On the Practical use of Variable Elimination in Constraint Optimization Problems: 'Still-life' as a Case Study

Variable elimination is a general technique for constraint processing. It is often discarded because of its high space complexity. However, it can be extremely useful when combined with other techniques. In this paper we study the applicability of variable elimination to the challenging problem of finding still-lifes. We illustrate several alternatives: variable elimination as a stand-alone algorithm, interleaved with search, and as a source of good quality lower bounds. We show that these techniques are the best known option both theoretically and empirically. In our experiments we have been able to solve the n=20 instance, which is far beyond reach with alternative approaches

A preliminary evaluation of the use of gun bluing to enhance friction ridge detail on cartridge casings

Friction ridge detail was enhanced on fired and unfired 9mm brass luger ammunition casings using three techniques, two involving Gun Blue reagent at a concentration of 50% v/v. Fingermarks were deposited on a total number of 90 ammunition casings and half were discharged using a Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol. Mark development was achieved using either Superglue Fuming followed by Basic Yellow 40 Fluorescent Dye Staining (SG-BY40), Superglue Fuming followed by Gun Blue (SG-GB), or Gun Blue (GB) as a single process. All three processes developed ridge detail on both fired and unfired casings. The results of this preliminary work show that the use of Gun Blue as a single enhancement technique was able to enhance ridge detail of the highest quality and clarity particularly on fired casings, making it the most effective process

Relation between emotional intelligence and the physical-sportive activity in the extracurricular schedule

La finalidad del presente trabajo es analizar las relaciones existentes entre la práctica y no practica de actividades físicas y deportes en horario extraescolar con la inteligencia emocional en estudiantes de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Así mismo, también vamos a analizar si en función del tipo de deporte practicado (individual, adversario y colectivo) existen diferencias entre ellos. En el estudio participaron un total de 126 estudiantes del primer y segundo ciclo de la ESO. El instrumento utilizado fue el cuestionario BarOn EQ-i: YV (S) (2002), y la realización de una pregunta para conocer si practicaban actividad física o deporte y, en caso afirmativo, que indicaran que deporte practicaban. Las técnicas de análisis de datos incluyen una prueba t para muestras independientes y un análisis univariado de covarianza o ANOVA. Los resultados obtenidos indicaron que la práctica de actividades deportivas está asociada a mayores niveles de inteligencia emocional.The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the current connections between the practice and not practice of physical activities or sports in extracurricular schedule with the emotional intelligence in students of Secondary Obligatory Education. Likewise, we also propose to analyse if the type of sports (individual sport, adversary sport, team sport) has influence between them. The participants in our study were 126 students of the first and second cycle of Secondary Obligatory Education. The tools that we have used were the test BarOn EQ-i: YV (S) (2002) and one question to know if the students practice sports or not and if the answer was positive, write what sport they practice. The analysis of information’s techniques include a student’s t-test for independents samples and an analysis of variance or ANOVA. The obtained results indicate that practice physical activities or sports is associated with high levels of emotional intelligence

Beyond Consistency and Substitutability

International audienceElimination of inconsistent values in instances of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) conserves all solutions. Elimination of substitutable values conserves at least one solution. We show that certain values which are neither inconsistent nor substitutable can also be deleted while conserving at least one solution. This allows us to state novel rules for the elimination of values in binary CSP. From a practical point of view, we show that one such rule can be applied in the same asymptotic time complexity as neighbourhood substitution but is strictly stronger. An alternative to the elimination of values from domains is the elimination of variables. We give novel satisfiability-preserving variable elimination operations. In each case we show that if the instance is satisfiable, then a solution to the original instance can always be recovered in low-order polynomial time from a solution to the reduced instance

Grape Resveratrol Increases Serum Adiponectin and Downregulates Inflammatory Genes in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells: A Triple-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, One-Year Clinical Trial in Patients with Stable Coronary Artery Disease

