The statistical inferences about the parameters of Binomial-Poisson hierarchy model are discussed. Based on the estimators of paired observations we consider the other two cases with extra observations on both the first and second layer of the model. The MLEs of lambda and p are derived and it is also proved the MLE lambda is also the UMVUE of lambda. By using multivariate central limit theory and large sample theory, both the estimators based on extra observations on the first and second layer are obtained respectively. The performances of the estimators are compared numerically based on extensive Monte Carlo simulation. Simulation studies indicate that the performance of the estimators is more efficient than those only based on paired observations. Inference about the confidence interval for p is presented for both cases. The efficiency of the estimators is compared with condition given that same number of extra observations is provided.

The JAK-STAT pathway is an intracellular signaling pathway that is found to have crucial roles in hematopoiesis, immune response and the development of many other tissues in mammals. The pathway is conserved in Drosophila melanogaster, and is much simpler: there is only one Drosophila JAK (Hopscotch, Hop) and STAT (STAT92E) respectively, while there are at least 4 JAKs and 7 STATs in mammals. The pathway has been intensively studied in Drosophila, and has been implicated in many tissue development and cellular processes. In this work, I present several roles of JAK signaling in oogenesis.First, JAK signaling is required for cell differentiation within a specific lineage of follicle cells – stalk cells and polar cells. Unpaired (upd), which encodes the known ligand for the pathway, is expressed specifically in the polar cells in the developing egg. Reduced function of Upd or Hop results in fusions of egg chambers, which is primarily caused by improper formation of stalk cells, while general activation of the pathway in the egg chamber produces an extra number of stalk cells and sometimes eliminates polarfollicle cells. Based on the known function of the Notch pathway in oogenesis, we propose a model that Notch signaling determines a pool of precursors for the polar and stalk cells while JAK activity determines their specific fates within that pool.Second, JAK signaling is also involved in epithelial follicle cell differentiation. Consistent with the expression pattern of upd in the ovary, there is a gradient of JAK activity expanding from the poles, and this JAK activation gradient is both required and sufficient to suppress the main body follicle cell fate. Also, different levels of JAK activity are required and sufficient to determine both anterior and posterior terminal follicle cell fates. Consistent with these data is a model that a gradient of JAK activity triggered by Upd from the poles pre-patterns the epithelium into three domains and pre-determines sub-populations of terminal follicle cell fates prior to the EGFR activation, and cooperates with EGFR activity later to define posterior terminal follicle cell fates. This provides the first evidence for a morphogenic function of the JAK-STAT pathway in any organism.

Meiosis, the core engine of sexual reproduction, is a complex process that results in the production of recombinant haploid genomes. In the meioses of Neurospora, worms and mice, gene expression from DNA that lacks a pairing partner is silenced. We posit that this is a two-step process. First, a process called meiotic trans-sensing compares the chromosomes from each parent and identifies significant differences as unpaired DNA. Second, if unpaired DNA is identified, a process called meiotic silencing inhibits expression of genes within the unpaired region and regions sharing sequence identity. Meiotic silencing is mechanistically most likely related to RNAi in other eukaryotes. We used a combination of forward and reverse genetic strategies aimed at understanding the mechanisms of meiotic trans-sensing and meiotic silencing. Here, we present genetic evidence that arguably differentiates the meiotic transsensing step from meiotic silencing, by demonstrating that DNA methylation affects sensing of specific allele-types without interfering with silencing in general. We also determined that DNA sequence is an important parameter scrutinized during meiotic trans-sensing. This, and other observations, led us to hypothesize meiotic recombination as the mechanism for meiotic trans-sensing. However, we find that mutants of key genes required for recombination and chromosome pairing are not required for locus-specific meiotic silencing. We conclude that two interesting possibilities remain: meiotic trans-sensing occurs through a previously uncharacterized recombination pathway or chromosomal regions are carefully compared in the absence of recombination. Finally, forward genetics revealed a novel component of meiotic silencing, Sms-4, encoding the Neurospora ortholog of mammalian mRNP component ELG protein. Unlike previous loss-of-function mutants that abate meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA, Sms-4 is not required for successful meiosis, showing that meiosis and meiotic silencing are distinct, yet overlapping, phenomena. Intriguingly, SMS-4 is the first component to be localized with bulk chromatin in the nucleus, presumably the site of trans-sensing. Finally, we carried out a critical examination of the current evidence in the field and present alternative models for meiotic trans-sensing and meiotic silencing in Neurospora.

