Abstract
Meiosis is a differentiated program of the cell cycle that is characterized by high levels of recombination followed by two nuclear divisions. In fission yeast, the genetic program during meiosis is regulated at multiple levels, including transcription, mRNA stabilization, and splicing. Mei4 is a forkhead transcription factor that controls the expression of mid-meiotic genes. Here, we describe that Fkh2, another forkhead transcription factor that is essential for mitotic cell-cycle progression, also plays a pivotal role in the control of meiosis. Fkh2 binding preexists in most Mei4-dependent genes, inhibiting their expression. During meiosis, Fkh2 is phosphorylated in a CDK/Cig2-dependent manner, decreasing its affinity for DNA, which creates a window of opportunity for Mei4 binding to its target genes. We propose that Fkh2 serves as a placeholder until the later appearance of Mei4 with a higher affinity for DNA that induces the expression of a subset of meiotic genes.

Abstract
Recent advances in the cost-efficiency of sequencing technologies enabled the combined DNA-and RNA-sequencing of human individuals at the population-scale, making genome-wide investigations of the inter-individual genetic impact on gene expression viable. Employing mRNA-sequencing data from the Geuvadis Project and genome sequencing data from the 1000 Genomes Project we show that the computational analysis of DNA sequences around splice sites and poly-A signals is able to explain several observations in the phenotype data. In contrast to widespread assessments of statistically significant associations between DNA polymorphisms and quantitative traits, we developed a computational tool to pinpoint the molecular mechanisms by which genetic markers drive variation in RNA-processing, cataloguing and classifying alleles that change the affinity of core RNA elements to their recognizing factors. The in silico models we employ further suggest RNA editing can moonlight as a splicing-modulator, albeit less frequently than genomic sequence diversity. Beyond existing annotations, we demonstrate that the ultra-high resolution of RNA-Seq combined from 462 individuals also provides evidence for thousands of bona fide novel elements of RNA processing-alternative splice sites, introns, and cleavage sites-which are often rare and lowly expressed but in other characteristics similar to their annotated counterparts.

Abstract
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data exhibit long memory and time-varying conditional variance (volatility). These characteristics are well captured using Fractionally Integrated AutoRegressive Moving Average (ARFIMA) models with Generalised AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) errors, which are an extension of the AR models usual in the analysis of HRV. GARCH models assume that volatility depends only on the magnitude of the shocks and not on their sign, meaning that positive and negative shocks have a symmetric effect on volatility. However, HRV recordings indicate further dependence of volatility on the lagged shocks. This work considers Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) models which assume that positive and negative shocks have an asymmetric effect (leverage effect) on the volatility, thus better copping with complex characteristics of HRV. ARFIMA-EGARCH models, combined with adaptive segmentation, are applied to 24 h HRV recordings of 30 subjects from the Noltisalis database: 10 healthy, 10 patients suffering from congestive heart failure and 10 heart transplanted patients. Overall, the results for the leverage parameter indicate that volatility responds asymmetrically to values of HRV under and over the mean. Moreover, decreased leverage parameter values for sick subjects, suggest that these models allow to discriminate between the different groups.

Abstract
Modeling Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data has become important for clinical applications and as a research tool. These data exhibit long memory and time-varying conditional variance (volatility). In HRV, volatility is traditionally estimated by recursive least squares combined with short memory AutoRegressive (AR) models. This work considers a parametric approach based on long memory Fractionally Integrated AutoRegressive Moving Average (ARFIMA) models with heteroscedastic errors. To model the heteroscedasticity nonlinear Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (GARCH) and Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (EGARCH) models are considered. The latter are necessary to model empirical characteristics of conditional volatility such as clustering and asymmetry in the response, usually called leverage in time series literature. The ARFIMA-EGARCH models are used to capture and remove long memory and characterize conditional volatility in 24 hour HRV recordings from the Noltisalis database.

Abstract
We introduce a new class of integer-valued self-exciting threshold models, which is based on the binomial autoregressive model of order one as introduced by McKenzie (Water Resour Bull 21:645-650, 1985. doi:. Basic probabilistic and statistical properties of this class of models are discussed. Moreover, parameter estimation and forecasting are addressed. Finally, the performance of these models is illustrated through a simulation study and an empirical application to a set of measle cases in Germany.

Abstract
Determining valuable data among large volumes of data is one of the main challenges in Big Data. We aim to extract knowledge from these sources using a Hierarchical Multi-Label Classification process called Semantic HMC. This process automatically learns a label hierarchy and classifies items from very large data sources. Five steps compose the Semantic HMC process: Indexation, Vectorization, Hierarchization, Resolution and Realization. The first three steps construct automatically the label hierarchy from data sources. The last two steps classify new items according to the label hierarchy. This paper focuses in the last two steps and presents a new highly scalable process to classify items from huge sets of unstructured text by using ontologies and rule-based reasoning. The process is implemented in a scalable and distributed platform to process Big Data and some results are discussed. © 2016 ACM.