Analog Multiple Descriptions: A Zero-Delay Source-Channel Coding Approach

This paper extends the well-known source coding problem of multiple descriptions, in its general and basic setting, to analog source-channel coding scenarios. Encoding-decoding functions that optimally map between the (possibly continuous valued) source and the channel spaces are numerically derived. The main technical tool is a non-convex optimization method, namely, deterministic annealing, which has recently been successfully used in other mapping optimization problems. The obtained functions exhibit several interesting structural properties, map multiple source intervals to the same interval in the channel space, and consistently outperform the known competing mapping techniques.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 201

Genomic and proteomic analysis of chemoresistance in breast cancer cell lines: MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231

In this study, cisplatin-resistant adenocarcinoma breast cancer cell lines, labeled MCF-7/R6 and MDA-MB-231/R2 were established by 6 replicative sequential treatment of low doses (1 micromolar) over high doses (30 micromolar) of cisplatin and chemoresistance was evaluated as apoptotic response to 30 micromolar cisplatin for 48 hours. Throughout the study parental cells were used as control. RNA was isolated to conduct microarray study to analyze 48000 gene probes (Illumina Human WG-6 BeadChip). Gene expression data was analyzed by MATLAB 2009 and identification of differentially expressed genes were further studied by proteomic analysis to understand the drug resistance mechanisms. Our data indicated that transcription of drug resistant marker genes, such as GSTP1 and ABCB6 were upregulated in MCF-7/R6 cell line. Both intrinsically resistant cell line: MDA-MB-231 and acquired resistant cell line: MCF-7/R6 were similar in activating NF- kappa-B pathway but not MAP kinase pathway. In MCF-7/R6 cell line NF-kappa-B pathway was transactivated through p50 subunit, as well as translocation of Foxo3a transcription factor into the nucleus. Genes responsible for cell death, Foxo family and MAPK levels were found to change significantly at protein and genetic level in MCF-7/R6 and MDA-MB-231/R2 cells. Phosphorylation levels in transcription factor Foxo1 and Foxo3a were found to change MCF-7/R6 cells, indicating resistance to apoptosis. Moreover, cell cycle, tumor suppressor and estrogen receptor levels were found to be altered in MCF-7/R6 cell line. Our data clearly identify several proteins and pathways which have distinct roles in chemoresistance mechanism. This knowledge can be further validated in a clinical setting

An exploratory study looking at the relationship marketing techniques used in the music festival industry

There are current issues and trends in the music festival market, which may affect the success of an event, and market saturation is at the forefront of these issues. Previous literature, maintaining the need for a marketing approach to festivals, identifi es the need for maintaining strong stakeholder relationships in order to succeed in a business environment; attention has been focused to the theory of relationship marketing (RM) because of the recognition that this practice is complementary to the marketing of festivals. The very nature of the music festival as an annual, usually, 4-day event means that effective marketing is needed to keep connections with the consumer throughout the year. This article focuses on the RM techniques utilised within the music festival industry from the viewpoint of the festival organiser in an attempt to establish how festival organisations value and monitor organisational relationships. This article explores the extent to which these relationships are valued and managed; furthermore, the variations between these intricate relationships are considered by focusing on those held with the organisation ’ s consumers and sponsors, the results of which have provided the ability to establish the importance and relevance of RM to the industry and further identify the marketing communication methods employed to establish and maintain such relationships. In-depth, convergent interviews have been conducted with a segment of music festival organisers from a range of events. The results have been integrated with the study of current literature to best exemplify these issues. It has been established that RM has a strong role in today ’ s commercial and independent music festival industry; technological advances are enabling the organiser to support online relationships further and increase consumer loyalty. There is a need to expand the research further because of the complexity of organisational relationships and the varying categories of festivals

What influences tourists' overall holiday experience? Tourism company products versus destination products

There are as yet to our knowledge no systematic investigations comparing the effects of specific tourism company product and total destination product components on tourists’ experience. The current study addressed this particular issue, based upon a convenience sample of 867 tourists visiting Northern Norway in the summer of 2011. The study results indicated that the effect of the company product components was indeed much greater than that of the destination product on the tourists’ overall holiday experience. Further analysis revealed that three of the product components related to the tourism company (personnel, information, and product variety) and three of those related to the destination (transport to destination, accommodation, and restaurant/dining facilities) had a significant influence on the tourists’ overall holiday experience. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.publishedVersionOpen Acces

Norwegian Men and Women Value Similar Mate Traits in Short-Term Relationships

Previous research has provided evidence that females are generally the more selective sex in humans. Moreover, both sexes have been found to be more selective in long-term mating compared to short-term mating. In this study, we have examined the effects of sex, mating strategy (preferred relationship length) and their interaction on mate preferences (i.e., mate selection criteria) in an egalitarian Nordic society, namely Norway. The study sample consisted of 1,000 individuals, 417 of whom were male and 583 female respondents. According to our findings, men were more selective in physical appearance, whereas women were more selective in all the other mate preferences (e.g., understanding, dominant, kind, intellectual etc.). The respondents that were seeking short-term relationships had higher preference for physical appearance, humorousness and sociability. On the other hand, the respondents that were seeking long-term relationships were more selective in most of the other mate preferences (i.e., understanding, kind, cultivated, domestic, reliable, and similar). Interestingly, no interaction effect was found between sex and mating strategy in that differences between long-term and short-term seekers in mate preferences did not change depending on sex. This suggests that men and women value the same traits in short-term relationships.Peer reviewe

A Deterministic Annealing Approach to Witsenhausen's Counterexample

This paper proposes a numerical method, based on information theoretic ideas, to a class of distributed control problems. As a particular test case, the well-known and numerically "over-mined" problem of decentralized control and implicit communication, commonly referred to as Witsenhausen's counterexample, is considered. The method provides a small improvement over the best numerical result so far for this benchmark problem. The key idea is to randomize the zero-delay mappings. which become "soft", probabilistic mappings to be optimized in a deterministic annealing process, by incorporating a Shannon entropy constraint in the problem formulation. The entropy of the mapping is controlled and gradually lowered to zero to obtain deterministic mappings, while avoiding poor local minima. Proposed method obtains new mappings that shed light on the structure of the optimal solution, as well as achieving a small improvement in total cost over the state of the art in numerical approaches to this problem.Comment: submitted to ISIT'1