Noise from spatial heterogeneity changes signal amplification magnitude and increases the variability in dose responses

In most molecular level simulations, spatial heterogeneity is neglected by the well-mixed condition assumption. However, the signals of biomolecular networks are affected from both time and space, which are responsible for diverse physiological responses. To account the spatial heterogeneity in the kinetic model, we consider multiple subvolumes of a reaction, introduce parameters representing transfer of ligands between the volumes, and reduce this to an error-term representing the difference between the well-mixed condition and the actual spatial factors. The error-term approach allows modelling of varying spatial heterogeneity without increasing computational burden exponentially. The effect of varying this term, d, between 0 (well-mixed) and 1 (no mixing) and of adding noise to the kinetic constants was then investigated and correlated with knowledge of the behaviour of real systems and situations where network models are inadequate. The spatial distribution effects on the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in human mammary epithelial tissue, which is involved in proliferation and tumorigenesis, are studied by introducing noisy kinetic constants. The steady-state of the dose response in the EGFR is strongly affected by spatial fluctuations. The ligand-bound receptor is reduced up to 50% from the response without spatial fluctuations and the variance of the steady-state is increased at least 2-fold from the one for no spatial fluctuations. On the other hand, dynamic properties such as the rising time and overshoot are less sensitive to spatial noise

The size of the largest fluctuations in a market model with Markovian switching

This paper considers the size of the large fluctuations of a stochastic differential equation with Markovian switching. We concentrate on processes which obey the Law of the Iterated Logarithm, or obey upper and lower iterated logarithm growth bounds on their almost sure partial maxima. The results are applied to financial market models which are subject to random regime shifts. We prove that the security exhibits the same long-run growth properties and deviations from the trend rate of growth as conventional geometric Brownian motion, and also that the returns, which are non-Gaussian, still exhibit the same growth rate in their almost sure large deviations as stationary continuous-time Gaussian processes

Theoretical studies of the local structures and EPR parameters for Cu2+^{2+} center in Cd2_{2}(NH4_{4})2_{2}(SO4_{4})3_{3} single crystal

The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) parameters ($g$ factors $g_{i}$ and the hyperfine structure constants ${{A}}_{{i}}$, ${i} = {x}, {y}, {z}$) are interpreted by using the perturbation formulae for a $3{d}^{9}$ ion in rhombically ({D}$_{2h}$) elongated octahedra. In the calculated formulae, the crystal field parameters are set up from the superposition model, and the contribution to the EPR parameters from the admixture of $d$-orbitals in the ground state wave function of the Cu$^{2+}$ ion was taken into account. Based on the calculation, local structural parameters of the impurity Cu$^{2+}$ center in Cd$_{2}$(NH$_{4}$)$_{2}$(SO$_{4}$)$_{3}$ (CAS) crystal were obtained (i.e., ${R}_{{x}}\approx 2.05$ {\AA}, ${R}_{{y}} \approx 1.91$ {\AA}, ${R}_{{z}} \approx 2.32$ {\AA}). The theoretical EPR parameters based on the above Cu$^{2+}$-O$^{2-}$ bond lengths in CAS crystal show a good agreement with the observed values. The results are discussed.Comment: 5 page

Public vs private administration of rural health insurance schemes: a comparative study in Zhejiang of China.

: Since 2003, China has experimented in some of the country's counties with the private administration of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), a publicly subsidized health insurance scheme for rural populations. Our study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of private vs public administration in four counties in one of China's most affluent provinces in the initial stage of the NCMS's implementation. The study was undertaken in Ningbo city of Zhejiang province. Out of 10 counties in Ningbo, two counties with private administration for the NCMS (Beilun and Ninghai) were compared with two others counties with public administration (Zhenhai and Fenghua), using the following indicators: (1) proportion of enrollees who were compensated for inpatient care; (2) average reimbursement-expense ratio per episode of inpatient care; (3) overall administration cost; (4) enrollee satisfaction. Data from 2004 to 2006 were collected from the local health authorities, hospitals and the contracted insurance companies, supplemented by a randomized household questionnaire survey covering 176 households and 479 household members. In our sample counties, private administration of the NCMS neither reduced transaction costs, nor improved the benefits of enrollees. Enrollees covered by the publicly administered NCMS were more likely to be satisfied with the insurance scheme than those covered by the privately administered NCMS. Experience in the selected counties suggests that private administration of the NCMS did not deliver the hoped-for results. We conclude that caution needs to be exercised in extending private administration of the NCMS

Applying mesh conformation on shape analysis with missing data

A mesh conformation approach that makes use of deformable generic meshes has been applied to establishing correspondences between 3D shapes with missing data. Given a group of shapes with correspondences, we can build up a statistical shape model by applying principal component analysis (PCA). The conformation at first globally maps the generic mesh to the 3D shape based on manually located corresponding landmarks, and then locally deforms the generic mesh to clone the 3D shape. The local deformation is constrained by minimizing the energy of an elastic model. An algorithm was also embedded in the conformation process to fill missing surface data of the shapes. Using synthetic data, we demonstrate that the conformation preserves the configuration of the generic mesh and hence it helps to establish good correspondences for shape analysis. Case studies of the principal component analysis of shapes were presented to illustrate the successes and advantages of our approach

Discrete Razumikhin-type technique and stability of the Euler-Maruyama method to stochastic functional differential equations

A discrete stochastic Razumikhin-type theorem is established to investigate whether the Euler--Maruyama (EM) scheme can reproduce the moment exponential stability of exact solutions of stochastic functional differential equations (SFDEs). In addition, the Chebyshev inequality and the Borel-Cantelli lemma are applied to show the almost sure stability of the EM approximate solutions of SFDEs. To show our idea clearly, these results are used to discuss stability of numerical solutions of two classes of special SFDEs, including stochastic delay differential equations (SDDEs) with variable delay and stochastically perturbed equations

Vision-based judgment of tomato maturity under growth conditions

To determine the picking time of tomato and design the control strategy for the harvesting robot, the judgment of tomato maturity under natural conditions is required. Tomato samples were collected based on the fruit growth conditions which were divided into five different stages in this article: breakers, turning, pink, light-red, and red stages. The visible CCD camera VS-880HC was adopted to shoot visible images, while the near-infrared images at a wavelength of 810 nm were screened by MS- 3100 multi-spectral camera. The variations of samples, about color features, were analyzed. The tests indicated that with the changes in maturity, the hue-mean of tomato decreased and the red-green colordifference image mean increased. The standard deviations of the hue-mean and red-green image mean were the largest values for tomato in the pink stage, but the intensity mean of the near-infrared image for tomato in the pink stage had the lowest value. Hue-mean and red-green color-difference image mean can be used as a criterion for the judgment of tomato maturity, and the tests indicated that the redgreen mean method was more satisfactory than that of the hue-mean in the maturity recognition methods of tomato fruit with an accuracy of over 96%. The intermediate divisions of five different maturity stages, which were divided by red-green color-difference image mean, were 0, 23.5, 42.5 and 70. The judgment errors of the two methods are mainly caused by the recognition of tomatoes at the pink stage.Key words: Tomato, maturity, image, judgment

A survey of mobile cloud computing

2010-2011 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe