Accurate forecasting of the undecided population in a public opinion poll

The problem of pollsters is addressed which is to forecast accurately the final answers of the undecided respondents to the primary question in a public opinion poll. The task is viewed as a pattern‐recognition problem of correlating the answers of the respondents to the peripheral questions in the survey with their primary answers. The underlying pattern is determined with a supervised artificial neural network that is trained using the peripheral answers of the decided respondents whose primary answers are also known. With peripheral answers as inputs, the trained network outputs the most probable primary response of an undecided respondent. For a poll conducted to determine the approval rating of the (former) Philippine president, J. E. Estrada in December 1999 and March 2000, the trained network predicted with a 95% success rate the direct responses of a test population that consists of 24.57% of the decided population who were excluded in the network training set. For the undecided population (22.67% of December respondents; 23.67% of March respondents), the network predicted a final response distribution that is consistent with the approval/disapproval ratio of the decided population. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collaborative genome-wide association analysis supports a role for ANK3 and CACNA1C in bipolar disorder

To identify susceptibility loci for bipolar disorder, we tested 1.8 million variants in 4,387 cases and 6,209 controls and identified a region of strong association (rs10994336, P = 9.1 x 10(-9)) in ANK3 (ankyrin G). We also found further support for the previously reported CACNA1C (alpha 1C subunit of the L-type voltage-gated calcium channel; combined P = 7.0 x 10(-8), rs1006737). Our results suggest that ion channelopathies may be involved in the pathogenesis of bipolar disorder.     

A concept of intracellular transmission of excitation by means of the endoplasmic reticulum

Zusammenfassung Die morphologische Beobachtung von getrennten cytoplasmatischen Phasen in geschlossenen Membranen führt zur Annahme von Membranpotentialen innerhalb der Zelle. Schreibt man den Membranen des endoplasmatischen Reticulums die Eigenschaften der Plasmamembran zu, so leiten sie die Erregung ins Zellinnere und dienen als Potentialspeicher.     

The bromination of saturated 3-ketosteroids with N-bromo-imides

Zusammenfassung Die Bromierung von gesättigten 3-Keto-steroiden mit N-Brom-succinimid oder N-Brom-phthalimid liefert die 2-Brom-3-keto-steroide bei Verbindungen, die derallo-Reihe angehören, und die 4-Brom-3-keto-steroide bei Vertretern dernormal-Reihe. Die weitere Bromierung eines 2-Brom-3-ketons zum 2,2-Dibrom-3-keton ist möglich.