MEMOFinder: combining _de_ _novo_ motif prediction methods with a database of known motifs

*Background:* Methods for finding overrepresented sequence motifs are useful in several key areas of computational biology. They aim at detecting very weak signals responsible for biological processes requiring robust sequence identification like transcription-factor binding to DNA or docking sites in proteins. Currently, general performance of the model-based motif-finding methods is unsatisfactory; however, different methods are successful in different cases. This leads to the practical problem of combining results of different motif-finding tools, taking into account current knowledge collected in motif databases.
*Results:* We propose a new complete service allowing researchers to submit their sequences for analysis by four different motif-finding methods for clustering and comparison with a reference motif database. It is tailored for regulatory motif detection, however it allows for substantial amount of configuration regarding sequence background, motif database and parameters for motif-finding methods.
*Availability:* The method is available online as a webserver at: http://bioputer.mimuw.edu.pl/software/mmf/. In addition, the source code is released on a GNU General Public License

Outside the Canon — T. F. Powys’ Short Stories and the Ordinary

La qualité fixe du canon de la nouvelle moderniste britannique est claire – l’influence de Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Mansfield, Lowry, et Beckett est si évidente que toute discussion de leurs contemporains amènera à convoquer les géants qu’ils sont devenus et à utiliser des commentaires qui ont été formulés à leur propos. De manière à agrandir l’image que l’on se fait de la nouvelle modernistes, cet article se propose d’étudier un auteur en marge du canon littéraire, un auteur qu’il est d’ailleurs difficile de qualifier de moderniste. En analysant les nouvelles de T. F. Powys – en particulier le traitement de l’intrigue, les personnages et le thème central que constitue l’écriture de l’ordinaire – ce travail présente un ensemble de textes brefs et introduit une alternative aux réévaluations modernistes de la nouvelle et des conventions liées au réalisme

Labour arbitrage: the lifecycle of a global production node

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the geographic mobility of organisations by focusing on an instance of a rural community hosting a mobile phone plant in Romania. The paper depicts the process of changes in the community and outlines the effects during the lifecycle of the investment: starting from the plant's re-location from Germany to Romania until its closure and re-location to Southern China. Design/methodology/approach – This study emerged from a 16 month ethnography in the community conducted between 2011 and 2013. The quotes and observations come from recorded interviews and field notes taken during this time. Findings – The outcome of this work is to show how firms generate relationships not only with each other, but also with local communities, their labour markets and economies. As the author argue in this work, those relationships, despite their intensity and transformative power, are unstable and contrary to expectations might prove to be fragile and temporary. Originality/value – A number of approaches, such as world-system theory, political economy or the global value chain theory, try to describe the ongoing re-location of manufacturing industry by employing a top-down perspective. In this work, the author goes beyond this view and instead focus on the cultural meanings of this process. The author's bottom-up perspective focuses on the particular geographic location of a production node, an important part of the global value chain of a major producer of consumer electronics. The unique value of this work is also that it shows the local outcomes of the investment and the way that workers understand their participation in global production at different stages of organisational life

Why Russia needs decolonisation for its future democratisation

Ukraine’s recent success on the battlefield has encouraged discussion on potential changes to Russia’s political setup. While a new leader would be needed, more fundamental change would be required if the country is to embark on a path towards democracy. The key issue lies in Moscow’s relations with its periphery, an exploitative relationship that has persisted for centuries.The war in Ukraine has been made possible by Russian and Soviet authorities continually focusing their ideological and political attention on European Russia over the centuries. In doing so, they have been ignoring the interests of other regions of the country, as well as their non-Slavic populations. In this sense, 75 per cent of Russia’s territory acts as Moscow’s internal colonial empire. Not only is it financing the war with its oil and gas, but it is also providing cannon fodder for Russian military commanders, who do not value the lives of Buryats, Tatars or Chechens as much as those of the Slavic citizens. As a result, decolonisation is essential to ensuring the democratisation of Russia

The effects of Brazil’s basic education reform on juvenile crime.

