A macro-financial analysis of the euro area sovereign bond market. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 259, June 2014

We estimate the 'fundamental' component of euro area sovereign bond yield spreads, i.e. the part of bond spreads that can be justified by country-specific economic factors, euro area economic fundamentals, and international influences. The yield spread decomposition is achieved using a multi-market, no-arbitrage affine term structure model with a unique pricing kernel. More specifically, we use the canonical representation proposed by Joslin, Singleton, and Zhu (2011) and introduce next to standard spanned factors a set of unspanned macro factors, as in Joslin, Priebsch, and Singleton (2013). The model is applied to yield curve data from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain over the period 2005-2013. Overall, our results show that economic fundamentals are the dominant drivers behind sovereign bond spreads. Nevertheless, shocks unrelated to the fundamental component of the spread have played an important role in the dynamics of bond spreads since the intensification of the sovereign debt crisis in the summer of 201

Ability of Lactobacillus kefiri LKF01 (DSM32079) to colonize the intestinal environment and modify the gut microbiota composition of healthy individuals

Abstract Background Probiotics have been observed to positively influence the host's health, but to date few data about the ability of probiotics to modify the gut microbiota composition exist. Aims To evaluate the ability of Lactobacillus kefiri LKF01 DSM32079 (LKEF) to colonize the intestinal environment of healthy subjects and modify the gut microbiota composition. Methods Twenty Italian healthy volunteers were randomized in pre-prandial and post-prandial groups. Changes in the gut microbiota composition were detected by using a Next Generation Sequencing technology (Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine). Results L. kefiri was recovered in the feces of all volunteers after one month of probiotic administration, while it was detected only in three subjects belonging to the pre-prandial group and in two subjects belonging to the post-prandial group one month after the end of probiotic consumption. After one month of probiotic oral intake we observed a reduction of Bilophila, Butyricicomonas, Flavonifractor, Oscillibacter and Prevotella. Interestingly, after the end of probiotic administration Bacteroides, Barnesiella, Butyricicomonas, Clostridium, Haemophilus, Oscillibacter, Salmonella, Streptococcus, Subdoligranolum, and Veillonella were significantly reduced if compared to baseline samples. Conclusion L. kefiri LKF01 showed a strong ability to modulate the gut microbiota composition, leading to a significant reduction of several bacterial genera directly involved in the onset of pro-inflammatory response and gastrointestinal diseases

Real-time pursuit-evasion with humanoid robots

We consider a pursuit-evasion problem between humanoids. In our scenario, the pursuer enters the safety area of the evader headed for collision, while the latter executes a fast evasive motion. Control schemes are designed for both the pursuer and the evader. They are structurally identical, although the objectives are different: the pursuer tries to align its direction of motion with the line-of-sight to the evader, whereas the evader tries to move in a direction orthogonal to the line-of-sight to the pursuer. At the core of the control scheme is a maneuver planning module which makes use of closed- form expressions exclusively. This allows its use in a replanning framework, where each robot updates its motion plan upon completion of a step to account for the perceived motion of the other. Simulation and experimental results on NAO humanoids reveal an interesting asymptotic behavior which was predicted using unicycle as template models for trajectory generation

Acute coronary syndrome and renal impairment: a systematic review

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Recombination between heterologous human acrocentric chromosomes

