Laguna Beach

Laguna Beach 2007

MCB program at USC holds an annual retreat at Laguna Beach. This year we stayed in Laguna Beach from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Most time was used for presentations and poster exhibition. Only Saturday afternoon was free time.

We went to the beach first. You can see smooth sandy beach as well as rocky shore here. People surf or take a sunbath on the sandy beach. I cannot swim or surf, so I only walk on bare foot, feeling the sand moving under my skin. Looking west, the immerse pacific ocean shined under the afternoon sunshine. Lots of seagulls were flying above the sea and sometimes they landed on the beach. They were not afraid of people, leisurely walking near you.

There was more fun in the rocky shore. The waves constantly licked the rock. Many shells attached to the rock. We found a piece of rock, which is completely covered by shells. In some place, sea anemones quietly rest in small pools of water. If you touch them with your figure, they will quickly crouching their body.

Later we drove along Pacific Coast Highway to the downtown of Laguna. I bet Pacific Coast Highway is one of most beautiful roads in the world. With blue sea on one side and elegant Spanish-style cabins on the other side, no wonder our driver said:'it feel like playing Need for Speed"。 There are many galleries in downtown of Laguna Beach. I really like Laguna's artistic style.

Halloween@Hollywood

Halloween@West Hollywood 2007

Halloween was a great festival. Hundreds of thousand of people from all around poured into West Hollywood, making Los Angeles' traffic more jammed. We talked about pumpkins, costumes and candies in the car, but my heart had flied to Hollywood.

We exited the freeway. As we got nearer, we began to see people dressing up in the street. We cannot help shouting out: "Look! Ghost" or "lovely rabbit!" or "hot girls!". Actually, everything was striking in the eyes of a new-comer to Halloween.

Especially when you walked in a miles-long boulevard , which was filled with 30,000+ persons dressing up.

(for more pictures, go to my album http://picasaweb.google.com/songkaiyuan/Halloween2007 )

Among such a bravo crowd, I regret I myself didn't dress up. Besides eyes, your ears were struck with high-volume music. You had a impulse to sing and dance. We all some times wish to forget work and study. Halloween is such a fun that you can behave innocently like an child, and you can fulfill the dream of being a star-in Hollywood.

References
my album http://picasaweb.google.com/songkaiyuan/Halloween2007
Jing's blog post http://witchejing123.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9735172B2B16AA57!371.entry
Jing's album http://witchejing123.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!9735172B2B16AA57!333/
Pei's album http://picasaweb.google.com/zhangpei511/2007_10_31HollywoodHalloween
Halloween in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

Eureka! --Letters from Los Angeles

"Eureka!" is the motto of California and "Find Yourself Here" is the slogan. These two phases exactly describes my feeling during the past month at USC and Los Angeles. "Eureka!" represents the delight of discovery. "Find Yourself Here" means the progress of adjusting to the new life here.

Excited and curiously, I have been exploring this new world. The buildings in campus are mostly grand structures. They are built of red-orange ( people here calls it cardinal) ) bricks. Under the strong sunshine here, they are so vivid that you may wonder whether they are real. I was again impressed when I walked into one reading room in Doheny Library. It is about one hundred meters long, twenty meters high and more than ten meters high. With tall bookshelves lining near the wall and large dark-red tables standing in the middle, it makes me hold my breath for a while. Though I didn't shout it shout, the word "Eureka" really came into my mind at that time.

As of Los Angeles, I like the shiny sun, the blue sky, the beautiful buildings, gardens and tall palm trees here and there. The houses off campus are two or three storied, most with a delicate garden. My apartment is about ten minutes walk from campus. ( My Apt. -Birthplace of Adlai Stevenson III). When I am free in the afternoon, I sit by the window, looking at the skyline of downtown. It feels great.

However my exploration of Los Angeles is limited to the district close to campus. Los Angeles is so big that one cannot really explore it without a car. Additionally, the warning against criminal activities discourages our ambition to go far by bus. I hope I will have more chances to cry out "Eureka" in the future.

