Cartesian Certainty and the Infinity of the Will

This paper interprets Descartes\u27 conception of certainty as most fundamentally a function of the human will, controlling the cognitive encounter with the world

Simone Weil\u27s Spiritual Critique of Modern Science: An Historical-Critical Assessment

This paper evaluates Simone Weil\u27s philosophy and theology of science from the perspective of an historical phenomenology of science

Large time behaviour of solutions of a system of generalized Burgers equation

In this paper we study the asymptotic behaviour of solutions of a system of $N$ partial differential equations. When $N = 1$ the equation reduces to the Burgers equation and was studied by Hopf. We consider both the inviscid and viscous case and show a new feature in the asymptotic behaviour.Comment: 9 page

Joint analysis of functional genomic data and genome-wide association studies of 18 human traits

Annotations of gene structures and regulatory elements can inform genome-wide association studies (GWAS). However, choosing the relevant annotations for interpreting an association study of a given trait remains challenging. We describe a statistical model that uses association statistics computed across the genome to identify classes of genomic element that are enriched or depleted for loci that influence a trait. The model naturally incorporates multiple types of annotations. We applied the model to GWAS of 18 human traits, including red blood cell traits, platelet traits, glucose levels, lipid levels, height, BMI, and Crohn's disease. For each trait, we evaluated the relevance of 450 different genomic annotations, including protein-coding genes, enhancers, and DNase-I hypersensitive sites in over a hundred tissues and cell lines. We show that the fraction of phenotype-associated SNPs that influence protein sequence ranges from around 2% (for platelet volume) up to around 20% (for LDL cholesterol); that repressed chromatin is significantly depleted for SNPs associated with several traits; and that cell type-specific DNase-I hypersensitive sites are enriched for SNPs associated with several traits (for example, the spleen in platelet volume). Finally, by re-weighting each GWAS using information from functional genomics, we increase the number of loci with high-confidence associations by around 5%.Comment: Fixed typos, included minor clarification

Computational Geometry Column 34

Problems presented at the open-problem session of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry are listed