Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Pathways To Mental Health Care Of First-Episode Psychosis Patients: A Systematic Review., Kelly K. Anderson, Rebecca Fuhrer, Ashok K. Malla

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

BACKGROUND: Although there is agreement on the association between delay in treatment of psychosis and outcome, less is known regarding the pathways to care of patients suffering from a first psychotic episode. Pathways are complex, involve a diverse range of contacts, and are likely to influence delay in treatment. We conducted a systematic review on the nature and determinants of the pathway to care of patients experiencing a first psychotic episode.

METHOD: We searched four databases (Medline, HealthStar, EMBASE, PsycINFO) to identify articles published between 1985 and 2009. We manually searched reference lists and relevant journals and used forward citation …

Nona-Arginine Facilitates Delivery Of Quantum Dots Into Cells Via Multiple Pathways, Yi Xu, Betty Revon Liu, Han Jung Lee, Katie Shannon, Jeffrey G. Winiarz, Tien-Chun Wang, Huey-Jenn Chiang, Yue-Wern Huang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have recently been used to deliver and monitor biomolecules, such as drugs and proteins. However, QDs alone have a low efficiency of transport across the plasma membrane. In order to increase the efficiency, we used synthetic nona-arginine (SR9), a cell-penetrating peptide, to facilitate uptake. We found that SR9 increased the cellular uptake of QDs in a noncovalent binding manner between QDs and SR9. Further, we investigated mechanisms of QD/SR9 cellular internalization. Low temperature and metabolic inhibitors markedly inhibited the uptake of QD/SR9, indicating that internalization is an energy-dependent process. Results from both the pathway inhibitors and …

Event Study Method For Validating Agent-Based Trading Simulations, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we introduce how one can validate an event-centric trading simulation platform that is built with multi-agent technology. The issue of validation is extremely important for agent-based simulations, but unfortunately, so far there is no one universal method that would work in all domains. The primary contribution of this paper is a novel combination of event-centric simulation design and event study approach for market dynamics generation and validation. In our event-centric design, the simulation is progressed by announcing news events that affect market prices. Upon receiving these events, event-aware software agents would adjust their views on the market …

Thinking Outside The Curve, Part Ii: Modeling Fetal-Infant Mortality, Richard Charnigo, Lorie W. Chesnut, Tony Lobianco, Russell S. Kirby

Statistics Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Greater epidemiologic understanding of the relationships among fetal-infant mortality and its prognostic factors, including birthweight, could have vast public health implications. A key step toward that understanding is a realistic and tractable framework for analyzing birthweight distributions and fetal-infant mortality. The present paper is the second of a two-part series that introduces such a framework.

METHODS: We propose estimating birthweight-specific mortality within each component of a normal mixture model representing a birthweight distribution, the number of components having been determined from the data rather than fixed a priori.

RESULTS: We address a number of methodological issues related to our …

Thinking Outside The Curve, Part I: Modeling Birthweight Distribution, Richard Charnigo, Lorie W. Chesnut, Tony Lobianco, Russell S. Kirby

Statistics Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Greater epidemiologic understanding of the relationships among fetal-infant mortality and its prognostic factors, including birthweight, could have vast public health implications. A key step toward that understanding is a realistic and tractable framework for analyzing birthweight distributions and fetal-infant mortality. The present paper is the first of a two-part series that introduces such a framework.

METHODS: We propose describing a birthweight distribution via a normal mixture model in which the number of components is determined from the data using a model selection criterion rather than fixed a priori.

RESULTS: We address a number of methodological issues, including how the …

White Matter Diffusion Alterations In Normal Women At Risk Of Alzheimer's Disease, Charles D. Smith, Himachandra Chebrolu, Anders H. Andersen, David A. Powell, Mark A. Lovell, Shuling Xiong, Brian T. Gold

Neurology Faculty Publications

Increased white matter mean diffusivity and decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) has been observed in subjects diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). We sought to determine whether similar alterations of white matter occur in normal individuals at risk of AD. Diffusion tensor images were acquired in 42 cognitively normal right-handed women with both a family history of dementia and at least one apolipoprotein E4 allele. These were compared with images from 23 normal women without either AD risk factor. Group analyses were performed using tract-based spatial statistics. Reduced FA was observed in the fronto-occipital and inferior temporal …

Interaction Of Extracellular Domain 2 Of The Human Retina-Specific Atp-Binding Cassette Transporter (Abca4) With All-Trans-Retinal., Esther E Biswas-Fiss, Deepa S Kurpad, Kinjalben Joshi, Subhasis B Biswas

Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences & Biotechnology Faculty Papers

The retina-specific ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter, ABCA4, is essential for transport of all-trans-retinal from the rod outer segment discs in the retina and is associated with a broad range of inherited retinal diseases, including Stargardt disease, autosomal recessive cone rod dystrophy, and fundus flavimaculatus. A unique feature of the ABCA subfamily of ABC transporters is the presence of highly conserved, long extracellular loops or domains (ECDs) with unknown function. The high degree of sequence conservation and mapped disease-associated mutations in these domains suggests an important physiological significance. Conformational analysis using CD spectroscopy of purified, recombinant ECD2 protein demonstrated that it …

Partitioning Of Minimotifs Based On Function With Improved Prediction Accuracy, Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, Tian Mi, Jerlin Camilus Merlin, Aaron Oommen, Patrick R. Gradie, Martin R. Schiller

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Background

Minimotifs are short contiguous peptide sequences in proteins that are known to have a function in at least one other protein. One of the principal limitations in minimotif prediction is that false positives limit the usefulness of this approach. As a step toward resolving this problem we have built, implemented, and tested a new data-driven algorithm that reduces false-positive predictions.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Certain domains and minimotifs are known to be strongly associated with a known cellular process or molecular function. Therefore, we hypothesized that by restricting minimotif predictions to those where the minimotif containing protein and target protein have …

A New Design For A Turing Test For Bots, Philip Hingston

Research outputs pre 2011

Interesting, human-like opponents add to the entertainment value of a video game, and creating such opponents is a difficult challenge for programmers. Can artificial intelligence and computational intelligence provide the means to convincingly simulate a human opponent? Or are simple programming tricks and deceptions more effective? To answer these questions, the author designed and organised a game bot programming competition, the BotPrize, in which competitors submit bots that try to pass a “Turing Test for Bots”. In this paper, we describe a new design for the competition, which will make it simpler to run, and, we hope, open up new …