An Operator Product Expansion for Polygonal null Wilson Loops

We consider polygonal Wilson loops with null edges in conformal gauge theories. We derive an OPE-like expansion when several successive lines of the polygon are becoming aligned. The limit corresponds to a collinear, or multicollinear, limit and we explain the systematics of all the subleading corrections, going beyond the leading terms that were previously considered. These subleading corrections are governed by excitations of high spin operators, or excitations of a flux tube that goes between two Wilson lines. The discussion is valid for any conformal gauge theory, for any coupling and in any dimension. For N=4 super Yang Mills we check this expansion at strong coupling and at two loops at weak coupling . We also make predictions for the remainder function at higher loops. In the process, we also derived a new version for the TBA integral equations that determine the strong coupling answer and present the area as the associated Yang-Yang functional.Comment: 48 pages, 12 figures, harvmac. v2 fixed a small issue regarding divergence

Analysis of the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry and Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda wines market in the period 1982-2012

Los vinos de Jerez-Xérès-Sherry y Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda se encuentran entre los vinos más afamados del mundo por su peculiar método de elaboración, por sus diferentes tipos y por su calidad. Han sido los vinos más exportados de España durante el siglo XIX y gran parte del XX, ocupando un lugar destacado en la balanza comercial española en el siglo XIX. Una de las características más relevante de estos vinos es su vocación exportadora, siendo el mercado exterior su principal destino. En la actualidad los vinos de Jerez exportan más del 70 % de su producción, siendo Reino Unido, Holanda y Alemania sus principales mercados, además de estar presente en casi un centenar de países. En el presente artículo analizamos su evolución comercial y sus tendencias en sus principales mercados en el periodo comprendido entre 1982 y 2012. Asimismo, señalamos y analizamos las causas de su decadencia y los distintos planes de reconversión puestos en marcha para equilibrar la oferta y la demanda y hacer frente al proceso de globalización e internacionalización del mercado del vino con el fin de ganar cuotas de mercado.The Jerez-Xérès-Sherry and Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda wines are one of the most famous world wide forits peculiar method of production, forits different types and forits quality. They have been the most exported wines from Spain during the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth. They have occupied a prominent place in the Spanish trade balance in the nineteenth century. One of the most relevant characteristics of these wines is their exporting vocation, with the foreign market being their main destination. Currently, Jerez wines export more than 70% of their production, with the UK, Holland and Germany being their main markets, apart from being present in almost a hundred countries. In the present article we analysis commercial evolution and its trends in its main markets in the period between 1982 and 2012. We also point out and analysis causes of its decline and the different restructuring plans put in place to balance supply and demand and also face the process of globalization of the international wine market to gain foreign market shares

A Survey on Automated Food Monitoring and Dietary Management Systems

Healthy diet with balanced nutrition is key to the prevention of life-threatening diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Recent advances in smartphone and wearable sensor technologies have led to a proliferation of food monitoring applications based on automated food image processing and eating episode detection, with the goal to conquer drawbacks of the traditional manual food journaling that is time consuming, inaccurate, underreporting, and low adherent. In order to provide users feedback with nutritional information accompanied by insightful dietary advice, various techniques in light of the key computational learning principles have been explored. This survey presents a variety of methodologies and resources on this topic, along with unsolved problems, and closes with a perspective and boarder implications of this field

Does High-Speed Rail Generate Spillovers on Local Budgets

Many developed countries have boosted investment into High-Speed Rail (HSR). This infrastructure is costly and requires high investment during the construction and operation periods, which is mainly financed with public funds. This economic effort is seldom set off, which leads to subsidies with the money collected from public debt growth or tax pressure increases. The question that immediately emerges is whether the entrance of this new infrastructure generates spillovers at the local level. In this paper, we answer this question by using local data on economic activity, unicipalities’ characteristics and local public budgets in Spain for the past decade (2001–2010). To approach to this problem, we use GIS tools and build a database to estimate the impact by considering difference-in-difference analysis. Our estimations yield a general conclusion: when HSR comes to town, both local revenues and the local fiscal gap improve by 10% and 16%, respectively. These improvements primarily affect municipalities located within 5 km of an HSR station

Increased Multiplexing Gain with Reconfigurable Surfaces: Simultaneous Channel Orthogonalization and Information Embedding

