¿Can crossbred animals be used for genomic selection?

Ponencia publicada en ITEA, vol.104La producción en poblaciones “puras” suele tener una baja reproducibilidad en sus descendentes “cruzados”. La selección genómica podría utilizarse para evaluar poblaciones “puras” usando los datos de sus descendientes “cruzados”. Sin embargo, en las poblaciones cruzadas quizás el desequilibrio de ligamiento (LD) no esta restringido a marcadores estrechamente ligados al QTL y los efectos de los marcadores podrían ser específicos de cada población. Estos dos problemas podrían solucionarse utilizando un modelo con los alelos de los SNPs específicos para cada población. Para investigar esta idea usamos un modelo con los efectos de los genotipos de los SNPs (modelo 1) y otro modelo con los efectos de alelos de los SNPs específicos para cada población (modelo 2). Ambos modelos se utilizaron para predecir los valores genéticos de las poblaciones “puras” usando datos F1. Tres situaciones fueron simuladas, en las dos primeras se consideró que las dos poblaciones tenían un mismo origen con una diferencia de 50 y 550 generaciones, respectivamente. En la tercera situación se consideró que las dos poblaciones tenían orígenes distintos. En todos los casos las dos poblaciones generaron una población F1 con un tamaño de 1.000 individuos. Los valores fenotípicos de la F1 fueron simulados con una media de 12 QTL segregando y una heredabilidad de 0.3. En el análisis de la F1 y la población “pura” de validación se escogieron 500 marcadores en segregación. Para estimar el efecto de los SNPs se utilizó el método Bayesiano llamado Bayes-B. La precisión media de los valores genéticos obtenida varió entre 0.789 y 0.718. Sin embargo, se observó que conforme las poblaciones estuvieron más alejadas la precisión disminuyó y el modelo 2 dio valores ligeramente superiores que el modelo 1. Estos resultados sugerirían que los animales cruzados pueden ser utilizados para evaluar poblaciones “puras”. Además modelos con origen específico de población darían mejores resultados.Performance of purebred parents can be a poor predictor of performance of their crossbred descendants. However, in crossbred populations linkage disequilibrium may not be restricted to markers that are tightly linked to the QTL and the effects of SNPs may be breed specific. Both these problems can be addressed by using a model with breed-specific SNP effects. To investigate this idea, we used a model with effects of SNP genotypes (model 1) and a model with breed-specific effects of SNP alleles (model 2) to predict purebred breeding values using F1 data. Three scenarios were considered. In the first two, pure breeds were assumed to have a common origin either 50 or 550 generations ago. In the third scenario, the two breeds did not have a common origin. In all these scenarios, the two breeds were used to generate an F1 with 1,000 individuals. Trait phenotypic values controlled by 12 segregating QTL and with a heritability of 0.30 were simulated for the F1 individuals. Further, 500 segregating markers on a chromosome of 1 Morgan were chosen for analysis in the F1s and in the validation population of purebred. A Bayesian method (Bayes-B) was used to estimate the SNP effects. The accuracy of the predictions was between 0.789 and 0.718. However, the accuracy was lower when the populations were more separate and model 2 gave values slightly higher than model 1. These results suggest that crossbred data could be used to evaluate purebreds and breed specific models could give better results

Experimental analysis and model validation of an opaque ventilated facade

Natural ventilation is a convenient way of reducing energy consumption in buildings. In this study an experimental module of an opaque ventilated façade (OVF) was built and tested for assessing its potential of supplying free ventilation and air preheating for the building. A numerical model was created and validated against the experimental data. The experimental results showed that the flow rates induced in the façade cavity were due to mixed driving forces: wind and buoyancy. Depending on the weather conditions one of them was the main driving force, or both were of the same order. When the wind force was the main driving force, higher flow rates were found. In these cases buoyancy acted as supporting driving force. When the wind speed was low and buoyancy prevailed lower flow rates were found. Air and surface temperatures were predicted by the numerical model with a better accuracy than flow and energy rates. The model predicts correctly the influence of the wind and buoyancy driving forces. The experimental OVF module showed potential for free ventilation and air preheating, although it depends on weather and geometrical variables. The use of the numerical model using the right parameters was found viable for analyzing the performance of an OVF

