819 research outputs found
Maximal acceleration or maximal accelerations?
We review the arguments supporting the existence of a maximal acceleration
for a massive particle and show that different values of this upper limit can
be predicted in different physical situations.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.
Mitigating Gender Bias in Machine Learning Data Sets
Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to amplify and perpetuate societal
biases and presents profound ethical implications for society. Gender bias has
been identified in the context of employment advertising and recruitment tools,
due to their reliance on underlying language processing and recommendation
algorithms. Attempts to address such issues have involved testing learned
associations, integrating concepts of fairness to machine learning and
performing more rigorous analysis of training data. Mitigating bias when
algorithms are trained on textual data is particularly challenging given the
complex way gender ideology is embedded in language. This paper proposes a
framework for the identification of gender bias in training data for machine
learning.The work draws upon gender theory and sociolinguistics to
systematically indicate levels of bias in textual training data and associated
neural word embedding models, thus highlighting pathways for both removing bias
from training data and critically assessing its impact.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 Tables, Presented as Bias2020 workshop (as
part of the ECIR Conference) - http://bias.disim.univaq.i
Optical properties and charge-transfer excitations in edge-functionalized all-graphene nanojunctions
We investigate the optical properties of edge-functionalized graphene
nanosystems, focusing on the formation of junctions and charge transfer
excitons. We consider a class of graphene structures which combine the main
electronic features of graphene with the wide tunability of large polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons. By investigating prototypical ribbon-like systems, we
show that, upon convenient choice of functional groups, low energy excitations
with remarkable charge transfer character and large oscillator strength are
obtained. These properties can be further modulated through an appropriate
width variation, thus spanning a wide range in the low-energy region of the
UV-Vis spectra. Our results are relevant in view of designing all-graphene
optoelectronic nanodevices, which take advantage of the versatility of
molecular functionalization, together with the stability and the electronic
properties of graphene nanostructures.Comment: J. Phys. Chem. Lett. (2011), in pres
Assessing Dietary Branched-Chain Amino Acids to Achieve Linear Programming Goals through Model Extrapolation and Empirical Research
Renewed interest, especially in the United States, has sparked in assessing branched-chain amino acid interactions in practical diets for broilers. Indeed, as L-valine enters formulation bird nitrogen excesses are reduced as diet protein falls to the new first limiting amino acid (e.g., isoleucine, arginine, or tryptophan). For a United States based example, the result is less oilseeds and more gains, which typically result in increased inclusions in corn or corn by-products, coupled with a concomitant increase in dietary leucine. The proceedings outline the foundations of the branched-chain amino acid early research, antagonism studies, and a meta-analysis conducted on publications with Cobb and Ross birds from 2000 to present. Results indicate that branched-chain amino acid interactions can occur in broilers fed on practical diets, and that responses vary by strain
Designing all-graphene nanojunctions by covalent functionalization
We investigated theoretically the effect of covalent edge functionalization,
with organic functional groups, on the electronic properties of graphene
nanostructures and nano-junctions. Our analysis shows that functionalization
can be designed to tune electron affinities and ionization potentials of
graphene flakes, and to control the energy alignment of frontier orbitals in
nanometer-wide graphene junctions. The stability of the proposed mechanism is
discussed with respect to the functional groups, their number as well as the
width of graphene nanostructures. The results of our work indicate that
different level alignments can be obtained and engineered in order to realize
stable all-graphene nanodevices
Direct Observation of the Superfluid Phase Transition in Ultracold Fermi Gases
Water freezes into ice, atomic spins spontaneously align in a magnet, liquid
helium becomes superfluid: Phase transitions are dramatic phenomena. However,
despite the drastic change in the system's behaviour, observing the transition
can sometimes be subtle. The hallmark of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and
superfluidity in trapped, weakly interacting Bose gases is the sudden
appearance of a dense central core inside a thermal cloud. In strongly
interacting gases, such as the recently observed fermionic superfluids, this
clear separation between the superfluid and the normal parts of the cloud is no
longer given. Condensates of fermion pairs could be detected only using
magnetic field sweeps into the weakly interacting regime. The quantitative
description of these sweeps presents a major theoretical challenge. Here we
demonstrate that the superfluid phase transition can be directly observed by
sudden changes in the shape of the clouds, in complete analogy to the case of
weakly interacting Bose gases. By preparing unequal mixtures of the two spin
components involved in the pairing, we greatly enhance the contrast between the
superfluid core and the normal component. Furthermore, the non-interacting
wings of excess atoms serve as a direct and reliable thermometer. Even in the
normal state, strong interactions significantly deform the density profile of
the majority spin component. We show that it is these interactions which drive
the normal-to-superfluid transition at the critical population imbalance of
70(5)%.Comment: 16 pages (incl. Supplemental Material), 5 figure
Optical Excitations and Field Enhancement in Short Graphene Nanoribbons
The optical excitations of elongated graphene nanoflakes of finite length are
investigated theoretically through quantum chemistry semi-empirical approaches.
