Women Leadership and Political Power in Lating America: A Focus on Argentina

As is the trend in the rest of the world, women have historically been seriously under represented in leadership and political positions in Latin America. This situation hinders not only representation but democracy, political equality, and justice. An investigation of the specific historical, social, and political problems women face in order to gain political power aids in fully understanding this issue. Argentina yields a series of lessons that are worth highlighting, as they have helped to buck this trend

Long non-coding RNA SOX2OT: Expression signature, splicing patterns, and emerging roles in pluripotency and tumorigenesis

SOX2 overlapping transcript (SOX2OT) is a long non-coding RNA which harbors one of the major regulators of pluripotency, SOX2 gene, in its intronic region. SOX2OT gene is mapped to human chromosome 3q26.3 (Chr3q26.3) locus and is extended in a high conserved region of over 700 kb. Little is known about the exact role of SOX2OT; however, recent studies have demonstrated a positive role for it in transcription regulation of SOX2 gene. Similar to SOX2, SOX2OT is highly expressed in embryonic stem cells and down-regulated upon the induction of differentiation. SOX2OT is dynamically regulated during the embryogenesis of vertebrates, and delimited to the brain in adult mice and human. Recently, the disregulation of SOX2OT expression and its concomitant expression with SOX2 have become highlighted in some somatic cancers including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, lung squamous cell carcinoma, and breast cancer. Interestingly, SOX2OT is differentially spliced into multiple mRNA-like transcripts in stem and cancer cells. In this review, we are describing the structural and functional features of SOX2OT, with an emphasis on its expression signature, its splicing patterns and its critical function in the regulation of SOX2 expression during development and tumorigenesis. © 2015 Shahryari, Saghaeian Jazi, Samaei and Mowla

FARS: Fuzzy Ant based Recommender System for Web Users

Recommender systems are useful tools which provide an adaptive web environment for web users. Nowadays, having a user friendly website is a big challenge in e-commerce technology. In this paper, applying the benefits of both collaborative and content based filtering techniques is proposed by presenting a fuzzy recommender system based on collaborative behavior of ants (FARS). FARS works in two phases: modeling and recommendation. First, user’s behaviors are modeled offline and the results are used in second phase for online recommendation. Fuzzy techniques provide the possibility of capturing uncertainty among user interests and ant based algorithms provides us with optimal solutions. The performance of FARS is evaluated using log files of “Information and Communication Technology Center” of Isfahan municipality in Iran and compared with ant based recommender system (ARS). The results shown are promising and proved that integrating fuzzy Ant approach provides us with more functional and robust recommendations

Hippocampal representations of homing based on path integration

The ability to plan and execute a journey to a specific destination is essential for the survival of individuals of different species. Purposeful navigation can be achieved using landmark-based navigation and path integration. During path integration, the animal integrates self-motion information to estimate its location. Path integration is needed when external landmarks, such as visual landmarks, odour or auditory cues, are unavailable or when the animal visits unfamiliar environments. The study of the neuronal basis of path integration has been hampered by the lack of behavioural paradigm assessing path integration that allows simultaneous in vivo electrophysiological recordings in freely moving animals. Lesion studies have shown that the hippocampus and parahippocampal area are involved in path integration but the firing activity of the spatially selective cells, such as place cells, during path integration is unknown. Here, we developed a new behavioural paradigm (Automated Path Integration or AutoPI) to study homing behaviour based on path integration. In this task, a mouse finds a movable lever on the arena, presses it and returns to its home base to collect a food reward. Using the AutoPI task, we could record the firing pattern of the neurons in a large arena and investigate their spatial properties during homing behaviour. We used silicon probes to record the activity of hippocampal pyramidal cells when mice were running in AutoPI. By comparing the firing activity of neurons in the AutoPI task and during random foraging, we detected a complete reorganisation of hippocampal ensembles. We also found that several hippocampal pyramidal cells were firing when the animal was close to the lever (lever-anchored cells), independently of the lever's location on the arena. The spatial stability of lever-anchored cells was reduced during the trials with inaccurate homing. Moreover, the firing activity of lever-anchored cells also predicted the homing direction of the mice. These findings describe how hippocampal neurons with object-anchored firing fields contribute to homing behavior based on path integration