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.[Purpose] The grape and wine polyphenol resveratrol exerts cardiovascular benefits but evidence from randomized human clinical trials is very limited. We investigated dose-depending effects of a resveratrol-containing grape supplement on stable patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) treated according to currently accepted guidelines for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.[Methods] In a triple-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, one-year follow-up, 3-arm pilot clinical trial, 75 stable-CAD patients received 350 mg/day of placebo, resveratrol-containing grape extract (grape phenolics plus 8 mg resveratrol) or conventional grape extract lacking resveratrol during 6 months, and a double dose for the following 6 months. Changes in circulating inflammatory and fibrinolytic biomarkers were analyzed. Moreover, the transcriptional profiling of inflammatory genes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was explored using microarrays and functional gene expression analysis.[Results] After 1 year, in contrast to the placebo and conventional grape extract groups, the resveratrol-containing grape extract group showed an increase of the anti-inflammatory serum adiponectin (9.6 %, p = 0.01) and a decrease of the thrombogenic plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 (PAI-1) (−18.6 %, p = 0.05). In addition, 6 key inflammation-related transcription factors were predicted to be significantly activated or inhibited, with 27 extracellular-space acting genes involved in inflammation, cell migration and T-cell interaction signals presenting downregulation (p < 0.05) in PBMCs. No adverse effects were detected in relation to the study products.[Conclusions] Chronic daily consumption of a resveratrol-containing grape nutraceutical could exert cardiovascular benefits in stable-CAD patients treated according to current evidence-based standards, by increasing serum adiponectin, preventing PAI-1 increase and inhibiting atherothrombotic signals in PBMCs.This study was supported by public funds: Projects CICYT-BFU2007-60576 and Consolider-Ingenio 2010 (CSD2007-00063, Fun-C-Food) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) and GERM-06-04486 (Fundación Séneca, Murcia, Spain). Dr. Tomé-Carneiro received a FPI grant from MICINN and Dr. Larrosa received a JAE-DOC contract from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, Spain).Peer reviewe

Ru-Catalyzed C-H Arylation of Fluoroarenes with Aryl Halides

We gratefully acknowledge the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, EP/I038578/1 and EP/ K039547/1) for funding and the European Research Council for a Starting Grant (to I.L.).

On Tackling the Limits of Resolution in SAT Solving

The practical success of Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) solvers stems from the CDCL (Conflict-Driven Clause Learning) approach to SAT solving. However, from a propositional proof complexity perspective, CDCL is no more powerful than the resolution proof system, for which many hard examples exist. This paper proposes a new problem transformation, which enables reducing the decision problem for formulas in conjunctive normal form (CNF) to the problem of solving maximum satisfiability over Horn formulas. Given the new transformation, the paper proves a polynomial bound on the number of MaxSAT resolution steps for pigeonhole formulas. This result is in clear contrast with earlier results on the length of proofs of MaxSAT resolution for pigeonhole formulas. The paper also establishes the same polynomial bound in the case of modern core-guided MaxSAT solvers. Experimental results, obtained on CNF formulas known to be hard for CDCL SAT solvers, show that these can be efficiently solved with modern MaxSAT solvers

〈初期軍記〉における戦闘被害の表現-女の描かれ方をめぐって-

軍記・語り物研究会第374回例会(平成19年7月22日・於:法政大学)共同討議「初期軍記」研究の検証と展開-新たな「状況」と「変容」を探る-における基調報

18 años de gobiernos panistas en Jalisco: siete ensayos académicos

Tras seis décadas de que el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) gobernó a México como partido hegemónico, la democratización en el país ha sido objeto de estudio en distintos niveles. Este proceso comenzó en los gobiernos locales, pero aún es reducido el número de investigaciones que documentan la evolución en este plano. Esta obra aborda el caso de Jalisco, uno de los primeros estados en donde el PRI cedió el poder. Aconteció en 1995, cuando perdió la gubernatura frente al Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), que la retuvo por 18 años, para luego cederla de nuevo al partido tricolor. Lo acontecido en estos tres sexenios se reconstruye a través de siete ensayos, en los que se presentan las características de los gobiernos panistas y los avances y retrocesos en la entidad durante las administraciones blanquiazules en el ámbito económico y social, en materia de control y trasparencia de la información, así como de su relación con la prensa y con la sociedad civil. La transición política en Jalisco se repitió a escala federal, por lo que la lectura de los textos que conforman esta obra contribuye a entender mejor el complejo fenómeno de la democratización en México.ITESO, A.C

On a moment generalization of some classical second-order differential equations generating classical orthogonal polynomials

The aim of the work is to construct new polynomial systems, which are solutions to certain functional equations which generalize the second-order differential equations satisfied by the so called classical orthogonal polynomial families of Jacobi, Laguerre, Hermite and Bessel. These functional equations can be chosen to be of different type: fractional differential equations, q-difference equations, etc, which converge to their respective differential equations of the aforesaid classical orthogonal polynomials. In addition to this, there exists a confluence of both the families of polynomials constructed and the functional equations who approach to the classical families of polynomials and second-order differential equations, respectivel