Towards BioDBcore: a community-defined information specification for biological databases

The present article proposes the adoption of a community-defined, uniform, generic description of the core attributes of biological databases, BioDBCore. The goals of these attributes are to provide a general overview of the database landscape, to encourage consistency and interoperability between resources and to promote the use of semantic and syntactic standards. BioDBCore will make it easier for users to evaluate the scope and relevance of available resources. This new resource will increase the collective impact of the information present in biological database

Recent advances in biocuration: meeting report from the Fifth International Biocuration Conference.

The 5th International Biocuration Conference brought together over 300 scientists to exchange on their work, as well as discuss issues relevant to the International Society for Biocuration's (ISB) mission. Recurring themes this year included the creation and promotion of gold standards, the need for more ontologies, and more formal interactions with journals. The conference is an essential part of the ISB's goal to support exchanges among members of the biocuration community. Next year's conference will be held in Cambridge, UK, from 7 to 10 April 2013. In the meanwhile, the ISB website provides information about the society's activities (http://biocurator.org), as well as related events of interest

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

The latent effect of cogency in the minority influence process

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references.This study investigated the mechanisms by which a minority's consistent behavioral style affected influence. To examine these mechanisms,, this study manipulated involvement and message cogency and obtained a number of process measures of the extent of message scrutiny. It was expected that a consistent behavioral style would function much like involvement. High levels of each would increase message scrutiny, and recipients should carefully process the message and discriminate weak from cogent arguments; more opinion change should be found with cogent rather than weak messages. Furthermore, minority influence should be found on private direct and indirect (latent) measures but not public (manifest) measures. Groups consisted of two naive subjects and one confederate of the same sex who were assigned to an Involvement (high vs. low) X Behavioral Style (consistent vs. inconsistent) by Argument Cogency (cogent vs. weak) condition. One hundred thirty-six (68 male and 68 female) introductory psychology students participated, in same sex groups, as part of course requirement. Subjects were told that they would be participating in a project that concerned how students view certain solutions to University-related problems, and were asked to give their opinions, and reasons for their opinions, on various proposals. Direct tests of the hypotheses could not be tested because manipulations of consistency and involvement were not powerful enough. on direct influence,, inconsistent minorities caused a boomerang effect, and consistent minorities had no effect. However, argument cogency affected subjects' thoughts about the communicator and message, and subjects' facial reactions to the source. Subjects' listed more positive thoughts about the source and the message, and emitted more positive than negative affective responses, when they heard cogent rather than weak arguments. The thought listings, and facial affect, are viewed as process-oriented measures of agreement with the source and provide a new means of measuring a type of indirect influence. This study provides us with a promising new approach to explore the latent (indirect) effects of an influential minority source via these process oriented measures

Keyword Mnemonic And Retention Of Second-Language Vocabulary Words

Use of the keyword mnemonic has been shown to substantially increase learning speed and immediate recall of 2nd-language vocabulary words in comparison with other learning strategies. Although the majority of researchers examining long-term retention of material acquired through the keyword method have concluded that these gains are maintained over time, most have relied on experimental designs based on within-subject comparisons. However, within-subject comparisons of retention over time are confounded by both rates of initial acquisition and level of immediate recall. In this article data are presented from 4 experiments in which the retention interval (immediate vs. delay) was treated as a between-subjects factor. The findings consistently indicated that long-term forgetting was greater for learners instructed to use the keyword mnemonic than for learners engaged in rote rehearsal. It is suggested that preexperimental associations to keywords interfere with retrieval of the interactive images established in the laboratory

Da circulação de crianças à adoção internacional: questões de pertencimento e posse From child circulation to international adoption: questions of ownership and belonging

Nesse artigo, examino uma prática local - a circulação de crianças em bairros populares de uma grande cidade brasileira - à luz do contexto mais amplo que inclui a adoção nacional e internacional. Inicio com a descrição etnográfica de redes de ajuda mútua e valores familiares de duas mulheres que, por causa de extrema miséria, confiaram seus filhos aos cuidados de outrem. Procuro entender como essas mulheres significam a "circulação" de suas crianças e, num segundo momento, pergunto se, no seu entendimento, as leis regendo a adoção legal seriam inteligíveis. Finalmente, teço uma curta reflexão sobre discursos encontrados entre europeus e norte-americanos que recorrem à adoção, questionando a aplicação diferencial desses discursos no âmbito internacional.<br>In this article, I examine a local practice - the circulation of children in working-class neighborhoods of a large Brazilian city - by situating it within a wider context which includes national and international adoption. I begin with the ethnographic description on mutual help networks and family-related values of two poverty-stricken women who have given their children to be raised by others. I then seek to understand the place child placement holds in the life experience of these women, and, by extension, the way laws governing legal adoption connect with their way of seeing the process. Finally, in the light of this ethnographic material on "child donors", I weave a short reflection on discourses held by Europeans and North Americans on adoption, questioning the particular way these discourses filter through to and operate on the international arena

Improvement of Asparagine Ethylenediamines as Anti-malarial

The Plasmodium proteasome (Pf20S) emerged as a target for antimalarials. Pf20S inhibitors are active at multiple stages of the parasite life cycle and synergize with artemisinins, suggesting that Pf20S inhibitors have potential to be prophylactic, therapeutic, and transmission blocking as well as are useful for combination therapy. We recently reported asparagine ethylenediamines (AsnEDAs) as immunoproteasome inhibitors and modified AsnEDAs as selective Pf20S inhibitors. Here, we report further a structure–activity relationship study of AsnEDAs for selective inhibition of Pf20S over human proteasomes. Additionally, we show new mutation that conferred resistance to AsnEDAs and collateral sensitivity to an inhibitor of the Pf20S β2 subunit, the same as previously identified resistant mutation. This resistance could be overcome through the use of the structure-guided inhibitor design. Collateral sensitivity to inhibitors among respective proteasome subunits underscores the potential value of treating malaria with combinations of inhibitors of different proteasome subunits to minimize the emergence of drug resistance