The spectra and the resulting dipole fields are analyzed, accounting in full
atomistic details for quantum confinement effects, which are crucial in the
nanoscale regime. We find that the optical spectra of these nanostructures are
dominated at low energy by excitations with strong intensity, comprised of
characteristic coherent combinations of a few single-particle transitions with
comparable weight. They give rise to stationary collective oscillations of the
photoexcited carrier density extending throughout the flake, and to a strong
dipole and field enhancement. This behavior is robust with respect to width and
length variations, thus ensuring tunability in a large frequency range. The
implications for nanoantennas and other nanoplasmonic applications are
discussed for realistic geometries
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Imaging mass cytometry and multiplatform genomics define the phenogenomic landscape of breast cancer
Genomic alterations shape cell phenotypes and the structure of tumor ecosystems in poorly defined ways. To investigate these
relationships, we used imaging mass cytometry to quantify the expression of 37 proteins with subcellular spatial resolution in
483 tumors from the METABRIC cohort. Single-cell analysis revealed cell phenotypes spanning epithelial, stromal and immune
types. Distinct combinations of cell phenotypes and cell–cell interactions were associated with genomic subtypes of breast
cancer. Epithelial luminal cell phenotypes separated into those predominantly impacted by mutations and those affected by
copy number aberrations. Several features of tumor ecosystems, including cellular neighborhoods, were linked to prognosis,
illustrating their clinical relevance. In summary, systematic analysis of single-cell phenotypic and spatial correlates of genomic
alterations in cancer revealed how genomes shape both the composition and architecture of breast tumor ecosystems and will
enable greater understanding of the phenotypic impact of genomic alterations
On the trace identity in a model with broken symmetry
Considering the simple chiral fermion meson model when the chiral symmetry is
explicitly broken, we show the validity of a trace identity -- to all orders of
perturbation theory -- playing the role of a Callan-Symanzik equation and which
allows us to identify directly the breaking of dilatations with the trace of
the energy-momentum tensor. More precisely, by coupling the quantum field
theory considered to a classical curved space background, represented by the
non-propagating external vielbein field, we can express the conservation of the
energy-momentum tensor through the Ward identity which characterizes the
invariance of the theory under the diffeomorphisms. Our ``Callan-Symanzik
equation'' then is the anomalous Ward identity for the trace of the
energy-momentum tensor, the so-called ``trace identity''.Comment: 11 pages, Revtex file, final version to appear in Phys.Rev.
Allelic imbalances of chromosomes 8p and 18q and their roles in distant relapse of early stage, node-negative breast cancer
INTRODUCTION: Identification of breast cancer patients at risk for postoperative distant relapse is an important clinical issue. Existing pathological markers can predict disease recurrence only to a certain extent, and there is a need for more accurate predictors. METHODS: Using 'counting alleles', a novel experimental method, we determined allelic status of chromosomes 8p and 18q in a case-control study with 65 early stage, node negative, invasive ductal carcinomas (IDCs). The association between allelic imbalance (AI) of both chromosomal markers and distant relapses was examined. RESULTS: Eighty percent of tumors contained 8pAI and sixty-eight percent of tumors contained 18qAI. However, none of the tumor samples retained both chromosome 8p and 18q alleles. More importantly, tumors with 8pAI but not 18qAI were more likely to have distant relapse compared to tumors with 18qAI but not 8pAI. CONCLUSION: Our finding suggests that differential allelic loss of chromosomes 8p and 18q may represent subtypes of early stage IDC with different tumor progression behaviors
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