Academia Sinica

About: Academia Sinica is a facility organization based out in Taipei, Taiwan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Galaxy. The organization has 52086 authors who have published 65998 publications receiving 1728114 citations. The organization is also known as: Central Research Academy.

FASTSNP: an always up-to-date and extendable service for SNP function analysis and prioritization

Abstract: Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) prioritization based on the phenotypic risk is essential for association studies. Assessment of the risk requires access to a variety of heterogeneous biological databases and analytical tools. FASTSNP (function analysis and selection tool for single nucleotide polymorphisms) is a web server that allows users to efficiently identify and prioritize high-risk SNPs according to their phenotypic risks and putative functional effects. A unique feature of FASTSNP is that the functional effect information used for SNP prioritization is always up-to-date, because FASTSNP extracts the information from 11 external web servers at query time using a team of web wrapper agents. Moreover, FASTSNP is extendable by simply deploying more Web wrapper agents. To validate the results of our prioritization, we analyzed 1569 SNPs from the SNP500Cancer database. The results show that SNPs with a high predicted risk exhibit low allele frequencies for the minor alleles, consistent with a well-known finding that a strong selective pressure exists for functional polymorphisms. We have been using FASTSNP for 2 years and FASTSNP enables us to discover a novel promoter polymorphism. FASTSNP is available at http://fastsnp.ibms.sinica.edu.tw.

FCC-ee: The Lepton Collider: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 2

Abstract: In response to the 2013 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study was launched, as an international collaboration hosted by CERN. This study covers a highest-luminosity high-energy lepton collider (FCC-ee) and an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), which could, successively, be installed in the same 100 km tunnel. The scientific capabilities of the integrated FCC programme would serve the worldwide community throughout the 21st century. The FCC study also investigates an LHC energy upgrade, using FCC-hh technology. This document constitutes the second volume of the FCC Conceptual Design Report, devoted to the electron-positron collider FCC-ee. After summarizing the physics discovery opportunities, it presents the accelerator design, performance reach, a staged operation scenario, the underlying technologies, civil engineering, technical infrastructure, and an implementation plan. FCC-ee can be built with today’s technology. Most of the FCC-ee infrastructure could be reused for FCC-hh. Combining concepts from past and present lepton colliders and adding a few novel elements, the FCC-ee design promises outstandingly high luminosity. This will make the FCC-ee a unique precision instrument to study the heaviest known particles (Z, W and H bosons and the top quark), offering great direct and indirect sensitivity to new physics.

Accretionary growth and crust formation in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and comparison with the Arabian-Nubian shield

Abstract: Kroner, A., Windley, B.F., Badarch, G., Tomurtogoo, O., Hegner, E., Jahn, B.M., Gruschka, S., Khain, E.V., Demoux, A., and Wingate, M.T.D., 2007, Accretionary growth and crust formation in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and comparison with the Arabian-Nubian shield, in Hatcher, R.D., Jr., Carlson, M.P., McBride, J.H., and Martinez Catalan, J.R., eds., 4-D Framework of Continental Crust: Geological Society of America Memoir 200, p. 181–209, doi: 10.1130/2007.1200(11). For permission to copy, contact editing@geosociety.org. ©2007 The Geological Society of America. All rights reserved. *Kroner: kroener@mail.uni-mainz.de; Windley: brian.windley@btinternet.com; Tomurtogoo: igmr@magicnet.mn; Hegner: hegner@lmu.de; Jahn: jahn@earth. sinica.edu.tw; Khain: khain@ginras.ru; Demoux: demoux@uni-mainz.de; Wingate: mwingate@tsrc.uwa.edu.au.

Genome-wide association analysis of more than 120,000 individuals identifies 15 new susceptibility loci for breast cancer

Abstract: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and large-scale replication studies have identified common variants in 79 loci associated with breast cancer, explaining ∼14% of the familial risk of the disease. To identify new susceptibility loci, we performed a meta-analysis of 11 GWAS, comprising 15,748 breast cancer cases and 18,084 controls together with 46,785 cases and 42,892 controls from 41 studies genotyped on a 211,155-marker custom array (iCOGS). Analyses were restricted to women of European ancestry. We generated genotypes for more than 11 million SNPs by imputation using the 1000 Genomes Project reference panel, and we identified 15 new loci associated with breast cancer at P < 5 × 10(-8). Combining association analysis with ChIP-seq chromatin binding data in mammary cell lines and ChIA-PET chromatin interaction data from ENCODE, we identified likely target genes in two regions: SETBP1 at 18q12.3 and RNF115 and PDZK1 at 1q21.1. One association appears to be driven by an amino acid substitution encoded in EXO1.

Finite element methods and their convergence for elliptic and parabolic interface problems

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the finite element methods for solving second order elliptic and parabolic interface problems in two-dimensional convex polygonal domains. Nearly the same optimal $L^2$ -norm and energy-norm error estimates as for regular problems are obtained when the interfaces are of arbitrary shape but are smooth, though the regularities of the solutions are low on the whole domain. The assumptions on the finite element triangulation are reasonable and practical.