The relationship between metabolic rate and sociability is altered by food-deprivation

Individuals vary in the extent to which they associate with conspecifics, but little is known about the energetic underpinnings of this variation in sociability. Group-living allows individuals to find food more consistently, but within groups, there can be competition for food items. Individuals with an increased metabolic rate could display decreased sociability to reduce competition. Long-term food deprivation (FD) may alter any links between sociability and metabolic rate by affecting motivation to find food. We examined these issues in juvenile qingbo carp Spinibarbus sinensis, to understand how FD and metabolic rate affect sociability. Like many aquatic ectotherms, this species experiences seasonal bouts of FD. Individuals were either: (i) food-deprived for 21 days; or (ii) fed a maintenance ration (control). Fish from each treatment were measured for standard metabolic rate (SMR) and tested for sociability twice: once in the presence of a control stimulus shoal and once with a food-deprived stimulus shoal. Control individuals ventured further from stimulus shoals over a 30-min trial, while food-deprived fish did not change their distance from stimulus shoals as trials progressed. Control fish with a higher SMR were least sociable. Well-fed controls showed decreased sociability when exposed to food-deprived stimulus shoals, but there was evidence of consistency in relative sociability between exposures to different shoal types. Results contrast with previous findings that several days of fasting causes individuals to decrease associations with conspecifics. Prolonged FD may cause individuals to highly prioritize food acquisition, and the decreased vigilance that would accompany continuous foraging may heighten the need for the antipredator benefits of shoaling. Conversely, decreased sociability in well-fed fish with a high SMR probably minimizes intraspecific competition, allowing them to satisfy an increased energetic demand while foraging. Together, these results suggest that FD – a challenge common for many ectothermic species – can affect individual sociability as well as the attractiveness of groups towards conspecifics. In addition, the lack of a link between SMR and sociability in food-deprived fish suggests that, in situations where group membership is linked to fitness, the extent of correlated selection on metabolic traits may be context-dependent

Womanist Identity, Acculturation, and Gender Role Identity: An Examination of Chinese Female Students in the United States

Thesis advisor: Janet E. HelmsAs the first generation born after China introduced its "one-child policy," Chinese female students in the United States belong to a special population that is under the dual pressures of their parents' expectations to succeed and the conflicting traditional Chinese stereotypes of women as obedient to men, dependent, and home orientated. Previous research on Chinese female students' acculturative experiences indicates that these women face unique challenges in redefining their gender roles. However, no studies have explored whether womanist and acculturative processes are related to this psychological transition. The current study explored womanist identity and acculturation attitudes as processes influencing Chinese women's negotiations of their gender roles and redefinitions of themselves as women while living in the United States. Chinese female international students (N=192), enrolled in colleges or universities in the US, completed a demographic questionnaire; the Womanist Identity Attitude Scale (Helms, 1990), which assessed their manner of coping with traditional role expectations; and, the Acculturation Scale for Asian International Students (Gu, 2008), which measured acculturation attitudes. Their gender-role traits and stereotypical attitudes toward American women were examined by the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem, 1974) and Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) (Spence, Helmrich, & Stapp, 1978). Canonical correlation analyses were used to investigate relationships among (a) womanist identity and acculturation attitudes, (b) womanist identity and gender-roles, and (c) acculturation attitudes and gender roles. Two identity-acculturation patterns, three identity-gender role patterns, and two acculturation-gender role patterns were identified. When the Chinese women were self-defining their gender-role identity, they were participating in U.S. culture and integrating traditional and non-traditional gender-role traits and attitudes. Traditional womanist attitudes were associated with increased levels of rejecting the U.S. culture, traditional gender roles, and perceived dissimilarities between themselves and U.S. women. The current study is the first to investigate gender-role and acculturation developmental issues of "One-Child" women from a psychological perspective. Obtained results suggest that their adaptive processes are more complex than anticipated. Methodological limitations of the study are discussed.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology

Sparsity for Ultrafast Material Identification

Mid-infrared spectroscopy is often used to identify material. Thousands of spectral points are measured in a time-consuming process using expensive table-top instrument. However, material identification is a sparse problem, which in theory could be solved with just a few measurements. Here we exploit the sparsity of the problem and develop an ultra-fast, portable, and inexpensive method to identify materials. In a single-shot, a mid-infrared camera can identify materials based on their spectroscopic signatures. This method does not require prior calibration, making it robust and versatile in handling a broad range of materials

Comparative Analysis of Homologous Sequences of Saccharum officinarum and Saccharum spontaneum Reveals Independent Polyploidization Events

