Lorentz resonance in the homogenization of plasmonic crystals

We explain the Lorentz resonances in plasmonic crystals that consist of two-dimensional nano-dielectric inclusions as the interaction between resonant material properties and geometric resonances of electrostatic nature. One example of such plasmonic crystals are graphene nanosheets that are periodically arranged within a non-magnetic bulk dielectric. We identify local geometric resonances on the length scale of the small-scale period. From a materials perspective, the graphene surface exhibits a dispersive surface conductance captured by the Drude model. Together these phenomena conspire to generate Lorentz resonances at frequencies controlled by the surface geometry and the surface conductance. The Lorentz resonances found in the frequency response of the effective dielectric tensor of the bulk metamaterial are shown to be given by an explicit formula, in which material properties and geometric resonances are decoupled. This formula is rigorous and obtained directly from corrector fields describing local electrostatic fields inside the heterogeneous structure. Our analytical findings can serve as an efficient computational tool to describe the general frequency dependence of periodic optical devices. As a concrete example, we investigate two prototypical geometries composed of nanotubes and nanoribbons.

The relative frequency of Myasthenia Gravis in patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Neuromyelitis Optica

Background: Co-occurrence of autoimmune diseases have always been an area of interest due to common underlying immunopathologic mechanisms. In this study, we assess the relative frequency of myasthenia gravis (MG) in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and neuromyelitis optica (NMO).Methods: Records of patients with MS and NMO who visited the Isfahan MS center were screened. The data of patients with comorbid MG was used to calculate relative frequency.Results: The relative frequency of MG in our sample MS and NMO population was 0.34% and 5%, respectively, which is higher than the reported prevalence of MG alone in the general population (0.0005-0.024%).Conclusion: The higher frequency of MG in MS and NMO populations compared to the general frequency of the disease may be due to common immunopathologic mechanisms that underly the diseases. Regulatory T cells, the complement pathway, matrix metalloproteinases, and B cells play critical roles in each disease and share common features in MS and MG. The complement system also plays a central role in NMO and MG. The relative frequency of MG in patients with MS and NMO is higher than of that reported in the general population (0.34% and 5%, respectively).

Evolution of Free Indirect Speech Structures in English, American, and Russian Literature

Changes that free indirect speech underwent in English, American, and Russian literature during the 20th century were investigated. Both general and more specific (qualitative and quantitative) trends in the free indirect speech development were discussed. Free indirect speech was considered from a diachronic point of view, i.e., the study aims to identify a correlation between the patterns that could be relevant for literary translation from English into Russian and vice versa. Based on the results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of free indirect speech contexts, it was demonstrated that free indirect speech has evolved. A notable increase in the degree of textual interference and in the variety of models employed was observed. Interestingly, the frequency of occurrence of free indirect speech structures in literary texts varies from decade to decade. Although there are some common trends in free indirect speech usage following the global tendencies in literature, its evolution depends on particular national literary traditions as well. The data obtained show that the most intense usage of free indirect speech segments is typical for the English literature. From the translation perspective, it is important that the general frequency and functional models of indirect speech usage can slightly differ even in texts of the same period or among the writers.

On Λ-Fleming–Viot processes with general frequency-dependent selection

We construct a multitype constant-size population model allowing for general selective interactions as well as extreme reproductive events. Our multidimensional model aims for the generality of adaptive dynamics and the tractability of population genetics. It generalises the idea of Krone and Neuhauser [39] and González Casanova and Spanò [29], who represented the selection by allowing individuals to sample several potential parents in the previous generation before choosing the ‘strongest’ one, by allowing individuals to use any rule to choose their parent. The type of the newborn can even not be one of the types of the potential parents, which allows modelling mutations. Via a large population limit, we obtain a generalisation of $\Lambda$ -Fleming–Viot processes, with a diffusion term and a general frequency-dependent selection, which allows for non-transitive interactions between the different types present in the population. We provide some properties of these processes related to extinction and fixation events, and give conditions for them to be realised as unique strong solutions of multidimensional stochastic differential equations with jumps. Finally, we illustrate the generality of our model with applications to some classical biological interactions. This framework provides a natural bridge between two of the most prominent modelling frameworks of biological evolution: population genetics and eco-evolutionary models.

A General Frequency Domain Estimation Method for Gegenbauer Processes

In this paper a new method for estimation of all the parameters of a k-factor Gegenbauer process is developed using a broadband nonlinear least-squares regression technique in the frequency-domain, with similarities to a Whittle estimator. Simulation studies where the underlying distribution is symmetric suggest that while the new method may have a slightly lower level of accuracy than existing methods (Whittle, conditional sum-of-squares), it can improve the accuracy in determining the values for the short-memory parameters of highly skewed non-Gaussian data (e.g., χ2), while having the added advantage of being evaluated considerably faster. In a supplementary addendum we provide some theoretical results under a Gaussian assumption.

Detection of Intestinal Parasites in Stray Dogs from a Farming and Cattle Region of Northwestern Mexico

Stray dogs are one of the main reservoirs of intestinal parasitic infections and some have zoonotic potential. An epidemiological survey was carried out between September 2017 and May 2018 in Mexicali Valley, this area sacrifices around 92,470 head of cattle monthly, which represents 27% of the national slaughter and has 71,307 hectares for crops. In this period the Municipal Animal Control Center during their routine visits to the Mexicali Valley captured 103 dogs. All the dogs were evaluated using copromicroscopic techniques to detect intestinal parasites. The general frequency of parasitic infections was 28.15% (29/103), the most frequent parasite being Dipylidium caninum 16.50% (17/103), followed by Taenia spp. 6.79% (7/103), Taenia hydatigena 2.91% (3/103), Taenia serialis 0.97% (1/103), Taenia pisiformis (0.97%), Toxocara canis 3.88% (4/103), Toxascaris leonina 1.94% (2/103), and Cystoisospora spp. 1.94% (2/103). No significant statistical associations were found between parasitic infections and the studied variables (sex, age, and size) however; there was a significant statistical association with the capture area. Most of the parasites found in this survey have potential to affect the human population and animal production.

DISCOURSE FEATURES OF BLOGS IN SUBCORPUS OF RUSSIAN RU-RSTREEBANK

The paper presents a corpus study of the discourse features in the corpus of blogs. It is based on the data of Ru-RSTreebank annotated within the framework of the Rhetorical Structure theory [Mann, Thompson 1988]. The Ru-RSTreebank represents genres of news and popular science, scientific papers, and blogs texts. Blog subcorpus contains such topics as travelling, cosmetics, sports and health, psychology, IT and tech and some others. Blogs texts constitute a specific genre as they combine properties of written and spoken discourse. The purpose of the paper is to investigate discourse features of blogs in comparison with other genres. We analyze the variation in rhetoric relations distribution among genres, and single out the differences in discourse connectives usage. Furthermore, we check the distribution of other discourse features reported in different studies for spoken discourse and for social media in the Ru-RSTreebank blogs subcorpus. The general frequency analysis and the experiments on RandomForest classifier application to genre recognition have shown that the most important rhetoric relations specific to blogs are Evaluation and Contrast, that there is a tendency to use shorter discourse units and not to express the discourse relations overtly via subordinative conjunctions.