Identical Twins

"Three Identical Strangers" is a documentary film telling a "bizarre" story of American triplets. Wathching  this film we may wonder: "Do we live in a “chancy, chancy, chancy world?" The Effect of Celestial Twins (ECT) rejects the idea of such an improbable universe and proposes instead a hypothesis that a new temporal  factor (the Theta-factor) plays an important role in shaping our personalities and life-paths.

This essay proposes that Shakespeare uses twinship and marriage in The Comedy of Errors to reflect on the importance of individuality and interrelation in the formation of identity. Specifically, the essay shows how Errors sets the twin relation against the marital relation, ultimately implying that marriage--imperfect, everyday marriage--has as much subjective impact as the extraordinary bond between identical twins. As wonderful as it might be to see two persons sharing "one face, one voice, one habit," Errors suggests that the twin relation does not surpass in significance the equally marvelous relation whereby husband and wife become "one flesh."

The current model used in research for all walks of medicine has only two independent factors: genetics and environment. This simple model breaks down quickly when looking at identical twin studies, especially the study of infant twins since both variables are equal. We have been analyzing the data collected from various identical twin studies in order to find a more robust causality model for both non-hereditary disease and behavior in humans. The model that we are currently testing has three additional independent factors. These have been hypothesized in order to describe the pattern found in all behavioral research data. Non-hereditary disease occurrence data fits well into this more robust model. Current Model Summary The two-factor model does not describe the statistical results seen in any of the twin studies. In the extreme cases we can see that a truly genetic disease would only effect the statistics on the identical twin pair, while the statistical results for Fraternal Twins, Siblings and Ancestors would be the same, showing no statistical difference in the probability of obtaining the disease. In the case of a purely environmental influence, there should be no statistical difference between Identical Twins, Fraternal Twins and Siblings since they statistically grow up in the same environment. In addition, interaction of the two variables cannot explain the observed statistically significant differences in the occurrence of diseases in Fraternal Twins and Siblings. They both have the same genetic distribution and grow up in the same environment. In both our reading of the study summaries and in our observation of life in general, we have seen a family relationship that we cannot attribute to genetics. How many families have you heard of that have, generation after generation of the same problem: child abuse, alcoholism, criminal behavior, poverty, or just unlikely streaks of plain bad luck on the negative side, while on the positive side other families seem to glide through life on a lucky streak from one generation to the next. Studies of identical twins support a family (non-genetic) variable. The following pattern is consistent within all of the studies that we have seen: " For example, a monozygotic (identical) twin of a person with schizophrenia has the highest risk-40 to 50 percent-of developing the illness. A child whose parent has schizophrenia has about a 10 percent chance. " (From NIHM article on Schizophrenia.) If schizophrenia were to genetic, then the second twin must have it. So if it is not genetic, then there should not be the family correlation, but there is. So there must be another independent family variable that is currently ignored. This pattern is seen in alcoholism, criminal behavior, schizophrenia, ADHA, bipolar disorder, homosexuality and some types of cancer. In general it shows the greatest correlation with identical twins, a weaker relation with fraternal twins, a yet still weaker relationship with siblings, but all of these relations are higher than the normal statistical occurrence in the general population. As seen in interaction studies, the interaction factor between genetics and environment has not been shown to be statistically significant, so we have left an interaction factor out of our model. Shawn Murphy Comment [1]: Need better percentage quote showing fraternal and ancestral differences.

Face recognition is one of the most challenging problems in the domain of image processing and machine
vision. The face recognition system is critical when individuals have very similar biometric signature such
as identical twins. In this paper, new efficient facial-based identical twins recognition is proposed
according to geometric moment. The utilized geometric moment is Zernike Moment (ZM) as a feature
extractor inside the facial area of identical twins images. Also, the facial area in an image is detected using
AdaBoost approach. The proposed method is evaluated on two datasets, Twins Days Festival and Iranian
Twin Society which contain scaled and rotated facial images of identical twins in different illuminations.
The results prove the ability of proposed method to recognize a pair of identical twins. Also, results show
that the proposed method is robust to rotation, scaling and changing illumination.

SQL injection attacks are easy way to attack the web applications and gain access to the private data in a database. Using different types of the SQL attacks one can easily gain access, modify the database or can even remove it. Details such as fields and table names are required for a hacker to modify a database.
Hence, to provide the increased amount of security to users and their data, different types of techniques are
used such as Random4 algorithm, which is based on randomization and used to encrypt the user input,
Hirschberg algorithm which is a divide and conquer technique used to match the query pattern. In this paper we are providing a comparative study and implementation of these prevention techniques using open source software.

Choriogenesis

In developmental biology, choriogenesis is the formation of the chorion, an outer membrane of the placenta that eventually forms chorionic villi that allow the transfer of blood and nutrients from mother to fetus.

