Schema mappings are high-level specifications that describe the relationship between two database schemas. Schema mappings are considered to be the essential building blocks in such critical data interoperability tasks as data exchange and data integration. For this reason, they have been the focus of extensive research investigations over the past several years. Since in real-life applications...

A unique sequence within the giant titin molecule, the PEVK domain, has been suggested to greatly contribute to passive force development of relaxed skeletal muscle during stretch. To explore the nature of PEVK elasticity, we used titin-specific antibodies to stain both ends of the PEVK region in rat psoas myofibrils and determined the region's force-extension relation by combining immunofluore...

Dynamics of transforming potential underlie the systems of heterogeneous progression to a final demented state in Alzheimer patients. Such dynamics reflect many of the attributes of an essentially variable vascular series of substrates that implicate various component systems of the blood brain barrier as endothelium and also of the subcortical structures and cortex as further delineated by sys...

BACKGROUND The dewlaps of Anolis lizards provide a classic example of a complex signaling system whose function and evolution is poorly understood. Dewlaps are flaps of skin beneath the chin that are extended and combined with head and body movements for visual signals and displays. They exhibit extensive morphological variation and are one of two cladistic features uniting anoles, yet little i...

One of the key feature of a communicative system is the ability to detect important signals in the interaction process, which can allow an agent to adapt and act properly. If we consider the case of natural gestural interaction among neo-natal and pre-verbal children (Nadel et al., 1999), most of theses signals are non explicit (i.e not directly associated to explicit symbols), and nevertheless...

study of implicit complexity criteria. In the paper [BDLM06] with Dal Lago (Bologna) and Moyen (LIPN), we have started to analyze the behaviour of programs (first-order term rewriting systems) satisfying the implicit complexity criterion for the characterization of Ptime from [BMM07] (that we call here the P-criterion), based on quasi-interpretations. For that we have used a notion of abstracti...

The general capabilities of fault tolerant computations in one-way and two-way linear cellular arrays are investigated in terms of pattern recognition. The defective processing elements (cells) that cause the misoperations are assumed to behave as follows. Dependent on the result of a self-diagnosis they store their working state locally such that it becomes visible to the neighbors. A non-work...

Objective: The lack of overt signs and symptoms and controversies surrounding the thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) reference range variability make the management of subclinical hypothyroidism (sHT) a challenge. Because muscle cramps and weakness have been noted in sHT, histological skeletal muscle examination may be of diagnostic significance as the presence of abnormalities would substantiat...

Over the past 40 years there has been tremendous progress in formally characterizing the reasoning required for some intellectual task and studying efficient algorithms for its automation. Examples of tasks for which such characterizations have been proposed include planning, diagnosis and learning in AI, but also model checking in Automated Reasoning and Formal Methods. Multicriteria decision-...

Over the past decade, the biomathematical community has devoted substantial effort to the complicated challenge of estimating parameter values for biological systems models. An even more difficult issue is the characterization of functional forms for the processes that govern these systems. Most parameter estimation approaches tacitly assume that these forms are known or can be assumed with som...