The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Human Biomolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP) aims to create a comprehensive high-resolution atlas of all the cells in the healthy human body. Multiple ...laboratories across the United States are collecting tissue specimens from different organs of donors who vary in sex, age, and body size. Integrating and harmonizing the data derived from these samples and 'mapping' them into a common three-dimensional (3D) space is a major challenge. The key to making this possible is a 'Common Coordinate Framework' (CCF), which provides a semantically annotated, 3D reference system for the entire body. The CCF enables contributors to HuBMAP to 'register' specimens and datasets within a common spatial reference system, and it supports a standardized way to query and 'explore' data in a spatially and semantically explicit manner. ... This paper describes the construction and usage of a CCF for the human body and its reference implementation in HuBMAP. The CCF consists of (1) a CCF Clinical Ontology, which provides metadata about the specimen and donor (the 'who'); (2) a CCF Semantic Ontology, which describes 'what' part of the body a sample came from and details anatomical structures, cell types, and biomarkers (ASCT+B); and (3) a CCF Spatial Ontology, which indicates 'where' a tissue sample is located in a 3D coordinate system. An initial version of all three CCF ontologies has been implemented for the first HuBMAP Portal release. It was successfully used by Tissue Mapping Centers to semantically annotate and spatially register 48 kidney and spleen tissue blocks. The blocks can be queried and explored in their clinical, semantic, and spatial context via the CCF user interface in the HuBMAP Portal.
Several major securities markets including Nasdaq in the United States and the London Stock Exchange's SEAQ are organized as dealer markets that use computer screen displays of competitive dealer ...quotes to establish fair trade prices. To improve their markets and to reduce investors' trading costs, these exchanges are introducing new rules and systems for handling investors' orders. The redesign of a market structure raises important strategic issues for exchanges; more attractive trading mechanisms will increase order flow and improve liquidity, but margins and total profits earned by traditional exchange intermediaries may be reduced. To examine the consequences of market structure changes, we conducted experimental tests of the integration of an order-driven trading system into a dealer/quote-driven market. Using computer-based simulations of a stock market, experimental subjects traded using a traditional dealer quote screen to which a public limit order facility was added. Data captured on subjects' trading decisions revealed that the limit order system was used by the subjects, attracting some orders that would have otherwise gone to dealers, and lowered investor trading costs. The integration of limit orders reduced dealers' activities as a percentage of total market volume and lowered dealers' trading margins, except in a special "informed dealer" case.
Electronic cash systems seek to reengineer cash payments. While the use of cash imposes numerous invisible costs on the economy, many security and consumer acceptance issues prevent its immediate ...replacement. We begin by analyzing the economics of the proposed Mondex electronic cash system, suggesting possible benefits that may be realized by various channel members whose cooperation will be essential to any successful implementation of electronic cash. We conclude that the major challenges to the global implementation of electronic currency will be establishing the proper incentives for channel members, overcoming regulatory barriers, and gaining a critical mass of consumer and merchant acceptance, rather than difficulties with technology or network security. We identify several areas for directed future research on the economic implications of electronic payment.
Traditional management accounting systems are limited in their ability to provide profitability information relevant to management decisions. The problems of inadequate profitability measurement are ...intensified in today's business environments, where changing margins due to deregulation and new entrants, new products with unknown costs, and customer sophistication in locating low-cost providers often combine to leave unprepared firms with growing numbers of loss-making client relationships. In response, firms in a number of service and manufacturing industries are experimenting with new methods for measuring performance, and are implementing these techniques using information systems. The collection and analysis of information on the profitability of customer relationships enables managers to identify and defend their most attractive market segments, and to turn loss-making accounts into profitable ones. The London-based securities house, BZW, developed BEATRICE, an innovative information system that combines activity-based accounting principles and a model of customer profitability to make an income assignment to each of the 6,000 trades the firm makes in a day. The system's value is considerable, and can be evaluated by using industry performance benchmarks, and by comparing management decision making using the currently available information with what was possible with previous data.
Electronic stopping forces of heavy ions in metal oxides Zhang, Y.; Jensen, J.; Possnert, G. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
August 2006, 2006-08-00, Letnik:
249, Številka:
1-2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Electronic energy loss of charged particles in materials is a fundamental process responsible for the unique response of materials in applications of advanced nuclear power, radiation detectors and ...advanced processing of electronic devices. In this study, stopping forces for ions in metal oxides of ZrO2, Ta2O5 and Nb2O5 have been determined using a time-of-flight energy elastic recoil detection analysis (ToF-E ERDA) set-up. In transmission geometry, the energy loss of heavy ions in these thin metal oxide foils was measured over a continuous range of energies from a few 10keV/nucleon to over a thousand keV/nucleon using the ToF data that was tagged by a Si detector with and without the stopping foils. Comparisons are made with the SRIM-2003 (The Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter) predictions. While SRIM predicts He stopping force well, varying degrees of agreement with the measured stopping data up to 7% are observed and deviations around stopping maximum are evident for heavy elements.
US brokerage firms have shown strong interest in a new alternative for trading of equity options since the 26 May 2000 launch of the International Securities Exchange (ISE), an all-electronic trading ...platform. Although the collective impact of these adoption decisions led to a successful launch and a formidable competitor to the four established options markets in the US, major brokerage firms differ widely in their usage and adoption rates.
