Search algorithms for bandit problems are applicable in materials discovery. However, objectives of the conventional bandit problem are different from those of materials discovery. The conventional bandit problem aims to maximize the total rewards, whereas materials discovery aims to achieve breakthroughs in material properties. The max $K$-armed bandit (MKB) problem, which aims to acquire the single best reward, matches with the discovery tasks better than the conventional bandit. However, typical MKB algorithms are not directly applicable to materials discovery due to some difficulties. The typical algorithms have many hyperparameters and some difficulty in the directly implementation for the materials discovery. Thus, we propose a new MKB algorithm using an upper confidence bound of expected improvement of the best reward. This approach is guaranteed to be asymptotic to greedy oracles, which does not depend on the time horizon. In addition, compared with other MKB algorithms, the proposed algorithm has only one hyperparameter, which is advantageous in materials discovery. We applied the proposed algorithm to synthetic problems and molecular-design demonstrations using a Monte Carlo tree search. According to the results, the proposed algorithm stably outperformed other bandit algorithms in the late stage of the search process, unless the optimal arm coincides in the MKB and conventional bandit settings.

Since the departure of users has a large effect on the integrity of shared files in a P2P system, there is a strong need for methods that can mitigate the effects of user departure. In this paper, introducing a graph to represent the file-sharing in a P2P system, we model the participation and departure processes of users with a renewal process to determine the node departure time. The fact that the departure interval of nodes in the introduced connection graph can be expressed in terms of residual lifetimes is used to derive the expected values of node departure time for several lifetime distributions of nodes. It is also shown that the Laplace transform of the number of departure nodes can be expressed in terms of the node lifetime distribution function.

An enormous body of information has been obtained by molecular and cellular biology in the last half century. However, even these powerful approaches are not adequate when it comes to higher-level biological structures, such as tissues, organs, and individual organisms, because of the complexities involved. Thus, accumulation of data at the higher levels supports and broadens the context for that obtained on the molecular and cellular levels. Under such auspices, an attempt to elucidate mesoscopic and macroscopic subjects based on plentiful nanoscopic and microscopic data is of great potential value. On the other hand, fully realistic simulation is impracticable because of the extensive cost entailed and enormous amount of data required. Abstraction and modeling that balance the dual requirements of prediction accuracy and manageable calculation cost are of great importance for systems biology. We have constructed an ammonia metabolism model of the hepatic lobule, a histological component of the liver, based on a single-hepatocyte model that consists of the biochemical kinetics of enzymes and transporters. To bring the calculation cost within reason, the porto-central axis, which is an elemental structure of the lobule, is defined as the systems biological unit of the liver, and is accordingly modeled. A model including both histological structure and position-specific gene expression of major enzymes largely represents the physiological dynamics of the hepatic lobule in nature. In addition, heterogeneous gene expression is suggested to have evolved to optimize the energy efficiency of ammonia detoxification at the macroscopic level, implying that approaches like this may elucidate how properties at the molecular and cellular levels, such as regulated gene expression, modify higher-level phenomena of multicellular tissue, organs, and organisms.

MOTIVATION: Although a huge amount of mammalian genomic data does become publicly available, there are still hurdles for biologists to overcome before such data can be fully exploited. One of the challenges for gaining biological insight from genomic data has been the inability to cross-reference transcriptomic and proteomic data using a single informational platform. To address this, we constructed an open-access database that enabled us to cross-reference transcriptomic and proteomic data obtained from immune cells. RESULTS: The database, named RefDIC (Reference genomics Database of Immune Cells), currently contains: (i) quantitative mRNA profiles for human and mouse immune cells/tissues obtained using Affymetrix GeneChip technology; (ii) quantitative protein profiles for mouse immune cells obtained using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) followed by image analysis and mass spectrometry and (iii) various visualization tools to cross-reference the mRNA and protein profiles of immune cells. RefDIC is the first open-access database for immunogenomics and serves as an important information-sharing platform, enabling a focused genomic approach in immunology. AVAILABILITY: All raw data and information can be accessed from http://refdic.rcai.riken.jp/. The microarray data is also available at http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/ under CIBEX accession no. CBX19, and http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/ under PRIDE accession numbers 2354-2378 and 2414.

This paper describes a novel method for gesture recognition using character recognition techniques on two-dimensional eigenspace. An image-based approach can capture human body poses in 3D motion from multiple image sequences. The sequence of poses can be reduced into a trajectory on the two-dimensional eigenspace with preserving the main features in gesture, so that the gesture recognition equals the character recognition. Experiments for the gesture recognition using some character recognition techniques show our method is useful.

A multimicrocomputer system is described, stressing mainly software and hardware architectures, which has been constructed mainly for image creation. This system is distinctive mainly in that (i) 64 unit computers are interconnected with a root computer, each of equal performance, such that a number of unit computers constitute a pipelined computer and such pipelined computers work in parallel, all controlled by the root computer, and (ii) an intercomputer memory swapping unit is introduced, which is to be linked with a pair of unit computers to transfer a great amount of data at a time from one to the other through the use of a bus exchange switch.