Predictability of hand skill and cognitive abilities from craniofacial width in right- and left-handed men and women: relation of skeletal structure to cerebral function

Recently, a family of homeobox genes involved in brain and craniofacial development was identified. In light of this genetic background, we hypothesized that some functional characteristics of human brain (hand skill, cognition) may be linked to some structural characteristics of human skull (e.g. craniofacial width) in humans. Hand preference was assessed by the Oldfield`s Handedness Questionaire. Hand skill was measured by Peg Moving Task. Face width was measured from the anteroposterior cephalograms (X-ray) using right (R) and left (L) zygomatic points. Intelligence “g” was assessed by Cattell`s Culture Fair Intelligence Test; the perceptual-verbal ability was assessed by “Finding A`s Test”; the spatial ability was assessed by the mental rotation task, in right- and left-handed men and women. The percentages of right-, left-, and mixed-faced subjects were close to those found for paw preference in cats. So, Women tended to be more right-faced (R-L > 0) and less left-faced (R-L < 0) than men who were tended to be more left-faced and less right-faced than women. R-L face width inversely correlated with L-R PMT (peg moving time) in left-handers; there was a direct relation between these variables in right-handers. Cattell-IQ linearly increased with R-L face width in left-handers, negatively correlated in right-handed men and women. Verbal ability inversely related to R – L face width in right- and left-handed men, but directly correlated in right-handed women. Number correct on mental rotation task positively linearly correlated with R-L face width in left-handers and right-handed women. It was concluded that the structural-functional coupling revealed in the present work may have its origins in parallel development of the craniofacial skeleton and brain under the influence of homeobox genes

BilKristal 2.0: A tool for pattern information extraction from crystal structures

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We present a revised version of the BilKristal tool of Okuyan et al. (2007). We converted the development environment into Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 in order to resolve compatibility issues. We added multi-core CPU support and improvements are made to graphics functions in order to improve performance. Discovered bugs are fixed and exporting functionality to a material visualization tool is added

Direct volume rendering of unstructured tetrahedral meshes using CUDA and OpenMP

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Direct volume visualization is an important method in many areas, including computational fluid dynamics and medicine. Achieving interactive rates for direct volume rendering of large unstructured volumetric grids is a challenging problem, but parallelizing direct volume rendering algorithms can help achieve this goal. Using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), we propose a GPU-based volume rendering algorithm that itself is based on a cell projection-based ray-casting algorithm designed for CPU implementations. We also propose a multicore parallelized version of the cell-projection algorithm using OpenMP. In both algorithms, we favor image quality over rendering speed. Our algorithm has a low memory footprint, allowing us to render large datasets. Our algorithm supports progressive rendering. We compared the GPU implementation with the serial and multicore implementations. We observed significant speed-ups that, together with progressive rendering, enables reaching interactive rates for large datasets

The Relationship Between Stock Prices and Exchange Rates: An Empirical Study on Emerging Markets

This study aims to determine whether the traditional or portfolio approach is relevant for developing countries, by using the relationship between stock prices and exchange rates. For this purpose, cointegration (Pesaran et al., 2001) and causality tests (Toda Yamamoto, 1995) are used to examine the relationship between stock prices and exchange rates using monthly data from 13 developing countries. There is a negative relationship between the variables in the long-run, in 6 countries. There is a casual relationship in 8 countries, for 5 countries there is uni-directional causality running from stock prices to exchange rate, for 3 countries there is bi-directional causality between the variables. These findings can be interpreted as the relevance of the portfolio approach in the developing countries examinedExchange Rates, Stock Prices, Bounds Test, Toda Yamamoto Causality

