Data normalization is a crucial step in the gene expression analysis as it ensures the validity of its downstream analyses. Although many metrics have been designed to evaluate the existing normalization methods, different metrics or different datasets by the same metric yield inconsistent results, particularly for the single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. The worst situations could be that one method evaluated as the best by one metric is evaluated as the poorest by another metric, or one method evaluated as the best using one dataset is evaluated as the poorest using another dataset. Here raises an open question: principles need to be established to guide the evaluation of normalization methods. In this study, we propose a principle that one normalization method evaluated as the best by one metric should also be evaluated as the best by another metric (the consistency of metrics) and one method evaluated as the best using scRNA-seq data should also be evaluated as the best using bulk RNA-seq data or microarray data (the consistency of datasets). Then, we designed a new metric named Area Under normalized CV threshold Curve (AUCVC) and applied it with another metric mSCC to evaluate 14 commonly used normalization methods using both scRNA-seq data and bulk RNA-seq data, satisfying the consistency of metrics and the consistency of datasets. Our findings paved the way to guide future studies in the normalization of gene expression data with its evaluation. The raw gene expression data, normalization methods, and evaluation metrics used in this study have been included in an R package named NormExpression. NormExpression provides a framework and a fast and simple way for researchers to select the best method for the normalization of their gene expression data based on the evaluation of different methods (particularly some data-driven methods or their own methods) in the principle of the consistency of metrics and the consistency of datasets.

README — Code and data
Project: LOCALISED

Work Package 7, Task 7.1

Paper: A Systemic Framework for Assessing the Risk of Decarbonization to Regional Manufacturing Activities in the European Union

What this repo does
-------------------
Builds the Transition‑Risk Index (TRI) for EU manufacturing at NUTS‑2 × NACE Rev.2, and reproduces the article’s Figures 3–6:
• Exposure (emissions by region/sector)
• Vulnerability (composite index)
• Risk = Exposure ⊗ Vulnerability
Outputs include intermediate tables, the final analysis dataset, and publication figures.

Folder of interest
------------------
Code and data/
├─ Code/ # R scripts (run in order 1A → 5)
│ └─ Create Initial Data/ # scripts to (re)build Initial data/ from Eurostat API with imputation
├─ Initial data/ # Eurostat inputs imputed for missing values
├─ Derived data/ # intermediates
├─ Final data/ # final analysis-ready tables
└─ Figures/ # exported figures

Quick start
-----------
1) Open R (or RStudio) and set the working directory to “Code and data/Code”.
Example: setwd(".../Code and data/Code")
2) Initial data/ contains the required Eurostat inputs referenced by the scripts.
To reproduce the inputs in Initial data/, run the scripts in Code/Create Initial Data/.
These scripts download the required datasets from the respective API and impute missing values; outputs are written to ../Initial data/.
3) Run scripts sequentially (they use relative paths to ../Raw data, ../Derived data, etc.):
1A-non-sector-data.R → 1B-sector-data.R → 1C-all-data.R → 2-reshape-data.R → 3-normalize-data-by-n-enterpr.R → 4-risk-aggregation.R → 5A-results-maps.R, 5B-results-radar.R

What each script does
---------------------
Create Initial Data — Recreate inputs
• Download source tables from the Eurostat API or the Localised DSP, apply light cleaning, and impute missing values.
• Write the resulting inputs to Initial data/ for the analysis pipeline.

1A / 1B / 1C — Build the unified base
• Read individual Eurostat datasets (some sectoral, some only regional).
• Harmonize, aggregate, and align them into a single analysis-ready schema.
• Write aggregated outputs to Derived data/ (and/or Final data/ as needed).

2 — Reshape and enrich
• Reshapes the combined data and adds metadata.
• Output: Derived data/2_All_data_long_READY.xlsx (all raw indicators in tidy long format, with indicator names and values).

3 — Normalize (enterprises & min–max)
• Divide selected indicators by number of enterprises.
• Apply min–max normalization to [0.01, 0.99].
• Exposure keeps real zeros (zeros remain zero).
• Write normalized tables to Derived data/ or Final data/.

4 — Aggregate indices
• Vulnerability: build dimension scores (Energy, Labour, Finance, Supply Chain, Technology).
– Within each dimension: equal‑weight mean of directionally aligned, [0.01,0.99]‑scaled indicators.
– Dimension scores are re‑scaled to [0.01,0.99].
• Aggregate Vulnerability: equal‑weight mean of the five dimensions.
• TRI (Risk): combine Exposure (E) and Vulnerability (V) via a weighted geometric rule with α = 0.5 in the baseline.
– Policy‑intuitive properties: high E & high V → high risk; imbalances penalized (non‑compensatory).
• Output: Final data/ (main analysis tables).

