The dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional isotropic droplet in a cholesteric liquid crystal medium under symmetric shear flow is studied by lattice Boltzmann simulations. We consider a geometry in which the flow direction is along the axis of the cholesteric, as this setup exhibits a significant viscoelastic response to external stress. We find that the dynamics depends on the magnitude of the shear rate, the anchoring strength of the liquid crystal at the droplet interface and the chirality. While low shear rate and weak interface anchoring the system shows a non-Newtonian behavior, a Newtonian-like response is observed at high shear rate and strong interface anchoring. This is investigated both by estimating the secondary flow profile, namely a flow emerging along the out-of-plane direction (absent in fully-Newtonian fluids, such as water) and by monitoring defect formation and dynamics, which significantly alter the rheological response of the system.

We investigate numerically, by a hybrid lattice Boltzmann method, the morphology and the dynamics of an emulsion made of a polar active gel, contractile or extensile, and an isotropic passive fluid. We focus on the case of a highly off-symmetric ratio between the active and passive components. In absence of any activity we observe an hexatic-ordered droplets phase, with some defects in the layout. We study how the morphology of the system is affected by activity both in the contractile and extensile case. In the extensile case a small amount of activity favors the elimination of defects in the array of droplets, while at higher activities, first aster-like rotating droplets appear, and then a disordered pattern occurs. In the contractile case, at sufficiently high values of activity, elongated structures are formed. Energy and enstrophy behavior mark the transitions between the different regimes.

An overview of recent Virtualization Technologies impact on Cloud Security, including Advantages, Issues, and Perspectives

We propose a stochastic model in evolutionary game theory where individuals (or subpopulations) can mutate changing their strategies randomly (but rarely) and explore the external environment. This environment affects the selective pressure by modifying the payoff arising from the interactions between strategies. We derive a Fokker-Planck integro-differential equation and provide Monte Carlo simulations for the Hawks vs Doves game. In particular we show that, in some cases, taking into account the external environment favors the persistence of the low-fitness strategy.

We are concerned with a priori estimates, in rearrangement form, for weak solutions to fully anisotropic, nonlinear elliptic equations with lower-order terms whose prototype is \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{array} [c]{lll} -\hbox{\rm div} \; (a(x, u, \nabla u)) + b(u)=f(x) & \qquad\hbox{\rm in\ } \Omega \\ u=0 & \qquad\text{on}\;\partial\Omega. \end{array} \right. \end{equation*} Here, $\Omega$ is an open bounded set in $\mathbb{R}^{N}$, with $N\geq2$, $a(x, \eta, \xi)$ is a Carath\'{e}odory function fulfilling \begin{equation*} a(x,\eta,\xi)\cdot\xi\geq\Phi\left( \xi\right) \qquad \text{ for } \left( \eta,\xi\right) \in\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}^{N}, \; \text{ for a. e. } x\in\Omega, \end{equation*} where $\Phi :\mathbb{R}^{N}\rightarrow\left[ 0,+\infty\right[ $ is an $N-$dimensional Young function, and $b:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is a continuous and strictly increasing function such that $b\left( 0\right)=0$. Finally, $f:\Omega \rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is a nonnegative measurable function enjoying suitable integrability conditions.

Purpose: We studied microRNAs as potential biomarkers for Pompe disease. Methods: We analyzed microRNA expression by small RNA-seq in tissues from the disease murine model at two different ages (3 and 9 months), and in plasma from Pompe patients. Results: In the mouse model we found 211 microRNAs that were differentially expressed in gastrocnemii and 66 in heart, with a different pattern of expression at different ages. In a preliminary analysis in plasma from six patients 55 microRNAs were differentially expressed. Sixteen of these microRNAs were common to those dysregulated in mouse tissues. These microRNAs are known to modulate the expression of genes involved in relevant pathways for Pompe disease pathophysiology (autophagy, muscle regeneration, muscle atrophy). One of these microRNAs, miR-133a, was selected for further quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis in plasma samples from 52 patients, obtained from seven Italian and Dutch biobanks. miR-133a levels were significantly higher in Pompe disease patients than in controls and correlated with phenotype severity, with higher levels in infantile compared with late-onset patients. In three infantile patients miR-133a decreased after start of enzyme replacement therapy and evidence of clinical improvement. Conclusion: Circulating microRNAs may represent additional biomarkers of Pompe disease severity and of response to therapy.

