Careful design in the primary steps of a next-generation sequencing study is critical for obtaining successful results in downstream analysis.
 
  In this study, a framework is proposed to evaluate and improve the sequence mapping in targeted regions of the reference genome. In this regard, simulated short reads were produced from the coding regions of the human genome and mapped to a Customized Target-Based Reference (CTBR) by the alignment tools that have been introduced recently. The short reads produced by different sequencing technologies aligned to the standard genome and also CTBR with and without well-defined mutation types where the amount of unmapped and misaligned reads and runtime was measured for comparison.
 
  The results showed that the mapping accuracy of the reads generated from Illumina Hiseq2500 using Stampy as the alignment tool whenever the CTBR was used as reference was significantly better than other evaluated pipelines. Using CTBR for alignment significantly decreased the mapping error in comparison to other expanded or more limited references. While intentional mutations were imported in the reads, Stampy showed the minimum error of 1.67% using CTBR. However, the lowest error obtained by stampy too using whole genome and one chromosome as references was 3.78% and 20%, respectively. Maximum and minimum misalignment errors were observed on chromosome Y and 20, respectively.
 
  Therefore using the proposed framework in a clinical targeted sequencing study may lead to predict the error and improve the performance of variant calling regarding the genomic regions targeted in a clinical study.
 Therefore using the proposed framework in a clinical targeted sequencing study may lead to predict the error and improve the performance of variant calling regarding the genomic regions targeted in a clinical study.
  The severe acute respiratory syndrome-like disease coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a disastrous global pandemic with 16,288,490 infected cases and 649,884 deaths. Until now, no effective treatments are found.
 
  The virus uses the 3-chymotrypsin-like protease for inducing the activity of the viral polyproteins and the spike (S) glycoprotein for human cell entry through the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor. Blocking the active binding sites of these molecules might be beneficial for decreasing the activity of the virus and suppressing the viral entry to the human cells. Here, docking methods were used to identify a group of ligands may perform the blocking operations.
 
  The results revealed the strongest binding affinities, sorted high to low, for tadalafil (Cialis) (phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor, tirofiban (antiplatelet), paraxanthine (central nervous system stimulant), dexamethasone, gentian violet cation (triphenylmethane), salbutamol, and amlodipine (calcium channel blocker).
 
  These substances may provide vital help for further clinical investigation in fighting against the current global pandemic of the COVID-19.
 These substances may provide vital help for further clinical investigation in fighting against the current global pandemic of the COVID-19.
  Bone age assessment (BAA) is a radiological process with the aim of identifying growth disorders in children. The objective of this study is to assess the bone age of Iranian children in an automatic manner.
 
  In this context, three computer vision techniques including histogram of oriented gradients (HOG), local binary pattern (LBP), and scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) are applied to extract appropriate features from the carpal and epiphyseal regions of interest. Two different datasets are applied here the University of Southern California hand atlas for training this computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system and Iranian radiographs for evaluating the performance of this system for BAA of Iranian children. In this study, the concatenation of HOG, LBP, and dense SIFT feature vectors and background subtraction are applied to improve the performance of this approach. Support vector machine (SVM) and K-nearest neighbor are used here for classification and the better results yielded by SVM.
 
  The accuracy of female radiographs is 90% and of male is 71.42%. The mean absolute error is 0.16 and 0.42 years for female and male test radiographs, respectively. Cohen's kappa coefficients are 0.86 and 0.6, 
  < 0.05, for female and male radiographs, respectively.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/sitagliptin.html  The results indicate that this proposed approach is in substantial agreement with the bone age reported by the experienced radiologist.
 
  This approach is easy to implement and reliable, thus qualified for CAD and automatic BAA of Iranian children.
 This approach is easy to implement and reliable, thus qualified for CAD and automatic BAA of Iranian children.
  Asymmetry analysis of retinal layers in right and left eyes can be a valuable tool for early diagnoses of retinal diseases. To determine the limits of the normal interocular asymmetry in retinal layers around macula, thickness measurements are obtained with optical coherence tomography (OCT).
 
  For this purpose, after segmentation of intraretinal layer in threedimensional OCT data and calculating the midmacular point, the TM of each layer is obtained in 9 sectors in concentric circles around the macula. To compare corresponding sectors in the right and left eyes, the TMs of the left and right images are registered by alignment of retinal raphe (i.e. diskfovea axes). Since the retinal raphe of macular OCTs is not calculable due to limited region size, the TMs are registered by first aligning corresponding retinal raphe of fundus images and then registration of the OCTs to aligned fundus images. To analyze the asymmetry in each retinal layer, the mean and standard deviation of thickness in 9 sectors of 11 layers are calculated in 50 normal individuals.
 
  The results demonstrate that some sectors of retinal layers have signifcant asymmetry with 
  < 0.05 in normal population. In this base, the tolerance limits for normal individuals are calculated.
 
  This article shows that normal population does not have identical retinal information in both eyes, and without considering this reality, normal asymmetry in information gathered from both eyes might be interpreted as retinal disorders.
 This article shows that normal population does not have identical retinal information in both eyes, and without considering this reality, normal asymmetry in information gathered from both eyes might be interpreted as retinal disorders.