48,939 research outputs found
Population entropies estimates of proteins
No full textThe Shannon entropy equation provides a way to estimate variability of amino acids sequences in a multiple sequence alignment of proteins. Knowledge of protein variability is useful in many areas such as vaccine design, identification of antibody binding sites, and exploration of protein 3D structural properties. In cases where the population entropies of a protein are of interest but only a small sample size can be obtained, a method based on linear regression and random subsampling can be used to estimate the population entropy. This method is useful for comparisons of entropies where the actual sequence counts differ and thus, correction for alignment size bias is needed. In the current work, an R based package named EntropyCorrect that enables estimation of population entropy is presented and an empirical study on how well this new algorithm performs on simulated dataset of various combinations of population and sample sizes is discussed. The package is available at https://github.com/lloydlow/EntropyCorrectWai Yee Lo
Reduced Complexity In-phase/Quadrature-phase Turbo Equalisation Using Radial Basis Functions
No full textA novel reduced complexity Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network based equaliser, referred to as the In-phase/Quadrature-phase RBF Equaliser (I/Q-RBF-EQ), is proposed. The I/Q-RBF-EQ is employed in the context of turbo equalisation (TEQ) assisted by iterative channel estimation. The performance of the I/Q-RBF-TEQ is characterized in a noise limited environment over an equally weighted, symbol-spaced three-path Rayleigh fading channel. The I/Q-RBF-TEQ achieved the same performance as the conventional turbo equaliser, while achieving a complexity reduction by a factor of 1.5 and 109.6 for 4-QAM and 16-QAM, respectively
Burst-by-Burst Adaptive Turbo-Coded Radial Basis Function-Assisted Decision Feedback Equalization
No full textThe performance of the proposed radial basis function (RBF) assisted turbo-coded adaptive modulation scheme is characterized in a wideband channel scenario. We commence by introducing the novel concept of the Jacobian RBF equalizer, which is a reduced-complexity version of the conventional RBF equalizer. Specifically, the Jacobian logarithmic RBF equalizer generates its output in the logarithmic domain and hence it can be used to provide soft outputs for the turbo-channel decoder. We propose using the average magnitude of the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of the bits in the received transmission burst before channel decoding as the channel quality measure for controlling the mode-switching regime of our adaptive scheme
Student Expectations in the New Millennium
No full textHigher education has experienced vast changes as a result of global political and economic developments. Cultural and social changes in the last decade have also added to the continuing evolution of higher education. These changes inevitably lead to changing expectations of students entering higher education. An adequate understanding of student expectations is crucial in ensuring a good fit between higher educational institutions and their students. This study attempts to carry out a baseline descriptive-quantitative research on student expectations in the higher education of Hong Kong. Four scales have been developed to measure students’ attitude toward: 1. job-oriented curriculum design, 2. user-friendly course delivery method, 3. opportunities for lifelong learning, and 4. student consumerism. Students’ priority of what makes a good university, their reasons for going to university, and their self-perception of ability to cope with university life are also explored. The Student Expectations Questionnaire (developed by the author) was used to gather data from 857 first-year undergrads from nine institutions of higher education in Hong Kong. Analyses include, among others, gender, age, major of study as well as institution comparisons
Entropy splitting for high-order numerical simulation of compressible turbulence
No full textA stable high-order numerical scheme for direct numerical simulation (DNS) of shock-free compressible turbulence is presented. The method is applicable to general geometries. It contains no upwinding, artificial dissipation, or filtering. Instead the method relies on the stabilizing mechanisms of an appropriate conditioning of the governing equations and the use of compatible spatial difference operators for the interior points (interior scheme) as well as the boundary points (boundary scheme). An entropy-splitting approach splits the inviscid flux derivatives into conservative and nonconservative portions. The spatial difference operators satisfy a summation-by-parts condition, leading to a stable scheme (combined interior and boundary schemes) for the initial boundary value problem using a generalized energy estimate. A Laplacian formulation of the viscous and heat conduction terms on the right hand side of the Navier–Stokes equations is used to ensure that any tendency to odd–even decoupling associated with central schemes can be countered by the fluid viscosity. The resulting methods are able to minimize the spurious high-frequency oscillations associated with pure central schemes, especially for long time integration applications such as DNS. For validation purposes, the methods are tested in a DNS of compressible turbulent plane channel flow at low values of friction Mach number, where reference turbulence data bases exist. It is demonstrated that the methods are robust in terms of grid resolution, and in good agreement with published channel data. Accurate turbulence statistics can be obtained with moderate grid sizes. Stability limits on the range of the splitting parameter are determined from numerical tests
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Coded Modulation Assisted Radial Basis Function Aided Turbo Equalisation for Dispersive Rayleigh Fading Channels
No full textIn this contribution a range of Coded Modulation (CM) assisted Radial Basis Function (RBF) based Turbo Equalisation (TEQ) schemes are investigated when communicating over dispersive Rayleigh fading channels. Specifically, 16QAM based Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), Turbo TCM (TTCM), Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) and iteratively decoded BICM (BICM-ID) are evaluated in the context of an RBF based TEQ scheme and a reduced-complexity RBF based In-phase/Quadrature-phase (I/Q) TEQ scheme. The Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm was employed for channel estimation, where the initial estimation step-size used was 0.05, which was reduced to 0.01 for the second and the subsequent TEQ iterations. The achievable coding gain of the various CM schemes was significantly increased, when employing the proposed RBF-TEQ or RBF-I/Q-TEQ rather than the conventional non-iterative Decision Feedback Equaliser - (DFE). Explicitly, the reduced-complexity RBF-I/Q-TEQ-CM achieved a similar performance to the full-complexity RBF-TEQ-CM, while attaining a significant complexity reduction. The best overall performer was the RBF-I/Q-TEQ-TTCM scheme, requiring only 1.88~dB higher SNR at BER=10-5, than the identical throughput 3~BPS uncoded 8PSK scheme communicating over an AWGN channel. The coding gain of the scheme was 16.78-dB
The VGAM Package for Categorical Data Analysis
No full textClassical categorical regression models such as the multinomial logit and proportional odds models are shown to be readily handled by the vector generalized linear and additive model (VGLM/VGAM) framework. Additionally, there are natural extensions, such as reduced-rank VGLMs for dimension reduction, and allowing covariates that have values specific to each linear/additive predictor, e.g., for consumer choice modeling. This article describes some of the framework behind the VGAM R package, its usage and implementation details.
Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis
No full textMultiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis
- …
