Graph presentations for moments of noncentral Wishart distributions and their applications

We provide formulas for the moments of the real and complex noncentral Wishart distributions of general degrees. The obtained formulas for the real and complex cases are described in terms of the undirected and directed graphs, respectively. By considering degenerate cases, we give explicit formulas for the moments of bivariate chi-square distributions and $2\times 2$ Wishart distributions by enumerating the graphs. Noting that the Laguerre polynomials can be considered to be moments of a noncentral chi-square distributions formally, we demonstrate a combinatorial interpretation of the coefficients of the Laguerre polynomials

Pseudo session-based recommendation with hierarchical embedding and session attributes

Recently, electronic commerce (EC) websites have been unable to provide an identification number (user ID) for each transaction data entry because of privacy issues. Because most recommendation methods assume that all data are assigned a user ID, they cannot be applied to the data without user IDs. Recently, session-based recommendation (SBR) based on session information, which is short-term behavioral information of users, has been studied. A general SBR uses only information about the item of interest to make a recommendation (e.g., item ID for an EC site). Particularly in the case of EC sites, the data recorded include the name of the item being purchased, the price of the item, the category hierarchy, and the gender and region of the user. In this study, we define a pseudo--session for the purchase history data of an EC site without user IDs and session IDs. Finally, we propose an SBR with a co-guided heterogeneous hypergraph and globalgraph network plus, called CoHHGN+. The results show that our CoHHGN+ can recommend items with higher performance than other methods.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figures, 5 table

CASE STUDY ON ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOR OF SCHOOL LUNCH OFFICIALS REGARDING UTILIZATION OF LOCAL PRODUCE -FOCUSING ON THE DIFFERENCE OF OCCUPATION

This study was conducted in January 2010 to identify influential factors for utilization of local produce in school lunch services and factor-correlations in terms of employment types and item types and to review the evaluation index for shokuiku. The research participants were 56 nutrition teachers, 91 school principals, and 23 school lunch directors. The study revealed that school lunch staff had high awareness and behavioral motivation for using local ingredients. School lunch directors were concerned about managerial aspects such as “high price” and “not enough variety and quantity” for making lunches with local ingredients only.  The principals expressed high opinion on educational or administrative advantages of using local ingredients in “increased number of local cuisine in the menu” and “securing food safety” but showed low awareness on problems related to using local produce to cook for entire student body such as “longer cooking time” and “not enough providers.” Correlation between questionnaire items revealed that there was a strong positive relation between items emphasizing advantages of using local produce. The results showed that using local produce for providing school lunches could induce changes in behaviors, such as frequenting local produce markets, and it is considered to become a good evaluation index for developing shokuiku

Convergence Stability of Depth-Depth-Matching-Based Steepest Descent Method in Simulated Liver Surgery

We recently established that our digital potential function was globally stable at the point where a virtual liver coincided with its real counterpart. In particular, because three rotational degrees of freedom are frequently used in a surgical operation on a real liver, stability of the potential function concerning three rotational degrees of freedom was carefully verified in the laboratory, using fluorescent lamps and sunlight. We achieved the same stability for several simulated liver operations using a 3D printed viscoelastic liver in a surgical operating room equipped with two light-emitting diode shadowless lamps. As a result, with increasing number of lamps, stability of our depth-depth matching in the steepest descendent algorithm improved because the lamps did not emit an infrared spectrum such as the one emitted by our depth camera. Furthermore, the slower the angular velocity in a surgical sequence, the more overall stability improved

Decelerated epigenetic aging associated with mood stabilizers in the blood of patients with bipolar disorder

