State transitions and the continuum limit for a 2D interacting, self-propelled particle system

We study a class of swarming problems wherein particles evolve dynamically via pairwise interaction potentials and a velocity selection mechanism. We find that the swarming system undergoes various changes of state as a function of the self-propulsion and interaction potential parameters. In this paper, we utilize a procedure which connects a class of individual-based models to their continuum formulations and determine criteria for the validity of the latter. H-stability of the interaction potential plays a fundamental role in determining both the validity of the continuum approximation and the nature of the aggregation state transitions. We perform a linear stability analysis of the continuum model and compare the results to the simulations of the individual-based one.     

Study of ProtoPorphyrin IX Elimination by Body Excreta: A new Noninvasive Cancer Diagnostic Method?

This paper describes the elimination of porphyrins by feces. It was demonstrated that porphyrin accumulates substantially more in tumors than in normal tissues, and consequently more PPIX reaches the blood of patients and animals with tumors, and then, it needs to be eliminated. The fluorescence of feces revealed that there are large amounts of PPIX in the excreta of animals with cancer comparing with healthy animals. The autofluorescence of feces porphyrin extracted with acetone was analyzed using fluorescence spectroscopy of animals inoculated with DU145 cells into the prostate and healthy animals to monitor the PPIX concentration. Emission spectra were obtained by exciting the samples at 405 nm. Significant differences were observed in autofluorescence intensities measured in the 575–725 nm spectral regions for the studied groups. The results showed a noninvasive, simple, rapid and sensitive method to detect cancer by feces analysis.     

Accurate Design of Finline Tapers for Millimeter Wave Applications

The design of nonuniform bilateral finlines on anisotropic substrates for millimeter wave applications is presented. The taper consists of a planar circuit with smooth variation of the slot width profile along the structure. The spectral domain method and Galerkin procedure are combined with the transmission line theory for studying the behavior of tapered bilateral finlines and evaluation of their design parameters. The influence of the substrate anisotropy on the propagation characteristics of these structures is also examined. This technique is general and can be applied to investigate a broad class of planar transmission line tapers.     

Nanoporous gold thin films synthesised via de-alloying of Au-based nanoglass for highly active SERS substrates

Nanoporous gold thin films have been fabricated through chemical de-alloying of Au-based nanoglass with a nanocolumnar structure, with composition Au₄₀Cu₂₈Ag₇Pd₅Si₂₀ (at.%), that had previously been deposited by magnetron sputtering. By varying the de-alloying conditions, gold ligaments ranging from 20 to 100?nm were obtained. The microstructure and chemical composition of the as-prepared films were characterised by various techniques. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of thin films was investigated using rhodamine 6G. The results indicate that the main microstructural features with interconnected ligaments and defects of nanoporous gold result in significant SERS enhancement.     

Modulation of humoral immune response to oral BCG vaccination by Mycobacterium bovis BCG Moreau Rio de Janeiro (RDJ) in healthy adults

We hypothesize that the energy strategy of a cell is a key factor for determining how, or if, the immune system interacts with that cell. Cells have a limited number of metabolic states, in part, depending on the type of fuels the cell consumes. Cellular fuels include glucose (carbohydrates), lipids (fats), and proteins. We propose that the cell's ability to switch to, and efficiently use, fat for fuel confers immune privilege. Additionally, because uncoupling proteins are involved in the fat burning process and reportedly in protection from free radicals, we hypothesize that uncoupling proteins play an important role in immune privilege. Thus, changes in metabolism (caused by oxidative stresses, fuel availability, age, hormones, radiation, or drugs) will dictate and initiate changes in immune recognition and in the nature of the immune response. This has profound implications for controlling the symptoms of autoimmune diseases, for preventing graft rejection, and for targeting tumor cells for destruction.     

A real-time monitoring approach for bivariate event data

Early detection of changes in the frequency of events is an important task in many fields, such as disease surveillance, monitoring of high-quality processes, reliability monitoring, and public health. This article focuses on detecting changes in multivariate event data by monitoring the time-between-events (TBE). Existing multivariate TBE charts are limited because they only signal after an event occurred for each of the individual processes. This results in delays (i.e., long time-to-signal), especially when we are interested in detecting a change in one or a few processes with different rates. We propose a bivariate TBE chart, which can signal in real-time. We derive analytical expressions for the control limits and average time-to-signal performance, conduct a performance evaluation and compare our chart to an existing method. Our findings showed that our method is an effective approach for monitoring bivariate TBE data and has better detection ability than the existing method under transient shifts and is more generally applicable. A significant benefit of our method is that it signals in real-time and that the control limits are based on analytical expressions. The proposed method is implemented on two real-life datasets from reliability and health surveillance.     

The Hardy–Littlewood–Pólya inequality of majorization in the context of $$\mathbf {\omega }$$ – $$\textbf{m}$$ –star-convex functions

Aequationes mathematicae - The Hardy–Littlewood–Pólya inequality of majorization is extended for $$\mathbf {\omega }$$ – $$\textbf{m}$$ –star-convex functions to the...