We propose and analyze a generalized two dimensional XY model, whose interaction potential has n weighted wells, describing corresponding symmetries of the system. As the lattice spacing vanishes, we derive by -convergence the discrete-to-continuum limit of this model. In the energy regime we deal with, the asymptotic ground states exhibit fractional vortices, connected by string defects. The -limit takes into account both contributions, through a renormalized energy, depending on the configuration of fractional vortices, and a surface energy, proportional to the length of the strings.

We consider two-dimensional zero-temperature systems of N particles to which we associate an energy of the form E[V](X):=?1?i<j?NV(|X(i)-X(j)|),where X(j) ? R represents the position of the particle j and V(r) ? R is the pairwise interaction energy potential of two particles placed at distance r. We show that under suitable assumptions on the single-well potential V, the ground state energy per particle converges to an explicit constant E¯ [V] , which is the same as the energy per particle in the square lattice infinite configuration.

We consider low-energy configurations for the Heitmann-Radin sticky discs functional, in the limit of diverging number of discs. More precisely, we renormalize the Heitmann-Radin potential by subtracting the minimal energy per particle, i.e. the so-called kissing number.

Personalized medicine (PM) moves at the same pace of data and technology and calls for important changes in healthcare. New players are participating, providing impulse to PM. We review the conceptual foundations for PM and personalized healthcare and their evolution through scientific publications where a clear definition and the features of the different formulations are identifiable. We then examined PM policy documents of the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine and related initiatives to understand how PM stakeholders have been changing.

Background A subset of individuals affected by imprinting disorders displays multi-locus imprinting disturbances (MLID). MLID has been associated with maternal-effect variants that alter the maintenance of methylation at germline-derived differentially methylated regions (gDMRs) in early embryogenesis. Pedigrees of individuals with MLID also include siblings with healthy phenotype.

Chandipura vesiculovirus (CHPV) is a rapidly emerging pathogen responsible for causing acute encephalitis. Due to its widespread occurrence in Asian and African countries, this has become a global threat, and there is an urgent need to design an effective and nonallergenic vaccine against this pathogen. The present study aimed to develop a multi-epitope vaccine using an immunoinformatics approach. The conventional method of vaccine design involves large proteins or whole organism which leads to unnecessary antigenic load with increased chances of allergenic reactions.

We analyse the lower ionosphere disturbances in the time period around the Mw 5.4 Kraljevo earthquake (EQ), which occurred on 3 November 2010 in Serbia. The results presented herein are based on analysis of the amplitudes of three VLF signals emitted in Italy, UK, and Germany and recorded in Serbia whose variations primarily result from changes in the electrical properties of the lower ionosphere at a distance more than 120 km from the epicentre of the EQ.

The definition of suitable generative models for synthetic yet realistic social networks is a widely studied problem in the literature. By not being tied to any real data, random graph models cannot capture all the subtleties of real networks and are inadequate for many practical contexts--including areas of research, such as computational epidemiology, which are recently high on the agenda.

In this paper we propose a new approach to detect clusters in undirected graphs with attributed vertices. The aim is to group vertices which are similar not only in terms of structural connectivity but also in terms of attribute values. We incorporate structural and attribute similarities between the vertices in an augmented graph by creating additional vertices and edges as proposed in [6, 38]. The augmented graph is then embedded in a Euclidean space associated to its Laplacian where a modified K-means algorithm is applied to identify clusters.

We introduce a notion of uniform convergence for local and nonlocal curvatures. Then, we propose an abstract method to prove the convergence of the corresponding geometric flows, within the level set formulation.