Transcriptome of the deep-sea black scabbardfish, Aphanopus carbo (Perciformes: Trichiuridae) : tissue-specific expression patterns and candidate genes associated to depth adaptation

Deep-sea fishes provide a unique opportunity to study the physiology and evolutionary adaptation to extreme environments. We carried out a high throughput sequencing analysis on a 454 GS-FLX titanium plate using unnormalized cDNA libraries from six tissues of A. carbo. Assemblage and annotations were performed by Newbler and InterPro/Pfam analyses, respectively. The assembly of 544,491 high quality reads provided 8,319 contigs, 55.6% of which retrieved blast hits against the NCBI nonredundant database or were annotated with ESTscan. Comparison of functional genes at both the protein sequences and protein stability levels, associated with adaptations to depth, revealed similarities between A. carbo and other bathypelagic fishes. A selection of putative genes was standardized to evaluate the correlation between number of contigs and their normalized expression, as determined by qPCR amplification. The screening of the libraries contributed to the identification of new EST simple-sequence repeats (SSRs) and to the design of primer pairs suitable for population genetic studies as well as for tagging and mapping of genes. The characterization of the deep-sea fish A. carbo first transcriptome is expected to provide abundant resources for genetic, evolutionary, and ecological studies of this species and the basis for further investigation of depth-related adaptation processes in fishes.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Focusing of opinions in the Deffuant model: First impression counts

The paper treats opinion dynamics of an unequal distribution as the initial opinion distribution. Simulated is the Deffuant model on a directed Barabasi-Albert network with discrete opinions and several subjects. Noticed is a focusing of the the resulting opinion distribution during the simulation towards the average value of the initial opinion distribution. A small change of the focusing is seen. A dependency of this change on the number of subjects and opinions is detected and indicates the change as a consequence of discretization the opinions. Hereby the average value of the initial opinion distribution can be identified as the guide of opinion forming.Comment: 8 pages including 5 figures, for Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Spatiotemporal Chaos, Localized Structures and Synchronization in the Vector Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation

We study the spatiotemporal dynamics, in one and two spatial dimensions, of two complex fields which are the two components of a vector field satisfying a vector form of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. We find synchronization and generalized synchronization of the spatiotemporally chaotic dynamics. The two kinds of synchronization can coexist simultaneously in different regions of the space, and they are mediated by localized structures. A quantitative characterization of the degree of synchronization is given in terms of mutual information measures.Comment: 6 pages, using bifchaos.sty (included). 7 figures. Related material, including higher quality figures, could be found at http://www.imedea.uib.es/PhysDept/publicationsDB/date.html . To appear in International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos (1999

Design of a Virtual Assistant to Improve Interaction Between the Audience and the Presenter

This article presents a novel design of a Virtual Assistant as part of a human-machine interaction system to improve communication between the presenter and the audience that can be used in education or general presentations for improving interaction during the presentations (e.g., auditoriums with 200 people). The main goal of the proposed model is the design of a framework of interaction to increase the level of attention of the public in key aspects of the presentation. In this manner, the collaboration between the presenter and Virtual Assistant could improve the level of learning among the public. The design of the Virtual Assistant relies on non-anthropomorphic forms with ‘live’ characteristics generating an intuitive and self-explainable interface. A set of intuitive and useful virtual interactions to support the presenter was designed. This design was validated from various types of the public with a psychological study based on a discrete emotions’ questionnaire confirming the adequacy of the proposed solution. The human-machine interaction system supporting the Virtual Assistant should automatically recognize the attention level of the audience from audiovisual resources and synchronize the Virtual Assistant with the presentation. The system involves a complex artificial intelligence architecture embracing perception of high-level features from audio and video, knowledge representation, and reasoning for pervasive and affective computing and reinforcement learning to teach the intelligent agent to decide on the best strategy to increase the level of attention of the audience

How veganism impacts tourists attitudes toward tourism destinations: An empirical study