The relationship between foreign investments and stock returns on ISE

Bu çalışmada, İMKB hisse senedi piyasasında yabancılar tarafından gerçekleştirilen işlemlerin hisse senedi getirileri üzerinde etkili olup olmadığı, tabanın genişlemesi (base broadening) hipotezinden yola çıkılarak ortaya konulmaya çalışılmıştır. 1997:01 - 2009:12 tarihleri arasındaki aylık veriler kullanılarak, iki değişken arasındaki eşbütünleşme ilişkisi Pesaran ve diğerleri (2001) tarafından geliştirilen Sınır Testi ve ARDL modelleri yardımıyla analiz edilmiştir. Sonuçta yabancı işlem hacmi ile hisse senedi getirileri arasında uzun dönemde pozitif bir ilişki tespit edilmiş ancak bu ilişkinin kısa dönemde anlamlı olmadığı görülmüştür. Bu bulgular İMKB’de tabanın genişlemesi hipotezinin uzun dönemde geçerli olduğu şeklinde yorumlanabilir.This paper, emerging from base broadening hypothesis, investigates whether the foreign transactions have an affect on the security returns in ISE. The cointegration relationship between two variables has been analyzed by the bounds testing approach developed by Pesaran et. al.(2001) and ARDL models using the monthly data of 1997:01- 2009:12. As a result, a positive relationship has been detected between the foreign transactions and returns of shares in the long run. However, the same relationship is insignificant in the short run. This finding can be interpreted as the validity of base broadening hypotesis in long term in ISE

A Model for Task Repartioning under Data Replication

We propose a two-phase model for solving the problem of task repartitioning under data replication with memory constraints. The hypergraph-partitioning-based model proposed for the first phase aims to minimize the total message volume that will be incurred due to the replication/migration of input data while maintaining balance on computational and receive-volume loads of processors. The network-flow-based model proposed for the second phase aims to minimize the maximum message volume handled by processors via utilizing the flexibility in assigning send-communication tasks to processors, which is introduced by data replication. The validity of our proposed model is verified on parallelization of a direct volume rendering algorithm

Testing for speculative bubbles on ISE

Bu çalışmanın amacı İMKB’de spekülatif şişkinliklerin varlığının süre verisi (duration) modeli ile test edilmesidir. Bu amaçla İMKB’deki hisse senedi fiyatlarında süre bağımlılığı olup olmadığı McQueen ve Thorley (1994)’nin yaklaşımı kullanılarak farklı sektörler bazında araştırılmaktadır. Verilerin başlangıç tarihi IMKB 100 endeksi için 3/7/1987, mali endeks ve sınai endeksi için 28/12/1990, hizmetler için 2/1/1997 ve teknoloji endeksi için 3/7/2000’dir. Seriler başlangıç tarihlerinden 20/02/2008 tarihine kadar olan süreyi kapsamaktadır ve günlük verilerdir. Yapılan hem parametrik hem de parametrik olmayan süre bağımlılığı testlerine göre incelenen tüm sektörlerde spekülatif şişkinliklerin var olmadığı gözlemlenmiştir.The main aim of this study is to examine the existence of speculative bubbles in Turkey using the daily data on ISE-100 and different sectors. For this purpose, the approach developed by McQueen and Thorley (1994), which utilizes duration models, is used. The beginning date of the daily indexes are 3/7/1987 for ISE-100 index, 28/12/1990 for financial and industry indexes, and 2/1/1997 for services index and 3/7/2000 for technology index. The end of observation period for all of the indexes is 20/02/2008. Both parametric and nonparametric duration test results do not support the expectations that there are speculative bubbles in all cases, that is, for the full data (ISE-100) and the data by considering sector differences as well

MaterialVis: Material visualization tool using direct volume and surface rendering techniques

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Visualization of the materials is an indispensable part of their structural analysis. We developed a visualization tool for amorphous as well as crystalline structures, called Material Vis. Unlike the existing tools, Material Vis represents material structures as a volume and a surface manifold, in addition to plain atomic coordinates. Both amorphous and crystalline structures exhibit topological features as well as various defects. Material Vis provides a wide range of functionality to visualize such topological structures and crystal defects interactively. Direct volume rendering techniques are used to visualize the volumetric features of materials, such as crystal defects, which are responsible for the distinct fingerprints of a specific sample. In addition, the tool provides surface visualization to extract hidden topological features within the material. Together with the rich set of parameters and options to control the visualization, Material Vis allows users to visualize various aspects of materials very efficiently as generated by modern analytical techniques such as the Atom Probe Tomography. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved