Gene Dosage, Expression, and Ontology Analysis Identifies Driver Genes in the Carcinogenesis and Chemoradioresistance of Cervical Cancer

Integrative analysis of gene dosage, expression, and ontology (GO) data was performed to discover driver genes in the carcinogenesis and chemoradioresistance of cervical cancers. Gene dosage and expression profiles of 102 locally advanced cervical cancers were generated by microarray techniques. Fifty-two of these patients were also analyzed with the Illumina expression method to confirm the gene expression results. An independent cohort of 41 patients was used for validation of gene expressions associated with clinical outcome. Statistical analysis identified 29 recurrent gains and losses and 3 losses (on 3p, 13q, 21q) associated with poor outcome after chemoradiotherapy. The intratumor heterogeneity, assessed from the gene dosage profiles, was low for these alterations, showing that they had emerged prior to many other alterations and probably were early events in carcinogenesis. Integration of the alterations with gene expression and GO data identified genes that were regulated by the alterations and revealed five biological processes that were significantly overrepresented among the affected genes: apoptosis, metabolism, macromolecule localization, translation, and transcription. Four genes on 3p (RYBP, GBE1) and 13q (FAM48A, MED4) correlated with outcome at both the gene dosage and expression level and were satisfactorily validated in the independent cohort. These integrated analyses yielded 57 candidate drivers of 24 genetic events, including novel loci responsible for chemoradioresistance. Further mapping of the connections among genetic events, drivers, and biological processes suggested that each individual event stimulates specific processes in carcinogenesis through the coordinated control of multiple genes. The present results may provide novel therapeutic opportunities of both early and advanced stage cervical cancers

Are Daily Stand-up Meetings Valuable? A Survey of Developers in Software Teams

The daily stand-up meeting is a widely used practice. However, what is more uncertain is how valuable the practice is to team members. We invited professional developers of a programming forum to a survey and obtained 221 responses. Results show that the daily stand-up meeting was used by 87% of those who employ agile methods. We found that even though the respondents on average were neutral towards the practice, the majority were either positive or negative. Junior developers were most positive and senior developers and members of large teams most negative. We argue that the value of the practice should be evaluated according to the team needs. Further, more work is needed to understand why senior developers do not perceive the meetings as valuable and how to apply the practice successfully in large teams.publishedVersio

Teamwork Quality and Project Success in Software Development: A Survey of Agile Development Teams

Small, self-directed teams are central in agile development. This article investigates the effect of team- work quality on team performance, learning and work satisfaction in agile software teams, and whether this effect differs from that of traditional software teams. A survey was administered to 477 respondents from 71 agile software teams in 26 companies and analyzed using structural equation modeling. A posi- tive effect of teamwork quality on team performance was found when team members and team leaders rated team performance. In contrast, a negligible effect was found when product owners rated team per- formance. The effect of teamwork quality on team members ́learning and work satisfaction was strongly positive, but was only rated by the team members. Despite claims of the importance of teamwork in ag- ile teams, this study did not find teamwork quality to be higher than in a similar survey on traditional teams. The effect of teamwork quality on team performance was only marginally greater for the agile teams than for the traditional teams

No Gender Difference in CS1 Grade for Students with Programming from High School: An Exploratory Study

Programming is an increasingly important skill in the 21st century. Therefore, many education systems internationally offer non-compulsory programming (NCP) courses during high school years. Aim. Our goal is to study the effect of NCP on first-semester student performance in CS1. Because interest in computing is more often associated with men than women, we also want to study gender differences. Method. A total of 232 students from a Norwegian university were involved in the study. High school grades from the public student registry were analysed together with questionnaire data and the CS1 grade. Results. The students with NCP performed significantly better in CS1 than those without (average grade 4.4 vs. 3.6, where A, B, … , F is coded as 5, 4, … , 0). For women the difference in performance with and without NCP was 4.4 vs. 3.2, for men it was 4.4 vs. 3.8. Conclusion. This study shows that for students with NCP, the notorious gender difference in CS1 performance was absent. The other results merit further considerations regarding mathematics and science backgrounds, grades, prior experience, and self-efficacy

Auger Electron Spectroscopy as a Probe of the Solution of Aqueous Ions

Aqueous potassium chloride has been studied by synchrotron-radiation excited core-level photoelectron and Auger electron spectroscopy. In the Auger spectrum of the potassium ion, the main feature comprises the final states where two outer valence holes are localized on potassium. This spectrum exhibits also another feature at a higher kinetic energy which is related to final states where outer valence holes reside on different subunits. Through ab initio calculations for microsolvated clusters, these subunits have been assigned as potassium ions and the surrounding water molecules. The situation is more complicated in the Auger spectrum of the chloride anion. One-center and multicenter final states are present here as well but overlap energetically

Surface Behavior of Hydrated Guanidinium and Ammonium Ions : A Comparative Study by Photoelectron Spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamics

Through the combination of surface sensitive photoelectron spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulation, the relative surface propensities of guanidinium and ammonium ions in aqueous solution are characterized. The fact that the N Is binding energies differ between these two species was exploited to monitor their relative surface concentration through their respective photoemission intensities. Aqueous solutions of ammonium and guanidinium chloride, and mixtures of these salts, have been studied in a wide concentration range, and it is found that the guanidinium ion has a greater propensity to reside at the aqueous surface than the ammonium ion. A large portion of the relative excess of guanidinium ions in the surface region of the mixed solutions can be explained by replacement of ammonium ions by guanidinium ions in the surface region in combination with a strong salting-out effect of guanidinium by ammonium ions at increased concentrations. This interpretation is supported by molecular dynamics simulations, which reproduce the experimental trends very well. The simulations suggest that the relatively higher surface propensity of guanidinium compared with ammonium ions is due to the ease of dehydration of the faces of the almost planar guanidinium ion, which allows it to approach the water-vapor interface oriented parallel to it