Combining Traditional Marketing and Viral Marketing with Amphibious Influence Maximization

In this paper, we propose the amphibious influence maximization (AIM) model that combines traditional marketing via content providers and viral marketing to consumers in social networks in a single framework. In AIM, a set of content providers and consumers form a bipartite network while consumers also form their social network, and influence propagates from the content providers to consumers and among consumers in the social network following the independent cascade model. An advertiser needs to select a subset of seed content providers and a subset of seed consumers, such that the influence from the seed providers passing through the seed consumers could reach a large number of consumers in the social network in expectation. We prove that the AIM problem is NP-hard to approximate to within any constant factor via a reduction from Feige's k-prover proof system for 3-SAT5. We also give evidence that even when the social network graph is trivial (i.e. has no edges), a polynomial time constant factor approximation for AIM is unlikely. However, when we assume that the weighted bi-adjacency matrix that describes the influence of content providers on consumers is of constant rank, a common assumption often used in recommender systems, we provide a polynomial-time algorithm that achieves approximation ratio of $(1-1/e-\epsilon)^3$ for any (polynomially small) $\epsilon > 0$. Our algorithmic results still hold for a more general model where cascades in social network follow a general monotone and submodular function.Comment: An extended abstract appeared in the Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), 201

Graphene oxide-Au nano particle coated quartz crystal microbalance biosensor for the real time analysis of carcinoembryonic antigen

A label-free quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) biosensor was developed for the selective and real-time estimation of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) through the present study. Graphene oxide-Au nanoparticles (GO-AuNPs) was in situ synthesised on the surface of the QCM electrode and the antibody of CEA (monoclonal anti-CEA from mouse) was covalently immobilized on this layer as the bioreceptor for CEA. Mercaptoacetic acid–EDC–NHS reaction mechanism was used for anti-CEA immobilization. The effect of oxygen plasma treatment of the QCM electrode surface before bioreceptor preparation on the performance of the biosensor was tested and was found promising. CEA solutions with various concentrations were analysed using the bioreceptors to estimate the sensitivity and detection limit of the biosensor. The biosensors selectively recognized and captured CEA biomolecules with a detection limit of 0.06 and 0.09 ng mL−1 of CEA for oxygen plasma-treated (E2) and untreated (E1) bioreceptors, respectively. The sensitivity was estimated at 102 and 79 Hz, respectively, for E2 and E1. Clinical serum samples were analysed and the results were found in good agreement with the ELISA analysis. Long term stability was also found to be excellent. Langmuir adsorption isotherm was also conducted using the experimental results

Annihilation Rates of Heavy 1−−1^{--} S-wave Quarkonia in Salpeter Method

The annihilation rates of vector $1^{--}$ charmonium and bottomonium $^3S_1$ states $V \rightarrow e^+e^-$ and $V\rightarrow 3\gamma$, $V \rightarrow \gamma gg$ and $V \rightarrow 3g$ are estimated in the relativistic Salpeter method. We obtained $\Gamma(J/\psi\rightarrow 3\gamma)=6.8\times 10^{-4}$ keV, $\Gamma(\psi(2S)\rightarrow 3\gamma)=2.5\times 10^{-4}$ keV, $\Gamma(\psi(3S)\rightarrow 3\gamma)=1.7\times 10^{-4}$ keV, $\Gamma(\Upsilon(1S)\rightarrow 3\gamma)=1.5\times 10^{-5}$ keV, $\Gamma(\Upsilon(2S)\rightarrow 3\gamma)=5.7\times 10^{-6}$ keV, $\Gamma(\Upsilon(3S)\rightarrow 3\gamma)=3.5\times 10^{-6}$ keV and $\Gamma(\Upsilon(4S)\rightarrow 3\gamma)=2.6\times 10^{-6}$ keV. In our calculations, special attention is paid to the relativistic correction, which is important and can not be ignored for excited $2S$, $3S$ and higher excited states.Comment: 10 pages,2 figures, 5 table