Rigidity of maximal holomorphic representations of Kähler groups

20 pagesWe investigate representations of Kähler groups $\Gamma = \pi_1(X)$ to a semisimple non-compact Hermitian Lie group $G$ that are deformable to a representation admitting an (anti)-holomorphic equivariant map. Such representations obey a Milnor--Wood inequality similar to those found by Burger--Iozzi and Koziarz--Maubon. Thanks to the study of the case of equality in Royden's version of the Ahlfors--Schwarz Lemma, we can completely describe the case of maximal holomorphic representations. If \dim_{\C}X \geq 2, these appear if and only if $X$ is a ball quotient, and essentially reduce to the diagonal embedding \Gamma < \SU(n,1) \to \SU(nq,q) \hookrightarrow \SU(p,q). If $X$ is a Riemann surface, most representations are deformable to a holomorphic one. In that case, we give a complete classification of the maximal holomorphic representations, that thus appear as preferred elements of the respective maximal connected components

Adaptive potential of hybridization among malaria vectors: Introgression at the immune locus TEP1 between Anopheles coluzzii and A. gambiae in 'Far-West' Africa

“Far-West” Africa is known to be a secondary contact zone between the two major malaria vectors Anopheles coluzzii and A. gambiae.We investigated gene-flow and potentially adaptive introgression between these species along a west-to-east transect in Guinea Bissau, the putative core of this hybrid zone. To evaluate the extent and direction of gene flow, we genotyped site 702 in Intron-1 of the para Voltage-Gated SodiumChannel gene, a species-diagnostic nucleotide position throughout most of A. coluzzii and A. gambiae sympatric range. We also analyzed polymorphismin the thioester-binding domain (TED) of the innate immunity-linked thioester-containing protein 1 (TEP1) to investigate whether elevated hybridization might facilitate the exchange of variants linked to adaptive immunity and Plasmodium refractoriness. Our results confirm asymmetric introgression of genetic material from A. coluzzii to A. gambiae and disruption of linkage between the centromeric "genomic islands" of inter-specific divergence. We report that A. gambiae from the Guinean hybrid zone possesses an introgressed TEP1 resistant allelic class, found exclusively in A. coluzzii elsewhere and apparently swept to fixation inWest Africa (i.e. Mali and Burkina Faso). However, no detectable fixation of this allele was found in Guinea Bissau, which may suggest that ecological pressures driving segregation between the two species in larval habitats in this region may be different from those experienced in northern and more arid parts of the species’ range. Finally, our results also suggest a genetic subdivision between coastal and inland A. gambiae Guinean populations and provide clues on the importance of ecological factors in intra-specific differentiation processes

Research Articles in Simplified HTML: a Web-first format for HTML-based scholarly articles

Purpose. This paper introduces the Research Articles in Simplified HTML (or RASH), which is a Web-first format for writing HTML-based scholarly papers; it is accompanied by the RASH Framework, a set of tools for interacting with RASH-based articles. The paper also presents an evaluation that involved authors and reviewers of RASH articles submitted to the SAVE-SD 2015 and SAVE-SD 2016 workshops. Design. RASH has been developed aiming to: be easy to learn and use; share scholarly documents (and embedded semantic annotations) through the Web; support its adoption within the existing publishing workflow. Findings. The evaluation study confirmed that RASH is ready to be adopted in workshops, conferences, and journals and can be quickly learnt by researchers who are familiar with HTML. Research Limitations. The evaluation study also highlighted some issues in the adoption of RASH, and in general of HTML formats, especially by less technically savvy users. Moreover, additional tools are needed, e.g., for enabling additional conversions from/to existing formats such as OpenXML. Practical Implications. RASH (and its Framework) is another step towards enabling the definition of formal representations of the meaning of the content of an article, facilitating its automatic discovery, enabling its linking to semantically related articles, providing access to data within the article in actionable form, and allowing integration of data between papers. Social Implications. RASH addresses the intrinsic needs related to the various users of a scholarly article: researchers (focussing on its content), readers (experiencing new ways for browsing it), citizen scientists (reusing available data formally defined within it through semantic annotations), publishers (using the advantages of new technologies as envisioned by the Semantic Publishing movement). Value. RASH helps authors to focus on the organisation of their texts, supports them in the task of semantically enriching the content of articles, and leaves all the issues about validation, visualisation, conversion, and semantic data extraction to the various tools developed within its Framework