Now I will tell how I find myself here. First, I can proudly declare that I has successfully lived on my own for nearly two weeks. After one week's free meal and another few days' meal in my classmates' home, I began to cook myself. I can't boast the deliciousness of my food, but at least in my opinion it tastes fine:-).

This semester began from last week. I take four courses this semester: two biological courses, one math course and one computer course. I have studied these materials more or less in China. So the main difficulty is language. The instructors of biology and math speaks a little blurred ( one of them from Russia:-) ). I need to try me best to follow. The instructors of algorithm speaks very clear English. Her course really restores my somewhat dwelled confidence in English because I can understand every word:-). In the coming year, besides the four courses, I need to work hard to improve my English, both written and spoken.

Again I can proudly declare that I received my first stipend yesterday. It is about two thousand dollars. Really wonderful:-). I begin to plan to buy a computer, learn to drive, etc and I even think of a trip to Canada in the winter, hehe.

My Apt. -Birthplace of Adlai Stevenson III

This is my apartment at Los Angeles. It is the birthplace of Adlai Stevenson III. When i introduced this house to my friend:"A famous American was born here", he commented, "In some years people will say 'A famous Chinese worked here '.". I lives in the upstairs room in the middle. My room is a half studio, i.e. I have my own bedroom and kitchen but share bath rooms with some tenants. They are two Indians, one Taiwanese and one Philippinos.

The above photo is taken by Floyd B. Bariscale. And please see his blog for more about this house. http://bigorangelandmarks.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-35-birthplace-of-adlai-e-stevenson.html

Application for Gradute School

Today I updated my personal homepage. Since I have finished applying for graduate school, I removed those contents and links in support of my application. However, some may be useful to other applicants in the future. I feel it is appropriate to log them here.

Statement of Purpose
http://chiangsong.googlepages.com/statementofpurpose

Letter of Recommendation
http://chiangsong.googlepages.com/recommendations3

Curriculum Vitae
http://chiangsong.googlepages.com/application

I Choose What I Love vs. I Love What I Choose

Finally I decided to go to USC. During the last few days before April 15, I contacted several faculties at the Joint CMU-Pitt Program in Computational Biology. The responses were rather disencouraging: three of them had no funds and two did not responded at all. When Prof. Sun, the chair of USC Computational Biology Program, called me on Apr. 14th evening, saying I should not play game, I realized I cannot wait any more. I sent the acceptance letter on Apr. 15 morning, Prof. Sun replied soon and asked me why I insisted on waiting for CMU's offers. I told him my idea frankly.

I have been fascinated with supercomputing since I got in touch with computer in high school. CMU's reputation in computer architecture and high performance computation has been haunting in my mind since then. Especially, Prof. Joel R. Stiles at CMU are heading the Center for Quantitative Biological Simulation in Pittsburg Supercomputing Center. It is a long-lasting idea in my mind to model live organisms in computer and study their behavior. I should honestly admit that my understanding of biological simulation is limited, but the love for it is something that cannot be explained with logic

I should be happy that the time-consuming and tedious application is over, but I felt hurt and disappointed. I used to believe that I am among the few potentially being able to do something really wonderful in biological simulation. And all faculties I contacted consider me competitive. Finally I could not choose what I love.

Sentimentality makes no use. I pretended to be as determinant as possible, sending back paper files, asking classmates at USC to arrange room, planning for my study at USC and telling my family the news. I would like to thank uncle, sister and mama for their encouraging congratulations. If nothing else had not happened, I would have gradually recovered from the heartbroken feeling of missing CMU opportunity and leisurely enjoy Hefei's spring.

Ironically, I received three mails in a line yesterday, one from McGill and two from CMU/Pitt program, asking whether I am still interested in their program. Just imagine that: when you are pursuing a pretty proud girl, she rejects you; you first feel heart-broken and then try to forget her and gradually you decide to love another girl; but now the previous girl comes back and ask whether you still love her, and she is so lovely. That is my feeling now.

If I choose what I love, I hurt USC's heart and I will feel guilt forever; If I love what I choose, I will definitely regret to miss such a pretty CMU. I hate such choices!

