Defined Benefit vs. Defined Contribution Plans: Only 45 Years to Retirement: What a Recent College Graduate Needs to Know

This paper defines and explains the terms essential for understanding retirement planning. It then describes the types of plans involved, defined benefit and defined contribution plans, and discusses the debate surrounding the privatization of Social Security. This paper provides statistics and facts about each of these options to better prepare a person in his or her 20s who is about to graduate from college and enter a career. Finally, the paper supplies tips on what a young person can do now to ensure a financially stable life upon retiring

The orienting mouse: An input device with attitude

This paper presents a modified computer mouse, the Orienting Mouse, which delivers orientation as an additional dimension of input; when the mouse is moved on a flat surface it reports, in addition to the conventional x, y translation, angular rotation of the device in the x, y plane. The orienting mouse preserves important properties of the standard mouse; all measurements are relative and movement is tracked only while the mouse is on its flat surface. If the user lets go of the mouse, leaving it on the surface, its position and orientation do not change until it is touched again. Picking the mouse up and putting it down in a different orientation leaves the angle and position unchanged. While the concept of sensing mouse rotation is not new, our work focuses on movement and navigation in 3D, rather than on precision positioning tasks. We describe a number of sample applications developed to test its effectiveness in this context. Specific features exploited and described include (i) an algorithm for calculating the mouse angle which cancels drift between the two sensors, and (ii) the use of angular gearing which avoids unnatural and uncomfortable hand positions when moving through large angles; informal user testing validates this idea

Differences in some skills of emotional expression for simple mentally retardation pupils who are integrated and those who are nonintegrated in Hama

  This study aims at recognizing the differences in some skills of emotional expression from teachers’ and parents’ perspectives between the simple mentally retardation pupils integrated in first stage in basic learning and those who are nonintegrated. The population consisted of 20 pupils of simple mentally retardation (8-12 years) integrated in public schools in first stage in basic learning, and 20 peer pupils in private centers. Whereas the teachers were selected (15 male/female) in public schools and (10 male/female) in private centers. Parents (80 )are the fathers and mothers of (20) pupils in public schools and (20) pupils in private centers. The study used the descriptive approach by designing a questionnaire to measure the differences in some skills of emotional expression between the simple mentally retardation pupils who are integrated in public schools and nonintegrated pupils who are in private centers. This questionnaire was distributed to teachers and parents. Then the data were analyzed statistically by SPSS. The results were as follows: -   There are statistically significant differences between integrated and nonintegrated pupils on all dimensions of the scale for the sake of integrated pupils. -   There are statistically significant differences between the means of some skills of emotional expressions (joy, love) according to the variable of gender for the sake of females. -   There are statistically significant differences in (anger)for the sake of males

Cancer Biology Data Curation at the Mouse Tumor Biology Database (MTB)

Many advances in the field of cancer biology have been made using mouse models of human cancer. The Mouse Tumor Biology (MTB, "http://tumor.informatics.jax.org":http://tumor.informatics.jax.org) database provides web-based access to data on spontaneous and induced tumors from genetically defined mice (inbred, hybrid, mutant, and genetically engineered strains of mice). These data include standardized tumor names and classifications, pathology reports and images, mouse genetics, genomic and cytogenetic changes occurring in the tumor, strain names, tumor frequency and latency, and literature citations.

Although primary source for the data represented in MTB is peer-reviewed scientific literature an increasing amount of data is derived from disparate sources. MTB includes annotated histopathology images and cytogenetic assay images for mouse tumors where these data are available from The Jackson Laboratory’s mouse colonies and from outside contributors. MTB encourages direct submission of mouse tumor data and images from the cancer research community and provides investigators with a web-accessible tool for image submission and annotation. 

Integrated searches of the data in MTB are facilitated by the use of several controlled vocabularies and by adherence to standard nomenclature. MTB also provides links to other related online resources such as the Mouse Genome Database, Mouse Phenome Database, the Biology of the Mammary Gland Web Site, Festing's Listing of Inbred Strains of Mice, the JAX® Mice Web Site, and the Mouse Models of Human Cancers Consortium's Mouse Repository. 

