7,706 research outputs found
Molecular Clocks without Rocks: New Solutions for Old Problems.
Molecular data have been used to date species divergences ever since they were described as documents of evolutionary history in the 1960s. Yet, an inadequate fossil record and discordance between gene trees and species trees are persistently problematic. We examine how, by accommodating gene tree discordance and by scaling branch lengths to absolute time using mutation rate and generation time, multispecies coalescent (MSC) methods can potentially overcome these challenges. We find that time estimates can differ - in some cases, substantially - depending on whether MSC methods or traditional phylogenetic methods that apply concatenation are used, and whether the tree is calibrated with pedigree-based mutation rates or with fossils. We discuss the advantages and shortcomings of both approaches and provide practical guidance for data analysis when using these methods
The Radiated Energy Budget of Chromospheric Plasma in a Major Solar Flare Deduced From Multi-Wavelength Observations
This paper presents measurements of the energy radiated by the lower solar
atmosphere, at optical, UV, and EUV wavelengths, during an X-class solar flare
(SOL2011-02-15T01:56) in response to an injection of energy assumed to be in
the form of nonthermal electrons. Hard X-ray observations from RHESSI were used
to track the evolution of the parameters of the nonthermal electron
distribution to reveal the total power contained in flare accelerated
electrons. By integrating over the duration of the impulsive phase, the total
energy contained in the nonthermal electrons was found to be
erg. The response of the lower solar atmosphere was measured in the free-bound
EUV continua of H I (Lyman), He I, and He II, plus the emission lines of He II
at 304\AA\ and H I (Ly) at 1216\AA\ by SDO/EVE, the UV continua at
1600\AA\ and 1700\AA\ by SDO/AIA, and the WL continuum at 4504\AA, 5550\AA, and
6684\AA, along with the Ca II H line at 3968\AA\ using Hinode/SOT. The summed
energy detected by these instruments amounted to erg;
about 15% of the total nonthermal energy. The Ly line was found to
dominate the measured radiative losses. Parameters of both the driving electron
distribution and the resulting chromospheric response are presented in detail
to encourage the numerical modelling of flare heating for this event, to
determine the depth of the solar atmosphere at which these line and continuum
processes originate, and the mechanism(s) responsible for their generation.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics
Journa
To Learn or Not to Learn Features for Deformable Registration?
Feature-based registration has been popular with a variety of features
ranging from voxel intensity to Self-Similarity Context (SSC). In this paper,
we examine the question on how features learnt using various Deep Learning (DL)
frameworks can be used for deformable registration and whether this feature
learning is necessary or not. We investigate the use of features learned by
different DL methods in the current state-of-the-art discrete registration
framework and analyze its performance on 2 publicly available datasets. We draw
insights into the type of DL framework useful for feature learning and the
impact, if any, of the complexity of different DL models and brain parcellation
methods on the performance of discrete registration. Our results indicate that
the registration performance with DL features and SSC are comparable and stable
across datasets whereas this does not hold for low level features.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Collaborative Gaze Channelling for Improved Cooperation During Robotic Assisted Surgery
The use of multiple robots for performing complex tasks is becoming a common practice for many robot applications. When different operators are involved, effective cooperation with anticipated manoeuvres is important for seamless, synergistic control of all the end-effectors. In this paper, the concept of Collaborative Gaze Channelling (CGC) is presented for improved control of surgical robots for a shared task. Through eye tracking, the fixations of each operator are monitored and presented in a shared surgical workspace. CGC permits remote or physically separated collaborators to share their intention by visualising the eye gaze of their counterparts, and thus recovers, to a certain extent, the information of mutual intent that we rely upon in a vis-à-vis working setting. In this study, the efficiency of surgical manipulation with and without CGC for controlling a pair of bimanual surgical robots is evaluated by analysing the level of coordination of two independent operators. Fitts' law is used to compare the quality of movement with or without CGC. A total of 40 subjects have been recruited for this study and the results show that the proposed CGC framework exhibits significant improvement (p<0.05) on all the motion indices used for quality assessment. This study demonstrates that visual guidance is an implicit yet effective way of communication during collaborative tasks for robotic surgery. Detailed experimental validation results demonstrate the potential clinical value of the proposed CGC framework. © 2012 Biomedical Engineering Society.link_to_subscribed_fulltex
