A comparison of Monte Carlo generators

A comparison of GENIE, NEUT, NUANCE, and NuWro Monte Carlo neutrino event generators is presented using a set of four observables: protons multiplicity, total visible energy, most energetic proton momentum, and $\pi^+$ two-dimensional energy vs cosine distribution.Comment: 5 pages, 12 figures, Talk given at NUINT12: Eighth International Workshop on Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the Few-GeV Region, October 22-27, 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brasi

Effective Genetic Risk Prediction Using Mixed Models

To date, efforts to produce high-quality polygenic risk scores from genome-wide studies of common disease have focused on estimating and aggregating the effects of multiple SNPs. Here we propose a novel statistical approach for genetic risk prediction, based on random and mixed effects models. Our approach (termed GeRSI) circumvents the need to estimate the effect sizes of numerous SNPs by treating these effects as random, producing predictions which are consistently superior to current state of the art, as we demonstrate in extensive simulation. When applying GeRSI to seven phenotypes from the WTCCC study, we confirm that the use of random effects is most beneficial for diseases that are known to be highly polygenic: hypertension (HT) and bipolar disorder (BD). For HT, there are no significant associations in the WTCCC data. The best existing model yields an AUC of 54%, while GeRSI improves it to 59%. For BD, using GeRSI improves the AUC from 55% to 62%. For individuals ranked at the top 10% of BD risk predictions, using GeRSI substantially increases the BD relative risk from 1.4 to 2.5.Comment: main text: 14 pages, 3 figures. Supplementary text: 16 pages, 21 figure

Chief Scientist Grants: a Waste of Public Money

The chief scientist program is designed to support Israeli technological projects. The level of subsidization, as revealed in JIMS' position paper, is much higher than the level used by OECD members. In fact, the Chief Scientist office distributes freely taxpayers' money without filtering and sorting the best projects. Usually, the bulk of the budget is given to large companies with extended public relations budgets. In the past 10 years, national expenditure on civilian R&D as a percent of GDP has more than doubled, from 2.2% in 1995 to 4.7% in 2008.Chief Scientist, Research and Development, R&D, Taxes, Grants