Bryan Adams: The Best of Me

The best of me
Can't stop this thing we started nothing can stop true love
Summer of '69 memory of early career life in muisc
Let's make a night to remember
Cloud #9 attractive voices
(Everything I do) I do it for you

My Google Maps

Some Days ago Google announced My Maps, "a new feature that makes it quick and easy to create your own custom Google Maps just by pointing and clicking" as described at Official Google Blog post Map-making: So easy a caveman could do it.

Here is my maps of some important places in my life.
Luanxian County in Tangshan in North China. I was born in the countryside and lived16 years there.
Tangshan City. I studied in Tangshan No.1 Middle School from Sept. 2000 to July 2003. It is a place I will remember for ever.
Hefei City. My university, University of Science and Technology of China is located in this city

Keeping Culture in the Warfire: Diary of Saad Eskander

I come to know Saad Eskander via the post Culture Under Siege: A Diary of Iraq's National Library by Max Magee. Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraq National Library and Archives, are rebuilding in very hard conditions the collection of the library, which has been looted during the early days of American invasion. Just image the endless violent events in Iraq, the perilous condition, the limited help of the authority and the difficulty in interacting various forces etc, the story of Saad and colleagues' sustaining the culture in the warfire is actually a heroic episode of intellectuals. If fortunately peace returns to Iraq someday in the future, we should thank them for keeping the culture from entirely disappearing.

It reminds my some Chinese heroes in Anti-Japan War and in the Culture Revolution. It is a tradition of Chinese intellectuals to protecting the Chinese culture most of because of an instinct. That is why China can have an continues of civilization history of over five thousand years.

And now I see the same instinct in Saad and his colleagues. I hope the Iraq war can damage the regime but not the culture, because the regime is of the politicians but the culture is the treasure of all Iraq people, or the human being as a whole.

Related Links:
1. Culture Under Siege: A Diary of Iraq's National Library
2. Online Diary of Saad Eskander at the British Library

Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head

The style of Coldplay, a Scotish rock band, sounds like U2.

Clocks simply the best
In my place I find its melody is familiar and comfortable, but I cannot remember where I heard it first.
The scientist
God put a smile upon your face jazz style
Politik in this song, Coldplay wants to their political altitude, however lacks the depth and insight of U2. It mainly is an abstract feeling, no vivid figures.
Green eyes at first time I listen to this song, I didn't feel any special style of this song. However, when I read a novel, listening to this album uncouciously, it somewhat strangely turn my attention from the novel to this song.

In fact, the whole album is like this song. It will not strike you too much at first, but after somewhile, you find it is worth listening to another time.

Offer of USC

When I am preparing the application material of USC, I had an intuitive feeling that they would accept me. The somewhat comic interview with Prof. Xianghong Zhou intensified my feeling. Even during the hard time when some classmates received offer of USC, I still believed that USC would not disregard me. And now, it comes. Congratulations to myself.

I felt that if you have put enough effort into something, you will never be disappointed at last. The saying that "No pains, no gains" tells some truth, but is a little passive, because it implies the situation that you may gain nothing though you worked, e.g "Pains, Still No Gains". God will not be so injustice. I would like to revise it to "Pains, Gains".

I still have a strong feeling that CMU will accept me. I hope my intuition will come true again.

Related previous post:
Interview with Prof. Xianghong Zhou
面试USC

My Firefox Extensions

Table of Contents

1. Tab Mix Plus
2. Session Manager
3. Firefox Showcase
4. Download Statusbar
5. DownThemAll
6. Fotofox
7. Fasterfox
8. Google Browser Sync
9. Google Notebook
10. Firefox Google Bookmarks
11. StumbleUpon
12. Greasemonkey
13. Adblock
14. ScrapBook
15. Better Gmail

1. Tab Mix Plus

Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. I strongly recommend the options of Select the tab pointed (Tool->Tab Mix Plus Option->Mouse->Mouse Gestures). It greatly decrease the amount of clicks when browsing.

