Carnegie Mellon University

About: Carnegie Mellon University is a education organization based out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Robot. The organization has 36317 authors who have published 104359 publications receiving 5975734 citations. The organization is also known as: CMU & Carnegie Mellon.

The X-Ray Observatory Suzaku

Abstract: High-sensitivity wide-band X-ray spectroscopy is the key feature of the Suzaku X-ray observatory, launched on 2005 July 10. This paper summarizes the spacecraft, in-orbit performance, operations, and data processing that are related to observations. The scientific instruments, the high-throughput X-ray telescopes, X-ray CCD cameras, non-imaging hard X-ray detector are also described.

Deformable Model Fitting by Regularized Landmark Mean-Shift

Abstract: Deformable model fitting has been actively pursued in the computer vision community for over a decade. As a result, numerous approaches have been proposed with varying degrees of success. A class of approaches that has shown substantial promise is one that makes independent predictions regarding locations of the model's landmarks, which are combined by enforcing a prior over their joint motion. A common theme in innovations to this approach is the replacement of the distribution of probable landmark locations, obtained from each local detector, with simpler parametric forms. In this work, a principled optimization strategy is proposed where nonparametric representations of these likelihoods are maximized within a hierarchy of smoothed estimates. The resulting update equations are reminiscent of mean-shift over the landmarks but with regularization imposed through a global prior over their joint motion. Extensions to handle partial occlusions and reduce computational complexity are also presented. Through numerical experiments, this approach is shown to outperform some common existing methods on the task of generic face fitting.

Gene expression elucidates functional impact of polygenic risk for schizophrenia

Abstract: Over 100 genetic loci harbor schizophrenia associated variants, yet how these variants confer liability is uncertain. The CommonMind Consortium sequenced RNA from dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of schizophrenia cases (N = 258) and control subjects (N = 279), creating a resource of gene expression and its genetic regulation. Using this resource, ~20% of schizophrenia loci have variants that could contribute to altered gene expression and liability. In five loci, only a single gene was involved: FURIN, TSNARE1, CNTN4, CLCN3, or SNAP91. Altering expression of FURIN, TSNARE1, or CNTN4 changes neurodevelopment in zebrafish; knockdown of FURIN in human neural progenitor cells yields abnormal migration. Of 693 genes showing significant case/control differential expression, their fold changes are ≤ 1.33, and an independent cohort yields similar results. Gene co-expression implicates a network relevant for schizophrenia. Our findings show schizophrenia is polygenic and highlight the utility of this resource for mechanistic interpretations of genetic liability for brain diseases.