Latitudinal clines in gene expression and cis\textit{cis}-regulatory element variation in Drosophila melanogaster\textit{Drosophila melanogaster}

$\textbf{BACKGROUND}$: Organisms can rapidly adapt to their environment when colonizing a new habitat, and this could occur by changing protein sequences or by altering patterns of gene expression. The importance of gene expression in driving local adaptation is increasingly being appreciated, and $\textit{cis}$-regulatory elements (CREs), which control and modify the expression of the nearby genes, are predicted to play an important role. Here we investigate genetic variation in gene expression in immune-challenged $\textit{Drosophila melanogaster}$ from temperate and tropical or sub-tropical populations in Australia and United States. $\textbf{RESULTS}$: We find parallel latitudinal changes in gene expression, with genes involved in immunity, insecticide resistance, reproduction, and the response to the environment being especially likely to differ between latitudes. By measuring allele-specific gene expression (ASE), we show that $\textit{cis}$-regulatory variation also shows parallel latitudinal differences between the two continents and contributes to the latitudinal differences in gene expression. $\textbf{CONCLUSIONS}$: Both Australia and United States were relatively recently colonized by$\textit{ D. melanogaster}$, and it was recently shown that introductions of both African and European flies occurred, with African genotypes contributing disproportionately to tropical populations. Therefore, both the demographic history of the populations and local adaptation may be causing the patterns that we see.This work was funded by European Research Council grant DrosophilaInfection 281668 and the Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/L004232/1

Classification of fibroglandular tissue distribution in the breast based on radiotherapy planning CT

Accurate segmentation of breast tissues is required for a number of applications such as model based deformable registration in breast radiotherapy. The accuracy of breast tissue segmentation is affected by the spatial distribution (or pattern) of fibroglandular tissue (FT). The goal of this study was to develop and evaluate texture features, determined from planning computed tomography (CT) data, to classify the spatial distribution of FT in the breas

Use of a Subcutaneous Insulin Computerized GlucoStabilizer™ Program on Glycemic Control in the Intensive Care Setting: A Retrospective Data Analysis.

Background: Despite guidelines that recommend strongly against Sliding Scale Insulin (SSI) it continues to be the most commonly insulin regimen used in hospitals to treat hyperglycemia. In addition to being reactionary to a glucose that has already increased, SSI offers practical challenges in the randomness of the doses of insulin prescribed and often a disconnect with glucose testing that should be occurring in congruence to the insulin dosing. While many clinical trials have shown improved glycemic control in critical care patients receiving intravenous insulin; few studies have demonstrated the efficacy of subcutaneous (SQ) insulin in this setting. In this study, we have evaluated the safety and efficacy of SQ insulin administration utilizing a computerized program, the Clarian GlucoStabilizer™ Subcutaneous Program (CGS-SQ) in the intensive care unit (ICU). This program is designed to overcome some of the most common barriers of SQ insulin delivery, those of dose calculation and timing. Methods: A computerized SQ insulin delivery program -The Clarian GlucoStabilizer™ Subcutaneous Program (CGS-SQ)- was made available to ICU practitioners, facilitating standardized calculation of insulin doses and incorporating reminder alarms for blood glucose (BG) testing. This program used three defaults Insulin Sensitivity Factors (ISF) and Insulin to Carbohydrate Ratios (CR) to calculate insulin doses. Additionally, there is an option for practitioner determined ISF and ICR. Patients, aged ≥ 18 years, initiated on the CGS-SQ and admitted to the (ICU) were eligible for inclusion in this retrospective evaluation. Patients were divided into four groups based on initial insulin sensitivity factor (ISF) and carbohydrate ratio (CR). Three of the groups used a default ISF and CR; ISF 60, CR 15; ISF 30, CR 10 and ISF 15, CR 8. These groups were compared with those where the practitioner specified an individualized ISF and CR, referred to as PDS (practitioner defined setting). Primary endpoints included: mean glucose, time to target glucose, hyperglycemic and hypoglycemic events. Results: In the 1,384 patients identified, patients initiated with a predefined setting had lower mean glucose compared to patients with PDS (ISF 60, CR 15: 135 mg/dL vs. ISF 30, CR 10: 140 mg/dL vs. ISF 15, CR 8: 134 mg/dL vs. PDS: 143 mg/dL; p \u3c 0.0001). Patients in the default settings had shorter time to target glucose and decreased incidence of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia. Conclusions: Using a system of computerized prompts with standardization of insulin dose calculation, SQ insulin can be effectively used in the treatment of ICU patients to target BG of 100-150 mg/dL with minimal risk of hypoglycemia