<p>PIWI proteins belong to an evolutionary conserved protein family as the sister sub-family of ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins. While AGO proteins are functionally well-characterized and shown to mediate small-RNA guided gene regulation, the function of PIWI proteins remain elusive. Here we pursued functional characterization of PIWI proteins by studying MILI and MIWI, two PIWI proteins in the mouse.</p><p>We first show that both MIWI and MILI co-immunoprecipitate with a novel class of non-coding small RNAs from the post-natal mouse testis extract, which are named Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs). Our cloning efforts identified thousands of different piRNA sequences, mostly derived from intergenic regions. Interestingly, both MILI and MIWI piRNAs correspond to the same regions on the genome and differ primarily in length. We propose piRNAs in the adult testis are produced by the processing of long, single stranded RNA precursors, based on the observation that piRNAs originate in clusters from a number of sites on the genome in a head-to-tail homology. In support, we bioinformatically predicted putative promoters, and yeast one hybrid analysis on two such regions found out that they interact with Krueppel C2H2 type zinc finger transcription factors. We did not observe the features of the "ping-pong" mechanism in their biogenesis: Both MILI and MIWI piRNAs are biased for 5` Uracil without an Adenine bias on the 10th nucleotide position, and do not significantly consist of sequences complementary to each other along their first 10nt. Moreover, MILI piRNAs are not down-regulated in Miwi-/- testis. These results indicate that the post-natal testicular piRNAs are produced independent of the ping-pong mechanism. </p><p>Although piRNAs are highly complex, PAGE and in situ analyses showed that piRNAs are germ cell-specific with predominant expression in spermatocytes and round spermatids, suggestive of a meiotic function. Correspondingly, we found that Miwi-/-; Mili-/- mice undergo only male infertility with terminal spermatogenic arrest during meiosis. piRNAs show a nucleo-cytoplasmic distribution, with enrichment in the chromatoid and dense bodies, two male germ cell-specific structures. The dense body has been implicated in synapsis and in the heterochromatinization of the sex chromosomes during male meiosis, a process known as meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI). Our histological analysis on Miwi-/-; Mili-/- testes showed that, while the overall synapsis is not affected, the sex chromosomes retain the euchromatin marker acetyl-H4K16 and lacks the heterochromatin marker H3K9-dimethyl. These observations indicate that murine PIWI proteins are necessary for MSCI. Moreover, we identified piRNA production from the X chromosome before MSCI, and propose PIWI proteins utilize piRNAs to target and silence unpaired chromosomal regions during meiosis.</p> / Dissertation

Modelos com erros de medição têm recebido a atenção de vários pesquisadores das mais diversas áreas de conhecimento. O principal objetivo desta dissertação consiste no estudo de um modelo funcional com erros de medição heteroscedásticos na presença de réplicas das observações. O modelo proposto estende resultados encontrados na literatura na medida em que as réplicas são parte do modelo, ao contrário de serem utilizadas para estimação das variâncias, doravante tratadas como conhecidas. Alguns procedimentos de estimação tais como o método de máxima verossimilhança, o método dos momentos e o método de extrapolação da simulação (SIMEX) na versão empírica são apresentados. Além disso, propõe-se o teste da razão de verossimilhanças e o teste de Wald com o objetivo de testar algumas hipóteses de interesse relacionadas aos parâmetros do modelo adotado. O comportamento dos estimadores de alguns parâmetros e das estatísticas propostas (resultados assintóticos) são analisados por meio de um estudo de simulação de Monte Carlo, utilizando-se diferentes números de réplicas. Por fim, a proposta é exemplificada com um conjunto de dados reais. Toda parte computacional foi desenvolvida em linguagem R (R Development Core Team, 2011) / Measurement error models have received the attention of many researchers of several areas of knowledge. The aim of this dissertation is to study a functional heteroscedastic measurement errors model with replicated observations. The proposed model extends results from the literature in that replicas are part of the model, as opposed to being used for estimation of the variances, now treated as known. Some estimation procedures such as maximum likelihood method, the method of moments and the empirical simulation-extrapolation method (SIMEX) are presented. Moreover, it is proposed the likelihood ratio test and Wald test in order to test hypotheses of interest related to the model parameters used. The behavior of the estimators of some parameters and statistics proposed (asymptotic results) are analyzed through Monte Carlo simulation study using different numbers of replicas. Finally, the proposal is illustrated with a real data set. The computational part was developed in R language (R Development Core Team, 2011)

