Modeling the growth of fingerprints improves matching for adolescents

We study the effect of growth on the fingerprints of adolescents, based on which we suggest a simple method to adjust for growth when trying to recover a juvenile's fingerprint in a database years later. Based on longitudinal data sets in juveniles' criminal records, we show that growth essentially leads to an isotropic rescaling, so that we can use the strong correlation between growth in stature and limbs to model the growth of fingerprints proportional to stature growth as documented in growth charts. The proposed rescaling leads to a 72% reduction of the distances between corresponding minutiae for the data set analyzed. These findings were corroborated by several verification tests. In an identification test on a database containing 3.25 million right index fingers at the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany, the identification error rate of 20.8% was reduced to 2.1% by rescaling. The presented method is of striking simplicity and can easily be integrated into existing automated fingerprint identification systems

Spatial Distance Between Parents and Adult Children in the United States

ObjectiveThis brief report presents contemporary national estimates of the spatial distance between residences of parents and adult children in the United States, including distance to one’s nearest parent or adult child and whether one lives near all of their parents and adult children.BackgroundThe most recent national estimates of parent–child spatial proximity come from data for the early 1990s. Moreover, research has rarely assessed the spatial clustering of all parents and adult children.MethodData are from the 2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics on residential locations of adults aged 25 years and older and each of their parents and adult children. The following two measures of spatial proximity were estimated: the share of adults who have their nearest parent or adult child at a given distance and the share of adults who have all parents and/or all adult children at a given distance. Sociodemographic and geographic differences were examined for both measures.ResultsAmong the adults with at least one living parent or adult child, a significant majority (74.8%) had their nearest parent or adult child within 30 miles, and about one third (35.5%) had all parents and adult children living that close. Spatial proximity differed substantially among sociodemographic groups, with those who were disadvantaged more likely to have their parents or adult children nearby. In most cases, sociodemographic disparities were much higher when spatial proximity was measured by proximity to all parents and all adult children instead of to the nearest parent or nearest adult child.ConclusionDisparities in having all parents and/or adult children nearby may be a result of family solidarity and also may affect family solidarity. This report sets the stage for new investigations of the spatial dimension of family cohesion.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154398/1/jomf12606_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154398/2/jomf12606.pd

Balancing a Cline by Influx of Migrants: A Genetic Transition in Water Frogs of Eastern Greece

Variation patterns of allozymes and of ND3 haplotypes of mitochondrial DNA reveal a zone of genetic transition among western Palearctic water frogs extending across northeastern Greece and European Turkey. At the western end of the zone, allozymes characteristic of Central European frogs known as Pelophylax ridibundus predominate, whereas at the eastern end, alleles characteristic of western Anatolian water frogs (P. cf. bedriagae) prevail. The ND3 haplotypes reveal 2 major clades, 1 characteristic of Anatolian frogs, the other of European; the European clade itself has distinct eastern and western subclades. Both the 2 major clades and the 2 subclades overlap within the transition zone. Using Bayesian model selection methods, allozyme data suggest considerable immigration into the Nestos River area from eastern and western populations. In contrast, the ND3 data suggest that migration rates are so high among all locations that they form a single panmictic unit; the best model for allozymes is second best for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Nuclear markers (allozymes), which have roughly 4 times as deep a coalescent history as mtDNA data and thus may reflect patterns over a longer time, indicate that eastern and western refugial populations have expanded since deglaciation (in the last 10 000 years) and have met near the Nestos River, whereas the mtDNA with its smaller effective population size has already lost the signal of partitioning into refugi

Autonomous navigation of a mobile robot using inertial and visual cues

International audienceThis paper describes the development and implementation of a reactive visual module utilized on an autonomous mobile robot to automatically correct its trajectory. We use a multisensorial mechanism based on inertial and visual cues. We report here only on the implementation and the experimentation of this module, whereas the main theoretical aspects have been developed elsewhere

Statements of Agreement From the Targeted Evaluation and Active Management (TEAM) Approaches to Treating Concussion Meeting Held in Pittsburgh, October 15-16, 2015

Conventional management for concussion involves prescribed rest and progressive return to activity. Recent evidence challenges this notion and suggests that active approaches may be effective for some patients. Previous concussion consensus statements provide limited guidance regarding active treatment

Meta-Analysis of Mutations in ALOX12B or ALOXE3 Identified in a Large Cohort of 224 Patients

The autosomal recessive congenital ichthyoses (ARCI) are a nonsyndromic group of cornification disorders that includes lamellar ichthyosis, congenital ichthyosiform erythroderma, and harlequin ichthyosis. To date mutations in ten genes have been identified to cause ARCI: TGM1, ALOX12B, ALOXE3, NIPAL4, CYP4F22, ABCA12, PNPLA1, CERS3, SDR9C7, and SULT2B1. The main focus of this report is the mutational spectrum of the genes ALOX12B and ALOXE3, which encode the epidermal lipoxygenases arachidonate 12-lipoxygenase, i.e., 12R type (12R-LOX), and the epidermis-type lipoxygenase-3 (eLOX3), respectively. Deficiency of 12R-LOX and eLOX3 disrupts the epidermal barrier function and leads to an abnormal epidermal differentiation. The type and the position of the mutations may influence the ARCI phenotype; most patients present with a mild erythrodermic ichthyosis, and only few individuals show severe erythroderma. To date, 88 pathogenic mutations in ALOX12B and 27 pathogenic mutations in ALOXE3 have been reported in the literature. Here, we presented a large cohort of 224 genetically characterized ARCI patients who carried mutations in these genes. We added 74 novel mutations in ALOX12B and 25 novel mutations in ALOXE3. We investigated the spectrum of mutations in ALOX12B and ALOXE3 in our cohort and additionally in the published mutations, the distribution of these mutations within the gene and gene domains, and potential hotspots and recurrent mutations

Advancing the Economics of Gender: New Insights and a Roadmap for the Future

This article introduces the Special Issue on Gender Differences by reviewing some of the most recent facts on the topic and placing the contributions of each of the papers in the Special Issue in the context of a burgeoning, vibrant literature