Ultra-deep RNA sequencing has become a powerful approach for genome-wide analysis of pre-mRNA alternative splicing. We develop MATS (Multivariate Analysis of Transcript Splicing), a Bayesian statistical framework for flexible hypothesis testing of differential alternative splicing patterns on RNA-Seq data. MATS uses a multivariate uniform prior to model the between-sample correlation in exon splicing patterns, and a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method coupled with a simulation-based adaptive sampling procedure to calculate the P value and false discovery rate (FDR) of differential alternative splicing. Importantly, the MATS approach is applicable to almost any type of null hypotheses of interest, providing the flexibility to identify differential alternative splicing events that match a given user-defined pattern. We evaluated the performance of MATS using simulated and real RNA-Seq data sets. In the RNA-Seq analysis of alternative splicing events regulated by the epithelial-specific splicing factor ESRP1, we obtained a high RT-PCR validation rate of 86% for differential alternative splicing events with a MATS FDR of < 10%. Additionally, over the full list of RT-PCR tested exons, the MATS FDR estimates matched well with the experimental validation rate. Our results demonstrate that MATS is an effective and flexible approach for detecting differential alternative splicing from RNA-Seq data.

No description available.

This research reviewed the neglect of cities in the mission work of the Reformed Churches in Southern Africa with a special reference to churches of Synod Soutpansberg. The biblical passage, Jeremiah 29:1-14 was used, as a representative of other biblical passages, to shed light on the role of cities in mission work of the church while addressing misconceptions and false theology about the cities and the role they played and still play in the mission work of the church. The same biblical message is confirmed by many missiology literature, including, "Cities, Missions' New Frontier" by R.S. Greenway and T.M. Monsma (1989); "City of God - City of Satan" by R.C. Linthicum(1991) and "Discipling the City" by R.S. Greenway (1992). The biblical message and the missiology literature mentioned above were the basis from which the neglect of the role of the cities in the history of the mission work of the Reformed Churches in Southern Africa was studied. From these basis, the causes, implementations and effects of such neglect in the mission work of the Soutpansberg churches was studied in Chapter 3. The empirical research was conducted using the interview questionnaire in Chapter 4. The empirical results and findings, which were presented in this research, can direct churches towards a remedy of the neglect of the cities in their mission work as far as the strategies is concerned. The neglect of the cities in the history of the mission work of the Reformed Churches in Southern Africa was studied with an aim that churches learn from it and hence avoid the past neglect in their present and future mission plans, strategies and programs. In other words, the lesson is important for churches to view the role of the secular cities as important instruments used by God to speed up not only the planting and growing big holy churches from those secular cities outwards, but also the biblical reformation of the rural - orientated theories, strategies and practice! / Thesis (M.A. (Theology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2008.

Mitt arbete handlar om hur franskstuderande elever i grundskolan skulle kunna använda sina kunskaper i engelska. Det engelska språket innehåller en mängd romanska ord, d.v.s. ord med franskt och latinskt ursprung. Således finns det många ord i franskan som eleverna känner igen från engelskan. Min uppfattning är att det borde underlätta för eleverna i franskinlärningen att utnyttja denna företeelse som en inlärningsstrategi och en kommunikationsstrategi. Att använda sina förkunskaper vid inlärning är för övrigt ett grepp som många lärare förespråkar. Resultatet av min undersökning i fyra högstadieklasser visar att det finns en klar positiv attityd till denna form av ordinlärning, men också att den kan förefalla förvirrande för många elever. I min uppsats behandlar jag även ordinlärning i allmänhet samt vikten av att använda sina förkunskaper.

Despite numerous studies of the development of theory of mind, how children express their understanding of mind in less structured, play settings has gone largely unstudied. Many developmental accounts, regardless of disagreement on other theoretical issues, agree that the child’s engagement within social contexts is crucial to the development of understanding of mind. Our goals were to collect a detailed account of how children use their understanding of mind and how mothers align their support to the child’s capabilities within social interactions. In this longitudinal study, typically developing preschoolers (N = 52) engaged in a hiding game with their mothers in a semi-structured play setting when the children were 42-, 54-, and 66-months old. Aspects of children’s understanding of mind were rated including understanding of knowledge access, deception, false belief, and emotional response to false belief, as well as, affective charge and engagement with the task. Mothers’ utterances were coded for various characteristics, particularly role and content. Children’s understanding of mind increased across visits and positively correlated with false belief task performance at the 42- and 54-month visits, rs = .35 and .39, p < .05, but not the 66-month visit, rs = –.25, p = .10. Children’s enthusiasm was positively related to their understanding of mind at the first and second visits, but not the last. Mothers tailored the content of their utterances to the child’s growing expertise, but whether mothers adjusted the role of their utterances to children’s understanding of mind remains unclear. Observing children’s playful use of their emerging understanding of mind in social interactions allowed for the capture of subtle variations in how children express and caregivers support their understanding.