Deformations of harmonic mappings and variation of the energy

We study the deformations of twisted harmonic maps $f$ with respect to the representation $\rho$. After constructing a continuous "universal" twisted harmonic map, we give a construction of every first order deformation of $f$ in terms of Hodge theory; we apply this result to the moduli space of reductive representations of a K\"ahler group, to show that the critical points of the energy functional $E$ coincide with the monodromy representations of polarized complex variations of Hodge structure. We then proceed to second order deformations, where obstructions arise; we investigate the existence of such deformations, and give a method for constructing them, as well. Applying this to the energy functional as above, we prove (for every finitely presented group) that the energy functional is a potential for the K\"ahler form of the "Betti" moduli space; assuming furthermore that the group is K\"ahler, we study the eigenvalues of the Hessian of $E$ at critical points.Comment: 32 pages. Several typos have been corrected and some references have been added. To appear on Math.

Between Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol: what will become of human rights protection in the future of Northern Ireland?

openQuesta tesi si prefigge l'obiettivo di analizzare l'impatto che il processo di uscita del Regno Unito dall'Unione Europea, conosciuto come Brexit, rischia di avere sui meccanismi di tutela dei diritti umani in Irlanda del Nord. Infatti, dal voto al referendum del 23 Giugno 2016 che ha visto prevalere il "leave", numerose sono state le difficoltà nel portare avanti un accordo con l'Unione Europea. Nonostante il dibattito politico e mediatico si soffermi sulle conseguenze relative al settore economico e a quello del diritto internazionale, altre problematiche sono state avanzate anche per quanto riguarda l'impegno del governo britannico a non arretrare sulla garanzia per la tutela dei diritti dei cittadini nord-irlandesi. Benché queste affermazioni possano sembrare fuori luogo, in quanto si sta parlando di una delle regioni che costituiscono lo stato multi-nazionale del Regno Unito ovvero di uno stato europeo e democratico, non va dimenticato che solo nel 1998 è stata messa la parola fine a quella guerra civile che durava attivamente da ormai tre decenni. E quell'accordo, noto come Good Friday Agreement (ovvero accordo del Venerdì Santo) poneva la questione dei diritti umani al centro del progetto costituzionale per una pace stabile e duratura nel nord dell'isola d'Irlanda. L'Irlanda del Nord è perciò definibile a tutti gli effetti come una società post conflitto. La struttura di questa tesi si basa su una iniziale analisi storica delle cause che hanno portato a rendere necessaria e cruciale la firma all'Accordo del Venerdì Santo, per poi passare ad una analisi vera e propria dal punto di vista del diritto costituzionale del cuore del documento e delle clausole in esso contenute. Dopo una valutazione dell'impatto che questo ha avuto, indagandone punti di forza e di debolezza, si passa agli avvenimenti più recenti della Brexit e a come questi si leghino e rischino in un certo senso di minare il lavoro impostato due decenni fa e portato avanti in questo periodo per assicurare che non si ritorni a quel vecchio schema del conflitto di natura settaria tra le due comunità (quella cattolico/nazionalista e quella protestante/unionista) nord-irlandesi storicamente maggioritarie. La tesi si conclude quindi con un'indagine di quali sono i meccanismi della tutela dei diritti umani di origine comunitaria che hanno svolto un ruolo fondamentale di garante all'interno dell'Accordo, e di come il governo di Westminster sembra intenzionato a smantellarli. Le argomentazioni avanzate sono volte a porre l'attenzione sul rischio concreto che esiste di determinare un grande passo indietro in tema di diritti, in quanto significherebbe indebolire l'intera struttura volta ad assicurare che ci siano adeguati meccanismi di prevenzione tanto quanto sanzionatori, che scongiurino il ritorno di quegli elementi destabilizzanti che hanno caratterizzato l'Irlanda del Nord dalla sua nascita, e in particolare nel periodo dei Troubles.This thesis aims to analyse the impact that the process of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, known as Brexit, is likely to have on human rights mechanisms in Northern Ireland. Indeed, since the referendum that took place on the 23rd of June, 2016 which ended up with the majority of UK citizens voting to 'leave', there have been numerous difficulties in pursuing an agreement with the European Union. Although the political and media debate focuses on the economic and international law consequences, other issues have also been raised regarding the British government's commitment not to back down on guaranteeing the rights of Northern Irish citizens. Although these claims may seem out of place, since Northern Ireland is one of the provinces composing the multi-national state of the United Kingdom, a European and democratic state, it should not be forgotten that it was only in 1998 that the civil war that had been actively going on for three decades was brought to an end. And that agreement, known as the Good Friday Agreement, placed the issue of human rights at the heart of the constitutional project for a stable and lasting peace in the north of the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland can therefore be defined in all respects as a post-conflict society. The structure of this thesis is based on an initial historical analysis of the causes that led to the crucial signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and then moves on to an actual analysis from a constitutional law perspective of the heart of the document and the therein contained. After an assessment of the impact this has had, investigating its strengths and weaknesses, it moves on to the more recent events of the Brexit and how these tie in with, and in a sense are at risk of undermining, the work set up two decades ago and carried on during this period to ensure that there is no return to that old pattern of sectarian conflict between the two historically majority Northern Irish communities (the Catholic/Nationalist and the Protestant/Unionist). The thesis then concludes with an investigation of which community-based human rights mechanisms have played a fundamental role as guarantors within the Agreement, and how the Westminster government seems intent on dismantling them. The arguments put forward want to draw attention to the real existing risk of bringing about a major step backwards in terms of rights, as it would mean weakening the whole structure aimed at ensuring that there are adequate preventive as well as sanctioning mechanisms, aimed at preventing the return of those destabilising elements that have characterised Northern Ireland since its inception, and in particular during the Troubles