2. Session Manager

Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows - either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. If you start you work everyday by opening some web pages , you can store them in a session. For example, I store Google Search, Gmail and Google Reader in a session named Google Family, and USTC BBS and NJU BBS in a session named BBS. I can easily switch between these sessions, saving the effort to open them. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs. If you're afraid of losing data while browsing - this extension allows you to relax...

3. Firefox Showcase

If you habitually find yourself awash in open tabs (It seems that one of my classmates usually runs into such situation), clicking around looking for the page you need, Firefox Showcase will save you a lot of aggravation. Once you install the extension, you'll have a new Showcase submenu under the View menu. From here you can choose to show thumbnails of all tabs in the current window or all tabs in all windows. Firefox has lots of options and keyboard shortcuts, however I will never dive into those complex options. Simply click F12 to get the thumbnail view, uparrow and downarrow to select the intended tab and enter to see the full view the select tab. I can also exit the thumbnail view by clicking Esc. That's all. For more, see View->Showcase and for a sidebar view, follow View->Sidebar->Showcase Sidebar.

4. Download Statusbar

If you're tired with that sometimes-pesky Downloads window that pops up whenever you download a file in Firefox. Download Statusbar suppresses that window from popping up, and instead provides you the same information in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window. You can roll your mouse over the filename and get a pop-up tool tip with some extra information about your download, too

5. DownThemAll

DownThemAll is is download manager and accelerator. It lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want! Simply, it saves you them time to open a shell and use wget.

6. Fotofox

Using Fotofox, you are able to grab a picture from any pages to the Fotofox sidebar, title it, tag it and upload them to your flickr album with a simple click. It is also compitable with other picture hosting site such as Tabblo, 23hq, Smugmug, Marela, and Kodak EasyShare Gallery.

7. Fasterfox

Exactly I don't know its performance.

8. Google Browser Sync

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords when you are using firefox on several computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Alternatively You can choose to sync cookies, or not to sync cookies, but you can't make the decision based on individual cookies. Suppose that you are now using a public computer. At first you can install this extension, sign in with your google account. The Google Browser Sync begins to synchronize your firefox settings on the server and thus you get a familiar firefox in the public computer. When you are going to leave, choose Tools->Google Browser Sync->Stop Syncing and click Tools->Clear Private Data... (Ctrl+Shilt+Delete) to clean your personal leaved on the public computer.

9. Google Notebook

In my opinion Google Notebook is a simple but great product though most people ignorate it. This is possibly because that there is not a convinient on-one-click client interface and that the usability is poor in the webpage user interface. For example, I have been long hoping for the tag feature and sharing ability based on a note. Google Notebook it the client interface. It simple the process you make notes. Just select any part of the webpages, whether be it text or picture, click Note This from pop menu activated by right mouse button. I believe Google notebook will outrun Clipmarks or other similar services.

10. Firefox Google Bookmarks

Firefox Google Bookmarks (GBookmarks) creates a menu to access your google bookmarks from any computer. ( Your google bookmarks resides in your search history). Additionally it server a backup mechanism for all bookmarks. This extension may overlap with the Google Browser Sync. Personally, I consider the Bookmark in firefox a lightweight bookmarks that store only the everyday used links and use GBookmarks as a heavyweight repository of all links that may be useful some day.

11. StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is also a bookmark service that incorporate social network elements. It resembles delicious. StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for. You can also share pages of interest within a community. Particularly, it will insert into your google search results which shows you other people's rating and reviews of the search result.

12. Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey basically allows you to add JavaScript to any Web page, which implies infinite control over the behavior of web pages. Greasemonkey is not for the faint of heart. The good news is that there are many generous souls out there who share the scripts they create. Check out userscripts.org for a script repository. If you want to write your own scripts, try diveintogreasemonkey.org or pick up Mark Pilgrim's Greasemonkey Hacks from O'Reilly Media. Personally I strongly recommend (1) Gmail Macros. After installation, it empower gmail with striking and convinient keyboard shortcuts like Google Reader; (2) Google Autopager: AutoPager enables "infinite scrolling" on Google search-results pages.

