398 research outputs found
The application of GMOs in agriculture and in food production for a better nutrition: two different scientific points of view
This commentary is a face-to-face debate between two almost opposite positions regarding the application of genetic engineering in agriculture and food production. Seven questions on the potential benefits of the application of genetic engineering in agriculture and on the potentially adverse impacts on the environment and human health were posed to two scientists: one who is sceptical about the use of GMOs in Agriculture, and one who views GMOs as an important tool for quantitatively and qualitatively improving food production.Research at the Universitat de Lleida is supported
by MICINN, Spain (BFU2007-61413); European Union
Framework 7 Program-SmartCell Integrated Project 222716; European
Union Framework 7 European Research Council IDEAS
Advanced Grant Program-BIOFORCE; COST Action FA0804: Molecular farming: plants as a production platform for high value
proteins; Centre CONSOLIDER on Agrigenomics funded by MICINN, Spain
Universal renormalization-group dynamics at the onset of chaos in logistic maps and nonextensive statistical mechanics
We uncover the dynamics at the chaos threshold of the logistic
map and find it consists of trajectories made of intertwined power laws that
reproduce the entire period-doubling cascade that occurs for . We corroborate this structure analytically via the Feigenbaum
renormalization group (RG) transformation and find that the sensitivity to
initial conditions has precisely the form of a -exponential, of which we
determine the -index and the -generalized Lyapunov coefficient . Our results are an unequivocal validation of the applicability of the
non-extensive generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) statistical mechanics to
critical points of nonlinear maps.Comment: Revtex, 3 figures. Updated references and some general presentation
improvements. To appear published as a Rapid communication of PR
Screen-detected vs clinical breast cancer: the advantage in the relative risk of lymph node metastases decreases with increasing tumour size
Screen-detected (SD) breast cancers are smaller and biologically more indolent than clinically presenting cancers. An often debated question is: if left undiagnosed during their preclinical phase, would they become more aggressive or would they only increase in size? This study considered a registry-based series (1988–1999) of 3329 unifocal, pT1a-pT3 breast cancer cases aged 50–70 years, of which 994 were SD cases and 2335 clinical cases. The rationale was that (1) the average risk of lymph node involvement (N+) is lower for SD cases, (2) nodal status is the product of biological aggressiveness and chronological age of the disease, (3) for any breast cancer, tumour size is an indicator of chronological age, and (4) for SD cases, tumour size is specifically an indicator of the duration of the preclinical phase, that is, an inverse indicator of lead time. The hypothesis was that the relative protection of SD cases from the risk of N+ and, thus, their relative biological indolence decrease with increasing tumour size. The odds ratio (OR) estimate of the risk of N+ was obtained from a multiple logistic regression model that included terms for detection modality, tumour size category, patient age, histological type, and number of lymph nodes recovered. A term for the detection modality-by-tumour size category interaction was entered, and the OR for the main effect of detection by screening vs clinical diagnosis was calculated. This increased linearly from 0.05 (95% confidence interval: 0.01–0.39) in the 2–7 mm size category to 0.95 (0.64–1.40) in the 18–22 mm category. This trend is compatible with the view that biological aggressiveness of breast cancer increases during the preclinical phase
L\'{e}vy scaling: the Diffusion Entropy Analysis applied to DNA sequences
We address the problem of the statistical analysis of a time series generated
by complex dynamics with a new method: the Diffusion Entropy Analysis (DEA)
(Fractals, {\bf 9}, 193 (2001)). This method is based on the evaluation of the
Shannon entropy of the diffusion process generated by the time series imagined
as a physical source of fluctuations, rather than on the measurement of the
variance of this diffusion process, as done with the traditional methods. We
compare the DEA to the traditional methods of scaling detection and we prove
that the DEA is the only method that always yields the correct scaling value,
if the scaling condition applies. Furthermore, DEA detects the real scaling of
a time series without requiring any form of de-trending. We show that the joint
use of DEA and variance method allows to assess whether a time series is
characterized by L\'{e}vy or Gauss statistics. We apply the DEA to the study of
DNA sequences, and we prove that their large-time scales are characterized by
L\'{e}vy statistics, regardless of whether they are coding or non-coding
sequences. We show that the DEA is a reliable technique and, at the same time,
we use it to confirm the validity of the dynamic approach to the DNA sequences,
proposed in earlier work.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure
Anomalous diffusion associated with nonlinear fractional derivative Fokker-Planck-like equation: Exact time-dependent solutions
We consider the nonlinear Fokker-Planck-like equation with fractional
derivatives . Exact
time-dependent solutions are found for
(). By considering the long-distance {\it asymptotic}
behavior of these solutions, a connection is established, namely
(), with the solutions optimizing
the nonextensive entropy characterized by index . Interestingly enough,
this relation coincides with the one already known for L\'evy-like
superdiffusion (i.e., and ). Finally, for
we obtain which differs from the value
corresponding to the solutions available in the literature (
porous medium equation), thus exhibiting nonuniform convergence.Comment: 3 figure
A Dynamic Approach to the Thermodynamics of Superdiffusion
We address the problem of relating thermodynamics to mechanics in the case of
microscopic dynamics without a finite time scale. The solution is obtained by
expressing the Tsallis entropic index q as a function of the Levy index alpha,
and using dynamical rather than probabilistic arguments.Comment: 4 pages, new revised version resubmitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Nonextensive Thermostatistics and the H-Theorem
The kinetic foundations of Tsallis' nonextensive thermostatistics are
investigated through Boltzmann's transport equation approach. Our analysis
follows from a nonextensive generalization of the ``molecular chaos
hypothesis". For , the -transport equation satisfies an -theorem
based on Tsallis entropy. It is also proved that the collisional equilibrium is
given by Tsallis' -nonextensive velocity distribution.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, corrected some typo
Average Entropy of a Subsystem from its Average Tsallis Entropy
In the nonextensive Tsallis scenario, Page's conjecture for the average
entropy of a subsystem[Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 71}, 1291(1993)] as well as its
demonstration are generalized, i.e., when a pure quantum system, whose Hilbert
space dimension is , is considered, the average Tsallis entropy of an
-dimensional subsystem is obtained. This demonstration is expected to be
useful to study systems where the usual entropy does not give satisfactory
results.Comment: Revtex, 6 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
- …