The effects of family size and birth order on an individual's g level

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to investigate whether the environment created by being born in a specific birth order and/or family size affects individuals’ general intelligence, or g. Based on the phenomenon of rising Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores observed across generations, the fact that IQ and g are highly correlated and that most, if not all, between-family variables have been shown not to produce the rising effect, it was hypothesized that there could be a significant difference in g scores of siblings of the same family and those of different sized families born in the same position. Birth order and family size could be argued to encompass most within-family factors that result in influencing the family environment and its influence on each child within it. Each child is part of the same within-family environment, however, within this framework each individual’s experience is different, accounting for the non-shared environment effects. This notion is supported by two models which attribute varying levels of IQ to children of the same family based on their birth order and family size. The Confluence and the Resource Dilution Models were discussed as possible explanations of what happens to g levels, should any difference between birth order and family size be uncovered. Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) were used to quantify the participants’ g levels with respect to the two research questions. Girl only families participated in this study to eliminate developmental factors between girls and boys of the same age. Siblings’ scores were compared for birth-order effects and the scores of children from the various sized families were compared for family size effects. Repeated measures analysis of variance was applied to test for birth order effects. One-way analysis of variance and one sample t tests were applied to test for family size effects. No significant birth-order effects were found, however, the pattern of achieved means increased with birth order which is in opposition to both models. The one significant finding for family size came in the form of the second borns of two daughters outperforming the second borns of three daughters. The findings and the trends of the achieved means between all birth order and family size variant groups were examined in light of findings of previous research on this topic

Stability of Ranked Gene Lists in Large Microarray Analysis Studies

This paper presents an empirical study that aims to explain the relationship between the number of samples and stability of different gene selection techniques for microarray datasets. Unlike other similar studies where number of genes in a ranked gene list is variable, this study uses an alternative approach where stability is observed at different number of samples that are used for gene selection. Three different metrics of stability, including a novel metric in bioinformatics, were used to estimate the stability of the ranked gene lists. Results of this study demonstrate that the univariate selection methods produce significantly more stable ranked gene lists than the multivariate selection methods used in this study. More specifically, thousands of samples are needed for these multivariate selection methods to achieve the same level of stability any given univariate selection method can achieve with only hundreds

Gene set enrichment meta-learning analysis: next- generation sequencing versus microarrays

Background Reproducibility of results can have a significant impact on the acceptance of new technologies in gene expression analysis. With the recent introduction of the so-called next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology and established microarrays, one is able to choose between two completely different platforms for gene expression measurements. This study introduces a novel methodology for gene-ranking stability analysis that is applied to the evaluation of gene-ranking reproducibility on NGS and microarray data. Results The same data used in a well-known MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) study was also used in this study to compare ranked lists of genes from MAQC samples A and B, obtained from Affymetrix HG-U133 Plus 2.0 and Roche 454 Genome Sequencer FLX platforms. An initial evaluation, where the percentage ofoverlapping genes was observed, demonstrates higher reproducibility on microarray data in 10 out of 11 gene-ranking methods. A gene set enrichment analysis shows similar enrichment of top gene sets when NGS is compared with microarrays on a pathway level. Our novel approach demonstrates high accuracy of decision trees when used for knowledge extraction from multiple bootstrapped gene set enrichment analysis runs. A comparison of the two approaches in sample preparation for high-throughput sequencing shows that alternating decision trees represent the optimal knowledge representation method in comparison with classical decision trees. Conclusions Usual reproducibility measurements are mostly based on statistical techniques that offer very limited biological insights into the studied gene expression data sets. This paper introduces the meta-learning-based gene set enrichment analysis that can be used to complement the analysis of gene-ranking stabilityestimation techniques such as percentage of overlapping genes or classic gene set enrichment analysis. It is useful and practical when reproducibility of gene ranking results or different gene selection techniquesis observed. The proposed method reveals very accurate descriptive models that capture the co-enrichment of gene sets which are differently enriched in the compared data sets

Experimental Investigation of an Overriding Control to Effect Recovery from Surge and Stall in a Turbojet Engine

The override was designed to automatically recover the engine from stall and surge by reducing fuel flow and then increasing fuel flow in a manner to avoid repeated stalls and surges and successfully complete the acceleration. One of two parameters was used to operate the override, tailpipe temperature, or the derivative of compressor-discharge pressure. The override operating with tailpipe temperature recovered the engine from stall and surge. Operating on compressor-discharge-pressure derivative, the override recovered the engine from surge, but failed when stall was encountered

