26Al/10Be Age of Peking Man

The chronological position of Peking Man, or Homo erectus pekinensis, has long been pursued, but has remained problematic due to lack of a suitable dating method^1-7^. Here we report cosmogenic ^26^Al/ ^10^Be burial dating of quartz sediments and artifacts from the lower strata of Zhoukoudian Locality 1 where the remains of early members of the Peking Man family were discovered. This study marks the first radioisotopic dating of any early hominin site in China beyond the range of mass spectrometric U-series dating. The weighted mean of six meaningful measurements, 0.75 +/-; 0.09 (0.11) Ma (million years), provides the best age estimate for lower cultural Layers ^7-10^. Together with previously reported U-series^3^ and paleomagnetic^4^ data, as well as sedimentological considerations^8, 9^ these layers may be further correlated to S6-S7 in Chinese loess stratigraphy or marine isotope stages 17-18, in the range of ~0.68-0.75 Ma. These ages are substantially older than previously supposed and may imply hominin presence in northern China throughout early Middle Pleistocene climate cycles

CRISPR/Cascade 9-Mediated Genome Editing-Challenges and Opportunities

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and Cascade 9 (also known as Cas9, CRISPR associated protein 9) confer protection against invading viruses or plasmids. The CRISPR/Cascade 9 system constitutes one of the most powerful genome technologies available to researchers today. So far, this technology has enabled efficient genome editing and modification in several model organisms and has successfully been used in biomedicine and biomedical engineering. However, challenges for efficient and safe genetic manipulation in several organisms persist. Here, we review functional approaches and future challenges associated with the use of the CRISPR/Cascade 9 genome editing system and discuss opportunities, ethical issues and future directions within this field

Molecular Cloning, Characterization and Expression Analysis of Two Members of the Pht1 Family of Phosphate Transporters in Glycine max

BACKGROUND: Phosphorus is one of the macronutrients essential for plant growth and development. The acquisition and translocation of phosphate are pivotal processes of plant growth. In a large number of plants, phosphate uptake by roots and translocation within the plant are presumed to occur via a phosphate/proton cotransport mechanism. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We cloned two cDNAs from soybean (Glycine max), GmPT1 and GmPT2, which show homology to the phosphate/proton cotransporter PHO84 from the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The amino acid sequence of the products predicted from GmPT1 and GmPT2 share 61% and 63% identity, respectively, with the PHO84 in amino acid sequence. The deduced structure of the encoded proteins revealed 12 membrane-spanning domains with a central hydrophilic region. The molecular mass values are ∼58.7 kDa for GmPT1 and ∼58.6 kDa for GmPT2. Transiently expressed GFP-protein fusions provide direct evidence that the two Pi transporters are located in the plasma membrane. Uptake of radioactive orthophosphate by the yeast mutant MB192 showed that GmPT1 and GmPT2 are dependent on pH and uptake is reduced by the addition of uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation. The K(m) for phosphate uptake by GmPT1 and GmPT2 is 6.65 mM and 6.63 mM, respectively. A quantitative real time RT-PCR assay indicated that these two genes are expressed in the roots and shoots of seedlings whether they are phosphate-deficient or not. Deficiency of phosphorus caused a slight change of the expression levels of GmPT1 and GmPT2. CONCLUSIONS: The results of our experiments show that the two phosphate transporters have low affinity and the corresponding genes are constitutively expressed. Thereby, the two phosphate transporters can perform translocation of phosphate within the plant

Comparative analysis of the transcriptome across distant species

The transcriptome is the readout of the genome. Identifying common features in it across distant species can reveal fundamental principles. To this end, the ENCODE and modENCODE consortia have generated large amounts of matched RNA-sequencing data for human, worm and fly. Uniform processing and comprehensive annotation of these data allow comparison across metazoan phyla, extending beyond earlier within-phylum transcriptome comparisons and revealing ancient, conserved features. Specifically, we discover co-expression modules shared across animals, many of which are enriched in developmental genes. Moreover, we use expression patterns to align the stages in worm and fly development and find a novel pairing between worm embryo and fly pupae, in addition to the embryo-to-embryo and larvae-to-larvae pairings. Furthermore, we find that the extent of non-canonical, non-coding transcription is similar in each organism, per base pair. Finally, we find in all three organisms that the gene-expression levels, both coding and non-coding, can be quantitatively predicted from chromatin features at the promoter using a 'universal model' based on a single set of organism-independent parameters

