Genome-Wide Association Analysis and Genomic Prediction of Thyroglobulin Plasma Levels

Thyroglobulin (Tg) is an iodoglycoprotein produced by thyroid follicular cells which acts as an essential substrate for thyroid hormone synthesis. To date, only one genome-wide association study (GWAS) of plasma Tg levels has been performed by our research group. Utilizing recent advancements in computation and modeling, we apply a Bayesian approach to the probabilistic inference of the genetic architecture of Tg. We fitted a Bayesian sparse linear mixed model (BSLMM) and a frequentist linear mixed model (LMM) of 7,289,083 variants in 1096 healthy European-ancestry participants of the Croatian Biobank. Meta-analysis with two independent cohorts (total n = 2109) identified 83 genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the ST6GAL1 gene (p<5×10−8). BSLMM revealed additional association signals on chromosomes 1, 8, 10, and 14. For ST6GAL1 and the newly uncovered genes, we provide physiological and pathophysiological explanations of how their expression could be associated with variations in plasma Tg levels. We found that the SNP-heritability of Tg is 17% and that 52% of this variation is due to a small number of 16 variants that have a major effect on Tg levels. Our results suggest that the genetic architecture of plasma Tg is not polygenic, but influenced by a few genes with major effects.     

Analyzing business competition by using fuzzy TOPSIS method: An example of Turkish domestic airline industry

The article uses fuzzy TOPSIS multi-methodological approach in the Turkish domestic airline industry. It starts by describing exceedingly complex nature of competition in the sector. Then, it deals with the constituent parts of the research methodology and the eclectic approach itself. The implementation of fuzzy TOPSIS method in the Turkish domestic airline industry reveals the ranking of major air carriers in light of key success variables in the sector. The article also provides an evaluation of empirical findings of fuzzy TOPSIS method from a managerial perspective.     

Vector channels for smart antennas. Measurements, statisticalmodeling, and directional properties in outdoor environments

In wireless communications, smart antenna systems that employ antenna arrays coupled with adaptive signal-processing techniques at the basestation improve capacity, coverage, and trunking efficiency. However, design and performance analysis of smart antenna systems strongly depend on channel propagation characteristics of signals present at the antenna array, the so-called vector channels. Here, variation of narrow-band vector channels (spatial signatures) due to a moving terminal is studied in typical suburban settings. Vector channel measurements are taken using a real-time smart antenna system with a uniform circular array at the basestation and a mobile transmitter at several locations. Two different wireless scenarios, namely, pedestrian and car mobile, are implemented to emulate the random movement of the mobile user. In each scenario, the mobile transmitter locations are chosen so that there exists line-of-sight (LOS), nonline-of-sight (NOLOS), or both LOS and NOLOS (mixed) propagation to the basestation. We find that in all cases, the Beta distribution can be used to empirically represent the spatial signature correlations and that large spatial diversity exists in NOLOS cases compared to LOS cases. Also, direction-of-arrivals mostly do not change much with movement in a suburban environment     

Blind multiuser channel estimation in asynchronous CDMA systems

In asynchronous code division multiple access (A-CDMA) systems transmitting over multipath channels, both intersymbol interference (ISI) as a result of interchip interference (ICI) and multiple access interference (MAI) cannot be easily eliminated. Although it is possible to design multiuser detectors that suppress MAI and ISI, these detectors often require explicit knowledge of at least the desired users' signature waveform. Recently, Liu and Xu (see Proc. 29th Asilomar Conf. Signals, Systems and Computers, 1996) introduced a blind estimation algorithm for synchronous CDMA (S-CDMA) systems to estimate the multiuser channels. However, this algorithm cannot be directly applied to an asynchronous CDMA (A-CDMA) system. In this paper, we study a similar blind estimation scheme that provides estimates of the multiuser channels by exploiting the structure information of the data output and the users' delays. In particular, we show that the subspace of the data matrix contains sufficient information for unique determination of channels and, hence, the signature waveforms. By utilizing antenna arrays, we extended our approach to overloaded systems, where the number of users may exceed the spreading factor     

Opportunistic Beamforming over Rayleigh Channels with Partial Side Information

In recent years, diversity techniques have evolved into highly attractive technology for wireless communications in different forms. For instance, the channel fluctuations of the users in a network are exploited as multiuser diversity by scheduling the user with the best signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). When fading is slow, beamforming at a multiple antenna transmitter is used to induce artificial channel fluctuations to ensure multiuser diversity in the network. Such a beamforming scheme is called opportunistic beamforming since the transmitter uses random beamforming to artificially induce opportunism in the network [1]. Opportunism requires a large number of users in the system in order to reach the performance of the true beamforming that uses perfect channel state information (CSI). In this paper we investigate the benefit of having partial CSI at an opportunistic transmitter. In the investigation, we focus on the maximum normalized SNR scheduling where user?s feedback consists of SNR relative to its channel gain. We show that opportunism can be beneficially used to increase the average throughput of the system. Simulations support the analytical average throughput results obtained as the amount of CSI and the number of users vary.     

