Search

This thesis combines regression, sentiment, and social network analysis to explore how Russian online media agencies, both overt and covert, affect online communication on Twitter when North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exercises occur. It explores the relations between the average sentiment of tweets and the activities of Russia’s overt and covert online media agencies. The data source for this research is the Naval Postgraduate School’s licensed Twitter archive and open-source information about the NATO exercises timeline. Publicly available lexicons of positive and negative terms helped to measure the sentiment in tweets. The thesis finds that Russia’s covert media agencies, such as the Internet Research Agency, have a great impact on and likelihood for changing the sentiment of network users about NATO than do the overt Russian media outlets. The sentiment during NATO exercises becomes more negative as the activity of Russian media organizations, whether covert or overt, increases. These conclusions suggest that close tracking and examination of the activities of Russia’s online media agencies provide the necessary base for detecting ongoing information operations. Further refining of the analytical methods can deliver a more comprehensive outcome. These refinements could employ machine learning or natural language processing algorithms that can increase the precision of the sentiment measurement probability and timely identification of trolls’ accounts. Podpolkovnik, Bulgarian Air Force Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

In this talk we discuss the basic concepts used in axioms of sciences, their meaning explained through the axioms and measurement that follow afterwards. There are situations where meaning comes first, then axioms then measure. And there are situations where measurements come first and meanings ��� later. Things may look elementary, but they are supposed to build a solid background when make a system to analyze the risk. We illustrate this approach on examples from classic sciences as geometry and algebra, from examples of recent times as for uncertainty and probability and focus our attention on the concept of risk ant its measurements.

Background: A female baby patient, first child of non-consanguineous couple of North-European origin was referred to the Genetics Clinic. During the second and third pregnancy trimester, foetal ultrasound assessment failed to detect any congenital abnormalities. The girl was born at 36 weeks of gestation by caesarean section with birth weight of 2230 grams and head circumference of 34.5 centimetres. She was hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit for respiratory support. Clinical assessment detected generalised arthrogryposis with severe bilateral clubfeet deformity, bilateral hip dislocation, clenched hands, ulnar finger deviation, clinodactyly, camptodactyly, and dysmorphic facial features such as brachycephaly, mild hypertelorism, central cleft palate, whistling face, low set, and posteriorly rotated ears. The initial treatment consisted of physiotherapy and casting. She was discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit after 20-days and follow-up was arranged in a specialized care facility. Methods: Gene panel testing for neuromuscular disorders was performed on Illumina NGS sequencing system and class 4 (likely pathogenic) or 5 (pathogenic) variants were reported and subsequently confirmed by Sanger sequencing. Results: A de novo heterozygous class 4 variant NM_022068.2(PIEZO2 ): c.8199_8202delAATA p.(Leu2733Phefs*10) in PIEZO2 gene was detected. Discussion: Congenital arthrogryposis is a broad spectrum of genetic and non-genetic conditions with overlapping clinical features. Heterozygous pathogenic variants in PIEZO2 are known to cause 3 types of arthrogryposis: Gordon syndrome (distal arthrogryposis type 3), Marden-Walker syndrome and Distal arthrogryposis type 5. These clinically and genetically overlapping syndromes are now considered to represent variable expression of the same disorder. Although there is no clear genotype- phenotype correlation, there are some differences among these syndromes. The clinical features of the presented patient tend most to correlate with Gordon syndrome phenotype, which is typically characterized by clenching of hands and feet, camptodactyly, clubfoot, and less frequently, cleft palate. The detected PIEZO2 variant is a frame shift variant, resulting in a premature stop codon. It is located 20 amino acids before the normal stop codon and has not been previously reported. This PIEZO2 gene variant was presumed to be likely pathogenic given that there is another reported patient with proven pathogenic PIEZO2 gene variant that is located downstream of this PIEZO2 position. Conclusion: A patient with phenotype of Gordon syndrome is presented, one of the three disorders known to be caused by PIEZO2 pathogenic variants.

Russian. Bulgarian, English summary, [Dimitrov Boyan; Dimitrov B.; Dimitrov Bojan; Димитров Боян Н.]

Russian. Bulgarian, English summary, [Dimitrov Boyan; Dimitrov B.; Dimitrov Bojan; Димитров Боян]

We follow the ideas of measuring strength of dependence between random events, presented at two previous MMR conferences in South Africa and Tokyo. In our work here we apply it for analyzing local dependence structure of some popular bivariate distributions. At the Grenoble conference presentation we focus on the Bivariate Normal distributions with various correlation coefficients, and on the Marshal-Olkin distribution with various parameter’s combinations. We draw the surface z = gii(x,y), i=1,2 of dependence of i-th component on the other component j≠i within the squares [x, x +1]x[y,y+1], and [x, x +.5]x[y,y+.5]. The points (x,y) run within the square [-3.5, 3.5]x[-3.5, 3.5] for Bivariate Normal distribution, and in [0.10]x[0,10] for the Marshal-Olkin distribution.