Inferring Transcriptional Interactions by the Optimal Integration of ChIP-chip and Knock-out Data

How to combine heterogeneous data sources for reliable prediction of transcriptional regulation is a challenge. Here we present an easy but powerful method to integrate Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-chip and knock-out data. Since these two types of data provide complementary (physical and functional) information about transcription, the method combining them is expected to achieve high detection rates and very low false positive rates. We try to seek the optimal integration of these two data using hyper-geometric distribution. We evaluate our method on yeast data and compare our predictions with YEASTRACT, high-quality ChIP-chip data, and literature. The results show that even using low-quality ChIP-chip data, our method uncovers more relations than those inferred before from high-quality data. Furthermore our method achieves a low false positive rate. We find experimental and computational evidence in literature for most transcription factor (TF)-gene relations uncovered by our method

Concept and Evidence of Tourist Risk Gaze

Gaze describes the experiential way that tourists perceive destinations during trips. Destination-related risks are inevitable in tourism; however, little attention has been given to the tourist gaze based on travel risk. Our research addresses this disparity by proposing and exploring the concept of tourist risk gaze. In Study 1, findings suggest that this type of gaze involves three interrelated aspects: risk information gaze, risky attraction gaze, and risky behavior gaze. In Study 2, we invited 50 Chinese university students to participate in an eye-tracking experiment to test tourist risk gaze. Participants displayed distinct visual attention patterns towards these three aspects when tourists encountered them during trips. This research offers a new lens through which to consider the tourist gaze and risk perception. It also introduces a novel eye-tracking method to analyze travel risk and the tourist gaze

Predicting multiplex subcellular localization of proteins using protein-protein interaction network: a comparative study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Proteins that interact in vivo tend to reside within the same or "adjacent" subcellular compartments. This observation provides opportunities to reveal protein subcellular localization in the context of the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. However, so far, only a few efforts based on heuristic rules have been made in this regard.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We systematically and quantitatively validate the hypothesis that proteins physically interacting with each other probably share at least one common subcellular localization. With the result, for the first time, four graph-based semi-supervised learning algorithms, Majority, <it>χ</it>²-score, GenMultiCut and FunFlow originally proposed for protein function prediction, are introduced to assign "multiplex localization" to proteins. We analyze these approaches by performing a large-scale cross validation on a <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae </it>proteome compiled from BioGRID and comparing their predictions for 22 protein subcellular localizations. Furthermore, we build an ensemble classifier to associate 529 unlabeled and 137 ambiguously-annotated proteins with subcellular localizations, most of which have been verified in the previous experimental studies.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Physical interaction of proteins has actually provided an essential clue for their co-localization. Compared to the local approaches, the global algorithms consistently achieve a superior performance.</p

"I would love to work in tourism, but...": exploring the outcomes of an ethnic tourism education initiative

This study focused on an ethnic tourism education initiative featuring Tibetan undergraduates in a coastal Chinese university. The employment intentions of the undergraduates and alumni were compared. The undergraduates were interested in hospitality and tourism jobs, while the alumni took stable government jobs. Using secondary data and focus groups, it was found that the Tibetan undergraduates "would love to work in tourism," but strong barriers existed: namely personal pursuits, family and social pressures, educational factors, the nature of tourism jobs, and the benefits of working in the government. The wider implications of the study for tourism education programs were presented

Tourism gaze: a review and prospect

The paper systematically reviews the "gaze" theory in tourism studies both at home and abroad, which has been mainly focused on "tourist gaze". The paper suggests that "tourism gaze" is an interactive and complicated concept with the participation of multi-stakeholders, rather than one-way gaze from tourists. "Tourism gaze" should also include "gaze from local people", "gaze from experts" "gaze between tourists" and "hidden gaze" and "mutual gaze" among stakeholders due to power gaps and changes. "Tourism gaze" tries to inspect the whole society from the perspective of tourism, which is of positive theoretical and practical significance. Based on the the comment on theoretical studies, the paper elaborates emphatically on the study orientation that can be accomplished among Chinese scholars, combining tourist development trends both domestically and internationally

