Avalanche dynamics in Bak-Sneppen evolution model observed with standard distribution width of fitness

We introduce the standard distribution width of fitness to characterize the global and individual features of a ecosystem in the Bak-Sneppen evolution model. Through tracking this quantity in evolution, a different hierarchy of avalanche dynamics, $w_{0}$ avalanche is observed. The corresponding gap equation and the self-organized threshold $w_{c}$ are obtained. The critical exponents $\tau ,$ $\gamma$and $\rho$, which describe the behavior of the avalanche size distribution, the average avalanche size and the relaxation to attractor, respectively, are calculated with numerical simulation. The exact master equation and $\gamma$ equation are derived. And the scaling relations are established among the critical exponents of this new avalanche.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Publisher Correction: Copper adparticle enabled selective electrosynthesis of n-propanol.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

An interferometric complementarity experiment in a bulk Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ensemble

We have experimentally demonstrated the interferometric complementarity, which relates the distinguishability $D$ quantifying the amount of which-way (WW) information to the fringe visibility $V$ characterizing the wave feature of a quantum entity, in a bulk ensemble by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) techniques. We primarily concern on the intermediate cases: partial fringe visibility and incomplete WW information. We propose a quantitative measure of $D$ by an alternative geometric strategy and investigate the relation between $D$ and entanglement. By measuring $D$ and $V$ independently, it turns out that the duality relation $D^{2}+V^{2}=1$ holds for pure quantum states of the markers.Comment: 13 page, 5 PS figure

Experimental Implementaton of Dense Coding Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Quantum dense coding has been demonstrated experimentally in terms of quantum logic gates and circuits in quantum computation and NMR technique. Two bits of information have been transmitted through manipulating one of the maximally entangled two-state quantum pair, which is completely consistent with the original ideal of Bennett-Wiesner proposal. Although information transmission happens between spins over inter-atomic distance, the scheme of entanglement transformation and measurement can be used in other processes of quantum information and quantum computing.Comment: Some print errors have been corrected, 15 pages, RevTex, 11 figure

Involvement of Autophagy in Cardiac Remodeling in Transgenic Mice with Cardiac Specific Over-Expression of Human Programmed Cell Death 5

Programmed cell death 5 (PDCD5) is a cytosolic protein suppressing growth of multiple types of cancer cells through activating p53. We hypothesized that PDCD5 plays an essential role in cardiac remodeling and function. PDCD5 was significantly up-regulated in the hearts from mice subjected to angiotensin II treatment or transverse aortic constriction. Thus, we generated transgenic mice over-expressing human PDCD5 under the control of alpha myosin heavy chain promoter to examine the role of PDCD5 in cardiac remodeling. Transgenic founder died spontaneously displayed enlarged heart. The high PDCD5 over-expressing line (10-fold) showed reduced survival rate, increase in heart weight normalized to body weight. Real-Time RT-PCR analysis revealed fetal gene program was up-regulated. Echocardiography and histopathological examination showed characteristics of dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure in transgenic mice. Western blot and immunohistochemistry analysis showed autophagy was dramatically increased in transgenic mice as compared to WT littermates control mice, while apoptosis remained unchanged. The enhanced autophagy in high over-expressing line was associated with significant increase in p53 activity and its downstream target damage-regulated autophagy modulator expression. The low over-expressing line (3.5-fold) appeared normal, but was more susceptible to angiotensin II-induced cardiac hypertrophy. This study is the first providing evidence that PDCD5 plays an important role in cardiac remodeling

Validation of the ITS2 Region as a Novel DNA Barcode for Identifying Medicinal Plant Species

BACKGROUND: The plant working group of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life recommended the two-locus combination of rbcL+matK as the plant barcode, yet the combination was shown to successfully discriminate among 907 samples from 550 species at the species level with a probability of 72%. The group admits that the two-locus barcode is far from perfect due to the low identification rate, and the search is not over. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we compared seven candidate DNA barcodes (psbA-trnH, matK, rbcL, rpoC1, ycf5, ITS2, and ITS) from medicinal plant species. Our ranking criteria included PCR amplification efficiency, differential intra- and inter-specific divergences, and the DNA barcoding gap. Our data suggest that the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS2) of nuclear ribosomal DNA represents the most suitable region for DNA barcoding applications. Furthermore, we tested the discrimination ability of ITS2 in more than 6600 plant samples belonging to 4800 species from 753 distinct genera and found that the rate of successful identification with the ITS2 was 92.7% at the species level. CONCLUSIONS: The ITS2 region can be potentially used as a standard DNA barcode to identify medicinal plants and their closely related species. We also propose that ITS2 can serve as a novel universal barcode for the identification of a broader range of plant taxa

New Classes of Distortion Risk Measures and Their Estimation

In this paper, we present a new method to construct new classes of distortion functions. A distortion function maps the unit interval to the unit interval and has the characteristics of a cumulative distribution function. The method is based on the transformation of an existing non-negative random variable whose distribution function, named the generating distribution, may contain more than one parameter. The coherency of the resulting risk measures is ensured by restricting the parameter space on which the distortion function is concave. We studied cases when the generating distributions are exponentiated exponential and Gompertz distributions. Closed-form expressions for risk measures were derived for uniform, exponential, and Lomax losses. Numerical and graphical results are presented to examine the effects of the parameter values on the risk measures. We then propose a simple plug-in estimate of risk measures and conduct simulation studies to compare and demonstrate the performance of the proposed estimates. The plug-in estimates appear to perform slightly better than the well-known L-estimates, but also suffer from biases when applied to heavy-tailed losses