Search

Statistical comparison of the DNF taxonomy against single datasets taxonomies, using one-sided superiority tests

Similarity Matrices of the DNF and single-layer taxonomies (based on the CTRPv2 drug sensitivity dataset).

This file contains all the Supplementary Figures (1-9) reporting the results of DNF using the NCI60 drug sensitivity data, as well as additional information regarding the size and distribution for drug communities in the DNF taxonomies

Comparison of predictive value of DNF versus published methods

Drug communities identified from the DNF taxonomies.

Identification of drug targets and mechanism of action (MoA) for new and uncharacterized anticancer drugs is important for optimization of treatment efficacy. Current MoA prediction largely relies on prior information including side effects, therapeutic indication, and chemoinformatics. Such information is not transferable or applicable for newly identified, previously uncharacterized small molecules. Therefore, a shift in the paradigm of MoA predictions is necessary toward development of unbiased approaches that can elucidate drug relationships and efficiently classify new compounds with basic input data. We propose here a new integrative computational pharmacogenomic approach, referred to as Drug Network Fusion (DNF), to infer scalable drug taxonomies that rely only on basic drug characteristics toward elucidating drug–drug relationships. DNF is the first framework to integrate drug structural information, high-throughput drug perturbation, and drug sensitivity profiles, enabling drug classification of new experimental compounds with minimal prior information. DNF taxonomy succeeded in identifying pertinent and novel drug–drug relationships, making it suitable for investigating experimental drugs with potential new targets or MoA. The scalability of DNF facilitated identification of key drug relationships across different drug categories, providing a flexible tool for potential clinical applications in precision medicine. Our results support DNF as a valuable resource to the cancer research community by providing new hypotheses on compound MoA and potential insights for drug repurposing. Cancer Res; 77(11); 3057–69. ©2017 AACR.

This file contains the legends for Supplementary Tables 1 to 5.

This file contains a detailed description of the methods used to reproduce published algorithms for drug clustering.

Enrichment of DNF drug communities

The yeast Pichia pastoris (also known as Komagataella pastoris) has been used for over 30 years to produce thousands of valuable, heterologous proteins, such as insulin to treat diabetes and antibodies to prevent migraine headaches. Despite its success, there are some common, stubborn problems encountered by research scientists when they try to use the yeast to produce their recombinant proteins. In order to provide those working in this field with strategies to overcome these common obstacles, nine experts in P. pastoris protein expression field were interviewed to create a written review and video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1oD6k8CdG8). This review describes how each respected scientist addressed a specific challenge, such as identifying high expression strains, improving secretion efficiency and decreasing hyperglycosylation. Their perspective and practical advice can be a tool to help empower others to express challenging proteins in this popular recombinant host.

PurposeThis study examines the effectiveness of Zero-Contact Marketing that minimizes contact between employees and consumers in marketplaces by adopting an integrated research framework of motivation theory, servicescape model and the theory of reasoned action (TRA).Design/methodology/approachThis study randomly collected 314 respondents through an online survey in May 2020 in South Korea. Structural equation modeling (SEM) assessed the overall hypothetical research model.FindingsZero-Contact Marketing facilitates the positive impacts of Korean consumers' motivations (intrinsic and extrinsic) and service environment on their word-of-mouth (WOM) intention to spread information about a store offering Zero-Contact Marketing service and the store revisit intention. In addition, consumers' attitude toward Zero-Contact Marketing and shopping pleasure (SPL) has stronger impacts on consumers' WOM intention than they do on the store revisit intention.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this study lies in that the survey participants responded only in South Korea, which may lead to biased results. To provide a more generalized insight, this study should be extended by considering consumers in other countries, since many consumers around the world tend to minimize face-to-face interaction and avoid unnecessary interruptions under the current pandemic.Practical implicationsBy minimizing the social interaction between employees and consumers, Zero-Contact Marketing may increase consumers' shopping satisfaction with free shopping moments and no disturbance, especially under the COVID-19 pandemic.Originality/valueThe findings provide theoretical contributions by empirically validating the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and service environment on consumers' internal and external responses in a Zero-Contact retail setting.