5A / 5B — Visualize results
• 5A: maps and distribution plots for Exposure, Vulnerability, and Risk → Figures 3 & 4.
• 5B: comparative/radar profiles for selected countries/regions/subsectors → Figures 5 & 6.
• Outputs saved to Figures/.

Data flow (at a glance)
-----------------------
Initial data → (1A–1C) Aggregated base → (2) Tidy long file → (3) Normalized indicators → (4) Composite indices → (5) Figures
| | |
v v v
Derived data/ 2_All_data_long_READY.xlsx Final data/ & Figures/

Assumptions & conventions
-------------------------
• Geography: EU NUTS‑2 regions; Sector: NACE Rev.2 manufacturing subsectors.
• Equal weights by default where no evidence supports alternatives.
• All indicators directionally aligned so that higher = greater transition difficulty.
• Relative paths assume working directory = Code/.

Reproducing the article
-----------------------
• Optionally run the codes from the Code/Create Initial Data subfolder
• Run 1A → 5B without interruption to regenerate:
– Figure 3: Exposure, Vulnerability, Risk maps (total manufacturing).
– Figure 4: Vulnerability dimensions (Energy, Labour, Finance, Supply Chain, Technology).
– Figure 5: Drivers of risk—highest vs. lowest risk regions (example: Germany & Greece).
– Figure 6: Subsector case (e.g., basic metals) by selected regions.
• Final tables for the paper live in Final data/. Figures export to Figures/.

Requirements
------------
• R (version per your environment).
• Install any missing packages listed at the top of each script (e.g., install.packages("...")).

Troubleshooting
---------------
• “File not found”: check that the previous script finished and wrote its outputs to the expected folder.
• Paths: confirm getwd() ends with /Code so relative paths resolve to ../Raw data, ../Derived data, etc.
• Reruns: optionally clear Derived data/, Final data/, and Figures/ before a clean rebuild.

Provenance & citation
---------------------
• Inputs: Eurostat and related sources cited in the paper and headers of the scripts.
• Methods: OECD composite‑indicator guidance; IPCC AR6 risk framing (see paper references).
• If you use this code, please cite the article:
A Systemic Framework for Assessing the Risk of Decarbonization to Regional Manufacturing Activities in the European Union.

1. Microbiome sequencing data often need to be normalized due to differences in read depths, and recommendations for microbiome analyses generally warn against using proportions or rarefying to normalize data and instead advocate alternatives, such as upper quartile, CSS, edgeR-TMM, or DESeq-VS. Those recommendations are, however, based on studies that focused on differential abundance testing and variance standardization, rather than community-level comparisons (i.e., beta diversity), Also, standardizing the within-sample variance across samples may suppress differences in species evenness, potentially distorting community-level patterns. Furthermore, the recommended methods use log transformations, which we expect to exaggerate the importance of differences among rare OTUs, while suppressing the importance of differences among common OTUs. 2. We tested these theoretical predictions via simulations and a real-world data set. 3. Proportions and rarefying produced more accurate comparisons among communities and were the only methods that fully normalized read depths across samples. Additionally, upper quartile, CSS, edgeR-TMM, and DESeq-VS often masked differences among communities when common OTUs differed, and they produced false positives when rare OTUs differed. 4. Based on our simulations, normalizing via proportions may be superior to other commonly used methods for comparing ecological communities.

PublicationPrimahadi Wijaya R., Gede. 2014. Visualisation of diachronic constructional change using Motion Chart. In Zane Goebel, J. Herudjati Purwoko, Suharno, M. Suryadi & Yusuf Al Aried (eds.). Proceedings: International Seminar on Language Maintenance and Shift IV (LAMAS IV), 267-270. Semarang: Universitas Diponegoro. doi: https://doi.org/10.4225/03/58f5c23dd8387Description of R codes and data files in the repositoryThis repository is imported from its GitHub repo. Versioning of this figshare repository is associated with the GitHub repo's Release. So, check the Releases page for updates (the next version is to include the unified version of the codes in the first release with the tidyverse).The raw input data consists of two files (i.e. will_INF.txt and go_INF.txt). They represent the co-occurrence frequency of top-200 infinitival collocates for will and be going to respectively across the twenty decades of Corpus of Historical American English (from the 1810s to the 2000s).These two input files are used in the R code file 1-script-create-input-data-raw.r. The codes preprocess and combine the two files into a long format data frame consisting of the following columns: (i) decade, (ii) coll (for "collocate"), (iii) BE going to (for frequency of the collocates with be going to) and (iv) will (for frequency of the collocates with will); it is available in the input_data_raw.txt. Then, the script 2-script-create-motion-chart-input-data.R processes the input_data_raw.txt for normalising the co-occurrence frequency of the collocates per million words (the COHA size and normalising base frequency are available in coha_size.txt). The output from the second script is input_data_futurate.txt.Next, input_data_futurate.txt contains the relevant input data for generating (i) the static motion chart as an image plot in the publication (using the script 3-script-create-motion-chart-plot.R), and (ii) the dynamic motion chart (using the script 4-script-motion-chart-dynamic.R).The repository adopts the project-oriented workflow in RStudio; double-click on the Future Constructions.Rproj file to open an RStudio session whose working directory is associated with the contents of this repository.