13. Adblock

Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firefox browsers. It allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. Adblock supports two types of filters: simple, and Regular Expression. Adblock will also provide a default list of filters, which is enough for a lazy person like me.

14. ScrapBook

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and easily manage collections. This enable you to surf web pages off line. You can also directly copy the ScrapBook folder from your firefox option folder to other computers and see what you saved there.

15. Better Gmail

The firefox extension Better Gmail is a collection of several featured Greasemonkey scripts. It enhance Gmail in lots of different ways - like adding saved searches, attachment icons, attachment notification, label colors, keyboard macros, a filter assistant and right-click conversation previews. For detailed description and screenshots, please have a look at Lifehacker Code: Better Gmail (Firefox extension)

References:
20 must-have Firefox extensions
Firefox Add-ons Recommended Add-ons
Lifehacker Code: Better Gmail (Firefox extension)

Ade, Cornell University!

Bad news, really bad news.

This morning I received a letter from Tri-institutional program in computational biology. They cannot offered me admission to their program. I was disappointed though I have prepared myself to face the worst result. I intend to study signal transduction network in The Tri-I program, but I am in fact not familiar with and intrigued in this field. My personal statement may seem not so persuasive.

I lost a good chance to enter an esteemed university, but also avoid entering an filed in which I show little passion. Keep confident. When we choose to open a door, we have to close another door. Hope is still there.

Ade, Cornell!

No News is Good News

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

After last interview with Prof. Xiangzhong Zhou, I have been nervously wait for futther news, however, a whole week has passed, there still are not any news. I read the above sentence from a letter in BBS, no news is good news because they are still processing my application. Comfort me.

Enjoy your leisure time!

Jane Zhang will sing for World Peace One

I came to this news that Jane Zhang will sing for World Peace, a world peace organization. WP1 is recording a song Give Your Love in order to spread peace awareness and to raise fund for the organization.

Jane Zhang is the only Asian representative. If this is not enough to image what honor it means, here a list of singers who will also join (definitely a dream team )

U2, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Carlos Santana, Yes, Shakira, the Rolling Stones, Earth Wind & Fire, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sting, David Bowie, Lionel Ritchie, the Goo Goo Dolls, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Tina Turner, The Eagles, Pearl Jam, Moby, Alanis Morissette, Phil Collins, Eminem, Wyclef Jean, Will Smith, Usher, Mary J. Blige, JZ, Beyonce, Pink, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Alicia Keys, Lenny Kravitz, Janet Jackson, Baby Face, Greenday, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle, Aretha Franklin, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Bon Jovi, Outkast, Sarah McLachlan, Enya, Paul Simon, The Dixie Chicks, Willie Nelson, Brad Paisley, Garth Brooks, Rascal Flatts, Tricia Yearwood, Keith Urban, Shania Twain, Martina McBride, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Ricky Martin, Mark Antony, David Bisbal, Juanes, Luis Miguel, Olga Tanon, Alejandro Sanz, Gilberto Gil, Ivan Lins, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Tony Bennett, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Autograph, Jane Zhang, David Lee, Prince Ali; and regional talent popular in many parts of the world.

I began to like Jane's personality (very cool) and voices when watching Super Girl 2005. Though my passion decrease later, I am still excited to hear this news. The world comes to appreciate Jane's talent. Jane, come on! your are the BEST!

Besides Jane's talent, the world's realization that one should not neglect the 13 billion Chinese people when thinking about world peace may also accelerate Jane's success. Anyway, congratulations to Jane.

The Dream of Red Chamber in wiki

I was really impressed by a piece of comment by Zhiyan Zhai when I was reading the Dream of Red Chamber. It says "I prey to God to create another Qin and another Zhi. It will be a great luck to the book and a great delight to us two"

能解者方有辛酸之泪，哭成此书。壬午除夕，书未成，芹为泪尽而逝。余尝哭芹，泪亦待尽。每意觅青埂峰再问石兄，余不遇獭头和尚何！怅怅！今而后惟愿造化主再出一芹一脂，是书何幸，余二人亦大快遂心于九泉矣。甲午八日泪笔。

I dreamed of being another Zhiyan Zhai expressing my ideas and feelings about this novel and sharing them with other alive. A wiki version of this book can record reversion history and provide collaboration between groups, and thus it will be good media to for people dreaming of being another Zhiyan Zhai like me. This media also involves now hot social network.

