Adding spaces to Thai and English: Effects on reading

Most research on reading has used Western languages, which have the property of being spaced. This paper examines how spacing and meaning affect reading in Thai, a modern, alphabetic and unspaced language. Results show that subjects were faster in reading and made less errors when spaces were added. Meaning facilitates reading as well, and does not interact with spacing. Finally, ability to read unspaced texts in Thai does not transfer to English. The results support the hypothesis that spaces, when present at all, offer perceptual cues that facilitate reading. Efficiency considerations raise the question of whether Thai should follow the example of Western languages and incorporate spaces and punctuation

Fractional smoothness and applications in finance

This overview article concerns the notion of fractional smoothness of random variables of the form $g(X_T)$, where $X=(X_t)_{t\in [0,T]}$ is a certain diffusion process. We review the connection to the real interpolation theory, give examples and applications of this concept. The applications in stochastic finance mainly concern the analysis of discrete time hedging errors. We close the review by indicating some further developments.Comment: Chapter of AMAMEF book. 20 pages

Characteristic bimodal profiles of RNA polymerase II at thousands of active mammalian promoters.

BACKGROUND: In mammals, ChIP-seq studies of RNA polymerase II (PolII) occupancy have been performed to reveal how recruitment, initiation and pausing of PolII may control transcription rates, but the focus is rarely on obtaining finely resolved profiles that can portray the progression of PolII through sequential promoter states. RESULTS: Here, we analyze PolII binding profiles from high-coverage ChIP-seq on promoters of actively transcribed genes in mouse and humans. We show that the enrichment of PolII near transcription start sites exhibits a stereotypical bimodal structure, with one peak near active transcription start sites and a second peak 110 base pairs downstream from the first. Using an empirical model that reliably quantifies the spatial PolII signal, gene by gene, we show that the first PolII peak allows for refined positioning of transcription start sites, which is corroborated by mRNA sequencing. This bimodal signature is found both in mouse and humans. Analysis of the pausing-related factors NELF and DSIF suggests that the downstream peak reflects widespread pausing at the +1 nucleosome barrier. Several features of the bimodal pattern are correlated with sequence features such as CpG content and TATA boxes, as well as the histone mark H3K4me3. CONCLUSIONS: We thus show how high coverage DNA sequencing experiments can reveal as-yet unnoticed bimodal spatial features of PolII accumulation that are frequent at individual mammalian genes and reminiscent of transcription initiation and pausing. The initiation-pausing hypothesis is corroborated by evidence from run-on sequencing and immunoprecipitation in other cell types and species

Regulation of Mammalian Physiology by Interconnected Circadian and Feeding Rhythms.

Circadian clocks are endogenous timekeeping systems that adapt in an anticipatory fashion the physiology and behavior of most living organisms. In mammals, the master pacemaker resides in the suprachiasmatic nucleus and entrains peripheral clocks using a wide range of signals that differentially schedule physiology and gene expression in a tissue-specific manner. The peripheral clocks, such as those found in the liver, are particularly sensitive to rhythmic external cues like feeding behavior, which modulate the phase and amplitude of rhythmic gene expression. Consequently, the liver clock temporally tunes the expression of many genes involved in metabolism and physiology. However, the circadian modulation of cellular functions also relies on multiple layers of posttranscriptional and posttranslational regulation. Strikingly, these additional regulatory events may happen independently of any transcriptional oscillations, showing that complex regulatory networks ultimately drive circadian output functions. These rhythmic events also integrate feeding-related cues and adapt various metabolic processes to food availability schedules. The importance of such temporal regulation of metabolism is illustrated by metabolic dysfunctions and diseases resulting from circadian clock disruption or inappropriate feeding patterns. Therefore, the study of circadian clocks and rhythmic feeding behavior should be of interest to further advance our understanding of the prevention and therapy of metabolic diseases