MTB provides access to data on mouse models of cancer via the internet and has been designed to facilitate the selection of experimental models for cancer research, the evaluation of mouse genetic models of human cancer, the review of patterns of mutations in specific cancers, and the identification of genes that are commonly mutated across a spectrum of cancers.

MTB is supported by NCI grant CA089713

The hGFAP-driven conditional TSPO knockout is protective in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

The mitochondrial translocator protein (TSPO) has been implicated in CNS diseases. Here, we sought to determine the specific role of TSPO in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the most studied animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS). To fundamentally elucidate the functions of TSPO, we first developed a viable TSPO knockout mouse. A conditional TSPO knockout mouse was generated by utilizing the Cre-Lox system. We generated a TSPO floxed mouse, and then crossed this mouse with a Cre recombinase expressing mouse driven by the human glial fibrillary acidic protein (hGFAP) promoter. The resultant mouse was a neural linage line specific TSPO knockout. The loss of TSPO in the CNS did not result in overt developmental defects or phenotypes. The TSPO-/- mouse showed a decrease in GFAP expression, correlating with a decrease in astrogliosis in response to neural injury during EAE. This decrease in astrogliosis was also witnessed in the lessening of severity of EAE clinical scoring, indicating an in vivo functional role for TSPO in suppressing EAE. The TSPO-/- mouse could be a useful tool in better understanding the role of TSPO in CNS disease, and our results implicate TSPO as a potential therapeutic target in MS

Mouse versus Rat: Profound Differences in Meiotic Regulation at the Level of the Isolated Oocyte

Cumulus cell-enclosed oocytes (CEO), denuded oocytes (DO), or dissected follicles were obtained 44–48 hr after priming immature mice (20–23 days old) with 5 IU or immature rats (25–27 days old) with 12.5 IU of equine chorionic gonadotropin, and exposed to a variety of culture conditions. Mouse oocytes were more effectively maintained in meiotic arrest by hypoxanthine, dbcAMP, IBMX, milrinone, and 8-Br-cGMP. Atrial natriuretic peptide, a guanylate cyclase activator, suppressed maturation in CEO from both species, but mycophenolic acid reversed IBMX-maintained meiotic arrest in mouse CEO with little activity in rat CEO. IBMX-arrested mouse, but not rat, CEO were induced to undergo germinal vesicle breakdown (GVB) by follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and amphiregulin, while human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) was ineffective in both species. Nevertheless, FSH and amphiregulin stimulated cumulus expansion in both species. FSH and hCG were both effective inducers of GVB in cultured mouse and rat follicles while amphiregulin was stimulatory only in mouse follicles. Changing the culture medium or altering macromolecular supplementation had no effect on FSH-induced maturation in rat CEO. The AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator, AICAR, was a potent stimulator of maturation in mouse CEO and DO, but only marginally stimulatory in rat CEO and ineffective in rat DO. The AMPK inhibitor, compound C, blocked meiotic induction more effectively in hCG-treated mouse follicles and heat-treated mouse CEO. Both agents produced contrasting results on polar body formation in cultured CEO in the two species. Active AMPK was detected in germinal vesicles of immature mouse, but not rat, oocytes prior to hCG-induced maturation in vivo; it colocalized with chromatin after GVB in rat and mouse oocytes, but did not appear at the spindle poles in rat oocytes as it did in mouse oocytes. Finally, cultured mouse and rat CEO displayed disparate maturation responses to energy substrate manipulation. These data highlight significant differences in meiotic regulation between the two species, and demonstrate a greater potential in mice for control at the level of the cumulus CEO

Contrasting mechanisms of penile urethral formation in mouse and human.