There is high mortality among patients with bipolar disorder (BD). Studies have reported accelerated biological aging in patients with BD. Recently, Horvath and Hannum et al. independently developed DNA methylation (DNAm) profiles as “epigenetic clocks,” which are the most accurate biological age estimate. This led to the development of two accomplished measures of epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) using blood samples, namely, intrinsic and extrinsic EAA (IEAA and EEAA, respectively). IEAA, which is based on Horvath’s clock, is independent of blood cell counts and indicates cell-intrinsic aging. On the other hand, EEAA, which is based on Hannum’s clock, is associated with age-dependent changes in blood cell counts and indicates immune system aging. Further, Lu et al. developed the “GrimAge” clock, which can strongly predict the mortality risk, and DNAm-based telomere length (DNAmTL). We used a DNAm dataset from whole blood samples obtained from 30 patients with BD and 30 healthy controls. We investigated Horvath EAA, IEAA, Hannum EAA, EEAA, Grim EAA, DNAmTL, and DNAm-based blood cell composition. Compared with controls, there was a decrease in Horvath EAA and IEAA in patients with BD. Further, there was a significant decrease in Horvath EAA and IEAA in patients with BD taking medication combinations of mood stabilizers (including lithium carbonate, sodium valproate, and carbamazepine) than in those taking no medication/monotherapy. This study provides novel evidence indicating decelerated epigenetic aging associated with mood stabilizers in patients with BD

CASE STUDY ON ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOR OF SCHOOL LUNCH OFFICIALS REGARDING UTILIZATION OF LOCAL PRODUCE -FOCUSING ON THE DIFFERENCE OF OCCUPATION

This study was conducted in January 2010 to identify influential factors for utilization of local produce in school lunch services and factor-correlations in terms of employment types and item types and to review the evaluation index for shokuiku. The research participants were 56 nutrition teachers, 91 school principals, and 23 school lunch directors. The study revealed that school lunch staff had high awareness and behavioral motivation for using local ingredients.School lunch directors were concerned about managerial aspects such as “high price” and “not enough variety and quantity” for making lunches with local ingredients only. The principals expressed high opinion on educational or administrative advantages of using local ingredients in “increased number of local cuisine in the menu” and “securing food safety” but showed low awareness on problems related to using local produce to cook for entire student body such as “longer cooking time” and “not enough providers.” Correlation between questionnaire items revealed that there was a strong positive relation between items emphasizing advantages of using local produce. The results showed that using local produce for providing school lunches could induce changes in behaviors, such as frequenting local produce markets, and it is considered to become a good evaluation index for developing shokuiku

mtDNA and Hemodynamics in Mood Disorders

Background: Given a lack of markers, diagnoses of bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) rely on clinical assessment of symptoms. However, the depressive mood states of BD and depressive symptoms of MDD are often difficult to distinguish, which leads to misdiagnoses, which in turn leads to inadequate treatment. Previous studies have shown that the hemodynamic responses of the left frontopolar cortex measured by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) differ between BD and MDD; these hemodynamic responses are associated with altered mitochondrial metabolism; and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn), an index of mitochondrial dysfunction, tends to decrease in BD and increase in MDD patients. In this study, we confirmed that mtDNAcn trends in opposite directions in BD and MDD. We then determined whether mtDNAcn could enhance the utility of NIRS as a diagnostic marker to distinguish between BD and MDD. Methods: We determined mtDNAcn in peripheral blood samples from 58 healthy controls, 79 patients with BD, and 44 patients with MDD. Regional hemodynamic responses during a verbal fluency task (VFT) in 24 BD patients and 44 MDD patients, matched by age and depression severity, were monitored using NIRS. Results: Measurements of mtDNAcn were lower in BD patients and higher in MDD patients than in controls. The left frontopolar region exhibited the most significant differences in mean VFT-related oxy-Hb changes between the BD and MDD groups. Multivariate logistic regression analysis with variables including age, sex, hemodynamic response of the left frontopolar region, and mtDNAcn showed high accuracy for distinguishing BD from MDD (area under the curve = 0.917; 95% confidence interval = 0.849–0.985). For the BD group, we observed a positive correlation between hemodynamic responses in the left frontopolar region and mtDNAcn, while for the MDD group, we observed a negative correlation. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the association between hemodynamic response and mitochondrial dysfunction in BD or MDD plays an important role in differentiating the pathophysiological mechanisms of BD from those of MDD