Evolving process-based models from psychological datausing genetic programming

The development of computational models to provide explanations of psychological data can be achieved using semi-automated search techniques, such as genetic programming. One challenge with these techniques is to control the type of model that is evolved to be cognitively plausible – a typical problem is that of “bloating”, where continued evolution generates models of increasing size without improving overall fitness. In this paper we describe a system for representing psychological data, a class of process-based models, and algorithms for evolving models. We apply this system to the delayed match-to-sample task. We show how the challenge of bloating may be addressed by extending the fitness function to include measures of cognitive performance

Submicron silicon powder production in an aerosol reactor

Powder synthesis by thermally induced vapor phase reactions is described. The powder generated by this technique consists of spherical, nonagglomerated particles of high purity. The particles are uniform in size, in the 0.1–0.2 µm size range. Most of the particles are crystalline spheres. A small fraction of the spheres are amorphous. Chain agglomerates account for less than 1% of the spherules

Perturbed rhythmic activation of signaling pathways in mice deficient for Sterol Carrier Protein 2-dependent diurnal lipid transport and metabolism.

Through evolution, most of the living species have acquired a time keeping system to anticipate daily changes caused by the rotation of the Earth. In all of the systems this pacemaker is based on a molecular transcriptional/translational negative feedback loop able to generate rhythmic gene expression with a period close to 24 hours. Recent evidences suggest that post-transcriptional regulations activated mostly by systemic cues play a fundamental role in the process, fine tuning the time keeping system and linking it to animal physiology. Among these signals, we consider the role of lipid transport and metabolism regulated by SCP2. Mice harboring a deletion of the Scp2 locus present a modulated diurnal accumulation of lipids in the liver and a perturbed activation of several signaling pathways including PPARα, SREBP, LRH-1, TORC1 and its upstream regulators. This defect in signaling pathways activation feedbacks upon the clock by lengthening the circadian period of animals through post-translational regulation of core clock regulators, showing that rhythmic lipid transport is a major player in the establishment of rhythmic mRNA and protein expression landscape

Structural variant calling: the long and the short of it.

Recent research into structural variants (SVs) has established their importance to medicine and molecular biology, elucidating their role in various diseases, regulation of gene expression, ethnic diversity, and large-scale chromosome evolution-giving rise to the differences within populations and among species. Nevertheless, characterizing SVs and determining the optimal approach for a given experimental design remains a computational and scientific challenge. Multiple approaches have emerged to target various SV classes, zygosities, and size ranges. Here, we review these approaches with respect to their ability to infer SVs across the full spectrum of large, complex variations and present computational methods for each approach

The Euler-Maruyama approximation for the absorption time of the CEV diffusion

A standard convergence analysis of the simulation schemes for the hitting times of diffusions typically requires non-degeneracy of their coefficients on the boundary, which excludes the possibility of absorption. In this paper we consider the CEV diffusion from the mathematical finance and show how a weakly consistent approximation for the absorption time can be constructed, using the Euler-Maruyama scheme

Herbert Simon's decision-making approach: Investigation of cognitive processes in experts

This is a post print version of the article. The official published can be obtained from the links below - PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.Herbert Simon's research endeavor aimed to understand the processes that participate in human decision making. However, despite his effort to investigate this question, his work did not have the impact in the “decision making” community that it had in other fields. His rejection of the assumption of perfect rationality, made in mainstream economics, led him to develop the concept of bounded rationality. Simon's approach also emphasized the limitations of the cognitive system, the change of processes due to expertise, and the direct empirical study of cognitive processes involved in decision making. In this article, we argue that his subsequent research program in problem solving and expertise offered critical tools for studying decision-making processes that took into account his original notion of bounded rationality. Unfortunately, these tools were ignored by the main research paradigms in decision making, such as Tversky and Kahneman's biased rationality approach (also known as the heuristics and biases approach) and the ecological approach advanced by Gigerenzer and others. We make a proposal of how to integrate Simon's approach with the main current approaches to decision making. We argue that this would lead to better models of decision making that are more generalizable, have higher ecological validity, include specification of cognitive processes, and provide a better understanding of the interaction between the characteristics of the cognitive system and the contingencies of the environment