Management of endocrine disease: Optimal feminizing hormone treatment in transgender people

Transgender women are assigned male at birth, but identify as women. The incidence of gender dysphoria is estimated to be around 1% of the population. Gender dysphoria may be associated with depression and low quality of life, which in most cases improves during gender affirming hormonal treatment (GAHT). Feminizing hormonal treatment for transgender women or gender non-binary people typically includes natural estrogen (estradiol). Additional testosterone-blocking treatment is often needed to ensure suppression of the pituitary gonadal axis and may include cyproterone acetate, a gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist (GnRH-a) or spironolactone. The health risks of cyproterone acetate as anti-androgen treatment are debated and randomized protocols with other anti-androgen treatments are requested. Orchiectomy is performed in some transgender women after various duration of GAHT. Currently, natural progesterone is not recommended as part of GAHT due to limited knowledge on the balance between risks and benefits. In the present article we discuss evidence regarding established and upcoming feminizing treatment for adult transgender women or for gender non-binary people seeking feminization. Data on study populations with transgender women are put into a wider context of literature regarding effects of sex steroid hormones in cisgender study populations. Relevant follow up and monitoring during feminizing treatment is debated. The review has special focus on the pharmacotherapy of feminizing hormonal therapy.

Hyper-optimized tensor network contraction

Tensor networks represent the state-of-the-art in computational methods across many disciplines, including the classical simulation of quantum many-body systems and quantum circuits. Several applications of current interest give rise to tensor networks with irregular geometries. Finding the best possible contraction path for such networks is a central problem, with an exponential effect on computation time and memory footprint. In this work, we implement new randomized protocols that find very high quality contraction paths for arbitrary and large tensor networks. We test our methods on a variety of benchmarks, including the random quantum circuit instances recently implemented on Google quantum chips. We find that the paths obtained can be very close to optimal, and often many orders or magnitude better than the most established approaches. As different underlying geometries suit different methods, we also introduce a hyper-optimization approach, where both the method applied and its algorithmic parameters are tuned during the path finding. The increase in quality of contraction schemes found has significant practical implications for the simulation of quantum many-body systems and particularly for the benchmarking of new quantum chips. Concretely, we estimate a speed-up of over 10,000× compared to the original expectation for the classical simulation of the Sycamore `supremacy' circuits.

DOES THE NUMBER OF JOINTS INVOLVED IN EXERCISE PROMOTE CHANGES IN ENERGY EXPENDITURE?

ABSTRACT Introduction: The benefits of strength training (ST) include not only strength improvement but also favorable body composition changes, which has led to a considerable increase in the indication of this training method in overweight and obese individuals, and has made the investigation of outcomes attributed to different manipulations of ST variables an important task. However, acute metabolic responses related to energy expenditure (EE) associated with the manipulation of exercises which, in turn, are associated with the number of joints involved in movement, are still inconclusive. Objective: To verify the influence of the number of joints involved in movement on EE with equalized volume in ST at different intensities. Methods: This training program was held on alternate days, with a 48-hour interval between each session, and with two randomized protocols, as follows: multi joint protocol with four common exercises for ST participants compared to the single joint protocol with four exercises. Each protocol was evaluated at three training intensities (90%, 75% and 60% of 1-RM) according to the one-repetition maximum test. Results: Significant increases in EE were observed in the multi joint session as compared to the single joint session: 90% 1-RM multi joint 246.80 ± 26.17 kcal vs single joint 227.40 ± 24.54 kcal (∆ -7.86, 95% CI 7.33; 31.46; t 3.44; p <0.05); 75% 1-RM multi joint 124.13 ± 25.40 kcal vs single joint 111.80 ± 22.78 kcal (∆ -9.93, 95% CI 3.25; 21.41; t 2.91; p <0.05); 60% 1-RM multi joint 70.80 ± 6.28 kcal vs single joint 64.40 ± 6.72 kcal (∆-9.04, 95% CI 3.95; 8.84; t 5.60; p <0.05). Conclusion: Multi joint exercises may be a variable to consider when EE balance is the main target of the ST program. However, further studies are needed to supplement our findings. Level of evidence II; Diagnostic studies-Investigating a diagnostic test.

Randomized feasible interpolation and monotone circuits with a local oracle

The feasible interpolation theorem for semantic derivations from [J. Krajíček, Interpolation theorems, lower bounds for proof systems, and independence results for bounded arithmetic, J. Symbolic Logic 62(2) (1997) 457–486] allows to derive from some short semantic derivations (e.g. in resolution) of the disjointness of two [Formula: see text] sets [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] a small communication protocol (a general dag-like protocol in the sense of Krajíček (1997) computing the Karchmer–Wigderson multi-function [Formula: see text] associated with the sets, and such a protocol further yields a small circuit separating [Formula: see text] from [Formula: see text]. When [Formula: see text] is closed upwards, the protocol computes the monotone Karchmer–Wigderson multi-function [Formula: see text] and the resulting circuit is monotone. Krajíček [Interpolation by a game, Math. Logic Quart. 44(4) (1998) 450–458] extended the feasible interpolation theorem to a larger class of semantic derivations using the notion of a real communication complexity (e.g. to the cutting planes proof system CP). In this paper, we generalize the method to a still larger class of semantic derivations by allowing randomized protocols. We also introduce an extension of the monotone circuit model, monotone circuits with a local oracle (CLOs), that does correspond to communication protocols for [Formula: see text] making errors. The new randomized feasible interpolation thus shows that a short semantic derivation (from a certain class of derivations larger than in the original method) of the disjointness of [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] closed upwards, yields a small randomized protocol for [Formula: see text] and hence a small monotone CLO separating the two sets. This research is motivated by the open problem to establish a lower bound for proof system [Formula: see text] operating with clauses formed by linear Boolean functions over [Formula: see text]. The new randomized feasible interpolation applies to this proof system and also to (the semantic versions of) cutting planes CP, to small width resolution over CP of Krajíček [Discretely ordered modules as a first-order extension of the cutting planes proof system, J. Symbolic Logic 63(4) (1998) 1582–1596] (system R(CP)) and to random resolution RR of Buss, Kolodziejczyk and Thapen [Fragments of approximate counting, J. Symbolic Logic 79(2) (2014) 496–525]. The method does not yield yet lengths-of-proofs lower bounds; for this it is necessary to establish lower bounds for randomized protocols or for monotone CLOs.

Clique Here: On the Distributed Complexity in Fully-Connected Networks

We consider a message passing model with n nodes, each connected to all other nodes by a link that can deliver a message of B bits in a time unit (typically, B = O(log n)). We assume that each node has an input of size L bits (typically, L = O(n log n)) and the nodes cooperate in order to compute some function (i.e., perform a distributed task). We are interested in the number of rounds required to compute the function. We give two results regarding this model. First, we show that most boolean functions require ‸ L/B ‹ − 1 rounds to compute deterministically, and that even if we consider randomized protocols that are allowed to err, the expected running time remains [Formula: see text] for most boolean function. Second, trying to find explicit functions that require superconstant time, we consider the pointer chasing problem. In this problem, each node i is given an array Ai of length n whose entries are in [n], and the task is to find, for any [Formula: see text], the value of [Formula: see text]. We give a deterministic O(log n/ log log n) round protocol for this function using message size B = O(log n), a slight but non-trivial improvement over the O(log n) bound provided by standard “pointer doubling.” The question of an explicit function (or functionality) that requires super constant number of rounds in this setting remains, however, open.