Search results for "Cluster Analysis"
showing 10 items of 848 documents
Prelogical Test: An Alternative Tool for Early Detection of Learning Difficulties
2014
Abstract Difficulties during the preschool age commonly lead to children who cannot solve problems, organize information and create meaning. It is necessary to predict factors that may affect their future learning. The aim is to develop an evaluation tool, to be applied in groups and that can easily evaluate results, to detect future learning problems in children of 3-6 years old. Computational intelligence techniques could contribute greatly to analyze results and to detect patterns that otherwise would not be apparent. Two protocols were implemented: an Indirect Variables Protocol (IVP) which captures children's personal data, and a Direct Variables Protocol (DVP) that assesses the graphi…
The Effect of the Return of Serve on the Server Pair’s Movement Parameters and Rally Outcome in Padel Using Cluster Analysis
2019
Purpose: The pressure exerted on racket sports players by the service has been well documented. Whilst the return of serve has been suggested through qualitative interviews as being of similar importance there is a dearth of quantitative data to support this contention. This study analyzed time, speed, and distance parameters related to the outcome of the return of serve (ROS) in Padel, a sport similar to tennis but played on a court bounded by walls and played in doubles format only. Methods: Matches (n = 18) at two tournaments, sanctioned by the Valencian Federation, in 2012 were recorded and processed using Tracker software. ROS shot type (flat or lob), ball location, players’ positions …
Feature selection on a dataset of protein families: from exploratory data analysis to statistical variable importance
2016
Proteins are characterized by several typologies of features (structural, geometrical, energy). Most of these features are expected to be similar within a protein family. We are interested to detect which features can identify proteins that belong to a family, as well as to define the boundaries among families. Some features are redundant: they could generate noise in identifying which variables are essential as a fingerprint and, consequently, if they are related or not to a function of a protein family. We defined an original approach to analyze protein features for defining their relationships and peculiarities within protein families. A multistep approach has been mainly performed in R …
Unsupervised quantitative methods to analyze student reasoning lines: Theoretical aspects and examples
2019
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Quantitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] A relevant aim of research in education is to find and study the reasoning lines that students deploy when dealing with problematic situations. This can be done through an analysis of the answers students give to a questionnaire. In this paper, we discuss some methodological aspects involved in the quantitative analysis of a questionnaire by means of two different clustering methods, a hierarchical one and a nonhierarchical one. We start from the coding procedures needed to obtain analyzable data from the questionnaire and from a definition of a correlation coefficient suitable for measuri…
Predicting antitrichomonal activity: A computational screening using atom-based bilinear indices and experimental proofs
2006
Existing Trichomonas vaginalis therapies are out of reach for most trichomoniasis people in developing countries and, where available, they are limited by their toxicity (mainly in pregnant women) and their cost. New antitrichomonal agents are needed to combat emerging metronidazole-resistant trichomoniasis and reduce the side effects associated with currently available drugs. Toward this end, atom-based bilinear indices, a new TOMOCOMD-CARDD molecular descriptor, and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) were used to discover novel, potent, and non-toxic lead trichomonacidal chemicals. Two discriminant functions were obtained with the use of non-stochastic and stochastic atom-type bilinear in…
Event-based criteria in GT-STAF information indices: theory, exploratory diversity analysis and QSPR applications
2012
Versatile event-based approaches for the definition of novel information theory-based indices (IFIs) are presented. An event in this context is the criterion followed in the "discovery" of molecular substructures, which in turn serve as basis for the construction of the generalized incidence and relations frequency matrices, Q and F, respectively. From the resultant F, Shannon's, mutual, conditional and joint entropy-based IFIs are computed. In previous reports, an event named connected subgraphs was presented. The present study is an extension of this notion, in which we introduce other events, namely: terminal paths, vertex path incidence, quantum subgraphs, walks of length k, Sach's subg…
Similarity boosted quantitative structure-activity relationship--a systematic study of enhancing structural descriptors by molecular similarity.
2013
The concept of molecular similarity is one of the most central in the fields of predictive toxicology and quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) research. Many toxicological responses result from a multimechanistic process and, consequently, structural diversity among the active compounds is likely. Combining this knowledge, we introduce similarity boosted QSAR modeling, where we calculate molecular descriptors using similarities with respect to representative reference compounds to aid a statistical learning algorithm in distinguishing between different structural classes. We present three approaches for the selection of reference compounds, one by literature search and two by…
Vanilloid Derivatives as Tyrosinase Inhibitors Driven by Virtual Screening-Based QSAR Models
2010
A number of vanilloids have been tested as tyrosinase inhibitors using Ligand-Based Virtual Screening (LBVS) driven by QSAR (Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship) models as the multi-agent classification system. A total of 81 models were used to screen this family. Then, a preliminary cluster analysis of the selected chemicals was carried out based on their bioactivity to detect possible similar substructural features among these compounds and the active database used in the QSAR model construction. The compounds identified were tested in vitro to corroborate the results obtained in silico. Among them, two chemicals, isovanillin (K(M) (app) = 1.08 mM) near to kojic acid (reference d…
Two distinct extracellular RNA signatures released by a single cell type identified by microarray and next-generation sequencing
2016
ABSTRACT Cells secrete extracellular RNA (exRNA) to their surrounding environment and exRNA has been found in many body fluids such as blood, breast milk and cerebrospinal fluid. However, there are conflicting results regarding the nature of exRNA. Here, we have separated 2 distinct exRNA profiles released by mast cells, here termed high-density (HD) and low-density (LD) exRNA. The exRNA in both fractions was characterized by microarray and next-generation sequencing. Both exRNA fractions contained mRNA and miRNA, and the mRNAs in the LD exRNA correlated closely with the cellular mRNA, whereas the HD mRNA did not. Furthermore, the HD exRNA was enriched in lincRNA, antisense RNA, vault RNA, …
A fully automatic approach for multimodal PET and MR image segmentation in gamma knife treatment planning
2017
The aim of this study is to combine Biological Target Volume (BTV) segmentation and Gross Target Volume (GTV) segmentation in stereotactic neurosurgery.Our goal is to enhance Clinical Target Volume (CTV) definition, including metabolic and morphologic information, for treatment planning and patient follow-up.We propose a fully automatic approach for multimodal PET and MR image segmentation. This method is based on the Random Walker (RW) and Fuzzy C-Means clustering (FCM) algorithms. A total of 19 brain metastatic tumors, undergone stereotactic neuro-radiosurgery, were retrospectively analyzed. A framework for the evaluation of multimodal PET/MRI segmentation is presented, considering volume…