Robot Rescue

Recently, it is very common in Asia that people put little toys on their office desks. It doesn’t mean they sometimes have their kids visiting them nor they are not grown up yet. These are toys, which can soothe their stress from work. I am always attracted by toys and also animations designed or directed by many artists and designers. In this fantasy world of toys, there may not be only human beings. As in Hayao Miyazaki’s animation “Spirited Away,” where there was a magic world ruled by a witch; and there was also an old spider man, a frog manager and even coals that were animated into cute little creatures. Imagination is unlimited; we can even fly or speak animal language in this world. In this fantasy world, figures and stories are not only just imaginations, but sometimes they become ideas for new technology. I believe imagination provides diversity and introduces more surprise and joys in our lives. With this magic of our minds, I intended to create a fantastic environment. At first I had created a planet and also some creatures. While I was creating these characters, there was a story coming up as if I was reading a storybook. The characters had their personalities and different missions to achieve. These became the opening animations of this project and then came the game. I was hoping users would feel more familiar to this environment in the game and closer to the creatures and the space I had created

Overexpression of lncRNA UCA1 promotes osteosarcoma progression and correlates with poor prognosis

AbstractLong non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been proved to play important roles in the tumorigenesis and development of several human malignancies. Our study aims to investigate the expression and function of lncRNA-UCA1 in osteosarcoma. lncRNA-UCA1 expression was detected in osteosarcoma tissues and cell lines by using qRT-PCR. Association between lncRNA-UCA1 levels and clinicopathological factors and patient's prognosis was analyzed. The roles of lncRNA-UCA1 in regulating osteosarcoma cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion were evaluated in vitro. We found that lncRNA-UCA1 expression was upregulated in osteosarcoma tissues and cell lines. High lncRNA-UCA1 expression was significantly correlated with large tumor size, high tumor grade, positive distant metastasis, and advanced clinical stage. Multivariate regression analysis identified lncRNA-UCA1 overexpression as an independent unfavorable prognostic factor. lncRNA-UCA1 knockdown inhibited osteosarcoma cell proliferation, promoted cell apoptosis, and suppressed cell invasion and migration, whereas lncRNA-UCA1 overexpression showed opposite effects. These findings suggested that lncRNA-UCA1 may contribute to osteosarcoma initiation and progression, and would be not only a novel prognostic marker but also a potential therapeutic target for this disease

What Scale of Audience a Campaign can Reach in What Price on Twitter?

Abstract—Campaigns with commercial and spam purposes have flooded the Twitter community. To understand what scale of audience a campaign could reach, we first perform a measurement study by collecting a dataset of about 10 million tweets via streaming API and one million search tweets for targeting topics, as well as 37,313 user accounts that are suspended by Twitter. From the dataset, we extract a spam campaign and a commercial promotion campaign accompanied by spamming activities. Then, we characterize the way in which a campaign can reach its audience, especially revealing the features that dominate the information diffusion. After identifying the accounts suspended by Twitter, we further inspect to what extent these features can help to weed out spam accounts. Also, the retrospective inspection is useful to uncover the tactics that malicious accounts utilize to avoid being suspended. Using the measurement results, we then develop a theoretical framework based on an epidemic model to investigate the dynamics of spammers and victims whom spammers reach in the spam campaign. With the theoretical framework, we conduct a benefit-cost analysis of the spam campaign, shedding lights on how to restrict the benefit of the spam campaign. I

TextRWeb: Large-Scale Text Analytics with R on the Web

As digital data sources grow in number and size, they pose an opportunity for computational investigation by means of text mining, NLP, and other text analysis techniques. R is a popular and powerful text analytics tool; however, it needs to run in parallel and re- quires special handling to protect copyrighted content against full access (consumption). The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) currently has 11 million volumes (books) where 7 million volumes are copyrighted. In this paper we propose HTRC TextRWeb, an interactive R software environment which employs complexity hiding interfaces and automatic code generation to allow large-scale text analytics in a non-consumptive means. For our principal test case of copyrighted data in HathiTrust Digital Library, TextRWeb permits us to code, edit, and submit text analytics methods empowered by a family of interactive web user interfaces. All these methods combine to reveal a new interactive paradigm for large-scale text analytics on the web

Phylogenetic analysis and classification of the Brassica rapa SET-domain protein family

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The SET (<it>Su(var)3-9, Enhancer-of-zeste, Trithorax</it>) domain is an evolutionarily conserved sequence of approximately 130-150 amino acids, and constitutes the catalytic site of lysine methyltransferases (KMTs). KMTs perform many crucial biological functions <it>via </it>histone methylation of chromatin. Histone methylation marks are interpreted differently depending on the histone type (i.e. H3 or H4), the lysine position (e.g. H3K4, H3K9, H3K27, H3K36 or H4K20) and the number of added methyl groups (i.e. me1, me2 or me3). For example, H3K4me3 and H3K36me3 are associated with transcriptional activation, but H3K9me2 and H3K27me3 are associated with gene silencing. The substrate specificity and activity of KMTs are determined by sequences within the SET domain and other regions of the protein.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we identified 49 SET-domain proteins from the recently sequenced <it>Brassica rapa </it>genome. We performed sequence similarity and protein domain organization analysis of these proteins, along with the SET-domain proteins from the dicot <it>Arabidopsis thaliana</it>, the monocots <it>Oryza sativa </it>and <it>Brachypodium distachyon</it>, and the green alga <it>Ostreococcus tauri. </it>We showed that plant SET-domain proteins can be grouped into 6 distinct classes, namely KMT1, KMT2, KMT3, KMT6, KMT7 and S-ET. Apart from the S-ET class, which has an interrupted SET domain and may be involved in methylation of nonhistone proteins, the other classes have characteristics of histone methyltransferases exhibiting different substrate specificities: KMT1 for H3K9, KMT2 for H3K4, KMT3 for H3K36, KMT6 for H3K27 and KMT7 also for H3K4. We also propose a coherent and rational nomenclature for plant SET-domain proteins. Comparisons of sequence similarity and synteny of <it>B. rapa </it>and <it>A. thaliana </it>SET-domain proteins revealed recent gene duplication events for some KMTs.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study provides the first characterization of the SET-domain KMT proteins of <it>B. rapa</it>. Phylogenetic analysis data allowed the development of a coherent and rational nomenclature of this important family of proteins in plants, as in animals. The results obtained in this study will provide a base for nomenclature of KMTs in other plant species and facilitate the functional characterization of these important epigenetic regulatory genes in <it>Brassica </it>crops.</p

Calculation of single-beam two-photon absorption transition rate of rare-earth ions using effective operator and diagrammatic representation

Effective operators needed in single-beam two-photon transition calculations have been represented with modified Goldstone diagrams similar to the type suggested by Duan and co-workers [J. Chem. Phys. 121, 5071 (2004) ]. The rules to evaluate these diagrams are different from those for effective Hamiltonian and one-photon transition operators. It is verified that the perturbation terms considered contain only connected diagrams and the evaluation rules are simplified and given explicitly.Comment: 10 preprint pages, to appear in Journal of Alloys and Compound