Progress in the determination of the J/ψ−πJ/\psi-\pi cross section

Improving previous calculations, we compute the $J/\psi \pi\to {charmed mesons}$ cross section using QCD sum rules. Our sum rules for the $J/\psi \pi\to \bar{D} D^*$, $D \bar{D}^*$, ${\bar D}^* D^*$ and ${\bar D} D$ hadronic matrix elements are constructed by using vaccum-pion correlation functions, and we work up to twist-4 in the soft-pion limit. Our results suggest that, using meson exchange models is perfectly acceptable, provided that they include form factors and that they respect chiral symmetry. After doing a thermal average we get $\sim 0.3$ mb at T=150\MeV.Comment: 22 pages, RevTeX4 including 7 figures in ps file

K* nucleon hyperon form factors and nucleon strangeness

A crucial input for recent meson hyperon cloud model estimates of the nucleon matrix element of the strangeness current are the nucleon-hyperon-K* (NYK*) form factors which regularize some of the arising loops. Prompted by new and forthcoming information on these form factors from hyperon-nucleon potential models, we analyze the dependence of the loop model results for the strange-quark observables on the NYK* form factors and couplings. We find, in particular, that the now generally favored soft N-Lambda-K* form factors can reduce the magnitude of the K* contributions in such models by more than an order of magnitude, compared to previous results with hard form factors. We also discuss some general implications of our results for hadronic loop models.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, new co-author, discussion extended to the momentum dependence of the strange vector form factor

Presupernova Structure of Massive Stars

Issues concerning the structure and evolution of core collapse progenitor stars are discussed with an emphasis on interior evolution. We describe a program designed to investigate the transport and mixing processes associated with stellar turbulence, arguably the greatest source of uncertainty in progenitor structure, besides mass loss, at the time of core collapse. An effort to use precision observations of stellar parameters to constrain theoretical modeling is also described.Comment: Proceedings for invited talk at High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics conference, Caltech, March 2010. Special issue of Astrophysics and Space Science, submitted for peer review: 7 pages, 3 figure

Faithful Squashed Entanglement

Squashed entanglement is a measure for the entanglement of bipartite quantum states. In this paper we present a lower bound for squashed entanglement in terms of a distance to the set of separable states. This implies that squashed entanglement is faithful, that is, strictly positive if and only if the state is entangled. We derive the bound on squashed entanglement from a bound on quantum conditional mutual information, which is used to define squashed entanglement and corresponds to the amount by which strong subadditivity of von Neumann entropy fails to be saturated. Our result therefore sheds light on the structure of states that almost satisfy strong subadditivity with equality. The proof is based on two recent results from quantum information theory: the operational interpretation of the quantum mutual information as the optimal rate for state redistribution and the interpretation of the regularised relative entropy of entanglement as an error exponent in hypothesis testing. The distance to the set of separable states is measured by the one-way LOCC norm, an operationally-motivated norm giving the optimal probability of distinguishing two bipartite quantum states, each shared by two parties, using any protocol formed by local quantum operations and one-directional classical communication between the parties. A similar result for the Frobenius or Euclidean norm follows immediately. The result has two applications in complexity theory. The first is a quasipolynomial-time algorithm solving the weak membership problem for the set of separable states in one-way LOCC or Euclidean norm. The second concerns quantum Merlin-Arthur games. Here we show that multiple provers are not more powerful than a single prover when the verifier is restricted to one-way LOCC operations thereby providing a new characterisation of the complexity class QMA.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. Due to an error in the published version, claims have been weakened from the LOCC norm to the one-way LOCC nor

Militarization and social development in the Third World

In this study we integrated the modernization and dependency theories of development to suggest the ways whereby militarization can affect development. We examined the effects of three components of militarization highlighted in these theories on the social development of ninety-two developing countries. Overall, our findings support the dependency theory's emphasis on the detrimental impact of international trade on disadvantaged nations. There is a significant negative correlation between arms import and social development. Arms export and indigenous spending are correlated with social development in the expected directions but their beta coefficients are not significant. The diverse ways these three aspects of militarization have been shown to affect social development help to explain some of the conflicting findings in the literature and point to the need to study these variables in their disaggregated form.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69141/2/10.1177_144078339503100105.pd