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.

Anycast is a new IPv6 feature that supports service-oriented address assignments in IPv6 networks. Because there are no protocol standards or even consensus on routing protocols, intersegment anycast communications are not yet available. In this paper, we propose two routing protocols for intersegment anycast to support anycast-oriented communication. Our proposed architecture (1) achieves the advantages of anycast communications, (2) takes the deployment scenario into the existing unicast network into consideration, and (3) maintains scalability. We also implement the proposed routing protocols in an experimental environment and verify that they work correctly.

Today, the use of anycast address is quite limited. One of the reasons is because there is no routing protocol providing a global anycasting service. In this paper we design and implement a new anycast routing protocol called PIA-SM (protocol independent anycast-sparse mode). We focus on PIM-SM (protocol independent multicast-sparse mode), which is one of multicast routing protocols available now, to develop an anycast routing protocol because anycast and multicast have many similar properties. We modified PIM-SM based on differences between multicast and anycast. We next describe technical issues to be solved on the implementation of PIA-SM. We also show some experimental results to demonstrate PIA-SM, and verify that PIA-SM enables routers to forward an anycast packet to an appropriate node of multiple candidate nodes.

Due to the rapid progress of computer and network technologies, the environment for multimedia communications is being prepared day by day. This environment, however is not developed enough to realize well-synchronized high performance multimedia communications, because there are still problems that must be solved. To solve these problems, we propose new algorithms and techniques that have already been implemented and verified on a testbed system. We discuss the influence of human media perception and the control characteristics of audio and video devices on the synchronization mechanisms. We mainly discuss synchronization methods under resource critical situations. The methods are also extended to handle packet loss error recovery.