A Cost-Efficient and Simple Plant Oil DNA Extraction Protocol Optimized for DNA-Based Assessment of Product Authenticity

DNA-based assays offer precision in ascertaining the species/cultivar origin of agro-food products. Yet, obtaining DNA of sufficient quality and quantity is the main challenge while performing DNA-based food authentication analyses. The aim of the present work was to standardize a cost-efficient, easy-to-apply, yet effective plant oil DNA isolation protocol that allows reliable downstream PCR-based analyses. Because capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation of species/cultivar discriminating genomic fragments is a widely adopted approach in food genomics, a CE system was utilized in order to assess the performance of the proposed cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB)-based protocol. A plastid intergenic spacer and a nuclear olive gene were used as targets in order to evaluate the amplificability of DNA extracted with the CTAB-based protocol. The plastid barcode not only allowed assessing the reproducibility of PCR amplifications from the extracted oil DNA samples (olive, hazelnut, corn, rapeseed, cottonseed, and soybean oils) but also proved successful in discriminating all tested oil crop species based on amplified fragment length polymorphisms. Moreover, the barcode assay proved successful in correctly identifying the tested olive oil: cottonseed oil blends as admixtures of the two oil species. Thus, it was also feasible to demonstrate the potential of the barcode sequence as a discriminatory analyte to detect adulteration in plant oils. In addition, application of a CAPS (cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence) assay designed to genotype a nuclear SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) marker resulted in the successful identification of the two single-cultivar olive oils included in the study. As a result of the present work, it was feasible to standardize a reliable and cost-efficient DNA extraction protocol that works well with both unrefined (olive and hazelnut) and refined (corn, rapeseed, cottonseed, and soybean) oils.     

Interference analysis and capacity for forward link 3G CDMA network with adaptive antennas

In code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, the capacity of forward link (FL) communication to mobile receivers is limited primarily by co‐channel interference (CCI). Adaptive antenna arrays (AAAs) that use antenna arrays along with advanced signal processing at the base station (BS) have been proposed to mitigate this limitation. For a 3G CDMA cellular network, where each BS equipped with an AAA serves mixture of voice and data users within its coverage, we study FL capacity and investigate the effects of different factors (array topology, multipath angle spread, data rate, and beamforming algorithm) on this capacity under Rayleigh fading channel. By modeling the instantaneous signal‐to‐interference power ratio received at the mobile, we derive the system outage equation that considers blocking of either desired voice or data user. Simulation results show that for the same element spacing and number of antenna elements per cell, the uniform circular array (UCA) topology results in larger capacity than the sectorized uniform linear array (ULA) topology does, and that a larger angle spread or data user rate reduces FL capacity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ERLAK: On the Cooperative Estimation of the Real-Time RSSI Based Location and K Constant Term

Nowadays location estimation using WiFi networks in indoor environments has become a hot research topic. Challenging methods without calibration or hardware integration are essentially required for cost-effective and practical solutions. The Received Signal Strength Indicator-based localization methods offer low cost solutions. However, their propagation models are difficult to characterize due to environmental factors in indoor and multiple parameters. There are a number of works over estimation of location and pathloss exponent presented in the literature. This paper introduces a new method shortly named as ERLAK in order to estimate the K constant term using log normal channel model in addition to the location of mobile station in indoor environment. The ERLAK method has been consistently compared to the well-known Least Square and Weighted Least Square methods. It achieves the least errors in distance estimations compared to the classical methods on especially critical measurement points. It remarkably accomplishes less than 5 m mean errors for distance estimation results particularly when signal is received from all of the access points.

     

Packet combining with adaptive retransmission control in DS-CDMA random access networks

Packet combining with adaptive retransmission control (ARC) in DS-CDMA random access networks has been investigated. The proposed system uses diversity packet combining while adaptively adjusting the retransmission probability of backlog users to optimize packet retransmissions. A soft decision DS-CDMA analysis is used to derive the optimum channel input for ARC. Simulation results show that packet combining with ARC can significantly increase the throughput and maintain the performance very close to its optimum in the high traffic region.     

Performance of Beamspace Transmit Diversity Technique in Two Beam Rayleigh Fading Channels

Many theories of exploiting spatial diversity in wireless communications and more recently space-time coding are results of understanding the spatial channel models for antenna array communication systems. For example, the models for rich scattering environments assume the channel coefficients to be almost independent when the spacing between the antennas is sufficient. This could limit the possibility of extracting direction of the signal propagation with respect to antenna locations (G. Xu et al., IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 349–355, 1994). On the other hand, when the scattering is limited to few dominant reflectors, the directions of the signals traveling through the environment can prevail in the channel coefficients. Extracting the propagation direction (beam direction) information from the channel coefficients has been investigated extensively in array signal processing literature. These investigations have led to many algorithms of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation and beamforming. Here, we propose a transmit diversity technique that exploits beam directions in environments with few beam directions. While we present this technique for two-beam Rayleigh fading channels (J.E. Mazo, IEEE Transaction on Communication, Vol. 39, No. 7, pp. 1027–1030, 1991), it can be easily extended to multibeam general fading channels. The proposed method does not require feedback from the receiver.