University of Iceland

About: University of Iceland is a education organization based out in Reykjavik, Suðurnes, Iceland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Genome-wide association study. The organization has 5423 authors who have published 16199 publications receiving 694762 citations. The organization is also known as: Háskóli Íslands.

Low-frequency and rare exome chip variants associate with fasting glucose and type 2 diabetes susceptibility

Abstract: Fasting glucose and insulin are intermediate traits for type 2 diabetes. Here we explore the role of coding variation on these traits by analysis of variants on the HumanExome BeadChip in 60,564 non-diabetic individuals and in 16,491 T2D cases and 81,877 controls. We identify a novel association of a low-frequency nonsynonymous SNV in GLP1R (A316T; rs10305492; MAF=1.4%) with lower FG (β=-0.09±0.01 mmol l(-1), P=3.4 × 10(-12)), T2D risk (OR[95%CI]=0.86[0.76-0.96], P=0.010), early insulin secretion (β=-0.07±0.035 pmolinsulin mmolglucose(-1), P=0.048), but higher 2-h glucose (β=0.16±0.05 mmol l(-1), P=4.3 × 10(-4)). We identify a gene-based association with FG at G6PC2 (pSKAT=6.8 × 10(-6)) driven by four rare protein-coding SNVs (H177Y, Y207S, R283X and S324P). We identify rs651007 (MAF=20%) in the first intron of ABO at the putative promoter of an antisense lncRNA, associating with higher FG (β=0.02±0.004 mmol l(-1), P=1.3 × 10(-8)). Our approach identifies novel coding variant associations and extends the allelic spectrum of variation underlying diabetes-related quantitative traits and T2D susceptibility.

Challenges and Opportunities of Multimodality and Data Fusion in Remote Sensing

Abstract: Remote sensing is one of the most common ways to extract relevant information about Earth and our environment. Remote sensing acquisitions can be done by both active (synthetic aperture radar, LiDAR) and passive (optical and thermal range, multispectral and hyperspectral) devices. According to the sensor, a variety of information about the Earth's surface can be obtained. The data acquired by these sensors can provide information about the structure (optical, synthetic aperture radar), elevation (LiDAR), and material content (multispectral and hyperspectral) of the objects in the image. Once considered together their complementarity can be helpful for characterizing land use (urban analysis, precision agriculture), damage detection (e.g., in natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, oil spills in seas), and give insights to potential exploitation of resources (oil fields, minerals). In addition, repeated acquisitions of a scene at different times allows one to monitor natural resources and environmental variables (vegetation phenology, snow cover), anthropological effects (urban sprawl, deforestation), climate changes (desertification, coastal erosion), among others. In this paper, we sketch the current opportunities and challenges related to the exploitation of multimodal data for Earth observation. This is done by leveraging the outcomes of the data fusion contests, organized by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society since 2006. We will report on the outcomes of these contests, presenting the multimodal sets of data made available to the community each year, the targeted applications, and an analysis of the submitted methods and results: How was multimodality considered and integrated in the processing chain? What were the improvements/new opportunities offered by the fusion? What were the objectives to be addressed and the reported solutions? And from this, what will be the next challenges?

Factors associated with suicide ideation in adults.

Abstract: The study considers numerous factors potentially related to suicide ideation in adults, including life stress, stress perceptions, social support, personality, alcohol use, chronic conditions, distress symptoms and sociodemographic background. Using data from a health survey of 825 adult residents in the urban Reykjavik area of Iceland, the study finds that financial hardship, legal stress, family difficulties, stress perceptions and low material support are significantly related to thoughts of committing suicide. Multiple chronic conditions, frequent alcohol use and various forms of distress (e.g. depression, anxiety, hopelessness, pain) are also related to suicide ideation. Furthermore, low self-esteem and external locus of control (low sense of mastery) are both associated with suicidal thoughts. No significant relationships were found between sociodemographic background and suicide ideation. The meaning of the results, and their implications for continued theoretical and clinical work in this area, are discussed. Suicide research has primarily focused on completed suicides (e.g. Durkheim [1897] 1951; Fisher et al. 1993; Henry and Short 1954; Lester 1974; Pritchard 1996) or suicide attempts (e.g. Diekstra 1982; Maris 1981; Slap et al. 1989; Smith and Crawford 1986; Stack and Wasserman 1995). Relatively few studies have focused on thoughts of own death or suicide, or suicide planning. Nevertheless, there is a growing understanding that ideation and planning are important steps in a process of suicide, characterised by a stepwise hierarchy of actions with an underlying gradient of severity (Beck 1986; Bonner and Rich 1987; Diekstra 1993; Smith and Crawford 1986). Ideation precedes planning, which may result in an attempt leading to death. If nonfatal, the attempt may increase the likelihood of subsequent ideation, planning and attempt (see paths a-e in Fig. 1). It should therefore be of theoretical as well as clinical value to consider the risk factors associated with suicide ideation and planning.

Phonological recoding and lexical access

Abstract: Four experiments are reported that examine the effects of homophony (e.g., SAIL/SALE) on response latency in a lexical decision task. The results indicated that an effect of homophony was evident only if the nonword distractors consisted of legal, pronounceable strings (e.g., SLINT), but that this effect disappeared if the nonwords sounded like English words (e.g., BRANE). An optional encoding strategy is proposed to account for this differential effect. It is suggested that while both graphemic and phonemic encoding occurred simultaneously, naive subjects tended to rely on the outcome of the phonological route. However, when such reliance produced a high error rate (i.e., when the nonwords sounded like English words),. these subjects were able to abandon a phonological strategy and rely on the graphemic encoding procedure instead. Two further aspects of the results are of interest. First, the less frequent member of a homophone pair was slower when compared with a control item if the nonword distractors were of the SLINT type, but not different if they were of the BRANE type. The high-frequency members did not differ from their controls in either nonword environment. Second, in a homophone “repetition” experiment, the frequency order of presentation within pairs of homophones (i.e., the high-frequency member followed by the low-frequency member, or vice versa) had a substantial effect. A spelling recheck procedure and a response-inhibitory mechanism are postulated to incorporate these effects into a dual-encoding direct-access model of word recognition.

Vp-Internal structure and object shift in icelandic

Abstract: Les As. montrent que si la theorie de la localite de Chomsky est adoptee, il est necessaire de postuler des projections fonctionnelles internes au SV afin de rendre compte du changement d'objet dans les constructions islandaises a double objet. Les As. rendent compte de ces projections fonctionnelles en analysant les verbes ditransitifs comme des constructions causatives ou un verbe causatif prend un complement ST. Ils montrent enfin que la structure fonctionnelle interne au SV est necessaire d'une maniere independante pour rendre compte des phenomenes lies a l'ordre des mots dans les constructions a particule en islandais