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp. hybrids) is an economically important crop widely grown in tropical and subtropical regions for sugar and ethanol production. However, the large genome size, high ploidy level, interspecific hybridization and aneuploidy make sugarcane one of the most complex genomes and have long hampered genome research in sugarcane. Modern sugarcane cultivars are derived from interspecific hybridization between S. officinarum and S. spontaneum with 80–90% of the genome from S. officinarum and 10–20% of the genome from S. spontaneum. We constructed bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries of S. officinarum variety LA Purple (2n = 8x = 80) and S. spontaneum haploid clone AP85-441 (2n = 4x = 32), and selected and sequenced 97 BAC clones from the two Saccharum BAC libraries. A total of 5,847,280 bp sequence from S. officinarum and 5,011,570 bp from S. spontaneum were assembled and 749 gene models were annotated in these BACs. A relatively higher gene density and lower repeat content were observed in S. spontaneum BACs than in S. officinarum BACs. Comparative analysis of syntenic regions revealed a high degree of collinearity in genic regions between Saccharum and Sorghum bicolor and between S. officinarum and S. spontaneum. In the syntenic regions, S. spontaneum showed expansion relative to S. officinarum, and both S. officinarum and S. spontaneum showed expansion relative to sorghum. Among the 75 full-length LTR retrotransposons identified in the Saccharum BACs, none of them are older than 2.6 mys and no full-length LTR elements are shared between S. officinarum and S. spontaneum. In addition, divergence time estimated using a LTR junction marker and a syntenic gene shared by 3 S. officinarum and 1 S. spontaneum BACs revealed that the S. spontaneum intergenic region was distant to those from the 3 homologous regions in S. officinarum. Our results suggested that S. officinarum and S. spontaneum experienced at least two rounds of independent polyploidization in each lineage after their divergence from a common ancestor

Multi-Perspective Fusion Network for Commonsense Reading Comprehension

Commonsense Reading Comprehension (CRC) is a significantly challenging task, aiming at choosing the right answer for the question referring to a narrative passage, which may require commonsense knowledge inference. Most of the existing approaches only fuse the interaction information of choice, passage, and question in a simple combination manner from a \emph{union} perspective, which lacks the comparison information on a deeper level. Instead, we propose a Multi-Perspective Fusion Network (MPFN), extending the single fusion method with multiple perspectives by introducing the \emph{difference} and \emph{similarity} fusion\deleted{along with the \emph{union}}. More comprehensive and accurate information can be captured through the three types of fusion. We design several groups of experiments on MCScript dataset \cite{Ostermann:LREC18:MCScript} to evaluate the effectiveness of the three types of fusion respectively. From the experimental results, we can conclude that the difference fusion is comparable with union fusion, and the similarity fusion needs to be activated by the union fusion. The experimental result also shows that our MPFN model achieves the state-of-the-art with an accuracy of 83.52\% on the official test set

Construction of Papaya Male and Female BAC Libraries and Application in Physical Mapping of the Sex Chromosomes

Papaya is a major fruit crop in the tropics and has recently evolved sex chromosomes. Towards sequencing the papaya sex chromosomes, two bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries were constructed from papaya male and female genomic DNA. The female BAC library was constructed using restriction enzyme BstY I and consists of 36,864 clones with an average insert size of 104 kb, providing 10.3x genome equivalents. The male BAC library was constructed using restriction enzyme EcoR I and consists of 55,296 clones with an average insert size of 101 kb, providing 15.0x genome equivalents. The male BAC library was used in constructing the physical map of the male-specific region of the male Y chromosome (MSY) and in filling gaps and extending the physical map of the hermaphrodite-specific region of the Yh chromosome (HSY) and the X chromosome physical map. The female BAC library was used to extend the X physical map gap. The MSY, HSY, and X physical maps offer a unique opportunity to study chromosomal rearrangements, Y chromosome degeneration, and dosage compensation of the papaya nascent sex chromosomes

