15 research outputs found
BPCoach: Exploring Hero Drafting in Professional MOBA Tournaments via Visual Analytics
Hero drafting for multiplayer online arena (MOBA) games is crucial because
drafting directly affects the outcome of a match. Both sides take turns to
"ban"/"pick" a hero from a roster of approximately 100 heroes to assemble their
drafting. In professional tournaments, the process becomes more complex as
teams are not allowed to pick heroes used in the previous rounds with the
"best-of-N" rule. Additionally, human factors including the team's familiarity
with drafting and play styles are overlooked by previous studies. Meanwhile,
the huge impact of patch iteration on drafting strengths in the professional
tournament is of concern. To this end, we propose a visual analytics system,
BPCoach, to facilitate hero drafting planning by comparing various drafting
through recommendations and predictions and distilling relevant human and
in-game factors. Two case studies, expert feedback, and a user study suggest
that BPCoach helps determine hero drafting in a rounded and efficient manner.Comment: Accepted by The 2024 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW) (Proc. CSCW 2024
PromotionLens: Inspecting Promotion Strategies of Online E-commerce via Visual Analytics
Promotions are commonly used by e-commerce merchants to boost sales. The
efficacy of different promotion strategies can help sellers adapt their
offering to customer demand in order to survive and thrive. Current approaches
to designing promotion strategies are either based on econometrics, which may
not scale to large amounts of sales data, or are spontaneous and provide little
explanation of sales volume. Moreover, accurately measuring the effects of
promotion designs and making bootstrappable adjustments accordingly remains a
challenge due to the incompleteness and complexity of the information
describing promotion strategies and their market environments. We present
PromotionLens, a visual analytics system for exploring, comparing, and modeling
the impact of various promotion strategies. Our approach combines
representative multivariant time-series forecasting models and well-designed
visualizations to demonstrate and explain the impact of sales and promotional
factors, and to support "what-if" analysis of promotions. Two case studies,
expert feedback, and a qualitative user study demonstrate the efficacy of
PromotionLens.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. IEEE
VIS 2022
Small RNA zippers lock miRNA molecules and block miRNA function in mammalian cells.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) loss-of-function phenotypes are mainly induced by chemically modified antisense oligonucleotides. Here we develop an alternative inhibitor for miRNAs, termed \u27small RNA zipper\u27. It is designed to connect miRNA molecules end to end, forming a DNA-RNA duplex through a complementary interaction with high affinity, high specificity and high stability. Two miRNAs, miR-221 and miR-17, are tested in human breast cancer cell lines, demonstrating the 70∼90% knockdown of miRNA levels by 30-50 nM small RNA zippers. The miR-221 zipper shows capability in rescuing the expression of target genes of miR-221 and reversing the oncogenic function of miR-221 in breast cancer cells. In addition, we demonstrate that the miR-221 zipper attenuates doxorubicin resistance with higher efficiency than anti-miR-221 in human breast cancer cells. Taken together, small RNA zippers are a miRNA inhibitor, which can be used to induce miRNA loss-of-function phenotypes and validate miRNA target genes
Acupuncture treatment for insulin sensitivity of women with polycystic ovary syndrome and insulin resistance: a study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data
Single, double and triple cobalt atoms confined in 2D regular framework for oxygen electrocatalysis
Many natural metalloenzymes consist of multi-nuclear metal sites. The multiple metal centers trigger a cooperative catalytic effect that decreases the reaction energy barrier. However, it remains a grand challenge in mimicking the metalloenzymes in heterogeneous catalysts. C2N is an emerging 2D material with a predictive regular holey framework. Its large hole with a diameter of ~8.35 Ã… contains three pairs of pyridinic nitrogen, allowing the capture of transition metals from single to triple atoms. Based on quantum chemistry calculations, we find that the introduction of double (Co2@C2N) and triple cobalt (Co3@C2N) atom clusters turns C2N nanosheet from semiconducting into a nearly metallic state. The confined double or triple atoms can work cooperatively toward oxygen reduction and evolution reaction (ORR and OER). Impressively, with the activation barrier of 0.57 eV, Co3@C2N is a competitive novel candidature that can substitute bulk Pt catalyst (~0.80 eV). In-depth analysis indicates that the formation of an oxo-doped field environment is the key to realize efficient oxygen electrocatalysis.</p