TFBSTools: an R/bioconductor package for transcription factor binding site analysis.

Summary: The ability to efficiently investigate transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) genome-wide is central to computational studies of gene regulation. TFBSTools is an R/Bioconductor package for the analysis and manipulation of TFBSs and their associated transcription factor profile matrices. TFBStools provides a toolkit for handling TFBS profile matrices, scanning sequences and alignments including whole genomes, and querying the JASPAR database. The functionality of the package can be easily extended to include advanced statistical analysis, data visualization and data integration. Availability and implementation: The package is implemented in R and available under GPL-2 license from the Bioconductor website (http://bioconductor.org/packages/TFBSTools/). Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Long Memory in Import and Export Price Inflation and Persistence of Shocks to the Terms of Trade

Long memory models have been successfully used to investigate the dynamic time-series behavior of inflation rates based on the CPI and WPI. However, almost no attention has been paid to import and export price inflation, nor to the terms of trade which they make up. This article investigates the dynamics of the terms of trade by focusing first on the time-series characteristics of these price series. It tests for long memory in export and import price inflation series and estimates the fractional differencing parameter using a number of approaches. To give a better idea of the degree of persistence of each series, estimates of the impulse responses are computed which take into account possible fractional integration. The dynamic behavior in changes in the terms of trade is then related to the long memory behavior of the import and export price inflation series. In a sample of eleven economies for which data is available, evidence of long memory in import and export price inflation occurs in about half the cases. Granger (1980) points out that the natural occurrence of long memory may be attributed to aggregation in macroeconomic series. Our analysis provides evidence of an alternative explanation, namely that long-memory may result from the differencing of a linear relationship between non-cointegrating variables. Specifically, the results from our analysis of eleven economies reveal that shocks to the terms of trade will persist if the constituent price inflation series are not cointegratedlong memory, terms of trade, imported inflation

Achieving Effective Innovation Based On TRIZ Technological Evolution

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityThis paper outlines the conception of effective innovation and discusses the method to achieve it. Effective Innovation is constrained on the path of technological evolution so that the corresponding path must be detected before conceptual design of the product. The process of products technological evolution is a technical developing process that the products approach to Ideal Final Result (IFR). During the process, the sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation carry on alternately. By researching and forecasting potential techniques using TRIZ technological evolution theory, the effective innovation can be achieved finally.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Print-Scan Resilient Text Image Watermarking Based on Stroke Direction Modulation for Chinese Document Authentication

Print-scan resilient watermarking has emerged as an attractive way for document security. This paper proposes an stroke direction modulation technique for watermarking in Chinese text images. The watermark produced by the idea offers robustness to print-photocopy-scan, yet provides relatively high embedding capacity without losing the transparency. During the embedding phase, the angle of rotatable strokes are quantized to embed the bits. This requires several stages of preprocessing, including stroke generation, junction searching, rotatable stroke decision and character partition. Moreover, shuffling is applied to equalize the uneven embedding capacity. For the data detection, denoising and deskewing mechanisms are used to compensate for the distortions induced by hardcopy. Experimental results show that our technique attains high detection accuracy against distortions resulting from print-scan operations, good quality photocopies and benign attacks in accord with the future goal of soft authentication

Coronae & Outflows from Helical Dynamos, Compatibility with the MRI, and Application to Protostellar Disks

Magnetically mediated disk outflows are a leading paradigm to explain winds and jets in a variety of astrophysical sources, but where do the fields come from? Since accretion of mean magnetic flux may be disfavored in a thin turbulent disk, and only fields generated with sufficiently large scale can escape before being shredded by turbulence, in situ field production is desirable. Nonlinear helical inverse dynamo theory can provide the desired fields for coronae and outflows. We discuss the implications for contemporary protostellar disks, where the MRI (magneto-rotational instability) can drive turbulence in the inner regions, and primordial protostellar disks, where gravitational instability drives the turbulence. We emphasize that helical dynamos are compatible with the magneto-rotational instability, and clarify the relationship between the two.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX (with figs); version in press for "Proceedings of the International Workshop on Magnetic Fields and Star Formation: Theory vs. Observation" Madrid, Spain; April 200

Advancing Learner Autonomy in Tefl Via Collaborative Learning

Learner autonomy has been defined as \u27a capacity to control important aspects of one\u27s learning\u27(Benson, 2013, p. 852). In the teaching of additional languages, learner autonomy dates back at least to the 1970s. For instance, Trim, who was a leader in the teaching of additional languages in Europe, stated that a goal of language education was to: make the process of language learning more democratic by providing the con- ceptual tools for the planning, construction and conduct of courses closely geared to the needs, motivations and characteristics of the learner and enabling him [sic] so far as possible to steer and control his own progress. (1978, p. 1

Star-forming accretion flows and the low luminosity nuclei of giant elliptical galaxies

The luminosities of the centers of nearby elliptical galaxies are very low compared to models of thin disc accretion to their black holes at the Bondi rate, typically a few hundredths to a few tenths of a solar mass per year. This has motivated models of inefficiently-radiated accretion that invoke weak electron-ion thermal coupling, and/or inhibited accretion rates due to convection or outflows. Here we point out that even if such processes are operating, a significant fraction of the accreting gas is prevented from reaching the central black hole because it condenses into stars in a gravitationally unstable disc. Star formation occurs inside the Bondi radius (typically ~100pc in giant ellipticals), but still relatively far from the black hole in terms of Schwarzschild radii. Star formation depletes and heats the gas disc, eventually leading to a marginally stable, but much reduced, accretion flow to the black hole. We predict the presence of cold (~100K), dusty gas discs, containing clustered H-alpha emission and occasional type II supernovae, both resulting from the presence of massive stars. Star formation accounts for several features of the M87 system: a thin disc, traced by H-alpha emission, is observed on scales of about 100pc, with features reminiscent of spiral arms and dust lanes; the star formation rate inferred from the intensity of H-alpha emission is consistent with the Bondi accretion rate of the system. Star formation may therefore help suppress accretion onto the central engines of massive ellipticals. We also discuss some implications for the fueling of the Galactic center and quasars.Comment: 13 pages, accepted to MNRA