Modelos com erros de medição têm recebido a atenção de vários pesquisadores das mais diversas áreas de conhecimento. O principal objetivo desta dissertação consiste no estudo de um modelo funcional com erros de medição heteroscedásticos na presença de réplicas das observações. O modelo proposto estende resultados encontrados na literatura na medida em que as réplicas são parte do modelo, ao contrário de serem utilizadas para estimação das variâncias, doravante tratadas como conhecidas. Alguns procedimentos de estimação tais como o método de máxima verossimilhança, o método dos momentos e o método de extrapolação da simulação (SIMEX) na versão empírica são apresentados. Além disso, propõe-se o teste da razão de verossimilhanças e o teste de Wald com o objetivo de testar algumas hipóteses de interesse relacionadas aos parâmetros do modelo adotado. O comportamento dos estimadores de alguns parâmetros e das estatísticas propostas (resultados assintóticos) são analisados por meio de um estudo de simulação de Monte Carlo, utilizando-se diferentes números de réplicas. Por fim, a proposta é exemplificada com um conjunto de dados reais. Toda parte computacional foi desenvolvida em linguagem R (R Development Core Team, 2011) / Measurement error models have received the attention of many researchers of several areas of knowledge. The aim of this dissertation is to study a functional heteroscedastic measurement errors model with replicated observations. The proposed model extends results from the literature in that replicas are part of the model, as opposed to being used for estimation of the variances, now treated as known. Some estimation procedures such as maximum likelihood method, the method of moments and the empirical simulation-extrapolation method (SIMEX) are presented. Moreover, it is proposed the likelihood ratio test and Wald test in order to test hypotheses of interest related to the model parameters used. The behavior of the estimators of some parameters and statistics proposed (asymptotic results) are analyzed through Monte Carlo simulation study using different numbers of replicas. Finally, the proposal is illustrated with a real data set. The computational part was developed in R language (R Development Core Team, 2011)

The TRACAB Image Tracking System is used by ChyronHego for the tracking of ball and players on football fields. It requires the calibration of the cameras around the arena which is disrupted by fences and other mesh structures that are positioned between the camera and the field as a safety measure for the public. The purpose of this work was the implementation of a cycle consistent Generative Adversarial Network (cycle-GAN) for removing the fence from the image using unpaired data. Cycle-GANs are part of the state-of-the-art of image-to-image translation and can solve this kind of problem without the need of paired images. This makes it an exciting and powerful method and, according to the latest investigations in the current work, it has never been used for this kind of application before. The model was able to strongly attenuate, and in some cases completely remove, the net structure from images. To quantify the impact of the net removal a homography matching was performed. Then, it was compared with the homography associated to the baseline of blurring the image with a gaussian filter and the original image without the use of any filter. The results showed that the identification of key-points was harder on synthetic images than on the original image with or without small Gaussian filters, but it showed a better performance against images blurred with filters with a standard deviation of 3 pixels or more. Despite the performance not being better than the baseline in all the cases it always added new key-points, and sometimes, it was able to find correct homographies where the baseline could not. Therefore, the cycle-GAN model proved to complement the baseline. / TRACAB Image Tracking System används av ChyronHego för spårning av bollen och spelaren påfotbollsplaner. Detta kräver kalibrering av kamerorna runt arenan som störs av staket och andra nätstrukturer som är placerade mellan kameran och fältet som en säkerhetsåtgärd för publiken. Detta examensabrete fokuserar påimplementeringen av en cycle-GAN för borttagning av nätet från bilden med hjälp av oparade data. Cycle-GAN är en bild-till-bild-översättning state-of-the-art teknik och det kan lösa denna typ av problem utan parade bilder. Detta gör det till en spännande och kraftfull metod och enligt den senaste forskningen har det aldrig använts för denna typ av tillämpning förut. Modellen kunde kraftigt dämpa och i vissa fall helt ta bort nätstrukturen från bilder. För att kvantifiera effekterna av avlägsnandet av nätet utfördes en homografimatchning. Därefter jämfördes det med homografin associerad med baslinjen där bilden görs suddig med ett gaussiskt filter och originalbilden utan användning av något filter. Resultaten visade att identifieringen av nyckelpunkter var svårare påsyntetiska bilder än påoriginalbilder med eller utan småGauss-filter, men det visade bättre prestanda än bilder som var suddigt med filter med en standardavvikelse på 3 pixlar eller mer. Trots att prestandan inte var bättre än baslinjen i alla fall lade versionen utan nätet alltid till nya nyckelpunkter, och ibland kunde den hitta korrekta homografier där baslinjen misslyckades. Därför, cycle-GAN-modellen kompletterar baslinjen.

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Theme in this thesis is comparison of motor abilities of pair and unpaired rowers. There is briefly mentioned characteristic of rowing and structure of rowing performance in theoretical part. Next captures are about single motor abilities. In practical part of thesis are characterized rowers, who were tested and Unifittes 6-60, according to were rowers tested. Last part of thesis is about comparison of measured results. Key words Rower, rowing, pair rowing, unpaired rowing, motor, motor abilities, movement, tests, motor testing, power abilities, speed abilities, endurance abilities, coordination abilities.