Analysis of bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) data is a valuable tool to understand transcription at the genome scale. Targeted sequencing of RNA has emerged as a practical means of assessing the majority of the transcriptomic space with less reliance on large resources for consumables and bioinformatics. TempO-Seq is a templated, multiplexed RNA-Seq platform that interrogates a panel of sentinel genes representative of genome-wide transcription. Nuances of the technology require proper preprocessing of the data. Various methods have been proposed and compared for normalizing bulk RNA-Seq data, but there has been little to no investigation of how the methods perform on TempO-Seq data. We simulated count data into two groups (treated vs. untreated) at seven-fold change (FC) levels (including no change) using control samples from human HepaRG cells run on TempO-Seq and normalized the data using seven normalization methods. Upper Quartile (UQ) performed the best with regard to maintaining FC levels as detected by a limma contrast between treated vs. untreated groups. For all FC levels, specificity of the UQ normalization was greater than 0.84 and sensitivity greater than 0.90 except for the no change and +1.5 levels. Furthermore, K-means clustering of the simulated genes normalized by UQ agreed the most with the FC assignments [adjusted Rand index (ARI) = 0.67]. Despite having an assumption of the majority of genes being unchanged, the DESeq2 scaling factors normalization method performed reasonably well as did simple normalization procedures counts per million (CPM) and total counts (TCs). These results suggest that for two class comparisons of TempO-Seq data, UQ, CPM, TC, or DESeq2 normalization should provide reasonably reliable results at absolute FC levels ≥2.0. These findings will help guide researchers to normalize TempO-Seq gene expression data for more reliable results.

Overview

• The Naturalistic Neuroimaging Database (NNDb v2.0) contains datasets from 86 human participants doing the NIH Toolbox and then watching one of 10 full-length movies during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).The participants were all right-handed, native English speakers, with no history of neurological/psychiatric illnesses, with no hearing impairments, unimpaired or corrected vision and taking no medication. Each movie was stopped in 40-50 minute intervals or when participants asked for a break, resulting in 2-6 runs of BOLD-fMRI. A 10 minute high-resolution defaced T1-weighted anatomical MRI scan (MPRAGE) is also provided.
• The NNDb V2.0 is now on Neuroscout, a platform for fast and flexible re-analysis of (naturalistic) fMRI studies. See: https://neuroscout.org/

v2.0 Changes

• Overview
  • We have replaced our own preprocessing pipeline with that implemented in AFNI’s afni_proc.py, thus changing only the derivative files. This introduces a fix for an issue with our normalization (i.e., scaling) step and modernizes and standardizes the preprocessing applied to the NNDb derivative files. We have done a bit of testing and have found that results in both pipelines are quite similar in terms of the resulting spatial patterns of activity but with the benefit that the afni_proc.py results are 'cleaner' and statistically more robust.

• Normalization

  • Emily Finn and Clare Grall at Dartmouth and Rick Reynolds and Paul Taylor at AFNI, discovered and showed us that the normalization procedure we used for the derivative files was less than ideal for timeseries runs of varying lengths. Specifically, the 3dDetrend flag -normalize makes 'the sum-of-squares equal to 1'. We had not thought through that an implication of this is that the resulting normalized timeseries amplitudes will be affected by run length, increasing as run length decreases (and maybe this should go in 3dDetrend’s help text). To demonstrate this, I wrote a version of 3dDetrend’s -normalize for R so you can see for yourselves by running the following code:

