Nonlinear Spectral Mixture Modeling of Lunar Multispectral: Implications for Lateral Transport

Linear and nonlinear spectral mixture models applied to Clementine multispectral images of the Moon result in roughly similar spatial distributions of endmember abundances. However, there are important differences in the absolute values of the predicted abundances. The magnitude of these differences and the implications for understanding geological processes are investigated across a geologic contact between mare and highland in the Grimaldi Basin on the western nearside of the Moon. Vertical and lateral mass transport due to impact cratering has redistributed mare and highland materials across the contact, creating a gradient in composition. Solutions to linear and nonlinear spectral mixture models for identical spectral endmembers of mare, highland, and fresh crater materials are compared across this simple geologic contact in the Grimaldi Basin. Profiles of mare abundance across the contact are extracted and compared quantitatively. Profiles from the linear mixture models indicate that the geologic contact has an average mare abundance of 60%, and the compositional boundary is asymmetric with more mare transported onto the highland side of the contact than highland onto the mare side of the contact. In contrast the nonlinear abundance profiles indicate that the geologic contact has an average mare abundance of 50%, and the compositional boundary is remarkably symmetric. Given the expectation that materials will be intimately mixed on the surface of the Moon, and that the asymmetries implied by the linear model are not consistent with our understanding of lunar surface processes, the nonlinear spectral mixture model is preferred and should be applied whenever quantitative abundance information is required. The remarkable symmetry in the compositional gradients across this contact indicate that lateral mass transport dominates over vertical transport at this boundary

Use of a Novel Nonparametric Version of DEPTH to Identify Genomic Regions Associated with Prostate Cancer Risk.

BACKGROUND: We have developed a genome-wide association study analysis method called DEPTH (DEPendency of association on the number of Top Hits) to identify genomic regions potentially associated with disease by considering overlapping groups of contiguous markers (e.g., SNPs) across the genome. DEPTH is a machine learning algorithm for feature ranking of ultra-high dimensional datasets, built from well-established statistical tools such as bootstrapping, penalized regression, and decision trees. Unlike marginal regression, which considers each SNP individually, the key idea behind DEPTH is to rank groups of SNPs in terms of their joint strength of association with the outcome. Our aim was to compare the performance of DEPTH with that of standard logistic regression analysis. METHODS: We selected 1,854 prostate cancer cases and 1,894 controls from the UK for whom 541,129 SNPs were measured using the Illumina Infinium HumanHap550 array. Confirmation was sought using 4,152 cases and 2,874 controls, ascertained from the UK and Australia, for whom 211,155 SNPs were measured using the iCOGS Illumina Infinium array. RESULTS: From the DEPTH analysis, we identified 14 regions associated with prostate cancer risk that had been reported previously, five of which would not have been identified by conventional logistic regression. We also identified 112 novel putative susceptibility regions. CONCLUSIONS: DEPTH can reveal new risk-associated regions that would not have been identified using a conventional logistic regression analysis of individual SNPs. IMPACT: This study demonstrates that the DEPTH algorithm could identify additional genetic susceptibility regions that merit further investigation. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 25(12); 1619-24. ©2016 AACR.National Health and Medical Research Council Australia (Grant ID: 1033452, Senior Principal Research Fellowship, Senior Research Fellowship), Cancer Research UK (Grant IDs: C5047/A7357, C1287/A10118, C1287/A5260, C5047/A3354, C5047/A10692, C16913/A6135 and C16913/A6835), Prostate Research Campaign UK (now Prostate Cancer UK), The Institute of Cancer Research and The Everyman Campaign, The National Cancer Research Network UK, The National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) UK, National Institute for Health Research funding to the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Prostate Cancer Research Program of Cancer Council Victoria from The National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (Grant IDs: 126402, 209057, 251533, 396414, 450104, 504700, 504702, 504715, 623204, 940394, 614296), VicHealth, Cancer Council Victoria, The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, The Whitten Foundation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tattersall’sThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Association for Cancer Research via http://dx.doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-16-030

Analysis on the situation of subjective well-being and its influencing factors in patients with ankylosing spondylitis

BACKGROUND: To examine the subjective well-being (SWB) in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) compared with the healthy controls, and to explore the associations between SWB and demographic characteristics, disease-specific variables in AS patients. METHODS: SWB was assessed with General Well-Being Schedule (GWBS) in 200 AS patients and 210 healthy controls. Comparisons among subgroups were performed to investigate how certain aspects operate as favorable or adverse factors in influencing SWB in the patients with AS. RESULTS: Both men and women with AS reported significantly impaired SWB on all scales of the GWBS except for the Control (O) scale. The results revealed that better sleep, lower disease activity and more family care predicted higher SWB. In AS patients, positive attitude towards therapy prospect was significantly associated with higher SWB. Therapy prospect refers to the hope of patients about the disease treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with general population, SWB might be affected by the onset of AS. There are significant associations between SWB and sleep quality, BASDAI, APGAR, therapy prospect

Maoism in the Cultural Revolution: A Political Religion?”

in Robert Mallett, John Tortorice and Roger Griffin, ed., The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics: Essays in Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008)

JAPAN AND THE GREAT WAR

East Asia, and particularly Japan, is often omitted from both popular and academic accounts of the First World War. This is evident not just in the Western historiography of the conflict, but also in the Chinese and Japanese histories of the war. Yet, if the First World War is to be truly understood as a ‘world war’, it has to be seen in its global context. The events in the East Asian theatre and the ways in which the conflict profoundly influenced its political, economic and socials histories in both the domestic and international spheres therefore have to be looked at and analyzed accordingly. This is particularly relevant because, as specific memories of the conflict have receded into time, the orthodox factual and ethical foundations of the Western interpretation of the war are crumbling on different fronts and the stress on the military aspects alone is broadening out; thus new aspects of the conflagration can now be identified. Both Japan’s experience within the war and its observations of the impact that the conflict had others were major catalysts for change and that its effects went beyond merely the further expansion of Japanese political and military influence in continental East Asia. The conflict, for example, provided a major stimulus to the Japanese economy by creating fresh export markets and forcing the country to establish new import-substitution industries, in areas such as chemicals and optics, to make up for the loss of trade with Germany. In doing so, it also stimulated the rise of a credit boom that would mean that Japan entered the inter-war period with an over-extended and unstable banking system. In the realm of governance, Japan was faced with the question of how it should respond to the great expansion of state activity that the war had precipitated in Europe in regard to both economy and society. Then there was the challenge in the world of ideas where the Bolshevik Revolution and the Allied victory brought it with cries for democracy and greater labour rights at home (even to the extent of calls for female suffrage) and internationalism abroad. In order to look at some of these issues, nine scholars who are experts on Japanese and Asian history have come together as a working group to look at various aspects of the Japanese experience during and after the First World War. The topics covered are original and include innovative methodological approaches. In overall terms, the working group members have focused their attention on the way in which Japan and the Great Powers responded to the extension of hostilities to East Asia, as well as how the war influenced the evolution of social and economic policy within Japan and its empire. Il progetto di ricerca - del quale questo volume è il primo risultato - è stato concepito e coordinato da O. Frattolillo e ha coinvolto studiosi che sono comunemente ritenuti sulla scena accademica internazionale tra i massimi esperti sul tema (Frederic Dickinson, Kevin Doak, Naraoka Sochi, Ono Keishi, Xu Guoqi, Antony Best et al.)