7846033
Economic Advantage of Pharmacogenomics - Clinical Trials with Genetic Information
The purpose of this study is to clarify the benefit and loss for the pharmaceutical companies when they adopt introducing pharmacogenomics in their clinical trials (in the following description, clinical trials by using pharmacogenomics is called "pgx clinical trial"), that is, when they use genetic information in their clinical trials. Particularly, the benefit for the pharmaceutical companies in terms of following two points is analyzed. 1. Development cost of new drug and period of clinical trial can be reduced because a clinical trial needs less subjects, 2. The new drug can be placed on the market earlier because the development period can be shortened. A survey conducted by Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association revealed that the pharmaceutical companies in Japan are interested in "pgx clinical trial". Specifically, 95% of the member companies (n=19) of the Association replied that the establishment of a guideline for pgx clinical trial by regulatory authorities are highly desirable. However, 65% of them (n=13) also replied that pgx clinical trial is difficult for the time being. It can be concluded that the pharmaceutical companies are positive about pgx clinical trial, but they cannot take a step towards it for several reasons: some of them may be worried their sales for non-responders will be reduced, poor understanding of pgx among the concerned parties, and not matured methodology of pgx clinical trial. This study shows that the advantage of pgx clinical trial outweighs its disadvantage. The sales may decrease because the drug is not used for non-responders, however, the number of subjects necessary for a clinical trial can be reduced, study period can be shortened and the drug can be marketed earlier. Furthermore, adverse events (AE) and adverse drug reactions (ADR) during the clinical trial and post-marketing phase can be markedly reduced. This represents a great benefit for the patients, pharmaceutical companies and the society as a whole.
6820086
BioCichlid: central dogma-based 3D visualization system of time-course microarray data on a hierarchical biological network
SUMMARY
BioCichlid is a 3D visualization system of time-course microarray data on molecular networks, aiming at interpretation of gene expression data by transcriptional relationships based on the central dogma with physical and genetic interactions. BioCichlid visualizes both physical (protein) and genetic (regulatory) network layers, and provides animation of time-course gene expression data on the genetic network layer. Transcriptional regulations are represented to bridge the physical network (transcription factors) and genetic network (regulated genes) layers, thus integrating promoter analysis into the pathway mapping. BioCichlid enhances the interpretation of microarray data and allows for revealing the underlying mechanisms causing differential gene expressions.


AVAILABILITY
BioCichlid is freely available and can be accessed at http://newton.tmd.ac.jp/. Source codes for both biocichlid server and client are also available.
7624276
Molecular Phylogenetic Trees are Inferred by Using Minimum Model-Based Complexity
5390740
Inference of Molecular Phylogenetic Tree Based on Minimum Model-Based Complexity Method
In this study, starting with a newly introduced concept of data complexity ("empirical data complexity"), we specify the concept of complexity more concretely in relation to mathematical modeling and introduce "model-based complexity (MBC)". Inductive inference based on the minimum model-based complexity method is then applied to the reconstruction of molecular evolutionary tree from DNA sequences. We find that minimum MBC method has good asymptotic property when DNA sequence lengths approach to infinite and compensates the bias of maximum likelihood method due to the difference of tree topology complexity. The efficiency of minimum MBC method for reconstruction of molecular tree is studied by computer simulation, and results suggest that this method is superior to the traditional maximum likelihood method or its modification by Akaike's AIC.
1789208
Induction of Expert System Rules from Databases Based on Rough Set Theory and Resampling Methods
Automated knowledge acquisition is an important research issue to solve the bottleneck problem in developing expert systems. There have been proposed several methods of inductive learning, such as induction of decision trees, AQ method, and neural networks for this purpose. However, most of the approaches focus on inducing some rules which classify cases correctly. On the contrary, medical experts also learn other information which is important for medical diagnostic procedures from databases. In this paper, a ruleinduction system, called PRIMEROSEREX (Probabilistic Rule Induction Method based on Rough Sets and Resampling methods for Expert systems), is introduced. This program extracts not only classification rules for differential diagnosis, but also other medical knowledge needed for other diagnostic procedures, based on a diagnosing model of a medical expert system RHINOS (Rule-based Headache and facial pain INformation Orgranizing System). This system is evaluated by using training samples of RHINOS domain, and the induced results are compared with rules acquired from medical experts. The results show that our proposed method correctly induces RHINOS rules and estimate the statistical measures of rules.
24468427
Induction of Probabilistic Rules Based on Rough Set Theory
Automated knowledge acquisition is an important research issue in machine learning. There have been proposed several methods of inductive learning, such as ID3 family and AQ family. These methods are applied to discover meaningful knowledge from large database, and their usefulness is in some aspects ensured. However, in most of the cases, their methods are of deterministic nature, and the reliability of acquired knowledge is not evaluated statistically, which makes these methods ineffective when applied to the domain of essentially probabilistic nature, such as medical one. Extending concepts of rough set theory to probabilistic domain, we introduce a new approach to knowledge acquistion, which induces probabilistic rules based on rough set theory(PRIMEROSE) and develop an program that extracts rules for an expert system from clinical database, based on this method. The results show that the derived rules almost correspond to those of the medical experts.
27278741
An e-mail environment with handwriting using the HandsDraw digital ink format
This paper proposes a handwriting-based e-mail environment system, including the HandsDraw format, whose facilities include the reading and writing of handwritten massages, their transmission and reception, annotations or comments by recipients, confirmation of the author and time of writing, and reproduction of handwriting. The system has a user interface which is friendly even to a beginner, and can handle more expressive massages on the Internet. The system is regarded as an advanced mobile communication terminal of the kind which has been fashionable recently. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of pen input, encircling (lasso) selection and a button interface are used for dialogue. Users' opinions (collected by questionnaires, on the Internet, and from laboratory use of the system for 2 1/2 years) confirm all of the functions of the system. Some respondents have suggested the conversion of handwritten characters to a type font (rather than sending them directly) by using the character-recognition facility in this system. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 33(14): 101–109, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.1180
206775678
Hybrid pen-input character recognition system based on integration of online-offline recognition
Describes a handwritten character recognition system that integrates offline recognition requiring a bitmap image and online recognition involving an input pattern as a sequence of x-y coordinates. Offline recognition performs well for painted or overwritten patterns (for which online recognition would not be suited), whereas online recognition is suitable for very deformed patterns (for which offline recognition is not suited). Because each method has different recognition capabilities, the methods complement each other when integrated together. We have implemented a hybrid handwritten character recognition system in which the recognition results of the offline and online recognizer are integrated to create an improved product. After testing several integration methods for a handwritten character database, we found that the best method increased the recognition rate from 73.8% (offline) and 84.8% (online) to 87.6% (integrated).
39591082
Prototyping of Digital Ink E-Mail System Based on a Common Ink Format
This paper describes the prototyping of a digital ink e-mail system based on a common ink format. This e-mail system can deal with handwritten figures and text strings on a same electronic paper. Digital ink is useful to express one's message on electronic paper (digital paper). Because digital ink is similar to real ink used on real paper, it is easy to use even for the end user. But on existing e-mail systems, most messages are written in text only. We think that the e-mail system must be made more user-friendly and useful if digital-ink is to be easily used on it. To deal with digital ink on an e-mail system, we have designed a new document format HandsDraw which can be used for text, simple figures and digital ink. This format is so simple that it is easy to implement software which can deal with it on any computer system. We also have made a prototype digital ink e-mail system. This system uses HandsDraw to exchange handwritten messages by e-mail. We think the digital ink e-mail system allows e-mail users to express their messages more quickly, directly and intuitively.
19316869
Avoidance Ability of Redundant Mobile Manipulators During Hand Trajectory Tracking
A vapor generator in which a plurality of tubes are connected together and arranged to form at least a portion of the boundary walls of a gas-tight enclosure. Portions of the tubes are bent to form a plurality of openings extending through at least one of the boundary walls. Some of the bent tube portions extend around the openings in the plane of the wall, and others of the bent tube portions extend out of the plane of the wall. The tubes, including the bent portions, extend at an angle with respect to a horizontal plane for their entire lengths to enable the tubes to drain. A burner is associated with each opening to apply heat to the enclosure, and fluid is passed through the tubes to apply heat to the fluid.
5444349
Threshold Correction of Document Image Binarization for Ruled-line Extraction
In this paper, a new threshold correction method for document image binarization that is forcused on ruled-line extraction is presented. This method enhances the binary image of a ruled line, which is often adversely influenced by adjacent text pixels or background noise.The threshold correction method consists of two submethods. One is a noise reduction method that is based on background determination, and the other is a threshold surface conversion method. Both these methods use the aspect of local straightness feature to distinguish ruled-line pixels from background pixels.