Fortunately, I came to know that Zoho release its wiki hosting service from TechCruch and I spent the whole night in tranferring a version of the Dream of Red Chamber to my wiki on Zoho. You can visit it at http://ryansonger.wiki.zoho.com/HomePage.html. It is still rather simple but I will add more materials in the future. And I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Avril Lavigne: Let Go

The quoted post was written in Sept 2006 when I first listened to Avril. Now during the long nervous and tedious time waiting for the application results, I began to listen to Avril again and naturally some new feelings. This post was originally published in WSH. I feel it better to move it to this blog, which is dedicated for entertainment.

This is the first time I listen to Avril Lavigne. Long before today I have noticed her beautiful name and grace posters. She rarely smiles. She impress you with a cool and pride attitude, something like a girl in one of Murakami Haruki's novel, Dance! Dance!Dance! this kind of girls have a talent to observe and control others. however, I didn't become a fan of Avril then because I have seen too many quick-coming-and -quick-going singers with a beautifle face but an ugly voice. I have a prejudice toward newly emerging actrees.

My idea changed when I come to losing grip, the first song of the album Complicated. Her style is a little like Sun Yanzi, relaxed and comfortable. I continued. the song complicated convert me to a funs of Avril. And then,Tomorrow. The voice souds so sweet that I feel my sweetheart whisp around my ears.

Recommendation & Review

• complicated free style, free attitude towards love
  
• skater boy leave social status and wealth aside, let us follow our heart and love each other. It is true we are nothing now but who knows what will we be like in the future.
  
• tomorrow sweet voice, soft style, however, the lyrics is too simple
• I'm with you I voe to take the girl's hand and take her to a happy place
• Mobile special and I cannot quite catch its idea
• Anything but ordinary A heart longing for freedom, crazy, brave love and fly
  

A good site to see lyrics. The layout is clean and comfortable with messy ads.
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/a/avril+lavigne/

Hurray! Interview Invitations from USC

After nearly a week's nervous waiting, I received my first interview invitation from USC yesterday. Prof. Xianghong Zhou wrote me the email, and it is possibly she will interview me. I visited her lab's website when I chose schools. She is a Chinese, assistant professor, with a sweet smile. Hopefully she will not be too strict with me in interview.

Well, know yourself and know your enemy, you will never be beaten even in a hundred of battles. I plan to read her papers in the next two days. Her research is centered around methodological study of integrating cross-platform microarray datasets. I have just read her paper of Gene Aging Nexus. She may has a rigorous requirement of statistics. (My disadvantage is my rather limited mathematical vocabulary!) I feel confident in my computer knowledge and programming ability.

Go on! Fighting!

Comments on Zhou's papers:
1. Gene Aging Nexus: A Web Database and Data Mining Platform for Microarray Data on Aging
keywords:
meta-analysis: by first extracting expression patterns form individual microarray datasets and then identifying recurrent signals, these approaches may enhance signal-noise separation.
differential expression analysis:
co-expression analysis: Zhou proposed a new method to mine regulatory modules in previous papers Mining dense subgraphs across massive biological networks for functional discovery.
no major biological breakthrough.

2. Integrative missing value estimation for microarray data
Question Answered:
Due to the inherent noise and the limitation of experimental systems, a microarray dataset on average has more than 5% missing values, affecting more than 60% of the genes. Such missing values made some subsequent analysis methods inapplicable or greatly decrease their performance. Thus the question of missing value estimation.

Basic Idea:
How to choose neighboring genes when not enough information is available in internal microarray dataset. Intuitively, if a set of genes frequently show expression similarity to the target gene over multiple data sets, they constitute a robust neighborhood which tend to show expression co-variations with the target gene.

other concepts:
LLS Local Least Square
Bayesian principle component analysis
singular value decomposition
support vector machines