Analyzing student travel patterns with augmented data visualizations

Visualization and visual analytics tools can provide critical support for experts and stakeholders to understand transportation flows and related human activities. Correlating and representing quantitative data with data from human actors can provide explanations for patterns and anomalies. We conducted research to compare and contrast the capabilities of several tools available for visualization and decision support as a part of an integrated urban informatics and visualization research project that develops tools for transportation planning and decision making. For this research we used the data collected by the StudentMoveTO (Toronto) survey which was conducted in the fall of 2015 by Toronto's four universities with the goal of collecting detailed data to understand travel behaviour and its effect on the daily routines of the students. This paper discusses the usefulness of new software which can allow designers to build meaningful narratives integrating 3D representations to assist in Geo-spatial analysis of the data

Turbulence Fluctuations and New Universal Realizability Conditions in Modelling

General turbulent mean statistics are shown to be characterized by a variational principle. The variational functionals, or ``effective actions'', have experimental consequences for turbulence fluctuations and are subject to realizability conditions of positivity and convexity. An efficient Rayleigh-Ritz algorithm is available to calculate approximate effective actions within PDF closures. Examples are given for Navier-Stokes and for a 3-mode system of Lorenz. The new realizability conditions succeed at detecting {\em a priori} the poor predictions of PDF closures even when the classical 2nd-order moment realizability conditions are satisfied.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX (Version 2.09), 3 figures, Postscript, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

On the strong anomalous diffusion

The superdiffusion behavior, i.e. $\sim t^{2 \nu}$, with $\nu > 1/2$, in general is not completely characherized by a unique exponent. We study some systems exhibiting strong anomalous diffusion, i.e. $\sim t^{q \nu(q)}$ where $\nu(2)>1/2$ and $q \nu(q)$ is not a linear function of $q$. This feature is different from the weak superdiffusion regime, i.e. $\nu(q)=const > 1/2$, as in random shear flows. The strong anomalous diffusion can be generated by nontrivial chaotic dynamics, e.g. Lagrangian motion in $2d$ time-dependent incompressible velocity fields, $2d$ symplectic maps and $1d$ intermittent maps. Typically the function $q \nu(q)$ is piecewise linear. This corresponds to two mechanisms: a weak anomalous diffusion for the typical events and a ballistic transport for the rare excursions. In order to have strong anomalous diffusion one needs a violation of the hypothesis of the central limit theorem, this happens only in a very narrow region of the control parameters space.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figure

Fluctuations in the Irreversible Decay of Turbulent Energy

A fluctuation law of the energy in freely-decaying, homogeneous and isotropic turbulence is derived within standard closure hypotheses for 3D incompressible flow. In particular, a fluctuation-dissipation relation is derived which relates the strength of a stochastic backscatter term in the energy decay equation to the mean of the energy dissipation rate. The theory is based on the so-called ``effective action'' of the energy history and illustrates a Rayleigh-Ritz method recently developed to evaluate the effective action approximately within probability density-function (PDF) closures. These effective actions generalize the Onsager-Machlup action of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics to turbulent flow. They yield detailed, concrete predictions for fluctuations, such as multi-time correlation functions of arbitrary order, which cannot be obtained by direct PDF methods. They also characterize the mean histories by a variational principle.Comment: 26 pages, Latex Version 2.09, plus seceq.sty, a stylefile for sequential numbering of equations by section. This version includes new discussion of the physical interpretation of the formal Rayleigh-Ritz approximation. The title is also change