Endogenous tourism marketing for destination development

Building on the considerable literature on trust and authenticity, it is argued that approaches to tourism marketing which provide images of local people in fresh, authentic, personalised styles can be attractive to many consumers. These approaches, which are defined here as endogenous marketing, locate the local citizens at the centre of the promotional efforts. The basis for endogenous tourism marketing lies in linking several concepts in a logical chain. The key concepts to be connected are firstly the need for trust in marketing communications, secondly authenticity and through that concept a realistic treatment of the possible experience at the destination, and finally the likelihood of a genuine welcome from the local destination community. These links constitute a pathway for understanding new endogenous marketing directions for positive destination development

Positive psychology and its applications in Tourism Studies

Positive psychology is an area of study that seeks to highlight the role of positive emotions, character strengths and positive institutions serving human happiness and well-being. There has been a rapid rise in the prominence of this area of psychology since the year 2000. Due to its consistency with the social economic concerns of the contemporary era, as well its accordance with ordinary people' s pursuit of happiness, positive psychology has been increasingly adopted by a range of disciplines. Its application in tourism, however, has been very slow. It was first introduced to tourism studies by Dr. Philip Pearce, a tourism psychologist based in Australia, in 2007. \ud \ud This article initially addressed the core ideas about positive psychology. Its background, its differences from the traditional clinical psychology, and its distinctive ways of doing research were reviewed. More importantly, the three core research areas, positive emotion, positive personality, and positive institutions were addressed in detail. The relationships among these three elements were also presented. In addition, positive interventions, which help to achieve the three afore-mentioned outcomes were considered. \ud \ud The highlight of this overview lies in the introduction of earlier positive psychology studies to tourism. The work of Pearce and his colleagues', especially Sebastian Filep, has been thoroughly reviewed and acknowledged. Their work, together with others, fully supports a consistency between the goals of tourism and the aims of positive psychology. For example, tourist behaviour as a case study, the benefits of travelling for individuals can fit in all the elements proposed by Martin Seligman's (2011) PERMA model (e.g. pleasure, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement). \ud \ud The existing literature which underpins positive psychology and its adoption in tourism is helpful in enriching our understanding. Research in this area, however, can be more insightful and useful if we take the Chinese context into consideration. A critical issue is to incorporate the Chinese cultural issues, especially the influential Confucianism, the Buddhism, as well as the modern communist cultures. These cultural contexts offer insights in exploring the distinctive characters of both Chinese tourist behaviour and the tourism community development. \ud \ud Considering the broader cultural issues and the research in and about China tourism, we proposed three areas for further research. Firstly, there is a paucity of positive psychology studies in tourism community research. As far as China is concerned, where many provinces and regions are using tourism as a tool to enhance local livelihoods, studies about how tourism can improve tourism community's well-being are both timely and important. Secondly, the thinking in positive psychologies can also be applied to the extraordinarily growing Chinese tourist market and consumer studies. Examples include what issues will influence Chinese tourists' positive on-site emotional experiences, and what are the learning outcomes of travelling, especially those for non-traditional travel (e. g. independent overseas travel, gap year, couch surfing, and self-drive tourism). The last but not the least point is concerned with the well-being of China's aging population and its increasing mobility. The kinds of tourism styles and benefits for this group in China may be very different from snowbirds and grey nomads in the western world. Research about how travel and serious leisure contribute to tourism communities and their own well-being is of particular help to both the policy makers and tourism industry in China

Induced fit or conformational selection for RNA/U1A folding

The hairpin II of U1 snRNA can bind U1A protein with high affinity and specificity. NMR spectra suggest that the loop region of apo-RNA is largely unstructured and undergoes a transition from unstructured to well-folded upon U1Abinding. However, the mechanism that RNA folding coupled protein binding is poorly understood. To get an insight into the mechanism, we have performed explicit-solvent molecular dynamics (MD) to study the folding kinetics of bound RNA and apo-RNA. Room-temperature MD simulations suggest that the conformation of bound RNA has significant adjustment and becomes more stable upon U1A binding. Kinetic analysis of high-temperature MD simulations shows that bound RNA and apo-RNA unfold via a two-state process, respectively. Both kinetics and free energy landscape analyses indicate that bound RNA folds in the order of RNA contracting, U1A binding, and tertiary folding. The predicted Φ-values suggest that A8, C10, A11, and G16 are key bases for bound RNA folding. Mutant Arg52Gln analysis shows that electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonds between RNA and U1A (Arg52Gln) decrease. These results are in qualitative agreement with experiments. Furthermore, this method could be used in other studies about biomolecule folding upon receptor binding