Selenocysteine (Sec), the 21st genetically encoded amino acid, is structurally similar to cysteine (Cys) but with a sulfur to selenium replacement. This small change confers Sec with related chemical properties to Cys but often with enhanced reactivity. In organisms, Sec is present in selenoproteins taking on various roles such as cellular maintenance, immune response, hormone regulation, and oxidative stress. The detailed reactions of Sec in these functions remains unclear and has been a difficult question to answer. This is related to the low natural expression of selenoproteins and their complicated biosynthesis pathway. As a result, the focus in selenoprotein research has been on the expansion of tools and techniques to promote research in this area. Over the past two decades there has been immense progress in the development of selenoprotein expression systems, Sec-detection methods, and genomic databases. In this review we have compiled these tools systematically, highlighting their strengths and clarifying the limitations, as a resource for future selenoprotein research.

The concurrent think-aloud protocol—in which participants verbalize their thoughts when performing tasks—is a widely employed approach in usability testing. Despite its value, analyzing think-aloud sessions can be onerous because it often entails assessing all of a user's verbalizations. This has motivated previous research on developing categories to segment verbalizations into manageable units of analysis. However, the way in which a category might relate to usability problems is currently unclear. In this research, we sought to address this gap in our understanding. We also studied how speech features might relate to usability problems. Through two studies, this research demonstrates that certain patterns of verbalizations are more telling of usability problems than others and that these patterns are robust to different types of test products (i.e., physical devices and digital systems), access to different types of information (i.e., video and audio modality), and the presence or absence of a visualization of verbalizations. The implication is that the verbalization and speech patterns can potentially reduce the time and effort required for analysis by enabling evaluators to focus more on the important aspects of a user's verbalizations. The patterns could also potentially be used to inform the design of systems to automatically detect when in the recorded think-aloud sessions users experience problems.

This research is to examine the impact of self-construal patterns on young individuals’ green consumption behaviors in a cross-cultural context. A survey shows that millennials are more willingly to pay more for green products which are committed to positive social and environmental impact (Nielsen 2015). To date, very little research has focused on the influence of self-construal patterns on young individuals’ green behaviors between Western and Eastern consumers. This study develops a framework to show how differences in self-construal patterns could affect the impact of attitude, social influence, green brand equity and self-consciousness on consumers’ green consumption behaviors. Specifically, which factors are more salient in influencing consumers’ intentions to purchase green products in a cross-cultural context is examined. This study seeks to address the following research questions in regard to the differential role of self-construal plays in the green consumption process in a cross-cultural setting. RQ1. How do self-construal patterns moderate attitude toward green advertising, self-expression, brand association and social influence? RQ2. How do attitude toward green advertising, self-expression, brand association and social influence affect young American and Japanese consumers’ intentions to buy green products? RQ3. Are there any differences in the relationships among the constructs between the two cultures?

This study examined generational discrepancies among Indian Gen X and Millennial consumers' attitude toward online star ratings. The results show online star rating involvement has an impac...

Les représentations des pratiques sexuelles : du phallocentrisme au queer en passant par les réseaux sociaux Introduction au dossier.

This article looks at how marketing student ratings of instructors and classes on online rating sites such as RateMyProfessor.com can be biased by prior student ratings of that class. Research has identified potential sources of bias of online student reviews administered by universities. Less has been done on the sources of bias inherent in a ratings site where those doing the rating can see prior ratings. To measure how student online ratings of a course can be influenced by existing online ratings, the study used five different prior ratings experiment conditions: mildly negative prior ratings, strongly negative prior ratings, mildly positive prior ratings, strongly positive prior ratings, and a control condition of no prior ratings. Results of this study suggest prior online ratings, both positive and negative, do affect subsequent online ratings and bias them. There are several implications. First, both negative and positive ratings can have an impact biasing subsequent ratings. Second, sometimes negative prior ratings must be strong in valence in order to bias subsequent ratings whereas even mildly positive ratings can have an impact. Last, this bias can potentially influence student course selection.