The short arms of the human acrocentric chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21 and 22 (SAACs) share large homologous regions, including ribosomal DNA repeats and extended segmental duplications1,2. Although the resolution of these regions in the first complete assembly of a human genome—the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium’s CHM13 assembly (T2T-CHM13)—provided a model of their homology3, it remained unclear whether these patterns were ancestral or maintained by ongoing recombination exchange. Here we show that acrocentric chromosomes contain pseudo-homologous regions (PHRs) indicative of recombination between non-homologous sequences. Utilizing an all-to-all comparison of the human pangenome from the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium4 (HPRC), we find that contigs from all of the SAACs form a community. A variation graph5 constructed from centromere-spanning acrocentric contigs indicates the presence of regions in which most contigs appear nearly identical between heterologous acrocentric chromosomes in T2T-CHM13. Except on chromosome 15, we observe faster decay of linkage disequilibrium in the pseudo-homologous regions than in the corresponding short and long arms, indicating higher rates of recombination6,7. The pseudo-homologous regions include sequences that have previously been shown to lie at the breakpoint of Robertsonian translocations8, and their arrangement is compatible with crossover in inverted duplications on chromosomes 13, 14 and 21. The ubiquity of signals of recombination between heterologous acrocentric chromosomes seen in the HPRC draft pangenome suggests that these shared sequences form the basis for recurrent Robertsonian translocations, providing sequence and population-based confirmation of hypotheses first developed from cytogenetic studies 50 years ago9.Our work depends on the HPRC draft human pangenome resource established in the accompanying Article4, and we thank the production and assembly groups for their efforts in establishing this resource. This work used the computational resources of the UTHSC Octopus cluster and NIH HPC Biowulf cluster. We acknowledge support in maintaining these systems that was critical to our analyses. The authors thank M. Miller for the development of a graphical synopsis of our study (Fig. 5); and R. Williams and N. Soranzo for support and guidance in the design and discussion of our work. This work was supported, in part, by National Institutes of Health/NIDA U01DA047638 (E.G.), National Institutes of Health/NIGMS R01GM123489 (E.G.), NSF PPoSS Award no. 2118709 (E.G. and C.F.), the Tennessee Governor’s Chairs programme (C.F. and E.G.), National Institutes of Health/NCI R01CA266339 (T.P., L.G.d.L. and J.L.G.), and the Intramural Research Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health (A.R., S.K. and A.M.P.). We acknowledge support from Human Technopole (A.G.), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy (S.B. and V.C.), and Stowers Institute for Medical Research (T.P., L.G.d.L., B.R. and J.L.G.).Peer Reviewed"Article signat per 13 autors/es: Andrea Guarracino, Silvia Buonaiuto, Leonardo Gomes de Lima, Tamara Potapova, Arang Rhie, Sergey Koren, Boris Rubinstein, Christian Fischer, Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, Jennifer L. Gerton, Adam M. Phillippy, Vincenza Colonna & Erik Garrison " Human Pangenome Reference Consortium: "Haley J. Abel, Lucinda L. Antonacci-Fulton, Mobin Asri, Gunjan Baid, Carl A. Baker, Anastasiya Belyaeva, Konstantinos Billis, Guillaume Bourque, Silvia Buonaiuto, Andrew Carroll, Mark J. P. Chaisson, Pi-Chuan Chang, Xian H. Chang, Haoyu Cheng, Justin Chu, Sarah Cody, Vincenza Colonna, Daniel E. Cook, Robert M. Cook-Deegan, Omar E. Cornejo, Mark Diekhans, Daniel Doerr, Peter Ebert, Jana Ebler, Evan E. Eichler, Jordan M. Eizenga, Susan Fairley, Olivier Fedrigo, Adam L. Felsenfeld, Xiaowen Feng, Christian Fischer, Paul Flicek, Giulio Formenti, Adam Frankish, Robert S. Fulton, Yan Gao, Shilpa Garg, Erik Garrison, Nanibaa’ A. Garrison, Carlos Garcia Giron, Richard E. Green, Cristian Groza, Andrea Guarracino, Leanne Haggerty, Ira Hall, William T. Harvey, Marina Haukness, David Haussler, Simon Heumos, Glenn Hickey, Kendra Hoekzema, Thibaut Hourlier, Kerstin Howe, Miten Jain, Erich D. Jarvis, Hanlee P. Ji, Eimear E. Kenny, Barbara A. Koenig, Alexey Kolesnikov, Jan O. Korbel, Jennifer Kordosky, Sergey Koren, HoJoon Lee, Alexandra P. Lewis, Heng Li, Wen-Wei Liao, Shuangjia Lu, Tsung-Yu Lu, Julian K. Lucas, Hugo Magalhães, Santiago Marco-Sola, Pierre Marijon, Charles Markello, Tobias Marschall, Fergal J. Martin, Ann McCartney, Jennifer McDaniel, Karen H. Miga, Matthew W. Mitchell, Jean Monlong, Jacquelyn Mountcastle, Katherine M. Munson, Moses Njagi Mwaniki, Maria Nattestad, Adam M. Novak, Sergey Nurk, Hugh E. Olsen, Nathan D. Olson, Benedict Paten, Trevor Pesout, Adam M. Phillippy, Alice B. Popejoy, David Porubsky, Pjotr Prins, Daniela Puiu, Mikko Rautiainen, Allison A. Regier, Arang Rhie, Samuel Sacco, Ashley D. Sanders, Valerie A. Schneider, Baergen I. Schultz, Kishwar Shafin, Jonas A. Sibbesen, Jouni Sirén, Michael W. Smith, Heidi J. Sofia, Ahmad N. Abou Tayoun, Françoise Thibaud-Nissen, Chad Tomlinson, Francesca Floriana Tricomi, Flavia Villani, Mitchell R. Vollger, Justin Wagner, Brian Walenz, Ting Wang, Jonathan M. D. Wood, Aleksey V. Zimin & Justin M. Zook"Postprint (published version