This thesis aims to analyze the relation of education on the juvenile crime committed by 14-year-olds. We use a change in compulsory schooling law passed in Brazil in 2006 that anticipated the entry of youths in the first grade of elementary school. According to the law, new students must be enrolled in this grade at the age of six instead of seven. We argue that a change in the curriculum rather than an extra year of schooling may correlate with crimes. We analyze whether municipalities with a higher proportion of 14-year-olds in this new system reveal changes in criminal outcomes. Although previous literature suggest that this policy has a positive effect on students’ academic performance due to improvements in Mathematics and Portuguese scores, which may discourage delinquent behavior, our results indicate a positive correlation between the policy and crime. Estimates show a positive relation between auto thefts committed by 14-year-olds and policy expansion. The results by gender also point to an increase in this crime for both, with greater magnitude for males. Furthermore, our findings evidence that delinquent behavior persists among youths aged 15-17, especially drug dealing. Despite our robustness tests provide additional evidence of the positive relation between crime and the policy expansion, our estimates are still a first investigation that indicates only a correlation between the new policy and criminal outcomes.Este artigo visa analisar a relação da educação sobre a criminalidade juvenil cometida por jovens de 14 anos de idade. É usada uma mudança na lei de escolaridade compulsória aprovada no Brasil em 2006 que antecipou a entrada de jovens na primeira série do ensino fundamental, com isso a duração do ensino fundamental passou de oito para nove anos. De acordo com a lei, novos alunos devem ser matriculados nesta série aos seis anos de idade ao invés de sete. É argumentado que uma mudança no currículo em vez de um ano extra de escolaridade pode estar correlacionada com os resultados criminais. É analisado se os municípios com maior proporção de jovens de 14 anos neste novo sistema evidenciam variações sobre resultados criminais. Embora resultados anteriores da literatura mostrem que esta política tem um efeito positivo nos resultados acadêmicos dos alunos devido a melhorias nas notas de matemática e português, o que pode desencorajar o comportamento delinquente, os resultados indicam uma correlação positiva entre a política e o crime. As estimativas mostram uma relação positiva entre furtos de carros cometidos por jovens de 14 anos e a expansão da política. Os resultados por gênero também apontam para um aumento deste crime para ambos, com maior magnitude para os homens. Os resultados também evidenciam que o comportamento delinquente persiste entre jovens de 15-17 anos, especialmente no tráfico de drogas. Apesar de os testes de robustez fornecerem evidências adicionais da relação positiva entre o crime e a expansão da política, as estimativas ainda são uma primeira investigação que indicam apenas uma correlação entre a nova política e os resultados criminais

Digital competences of Maria Grzegorzewska Academy of Special Education students – method and results of a survey

Author analyses the use of new technologies by the pedagogy students from the generation of digital natives focusing on using the functions of mobile electronic devices and basic functions of Internet. Data has been collected with Google Forms. They allow to collect the data very quick, to see the responses immediately and to export the data to a spreadsheet. The aim of the study is to determine the level of student’s competence on the chosen field of information technology. Research shows that students have lower skills than they declare. Author advocates that this situation needs to be improved

Virtual Reality for the Visually Impaired

This thesis aims to illuminate and describe how there are problems with the development of virtual reality regarding visually impaired people. After discussing the reasons how and why this is a problem, this thesis will provide some possible solutions to develop virtual reality into a more user accessible technology, specifically for the visually impaired. As the popularity of virtual reality increases in digital culture, especially with Facebook announcing their development of Metaverse, there is a need for a future virtual reality environment that everyone can use. And it is in these early stages of development, that the need to address the problem of inaccessibility arises. As virtual reality is a relatively new medium in digital culture, the research on its use by visually impaired people has significant gaps. And as relatively few researchers are exploring this topic, my research will hopefully lead to more activity in this important area. Therefore, my research questions aim to address the current limitations of virtual reality, filling in some of the most significant gaps in this research area. My thesis will do this by conducting interviews and surveys to gather data that can further support and identify the crucial limitations of the visually impaired experience while trying to use virtual reality technology. The findings in this thesis will further address the problem, creating a possible solution and emphasizing the importance of user accessibility for the visually impaired in the future development of virtual reality. If digital companies and developers address this problem now, we can have a future where visually impaired people are treated more equally, with technologies developed specifically for them to experience virtual worlds.Master's Thesis in Digital CultureDIKULT350MAHF-DIKU

Fair non-monetary scheduling in federated clouds

In a hybrid cloud, individual cloud service providers (CSPs) often have incentive to use each other's resources to off-load peak loads or place load closer to the end user. However, CSPs have to keep track of contributions and gains in order to disincentivize long-term free-riding. We show CloudShare, a distributed version of a load balancing algorithm DirectCloud based on the Shapley value---a powerful fairness concept from game theory. CloudShare coordinates CSPs by a ZooKeeper-based coordination layer; each CSP runs a broker that interacts with local resources (such as Kubernetes-managed clusters). We quantitatively evaluate our implementation by simulation. The results confirm that CloudShare generates on the average more fair schedules than the popular FairShare algorithm. We believe our results show an viable alternative to monetary methods based on, e.g., spot markets.Comment: Accepted to CrossCloud'18: 5th Workshop on CrossCloud Infrastructures & Platform