  # Generate a resting state (rs) timeseries (ts)
  # Install / load package to make fake fMRI ts
  # install.packages("neuRosim")
  library(neuRosim)
  # Generate a ts
  ts.rs <- simTSrestingstate(nscan=2000, TR=1, SNR=1)
  # 3dDetrend -normalize
  # R command version for 3dDetrend -normalize -polort 0 which normalizes by making "the sum-of-squares equal to 1"
  # Do for the full timeseries
  ts.normalised.long <- (ts.rs-mean(ts.rs))/sqrt(sum((ts.rs-mean(ts.rs))^2));
  # Do this again for a shorter version of the same timeseries
  ts.shorter.length <- length(ts.normalised.long)/4
  ts.normalised.short <- (ts.rs[1:ts.shorter.length]- mean(ts.rs[1:ts.shorter.length]))/sqrt(sum((ts.rs[1:ts.shorter.length]- mean(ts.rs[1:ts.shorter.length]))^2));
  # By looking at the summaries, it can be seen that the median values become  larger
  summary(ts.normalised.long)
  summary(ts.normalised.short)
  # Plot results for the long and short ts
  # Truncate the longer ts for plotting only
  ts.normalised.long.made.shorter <- ts.normalised.long[1:ts.shorter.length]
  # Give the plot a title
  title <- "3dDetrend -normalize for long (blue) and short (red) timeseries";
  plot(x=0, y=0, main=title, xlab="", ylab="", xaxs='i', xlim=c(1,length(ts.normalised.short)), ylim=c(min(ts.normalised.short),max(ts.normalised.short)));
  # Add zero line
  lines(x=c(-1,ts.shorter.length), y=rep(0,2), col='grey');
  # 3dDetrend -normalize -polort 0 for long timeseries
  lines(ts.normalised.long.made.shorter, col='blue');
  # 3dDetrend -normalize -polort 0 for short timeseries
  lines(ts.normalised.short, col='red');
  

• Standardization/modernization

  • The above individuals also encouraged us to implement the afni_proc.py script over our own pipeline. It introduces at least three additional improvements: First, we now use Bob’s @SSwarper to align our anatomical files with an MNI template (now MNI152_2009_template_SSW.nii.gz) and this, in turn, integrates nicely into the afni_proc.py pipeline. This seems to result in a generally better or more consistent alignment, though this is only a qualitative observation. Second, all the transformations / interpolations and detrending are now done in fewers steps compared to our pipeline. This is preferable because, e.g., there is less chance of inadvertently reintroducing noise back into the timeseries (see Lindquist, Geuter, Wager, & Caffo 2019). Finally, many groups are advocating using tools like fMRIPrep or afni_proc.py to increase standardization of analyses practices in our neuroimaging community. This presumably results in less error, less heterogeneity and more interpretability of results across studies. Along these lines, the quality control (‘QC’) html pages generated by afni_proc.py are a real help in assessing data quality and almost a joy to use.

• New afni_proc.py command line

  • The following is the afni_proc.py command line that we used to generate blurred and censored timeseries files. The afni_proc.py tool comes with extensive help and examples. As such, you can quickly understand our preprocessing decisions by scrutinising the below. Specifically, the following command is most similar to Example 11 for ‘Resting state analysis’ in the help file (see https://afni.nimh.nih.gov/pub/dist/doc/program_help/afni_proc.py.html): afni_proc.py \ -subj_id "$sub_id_name_1" \ -blocks despike tshift align tlrc volreg mask blur scale regress \ -radial_correlate_blocks tcat volreg \ -copy_anat anatomical_warped/anatSS.1.nii.gz \ -anat_has_skull no \ -anat_follower anat_w_skull anat anatomical_warped/anatU.1.nii.gz \ -anat_follower_ROI aaseg anat freesurfer/SUMA/aparc.a2009s+aseg.nii.gz \ -anat_follower_ROI aeseg epi freesurfer/SUMA/aparc.a2009s+aseg.nii.gz \ -anat_follower_ROI fsvent epi freesurfer/SUMA/fs_ap_latvent.nii.gz \ -anat_follower_ROI fswm epi freesurfer/SUMA/fs_ap_wm.nii.gz \ -anat_follower_ROI fsgm epi freesurfer/SUMA/fs_ap_gm.nii.gz \ -anat_follower_erode fsvent fswm \ -dsets media_?.nii.gz \ -tcat_remove_first_trs 8 \ -tshift_opts_ts -tpattern alt+z2 \ -align_opts_aea -cost lpc+ZZ -giant_move -check_flip \ -tlrc_base "$basedset" \ -tlrc_NL_warp \ -tlrc_NL_warped_dsets \ anatomical_warped/anatQQ.1.nii.gz \ anatomical_warped/anatQQ.1.aff12.1D \ anatomical_warped/anatQQ.1_WARP.nii.gz \ -volreg_align_to MIN_OUTLIER \ -volreg_post_vr_allin yes \ -volreg_pvra_base_index MIN_OUTLIER \ -volreg_align_e2a \ -volreg_tlrc_warp \ -mask_opts_automask -clfrac 0.10 \ -mask_epi_anat yes \ -blur_to_fwhm -blur_size $blur \ -regress_motion_per_run \ -regress_ROI_PC fsvent 3 \ -regress_ROI_PC_per_run fsvent \ -regress_make_corr_vols aeseg fsvent \ -regress_anaticor_fast \ -regress_anaticor_label fswm \ -regress_censor_motion 0.3 \ -regress_censor_outliers 0.1 \ -regress_apply_mot_types demean deriv \ -regress_est_blur_epits \ -regress_est_blur_errts \ -regress_run_clustsim no \ -regress_polort 2 \ -regress_bandpass 0.01 1 \ -html_review_style pythonic We used similar command lines to generate ‘blurred and not censored’ and the ‘not blurred and not censored’ timeseries files (described more fully below). We will provide the code used to make all derivative files available on our github site (https://github.com/lab-lab/nndb).