Culture and self-construal impact on how consumers purchase and use products as well as the strategies marketers use to promote and position their products. Consumer behavior in individualist societies can be quite different from that of collectivist societies. Similarly, consumers with an independent self-construal can react quite differently in various contexts from those who have an interdependent self-construal. This paper reviews the consequences of these findings for various contexts in marketing as found in subsequent literature. The topics include purchase of luxury goods through the work of Kastanakis and Balabanis. Secondly, it examines impulse purchases. It also follows the consequences of culture and self-construal on brand strategy. Lastly, this paper takes a look at implications within the context of choice tasks.

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of comparative advertising of a high involvement product in two countries, the United States and Taiwan. The results show that different types of comparative advertising moderate the relationship in the proposed model and exert different levels of influences on consumers. The United States and Taiwanese consumers are significantly different in attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the sponsored brand, and purchase intention. The results show that direct comparative advertising might be suitable for promoting a new brand in countries with individualistic cultures. However, global marketers should be cautious when employing comparative advertising formats in collectivist cultures.

Globalization has the center of attention for many companies as they see the need to expand their product offerings to consumers of a different geographical location as well as of a different culture. Effective international market segmentation (IMS) is an indication of a clear understanding of the what, where and how products are being promoted and sold worldwide (Cleveland et al. 2016). The strategy chosen for a market segment varies accordingly across different cultures. The purpose of this research is to examine whether consumers’ national identity, national animosity and ethnocentrism have an effect on attitude when consumers’ perceived product and country image are added as mediators. Research has been circling around the concept of country-of-origin (COO) for years. There are also several other variations of COO which includes Product-Country image (PCI), country image, product and brand image. COO is widely known as the “Made-in” label, and this COO effect is often overlapped between how a consumer perceive a country image and a product image. Consumers’ perception of a country affects their perception of the quality of a product or brand that is originated from that particular country. In this research, the COO concept was beyond where a product was made-in. Consumer ethnocentrism was used to examine the relationships between national identity and consumer’s perceived product image and country image (respectively). The results show consumer ethnocentrism has an effect on product image but not on country image when national identity is used an independent variable. In other words, for Americans, a “made-in USA” label is more important than portraying an image of USA. This result suggest that Americans have a strong sense of their national identity. This implies that Americans’ impression of their own country is influenced none other than their belongingness to their home country. This study used bags as a stimuli. Although it is a study to determine young consumers’ ethnocentrism, its effect on (1) COO labeled products, and its impact on their (2) purchasing intention, may not be elaborative enough to measure a general mentality of the American community. In many promotional ads, there are many situations where different types of products are used and different market segments were targeted. Thus, for future research, different product types will be used to determine the effect of consumer ethnocentrism and national identity on “Made-in” labels.

Millennials care about the environment and have positive attitudes toward green products (Smith 2010). Although the research on green marketing and advertising is growing, scant cross-national research has devoted much attention to examining millennials’ perceptions of green products, let alone their behavioral intentions to purchase them. This study aims to investigate the influence of attitude, social pressure, and perceived behavioral control on environmentally oriented millennials’ behavioral intentions to purchase green products in a cross-cultural context. American (individualist) and South Korean (collectivist) consumers are selected for comparison because of their distinctive cultural differences in consumption values as well as their perceptions of green marketing practices. To provide a better understanding of green marketing effects on millennials, this study employs the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as the theoretical underpinning to examine the effects of culture on purchasing green products. The results reveal that consumers’ environmental concern has no direct effects on intention to purchase green products among millennials in both countries. However, the findings reveal that the impact of concern for the environment is actually mediated through attitude toward green product and social influence that subsequently influence millennials’ green consumption behaviors. The positive relationship between environmental concern and attitude toward green product in both countries is consistent with Matthes and Wonneberger’s (2014) study. The results also suggest that cultural effects might influence millennials’ intentions to purchase green products. Both attitude toward green product and social influence are significant predictors of intention to purchase green product in both samples. However, the results show that social influence exerts a much stronger influence on Korean consumers’ purchase intention than attitude does. Although perceived behavioral control is positively related to purchase intention for the American consumers, its effects are being marginalized by the influence of attitude and social influence. This suggests that American millennials do have certain control over their green behaviors. Further analysis of the data shows that American millennials exhibit more concerns for the environment than their South Korean counterparts. Similarly, American millennials’ intentions to purchase green products are higher than their Korean counterparts. In conclusion, this study provides some preliminary evidence concerning what factors motivate young American and South Korean consumers to consume green products.

