Semantic priming of progression features in events

Event knowledge includes persons and objects and their roles in the event. This study investigated whether the progression of patients from a source to a resulting feature, such as the progression of hair that is cut from long to short, forms part of event representations. Subjects were presented with an event prime followed by two adjectives and asked to judge whether the adjectives were interrelated. Results showed that the semantic interrelation of two adjectives is recognized faster and more accurately when the adjectives denote source and resulting features of the patient of the primed event (“cutting”: long–short). Furthermore, we found that presenting an event-related adjective in combination with an unrelated adjective makes it more difficult to recognize that the two adjectives are not interrelated, but only when the event-related adjective denotes a source feature. We argue that an inference mechanism automatically completes the representation of the event. We conclude that source and resulting features are represented in a goal-directed and chronological way

A bibliometric analysis-based review on green IT

With the increasing global greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) from ICT usage, several research projects have been conducted in the areas for Green IT development (such as optimal resource allocation algorithms, deterministic heuristics approaches) and Green IT deployment (integrated framework approach). Although there was significant progress in Green IT research during the period of 2008–2013, it has declined gradually in recent years. The findings from all of these Green IT research play a vital role in improving the resource optimisation, which can result in GHGE from ICT usage. This book chapter presents the findings from bibliometric analysis, co-authorship and citation network analysis on Green IT articles. The findings show that the numbers of total related articles increased from 2008 to 2013 and gradually decreased in recent years. USA, Germany, India, Australia and England are the leading countries. The high average citations of articles from Australian scholars reflect their significant academic value in this Green IT research area, although the funding support from Australia research council on Green IT is comparatively low. There is a need to encourage more academic collaborations with co-authorship to share experiences, knowledge and skills for more innovative solutions. The citations among articles from worldwide are widely distributed and well linked among articles from various countries and academic institutions

ς(B) Activity Depends on RsbU in Staphylococcus aureus

Derivatives of the widely used laboratory strain Staphylococcus aureus NCTC8325, which are natural rsbU mutants, were shown to be unable to produce RsbU, a positive regulator of the alternative sigma factor ς(B). The lack of RsbU prevented the heat-dependent production of ς(B)-controlled transcripts and resulted in reduced H(2)O(2) and UV tolerance, enhanced alpha-hemolysin activity, and the inability to produce the alkaline shock protein Asp23. After 48 h of growth, rsbU mutant strains failed to accumulate staphyloxanthin, the major stationary-phase carotenoid. Transcription of Asp23 was found to be exclusively controlled by ς(B), making it an excellent target for the study of ς(B) activity in S. aureus. Reporter gene experiments, using the firefly luciferase gene (luc+) fused to the ς(B)-dependent promoter(s) of asp23, revealed that ς(B) is almost inactive in 8325 derivatives. cis complementation of the 8325 derivative BB255 with the wild-type rsbU gene from strain COL produced the rsbU(+) derivative GP268, a strain possessing a ς(B) activity profile comparable to that of the rsbU(+) wild-type strain Newman. In GP268, the heat inducibility of ς(B)-dependent genes, Asp23 production, alpha-hemolysin activity, pigmentation, and susceptibility to H(2)O(2) were restored to the levels observed in strain Newman, clearly demonstrating that RsbU is needed for activation of ς(B) in S. aureus