Retinal gene therapy based on adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors is safe and efficient in humans. The low intrinsic DNA transfer capacity of AAV has been expanded by dual vectors where a large expression cassette is split in two halves independently packaged in two AAV vectors. Dual AAV transduction efficiency, however, is greatly reduced compared to that obtained with a single vector. As AAV intracellular trafficking and processing are negatively affected by phosphorylation, this study set to identify kinase inhibitors that can increase dual AAV vector transduction. By high-throughput screening of a kinase inhibitors library, three compounds were identified that increase AAV transduction in vitro, one of which has a higher effect on dual than on single AAV vectors. Importantly, the transduction enhancement is exerted on various AAV serotypes and is not transgene dependent. As kinase inhibitors are promiscuous, siRNA-mediated silencing of targeted kinases was performed, and AURKA and B, PLK1, and PTK2 were among those involved in the increase of AAV transduction levels. The study shows that kinase inhibitor administration reduces AAV serotype 2 (AAV2) capsid phosphorylation and increases the activity of DNA-repair pathways involved in AAV DNA processing. Importantly, the kinase inhibitor PF-00562271 improves dual AAV8 transduction in photoreceptors following sub-retinal delivery in mice. The study identifies kinase inhibitors that increase dual and single AAV transduction by modulating AAV entry and post-entry steps.

MASCOT2018 is the 15th edition of the IMACS/ISGG workshop focused on methods and tools for the complete cycle of numerical modelling and simulation, from the development of theoretically well based models and methods to the deep investigation of crucial applications, from geometry and model construction to its implementation, from data analysis and powerful design of computational tools, with advanced capabilities. Aim of the workshop is the presentation and discussion of innovative technologies dealing with all aspects of computational processes. We recall, but without limiting to them, methodologies for effective grid generation, advanced approximation methods, identification and application of efficient PDE numerical solution algorithms, the development of powerful tools for image processing and scientific visualization. The workshop would bring together developers and users of computational methods and software tools to go deeper into advantages of new methodologies, discuss applications and results, illustrate educational approaches, identify new needs and innovative development directions in a growing variety of problems in applied mathematics

The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruz causes the Chagas disease, which final outcome can be morbidity or death. The complexity of this infection is due to the many kinds of players involved in the immune response and to the variety of host cells targeted by the parasite. We built an ordinary differential equation model which includes aspects of innate and adaptive immune response to study the T. cruzi infection. The model also includes cardiomyocytes to represent how the infection affects the heart. We used parasitemia experimental data of infected wild-type mice to estimate the model parameters. We investigated how the number of parasites and infected cardiomyocytes were affected by changes of parameters controlling the survival rates of the parasite. We thus introduce a 20% variation in either macrophages, CDS+T cells, or anti- parasite specific antibody activity. This resulted in a change of the parasitemia as expected, and produced a broader variation in the number of parasites around the peak of parasitemia. Moreover, the same three model modifications were enabled one at a time to simulate a knockout effect in the host. The results of the knockout effects were a faster parasite growth and death of the host in all three cases, in agreement with in vivo experimental data. The model also is corroborated by in vivo data from the literature where the inhibition of macrophages, antibody, or CTL is not compensated by the other parasite killing mechanisms, and as a result lead to death of the host. Altogether these results indicate that the immune system plays a crucial role in controlling T. cruzi infection and impairment of one modality of action greatly reduces its efficiency and results in a much larger extensionof the infection of cardiomyocytes.

Infection by Leishmania can cause diseases ranging from self-healing cutaneous to visceral dissemination that can lead to death if untreated. In order to explore the early phase of the infection and the role of macrophages, we implement a system of differential equations involving the major players in the innate immune response to leishmaniasis (i.e., parasites in the intracellular and free form, infected and uninfected macrophages, and NO/ROS). The model was adjusted and validated using data from C57BL/6, KO and SCID mice published in the literature. The key findings were the surprisingly more active macrophages in the mice knockouts for IL-12 and IFN-g. This result can be interpreted as an indication of an M2b polarization of the macrophages in these mice. Sensitivity Analysis shows that NO/ROS secretion rate is more important to Leishmania control then the mechanisms of killing intracellular parasites. This model is a useful tool for comprehending the infection and treatments. Index Terms-leishmaniasis, cutaneous, innate-immune-response, macrophages, ODE

The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) is a limb-viewing infrared Fourier transform spectrometer that operated from 2002 to 2012 onboard the ENVISAT satellite. The maintenance and the upgrade of both L1 and L2 ESA processors are accomplished by the Quality Working Group, where a fruitful collaboration among Level 1, Level 2 and validation teams can be exploited. Recently both ESA L1 and L2 processors have been updated, as well as the spectroscopic database and some absorption cross-sections. In addition to the products already present in the current release (V7) of ESA MIPAS data (temperature and the VMR of H2O, O3, HNO3, CH4, N2O, NO2, CFC-11, CFC-12, N2O5, ClONO2, HCFC-22, COF2, CF4, HCN and CCl4), the VMR of six additional species (OCS, CH3Cl, HDO, C2H2, C2H6, COCl2) will be provided in V8 dataset. In preparation of V8 full mission reprocessing, three Diagnostic Datasets have been generated to check the performances of all L1, L2 processors and the new auxiliary data.The analysis of these Diagnostic Datasets and the comparison with previous full mission dataset V7 will be used to perform a first assessment of the quality of the new V8 products. In the paper special focus will be given to the new species.

