Common variants of the TCF7L2 gene are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in a UK-resident South Asian population

Background - Recent studies have implicated variants of the transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2) gene in genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes mellitus in several different populations. The aim of this study was to determine whether variants of this gene are also risk factors for type 2 diabetes development in a UK-resident South Asian cohort of Punjabi ancestry. Methods - We genotyped four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of TCF7L2 (rs7901695, rs7903146, rs11196205 and rs12255372) in 831 subjects with diabetes and 437 control subjects. Results - The minor allele of each variant was significantly associated with type 2 diabetes; the greatest risk of developing the disease was conferred by rs7903146, with an allelic odds ratio (OR) of 1.31 (95% CI: 1.11 – 1.56, p = 1.96 × 10-3). For each variant, disease risk associated with homozygosity for the minor allele was greater than that for heterozygotes, with the exception of rs12255372. To determine the effect on the observed associations of including young control subjects in our data set, we reanalysed the data using subsets of the control group defined by different minimum age thresholds. Increasing the minimum age of our control subjects resulted in a corresponding increase in OR for all variants of the gene (p ≤ 1.04 × 10-7). Conclusion - Our results support recent findings that TCF7L2 is an important genetic risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes in multiple ethnic groups.

Use of general practice prescribing data as a surrogate estimate of statin compliance

Background and Objective: To maximise the benefit from statin therapy, patients must maintain regular therapy indefinitely. Non-compliance is thought to be common in those taking medication at regular intervals over long periods of time, especially where they may perceive no immediate benefit (News editorial, 2002). This study extends previous work in which commonly held prescribing data is used as a surrogate marker of compliance and was designed to examine compliance in those stabilised on statins in a large General Practice. Design: Following ethical approval, details of all patients who had a single statin for 12 consecutive months with no changes in drug, frequency or dose, between December 1999 and March 2003, were obtained. Setting: An Eastern Birmingham Primary Care Trust GP surgery. Main Outcome Measures: A compliance ratio was calculated by dividing the number of days treatment by the number of doses prescribed. For a once daily regimen the ratio for full compliance_1. Results: 324 patients were identified. The average compliance ratio for the first six months of the study was 1.06 ± 0.01 (range 0.46 – 2.13) and for the full twelve months was 1.05 ± 0.01 (range 0.58 – 2.08). Conclusions: The data shown here indicates that as a group, long-term, stabilised statin users appear compliant. However, the range of values obtained show that there are identifiable subsets of patients who are not taking their therapy as prescribed. Although the apparent use of more doses than prescribed in some patients may result from medication hording, this cannot be the case in the patients who apparently take less. It has been demonstrated here that the compliance ratio can be used as an early indicator of problems allowing targeted compliance advice can be given where it will have the most benefit. References: News Editorial. Pharmacy records could be used to enhance statin compliance in elderly. Pharm. J. 2002; 269: 121.

Visualisation of heterogeneous data with the generalised generative topographic mapping

Heterogeneous and incomplete datasets are common in many real-world visualisation applications. The probabilistic nature of the Generative Topographic Mapping (GTM), which was originally developed for complete continuous data, can be extended to model heterogeneous (i.e. containing both continuous and discrete values) and missing data. This paper describes and assesses the resulting model on both synthetic and real-world heterogeneous data with missing values.

Site-restricted web searches for data collection in regional dialectology

This article presents a new method for data collection in regional dialectology based on site-restricted web searches. The method measures the usage and determines the distribution of lexical variants across a region of interest using common web search engines, such as Google or Bing. The method involves estimating the proportions of the variants of a lexical alternation variable over a series of cities by counting the number of webpages that contain the variants on newspaper websites originating from these cities through site-restricted web searches. The method is evaluated by mapping the 26 variants of 10 lexical variables with known distributions in American English. In almost all cases, the maps based on site-restricted web searches align closely with traditional dialect maps based on data gathered through questionnaires, demonstrating the accuracy of this method for the observation of regional linguistic variation. However, unlike collecting dialect data using traditional methods, which is a relatively slow process, the use of site-restricted web searches allows for dialect data to be collected from across a region as large as the United States in a matter of days.

CORE: A Multi-Purpose Programming Contest Repository System

Яни Чаушев, Милослав Средков, Красимир Манев - Всяко състезание по програмиране използва множество софтуерни инструменти за управление на процесите по време на състезанието. Въпреки че тези инструменти обикновено покриват спецификите на конкретния вид състезание задоволително, те рядко адресират трудностите на дългосрочното съхранение на данни и оперативната съвместимост. В тази статия е представен един софтуерен инструмент адресиращ тези проблеми. Вместо комплексна система, касаеща всички аспекти на състезанието, CORE е централизирано хранилище за съхраняване и поддържане на необходимите за различни състезания данни. Представени са основните му елементи, текущото състояние на реализацията и перспективите за развитие на системата.

