Posterior moments and quantiles for the normal location model with Laplace prior

We derive explicit expressions for arbitrary moments and quantiles of the posterior distribution of the location parameter eta in the normal location model with Laplace prior, and use the results to approximate the posterior distribution of sums of independent copies of eta

Estimation of the methane emission factor for the Italian Mediterranean buffalo

In order to contribute to the improvement of the national greenhouse gas emission inventory, this work aimed at estimating a country-specific enteric methane (CH4) emission factor for the Italian Mediterranean buffalo. For this purpose, national agriculture statistics, and information on animal production and farming conditions were analysed, and the emission factor was estimated using the Tier 2 model of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Country-specific CH4 emission factors for buffalo cows (630 kg body weight, BW) and other buffalo (313 kg BW) categories were estimated for the period 1990–2004. In 2004, the estimated enteric CH4 emission factor for the buffalo cows was 73 kg/head per year, whereas that for other buffalo categories it was 56 kg/head per year. Research in order to determine specific CH4 conversion rates at the predominant production system is suggested

Multi-path entanglement of two photons

We present a novel optical device based on an integrated system of micro-lenses and single mode optical fibers. It allows to collect and direct into many modes two photons generated by spontaneous parametric down conversion. By this device multiqubit entangled states and/or multilevel qu-$d$it states of two photons, encoded in the longitudinal momentum degree of freedom, are created. The multi-path photon entanglement realized by this device is expected to find important applications in modern quantum information technology.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, revtex, revised versio

Shedding Light on Diatom Photonics by means of Digital Holography

Diatoms are among the dominant phytoplankters in the worl's ocean, and their external silica investments, resembling artificial photonics crystal, are expected to play an active role in light manipulation. Digital holography allowed studying the interaction with light of Coscinodiscus wailesii cell wall reconstructing the light confinement inside the cell cytoplasm, condition that is hardly accessible via standard microscopy. The full characterization of the propagated beam, in terms of quantitative phase and intensity, removed a long-standing ambiguity about the origin of the light. The data were discussed in the light of living cell behavior in response to their environment

Contracts for Abstract Processes in Service Composition

Contracts are a well-established approach for describing and analyzing behavioral aspects of web service compositions. The theory of contracts comes equipped with a notion of compatibility between clients and servers that ensures that every possible interaction between compatible clients and servers will complete successfully. It is generally agreed that real applications often require the ability of exposing just partial descriptions of their behaviors, which are usually known as abstract processes. We propose a formal characterization of abstraction as an extension of the usual symbolic bisimulation and we recover the notion of abstraction in the context of contracts.Comment: In Proceedings FIT 2010, arXiv:1101.426

PINK1 homozygous W437X mutation in a patient with apparent dominant transmission of parkinsonism.

We analyzed the PINK1 gene in 58 patients with early-onset Parkinsonism and detected the homozygous mutation W437X in 1 patient. The clinical phenotype was characterized by early onset (22 years of age), good re- sponse to levodopa, early fluctuations and dyskinesias, and psychiatric symptoms. The mother, heterozygote for W437X mutation, was affected by Parkinson’s disease and 3 further relatives were reported affected, according to an autosomal dominant transmission

Weighted-Average Least Squares (WALS): Confidence and Prediction Intervals

We consider inference for linear regression models estimated by weighted-average least squares (WALS), a frequentist model averaging approach with a Bayesian flavor. We propose a new simulation method that yields re-centered confidence and prediction intervals by exploiting the bias-corrected posterior mean as a frequentist estimator of a normal location parameter. We investigate the performance of WALS and several alternative estimators in an extensive set of Monte Carlo experiments that allow for increasing complexity of the model space and heteroskedastic, skewed, and thick-tailed regression errors. In addition to WALS, we include unrestricted and fully restricted least squares, two post-selection estimators based on classical information criteria, a penalization estimator, and Mallows and jackknife model averaging estimators. We show that, compared to the other approaches, WALS performs well in terms of the mean squared error of point estimates, and also in terms of coverage errors and lengths of confidence and prediction intervals

Updating neuropathology and neuropharmacology of monoaminergic systems

PreprintNon peer reviewe

Dynamics and Hadronization at intermediate transverse momentum at RHIC

The ultra-relativistic heavy-ion program at RHIC has shown that at intermediate transverse momenta ($p_T \simeq 2$-6 GeV) standard (independent) parton fragmentation can neither describe the observed baryon-to-meson ratios nor the empirical scaling of the hadronic elliptic flow ($v_2$) according to the number of valence quarks. Both aspects find instead a natural explanation in a coalescence plus fragmentation approach to hadronization. After a brief review of the main results for light quarks, we focus on heavy quarks showing that a combined fragmentation and quark-coalescence framework is relevant also here. Moreover, within relativistic Langevin simulations we find evidence for the importance of heavy-light resonances in the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) to explain the strong energy loss and collective flow of heavy-quark spectra as inferred from non-photonic electron observables. Such heavy-light resonances can pave the way to a unified understanding of the microscopic structure of the QGP and its subsequent hadronization by coalescence.Comment: Proceedings of the International Workshop on QCD - Martina Franca (Italy), June 2007. To be published in AIP. 6 pages, 6 figure

Identifying Cloned Navigational Patterns in Web Applications

Web Applications are subject to continuous and rapid evolution. Often programmers indiscriminately duplicate Web pages without considering systematic development and maintenance methods. This practice creates code clones that make Web Applications hard to maintain and reuse. We present an approach to identify duplicated functionalities in Web Applications through cloned navigational pattern analysis. Cloned patterns can be generalized in a reengineering process, thus to simplify the structure and future maintenance of the Web Applications. The proposed method first identifies pairs of cloned pages by analyzing similarity at structure, content, and scripting code. Two pages are considered clones if their similarity is greater than a given threshold. Cloned pages are then grouped into clusters and the links connecting pages of two clusters are grouped too. An interconnection metric has been defined on the links between two clusters to express the effort required to reengineer them as well as to select the patterns of interest. To further reduce the comprehension effort, we filter out links and nodes of the clustered navigational schema that do not contribute to the identification of cloned navigational patterns. A tool supporting the proposed approach has been developed and validated in a case study