microRNA (miRNA) activity and regulation are of increasing interest as new therapeutic targets. Traditional approaches to assess miRNA levels in cells rely on RNA sequencing or quantitative PCR. While useful, these approaches are based on RNA extraction and cannot be applied in real-time to observe miRNA activity with single-cell resolution. We developed a green fluorescence protein (GFP)-based reporter system that allows for a direct, real-time readout of changes in miRNA activity in live cells. The miRNA activity reporter (MiRAR) consists of GFP fused to a 3&prime, untranslated region containing specific miRNA binding sites, resulting in miRNA activity-dependent GFP expression. Using qPCR, we verified the inverse relationship of GFP fluorescence and miRNA levels. We demonstrated that this novel optogenetic reporter system quantifies cellular levels of the tumor suppressor miRNA let-7 in real-time in single Human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK 293) cells. Our data shows that the MiRAR can be applied to detect changes in miRNA levels upon disruption of miRNA degradation pathways. We further show that the reporter could be adapted to monitor another disease-relevant miRNA, miR-122. With trivial modifications, this approach could be applied across the miRNome for quantification of many specific miRNA in cell cultures, tissues, or transgenic animal models.

We present a new handheld haptic device, Thor's Hammer, which uses propeller propulsion to generate ungrounded, 3-DOF force feedback. Thor's Hammer has six motors and propellers that generates strong thrusts of air without the need for physical grounding or heavy air compressors. With its location and orientation tracked by an optimal tracking system, the system can exert forces in arbitrary directions regardless of the device's orientation. Our technical evaluation shows that Thor's Hammer can apply up to 4 N of force in arbitrary directions with less than 0.11 N and 3.9° of average magnitude and orientation errors. We also present virtual reality applications that can benefit from the force feedback provided by Thor's Hammer. Using these applications, we conducted a preliminary user study and participants felt the experience more realistic and immersive with the force feedback.

The authors look at student perceptions regarding the adoption and usage of Moodle. Self-efficacy theory and the Technology Acceptance Model were applied to understand student reactions to instructor implementation of classroom management software Moodle. They also looked at how the learning styles of students impacted their reactions to Moodle. Results show that students most valued the control Moodle gave them over their educational progress. Communication was also found to be an important benefit students sought in Moodle. Individual student reaction to Moodle was influenced by visual learning and degree of laziness.

Short message service (SMS) allows marketers to interact directly with target consumers at specific times and locations via their mobile phones. Using a modified technology acceptance model, this study examines factors that influence consumers' acceptance of SMS advertising. Data were collected in the U.S. and Korea to test the conceptual model and the cross-cultural validity of the measurement scales. The findings suggest that these scales are valid in the two national contexts. The usefulness construct is important to establish consumers' favorable attitudes toward acceptance of SMS ads in both countries. Young Korean consumers' attitudes toward SMS ads are more positive than their American counterparts. Although social influence has no effect on Korean consumers' attitudes toward acceptance, it does show a positive relationship with American consumers' attitudes. This study reveals that consumers' acceptance of SMS ads does differ in the two culturally distinctive countries.