Single-File Diffusion of Externally Driven Particles

We study 1-D diffusion of $N$ hard-core interacting Brownian particles driven by the space- and time-dependent external force. We give the exact solution of the $N$-particle Smoluchowski diffusion equation. In particular, we investigate the nonequilibrium energetics of two interacting particles under the time-periodic driving. The hard-core interaction induces entropic repulsion which differentiates the energetics of the two particles. We present exact time-asymptotic results which describe the mean energy, the accepted work and heat, and the entropy production of interacting particles and we contrast these quantities against the corresponding ones for the non-interacting particles

Thin lenses of asymmetric power

It is generally supposed that thin systems, including refracting surfaces and thin lenses, have powers that are necessarily symmetric.  In other words they have powers which can be represented assymmetric dioptric power matrices and in the familar spherocylindrical form used in optometry and ophthalmology.  This paper shows that this is not correct and that it is indeed possible for a thin system to have a power that is not symmetric and which cannot be expressed in spherocylindrical form.  Thin systems of asymmetric power are illustratedby means of a thin lens that is modelled with small prisms and is chosen to have a dioptric power ma-trix that is antisymmetric.  Similar models can be devised for a thin system whose dioptric power matrix is any  2 2 ×  matrix.  Thus any power, symmetric, asymmetric or antisymmetric, is possible for a thin system.  In this sense our understanding of the power of thin systems is now complete

Foci in ray pencils of general divergency

In generalized optical systems, that is, in systems which may contain thin refracting elements of asymmetric dioptric power, pencils of rays may exhibit phenomena that cannot occur in conventional optical systems.  In conventional optical systems astigmatic pencils have two principal meridians that are necessarily orthogonal; in generalized systems the principal meridians can be at any angle.  In fact in generalized systems a pencil may have only one principal meridian or even none at all.  In contrast to the line foci in the conventional interval of Sturm line foci in generalized systems may be at any angle and there may be only one line focus or no line foci.  A conventional cylindrical pencil has a single line focus at a finite distance but it can be regarded as having a second line focus at infinity.  Only in generalized systems is a single line focus possible without a second at infinity or anywhere else.  The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the types of pencils possible in generalized systems.  Particular attention is paid to the effect of including an antisymmetric component in the divergency of the pencil

De relatie tussen waterkwaliteit en welzijn bij Afrikaanse meerval en tong op Nederlandse viskwekerijen

Het doel van deze literatuurstudie is het beschrijven van de mogelijke knelpunten in de relatie tussen het welzijn van vissen en de waterkwaliteit in recirculatiesystemen (RAS), gespecificeerd op de Afrikaanse meerval (Clarias gariepinus) en tong (Solea solea). Hiernaast is bij een tongkwekerij en bij twee meervalkwekerijen een studie uitgevoerd naar de waterkwaliteit. De resultaten tonen aan dat de temperatuur, pH en zuurstofconcentratie van het water constant zijn. Het TAN-niveau (Total Ammonia Nitrogen) laat een variabel beeld zien bij de meervalkwekerijen, bij de tongkwekerij is het TAN-niveau constant laag

Biochemical and biological characterization of wild-type and ATPase-deficient Cockayne syndrome B repair protein

Cockayne syndrome (CS) is a nucleotide excision repair disorder characterized by sun (UV) sensitivity and severe developmental problems. Two genes have been shown to be involved: CSA and CSB. Both proteins play an essential role in preferential repair of transcription-blocking lesions from active genes. In this study we report the purification and characterization of baculovirus-produced HA-His6-tagged CSB protein (dtCSB), using a highly efficient three-step purification protocol. Microinjection of dtCSB protein in CS-B fibroblasts shows that it is biologically functional in vivo. dtCSB exhibits DNA-dependent ATPase activity, stimulated by naked as well as nucleosomal DNA. Using structurally defined DNA oligonucleotides, we show that double-stranded DNA and double-stranded DNA with partial single-stranded character but not true single-stranded DNA act as efficient cofactors for CSB ATPase activity. Using a variety of substrates, no overt DNA unwinding by dtCSB could be detected, as found with other SNF2/SWI2 family proteins. By site-directed mutagenesis the invariant lysine residue in the NTP-binding motif of CSB was substituted with a physicochemically related arginine. As expected, this mutation abolished ATPase activity. Surprisingly, the mutant protein was nevertheless able to partially rescue the defect in recovery of RNA synthesis after UV upon microinjection in CS-B fibroblasts. These results indicate that integrity of the conserved nucleotide-binding domain is important for the in vivo function of CSB but that also other properties independent from ATP hydrolysis may contribute to CSB biological functions

{TADA}: {T}axonomy Adaptive Domain Adaptation

Traditional domain adaptation addresses the task of adapting a model to a novel target domain under limited or no additional supervision. While tackling the input domain gap, the standard domain adaptation settings assume no domain change in the output space. In semantic prediction tasks, different datasets are often labeled according to different semantic taxonomies. In many real-world settings, the target domain task requires a different taxonomy than the one imposed by the source domain. We therefore introduce the more general taxonomy adaptive domain adaptation (TADA) problem, allowing for inconsistent taxonomies between the two domains. We further propose an approach that jointly addresses the image-level and label-level domain adaptation. On the label-level, we employ a bilateral mixed sampling strategy to augment the target domain, and a relabelling method to unify and align the label spaces. We address the image-level domain gap by proposing an uncertainty-rectified contrastive learning method, leading to more domain-invariant and class discriminative features. We extensively evaluate the effectiveness of our framework under different TADA settings: open taxonomy, coarse-to-fine taxonomy, and partially-overlapping taxonomy. Our framework outperforms previous state-of-the-art by a large margin, while capable of adapting to target taxonomies

The funhouse mirror: the I in personalised healthcare

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a ‘data mirror’ that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided