This paper focuses on estimating expert-specific characteristics and skills of art drawing, with use of figure tracing log data of pen strokes. In order to verify hypothesis, the authors acquired stroke data of simple figure drawing with use of Tablet PCs and digital pens. Afterwards, we compared the log data of novice learners with one of experts. As a result, we could not find significance between novices and experts in 8 target parameters. However, we found some tendencies of experts. These tendencies imply some training methods in art education.

The circadian clock of Drosophila is a model pathway for research in biological clock mechanisms, both with traditional experimental approaches and with emerging systems biology approaches utilizing mathematical modeling and in silico computer simulation. Dynamic diurnal oscillations are achieved by the complex interaction of components as a system, and mathematical reconstruction has proven to be an invaluable means of understanding such systematic behavior. In this study, we implemented eight published models of the Drosophila circadian clock in Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) for comparative systems biology studies using E-Cell Simulation Environment version 3, to examine the system-level requirements for the clock mechanism to be robust, by calculating the period and amplitude sensitivity coefficients with simulation experiments. While all models were generally robust as determined by the network topology of the oscillatory feedback loop structure, existing models place relatively strong emphasis on transcription regulation, although this is a limitation on robustness. We suggest that more comprehensive modeling including protein phosphorylation, polymerization, and nuclear transport with regard to amplitude sensitivity will be necessary for understanding the light entrainment and temperature compensation of circadian clocks.

Abstract Motivation: Many important problems in cell biology require the dense nonlinear interactions between functional modules to be considered. The importance of computer simulation in understanding cellular processes is now widely accepted, and a variety of simulation algorithms useful for studying certain subsystems have been designed. Many of these are already widely used, and a large number of models constructed on these existing formalisms are available. A significant computational challenge is how we can integrate such sub-cellular models running on different types of algorithms to construct higher order models. Results: A modular, object-oriented simulation meta-algorithm based on a discrete-event scheduler and Hermite polynomial interpolation has been developed and implemented. It is shown that this new method can efficiently handle many components driven by different algorithms and different timescales. The utility of this simulation framework is demonstrated further with a ‘composite’ heat-shock response model that combines the Gillespie–Gibson stochastic algorithm and deterministic differential equations. Dramatic improvements in performance were obtained without significant accuracy drawbacks. A multi-timescale demonstration of coupled harmonic oscillators is also shown. Availability: An implementation of the method is available as part of E-Cell Simulation Environment Version 3 downloadable from http://www.e-cell.org/software. Benchmark models are included in the package, and also available upon request. Supplementary information: Complete lists of reactions and parameters of the heat-shock model, and more results are available at http://www.e-cell.org/bioinfo/takahashi03-1-supp.pdf