1,720,976 research outputs found
Modeling and simulation of the blood coagulation cascade
No full textIn the last years, the use of Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) has witnessed ever growing applications for different computational analyses in the field of Life Sciences. In this work we present a CUDA-powered computational tool for the simulation of biological models defined as systems of mixed ordinary differential equations, based on both mass-action kinetics and Hill functions. The tool, named coagSODA, was purposely developed and applied for the analysis of a large model of the blood coagulation cascade. We present the biological results of a parameter sweep analysis of this model, and show that GPU can boost the computational performances up to 177× speedup
Massive exploration of perturbed conditions of the blood coagulation cascade through GPU parallelization
Get PDFThe introduction of general-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) is boosting scientific applications in Bioinformatics, Systems Biology, and Computational Biology. In these fields, the use of high-performance computing solutions is motivated by the need of performing large numbers of in silico analysis to study the behavior of biological systems in different conditions, which necessitate a computing power that usually overtakes the capability of standard desktop computers. In this work we present coagSODA, a CUDA-powered computational tool that was purposely developed for the analysis of a large mechanistic model of the blood coagulation cascade (BCC), defined according to both mass-action kinetics and Hill functions. coagSODA allows the execution of parallel simulations of the dynamics of the BCC by automatically deriving the system of ordinary differential equations and then exploiting the numerical integration algorithm LSODA. We present the biological results achieved with a massive exploration of perturbed conditions of the BCC, carried out with one-dimensional and bi-dimensional parameter sweep analysis, and show that GPU-accelerated parallel simulations of this model can increase the computational performances up to a 181× speedup compared to the corresponding sequential simulations
Abitare l’Università. Un campus chiamato città
No full textLa funzione dell’Università all’interno della città è riconducibile a quella di un importante e nevralgico attore urbano di primaria rilevanza, in grado di ingenerare e sviluppare strategie di rigenerazione e rinnovamento urbano e sociale. L’Università, infatti, impersonifica l’istituzione dedicata alla formazione e alla ricerca nella sua forma più alta e nobile: parimenti, la relazione tra Università e contesto urbano nutre il dibattito sulle politiche di gestione e sviluppo della città anche in epoca contemporanea. Il suo significato, unitamente ai luoghi a essa riconducibili, identifica nella storia delle civiltà, l’elemento di manifestazione e rappresentazione intellettuale d’eccellenza, in grado di materializzare in principi spaziali l’importanza che la cultura e la formazione hanno rivestito nella definizione dell’identità dei popoli. Non esiste epoca storica nella quale i popoli non demandino la propria crescita alla base trasmissiva dei saperi e della conoscenza, per mezzo di una dinamica identitaria, perseguita anche tramite il senso di appartenenza a una comunità dovuto al risiedere in un sistema campus allargato, del quale anche la residenzialità diviene elemento fondante e costitutivo. Un campus, perciò, chiamato città. L’architettura della residenza universitaria, congiuntamente a quella della formazione e ricerca, per mezzo del suo costituire luogo urbano primario propone, per la disciplina urbanistica e architettonica, una significativa opportunità di cimentarsi su temi complessi facenti parte della tradizione evolutiva della città. Le architetture per la residenzialità universitaria possono a pieno titolo afferire alla categoria delle grandi funzioni urbane: il succedersi degli eventi ci restituisce un quadro che ribadisce come tali destinazioni, in taluni contesti geografici e culturali, abbiano contribuito alla nascita e allo sviluppo delle città e delle sue porzioni parimenti a quelle volte alla trasmissione della conoscenza. Spesso operando in piena sinergia. Ancor più che in passato, tale scenario potrebbe rappresentare un obiettivo prioritario all’interno delle dinamiche di pianificazione del territorio: il perseguimento di tale traguardo viene talvolta sottovalutato per carenza di risorse o per l’erronea adesione a politiche urbane tese alla gestione dell’occasionalità più che al perseguimento di una programmazione coordinata e sistemica. Il tema connesso ai luoghi per l’ospitalità studentesca diviene altresì utile a rivendicare il ruolo e significato della tipologia connessa al concetto di residenza universitaria, alle sue prestazioni, ai suoi caratteri di urbanità, alla scala del microcosmo dell’alloggio e a quella dell’impianto urbano. Ciò riconduce l’Università al centro dei bisogni collettivi di trasformazione, sottraendola al pericolo di svolgere un riduttivo, e spesso semplicistico, ruolo di organizzatore culturale, anziché quello di esprimere un luogo dedicato alla vita, formazione e instradamento nel mondo del lavoro delle figure in futuro deputate alla colta trasformazione del mondo in cui viviamo
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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