<p>This dissertation uses game theoretic models to examine the effects of agent anonymity on markets for goods and for information. In open, anonymous settings, such as the Internet, anonymity is relatively easy to obtain --- oftentimes another email address is sufficient. By becoming anonymous, agents can participate in various mechanisms (such as elections, opinion polls, auctions, etc.) multiple times. The first chapter (joint work with Vincent Conitzer) studies elections that disincentivize voters from voting multiple times. A voting rule is false-name-proof if no agent ever benefits from casting additional votes. In elections with two alternatives, it is shown that there is a unique false-name-proof voting rule that is most responsive to votes. The probability that this rule selects the majority winner converges to 1 as the population grows large. Methods to design analogous rules for elections with 3 or more alternatives are proposed. The second chapter (also joint work with Vincent Conitzer) extends the analysis in the first chapter to broader mechanism design settings, where the goal is to disincentivize agents from participating multiple times. The cost model from the first chapter is generalized and revelation principles are proven. The third chapter studies a setting where firms are able to recognize their previous customers, and may use information about consumers' purchase histories to price discriminate (which may incentivize consumers to be anonymous). The formal model considers a monopolist and a continuum of heterogeneous consumers, where consumers are able to maintain their anonymity at some cost. It is shown that when consumers can costlessly maintain their anonymity, they all individually choose to do so, which paradoxically results in the highest profit for the monopolist. Increasing the cost of anonymity can benefit consumers, but only up to a point; at that point, the effect is reversed. Some of the results are extended to a setting with two competing firms selling differentiated products. Finally, the cost of maintaining anonymity is endogenized by considering a third party that can make consumers anonymous for a fee of its choosing. It is shown that this third party would prefer to be paid by the firm for allowing consumers to costlessly maintain their anonymity.</p> / Dissertation

<p>Despite recent evidence that infants under one year of age have implicit understanding of theory of mind, three-year-old children repeatedly fail in traditional false belief tasks. A serious of 4 studies investigated two possible sources of errors. First, children's comprehension of theory of mind questions was tested in an elicited imitation task. Second, their understanding of mental events was measured using anticipatory eye movements in non-verbal tasks. Results showed that young children's performance in verbal false belief tasks is limited by their understanding of linguistic representations of beliefs and their ability to monitor mental states in real-time. This implies the limitations of young children in keeping track of complex social events in real time and in understanding language conventions in real time.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between false memory and trait anxiety, depression and personality characteristics with emotionally valenced material (positive, depression related, threat related and neutral). Participants were 131 Middle East Technical University students. Four groups (depressed, anxious, mixed and control) were formed in order to differentiate the effects of trait anxiety and depression. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Trait Form of State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-I) were administered. In order to measure false memory creation, a variant of Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was used. It was hypothesized that the anxious group would produce more false memories for threat related words as compared to other groups. In addition, the depressed group was expected to display higher levels of false memory for depression related words as compared to other groups. One-way MANOVA was used to analyze the data. The results showed that there was a group difference only in terms of threat related words&rsquo / accuracy. Also people were categorized as &ldquo / low&rdquo / and &ldquo / high&rdquo / in the six personality characteristics as measured by Big Five Questionnaire. It was hypothesized that people high in openness to experience would commit less false memories as compared to people low in the trait. This was true for only positive material. Further, other personality characteristics were analyzed in order to discover the relationship between false memory and personality. The results were discussed in terms of relevant literature.

In recent years, the development of mobile networks is thriving or flourishing from 2G GSM, 2.5G GPRS, 3G UMTS to All-IP 4G, which integrates all heterogeneous networks and becomes mature and popular nowadays. Using mobile devices for voice transferring and multimedia sharing is also a part of our life. Mobile networks provide us an efficient way to exchange messages easily. However, these messages often contain critical personal data or private information. Transferring these messages freely in mobile network is dangerous since they can be eavesdropped easily by malicious mobile users for some illegal purposes, such as committing a crime. Hence, to avoid the exposure of the transmitted messages, robust security mechanisms are required. In this thesis, we will propose a one-round mutual authentication protocol which is computation and communication efficient and secure such that the privacy of mobile users¡¦ identities and the confidentiality of their transmitted data are guaranteed. In computation complexity, the protocol only employs symmetric encryption and hash-mac functions. Due to the possession of forward secrecy, the past encrypted messages are secure, even under the exposure of long-term keys. Furthermore, our scheme achieves the goal of user privacy and location privacy by changing TMSI in every session. Therefore, the third party cannot link two different sessions by eavesdropping the communication. Finally, our scheme also can prevent false base attacks which make use of a powerful base station to redirect mobile users¡¦ messages to a fake base station to obtain certain advantages.

<p>Mitt arbete handlar om hur franskstuderande elever i grundskolan skulle kunna använda sina kunskaper i engelska. Det engelska språket innehåller en mängd romanska ord, d.v.s. ord med franskt och latinskt ursprung. Således finns det många ord i franskan som eleverna känner igen från engelskan. Min uppfattning är att det borde underlätta för eleverna i franskinlärningen att utnyttja denna företeelse som en inlärningsstrategi och en kommunikationsstrategi. Att använda sina förkunskaper vid inlärning är för övrigt ett grepp som många lärare förespråkar. </p><p>Resultatet av min undersökning i fyra högstadieklasser visar att det finns en klar positiv attityd till denna form av ordinlärning, men också att den kan förefalla förvirrande för många elever. I min uppsats behandlar jag även ordinlärning i allmänhet samt vikten av att använda sina förkunskaper.</p>