Polymorphisms in the SULF1 gene are associated with early age of onset and survival of ovarian cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>SULF1 (sulfatase 1) selectively removes the 6-O-sulphate group from heparan sulfate, changing the binding sites for extracellular growth factors. <it>SULF1 </it>expression has been reported to be decreased in various cancers, including ovarian cancer. We hypothesized that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of <it>SULF1 </it>would impact clinicopathologic characteristics.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We genotyped five common (minor allele frequency>0.05) regulatory SNPs with predicted functionalities (rs2623047 G>A, rs13264163 A>G, rs6990375 G>A, rs3802278 G>A, and rs3087714 C>T) in 168 patients with primary epithelial ovarian cancer, using the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that rs2623047 G>A was significantly associated with an early age of onset of ovarian cancer in the G allele dose-response manner (<it>P </it>= 0.027; <it>P_trend</it>= 0.007) and that rs2623047 GG/GA genotypes were associated with longer progression-free survival; rs6990375 G>A was also associated with the early age of onset in the A allele dose-response manner (<it>P </it>= 0.013; <it>P_trend</it>= 0.009). The significant differences in age of disease onset persisted among carriers of haplotypes of rs2623047 and rs6990375 (<it>P </it>= 0.014; <it>P_trend</it>= 0.004). In luciferase reporter gene assays, rs2623047 G allele showed a slightly higher promoter activity than the A allele in the SKOV3 tumorigenic cell line.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings suggest that genetic variations in <it>SULF1 </it>may play a role in ovarian cancer onset and prognosis. Further studies with large sample sizes and of the mechanistic relevance of <it>SULF1 </it>SNPs are warranted.</p

Comprehensively Characterizing the Cytological Features of Saccharum spontaneum by the Development of a Complete Set of Chromosome-Specific Oligo Probes

Chromosome-specific identification is a powerful technique in the study of genome structure and evolution. However, there is no reliable cytogenetic marker to unambiguously identify each of the chromosomes in sugarcane (Saccharum spp., Poaceae), which has a complex genome with a high level of ploidy and heterozygosity. In this study, we developed a set of oligonucleotide (oligo)-based probes through bioinformatic design and massive synthetization. These probes produced a clear and bright single signal in each of the chromosomes and their eight homologous chromosomes in the ancient species Saccharum spontaneum (2n = 8x = 64). Thus, they can be used as reliable markers to robustly label each of the chromosomes in S. spontaneum. We then obtained the karyotype data and established a nomenclature based on chromosomal sizes for the eight chromosomes of the octoploid S. spontaneum. In addition, we also found that the 45S and 5S rDNAs demonstrated high copy number variations among different homologous chromosomes, indicating a rapid evolution of the highly repeated sequence after polyploidization. Our fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assay also demonstrated that these probes could be used as cross-species markers between or within the genera of Sorghum and Saccharum. By comparing FISH analyses, we discovered that several chromosome rearrangement events occurred in S. spontaneum, which might have contributed to the basic chromosome number reduction from 10 in sorghum to 8 in sugarcane. Consistent identification of individual chromosomes makes molecular cytogenetic study possible in sugarcane and will facilitate fine chromosomal structure and karyotype evolution of the genus Saccharum

Asymmetric purine-pyrimidine distribution in cellular small RNA population of papaya

BACKGROUND: The small RNAs (sRNA) are a regulatory class of RNA mainly represented by the 21 and 24-nucleotide size classes. The cellular sRNAs are processed by RNase III family enzyme dicer (Dicer like in plant) from a self-complementary hairpin loop or other type of RNA duplexes. The papaya genome has been sequenced, but its microRNAs and other regulatory RNAs are yet to be analyzed. RESULTS: We analyzed the genomic features of the papaya sRNA population from three sRNA deep sequencing libraries made from leaves, flowers, and leaves infected with Papaya Ringspot Virus (PRSV). We also used the deep sequencing data to annotate the micro RNA (miRNA) in papaya. We identified 60 miRNAs, 24 of which were conserved in other species, and 36 of which were novel miRNAs specific to papaya. In contrast to the Chargaff’s purine-pyrimidine equilibrium, cellular sRNA was significantly biased towards a purine rich population. Of the two purine bases, higher frequency of adenine was present in 23nt or longer sRNAs, while 22nt or shorter sRNAs were over represented by guanine bases. However, this bias was not observed in the annotated miRNAs in plants. The 21nt species were expressed from fewer loci but expressed at higher levels relative to the 24nt species. The highly expressed 21nt species were clustered in a few isolated locations of the genome. The PRSV infected leaves showed higher accumulation of 21 and 22nt sRNA compared to uninfected leaves. We observed higher accumulation of miRNA* of seven annotated miRNAs in virus-infected tissue, indicating the potential function of miRNA* under stressed conditions. CONCLUSIONS: We have identified 60 miRNAs in papaya. Our study revealed the asymmetric purine-pyrimidine distribution in cellular sRNA population. The 21nt species of sRNAs have higher expression levels than 24nt sRNA. The miRNA* of some miRNAs shows higher accumulation in PRSV infected tissues, suggesting that these strands are not totally functionally redundant. The findings open a new avenue for further investigation of the sRNA silencing pathway in plants