Review of John Hill for the State of Texas. By John L. Hill, Jr. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. Pp. 280. Notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-1603440721. $35.00).

The article reviews the book John Hill for the State of Texas, by John L. HIll, Jr

A systems approach to uncovering the adaptive response of cancer to targeted therapies

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computational and Systems Biology Program, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-53).Tyrosine kinase inhibitors have significant promise in the fight to develop agents that can target cancer in a tumor-specific manner. A number of drugs have been and are currently in development to inhibit specific kinases that can mediate uncontrolled proliferation; however, an unfortunate eventuality for most patients receiving these treatments is the development of resistance that renders these drugs almost completely ineffective. While a number of mechanisms can evolve within a tumor to mitigate effects of kinase inhibitors, we sought to uncover what changes are occurring in the tyrosine phosphorylation network at both short timescales (minutes to 72 hours) and long timescales (120 hours+) that can be playing a role in helping a tumor become resistant to driver-kinase inhibition. It is our hypothesis that specific feedback networks are able to detect and overcome driver kinase inhibition through activation of potential other pathways, which can go on to mediate a longer term resistance phenotype. In order to probe dynamics in the tyrosine phosphorylation network, we employed mass spectrometry to analyze peptides derived from six non-small cell lung cancer cell lines that we classify as either EGFR+ or EML4-ALK+. From both mass spectrometry data and growth assays, we identified an unintuitive boost in signaling and growth in response to low inhibitor concentrations, suggestive of a cellular mechanism that is adaptive to driver kinase inhibition. Studies of EML4-ALK driven H3122 cells showed that this short-term response is not the same as the known long-term resistance mechanism to ALK inhibition, leading support to the notion that the short-term "adaptive response" may be a novel type of mechanism to aid tumor adaptation to targeted therapies. In an effort to better probe signaling events occurring downstream of the phosphotyrosine network, a new pull down technique for mass spectrometry using 14-3-3 protein against phosphoserine and phosphothreonine peptides is described. The results of these studies open up many potential avenues for further exploration into the immediate and long-term signaling response of cancer to targeted therapies.by Adrian Joseph Randall.S.M

Decaying Neutrinos in Galaxy Clusters

Davidsen et al. (1991) have argued that the failure to detect uv photons from the dark matter DM) in cluster A665 excludes the decaying neutrino hypothesis. Sciama et al. (1993) argued that because of high central concentration the DM in that cluster must be baryonic. We study the DM profile in clusters of galaxies simulated using the Harrison--Zel'dovich spectrum of density fluctuations, and an amplitude previously derived from numerical simulations (Melott 1984b; Anninos et al. 1991) and in agreement with microwave background fluctuations (Smoot et al. 1992). We find that with this amplitude normalization cluster neutrino DM densities are comparable to observed cluster DM values. We conclude that given this normalization, the cluster DM should be at least largely composed of neutrinos. The constraint of Davidsen et al. can be somewhat weakened by the presence of baryonic DM; but it cannot be eliminated given our assumptions.Comment: 14 pages, requires aaspp.sty. All latex, style files, and postscript files included in a uuencoded compressed-tar file. [email protected]

Does More Money Make You Fat? The Effects of Quasi-Experimental Income Transfers on Adolescent and Young Adult Obesity

This paper examines how exogenous income transfers during adolescence affect contemporaneous body mass index (BMI) measures and young adult obesity rates using evidence from the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth. The effects of extra income differ depending on the households’ initial socio-economic status, tracing out an inverted U-shaped relationship between initial income and BMI. Youths who resided in families that had high pre-treatment annual incomes experience no change in young adult obesity rates as a result of the income transfers, while the BMI of poorer children increases. Part of this effect is due to differential increases in height, as well as weight. An exogenous annual transfer of $4,000 per adult family member results in an almost 4 cm gain in height-for-age. Adolescents coming from worse-off households experience an increase in weight only, without the corresponding change in height. The cumulative effects of the increase in household income persist for several years into young adulthood.obesity, health, cash transfer, adolescents, indigenous peoples

