This thesis proposes a synthesis of logic and probability for solving stochastic sequential decision-making problems. We address two main questions: How can we take advantage of logical structure to speed up planning in a principled way? And, how can probability inform the production of a more robust, yet still compact, policy? We can take as inspiration a mobile robot acting in the world: it i...

The common envelope phase of binary star evolution plays a central role in many evolutionary pathways leading to the formation of compact objects in short period systems. Using three dimensional hydrodynamical computations, we review the major features of this evolutionary phase, focusing on the conditions that lead to the successful ejection of the envelope and, hence, survival of the system a...

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Arenaviruses include lethal human pathogens which pose serious public health threats. So far, no FDA approved vaccines are available against arenavirus infections, and therapeutic options are limited, making the identification of novel drug targets for the development of efficacious therapeutics an urgent need. Arenaviruses are comprised of two RNA genome segments and four proteins, the polymer...

Three group A arboviruses, Sindbis (SIN), western (WEE) and eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), were selectively degraded with a nonionic detergent to yield a core particle and a soluble envelope component. Antigenic analysis by using radioimmune precipitation techniques revealed marked antigenic similarity among the core particles of the three viruses. The soluble envelope component exhibited a...

In the past 15 years our perception of nuclear envelope function has evolved perhaps nearly as much as the nuclear envelope itself evolved in the last 3 billion years. Historically viewed as little more than a diffusion barrier between the cytoplasm and the nucleoplasm, the nuclear envelope is now known to have roles in the cell cycle, cytoskeletal stability and cell migration, genome architect...

The development and maintenance of chloroplasts relies on the contribution of protein subunits from both plastid and nuclear genomes. Most chloroplast proteins are encoded by nuclear genes and are post-translationally imported into the organelle across the double membrane of the chloroplast envelope. Protein import into the chloroplast consists of two essential elements: the specific recognitio...

Dendrites with developed sidebranches are numerically studied with a coupled map lattice model. The competitive dynamics among sidebranches determines the shape of the envelope. The envelope has a parabolic shape near the tip of the dendrite and the envelope angle with respect to the main branch increases up to 45◦ finally. In an intermediate region, the envelope grows roughly in a power law, h...

We have used the sub-millimeter array to image the molecular envelope around IRC+10420. Our observations reveal a large and clumpy expanding envelope around the star. The molecular envelope shows a clear asymmetry in CO J=2–1 emission in the South-West direction. The elongation of the envelope is found even more pronounced in the emission of CO J=2–1 and SO JK=65–54. A small positional velocity...

In this paper, a new encoding algorithm of spectral envelope based on NLMS in G.729.1 for VoIP is proposed. In the TDAC part of G.729.1, the spectral envelope and MDCT coefficients extracted in the weighted CELP coding error (lower-band) and the higher-band input signal are encoded. In order to reduce allocation bits for spectral envelope coding, a new quantization algorithm based on NLMS is pr...