We study a design framework for robust, independently verifiable, and workload-balanced distributed algorithms working on a common input. The framework builds on recent noninteractive Merlin--Arthur proofs of batch evaluation of Williams~[31st IEEE Colloquium on Computational Complexity (CCC'16, May 29-June 1, 2016, Tokyo), to appear] with the basic observation that Merlin's magic is not needed fo

This essay introduces environmental historians to a new approach inspired by the burgeoning field of Wissensgeschichte; that is, the study of societal circulation of knowledge. It is argued that this new method can help us to better map out and analyse the emergence of modern environmentalism in society at large. To demonstrate the practical implications of the argument the essay is centred on an

Structural properties, independent of specific parameter values, can explain the robustness of biochemical systems. In this paper we consider the framework previously proposed by the authors to assess structural stability of biochemical reaction networks with monotone reaction rates, which considers systems in concentration coordinates, and we show that the results can be applied to systems in rea

Primary torsion dystonia (PTD) occurs due to a genetic mutation and often advances gradually. Currently, there is no therapy available that is able to inhibit progression. Neural stem cells (NSCs) are being investigated as potential therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, such as stroke and trauma. The present study evaluated the clinical effectiveness of NSC transplantation in an 18-year-old ma

We consider the flow control problem for a general class of compartmental nonlinear systems, which can be associated with a graph whose nodes represent subsystems with their own internal dynamics, and whose arcs represent flow links among them. We consider a network-decentralized control: each agent controls a link between two nodes and decides its actions based on the states of these nodes only.

A major drawback hinders the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) to the regulation of electromechanical systems or, more generally, systems with fast dynamics: the time needed for the online computation of the control is often too long with respect to the sampling time. This paper shows how this problem can be overcome by suitably implementing the MPC technique. The main idea is to compu

We consider the problem of stabilizing a class of systems formed by a set of decoupled subsystems (nodes) interconnected through a set of controllers (arcs). Controllers are network-decentralized, i.e., they use information exclusively from the nodes they interconnect. This condition requires a block-structured feedback matrix, having the same structure as the transpose of the overall input matrix

Molecular systems are uncertain: The variability of reaction parameters and the presence of unknown interactions can weaken the predictive capacity of solid mathematical models. However, strong conclusions on the admissible dynamic behaviors of a model can often be achieved without detailed knowledge of its specific parameters. In systems with a sign-definite Jacobian, for instance, cycle-based cr

We consider a traffic control problem defined on a network graph, whose nodes represent buffers and whose arcs represent flow channels. We consider network models with a peculiar aspect: each element of the flow arriving at each node must be redirected towards a precise other node of the network, hence each buffer is naturally split in several queues, characterized according to statistics about th

A property for a class of systems is said to be structural if it is met by any system in the class regardless of the adopted parameters. In this paper we investigate the structural nature of oscillatory behaviors, adaptation and monotonicity in a class of sign-invariant systems, capturing a wide variety of biological models. We employ standard robustness analysis tools, suitably tailored to the ca

BACKGROUND: The aims of the study were to determine the prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors and establish the proportion of people with psychosis meeting criteria for the metabolic syndrome (MetS). The study also aimed to identify the key lifestyle behaviours associated with increased risk of the MetS and to investigate whether the MetS is associated with illness severity and degree of func

Expression of antibodies inside cells has been used successfully to ablate protein function. This finding suggests that the technology should have an impact on disease treatment and in functional genomics where proteins of unknown function are predicted from genomic sequences. A major hindrance is the paucity of antibodies that function in eukaryotic cells, presumably because the antibodies fold i

Directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) holds great promise in cell replacement therapy for patients suffering from degenerative eye diseases, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD). In this study, we generated iPSCs from human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) by electroporation with episomal plasmid vectors encoding OCT4,

An extensive phenomenological study of the Drell-Yan (DY) process in pp collisions at various energies is performed in the color dipole framework. Besides previously studied γ∗ production we also include the Z0 contribution relevant at large dilepton invariant masses. We investigate the DY cross section differential in invariant mass, rapidity and transverse momentum of the dilepton pair in pp col