to-cell coupling, and how tissue structure modulates electrical propagation and arrhythmogenesis in the intact and diseased heart. We propose fractional diffusion models as a novel mathematical description of structurally heterogeneous excitable media, as a mean of representing the modulation of the total electric field by the secondary electrical sources associated with tissue inhomogeneities. Our results, validated against in-vivo human recordings and experimental data of different animal species, indicate that structural heterogeneity underlies many relevant characteristics of cardiac propagation, including the shortening of action potential duration along the activation pathway, and the progressive modulation by premature beats of spatial patterns of dispersion of repolarization. The proposed approach may also have important implications in other research fields involving excitable complex media

Foundations of Declarative Data Analysis Using Limit Datalog Programs

Motivated by applications in declarative data analysis, we study $\mathit{Datalog}_{\mathbb{Z}}$---an extension of positive Datalog with arithmetic functions over integers. This language is known to be undecidable, so we propose two fragments. In $\mathit{limit}~\mathit{Datalog}_{\mathbb{Z}}$ predicates are axiomatised to keep minimal/maximal numeric values, allowing us to show that fact entailment is coNExpTime-complete in combined, and coNP-complete in data complexity. Moreover, an additional $\mathit{stability}$ requirement causes the complexity to drop to ExpTime and PTime, respectively. Finally, we show that stable $\mathit{Datalog}_{\mathbb{Z}}$ can express many useful data analysis tasks, and so our results provide a sound foundation for the development of advanced information systems.Comment: 23 pages; full version of a paper accepted at IJCAI-17; v2 fixes some typos and improves the acknowledgment

Stratified Negation in Limit Datalog Programs

There has recently been an increasing interest in declarative data analysis, where analytic tasks are specified using a logical language, and their implementation and optimisation are delegated to a general-purpose query engine. Existing declarative languages for data analysis can be formalised as variants of logic programming equipped with arithmetic function symbols and/or aggregation, and are typically undecidable. In prior work, the language of $\mathit{limit\ programs}$ was proposed, which is sufficiently powerful to capture many analysis tasks and has decidable entailment problem. Rules in this language, however, do not allow for negation. In this paper, we study an extension of limit programs with stratified negation-as-failure. We show that the additional expressive power makes reasoning computationally more demanding, and provide tight data complexity bounds. We also identify a fragment with tractable data complexity and sufficient expressivity to capture many relevant tasks.Comment: 14 pages; full version of a paper accepted at IJCAI-1

The Bag Semantics of Ontology-Based Data Access

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is a popular approach for integrating and querying multiple data sources by means of a shared ontology. The ontology is linked to the sources using mappings, which assign views over the data to ontology predicates. Motivated by the need for OBDA systems supporting database-style aggregate queries, we propose a bag semantics for OBDA, where duplicate tuples in the views defined by the mappings are retained, as is the case in standard databases. We show that bag semantics makes conjunctive query answering in OBDA coNP-hard in data complexity. To regain tractability, we consider a rather general class of queries and show its rewritability to a generalisation of the relational calculus to bags

MicroRNAs and Malaria - A Dynamic Interaction Still Incompletely Understood.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by parasitic protozoa of the genus Plasmodium. It remains a major problem affecting humans today, especially children. However, the pathogenesis of malaria, especially severe malaria, remains incompletely understood, hindering our ability to treat this disease. Of recent interest is the role that small, non-coding RNAs play in the progression, pathogenesis of, and resistance to, malaria. Independent studies have now revealed the presence of microRNA (miRNA) in the malaria parasite, vector, and host, though these studies are relatively few. Here, we review these studies, focusing on the roles specific miRNA have in the disease, and how they may be harnessed for therapeutic purposes

Experimental Models of Microvascular Immunopathology: The Example of Cerebral Malaria.

Human cerebral malaria is a severe and often lethal complication of Plasmodium falciparum infection. Complex host and parasite interactions should the precise mechanisms involved in the onset of this neuropathology. Adhesion of parasitised red blood cells and host cells to endothelial cells lead to profound endothelial alterations that trigger immunopathological changes, varying degrees of brain oedema and can compromise cerebral blood flow, cause cranial nerve dysfunction and hypoxia. Study of the cerebral pathology in human patients is limited to clinical and genetic field studies in endemic areas, thus cerebral malaria (CM) research relies heavily on experimental models. The availability of malaria models allows study from the inoculation of Plasmodium to the onset of disease and permit invasive experiments. Here, we discuss some aspects of our current understanding of CM, the experimental models available and some important recent findings extrapolated from these models

Search for CP-violating nuclear magnetic quadrupole moment using the LuOH+^+ cation

The CP-violating interaction of the nuclear magnetic quadrupole moment (MQM) of the $^{175}$Lu nucleus with electrons in the molecular cation LuOH$^+$ is studied. The resulting effect is expressed in terms of CP-odd parameters, such as quantum chromodynamics angle $\bar{\theta}$, quark electric dipole moment (EDM) and chromo-EDM. For this we have performed a calculation of the nuclear MQM as well as the molecular constant that characterises the interaction of this MQM of $^{175}$Lu with electrons. Additionally, we predict the hyperfine structure constants for the ground electronic state of LuOH$^+$. We conclude that LuOH$^+$ is a promising system to measure the nuclear MQM

Inhibition of endothelial activation: A new way to treat cerebral malaria?

Background: Malaria is still a major public health problem, partly because the pathogenesis of its major complication, cerebral malaria (CM), remains incompletely understood. However tumor necrosis factor (TNF) is thought to play a key role in the development of this neurological syndrome, as well as lymphotoxin α (LT). Methods and Findings: Using an in vitro model of CM based on human brain-derived endothelial cells (HBEC-5i), we demonstrate the anti-inflammatory effect of LMP-420, a 2-NH2-6-Cl-9-[(5- dihydroxyboryl)-pentyl] purine that is a transcriptional inhibitor of TNF. When added before or concomitantly to TNF, LMP-420 inhibits endothelial cell (EC) activation, i.e., the up-regulation of both ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 on HBEC-5i surfaces. Subsequently, LMP-420 abolishes the cytoadherence of ICAM-1-specific Plasmodium falciparum-parasitized red blood cells on these EC. Identical but weaker effects are observed when LMP-420 is added with LT. LMP-420 also causes a dramatic reduction of HBEC-5i vesiculation induced by TNF or LT stimulation, as assessed by microparticle release. Conclusion: These data provide evidence for a strong in vitro anti-inflammatory effect of LMP-420 and suggest that targeting host cell pathogenic mechanisms might provide a new therapeutic approach to improving the outcome of CM patients. © 2005 Wassmer et al

LogMap family participation in the OAEI2018

We present the participation of LogMap and its variants in the OAEI 2018 campaign. The LogMap project started in January 2011 with the objective of developing a scalable and logic-based ontology matching system. This is our eight participation in the OAEI and the experience has so far been very positive. LogMap is one of the few systems that participates in (almost) all OAEI tracks