The purpose of this study is to examine the structural relationships of the veganism motivations on the vegan tourist attitudes towards the tourist destination offers, and consequently on satisfaction, intention to revisit and recommend. Food and tourism are intimately related in many ways, and a growing trend towards vegan food consumption and lifestyle could pose a challenge for the tourism sector. This paper presents the conceptual framework and research design of the study. Multivariate analysis techniques, such as reliability analysis, factor analysis, and structural equation modelling will be used to validate the proposed measurement and structural model. This study intends to contribute with new insights on the vegan tourist and how vegan tourist destinations can improve this type of tourist experience in this growing segment.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Characterising the fruit and vegetables consumer ethnocentrism in a Southern European country: an assesment of the reliability and validity of the CETSCALE in Portugal

This paper aims to characterize the consumer ethnocentrism (CE) and its implications on food products evaluation in a Southern European Country-Portugal. The 10-item version of the Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies Scale (CETSCALE) was used. It’s validity and dimensionality were assessed together with the ethnocentric characteristics among fruit and vegetables consumers. A questionnaire was conducted through Computer Assisted Phone Interviews – (CATI) to the person responsible for the household food purchase in the two largest Portuguese metropolitan areas Lisbon and Oporto resulting in 700 valid responses. The food products under consideration were fruit and vegetables as they represent the largest sales in the major retail chains and also are considered low value products. Moreover, Portuguese consumption of fruit and vegetables is the highest considering the European consumption. The validity and the reliability of the CETSCALE have been confirmed as the showing a high degree reliability. The multidimensionality of the construct has also been validated with two factors obtained and named soft and hight ethnocentrism. As far as authors are aware, this is the first study conducted in Portugal and considering two specific food categories – fruit and vegetables. The present study contributes to the ongoing debate on origin labelling in a time of increasing globalisation markets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Interaction of Vortices in Complex Vector Field and Stability of a ``Vortex Molecule''

We consider interaction of vortices in the vector complex Ginzburg--Landau equation (CVGLE). In the limit of small field coupling, it is found analytically that the interaction between well-separated defects in two different fields is long-range, in contrast to interaction between defects in the same field which falls off exponentially. In a certain region of parameters of CVGLE, we find stable rotating bound states of two defects -- a ``vortex molecule".Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

How cool is to be engaged with Drunk Elephant? An analysis of usergenerated content campaigns on Instagram

This study aims to understand the effect of user-generated content (UGC) campaigns on consumers’ perceptions of brand coolness and its influence on consumer brand engagement. The trendy concept of coolness in the beauty industry is studied through UGC, assessing if brands encouraging consumers to post about their experiences leads to consumers perceiving brands as cool and creating a deeper sense of engagement with that brand. This research intends to assess the interactions incited by a UGC campaign led by the prestigious beauty brand Drunk Elephant. Researchers employed a netnography methodology followed by a sentiment analysis technique to conduct that analysis. Data was retrieved from Instagram for one year using a text-mining tool capable of extracting the comments (67,321 interactions) and analysed using Natural Language Processing tools. Results confirm that adopting UGC campaigns can lead to consumers perceiving a brand to be cool and positively influencing consumer brand engagement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dynamics of localized structures in vector waves

Dynamical properties of topological defects in a twodimensional complex vector field are considered. These objects naturally arise in the study of polarized transverse light waves. Dynamics is modeled by a Vector Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation with parameter values appropriate for linearly polarized laser emission. Creation and annihilation processes, and selforganization of defects in lattice structures, are described. We find "glassy" configurations dominated by vectorial defects and a melting process associated to topological-charge unbinding.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures included in the text. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2000). Related material at http://www.imedea.uib.es/Nonlinear and http://www.imedea.uib.es/Photonics . In this new version, Fig. 3 has been replaced by a better on

Local temperature for dynamical black holes

A local Hawking temperature was recently derived for any future outer trapping horizon in spherical symmetry, using a Hamilton-Jacobi tunneling method, and is given by a dynamical surface gravity as defined geometrically. Descriptions are given of the operational meaning of the temperature, in terms of what observers measure, and its relation to the usual Hawking temperature for static black holes. Implications for the final fate of an evaporating black hole are discussed.Comment: 7 pages, contribution to Proceedings of ERE200