We derive generalized estimators for a number of spatial statistics that have been used in the analysis of spatially resolved omics data, such as Ripley's K, H and L functions, clustering index, and degree of clustering, which allow these statistics to be calculated on data modelled by arbitrary random measures (RMs). Our estimators generalize those typically used to calculate these statistics on point process data, allowing them to be calculated on RMs which assign continuous values to spatial regions, for instance to model protein intensity. The clustering index (H*) compares Ripley's H function calculated empirically to its distribution under complete spatial randomness (CSR), leading us to consider CSR null hypotheses for RMs which are not point-processes when generalizing this statistic. We thus consider restricted classes of completely random measures which can be simulated directly (Gamma processes and Marked Poisson Processes), as well as the general class of all CSR RMs, for which we derive an exact permutation-based H* estimator. We establish several properties of the estimators, including bounds on the accuracy of our general Ripley K estimator, its relationship to a previous estimator for the cross-correlation measure, and the relationship of our generalized H* estimator to previous statistics. To test the ability of our approach to identify spatial patterning, we use Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH) and Immunofluorescence (IF) data to probe for mRNA and protein subcellular localization patterns respectively in polarizing mouse fibroblasts on micropattened cells. We observe correlated patterns of clustering over time for corresponding mRNAs and proteins, suggesting a deterministic effect of mRNA localization on protein localization for several pairs tested, including one case in which spatial patterning at the mRNA level has not been previously demonstrated.

Coregulation of the expression of groups of genes has been extensively demonstrated empirically in bacterial and eukaryotic systems. Such coregulation can arise through the use of shared regulatory motifs, which allow the coordinated expression of modules (and module groups) of functionally related genes across the genome. Coregulation can also arise through the physical association of multi-gene complexes through chromosomal looping, which are then transcribed together. We present a general formalism for modeling coregulation rules in the framework of Random Boolean Networks (RBN), and develop specific models for transcription factor networks with modular structure (including module groups, and multi-input modules (MIM) with autoregulation) and multi-gene complexes (including hierarchical differentiation between multi-gene complex members). We develop a mean-field approach to analyse the stability of large networks incorporating coregulation, and show that autoregulated MIM and hierarchical gene-complex models can achieve greater stability than networks without coregulation whose rules have matching activation frequency. We provide further analysis of the stability of small networks of both kinds through simulations. We also characterize several general properties of the transients and attractors in the hierarchical coregulation model, and show using simulations that the steady-state distribution factorizes hierarchically as a Bayesian network in a Markov Jump Process analogue of the RBN model.

Do you know what is common between San Bernardino's shooting spree and the terrorist attacks in Paris last month? Jillennials, Jihadis who are Millennials. We mine data worldwide, a lot of it, a ton of it, every day and every night, and we do this for a living at PredictifyMe. We have partnership with the United Nations to protect school-goers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Lebanon using our proprietary software SecureSim and Soothsayer . When the Paris attacks unfolded, we asked ourselves (and our database), how can we use data sciences to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Can we find out what factors influence an otherwise ordinary citizen to become radicalized?

Just yesterday, for example, Facebook Inc. (FB) rolled out a new feature, VoiceOver, that uses AI technology to give oral descriptions of FB photos for blind and visually-impaired users (iPad and iPhone users only, so far). Perhaps the big Stanley Kubrickian monolith moment for AI happened in March, with the resounding win by the Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) AI program AlphaGo,over a champion in the complex board game Go--a game previously thought to be far too complex for a computer to play better than a human. If true believers in AI are correct that this long-promised technology is ready for the mainstream, whichever company controls AI could steer the tech industry for years to come. Hence we are witnessing a high-stakes competition to develop the next platform to establish industry dominance in upcoming product cycles. While Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), FB, GOOGL and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) are all jockeying furiously, the one company with the most riding on the outcome is International Business Machines Corp. (IBM).

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your fluid-filled Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. MIT has developed a 3D printer that can mix solids and liquids. With "printable hydraulics," an inkjet printer deposits individual droplets of material that are each 20 to 30 microns in diameter, or less than half the width of a human hair.

A senior Egyptian al-Qaida figure fighting in Syria was killed in a U.S. drone strike this week, the latest to be killed in such attacks in Syria, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and relatives said Friday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike Tuesday in the northwestern Idlib province. Before joining al-Qaida, Taha was a top figure in Egypt's notorious militant group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said several al-Qaida members, including Taha, were killed in Tuesday's strike.

The U.S. unveiled the prototype of an autonomous, experimental warship Thursday that would drastically reduce the cost of operations at sea and mark progress in the move toward robotic warfare. It comes as the military has increasingly aimed to boost unmanned technology to counter Chinese and Russian investments. "This is an inflection point," Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Work told Reuters in an interview. "This is the first time we've ever had a totally robotic, trans-oceanic-capable ship." Work said he hoped unmanned ships would be stationed in the western Pacific within as few as five years.

The Swedish startup company eEducation Albert is now launching an artificial intelligence application with focus on helping pupils with their homework in math during the last years of primary school. The startup-company intend to expand to other education-levels as well as the international market during the coming years. At the moment AI Albert is filled all available answers to questions to make good work with the pupils and the next week a paid version of the application is being launched to 65 schools in Sweden. "We have created a digital person that we have feeded with advanced logic and knowledge on how you teach the textbook the pupil is sitting with", says one of the founders Arta Mandegari in an interview with di.se. He and the other founder Salman Eskandari is graduates from the Chalmers, technological university of Gothenburg.

Gone are the days when archaeology was just a whole load of sand, dust and bones. These days the real explorers are all about the robotics. As technology has progressed, archaeological tools have become more sophisticated, including the potential to undertake scientific investigation with zero disturbances of the surrounding material. With the use of "non-invasive archeology" amazing discoveries can be made, such as the recent ground penetrating survey that appeared to indicate Shakespeare's skull might not be in his tomb. While these developments are all very useful, non-invasive technologies cannot, and never will, provide perfect resolution of the features within hidden spaces.

Social networks are awash with information. Relief agencies such the Kenyan chapter of the Red Cross are already leveraging information from Twitter to track and respond to emergencies. The innumerable amount of information generated within a crisis requires faster processing to extract actionable information. At iHub Research, we studied the flow of information on social media during the March 2013 Kenyan general election and developed a framework looking at the '3Vs of crowdsourcing,' a functional approach to validating, verifying and checking viability of crowdsourced information. As part of the research, machine learning techniques were deployed to sift through 2.6 million tweets and remove non-pertinent data, which narrowed down to 12,000 useful tweets.