Bayesian sparse factor analysis has many applications; for example, it has been applied to the problem of inferring a sparse regulatory network from gene expression data. We describe a number of inference algorithms for Bayesian sparse factor analysis using a slab and spike mixture prior. These include well-established Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and variational Bayes (VB) algorithms as wel...

OBJECTIVE The aim was to compare outcomes in a subgroup of patients with infrapopliteal (IP) disease randomised to infrapopliteal vein bypass (VB) or plain balloon angioplasty (PBA) in the original BASIL trial. METHODS A comparison of outcomes from patients randomised to VB or PBA undergoing revascularisation for severe limb ischaemia (SLI) because of IP disease with or without femoropoplitea...

OBJECTIVE To identify predictors of levels II and Vb involvement in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) with lateral neck metastasis. DESIGN Large case series. SETTING High-volume tertiary care hospital. PATIENTS Consecutive sample of 185 patients who underwent 248 selective neck dissections of at least levels II to V for pathologically proven PTC. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Significant independe...

The variational Bayesian (VB) approach is one of the best tractable approximations to the Bayesian estimation, and it was demonstrated to perform well in many applications. However, its good performance was not fully understood theoretically. For example, VB sometimes produces a sparse solution, which is regarded as a practical advantage of VB, but such sparsity is hardly observed in the rigoro...

We propose using the Variational Bayesian (VB) approach for automatically creating non-uniform, context-dependent HMM topologies. Although the Maximum Likelihood (ML) criterion is generally used to create HMM topologies, it has an overfitting problem. Recently, to avoid this problem, the VB approach has been applied to create acoustic models for speech recognition. We introduce the VB approach ...

UNLABELLED Perfusable tissue index (PTI) is a marker of myocardial viability and requires acquisition of transmission, (15)O-CO, and (15)O-H(2)O scans. The aim of this study was to generate parametric PTI images from a (15)O-H(2)O PET/CT scan without an additional (15)O-CO scan. METHODS Data from 20 patients undergoing both (15)O-H(2)O and (15)O-CO scans were used, assessing correlation betwe...

The dioxygen molecule has been the subject of valence bond (VB) studies since 1930s, as it was considered as the first "failure" of VB theory. The object of this article is to provide an unambiguous VB interpretation for the nature of chemical bonding of the molecule by means of modern VB computational methods, VBSCF, BOVB, and VBCI. It is shown that though the VBSCF method can not provide quan...

The ventrobasal (VB) thalamus is innervated by GABAergic afferents from the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) and participates in nociception. But how the TRN-VB pathway regulates pain is not fully understood. In the present study, we reported decreased extracellular GABA levels in the VB of rats with CFA-induced chronic inflammatory pain, measured by microdialysis with HPLC analysis. In vitro w...

STUDY OBJECTIVES We evaluated the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of transbronchial biopsy (TBB) using endobronchial ultrasonography with a guide sheath (EBUS-GS) and virtual bronchoscopy (VB) navigation for small peripheral pulmonary lesions < or = 30 mm in diameter. DESIGN Pilot study. SETTING A national university hospital. PATIENTS We performed TBB using EBUS-GS with VB navigation f...

Agonist-stimulated internalization followed by recycling to the cell membrane play an important role in fine-tuning the activity of chemokine receptors. Because the recycling of chemokine receptors is critical for the reestablishment of the cellular responsiveness to ligand, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms underlying the receptor recycling and resensitization. In the present study, w...