7,447 research outputs found
Organizing information on the next generation web - Design and implementation of a new bookmark structure
The next-generation Web will increase the need for a highly organized and ever evolving method to store references to Web objects. These requirements could be realized by the development of a new bookmark structure. This paper endeavors to identify the key requirements of such a bookmark, specifically in relation to Web documents, and sets out a suggested design through which these needs may be accomplished. A prototype developed offers such features as the sharing of bookmarks between users and groups of users. Bookmarks for Web documents in this prototype allow more specific information to be stored such as: URL, the document type, the document title, keywords, a summary, user annotations, date added, date last visited and date last modified. Individuals may access the service from anywhere on the Internet, as long as they have a Java-enabled Web browser
Particle-particle correlations and the space-time structure of heavy ion collisions
The present status of the use of two-particle intensity interferometry as a
diagnostic tool to study the space-time dynamics of intermediate energy heavy
ion collisions is examined. Calculations for the two-proton and two-pion
correlation functions are presented and compared to experiment. The
calculations are based on the nuclear Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck transport
theory.Comment: 20 pages, Preprint MSUCL-864 (to be published in Progress in Particle
and Nuclear Physics, Vol. 30
Lattice gas cellular automata model for rippling and aggregation in myxobacteria
A lattice-gas cellular automaton (LGCA) model is used to simulate rippling
and aggregation in myxobacteria. An efficient way of representing cells of
different cell size, shape and orientation is presented that may be easily
extended to model later stages of fruiting body formation. This LGCA model is
designed to investigate whether a refractory period, a minimum response time, a
maximum oscillation period and non-linear dependence of reversals of cells on
C-factor are necessary assumptions for rippling. It is shown that a refractory
period of 2-3 minutes, a minimum response time of up to 1 minute and no maximum
oscillation period best reproduce rippling in the experiments of {\it
Myxoccoccus xanthus}. Non-linear dependence of reversals on C-factor is
critical at high cell density. Quantitative simulations demonstrate that the
increase in wavelength of ripples when a culture is diluted with non-signaling
cells can be explained entirely by the decreased density of C-signaling cells.
This result further supports the hypothesis that levels of C-signaling
quantitatively depend on and modulate cell density. Analysis of the
interpenetrating high density waves shows the presence of a phase shift
analogous to the phase shift of interpenetrating solitons. Finally, a model for
swarming, aggregation and early fruiting body formation is presented
Differential regulation of the DNA methylome in adults born during the Great Chinese Famine in 1959-1961
Background: Extensive epidemiological studies have established the association between exposure to early-life adversity and health status and diseases in adults. Epigenetic regulation is considered as a key mediator for this phenomenon but analysis on humans is sparse. The Great Chinese Famine lasting from 1958 to 1961 is a natural string of disasters offering a precious opportunity for elucidating the underlying epigenetic mechanism of the long-term effect of early adversity. Methods: Using a high-throughput array platform for DNA methylome profiling, we conducted a case-control epigenome-wide association study on early-life exposure to Chinese famine in 79 adults born during 1959-1961 and compared to 105 unexposed subjects born 1963-1964. Results: The single CpG site analysis of whole epigenome revealed a predominant pattern of decreased DNA methylation levels associated with fetal exposure to famine. Four CpG sites were detected with p < 1e-06 (linked to EHMT1, CNR1, UBXN7 and ESM1 genes), 16 CpGs detected with 1e-06 < p < 1e-05 and 157 CpGs with 1e-05 < p < 1e-04, with a predominant pattern of hypomethylation. Functional annotation to genes and their enriched biological pathways mainly involved neurodevelopment, neuropsychological disorders and metabolism. Multiple sites analysis detected two top-rank differentially methylated regions harboring RNF39 on chromosome 6 and PTPRN2 on chromosome 7, both showing epigenetic association with stress-related conditions. Conclusion: Early-life exposure to famine could mediate DNA methylation regulations that persist into adulthood with broad impacts in the activities of genes and biological pathways. Results from this study provide new clues to the epigenetic embedding of early-life adversity and its impacts on adult health.Peer reviewe
Toward reduction of artifacts in fused images
