Identification of common genetic risk variants for autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heritable and heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental phenotypes diagnosed in more than 1% of children. Common genetic variants contribute substantially to ASD susceptibility, but to date no individual variants have been robustly associated with ASD. With a marked sample-size increase from a unique Danish population resource, we report a genome-wide association meta-analysis of 18,381 individuals with ASD and 27,969 controls that identified five genome-wide-significant loci. Leveraging GWAS results from three phenotypes with significantly overlapping genetic architectures (schizophrenia, major depression, and educational attainment), we identified seven additional loci shared with other traits at equally strict significance levels. Dissecting the polygenic architecture, we found both quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes. These results highlight biological insights, particularly relating to neuronal function and corticogenesis, and establish that GWAS performed at scale will be much more productive in the near term in ASD.Peer reviewe

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background: Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. Methods: The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model—a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates—with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality—which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. Findings: The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2–100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1–290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1–211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4–48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3–37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7–9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. Interpretation: Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Molecular field theories for biaxial liquid crystals

This thesis consists of five studies on the applications of the molecular field theory to model systems of biaxial molecules which form biaxial and uniaxial nematic and smectic A phases. The first study extends the original theory for biaxial nematic phases of D2h symmetry to allow the phase symmetry to be C2h. In the second study, a dipolar interaction is introduced to the original model of biaxial nematic phases formed from V-shaped molecules to explain a disagreement between theory and experiment. This leads to the stabilisation of the novel polar biaxial nematic phase. In the third study, we introduce molecular flexibility at a simplified level into an existing model of V-shaped molecules to investigate its effects on the stability of the biaxial nematic phases. The fourth study aims to explain and predict various effects of magnetic field on the uniaxial nematic to isotropic phase transition for a system of rigid V-shaped molecules. In the fifth study, we develop a model for biaxial smectic A phases. The theory is simplified by using several approximations which facilitates the calculations

On the lower bound of local optimums in k-means algorithm

10.1109/ICDM.2006.118Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, ICDM775-78

Schema-as-you-go: On probabilistic tagging and querying of wide tables

10.1145/1989323.1989343Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data181-19

Molecular field theory for biaxial smectic A liquid crystals

Thermotropic biaxial nematic phases seem to be rare, but biaxial smectic A phases less so. Here we use molecular field theory to study a simple two-parameter model, with one parameter promoting a biaxial phase and the second promoting smecticity. The theory combines the biaxial Maier-Saupe and McMillan models. We use alternatively the Sonnet-Virga-Durand (SVD) and geometric mean approximations (GMA) to characterize molecular biaxiality by a single parameter. For non-zero smecticity and biaxiality, the model always predicts a ground state biaxial smectic A phase. For a low degree of smectic order, the phase diagram is very rich, predicting uniaxial and biaxial nematic and smectic phases, with the addition of a variety of tricritical and tetracritical points. For higher degrees of smecticity, the region of stability of the biaxial nematic phase is restricted and eventually disappears, yielding to the biaxial smectic phase. Phase diagrams from the two alternative approximations for molecular biaxiality are similar, except inasmuch that SVD allows for a first-order isotropic-biaxial nematic transition, whereas GMA predicts a Landau point separating isotropic and biaxial nematic phases. We speculate that the rarity of thermotropic biaxial nematic phases is partly a consequence of the presence of stabler analogous smectic phase

Validating multi-column schema matchings by type

10.1109/ICDE.2008.4497420Proceedings - International Conference on Data Engineering120-12

Synthesis and cytotoxicity of dibenzo[(γ-aryl)pyridino]aza-17-crown-5 ethers

For the development of new anticancer agents, dibenzo[(γ-aryl)pyridino]aza-17-crown-5 ethers containing 2,4,6-triarylpyridine were synthesized successfully by one-step domino-condensation of 1,8-bis(2-acetylphenoxy)-3,6-dioxaoctane, arylaldehydes and ammonium acetate according to the conditions of Hantzsch reactions. The synthesized γ-arylpyridine derivatives show high cytotoxic activity against human cancer cell lines: Hep-G2, RD, FL, Lu1. Compounds (3b,c) showed significant cytotoxicity against all four human cell lines whereas the similar synthesized compound (3d) possessed cytotoxicity against HepG2, Lu1 and RD cell lines. Meantime, both compounds (3f,g) containing γ-heteroaryl only exhibited cytotoxicity against RD and FL cell lines. Azacrown ethers (3b-d) exhibited low activity on the Vero cell line, meaning that they can be evaluated for their potential as promising anticancer agents. X-Ray structure study was performed to determine the structure of the representative compound 3a. © ISUCT Publishing

Synthesis and cytotoxicity of dibenzo[(γ-aryl)pyridino]aza-17-crown-5 ethers

For the development of new anticancer agents, dibenzo[(γ-aryl)pyridino]aza-17-crown-5 ethers containing 2,4,6-triarylpyridine were synthesized successfully by one-step domino-condensation of 1,8-bis(2-acetylphenoxy)-3,6-dioxaoctane, arylaldehydes and ammonium acetate according to the conditions of Hantzsch reactions. The synthesized γ-arylpyridine derivatives show high cytotoxic activity against human cancer cell lines: Hep-G2, RD, FL, Lu1. Compounds (3b,c) showed significant cytotoxicity against all four human cell lines whereas the similar synthesized compound (3d) possessed cytotoxicity against HepG2, Lu1 and RD cell lines. Meantime, both compounds (3f,g) containing γ-heteroaryl only exhibited cytotoxicity against RD and FL cell lines. Azacrown ethers (3b-d) exhibited low activity on the Vero cell line, meaning that they can be evaluated for their potential as promising anticancer agents. X-Ray structure study was performed to determine the structure of the representative compound 3a. © ISUCT Publishing