JZZ.js - a unified API for MIDI applications

Presented at the 2nd Web Audio Conference (WAC), April 4-6, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia.There are multiple ways to access and emulate MIDI devices in JavaScript. This includes real MIDI access like Web-MIDI API or Jazz-Plugin, Web-Audio synths like MIDI.js or Timbre.js, or HTML gadgets for MIDI input like Qwerty-Hancock. When used all together, these methods allow good OS/browser coverage; however, it is cumbersome to use them all in the same project because of their API differences. We introduce JZZ.js - a JavaScript library that provides unified interface for all possible MIDI implementations and has the following key features: - Hiding the details of asynchronous calls behind the developer-friendly chaining syntax. e.g. JZZ().openMidiOut(/Yamaha/).send(0x90,60,127).wait(500).send(0x80,60,127); - Treating MIDI inputs and outputs as graph nodes that can be directly connected (inspired by the Web-Audio API design). e.g. JZZ().openMidiIn().connect(JZZ().openMidiOut('Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth')); - Numerous helpers for converting MIDI messages to/from the human-readable form. e.g. console.log(JZZ.MIDI.aftertouch(0,'D#5',127).toString()); - Extensibility. We provide examples how to adapt the developers’ own libraries and gadgets into the framework. JZZ.js works with Node.js and all major browsers in Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Limited support is available for Android and iOS

Mechanisms of Regulating Cell Topology in Proliferating Epithelia: Impact of Division Plane, Mechanical Forces, and Cell Memory

Regulation of cell growth and cell division has a fundamental role in tissue formation, organ development, and cancer progression. Remarkable similarities in the topological distributions were found in a variety of proliferating epithelia in both animals and plants. At the same time, there are species with significantly varied frequency of hexagonal cells. Moreover, local topology has been shown to be disturbed on the boundary between proliferating and quiescent cells, where cells have fewer sides than natural proliferating epithelia. The mechanisms of regulating these topological changes remain poorly understood. In this study, we use a mechanical model to examine the effects of orientation of division plane, differential proliferation, and mechanical forces on animal epithelial cells. We find that regardless of orientation of division plane, our model can reproduce the commonly observed topological distributions of cells in natural proliferating animal epithelia with the consideration of cell rearrangements. In addition, with different schemes of division plane, we are able to generate different frequency of hexagonal cells, which is consistent with experimental observations. In proliferating cells interfacing quiescent cells, our results show that differential proliferation alone is insufficient to reproduce the local changes in cell topology. Rather, increased tension on the boundary, in conjunction with differential proliferation, can reproduce the observed topological changes. We conclude that both division plane orientation and mechanical forces play important roles in cell topology in animal proliferating epithelia. Moreover, cell memory is also essential for generating specific topological distributions

NET-SYNTHESIS: A software for synthesis, inference and simplification of signal transduction networks

Summary: We present a software for combined synthesis, inference and simplification of signal transduction networks. The main idea of our method lies in representing observed indirect causal relationships as network paths and using techniques from combinatorial optimization to find the sparsest graph consistent with all experimental observations. We illustrate the biological usability of our software by applying it to a previously published signal transduction network (Li et al., 2006) and by using it to synthesize and simplify a novel network corresponding to activation induced cell death in large granular lymphocyte leukemia. Availability: NET-SYNTHESIS is freely downloadable fro