  We made one choice above that is different enough from our original pipeline that it is worth mentioning here. Specifically, we have quite long runs, with the average being ~40 minutes but this number can be variable (thus leading to the above issue with 3dDetrend’s -normalise). A discussion on the AFNI message board with one of our team (starting here, https://afni.nimh.nih.gov/afni/community/board/read.php?1,165243,165256#msg-165256), led to the suggestion that '-regress_polort 2' with '-regress_bandpass 0.01 1' be used for long runs. We had previously used only a variable polort with the suggested 1 + int(D/150) approach. Our new polort 2 + bandpass approach has the added benefit of working well with afni_proc.py.

  Which timeseries file you use is up to you but I have been encouraged by Rick and Paul to include a sort of PSA about this. In Paul’s own words: * Blurred data should not be used for ROI-based analyses (and potentially not for ICA? I am not certain about standard practice). * Unblurred data for ISC might be pretty noisy for voxelwise analyses, since blurring should effectively boost the SNR of active regions (and even good alignment won't be perfect everywhere). * For uncensored data, one should be concerned about motion effects being left in the data (e.g., spikes in the data). * For censored data: * Performing ISC requires the users to unionize the censoring patterns during the correlation calculation. * If wanting to calculate power spectra or spectral parameters like ALFF/fALFF/RSFA etc. (which some people might do for naturalistic tasks still), then standard FT-based methods can't be used because sampling is no longer uniform. Instead, people could use something like 3dLombScargle+3dAmpToRSFC, which calculates power spectra (and RSFC params) based on a generalization of the FT that can handle non-uniform sampling, as long as the censoring pattern is mostly random and, say, only up to about 10-15% of the data. In sum, think very carefully about which files you use. If you find you need a file we have not provided, we can happily generate different versions of the timeseries upon request and can generally do so in a week or less.

• Effect on results

  • From numerous tests on our own analyses, we have qualitatively found that results using our old vs the new afni_proc.py preprocessing pipeline do not change all that much in terms of general spatial patterns. There is, however, an

Output files from the 8. Metadata Analysis Workflow page of the SWELTR high-temp study. In this workflow, we compared environmental metadata with microbial communities. The workflow is split into two parts.

metadata_ssu18_wf.rdata : Part 1 contains all variables and objects for the 16S rRNA analysis. To see the Objects, in R run _load("metadata_ssu18_wf.rdata", verbose=TRUE)_

metadata_its18_wf.rdata : Part 2 contains all variables and objects for the ITS analysis. To see the Objects, in R run _load("metadata_its18_wf.rdata", verbose=TRUE)_
Additional files:

In both workflows, we run the following steps:

1) Metadata Normality Tests: Shapiro-Wilk Normality Test to test whether each matadata parameter is normally distributed.
2) Normalize Parameters: R package bestNormalize to find and execute the best normalizing transformation.
3) Split Metadata parameters into groups: a) Environmental and edaphic properties, b) Microbial functional responses, and c) Temperature adaptation properties.
4) Autocorrelation Tests: Test all possible pair-wise comparisons, on both normalized and non-normalized data sets, for each group.
5) Remove autocorrelated parameters from each group.
6) Dissimilarity Correlation Tests: Use Mantel Tests to see if any on the metadata groups are significantly correlated with the community data.
7) Best Subset of Variables: Determine which of the metadata parameters from each group are the most strongly correlated with the community data. For this we use the bioenv function from the vegan package.
8) Distance-based Redundancy Analysis: Ordination analysis of samples and metadata vector overlays using capscale, also from the vegan package.

Source code for the workflow can be found here:
https://github.com/sweltr/high-temp/blob/master/metadata.Rmd

This artifact accompanies the SEET@ICSE article "Assessing the impact of hints in learning formal specification", which reports on a user study to investigate the impact of different types of automated hints while learning a formal specification language, both in terms of immediate performance and learning retention, but also in the emotional response of the students. This research artifact provides all the material required to replicate this study (except for the proprietary questionnaires passed to assess the emotional response and user experience), as well as the collected data and data analysis scripts used for the discussion in the paper.