The Length and Flexibility of the 2-Substituent of 9-Ethyladenine Derivatives Modulate Affinity and Selectivity for the Human A2A Adenosine Receptor

The A2A adenosine receptor (A2A AR) is a key target for the development of pharmacological tools for the treatment of central nervous system disorders. Previous works have demonstrated that the insertion of substituents at various positions on adenine leads to A2A AR antagonists with affinity in the micromolar to nanomolar range. In this work, a series of 9-ethyladenine derivatives bearing phenylalkylamino, phenylakyloxy or phenylakylthio groups of different lengths at the 2-position were synthesised and tested against the human adenosine receptors. The derivatives showed sub-micromolar affinity for these membrane proteins. The further introduction of a bromine atom at the 8-position has the effect of improving the affinity and selectivity for all ARs and led to compounds that are able bind to the A2A AR subtype at low nanomolar levels. Functional studies confirmed that the new adenine derivatives behave as A2A AR antagonists with half-maximal inhibitory concentration values in the nanomolar range. Molecular modelling studies provide a description of the possible binding mode of these compounds at the A2A AR and an interpretation of the affinity data at this AR subtype

ClusterTabNet: Supervised clustering method for table detection and table structure recognition

We present a novel deep-learning-based method to cluster words in documents which we apply to detect and recognize tables given the OCR output. We interpret table structure bottom-up as a graph of relations between pairs of words (belonging to the same row, column, header, as well as to the same table) and use a transformer encoder model to predict its adjacency matrix. We demonstrate the performance of our method on the PubTables-1M dataset as well as PubTabNet and FinTabNet datasets. Compared to the current state-of-the-art detection methods such as DETR and Faster R-CNN, our method achieves similar or better accuracy, while requiring a significantly smaller model.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted to ICDAR 2024. Code available at https://github.com/SAP-samples/clustertabne

Application of seminal plasma in sex-sorting and sperm cryopreservation

Substantial dilution of boar semen during processing decreased the concentration of seminal plasma, perhaps contributing to the decline in sperm quality after cryopreservation and sex-sorting. Results of replacing seminal plasma in investigations from many laboratories have been contradictory. Results and discussion here suggest that whereas membrane status can be influenced by seminal plasma, the action of its various components, both positive and negative, is determined in part by the membrane status of the spermatozoa to which it is being exposed. Although progress has been made in identifying components of seminal plasma responsible for its protective effect (notably PSP-I/II spermadhesin for sex-sorted boar spermatozoa), little is known (in any species) regarding how external factors may influence their levels, and their functionality, in seminal plasma. It is noteworthy that seminal plasma is beneficial to post-thaw quality of sex-sorted ram spermatozoa only when added before freezing, not after thawing. Therefore, the action of seminal plasma and its components is dependent on sperm-related factors, in particular the type of processing to which they have been previously exposed. Further research is needed to unravel these biological complexities, and then characterise and synthesise useful proteins within seminal plasma. © 2008