Parents’ Incomes and Children’s Outcomes: A Quasi-Experiment

Identifying the effect of parental incomes on child outcomes is difficult due to the correlation of unobserved ability, education levels and income. Previous research has relied on the use of instrumental variables to identify the effect of a change in household income on the young adult outcomes of the household’s children. In this research, we examine the role that an exogenous increase in household incomes due to a government transfer unrelated to household characteristics plays in the long run outcomes for children in affected households. We find that children who are in households affected by the cash transfer program have higher levels of education in their young adulthood and a lower incidence of criminality for minor offenses. These effects differ by initial household poverty status as is expected. Second, we explore two possible mechanisms through which this exogenous increase in household income affects the long run outcomes of children – parental time (quantity) and parental quality. Parental quality and child interactions show a marked improvement while changes in parental time with child does not appear to matter.quasi-experiment, criminality, cash transfer programs, difference-in-differences, educational attainment, panel data

Evaluation of approximate comparison methods on Bloom filters for probabilistic linkage

Introduction The need for increased privacy protection in data linkage has driven the development of privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) techniques. A popular technique using Bloom filters with cryptographic analyses, modifications, and hashing variations to optimise privacy has been the focus of much research in this area. With few applications of Bloom filters within a probabilistic framework, there is limited information on whether approximate matches between Bloom filtered fields can improve linkage quality. Objectives In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of three approximate comparison methods for Bloom filters within the context of the Fellegi-Sunter model of recording linkage: Sørensen–Dice coefficient, Jaccard similarity and Hamming distance. Methods Using synthetic datasets with introduced errors to simulate datasets with a range of data quality and a large real-world administrative health dataset, the research estimated partial weight curves for converting similarity scores (for each approximate comparison method) to partial weights at both field and dataset level. Deduplication linkages were run on each dataset using these partial weight curves. This was to compare the resulting quality of the approximate comparison techniques with linkages using simple cut-off similarity values and only exact matching. Results Linkages using approximate comparisons produced significantly better quality results than those using exact comparisons only. Field level partial weight curves for a specific dataset produced the best quality results. The Sørensen-Dice coefficient and Jaccard similarity produced the most consistent results across a spectrum of synthetic and real-world datasets. Conclusion The use of Bloom filter similarity comparisons for probabilistic record linkage can produce linkage quality results which are comparable to Jaro-Winkler string similarities with unencrypted linkages. Probabilistic linkages using Bloom filters benefit significantly from the use of similarity comparisons, with partial weight curves producing the best results, even when not optimised for that particular dataset

Spectral performance of Square Kilometre Array Antennas - II. Calibration performance

We test the bandpass smoothness performance of two prototype Square Kilometre Array (SKA) SKA1-Low log-periodic dipole antennas, SKALA2 and SKALA3 ('SKA Log-periodic Antenna'), and the current dipole from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) precursor telescope. Throughout this paper, we refer to the output complex-valued voltage response of an antenna when connected to a low-noise amplifier, as the dipole bandpass. In Paper I, the bandpass spectral response of the log-periodic antenna being developed for the SKA1-Low was estimated using numerical electromagnetic simulations and analysed using low-order polynomial fittings, and it was compared with the HERA antenna against the delay spectrum metric. In this work, realistic simulations of the SKA1-Low instrument, including frequencydependent primary beam shapes and array configuration, are used with a weighted leastsquares polynomial estimator to assess the ability of a given prototype antenna to perform the SKA Epoch of Reionisation (EoR) statistical experiments. This work complements the ideal estimator tolerances computed for the proposed EoR science experiments in Trott & Wayth, with the realized performance of an optimal and standard estimation (calibration) procedure. With a sufficient sky calibration model at higher frequencies, all antennas have bandpasses that are sufficiently smooth to meet the tolerances described in Trott & Wayth to perform the EoR statistical experiments, and these are primarily limited by an adequate sky calibration model and the thermal noise level in the calibration data. At frequencies of the Cosmic Dawn, which is of principal interest to SKA as one of the first next-generation telescopes capable of accessing higher redshifts, the MWA dipole and SKALA3 antenna have adequate performance, while the SKALA2 design will impede the ability to explore this era