Removal of phenol using sulphate radicals activated by natural zeolite-supported cobalt catalysts
Two Co oxide catalysts supported on natural zeolites from Indonesia (INZ) and Australia (ANZ) were prepared and used to activate peroxymonosulphate for degradation of aqueous phenol. The two catalysts were characterized by several techniques such as X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and N2 adsorption. It was found that Co/INZ and Co/ANZ are effective in activation of peroxymonosulphate to produce sulphate radicals for phenol degradation. Co/INZ and Co/ANZ could remove phenol up to 100 and 70 %, respectively, at the conditions of 25 ppm phenol (500 mL), 0.2 g catalyst, 1 g oxone and 25 °C. Several parameters such as amount of catalyst loading, phenol concentration, oxidant concentration and temperature were found to be the key factors influencing phenol degradation. A pseudo first order would fit to phenol degradation kinetics, and the activation energies on Co/INZ and Co/ANZ were obtained as 52.4 and 61.3 kJ/mol,respectively
Set-optimization meets variational inequalities
We study necessary and sufficient conditions to attain solutions of
set-optimization problems in therms of variational inequalities of Stampacchia
and Minty type. The notion of a solution we deal with has been introduced Heyde
and Loehne, for convex set-valued objective functions. To define the set-valued
variational inequality, we introduce a set-valued directional derivative and we
relate it to the Dini derivatives of a family of linearly scalarized problems.
The optimality conditions are given by Stampacchia and Minty type Variational
inequalities, defined both by the set valued directional derivative and by the
Dini derivatives of the scalarizations. The main results allow to obtain known
variational characterizations for vector valued optimization problems
Cation distribution in manganese cobaltite spinels Co3−xMnxO4 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) determined by thermal analysis
Thermogravimetric analysis was used in order to study the reduction in air of submicronic powders of Co3−x Mn x O4 spinels, with 0 ≤ x ≤ 1. For x = 0 (i.e. Co3O4), cation reduction occurred in a single step. It involved the CoIII ions at the octahedral sites, which were reduced to Co2+ on producing CoO. For 0 < x ≤ 1, the reduction occurred in two stages at increasing temperature with increasing amounts of manganese. The first step corresponded to the reduction of octahedral CoIII ions and the second was attributed to the reduction of octahedral Mn4+ ions to Mn3+. From the individual weight losses and the electrical neutrality of the lattice, the CoIII and Mn4+ ion concentrations were calculated. The distribution of cobalt and manganese ions present on each crystallographic site of the spinel was determined. In contrast to most previous studies that took into account either CoIII and Mn3+ or Co2+, CoIII and Mn4+ only, our thermal analysis study showed that Co2+/CoIII and Mn3+/Mn4+ pairs occupy the octahedral sites. These results were used to explain the resistivity measurements carried out on dense ceramics prepared from our powders sintered at low temperature (700–750 °C) in a Spark Plasma Sintering apparatus
Testing the theory of immune selection in cancers that break the rules of transplantation
Modification of cancer cells likely to reduce their immunogenicity, including loss or down-regulation of MHC molecules, is now well documented and has become the main support for the concept of immune surveillance. The evidence that these modifications, in fact, result from selection by the immune system is less clear, since the possibility that they may result from reorganized metabolism associated with proliferation or from cell de-differentiation remains. Here, we (a) survey old and new transplantation experiments that test the possibility of selection and (b) survey how transmissible tumours of dogs and Tasmanian devils provide naturally evolved tests of immune surveillance
Form Factors in N=4 Super Yang-Mills and Periodic Wilson Loops
We calculate form factors of half-BPS operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills
theory at tree level and one loop using novel applications of recursion
relations and unitarity. In particular, we determine the expression of the
one-loop form factors with two scalars and an arbitrary number of
positive-helicity gluons. These quantities resemble closely the MHV scattering
amplitudes, including holomorphicity of the tree-level form factor, and the
expansion in terms of two-mass easy box functions of the one-loop result. Next,
we compare our result for these form factors to the calculation of a particular
periodic Wilson loop at one loop, finding agreement. This suggests a novel
duality relating form factors to periodic Wilson loops.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures. v2: typos fixed, comments adde
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