Silabo de Gestión de Procesos e Indicadores

Actualmente es innegable que las organizaciones se encuentran inmersas en entornos cada vez más globalizados y competitivos, en los cuales alcanzar sus diferentes objetivos significa gestionar sus recursos y actividades con eficacia y eficiencia, adoptando herramientas y metodologías para configurar un sistema de gestión que las conduzca a tal propósito. Para establecer, mantener y documentar un sistema de gestión, las empresas disponen de diferentes modelos de excelencia empresarial o normas de referencias mundialmente reconocidas, tales como ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OSHAS 18001, etc., cuyo principio fundamental de gestión y común a todos ellos, es el Enfoque basado en procesos. En tal sentido este curso pretende brindar a los alumnos los conocimientos nucleares sobre sistemas, organización y gestión empresarial basada en procesos, así como la metodología y herramientas para su aplicación y medición de resultados, desarrollando en él una fortaleza para su futuro desempeño profesional. Asimismo, servirá de base para el Curso de Gestión de la Calidad

Experimental Demonstration and Simulation of Bandwidth-Limited Underwater Wireless Optical Communication with MLSE

Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is able to provide large bandwidth, low latency, and high security. However, there still exist bandwidth limitations in UWOC systems, with a lack of effective compensation methods. In this paper, we systematically study the bandwidth limitation due to the transceiver and underwater channel through experiments and simulations, respectively. Experimental results show that by using the 7-tap maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) detection, the maximum bitrate of the simple rectangular shape on–off-keying (OOK) signaling is increased from 2.4 Gb/s to 4 Gb/s over 1 GHz transceiver bandwidth, compared to the conventional symbol-by-symbol detection. For the bandwidth limitation caused by the underwater channel, we simulate the temporal dispersion in the UWOC by adopting a Monte Carlo method with a Fournier–Forand phase function. With MLSE adopted at the receiver, the maximum available bitrate is improved from 0.4 to 0.8 Gb/s in 12 m of harbor water at the threshold of hard-decision forward-error-correction (HD-FEC, 3.8 × 10−3). Moreover, when the bitrate for 0.4 Gb/s 12 m and 0.8 Gb/s 10 m OOK transmission remains unchanged, the power budget can be reduced from 33.8 dBm to 30 dBm and from 27.8 dBm to 23.6 dBm, respectively. The results of both experiments and simulations indicate that MLSE has great potential for improving the performance of bandwidth-limited communication systems

Experimental Demonstration and Simulation of Bandwidth-Limited Underwater Wireless Optical Communication with MLSE

Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is able to provide large bandwidth, low latency, and high security. However, there still exist bandwidth limitations in UWOC systems, with a lack of effective compensation methods. In this paper, we systematically study the bandwidth limitation due to the transceiver and underwater channel through experiments and simulations, respectively. Experimental results show that by using the 7-tap maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) detection, the maximum bitrate of the simple rectangular shape on–off-keying (OOK) signaling is increased from 2.4 Gb/s to 4 Gb/s over 1 GHz transceiver bandwidth, compared to the conventional symbol-by-symbol detection. For the bandwidth limitation caused by the underwater channel, we simulate the temporal dispersion in the UWOC by adopting a Monte Carlo method with a Fournier–Forand phase function. With MLSE adopted at the receiver, the maximum available bitrate is improved from 0.4 to 0.8 Gb/s in 12 m of harbor water at the threshold of hard-decision forward-error-correction (HD-FEC, 3.8 × 10−3). Moreover, when the bitrate for 0.4 Gb/s 12 m and 0.8 Gb/s 10 m OOK transmission remains unchanged, the power budget can be reduced from 33.8 dBm to 30 dBm and from 27.8 dBm to 23.6 dBm, respectively. The results of both experiments and simulations indicate that MLSE has great potential for improving the performance of bandwidth-limited communication systems

Multi-Objective Optimization for Submarine Cable Route Planning Based on the Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

It is essential to design an appropriate submarine cable route to reduce costs and improve reliability. A methodology that can be used for multi-objective optimization in submarine cable route planning is proposed and numerically studied in this paper. The costs and risks are numerically assessed and mapped to the geographical map. The pheromone and heuristic functions of the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm are associated with the geographical map of costs and risks, which enables it to search for a submarine cable route with multi-objective optimization. The results show that the submarine cable route designed by the methodology can effectively avoid high-cost and high-risk regions, which means that the designed submarine cable route is cost-effective and highly reliability