Reconfigurable surface (RS) has been shown to be an effective solution for improving wireless communication links in general multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) setting. Current research efforts have been largely directed towards the study of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), which corresponds to an RS made of passive reconfigurable elements with only phase shifting capabilities. RIS constitutes a cost- and energy- efficient solution for increased beamforming gain since it allows to generate constructive interference towards desired directions, e.g., towards a base station (BS). However, in many situations, multiplexing gain may have greater impact on the achievable transmission rates and number of simultaneously connected devices, while RIS has only been able to achieve minor improvements in this aspect. Recent work has proposed the use of alternative RS technologies, namely amplitude-reconfigurable intelligent surface (ARIS) and fully-reconfigurable intelligent surface (FRIS), to achieve perfect orthogonalization of MU-MIMO channels, thus allowing for maximum multiplexing gain at reduced complexity. In this work we consider the use of ARIS and FRIS for simultaneously orthogonalizing a MU-MIMO channel, while embedding extra information in the orthogonalized channel. We show that the resulting achievable rates allow for full exploitation of the degrees of freedom in a MU-MIMO system with excess of BS antennas.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted at IEEE GLOBECOM 202

Lipids Levels in Patients with Uncomplicated Malaria Due to Plasmodium falciparum

Changes in lipid profile are common in adult patients with malaria, but only a few studies have evaluated such lipid abnormalities in uncomplicated falciparum malaria cases from the South America. This is a prospective study designed to evaluate transient lipid abnormalities in adults with uncomplicated falciparum malaria as well as to assess if the parasite count correlates with the lipid levels at admission. A total of 60 adult males were included in the study, of which 30 had the slide-confirmed infection by P. falciparum. Serial blood samples were collected at admission and on days 3, 14 and 43. Triglycerides, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL-c), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL-c) were measured by colorimetric methods. At admission, the levels of total cholesterol, LDL and HDL were significantly lower in malaria cases compared to healthy controls, but the levels of triglycerides were significantly higher in these patients. There are significant changes in lipid levels in the follow up. The lipid levels were not associated with the parasite count. In conclusion, there are significant lipid abnormalities in the adults with low levels of P. falciparum infection and mild signs and symptoms of the disease, which are not associated with parasitemia at admission

European Polar research : Status and challenges of European Polar fleet for enhancing strategic collaboration

Dañobeitia, Juan José ... et. al.-- 7th International Workshop on Marine Technology – Martech Workshop 2016, 26-28 October 2016, Barcelona.-- 4 pages, 7 figuresPolar Regions are the most vulnerable world areas to any climate change, and therefore can be considered drivers of global climate change, so small and systematic changes in the Polar Regions affect critically the global environment. This is particularly worrying for Europe and the Arctic due to ocean circulation interaction between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans whose outcome is already producing significant climate anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere. Many European countries support polar research, not only in the Arctic but also in Antarctica, and in fact many European polar research programs have a two-pole perspective. However Europe lacks sufficient marine technological platforms to meet the challenges posed today in marine polar researchThs paper benefited from EUROFLEETS2 Grant Agreement No. 312762 FP7-INFRA-0098, and EUPolarNet funded network Horizon 2020 Programme Grant Agreement No. 652641Peer Reviewe

miRDis: a Web tool for endogenous and exogenous microRNA discovery based on deep-sequencing data analysis

Small RNA sequencing is the most widely used tool for microRNA (miRNA) discovery, and shows great potential for the efficient study of miRNA cross-species transport, i.e., by detecting the presence of exogenous miRNA sequences in the host species. Because of the increased appreciation of dietary miRNAs and their far-reaching implication in human health, research interests are currently growing with regard to exogenous miRNAs bioavailability, mechanisms of cross-species transport and miRNA function in cellular biological processes. In this article, we present microRNA Discovery (miRDis), a new small RNA sequencing data analysis pipeline for both endogenous and exogenous miRNA detection. Specifically, we developed and deployed a Web service that supports the annotation and expression profiling data of known host miRNAs and the detection of novel miRNAs, other noncoding RNAs, and the exogenous miRNAs from dietary species. As a proofof- concept, we analyzed a set of human plasma sequencing data from a milk-feeding study where 225 human miRNAs were detected in the plasma samples and 44 show elevated expression after milk intake. By examining the bovine-specific sequences, data indicate that three bovine miRNAs (bta-miR-378, -181* and -150) are present in human plasma possibly because of the dietary uptake. Further evaluation based on different sets of public data demonstrates that miRDis outperforms other state-of-the-art tools in both detection and quantification of miRNA from either animal or plant sources. The miRDis Web server is available at: http://sbbi.unl.edu/miRDis/index.php