New remote sensing satellite sensors for the measurements of atmospheric radiation offer the advantage of very high spectral resolution and spectral and/or spatial and temporal coverage. The analysis of these measurements often requires a forward model (FM) for the simulation of the radiation collected by the sensor. The FM should model all the processes affecting the radiance, such as absorption and scattering by molecules and particles. Despite the advancement in sensor technology, the radiative transfer solvers are almost the same since several decades. Among these, the DISORT solver is still one of the most widely used. The DISORT code was developed 30 years ago, and while the code is maintained and updated regularly, the improvements are more geared towards new features than to a revision of the original setup. While the implementation was the best possible at the time, the memory constrains and language limitations of the time are nowadays considerably changed. On the other hand there is still the need of NRT retrievals, and the computing time of the multiple scattering needed in cloudy sky conditions is still the bottleneck of the FM calculation. We modified the DISORT algorithm in three directions: 1) Language improvements. Making use of dynamical assignment and modularity of modern fortran reduces execution time. 2) Algorithm improvements. By approaching the delta-m transformation on a per-layer basis, many computations were saved, expecially when the cloud pattern does not cover all the atmospheric range. 3) Numerical analysis improvements. While these improvements do not shorten the computational time, they improve the precision of the solution of the eigenvalue sub-problems that arises in the multiple scattering calculations. The modifications in the DISORT solver produce an improvement in calculation performances of a factor 3 with respect to the original version. The new solver is named as fast-DISORT (fDISORT).

We consider a general statistical linear inverse problem, where the solution is represented via a known (possibly overcomplete) dictionary that allows its sparse representation. We propose two different approaches. A model selection estimator selects a single model by minimizing the penalized empirical risk over all possible models. By contrast with direct problems, the penalty depends on the model itself rather than on its size only as for complexity penalties. A Q-aggregate estimator averages over the entire collection of estimators with properly chosen weights. Under mild conditions on the dictionary, we establish oracle inequalities both with high probability and in expectation for the two estimators. Moreover, for the latter estimator these inequalities are sharp. The proposed procedures are implemented numerically and their performance is assessed by a simulation study.

This chapter presents the most common and useful tests of hypothesis for bioinformatics applications. The hypothesis tests divide essentially into two categories: parametric and nonparametric. At the first category belong those tests based on the assumption of knowing the distribution of the sampling population(s) and inference is drawn on one or more unknown parameter(s); at the second category belong those tests that are "distribution-free" which generally have much less assumptions. For each test, we will present the mathematical hypothesis under which it is applicable and the statistics used to apply it.

Viene studiata l'evoluzione nel tempo del degrado del rivestimento interno di un tubo metallico al cui interno scorre un fluido. Il degrado si manifesta in tagli longitudinali del rivestimento. Per questo motivo il problema puo' essere posto e risolto (per mezzo di Thin Plate Approximation) in due dimensioni. We deal with the mathematical model of the incremental degradation of the internal coating (e.g. a polymeric material) of a metallic pipe in which a fluid flows relatively fast. The fluid drags solid impurities so that longitudinal scratches, inaccessible to any direct inspection procedure, are produced on the coating. Time evolution of this kind of defects can be reconstructed from the knowledge of a sequence of temperature maps of the external surface. The time-varying orthogonal section of this damaged interface is determined as a function of time and polar angle through the identification of a suitable effective heat transfer coefficient by means of Thin Plate Approximation.

Traffic data, automatically collected en masse every day, can be mined to discover information or patterns to support police investigations. Leveraging on domain expertise, in this paper we show how unsupervised clustering techniques can be used to infer trending behaviors for road-users and thus classify both routes and vehicles. We describe a tool devised and implemented upon openly-available scientific libraries and we present a new set of experiments involving three years worth data. Our classification results show robustness to noise and have high potential for detecting anomalies possibly connected to criminal activity.

In this paper we propose two numerical algorithms to solve a coupled PDE-ODE system which models a slow vehicle (bottleneck) moving on a road together with other cars. The resulting system is fully coupled because the dynamics of the slow vehicle depends on the density of cars and, at the same time, it causes a capacity drop in the road, thus limiting the car flux. The first algorithm, based on the Wave Front Tracking method, is suitable for theoretical investigations and convergence results. The second one, based on the Godunov scheme, is used for numerical simulations. The case of multiple bottlenecks is also investigated.

In this paper we deal with the study of travel flows and patterns of people in large populated areas. Information about the movements of people is extracted from coarse-grained aggregated cellular network data without tracking mobile devices individually. Mobile phone data are provided by the Italian telecommunication company TIM and consist of density profiles (i.e. the spatial distribution) of people in a given area at various instants of time. By computing a suitable approximation of the Wasserstein distance between two consecutive density profiles, we are able to extract the main directions followed by people, i.e. to understand how the mass of people distribute in space and time. The main applications of the proposed technique are the monitoring of daily flows of commuters, the organization of large events, and, more in general, the traffic management and control.