1,721,610 research outputs found
Novel factors of Anopheles gambiae haemocyte immune response to Plasmodium berghei infection
No full textBackground: Insect haemocytes mediate cellular immune responses (e.g., phagocytosis) and contribute to the
synthesis of humoral immune factors. In previous work, a genome-wide molecular characterization of Anopheles
gambiae circulating haemocytes was followed by functional gene characterization using cell-based RNAi screens.
Assays were carried out to investigate the role of selected haemocyte-specific or enriched genes in phagocytosis of
bacterial bio-particles, expression of the antimicrobial peptide cecropin1, and basal and induced expression of the
mosquito complement factor LRIM1 (leucine-rich repeat immune gene I).
Findings: Here we studied the impact of a subset of genes (37 candidates) from the haemocyte-specific dsRNA
collection on the development of Plasmodium in the mosquito by in vivo gene silencing. Our screening identifies
10 novel factors with a role in the mosquito response to Plasmodium. Analysis of in vivo screening phenotypes
reveals a significant anti-correlation between the prevalence of oocysts and melanised ookinetes.
Conclusions: Among novel immune genes are putative pattern recognition proteins (leucine-rich repeat,
fibrinogen-domain and R-type lectins), immune modulation and signalling proteins (LPS-induced tumor necrosis
factor alpha factor, LITAF and CLIP proteases), and components of extracellular matrix such as laminin and collagen.
Additional identified proteins such as the storage protein hexamerin and vesicular-type ATPase (V-ATPase) are
associated for the first time with the mosquito response against Plasmodium
Vector and vector-borne disease research: need for coherence, vision and strategic planning
No full textDynamic Provenance for SPARQL Update
No full textWhile the Semantic Web currently can exhibit provenance information by using the W3C PROV standards, there is a "missing link" in connecting PROV to storing and querying for dynamic changes to RDF graphs using SPARQL. Solving this problem would be required for such clear use-cases as the creation of version control systems for RDF. While some provenance models and annotation techniques for storing and querying provenance data originally developed with databases or workflows in mind transfer readily to RDF and SPARQL, these techniques do not readily adapt to describing changes in dynamic RDF datasets over time. In this paper we explore how to adapt the dynamic copy-paste provenance model of Buneman et al. [2] to RDF datasets that change over time in response to SPARQL updates, how to represent the resulting provenance records themselves as RDF in a manner compatible with W3C PROV, and how the provenance information can be defined by reinterpreting SPARQL updates. The primary contribution of this paper is a semantic framework that enables the semantics of SPARQL Update to be used as the basis for a 'cut-and-paste' provenance model in a principled manner
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
AutoML for Explainable Anomaly Detection (XAD)
No full textNumerous algorithms have been proposed for detecting anomalies (outliers, novelties) in an unsupervised manner. Unfortunately, it is not trivial, in general, to understand why a given sample (record) is labelled as an anomaly and thus diagnose its root causes. We propose the following reduced-dimensionality, surrogate model approach to explain detector decisions: approximate the detection model with another one that employs only a small subset of features. Subsequently, samples can be visualized in this low-dimensionality space for human understanding. To this end, we develop PROTEUS, an AutoML pipeline to produce the surrogate model, specifically designed for feature selection on imbalanced datasets. The PROTEUS surrogate model can not only explain the training data, but also the out-of-sample (unseen) data. In other words, PROTEUS produces predictive explanations by approximating the decision surface of an unsupervised detector. PROTEUS is designed to return an accurate estimate of out-of-sample predictive performance to serve as a metric of the quality of the approximation. Computational experiments confirm the efficacy of PROTEUS to produce predictive explanations for different families of detectors and to reliably estimate their predictive performance in unseen data. Unlike several ad-hoc feature importance methods, PROTEUS is robust to high-dimensional data
Variations on the Author
No full text“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Design and implementation of a filter engine for semantic web documents
No full textThis report describes our project that addresses the challenge of changes in the semantic web. Some studies have already been done for the so-called adaptive semantic web, such as applying inferring rules. In this study, we apply the technology of Event Notification System (ENS). Treating changes as events, we
developed a notification system for such events
Formal thinking of Greek Cypriot secondary school students in Limassol - by Georgios Onis Christophides
No full textThesis (M.A.)--Dept. of Education, A.U.B
- …
