32 research outputs found
Finding Your Literature Match -- A Recommender System
The universe of potentially interesting, searchable literature is expanding
continuously. Besides the normal expansion, there is an additional influx of
literature because of interdisciplinary boundaries becoming more and more
diffuse. Hence, the need for accurate, efficient and intelligent search tools
is bigger than ever. Even with a sophisticated search engine, looking for
information can still result in overwhelming results. An overload of
information has the intrinsic danger of scaring visitors away, and any
organization, for-profit or not-for-profit, in the business of providing
scholarly information wants to capture and keep the attention of its target
audience. Publishers and search engine engineers alike will benefit from a
service that is able to provide visitors with recommendations that closely meet
their interests. Providing visitors with special deals, new options and
highlights may be interesting to a certain degree, but what makes more sense
(especially from a commercial point of view) than to let visitors do most of
the work by the mere action of making choices? Hiring psychics is not an
option, so a technological solution is needed to recommend items that a visitor
is likely to be looking for. In this presentation we will introduce such a
solution and argue that it is practically feasible to incorporate this approach
into a useful addition to any information retrieval system with enough usage.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of the colloquium Future Professional
Communication in Astronomy II, 13-14 April 2010, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 11
pages, 4 figures
New Features in ADS Labs
<p>During 2012 the ADS team has been working hard on updating its services and interfaces to better support our community's research needs. We summarize here the capabilities of our new platform, ADS Labs, and highlight the features that have been developed over the last year: enhanced content, personalized recommendations, richer metrics, a citation tool and a preview of our upcoming integrated search and API. ADS Labs is built on the old tried‐and‐true ADS Abstract Databases, so all of ADS's content is available through it.</p
Investigating the allosterism of acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT) by using various sterols: in vitro and intact cell studies
ACAT1 (acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferase 1) is thought to have two distinct sterol-binding sites: a substrate-binding site and an allosteric-activator site. In the present work, we investigated the structural features of various sterols as substrates and/or activators in vitro. The results show that without cholesterol, the plant sterol sitosterol is a poor substrate for ACAT. In the presence of cholesterol, ACAT1-mediated esterification of sitosterol is highly activated while ACAT2-mediated esterification of sitosterol is only moderately activated. For ACAT1, we show that the stereochemistry of the 3-hydroxy group at steroid ring A is a critical structural feature for a sterol to serve as a substrate, but less critical for activation. Additionally, enantiomeric cholesterol, which has the same biophysical properties as cholesterol in membranes, fails to activate ACAT1. Thus ACAT1 activation by cholesterol is the result of stereo-specific interactions between cholesterol and ACAT1, and is not related to the biophysical properties of phospholipid membranes. To demonstrate the relevance of the ACAT1 allosteric model in intact cells, we showed that sitosterol esterification in human macrophages is activated upon cholesterol loading. We further show that the activation is not due to an increase in ACAT1 protein content, but is partly due to an increase in the cholesterol content in the endoplasmic reticulum where ACAT1 resides. Together, our results support the existence of a distinct sterol-activator site in addition to the sterol-substrate site of ACAT1 and demonstrate the applicability of the ACAT1 allosteric model in intact cells
Religion and Abortion Attitudes Among U.S. Hispanics: Findings from the 1990 Latino National Political Survey
The goal of this article is to examine the relationship between religious involvement, gauged mainly in terms of affiliation and frequency of attendance at services, and abortion attitudes among three major Hispanic subgroups: Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. Copyright (c) 2005 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.