This paper addresses the developmental mechanisms of formation of the mouse and human penile urethra and the possibility that two disparate mechanisms are at play. It has been suggested that the entire penile urethra of the mouse forms via direct canalization of the endodermal urethral plate. While this mechanism surely accounts for development of the proximal portion of the mouse penile urethra, we suggest that the distal portion of the mouse penile urethra forms via a series of epithelial fusion events. Through review of the recent literature in combination with new data, it is unlikely that the entire mouse urethra is formed from the endodermal urethral plate due in part to the fact that from E14 onward the urethral plate is not present in the distal aspect of the genital tubercle. Formation of the distal portion of the mouse urethra receives substantial contribution from the preputial swellings that form the preputial-urethral groove and subsequently the preputial-urethral canal, the later of which is subdivided by a fusion event to form the distal portion of the mouse penile urethra. Examination of human penile development also reveals comparable dual morphogenetic mechanisms. However, in the case of human, direct canalization of the urethral plate occurs in the glans, while fusion events are involved in formation of the urethra within the penile shaft, a pattern exactly opposite to that of the mouse. The highest incidence of hypospadias in humans occurs at the junction of these two different developmental mechanisms. The relevance of the mouse as a model of human hypospadias is discussed

Comparative analysis of transposed element insertion within human and mouse genomes reveals Alu's unique role in shaping the human transcriptome

Background: Transposed elements (TEs) have a substantial impact on mammalian evolution and are involved in numerous genetic diseases. We compared the impact of TEs on the human transcriptome and the mouse transcriptome. Results: We compiled a dataset of all TEs in the human and mouse genomes, identifying 3,932,058 and 3,122,416 TEs, respectively. We than extracted TEs located within human and mouse genes and, surprisingly, we found that 60% of TEs in both human and mouse are located in intronic sequences, even though introns comprise only 24% of the human genome. All TE families in both human and mouse can exonize. TE families that are shared between human and mouse exhibit the same percentage of TE exonization in the two species, but the exonization level of Alu, a primatespecific retroelement, is significantly greater than that of other TEs within the human genome, leading to a higher level of TE exonization in human than in mouse (1,824 exons compared with 506 exons, respectively). We detected a primate-specific mechanism for intron gain, in which Alu insertion into an exon creates a new intron located in the 3' untranslated region (termed 'intronization'). Finally, the insertion of TEs into the first and last exons of a gene is more frequent in human than in mouse, leading to longer exons in human. Conclusion: Our findings reveal many effects of TEs on these two transcriptomes. These effects are substantially greater in human than in mouse, which is due to the presence of Alu elements in human

Mouse X

Mouse X is a short science fiction film which was shot in August 2012 and is a mystery/sci-fi story about Anderson, a man who wakes in a building with no idea where he is or how he got there, before slowly discovering that in each of the rooms around him are a thousand clones of himself, all of whom woke into the same mysterious scenario. To escape he needs to outwit his 'selves' whilst overcoming the realisation that he is not the only Anderson... We're a low budget but extremely professional production full of energy and ambition. We raised our modest £5k budget from 150 individuals around the world and attracted some exceptional crew to this Lincoln based production. We have an executive producer who is currently working on a film with Richard Aoyade (Submarine, The IT Crowd) which stars Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network). We also have a Visual Effects team who worked on Burn After Reading and Sex and the City, Sound Designers who produce Hollywood trailers (Red Tails, Skyline to name just a couple) and a BAFTA award winning Cinematographer. We've been so lucky to bring this talented team of people together for this local production. We've also joined forces with some large companies to make this film happen and are currently working alongside Western Digital to promote the film whilst it goes through Post-Production. To find out more about Mouse X take a look at our Facebook page www.facebook.com/mouseshortfil

Intrusion Detection Using Mouse Dynamics

Compared to other behavioural biometrics, mouse dynamics is a less explored area. General purpose data sets containing unrestricted mouse usage data are usually not available. The Balabit data set was released in 2016 for a data science competition, which against the few subjects, can be considered the first adequate publicly available one. This paper presents a performance evaluation study on this data set for impostor detection. The existence of very short test sessions makes this data set challenging. Raw data were segmented into mouse move, point and click and drag and drop types of mouse actions, then several features were extracted. In contrast to keystroke dynamics, mouse data is not sensitive, therefore it is possible to collect negative mouse dynamics data and to use two-class classifiers for impostor detection. Both action- and set of actions-based evaluations were performed. Set of actions-based evaluation achieves 0.92 AUC on the test part of the data set. However, the same type of evaluation conducted on the training part of the data set resulted in maximal AUC (1) using only 13 actions. Drag and drop mouse actions proved to be the best actions for impostor detection.Comment: Submitted to IET Biometrics on 23 May 201