University of Washington

About: University of Washington is a education organization based out in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 131611 authors who have published 305578 publications receiving 17716157 citations. The organization is also known as: UW & UDub.

Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome.

Abstract: The human genome holds an extraordinary trove of information about human development, physiology, medicine and evolution. Here we report the results of an international collaboration to produce and make freely available a draft sequence of the human genome. We also present an initial analysis of the data, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the sequence.

Atherosclerosis — An Inflammatory Disease

Abstract: Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. Because high plasma concentrations of cholesterol, in particular those of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, are one of the principal risk factors for atherosclerosis,1 the process of atherogenesis has been considered by many to consist largely of the accumulation of lipids within the artery wall; however, it is much more than that. Despite changes in lifestyle and the use of new pharmacologic approaches to lower plasma cholesterol concentrations,2,3 cardiovascular disease continues to be the principal cause of death in the United States, Europe, and much of Asia.4,5 In fact, the lesions of atherosclerosis represent . . .

Antibiotic susceptibility testing by a standardized single disk method.

Abstract: In the words of the authors, the paper by A. W. Bauer et al., from the University of Washington in Seattle, on a standardized single-disk method for antibiotic susceptibility testing “. . . consolidate(s) and update(s) previous descriptions of the method and provide(s) a concise outline for its performance and interpretation.” Clinical microbiologists were relieved that finally a disk diffusion method had been standardized, could be used with ease, and provided reliable results as compared with minimum inhibitory concentration tests. The pivotal role of Hans Ericsson’s theoretical and practical studies (H. Ericsson and G. Svartz-Malmberg, Antibiot. Chemother. 6:41–74, 1959), as well as earlier reports by some of the authors of the publications cited, must be mentioned as a matter of fairness. Most of the recommendations given are still valid today even though some of the antimicrobial agents are obsolete, new ones have been added, some zone sizes had to be modified, and new media were designed for Haemophilus influenzae and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Recommendations of the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards continue to be based on this publication; the “Kirby-Bauer” method is, among the many disk methods used in other countries, still the one that has been researched most thoroughly and updated continuously. ALEXANDER VON GRAEVENITZ

Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant

Abstract: We present spectral and photometric observations of 10 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the redshift range 0.16 " z " 0.62. The luminosity distances of these objects are determined by methods that employ relations between SN Ia luminosity and light curve shape. Combined with previous data from our High-z Supernova Search Team and recent results by Riess et al., this expanded set of 16 high-redshift supernovae and a set of 34 nearby supernovae are used to place constraints on the following cosmo- logical parameters: the Hubble constant the mass density the cosmological constant (i.e., the (H 0 ), () M ), vacuum energy density, the deceleration parameter and the dynamical age of the universe ) " ), (q 0 ), ) M \ 1) methods. We estimate the dynamical age of the universe to be 14.2 ^ 1.7 Gyr including systematic uncer- tainties in the current Cepheid distance scale. We estimate the likely e†ect of several sources of system- atic error, including progenitor and metallicity evolution, extinction, sample selection bias, local perturbations in the expansion rate, gravitational lensing, and sample contamination. Presently, none of these e†ects appear to reconcile the data with and ) " \ 0 q 0 " 0.

XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System

Abstract: Tree boosting is a highly effective and widely used machine learning method. In this paper, we describe a scalable end-to-end tree boosting system called XGBoost, which is used widely by data scientists to achieve state-of-the-art results on many machine learning challenges. We propose a novel sparsity-aware algorithm for sparse data and weighted quantile sketch for approximate tree learning. More importantly, we provide insights on cache access patterns, data compression and sharding to build a scalable tree boosting system. By combining these insights, XGBoost scales beyond billions of examples using far fewer resources than existing systems.