Single-molecule fret study on structural dynamics of membrane proteins

De Na+ -gekoppelde betaïne symporter BetP van de bacterie Corynebacterium glutamicum gaat hyperosmotische stress tegen en wordt gereguleerd via een osmodetecterend C-terminaal domein. Hoewel de biochemie van het systeem goed is gekarakteriseerd, is structurele informatie slechts gedeeltelijk beschikbaar, vanwege een ontbrekend C-terminaal domein in de kristalstructuur. Dus zowel het activerings- als transportmechanisme blijven onopgelost. We hebben verschillende enkele molecuul technieken ontwikkeld om de conformationele dynamiek en heterogeniteit van BetP te bestuderen in proof-of-principle studies en een gedetailleerde mechanistische studie van transportactivatie.The Na+ coupled betaine symporter BetP counteracts hyperosmotic stress and is regulated via an osmosensing C-terminal domain. While the biochemistry of the system is well characterized, structural information is only partially available due to a lacking C-terminal domain in the crystal structure. Thus, both the activation and transport mechanism remain elusive. In this work, we established different single-molecule-based methods to study the conformational dynamics and heterogeneity of BetP in proof-of-principle studies (chapter 2/3) and a detailed mechanistic study of transport activation. Our studies showed that smFRET approach was sussefully adopted for BetP and we obtained the results that was not yet accompolished by standard strucrtal biology teqniques such as crystal structure method. The established methods will pave the way for future single-molecule studies and enhanced mechanistic understanding of the secondary-active transporter BetP in a near-native biochemistry environment

The correlation of cognation relationships with livelihoods and self-improvement with an emphasis on news and sayings from Imam Reza (AS)

Visiting relationships is one of the religious customs of a Muslim in Islamic culture. It is one of the most ethical-legal strategies of Islam to self- improvement and strengthens social bonds. With emphasis on the tradition of Imam Reza this article tries to study the relationship of the above mentioned issue with livelihood and self-improvement. According to this, we can say "there is an instant correlation between visiting relationships and self-improvement and livelihoods". The research methodology is descriptive-analysis and attributive that have been conducted using Islamic texts. Keywords: Imam Reza (AS), visiting relationships, piety, livelihoods, social capital

Estimation for the Cox Model with Biased Sampling Data via Risk Set Sampling

Prevalent cohort sampling is commonly used to study the natural history of a disease when the disease is rare or it usually takes a long time to observe the failure event. It is known, however, that the collected sample in this situation is not representative of the target population which in turn leads to biased sample risk sets. In addition, when survival times are subject to censoring, the censoring mechanism is informative. In this paper, I propose a pseudo-partial likelihood estimation method for estimating parameters in the Cox proportional hazards model with right-censored and biased sampling data by adjusting sample risk sets. I study the asymptotic properties of the resulting estimator and conduct a simulation study to illustrate its finite sample performance of the proposed method. I also use the proposed method to analyze a set of HIV/AIDS data.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Disain unit pengurut berkecepatan tinggi

INTISARI Telah dikeriakan rancangan awal suatu unit pengurut unruk sistem Intelligent File Store. Intelligent File Store tersusun atas beberapa sub-unit yang secara bersama-sama menyediakan dukungan perangkat keras bagi sistem-sistem berbasis pengetahuan yang besar(large knowledge-based systems). Telah dipilih algoritma pengurutan dengan penyisipan langsung (straight insertion sorting). Item yang hendak diurutkan disebut lexeme. Lexeme adalah deretan karakter. Lexeme ditransfer dart bagian IFS yang lain(Lexical Token Converter) ke unit pengurut melalui VMEbus. Pemindahan lexeme dapat berialan paralel dengan pengurutan. Unit pengurut tidak ikut melaksanakan transfer lexeme. Pemindahan lexeme dilaksanakan dengan bantuan Pengendali Akses Memori Langsung(DMA Controller). Keywords: intelegent file store, Unit Penguru