Age effect in generating mental images of buildings but not common objects

Imagining a familiar environment is different from imagining an environmental map and clinical evidence demonstrated the existence of double dissociations in brain-damaged patients due to the contents of mental images. Here, we assessed a large sample of young and old participants by considering their ability to generate different kinds of mental images, namely, buildings or common objects. As buildings are environmental stimuli that have an important role in human navigation, we expected that elderly participants would have greater difficulty in generating images of buildings than common objects. We found that young and older participants differed in generating both buildings and common objects. For young participants there were no differences between buildings and common objects, but older participants found easier to generate common objects than buildings. Buildings are a special type of visual stimuli because in urban environments they are commonly used as landmarks for navigational purposes. Considering that topographical orientation is one of the abilities mostly affected in normal and pathological aging, the present data throw some light on the impaired processes underlying human navigation.

Digital Repository of Information and Knowledge - Fund “BellKnow”

The aim was to develop an archive containing detailed description of church bells. As an object of cultural heritage the bell has general properties such as geometric dimensions, weight, sound of each of the bells, the pitch of the tone as well as acoustical diagrams obtained using contemporary equipment. The audio, photo and video archive is developed by using advanced technologies for analysis, reservation and data protection.

Bilingual Corpus - Digital Repository for Preservation of Language Heritage

The article briefly reviews bilingual Slovak-Bulgarian/Bulgarian-Slovak parallel and aligned corpus. The corpus is collected and developed as results of the collaboration in the frameworks of the joint research project between Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences. The multilingual corpora are large repositories of language data with an important role in preserving and supporting the world's cultural heritage, because the natural language is an outstanding part of the human cultural values and collective memory, and a bridge between cultures. This bilingual corpus will be widely applicable to the contrastive studies of the both Slavic languages, will also be useful resource for language engineering research and development, especially in machine translation.

Many Facet, Common Latent Trait Polytomous IRT Model and EM Algorithm

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 91E45.

Magyar alkalmazkodás az Európai Unió foglalkoztatás és szociálpolitikájához – tanulságok (The experiences from the Hungarian adaption to the common employment and social policy of the European Union)

A tanulmányban áttekintjük az európai foglalkoztatás- és szociálpolitika kialakulását és történetét, valamint a területen alkalmazott speciális koordinációs módszert. Ezt követően a csatlakozási tárgyalások elemzésével bemutatjuk a hazai politika helyzetét a csatlakozás időpontjában. Az elmúlt időszak foglalkoztatási adatai segítségével megvizsgáljuk a hazai és európai foglalkoztatás- és szociálpolitikai intézkedések hatásait. A cikk zárásaként a magyar EU-elnökség prioritásait és az aktuális közösségi terveket vesszük szemügyre. ______ The article gives a review on the history of the common employment and social policy in the European Union, with special attention to the coordination methods used in the field. The article also analyses the accession negotiations and the domestic policy situation at that time of Hungary's accession to the EU. With the data of recent years, the effects of the Hungarian and common EU measures are also examined. Finally, the priorities of the Hungarian Presidency of the European Council along with the current common policy plans are also demonstrated.

A semantic paradigm for intelligent data access

An implementation of Sem-ODB—a database management system based on the Semantic Binary Model is presented. A metaschema of Sem-ODB database as well as the top-level architecture of the database engine is defined. A new benchmarking technique is proposed which allows databases built on different database models to compete fairly. This technique is applied to show that Sem-ODB has excellent efficiency comparing to a relational database on a certain class of database applications. A new semantic benchmark is designed which allows evaluation of the performance of the features characteristic of semantic database applications. An application used in the benchmark represents a class of problems requiring databases with sparse data, complex inheritances and many-to-many relations. Such databases can be naturally accommodated by semantic model. A fixed predefined implementation is not enforced allowing the database designer to choose the most efficient structures available in the DBMS tested. The results of the benchmark are analyzed. ^ A new high-level querying model for semantic databases is defined. It is proven adequate to serve as an efficient native semantic database interface, and has several advantages over the existing interfaces. It is optimizable and parallelizable, supports the definition of semantic userviews and the interoperability of semantic databases with other data sources such as World Wide Web, relational, and object-oriented databases. The query is structured as a semantic database schema graph with interlinking conditionals. The query result is a mini-database, accessible in the same way as the original database. The paradigm supports and utilizes the rich semantics and inherent ergonomics of semantic databases. ^ The analysis and high-level design of a system that exploits the superiority of the Semantic Database Model to other data models in expressive power and ease of use to allow uniform access to heterogeneous data sources such as semantic databases, relational databases, web sites, ASCII files, and others via a common query interface is presented. The Sem-ODB engine is used to control all the data sources combined under a unified semantic schema. A particular application of the system to provide an ODBC interface to the WWW as a data source is discussed. ^

New media data to identify student training needs

The main objective is to exhibit how usage data from new media can be used to assess areas where students need more help in creating their ETDs. After attending this session, attendees will be able to use usage data from new media, in conjunction with traditional assessment data, to identify strengths and weaknesses in ETD training and resources. The burgeoning ETD program at Florida International University (FIU) has provided many opportunities to experiment with assessment strategies and new media. The usage statistics from YouTube and the ETD LibGuide revealed areas of strength and weakness in the training resources and the overall ETD training initiative. With the ability to assess these materials, they have been updated to better meet student needs. In addition to these assessment tools, there are opportunities to connect these statistics with data from a common error checklist, student feedback from ETD workshops, and final ETD submission surveys to create a full-fledged outcome based assessment program for the ETD initiative.

