3,067 research outputs found
Characterization of PRLR and PPARGC1A genes in buffalo (Bubalus bubalis)
More than 40 million households in India depend at least partially on livestock production. Buffaloes are one of the major milk producers in India. The prolactin receptor (PRLR) gene and peroxisome proliferators activated receptor-Îł coactivator 1-alpha (PPARGC1A) gene are reportedly associated with milk protein and milk fat yields in Bos taurus. In this study, we sequenced the PRLR and PPARGC1A genes in the water buffalo Bubalus bubalis. The PRLR and PPARGC1A genes coded for 581 and 819 amino acids, respectively. The B. bubalis PRLR gene differed from the corresponding Bos taurus at 21 positions and four differences with an additional arginine at position 620 in the PPARGC1A gene were found in the amino acid sequence. All of the changes were confirmed by cDNA sequencing. Twelve buffalo-specific single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified in both genes, with five of them being non-synonymous
Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death
We analyze the dynamic properties of 10^7 words recorded in English, Spanish
and Hebrew over the period 1800--2008 in order to gain insight into the
coevolution of language and culture. We report language independent patterns
useful as benchmarks for theoretical models of language evolution. A
significantly decreasing (increasing) trend in the birth (death) rate of words
indicates a recent shift in the selection laws governing word use. For new
words, we observe a peak in the growth-rate fluctuations around 40 years after
introduction, consistent with the typical entry time into standard dictionaries
and the human generational timescale. Pronounced changes in the dynamics of
language during periods of war shows that word correlations, occurring across
time and between words, are largely influenced by coevolutionary social,
technological, and political factors. We quantify cultural memory by analyzing
the long-term correlations in the use of individual words using detrended
fluctuation analysis.Comment: Version 1: 31 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables. Version 2 is streamlined,
eliminates substantial material and incorporates referee comments: 19 pages,
14 figures, 3 table
Detecting rich-club ordering in complex networks
Uncovering the hidden regularities and organizational principles of networks
arising in physical systems ranging from the molecular level to the scale of
large communication infrastructures is the key issue for the understanding of
their fabric and dynamical properties [1-5]. The ``rich-club'' phenomenon
refers to the tendency of nodes with high centrality, the dominant elements of
the system, to form tightly interconnected communities and it is one of the
crucial properties accounting for the formation of dominant communities in both
computer and social sciences [4-8]. Here we provide the analytical expression
and the correct null models which allow for a quantitative discussion of the
rich-club phenomenon. The presented analysis enables the measurement of the
rich-club ordering and its relation with the function and dynamics of networks
in examples drawn from the biological, social and technological domains.Comment: 1 table, 3 figure
Languages cool as they expand: Allometric scaling and the decreasing need for new words
We analyze the occurrence frequencies of over 15 million words recorded in millions of books published during the past two centuries in seven different languages. For all languages and chronological subsets of the data we confirm that two scaling regimes characterize the word frequency distributions, with only the more common words obeying the classic Zipf law. Using corpora of unprecedented size, we test the allometric scaling relation between the corpus size and the vocabulary size of growing languages to demonstrate a decreasing marginal need for new words, a feature that is likely related to the underlying correlations between words. We calculate the annual growth fluctuations of word use which has a decreasing trend as the corpus size increases, indicating a slowdown in linguistic evolution following language expansion. This ââcooling patternââ forms the basis of a third statistical regularity, which unlike the Zipf and the Heaps law, is dynamical in nature
Positivity of the English language
Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a
fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation.
People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the
central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural
language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively
biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of
the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More
deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four
large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant
with respect to frequency of word use.Comment: Manuscript: 9 pages, 3 tables, 5 figures; Supplementary Information:
12 pages, 3 tables, 8 figure
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Z boson production in Pb+Pb collisions at âSnn = 5.02 TeV measured by the ATLAS experiment
The production yield of Z bosons is measured in the electron and muon decay channels in Pb+Pb collisions at âS = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Data from the 2015 LHC run corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.49 nb are used for the analysis. The Z boson yield, normalised by the total number of minimum-bias events and the mean nuclear thickness function, is measured as a function of dilepton rapidity and event centrality. The measurements in Pb+Pb collisions are compared with similar measurements made in proton-proton collisions at the same centre-of-mass energy. The nuclear modification factor is found to be consistent with unity for all centrality intervals. The results are compared with theoretical predictions obtained at next-to-leading order using nucleon and nuclear parton distribution functions. The normalised Z boson yields in Pb+Pb collisions lie 1-3Ï above the predictions. The nuclear modification factor measured as a function of rapidity agrees with unity and is consistent with a next-to-leading-order QCD calculation including the isospin effect. nn -
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