Dataset

The artifact contains the resources described below.

Experiment resources

The resources needed for replicating the experiment, namely in directory experiment:

alloy_sheet_pt.pdf: the 1-page Alloy sheet that participants had access to during the 2 sessions of the experiment. The sheet was passed in Portuguese due to the population of the experiment.

alloy_sheet_en.pdf: a version the 1-page Alloy sheet that participants had access to during the 2 sessions of the experiment translated into English.

docker-compose.yml: a Docker Compose configuration file to launch Alloy4Fun populated with the tasks in directory data/experiment for the 2 sessions of the experiment.

api and meteor: directories with source files for building and launching the Alloy4Fun platform for the study.

Experiment data

The task database used in our application of the experiment, namely in directory data/experiment:

Model.json, Instance.json, and Link.json: JSON files with to populate Alloy4Fun with the tasks for the 2 sessions of the experiment.

identifiers.txt: the list of all (104) available participant identifiers that can participate in the experiment.

Collected data

Data collected in the application of the experiment as a simple one-factor randomised experiment in 2 sessions involving 85 undergraduate students majoring in CSE. The experiment was validated by the Ethics Committee for Research in Social and Human Sciences of the Ethics Council of the University of Minho, where the experiment took place. Data is shared the shape of JSON and CSV files with a header row, namely in directory data/results:

data_sessions.json: data collected from task-solving in the 2 sessions of the experiment, used to calculate variables productivity (PROD1 and PROD2, between 0 and 12 solved tasks) and efficiency (EFF1 and EFF2, between 0 and 1).

data_socio.csv: data collected from socio-demographic questionnaire in the 1st session of the experiment, namely:

participant identification: participant's unique identifier (ID);

socio-demographic information: participant's age (AGE), sex (SEX, 1 through 4 for female, male, prefer not to disclosure, and other, respectively), and average academic grade (GRADE, from 0 to 20, NA denotes preference to not disclosure).

data_emo.csv: detailed data collected from the emotional questionnaire in the 2 sessions of the experiment, namely:

participant identification: participant's unique identifier (ID) and the assigned treatment (column HINT, either N, L, E or D);

detailed emotional response data: the differential in the 5-point Likert scale for each of the 14 measured emotions in the 2 sessions, ranging from -5 to -1 if decreased, 0 if maintained, from 1 to 5 if increased, or NA denoting failure to submit the questionnaire. Half of the emotions are positive (Admiration1 and Admiration2, Desire1 and Desire2, Hope1 and Hope2, Fascination1 and Fascination2, Joy1 and Joy2, Satisfaction1 and Satisfaction2, and Pride1 and Pride2), and half are negative (Anger1 and Anger2, Boredom1 and Boredom2, Contempt1 and Contempt2, Disgust1 and Disgust2, Fear1 and Fear2, Sadness1 and Sadness2, and Shame1 and Shame2). This detailed data was used to compute the aggregate data in data_emo_aggregate.csv and in the detailed discussion in Section 6 of the paper.

data_umux.csv: data collected from the user experience questionnaires in the 2 sessions of the experiment, namely:

participant identification: participant's unique identifier (ID);

user experience data: summarised user experience data from the UMUX surveys (UMUX1 and UMUX2, as a usability metric ranging from 0 to 100).

participants.txt: the list of participant identifiers that have registered for the experiment.

Analysis scripts

The analysis scripts required to replicate the analysis of the results of the experiment as reported in the paper, namely in directory analysis:

analysis.r: An R script to analyse the data in the provided CSV files; each performed analysis is documented within the file itself.

requirements.r: An R script to install the required libraries for the analysis script.

normalize_task.r: A Python script to normalize the task JSON data from file data_sessions.json into the CSV format required by the analysis script.

normalize_emo.r: A Python script to compute the aggregate emotional response in the CSV format required by the analysis script from the detailed emotional response data in the CSV format of data_emo.csv.

Dockerfile: Docker script to automate the analysis script from the collected data.

Setup

To replicate the experiment and the analysis of the results, only Docker is required.

If you wish to manually replicate the experiment and collect your own data, you'll need to install:

A modified version of the Alloy4Fun platform, which is built in the Meteor web framework. This version of Alloy4Fun is publicly available in branch study of its repository at https://github.com/haslab/Alloy4Fun/tree/study.

If you wish to manually replicate the analysis of the data collected in our experiment, you'll need to install:

Python to manipulate the JSON data collected in the experiment. Python is freely available for download at https://www.python.org/downloads/, with distributions for most platforms.