Selection of an optimal substructure in the distributed arithmetic FIR digital filter

Nerekurzivna digitalna sita v porazdeljeni aritmetiki in aritmetiki s fiksno decimalno vejico se uporabljajo v hitrih sistemih za digitalno obdelavo podatkov, kjer se zahteva stabilnost odzivov in linearne fazne poteke pri zahtevanem velikem dušenju ali veliki strmini bokov. Med različnimi realizacijskimi oblikami smo primerjali kaskadno, vzporedno in kombinirano realizacijsko obliko. Primerjali smo frekvenčne lastnosti, kvantizacijski šum in aparaturno kompleksnost.For digital signal processing in high-speed systems FIR digital filters are used, especially in applications where linear time-invariant stable response and linear phase are needed. A fixed point arithmetic is applied in such systems. The hardware main problem in the design of high-speed FIR digital filters is the complexity. In practical realizations of FIR digital filters, the circuits containe many adders, inverters, registers and multipliers. Among these basic digital elements, the multiplier has most of the hardware complexity and its time response is the greatest. A distributed arithmetic was developed for this reason by some authors. In the hardware realization the multiplier is substituted with a memory, adder and register. The partial sum of coefficients is written in the memory. The partial sum from memory with the previous result from the adder divided by two in the adder is calculated. The previous result from the adder is written in the register on b-iteration of the summed partial results is needed for the calculation of one entire product in the case of the distributed arithmetic. b is the number of bits in the input word. The complexity of the hardware realization of all FIR digital filters in the distributed arithmetic is determined with the word length in all substructures, with ripple in passband and stopband and with the width of transition band on the frequency response. With an increase in the word length, sharpness of the frequency response in transition band and reduction of ripple in passband and stopband the number of basic elements and the time response are increased. The capacity of the memory is determined with 2N, N is the number of impulse response coefficients. In modern digital filter designs the sampling frequency is limited to 20MHz and the number of impulse response coefficients to 200. With the new technology of digital circuits this limit will be increased. Our paper deals with the possibility of reducing the memory capacity by using a combined realization form. The combined realization form contains a cascade-connected structure built with a parallel subsection. We present two FIR digital filters in the distributed arithmetic realization form. The first one is realized with digital elements such as logic gates, adders, inverters and registers, and the other one with digital elements and read-write memory. Both forms are suitable for realization in custom-design integrated circuits or in PLD. Another advantage of our contribution is an optimal word length in all subsections with consideration of the roundoff noise and expected ripple in passband and stopband. As a result, an optimal lowpass FIR digital filter in the distributed arithmetic with 61 coefficients of the impulse response usefulness of the combined realization form is presented and analysed. For the combined realization form of the FIR digital filter design impulse response coefficients are needed. These coefficients can be calculated with software such as MATLAB. The impulseresponse coefficients h(k) are the coefficients of transfer function H(z). From the zeros of the transfer function of the FIR digital filter the zeros of the cascade structure are selected. This selection requires approximately an equal number of zeros in all cascaded structures, and a similar frequency response in all cascaded structures with the frequency response of the whole FIR digital filter. With this selection, the hardware complexity of the cascaded structure is almost the same and the magnitude of the output signal from all the cascaded structures is suitably high. The output signal as a response to the input white noise signal is calculated with our program package for simulation of an FIR digital filter structure. Depending on quantization errors, an optimal word length in all sections is chosen. The simulated results and the theoretically calculated quantization errors with linear quantization error models are compared. A simplified method for determination of the optimal word length was searched for by using theoretically calculated quan

Experimental Investigation of a Surge Control on a Turbojet Engine

The action of a surge control that reduced fuel flow after receiving an indication of surge initiation was investigated. The control system could successfully limit surge to only 1 cycle but could not completely eliminate surge. Inability to interrupt a surge cycle before its completion was attributed to the conclusion that a surge cycle is irreversible

AND Protocols Using Only Uniform Shuffles

Secure multi-party computation using a deck of playing cards has been a subject of research since the "five-card trick" introduced by den Boer in 1989. One of the main problems in card-based cryptography is to design committed-format protocols to compute a Boolean AND operation subject to different runtime and shuffle restrictions by using as few cards as possible. In this paper, we introduce two AND protocols that use only uniform shuffles. The first one requires four cards and is a restart-free Las Vegas protocol with finite expected runtime. The second one requires five cards and always terminates in finite time.Comment: This paper has appeared at CSR 201