Influence on monozygotic twins

Identical twins have identical genomes in the immediate aftermath of twinning. Two-thirds of monozygotic twins share the same placenta, arising by cleavage before the fourth day of development; the other third have separate placentas because cleavage has taken place after the fourth day after choriogenesis has begun.

Placentas vary with respect to the transport of nutrients and hormones, a variance that may influence epigenesis. For example, the pattern of X chromosome inactivation is affected by placental status. There is some evidence that it affects the variance in IQ test findings among identical twins, that is, monochorionic identical twins display less IQ variance one from another than do dichorionic identical twins. There is weak evidence that monozygotic twins sharing a placenta have a higher concordance rate for schizophrenia than monozygotic twins with separate placentas. Sharing a placenta increases the risk for infection, and infection in pregnancy has been shown to be a risk factor for schizophrenia. Equally striking is evidence for increasing difference in genomic expression between identical twins as they are once again implicating environmental intercession.

In the domain of image processing, face recognition is one of the most well-known research field. When humans have very similar biometric properties, such as identical twins, the face recognition system is considered as a challengeable problem. In this paper, the AdaBoost method is utilized to detect the facial area of input image. After that the facial area is divided into some local regions. Finally, new efficient facial-based identical twins feature extractor based on the geometric moment is applied into local regions of face image. The used feature extractor is Pseudo-Zernike Moment (PZM) which is employed inside the local regions of facial area of identical twins images. To evaluate the proposed method, two datasets, Twins Days Festival and Iranian Twin Society, are collected where the datasets includes scaled and rotated facial images of identical twins in different illuminations. The experimental results demonstrates the ability of proposed method to recognize a pair of identical twins in different situations such as rotation, scaling and changing illumination

Face recognition is one of the most challenging problems in the domain of image processing and machine
vision. Face recognition system is critical when individuals have very similar biometric signature such as
identical twins. In this paper, new efficient facial-based identical twins recognition is proposed according
to the geometric moment. The utilized geometric moment is Pseudo-Zernike Moment (PZM) as a feature
extractor inside the facial area of identical twins images. Also, the facial area inside an image is detected
using Ada Boost approach. The proposed method is evaluated on two datasets, Twins Days Festival and
Iranian Twin Society which contain scaled, which contain the shifted and rotated facial images of identical
twins in different illuminations. The results prove the ability of proposed method to recognize a pair of
identical twins. Also, results show that the proposed method is robust to rotation, scaling and changing
illumination.

The three dimensional shape information of teeth from cone beam computed tomography images provides important assistance for dentist performing implant treatment, orthodontic surgery. This paper describes the tooth root of both anterior and posterior teeth from CBCT images of head. The segmentation is done using level set method with five energy functions. The edge energy used to move the curve towards border of the object. The shape prior energy provides the shape of the contour. The dentine wall energy provides interaction between the neighboring teeth and prevent shrinkage and leakage problem. The test result for both segmentation and 3D reconstruction shows that the method can visualize both anterior and posterior teeth with high accuracy and efficiency.

Why would you want your twins to be an optimist? Because pessimism is an ingrained pattern of mind that has far-reaching and tragic significances: underachievement, resignation, depressed mood, and even surprisingly poor physical health.

Twins with positive thinking skills are better competent to take disappointment, have a tougher sense of personal mastery and are well talented to jump back when things slip up in their lives.

The world of twin research and the medical specialty of Obstetrics and Gynecology have lost a giant. Dr Louis Keith passed away on July 6, 2014. He and his surviving twin brother Donald were arguably the most productive and respected monozygotic twins the world has known, making major contributions to all facets of twin science and public understanding.
Along with Luigi Gedda and colleagues, Louis Keith founded the International Society of Twin Studies in Rome in 1974, served on the editorial board of the Society’s periodicals, including this journal, “Twin Research and Human Genetics”. He served as Co-President of ISTS from 2001-2004 along with his MZ twin Donald. He edited over a dozen text books on topics pertaining to multiple pregnancy and co-founded the Center for Study of Multiple Birth.
The full breadth of Louis’ multidimensional career was not widely appreciated. In addition to his substantial twin work, Louis made major contributions in a broad array of fields, including women’s reproductive health and rights, gynecologic laparoscopy, the elucidation of anatomic mirroring, awareness and prevention of childhood burn injury, postpartum hemorrhage, the study of gender and sexuality, and the standardized photographic imaging of human anatomy.
Dr. Louis Keith selflessly promoted the career paths of others and inspired many to academic greatness. Although the full impact of his work will never be known, it is clear that Louis Keith was one of the rare individuals who will have a major and permanent positive impact on human life.
David Teplica MD, MFA