Most fusion satellite image methodologies at pixel-level introduce false spatial details, i.e.artifacts, in the resulting fusedimages. In many cases, these artifacts appears because image fusion methods do not consider the differences in roughness or textural characteristics between different land covers. They only consider the digital values associated with single pixels. This effect increases as the spatial resolution image increases. To minimize this problem, we propose a new paradigm based on local measurements of the fractal dimension (FD). Fractal dimension maps (FDMs) are generated for each of the source images (panchromatic and each band of the multi-spectral images) with the box-counting algorithm and by applying a windowing process. The average of source image FDMs, previously indexed between 0 and 1, has been used for discrimination of different land covers present in satellite images. This paradigm has been applied through the fusion methodology based on the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), using the à trous algorithm (WAT). Two different scenes registered by optical sensors on board FORMOSAT-2 and IKONOS satellites were used to study the behaviour of the proposed methodology. The implementation of this approach, using the WAT method, allows adapting the fusion process to the roughness and shape of the regions present in the image to be fused. This improves the quality of the fusedimages and their classification results when compared with the original WAT metho
Retrospective analysis of main and interaction effects in genetic association studies of human complex traits
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The etiology of multifactorial human diseases involves complex interactions between numerous environmental factors and alleles of many genes. Efficient statistical tools are demanded in identifying the genetic and environmental variants that affect the risk of disease development. This paper introduces a retrospective polytomous logistic regression model to measure both the main and interaction effects in genetic association studies of human discrete and continuous complex traits. In this model, combinations of genotypes at two interacting loci or of environmental exposure and genotypes at one locus are treated as nominal outcomes of which the proportions are modeled as a function of the disease trait assigning both main and interaction effects and with no assumption of normality in the trait distribution. Performance of our method in detecting interaction effect is compared with that of the case-only model.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Results from our simulation study indicate that our retrospective model exhibits high power in capturing even relatively small effect with reasonable sample sizes. Application of our method to data from an association study on the catalase -262C/T promoter polymorphism and aging phenotypes detected significant main and interaction effects for age-group and allele T on individual's cognitive functioning and produced consistent results in estimating the interaction effect as compared with the popular case-only model.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The retrospective polytomous logistic regression model can be used as a convenient tool for assessing both main and interaction effects in genetic association studies of human multifactorial diseases involving genetic and non-genetic factors as well as categorical or continuous traits.</p
Reversals in Temperature-Precipitation Correlations in the Northern Hemisphere Extratropics During the Holocene
Future precipitation levels remain uncertain because climate models have struggled to reproduce observed variations in temperature-precipitation correlations. Our analyses of Holocene proxy-based temperature-precipitation correlations and hydrological sensitivities from 2,237 Northern Hemisphere extratropical pollen records reveal a significant latitudinal dependence and temporal variations among the early, middle, and late Holocene. These proxy-based variations are largely consistent with patterns obtained from transient climate simulations (TraCE21k). While high latitudes and subtropical monsoon areas show mainly stable positive correlations throughout the Holocene, the mid-latitude pattern is temporally and spatially more variable. In particular, we identified a reversal from positive to negative temperature-precipitation correlations in the eastern North American and European mid-latitudes from the early to mid-Holocene that mainly related to slowed down westerlies and a switch to moisture-limited convection under a warm climate. Our palaeoevidence of past temperature-precipitation correlation shifts identifies those regions where simulating past and future precipitation levels might be particularly challenging.publishedVersio
K^+ momentum spectrum from (K^-,K^+) reactions in intranuclear cascade model
In a framework of intranuclear cascade (INC) type calculation, we study a
momentum spectrum in reactions \KK at a beam momentum of 1.65 GeV/c. INC model
calculations are compared with the relativistic impulse approximation (RIA)
calculations to perform the detailed study of the reaction mechanism. We find
that the INC model can reproduce the experimental data on various targets.
Especially, in the low-momentum region, the forward-angle cross sections of the
reaction on from light to heavy targets are consistently explained
with the two-step strangeness exchange and production processes with various
intermediate mesons, and , and productions and their decay
into . In the two-step processes, inclusion of meson and hyperon
resonances is found to be essential.Comment: LaTeX file and 12ps figure
Exploratory analysis of age and sex dependent DNA methylation patterns on the X-chromosome in whole blood samples
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