Did Adam and Eve Exist? (Leader\u27s Guide)

A study of The Lost World of Adam and Ev

Did Adam and Eve Exist? (Participant\u27s Guide)

A study of The Lost World of Adam and Ev

A Rapid Cloning Method Employing Orthogonal End Protection

We describe a novel in vitro cloning strategy that combines standard tools in molecular biology with a basic protecting group concept to create a versatile framework for the rapid and seamless assembly of modular DNA building blocks into functional open reading frames. Analogous to chemical synthesis strategies, our assembly design yields idempotent composite synthons amenable to iterative and recursive split-and-pool reaction cycles. As an example, we illustrate the simplicity, versatility and efficiency of the approach by constructing an open reading frame composed of tandem arrays of a human fibronectin type III (FNIII) domain and the von Willebrand Factor A2 domain (VWFA2), as well as chimeric (FNIII)n-VWFA2-(FNIII)n constructs. Although we primarily designed this strategy to accelerate assembly of repetitive constructs for single-molecule force spectroscopy, we anticipate that this approach is equally applicable to the reconstitution and modification of complex modular sequences including structural and functional analysis of multi-domain proteins, synthetic biology or the modular construction of episomal vectors

Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals

© Owner/Author 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Interacción '15 Proceedings of the XVI International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2829875.2829879We are evolving towards an interconnected and ubiquitous world, where digital devices and interfaces progressively adapt themselves to fit our needs and ease our daily activities. Although we coexist with plenty of animal species, such as our pets, we are approaching the evolution of technology in a strictly human-centric manner. A new field in Computer Science, called Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), aims at filling this technological gap by developing systems and interfaces specifically designed for animals. Supporting animals' natural behavior and habits with suitable technology could improve both humans and animals' wellbeing. As a consequence, this doctoral research aims to explore, design and develop animal-centered intelligent systems that focus on enhancing one of the most natural animal behaviors: play. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to expand ACI with the ability of automatically manage and adapt animals play activity in order to improve their wellbeing.Work supported by MINECO (TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R), UPV (UPV-FE-2014-24), MECD (FPU13/03831) and GVA (APOSTD/2013/013).Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2829875.2829879SHu, F., Silver, D., and Trude, A. LonelyDog@Home. 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Workshops, IEEE (2007), 333--337.Huizinga, J.Homo ludens. Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, The Nederlands, 1985.Mancini, C. Animal-computer interaction: a manifesto. Magazine interactions 18, 4 (2011), 69--73.Mancini, C. Animal-computer interaction (ACI): changing perspective on HCI, participation and sustainability. CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press (2013), 2227--2236.Matsuzawa, T. The Ai project: historical and ecological contexts. Animal cognition 6, 4 (2003), 199--211.Pons, P., Jaen, J., and Catala, A. Animal Ludens: Building Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals. 11th Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment - Workshop on Animal Human Computer Interaction, (2014).Pons, P., Jaen, J., and Catala, A. Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals. In A. Nijholt, ed., More Playful User Interfaces. Springer, 2015.Robinson, C., Mancini, C., van der Linden, J., Guest, C., and Harris, R. Empowering assistance dogs: an alarm interface for canine use. Intelligent Systems for Animal Welfare, (2014).Rumbaugh, D.M., Gill, T. V., Brown, J. V., et al. A computer-controlled language training system for investigating the language skills of young apes. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation 5, 5 (1973), 385--392.Westerlaken, M. and Gualeni, S. Felino: The Philosophical Practice of Making an Interspecies Videogame. The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, (2014), 1--12.Wingrave, C.A., Rose, J., Langston, T., and LaViola, J.J.J. Early explorations of CAT: canine amusement and training. CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (2010), 2661--2669.SpeakDolphin. http://www.speakdolphin.com

The Ellipticity of the Disks of Spiral Galaxies

The disks of spiral galaxies are generally elliptical rather than circular. The distribution of ellipticities can be fit with a log-normal distribution. For a sample of 12,764 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 1 (SDSS DR1), the distribution of apparent axis ratios in the i band is best fit by a log-normal distribution of intrinsic ellipticities with ln epsilon = -1.85 +/- 0.89. For a sample of nearly face-on spiral galaxies, analyzed by Andersen and Bershady using both photometric and spectroscopic data, the best fitting distribution of ellipticities has ln epsilon = -2.29 +/- 1.04. Given the small size of the Andersen-Bershady sample, the two distribution are not necessarily inconsistent. If the ellipticity of the potential were equal to that of the light distribution of the SDSS DR1 galaxies, it would produce 1.0 magnitudes of scatter in the Tully-Fisher relation, greater than is observed. The Andersen-Bershady results, however, are consistent with a scatter as small as 0.25 magnitudes in the Tully-Fisher relation.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; ApJ, accepte