Clustering of Bi-Dimensional and Heterogeneous Times Series: Application to Social Sciences Data

We present an application of bi-dimensional and heterogeneous time series clustering in order to resolve a Social Sciences study issue. The dataset is the result of a survey involving more than eight thousand handicapped persons. Sociologists need to know if there are in this dataset some homogeneous classes of people according to two attributes: the idea that handicapped people have about the quality of their life and their couple status (i.e. if they have a partner or not). These two attributes are time series so we had to adapt the k-Means clustering algorithm in order to be efficient with this kind of data. For this purpose, we use the Longest Common Subsequence time series distance for its efficiency to manage time stretching and we extend it to the bidimensional and heterogeneous case. The results of our unsupervised process give some pertinent and surprising clusters that can be easily analyzed by sociologists.Présentation d'une application d'un "bi-dimensional and heterogeneous time series clustering" pour résoudre un problème en sciences sociales. Les données concernent plus de huit mille personnes en situation de handicap. Le problème est de savoir s'il existe de groupes homogènes vis-à-vis de la qualité de vie ressentie et de la vie de couple déclarée. A ces deux séries temporelles, un algorithme de k-Means clustering a été adapté. Nous avons utilisé the Longest Common Subsequence time series distance et nous l'avons étendue au cas bi-dimensionnel et hétérogène. Le résultat a été pertinent et surprenant, utile à l'analyse sociologique

The role of prostaglandin E2 (PGE 2) in toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)-mediated colitis-associated neoplasia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We have previously found that TLR4-deficient (TLR4-/-) mice demonstrate decreased expression of mucosal PGE ₂and are protected against colitis-associated neoplasia. However, it is still unclear whether PGE ₂is the central factor downstream of TLR4 signaling that promotes intestinal tumorigenesis. To further elucidate critical downstream pathways involving TLR4-mediated intestinal tumorigenesis, we examined the effects of exogenously administered PGE ₂in TLR4-/- mice to see if PGE ₂bypasses the protection from colitis-associated tumorigenesis.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>Mouse colitis-associated neoplasia was induced by azoxymethane (AOM) injection followed by two cycles of dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) treatment. Two different doses of PGE ₂(high dose group, 200 μg, n = 8; and low dose group, 100 μg, n = 6) were administered daily during recovery period of colitis by gavage feeding. Another group was given PGE ₂during DSS treatment (200 μg, n = 5). Inflammation and dysplasia were assessed histologically. Mucosal Cox-2 and amphiregulin (AR) expression, prostanoid synthesis, and EGFR activation were analyzed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In control mice treated with PBS, the average number of tumors was greater in WT mice (n = 13) than in TLR4-/- mice (n = 7). High dose but not low dose PGE ₂treatment caused an increase in epithelial proliferation. 28.6% of PBS-treated TLR4-/- mice developed dysplasia (tumors/animal: 0.4 ± 0.2). By contrast, 75.0% (tumors/animal: 1.5 ± 1.2, P < 0.05) of the high dose group and 33.3% (tumors/animal: 0.3 ± 0.5) of the low dose group developed dysplasia in TLR4-/- mice. Tumor size was also increased by high dose PGE ₂treatment. Endogenous prostanoid synthesis was differentially affected by PGE ₂treatment during acute and recovery phases of colitis. Exogenous administration of PGE ₂increased colitis-associated tumorigenesis but this only occurred during the recovery phase. Lastly, PGE ₂treatment increased mucosal expression of AR and Cox-2, thus inducing EGFR activation and forming a positive feedback mechanism to amplify mucosal Cox-2.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results highlight the importance of PGE ₂as a central downstream molecule involving TLR4-mediated intestinal tumorigenesis.</p

De Politieke Strijd om Veiligheid: Regulering versus spontaniteit in de partijprogramma's

Veiligheid is een topprioriteit voor politieke partijen. Diepgaande analyse van partijprogramma's leert dat er een algemene toename is van de nadruk op repressieve regulering van de samenleving, en een afname van steun voor het stimuleren van spontane burgers

Standardising Bilingual Lexical Resources According to the Lexicon Markup Framework

The Dutch HLT agency for language and speech technology (known as TST-centrale) at the Institute for Dutch Lexicology is responsible for the maintenance, distribution and accessibility of (Dutch) digital language resources. In this paper we present a project which aims to standardise the format of a set of bilingual lexicons in order to make them available to potential users, to facilitate the exchange of data (among the resources and with other (monolingual) resources) and to enable reuse of these lexicons for NLP applications like machine translation and multilingual information retrieval. We pay special attention to the methods and tools we used and to some of the problematic issues we encountered during the conversion process. As these problems are mainly caused by the fact that the standard LMF model fails in representing the detailed semantic and pragmatic distinctions made in our bilingual data, we propose some modifications to the standard. In general, we think that a standard for lexicons should provide a model for bilingual lexicons that is able to represent all detailed and fine-grained translation information which is generally found in these types of lexicons