Making sense out of polemics

We intend to draw attention to a topic in practical argumentation that is complex, unavoidable and of substantial consequence in social, political and economical terms: polemics. Our target is a rather frequent —and far from trivial— type of polemics, those that are generated around action proposals that affect public well-being. Our aim is to develop a framework to identify the argumentative components of an actual controversy and eventually provide means to intervene in the ongoing disputation. With that focus, in this paper we outline the basic elements of a conceptual framework that will allow us to map the topic and articulate some salient opportunities.The authors wish to acknowledge the support of SINTELNET (FET Open Coordinated Action FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) in the writing of this paperPeer reviewe

Analysis of fine-scale mammalian evolutionary breakpoints provides new insight into their relation to genome organisation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Intergenic Breakage Model, which is the current model of structural genome evolution, considers that evolutionary rearrangement breakages happen with a uniform propensity along the genome but are selected against in genes, their regulatory regions and in-between. However, a growing body of evidence shows that there exists regions along mammalian genomes that present a high susceptibility to breakage. We reconsidered this question taking advantage of a recently published methodology for the precise detection of rearrangement breakpoints based on pairwise genome comparisons.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We applied this methodology between the genome of human and those of five sequenced eutherian mammals which allowed us to delineate evolutionary breakpoint regions along the human genome with a finer resolution (median size 26.6 kb) than obtained before. We investigated the distribution of these breakpoints with respect to genome organisation into domains of different activity. In agreement with the Intergenic Breakage Model, we observed that breakpoints are under-represented in genes. Surprisingly however, the density of breakpoints in small intergenes (1 per Mb) appears significantly higher than in gene deserts (0.1 per Mb).</p> <p>More generally, we found a heterogeneous distribution of breakpoints that follows the organisation of the genome into isochores (breakpoints are more frequent in GC-rich regions). We then discuss the hypothesis that regions with an enhanced susceptibility to breakage correspond to regions of high transcriptional activity and replication initiation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We propose a model to describe the heterogeneous distribution of evolutionary breakpoints along human chromosomes that combines natural selection and a mutational bias linked to local open chromatin state.</p

Boosting bonsai trees for handwritten/printed text discrimination

International audienceBoosting over decision-stumps proved its e ciency in Natural Language Processing essentially with symbolic features, and its good properties (fast, few and not critical parameters, not sensitive to overfitting) could be of great interest in the numeric world of pixel images. In this article we investigated the use of boosting over small decision trees, in image classification processing, for the discrimination of handwritten/printed text. Then, we conducted experiments to compare it to usual SVM-based classification revealing convincing results with very close performance, but with faster predictions and behaving far less as a black-box. Those promising results tend to make use of this classifier in more complex recognition tasks like multiclass problems

MEXICA-Impro: A Computational Model for Narrative Improvisation.

Abstract. This paper describes a system that dynamically generate narratives through improvisation. MEXICA-impro is based on a cognitive account of the creative process called engagement-reflection. Its architecture defines a framework where two agents participate in a simulated improvisation session to generate the plot of a story in which each one draws knowledge from two different databases representing cultural backgrounds. A worked example is explained in detail to show how this approach produces novel stories that could not be generated before

Close 3D proximity of evolutionary breakpoints argues for the notion of spatial synteny

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Folding and intermingling of chromosomes has the potential of bringing close to each other loci that are very distant genomically or even on different chromosomes. On the other hand, genomic rearrangements also play a major role in the reorganisation of loci proximities. Whether the same loci are involved in both mechanisms has been studied in the case of somatic rearrangements, but never from an evolutionary standpoint.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper, we analysed the correlation between two datasets: (i) whole-genome chromatin contact data obtained in human cells using the Hi-C protocol; and (ii) a set of breakpoint regions resulting from evolutionary rearrangements which occurred since the split of the human and mouse lineages. Surprisingly, we found that two loci distant in the human genome but adjacent in the mouse genome are significantly more often observed in close proximity in the human nucleus than expected. Importantly, we show that this result holds for loci located on the same chromosome regardless of the genomic distance separating them, and the signal is stronger in gene-rich and open-chromatin regions.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings strongly suggest that part of the 3D organisation of chromosomes may be conserved across very large evolutionary distances. To characterise this phenomenon, we propose to use the notion of spatial synteny which generalises the notion of genomic synteny to the 3D case.</p

FOSS EKV2.6 Verilog-A Compact MOSFET Model

The EKV2.6 MOSFET compact model has had a considerable impact on the academic and industrial community of analog integrated circuit design, since its inception in 1996. The model is available as a free open-source software (FOSS) tool coded in Verilog-A. The present paper provides a short review of foundations of the model and shows its capabilities via characterization and modeling based on a test chip in 180 nm CMOS fabricated via Europractice

Footprints of Inversions at Present and Past Pseudoautosomal Boundaries in Human Sex Chromosomes

The human sex chromosomes have stopped recombining gradually, which has left five evolutionary strata on the X chromosome. Y inversions are thought to have suppressed X–Y recombination but clear evidence is missing. Here, we looked for such evidence by focusing on a region—the X-added region (XAR)—that includes the pseudoautosomal region and the most recent strata 3 to 5. We estimated and analyzed the whole set of parsimonious scenarios of Y inversions given the gene order in XAR and its Y homolog. Comparing these to scenarios for simulated sequences suggests that the strata 4 and 5 were formed by Y inversions. By comparing the X and Y DNA sequences, we found clear evidence of two Y inversions associated with duplications that coincide with the boundaries of strata 4 and 5. Divergence between duplicates is in agreement with the timing of strata 4 and 5 formation. These duplicates show a complex pattern of gene conversion that resembles the pattern previously found for AMELXY, a stratum 3 locus. This suggests that this locus—despite AMELY being unbroken—was possibly involved in a Y inversion that formed stratum 3. However, no clear evidence supporting the formation of stratum 3 by a Y inversion was found, probably because this stratum is too old for such an inversion to be detectable. Our results strongly support the view that the most recent human strata have arisen by Y inversions and suggest that inversions have played a major role in the differentiation of our sex chromosomes