Causal Patterns: Extraction of multiple causal relationships by Mixture of Probabilistic Partial Canonical Correlation Analysis

In this paper, we propose a mixture of probabilistic partial canonical correlation analysis (MPPCCA) that extracts the Causal Patterns from two multivariate time series. Causal patterns refer to the signal patterns within interactions of two elements having multiple types of mutually causal relationships, rather than a mixture of simultaneous correlations or the absence of presence of a causal relationship between the elements. In multivariate statistics, partial canonical correlation analysis (PCCA) evaluates the correlation between two multivariates after subtracting the effect of the third multivariate. PCCA can calculate the Granger Causal- ity Index (which tests whether a time-series can be predicted from an- other time-series), but is not applicable to data containing multiple partial canonical correlations. After introducing the MPPCCA, we propose an expectation-maxmization (EM) algorithm that estimates the parameters and latent variables of the MPPCCA. The MPPCCA is expected to ex- tract multiple partial canonical correlations from data series without any supervised signals to split the data as clusters. The method was then eval- uated in synthetic data experiments. In the synthetic dataset, our method estimated the multiple partial canonical correlations more accurately than the existing method. To determine the types of patterns detectable by the method, experiments were also conducted on real datasets. The method estimated the communication patterns In motion-capture data. The MP- PCCA is applicable to various type of signals such as brain signals, human communication and nonlinear complex multibody systems.Comment: DSAA2017 - The 4th IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytic

Dental Approach for Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by intermittent upper airway obstruction during sleep. It causes sleep fragmentation from brief arousal and affects social life by excessive daytime sleepiness. Moreover, OSA is considered a risk factor for cardiovascular complications and type 2 diabetes as associated features. The gold standard treatment for OSA is continuous positive airway pressure during sleep. However, if this treatment is frustrating to the patient or the apnea and hypopnea index is low or mild, alternative treatments for OSA must be found. One possible treatment is an oral appliance (OA) to improve the upper airway configuration. Dental clinicians have attempted to improve this respiratory condition caused by OSA by using OA, and at Tokushima University Hospital, OA therapy has been in use since 1993. Nishigawa et al. introduced a method to fabricate an OA and to investigate the effects of this therapy. In the present article, the method of OA fabrication was modified, and its effects were evaluated. Dental clinicians should have some knowledge about the mechanics of sleep and the management of sleep conditions so that they can cooperate closely with medical physicians. Thus, collaboration between the medical and dental fields can help patients attain healthy sleep

SuperDARN future plan for Phase X JARE project

The Tenth Symposium on Polar Science/Special session: [S] Future plan of Antarctic research: Towards phase X of the Japanese Antarctic Research Project (2022-2028) and beyond, Tue. 3 Dec. / Entrance Hall (1st floor) at National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR

Usefulness and Problems of Endoscopic Ultrasonography in Prediction of the Depth of Tumor Invasion in Early Gastric Cancer

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the accuracy of endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) in local and regional staging of early gastric cancer, to analyze the factors influencing the accuracy of EUS, and to reveal the usefulness and problems of EUS in pre-treatment staging of gastric cancer. We examined 105 lesions in 104 patients with histologically confirmed gastric cancer and retrospectively evaluated them with EUS. The diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of EUS were determined by comparing the pre-treatment EUS with the postoperative histopathological findings. The overall diagnostic accuracy of EUS for the depth of cancer invasion was 86%. The overall sensitivity and specificity were 60% and 96%, respectively. The accuracy significantly declined in lesions located in the upper-third of the stomach (70%). Type 0-I lesions tended to be over-staged (12&), and the upper-third lesions tended to be under-staged (23%). The accuracy significantly declined in differentiated adenocarcinoma with massive submucosal invasion (56.5%). EUS is useful for evaluating the depth of gastric cancer invasion which determines the feasibility of endoscopic treatment. However, it is noteworthy that the diagnostic accuracy of the invasion depth diminished for lesions in the upper third of the stomach

Ectopic sebaceous glands in the esophagus that became evident over a three-year span

A 43-year-old Japanese woman was diagnosed with ectopic sebaceous glands in the esophagus by esophagogastroduodenoscopy and biopsy. At the age of 46, typical ectopic sebaceous glands were recognized in the upper esophagus, whereas yellowish white granules were faintly observed in the lower esophagus. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy examinations were repeated when she was 47 and again at 50 years old, and the lesions in the lower esophagus had become more evident over the ensuing 3 years. Esophageal ectopic sebaceous glands are relatively infrequent, and there have been few case reports describing the progression of the endoscopic features. We also report the clinical and endoscopic features of the five similar cases with pathologically proven ectopic sebaceous glands in the esophagus