Molecular Evolution and Functional Divergence of the Ca2+ Sensor Protein in Store-operated Ca2+ Entry: Stromal Interaction Molecule

Receptor-mediated Ca2+ signaling in many non-excitable cells initially induces Ca2+ release from intracellular Ca2+ stores, followed by Ca2+ influx across the plasma membrane. Recent findings have suggested that stromal interaction molecules (STIMs) function as the Ca2+ sensor to detect changes of Ca2+ content in the intracellular Ca2+ stores. Human STIMs and invertebrate STIM share several functionally important protein domains, but diverge significantly in the C-terminus. To better understand the evolutionary significance of STIM activity, phylogenetic analysis of the STIM protein family was conducted after extensive database searching. Results from phylogeny and sequence analysis revealed early adaptation of the C-terminal divergent domains in Urochordata, before the expansion of STIMs in Vertebrata. STIMs were subsequently subjected to one round of gene duplication as early as in the Euteleostomi lineage in vertebrates, with a second round of fish-specific gene duplication. After duplication, STIM-1 and STIM-2 molecules appeared to have undergone purifying selection indicating strong evolutionary constraints within each group. Furthermore, sequence analysis of the EF-hand Ca2+ binding domain and the SAM domain, together with functional divergence studies, identified critical regions/residues likely underlying functional changes, and provided evidence for the hypothesis that STIM-1 and STIM-2 might have developed distinct functional properties after duplication

On Features of Legal Terms Applied in the Criminal Case News: Based on Xinran Ji Reports

The legal terms stand as an essential part of legal language representing specialized concepts in laws, acts and regulations, whose distinguishing features remains, even with the applications in other non-legal instruments, and keep affecting the writing style of legal instruments, explicitly, the case news. Criminal cases are the main staples reported in case news, because people’s preferences, social controversies and public policies are able to be indicated in criminal cases. Furthermore, criminal cases can also inspect senses of social justice and morality in a more profound perspective, therefore the criminal case news is more valuable than the civil case news. But relatively speaking there are numerous legal terms being involved in criminal news reports, which requires reporters or editors should posses the corresponding attainment of legal knowledge, master the features of legal language and precisely understand the relation between the legal terms and the news story so that the news events could be represented in the presence of readers objectively and veritably, at the same time the communication effects made by news media could be actually exerted. This paper selects news reports of the case of Chinese graduate Xinran Ji studying in America murdered from media as research texts, which combine with features of the legal terms and criminal case news to add up and analyze the legal terms utilized in news reports on the case. In the end, it is hoped that the summary on features of the legal term applied in criminal case news would be drew out to contribute some inspirations and reflections

Research on Crack Depth Measurement in Concrete by Using Rayleigh Waves

The possibility of crack depth measurement in concrete by using Rayleigh waves and the feasibility of measurement method are3 introduced in this paper. The principle of crack measurement in concrete by using in-plan Rayleigh waves and the measurement analysis method are studied by using finite clement method

新出吐魯番文書に見える唐龍朔年間の哥邏祿部落破散問題

(訳)西村, 陽子Tr. By Nishimura, Yok

An accurate approximation formula for pricing European options with discrete dividend payments

In this article, two relevant problems related to pricing European options with discrete dividend under the classic Black-Scholes framework are considered. For the case when a discrete dividend payment is proportional to the underlying asset value, we discuss an interesting phenomenon observed; the option price is independent of the dividend payment date. This appears to be at odds with one\u27s intuition that dividend amount, as well as the dividend date, should both affect the price of a European call or put option. We reveal the fundamental reasons, from both mathematical and financial viewpoints, why this occurs. When the amount of the discrete dividend is fixed, we provide an approximation formula for European option prices, with only one-dimensional integrals involved. It should be noted that our formula is a general one since it can not only be applied when there is only a single dividend, but also be suitable for the case of multiple dividends