3,694 research outputs found
Aspiration Dynamics of Multi-player Games in Finite Populations
Studying strategy update rules in the framework of evolutionary game theory,
one can differentiate between imitation processes and aspiration-driven
dynamics. In the former case, individuals imitate the strategy of a more
successful peer. In the latter case, individuals adjust their strategies based
on a comparison of their payoffs from the evolutionary game to a value they
aspire, called the level of aspiration. Unlike imitation processes of pairwise
comparison, aspiration-driven updates do not require additional information
about the strategic environment and can thus be interpreted as being more
spontaneous. Recent work has mainly focused on understanding how aspiration
dynamics alter the evolutionary outcome in structured populations. However, the
baseline case for understanding strategy selection is the well-mixed population
case, which is still lacking sufficient understanding. We explore how
aspiration-driven strategy-update dynamics under imperfect rationality
influence the average abundance of a strategy in multi-player evolutionary
games with two strategies. We analytically derive a condition under which a
strategy is more abundant than the other in the weak selection limiting case.
This approach has a long standing history in evolutionary game and is mostly
applied for its mathematical approachability. Hence, we also explore strong
selection numerically, which shows that our weak selection condition is a
robust predictor of the average abundance of a strategy. The condition turns
out to differ from that of a wide class of imitation dynamics, as long as the
game is not dyadic. Therefore a strategy favored under imitation dynamics can
be disfavored under aspiration dynamics. This does not require any population
structure thus highlights the intrinsic difference between imitation and
aspiration dynamics
Albanese map for K\"ahler manifolds with nef anticanonical bundle
We study the structure of the Albanese map for K\"ahler manifolds with nef
anticanonical bundle. First, we give a result for fourfolds whose Albanse torus
is an elliptic curve. In the general case of any dimension, we look at two
cases: The general fiber of the Albanese map is a Calabi-Yau manifold or a
projective space. In the first case, we show that the manifold itself must be
Calabi-Yau. In the second case, we give a more topological proof of a result by
Cao and H\"oring which says that the manifold must be a projectivization of a
numerically flat vector bundle.Comment: 18 pages; comments are welcom
Electrospun Thymosin Beta-4 Loaded PLGA/PLA Nanofiber/ Microfiber Hybrid Yarns for Tendon Tissue Engineering Application
Microfiber yarns (MY) have been widely employed to construct tendon tissue grafts. However, suboptimal ultrastructure and inappropriate environments for cell interactions limit their clinical application. Herein, we designed a modified electrospinning device to coat poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) PLGA nanofibers onto polylactic acid (PLA) MY to generate PLGA/PLA hybrid yarns (HY), which had a well-aligned nanofibrous structure, resembling the ultrastructure of native tendon tissues and showed enhanced failure load compared to PLA MY. PLGA/PLA HY significantly improved the growth, proliferation, and tendon-specific gene expressions of human adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells (HADMSC) compared to PLA MY. Moreover, thymosin beta-4 (Tβ4) loaded PLGA/PLA HY presented a sustained drug release manner for 28 days and showed an additive effect on promoting HADMSC migration, proliferation, and tenogenic differentiation. Collectively, the combination of Tβ4 with the nano-topography of PLGA/PLA HY might be an efficient strategy to promote tenogenesis of adult stem cells for tendon tissue engineering
Compressed Video Action Recognition
Training robust deep video representations has proven to be much more
challenging than learning deep image representations. This is in part due to
the enormous size of raw video streams and the high temporal redundancy; the
true and interesting signal is often drowned in too much irrelevant data.
Motivated by that the superfluous information can be reduced by up to two
orders of magnitude by video compression (using H.264, HEVC, etc.), we propose
to train a deep network directly on the compressed video.
This representation has a higher information density, and we found the
training to be easier. In addition, the signals in a compressed video provide
free, albeit noisy, motion information. We propose novel techniques to use them
effectively. Our approach is about 4.6 times faster than Res3D and 2.7 times
faster than ResNet-152. On the task of action recognition, our approach
outperforms all the other methods on the UCF-101, HMDB-51, and Charades
dataset.Comment: CVPR 2018 (Selected for spotlight presentation
The effect of institutional ownership on firm innovation : evidence from Chinese listed firms
Monitoring by institutional investors can act as an important mechanism to promote firm innovation.
By investigating Chinese listed firms’ patenting between 2002 and 2011, we find that the presence of institutional investors enhances firm innovation.
Consistent with the monitoring view, we further find that (1) the effect of institutional investors
on firm patenting mainly comes from mutual funds; (2) the effect is more pronounced when market ompetition is more intense ; (3) the effect exists among private - and minor state - owned enterprises, but not among major state - owned enterprises. The above findings are robust when innovation quality is
examined
IL-2 Therapy Diminishes Renal Inflammation and the Activity of Kidney-Infiltrating CD4+ T Cells in Murine Lupus Nephritis
An acquired deficiency of interleukin-2 (IL-2) and related disturbances in regulatory T cell (Treg) homeostasis play an important role in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Low-dose IL-2 therapy was shown to restore Treg homeostasis in patients with active SLE and its clinical efficacy is currently evaluated in clinical trials. Lupus nephritis (LN), a challenging organ manifestation in SLE, is characterized by the infiltration of pathogenic CD4+ T cells into the inflamed kidney. However, the role of the Treg-IL-2 axis in the pathogenesis of LN and the mode of action of IL-2 therapy in the inflamed kidneys are still poorly understood. Using the (NZB × NZW) F1 mouse model of SLE we studied whether intrarenal Treg are affected by a shortage of IL-2 in comparison with lymphatic organs and whether and how intrarenal T cells and renal inflammation can be influenced by IL-2 therapy. We found that intrarenal Treg show phenotypic signs that are reminiscent of IL-2 deprivation in parallel to a progressive hyperactivity of intrarenal conventional CD4+ T cells (Tcon). Short-term IL-2 treatment of mice with active LN induced an expansion the intrarenal Treg population whereas long-term IL-2 treatment reduced the activity and proliferation of intrarenal Tcon, which was accompanied by a clinical and histological amelioration of LN. The association of these immune pathologies with IL-2 deficiency and their reversibility by IL-2 therapy provides important rationales for an IL-2-based immunotherapy of LN.DFG, SFB 650, Zelluläre Ansätze zur Suppression unerwünschter Immunreaktionen - From Bench to Bedsid
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