R software for the analysis scripts. R is freely available for download at https://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html, with binary distributions available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Usage

Experiment replication

This section describes how to replicate our user study experiment, and collect data about how different hints impact the performance of participants.

To launch the Alloy4Fun platform populated with tasks for each session, just run the following commands from the root directory of the artifact. The Meteor server may take a few minutes to launch, wait for the "Started your app" message to show.

cd experimentdocker-compose up

This will launch Alloy4Fun at http://localhost:3000. The tasks are accessed through permalinks assigned to each participant. The experiment allows for up to 104 participants, and the list of available identifiers is given in file identifiers.txt. The group of each participant is determined by the last character of the identifier, either N, L, E or D. The task database can be consulted in directory data/experiment, in Alloy4Fun JSON files.

In the 1st session, each participant was given one permalink that gives access to 12 sequential tasks. The permalink is simply the participant's identifier, so participant 0CAN would just access http://localhost:3000/0CAN. The next task is available after a correct submission to the current task or when a time-out occurs (5mins). Each participant was assigned to a different treatment group, so depending on the permalink different kinds of hints are provided. Below are 4 permalinks, each for each hint group:

Group N (no hints): http://localhost:3000/0CAN

Group L (error locations): http://localhost:3000/CA0L

Group E (counter-example): http://localhost:3000/350E

Group D (error description): http://localhost:3000/27AD

In the 2nd session, likewise the 1st session, each permalink gave access to 12 sequential tasks, and the next task is available after a correct submission or a time-out (5mins). The permalink is constructed by prepending the participant's identifier with P-. So participant 0CAN would just access http://localhost:3000/P-0CAN. In the 2nd sessions all participants were expected to solve the tasks without any hints provided, so the permalinks from different groups are undifferentiated.

Before the 1st session the participants should answer the socio-demographic questionnaire, that should ask the following information: unique identifier, age, sex, familiarity with the Alloy language, and average academic grade.

Before and after both sessions the participants should answer the standard PrEmo 2 questionnaire. PrEmo 2 is published under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This means that you are free to use the tool for non-commercial purposes as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and do not modify the original material. The original material, namely the depictions of the diferent emotions, can be downloaded from https://diopd.org/premo/. The questionnaire should ask for the unique user identifier, and for the attachment with each of the depicted 14 emotions, expressed in a 5-point Likert scale.

After both sessions the participants should also answer the standard UMUX questionnaire. This questionnaire can be used freely, and should ask for the user unique identifier and answers for the standard 4 questions in a 7-point Likert scale. For information about the questions, how to implement the questionnaire, and how to compute the usability metric ranging from 0 to 100 score from the answers, please see the original paper:

Kraig Finstad. 2010. The usability metric for user experience. Interacting with computers 22, 5 (2010), 323–327.

Analysis of other applications of the experiment

This section describes how to replicate the analysis of the data collected in an application of the experiment described in Experiment replication.

The analysis script expects data in 4 CSV files,

With the improvement of -omics and next-generation sequencing (NGS) methodologies, along with the lowered cost of generating these types of data, the analysis of high-throughput biological data has become standard both for forming and testing biomedical hypotheses. Our knowledge of how to normalize datasets to remove latent undesirable variances has grown extensively, making for standardized data that are easily compared between studies. Here we present the CAncer bioMarker Prediction Pipeline (CAMPP), an open-source R-based wrapper (https://github.com/ELELAB/CAncer-bioMarker-Prediction-Pipeline -CAMPP) intended to aid bioinformatic software-users with data analyses. CAMPP is called from a terminal command line and is supported by a user-friendly manual. The pipeline may be run on a local computer and requires little or no knowledge of programming. To avoid issues relating to R-package updates, a renv .lock file is provided to ensure R-package stability. Data-management includes missing value imputation, data normalization, and distributional checks. CAMPP performs (I) k-means clustering, (II) differential expression/abundance analysis, (III) elastic-net regression, (IV) correlation and co-expression network analyses, (V) survival analysis, and (VI) protein-protein/miRNA-gene interaction networks. The pipeline returns tabular files and graphical representations of the results. We hope that CAMPP will assist in streamlining bioinformatic analysis of quantitative biological data, whilst ensuring an appropriate bio-statistical framework.