White Matter Microstructural Damage on Diffusion Tensor Imaging in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease

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The Coexistence of asthma and Chronic Ostructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): prevalence and risk factors in young, middle-aged and elderly people from the general population

Background: The joint distribution of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has not been well described. This study aims at determining the prevalence of self-reported physician diagnoses of asthma, COPD and of the asthma-COPD overlap syndrome and to assess whether these conditions share a common set of risk factors. Methods: A screening questionnaire on respiratory symptoms, diagnoses and risk factors was administered by mail or phone to random samples of the general Italian population aged 20–44 (n = 5163) 45–64 (n = 2167) and 65–84 (n = 1030) in the frame of the multicentre Gene Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases (GEIRD) study. Results: A physician diagnosis of asthma or COPD (emphysema/chronic bronchitis/COPD) was reported by 13% and 21% of subjects aged &lt;65 and 65–84 years respectively. Aging was associated with a marked decrease in the prevalence of diagnosed asthma (from 8.2% to 1.6%) and with a marked increase in the prevalence of diagnosed COPD (from 3.3% to 13.3%). The prevalence of the overlap of asthma and COPD was 1.6% (1.3%–2.0%), 2.1% (1.5%–2.8%) and 4.5% (3.2%–5.9%) in the 20–44, 45–64 and 65–84 age groups. Subjects with both asthma and COPD diagnoses were more likely to have respiratory symptoms, physical impairment, and to report hospital admissions compared to asthma or COPD alone (p&lt;0.01). Age, sex, education and smoking showed different and sometimes opposite associations with the three conditions. Conclusion: Asthma and COPD are common in the general population, and they coexist in a substantial proportion of subjects. The asthma-COPD overlap syndrome represents an important clinical phenotype that deserves more medical attention and further research.</br

Mining Induced Ground Motions in a Tailings Dam

Mining induced seismicity can expose tailings dams to ground motions with potential to trigger a failure, if the structure reaches a certain level of vibrations that could exceed the seismic coefficient design criteria from pseudostatic analysis. Despite the cited risk, mainly for dams that are closer to open pits, few dams in Brazil are monitored by microseismic systems, and there are no references in the literature about continuous seismic monitoring both in open pit (source) and tailings dam, which represents the motivation of this paper. A microseismic system was commissioned in Cajati Mine, São Paulo, to record seismic events continuously in an array of 16 geophones (14 Hz and 4.5 Hz), installed in boreholes near the open pit (12 sensors) and in the dam (4 sensors), has measured values of PGA (Peak Ground Acceleration) and PGV (Peak Ground Velocity) related to 2,972 induced events from rock removal in the open pit. During the period monitored, the total of 109 events have triggered sensors in both structures, producing 920 seismograms, with the highest values of PGA and PGV of 0.0135 m/s2 (0.1358% of g) and 0.0892 mm/s. The highest PGA value is 36 times lower than the vertical coefficient of 3% of g defined by Brazilian technical standard to dam design criteria, normally used in common pseudostatic analysis from geotechnical engineers. A routine microseismic monitoring brings a new set of valuable actionable data and information to support the management of geotechnical tailings dams’ risks, under the conditions of vibrations induced by mining production