Comparison of Common Field/Clinical Measures to Standard Laboratory Measures of Hydration Status

Context: Accurately determining hydration status is a preventative measure for exertional heat illnesses (EHI). Objective: To determine the validity of various field measures of urine specific gravity (Usg) compared to laboratory instruments. Design: Observational research design to compare measures of hydration status: urine reagent strips (URS) and a urine color (Ucol) chart to a refractometer. Setting: We utilized the athletic training room of a Division I-A collegiate American football team. Participants: Trial 1 involved urine samples of 69 veteran football players (age=20.1+1.2yr; body mass=229.7+44.4lb; height=72.2+2.1in). Trial 2 involved samples from 5 football players (age=20.4+0.5yr; body mass=261.4+39.2lb; height=72.3+2.3in). Interventions: We administered the Heat Illness Index Score (HIIS) Risk Assessment, to identify athletes at-risk for EHI (Trial 1). For individuals “at-risk” (Trial 2), we collected urine samples before and after 15 days of pre-season “two-a-day” practices in a hot, humid environment(mean on-field WBGT=28.84+2.36oC). Main Outcome Measures: Urine samples were immediately analyzed for Usg using a refractometer, Diascreen 7® (URS1), Multistix® (URS2), and Chemstrip10® (URS3). Ucol was measured using Ucol chart. We calculated descriptive statistics for all main measures; Pearson correlations to assess relationships between the refractometer, each URS, and Ucol, and transformed Ucol data to Z-scores for comparison to the refractometer. Results: In Trial 1, we found a moderate relationship (r=0.491, p<.01) between URS1 (1.020+0.006μg) and the refractometer (1.026+0.010μg). In Trial 2, we found marked relationships for Ucol (5.6+1.6shades, r=0.619, p<0.01), URS2 (1.019+0.008μg, r=0.712, p<0.01), and URS3 (1.022+0.007μg, r=0.689, p<0.01) compared to the refractometer (1.028+0.008μg). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that URS were inconsistent between manufacturers, suggesting practitioners use the clinical refractometer to accurately determine Usg and monitor hydration status.

Education policy and national income distribution: New evidence from recent cross -country data

In the mid 19th century, Horace Mann insisted that a broad provision of public schooling should take precedence over the liberal education of an elite group. In that regard, his generation constructed a state sponsored common schooling enterprise to educate the masses. More than 100 years later, the institution of public schooling fails to maintain an image fully representative of the ideals of equity and inclusion. Critical theory in educational thought associates the dominant practice of functional schooling with maintenance of the status quo, an unequal distribution of financial, political, and social resources. This study examined the empirical basis for the association of public schooling with the status quo using the most recent and comparable cross-country income inequality data. Multiple regression analysis evaluated the possible relationship between national income inequality change over the period 1985-2005 and variables representative of national measures of education supply in the prior decade. The estimated model of income inequality development attempted to quantify the relationship between education supply factors and subsequent income inequality developments by controlling for economic, demographic, and exogenous factors. The sample included all nations with comparable income inequality data over the measurement period, N = 56. Does public school supply affect national income distribution? The estimated model suggested that an increase in the average years of schooling among the population age 15 years or older, measured over the period 1975-1985, provided a mechanism that resulted in a more equal distribution of income over the period 1985-2005 among low and lower-middle income nations. The model also suggested that income inequality increased less or decreased more in smaller economies and when the percentage of the population age < 15 years grew more slowly over the period 1985-2000. In contrast, this study identified no significant relationship between school supply changes measured over prior periods and income inequality development over the period 1985-2005 among upper-middle and high income nations.

Heterogeneous data source access for mobile devices

The mediator software architecture design has been developed to provide data integration and retrieval in distributed, heterogeneous environments. Since the initial conceptualization of this architecture, many new technologies have emerged that can facilitate the implementation of this design. The purpose of this thesis was to show that a mediator framework supporting users of mobile devices could be implemented using common software technologies available today. In addition, the prototype was developed with a view to providing a better understanding of what a mediator is and to expose issues that will have to be addressed in full, more robust designs. The prototype developed for this thesis was implemented using various technologies including: Java, XML, and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) among others. SOAP was used to accomplish inter-process communication. In the end, it is expected that more data intensive software applications will be possible in a world with ever-increasing demands for information.