R code to normalize the data. (R 1 kb)

Experimental data can broadly be divided in discrete or continuous data. Continuous data are obtained from measurements that are performed as a function of another quantitative variable, e.g., time, length, concentration, or wavelength. The results from these types of experiments are often used to generate plots that visualize the measured variable on a continuous, quantitative scale. To simplify state-of-the-art data visualization and annotation of data from such experiments, an open-source tool was created with R/shiny that does not require coding skills to operate it. The freely available web app accepts wide (spreadsheet) and tidy data and offers a range of options to normalize the data. The data from individual objects can be shown in 3 different ways: (1) lines with unique colors, (2) small multiples, and (3) heatmap-style display. Next to this, the mean can be displayed with a 95% confidence interval for the visual comparison of different conditions. Several color-blind-friendly palettes are available to label the data and/or statistics. The plots can be annotated with graphical features and/or text to indicate any perturbations that are relevant. All user-defined settings can be stored for reproducibility of the data visualization. The app is dubbed PlotTwist and runs locally or online: https://huygens.science.uva.nl/PlotTwist

Western blot data are widely used in quantitative applications such as statistical testing and mathematical modelling. To ensure accurate quantitation and comparability between experiments, Western blot replicates must be normalised, but it is unclear how the available methods affect statistical properties of the data. Here we evaluate three commonly used normalisation strategies: (i) by fixed normalisation point or control; (ii) by sum of all data points in a replicate; and (iii) by optimal alignment of the replicates. We consider how these different strategies affect the coefficient of variation (CV) and the results of hypothesis testing with the normalised data. Normalisation by fixed point tends to increase the mean CV of normalised data in a manner that naturally depends on the choice of the normalisation point. Thus, in the context of hypothesis testing, normalisation by fixed point reduces false positives and increases false negatives. Analysis of published experimental data shows that choosing normalisation points with low quantified intensities results in a high normalised data CV and should thus be avoided. Normalisation by sum or by optimal alignment redistributes the raw data uncertainty in a mean-dependent manner, reducing the CV of high intensity points and increasing the CV of low intensity points. This causes the effect of normalisations by sum or optimal alignment on hypothesis testing to depend on the mean of the data tested; for high intensity points, false positives are increased and false negatives are decreased, while for low intensity points, false positives are decreased and false negatives are increased. These results will aid users of Western blotting to choose a suitable normalisation strategy and also understand the implications of this normalisation for subsequent hypothesis testing.

Summary.10 primary GBM and 8 recurrent GBM samples (14/18 matched) profiled using single nucleus RNA- sequencing (sci-RNA-seq3 protocol).Data Format.Data is provided as preprocessed dataset, stored in Seurat Object.Sample processing, sci-RNA-seq3 library generation, and sequencingSnap-frozen patient pGBM and rGBM tissues were chopped with a razor blade or scissors before nucleus isolation. Nuclei extraction and fixation were performed as previously described (Cao 2019), except for the use of a modified CST lysis buffer50 plus 1% of SUPERase-In RNase Inhibitor (Invitrogen, #AM2696). Lysis time and washing steps were further optimized based on human GBM tissue. Nuclei quality was checked with DAPI and Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA) staining. Sci-RNA-seq3 libraries were generated as previously described49 using three-level combinatorial indexing. The final libraries were sequenced on Illumina NovaSeq as follows: read 1: 34bp, read 2: >=69bp, index 1: 10bp, index 2: 10bp.Demultiplexing and read alignments.Raw sequencing reads were first demultiplexed based on i5/i7 PCR barcodes. FASTQ files were then processed using the sci-RNA-Seq3 pipeline. After barcodes and unique molecular identifiers (UMIs) were extracted from the read1 of FASTQ files, read alignment was performed using STAR short-read aligner (v2.5.2b) with the human genome (hg19) and Gencode v24 gene annotations. After removing duplicate reads based on UMI, barcode, chromosome and alignment position, reads were summarized into a count matrix of M genes × N nuclei.Filtering, normalization, integration, and dimensional reduction.Raw count matrices were loaded into a Seurat object (version 4.0.1) and filtered to retain cells with (i) 200 – 9000 recovered genes per cell, (ii) less than 60% mitochondrial content, and (iii) unmatched rate within 3 median absolute deviations of the median. To normalize count matrix, we adopted the modeling framework previously described and implemented in sctransform (R Package, version 0.3.2). In brief, count data were modelled by regularized negative binomial regression, using sequencing depth as a model covariate to regress out the influence of technical effects, and Pearson residuals were used as the normalized and variance stabilized biological signal for downstream analysis. Data from each patient were integrated with the reciprocal PCA method (Seurat) using the top 2000 variable features. PCA was performed on the integrated dataset, and the top N components that accounted for 90% of the observed variance were used for UMAP embedding, RunUMAP(max_components = 2, n_neighbours = 50, min_dist = 01, metric = cosine).Contact.Contact Dr. Nicholas Mikolajewicz regarding any questions about the data or analysis (n.mikolajewicz@utoronto.ca)