Ecological notes of the alien species Godiva quadricolor (Gastropoda: Nudibranchia) occurring in Faro Lake (Italy)

The first record from Sicily of the introduced facelinid nudibranch Godiva quadricolor allowed the detection of trophic relationships with the polycerid Polycera hedgpethi, another non-native nudibranch, and with two bryozoan species, namely the naturalized Cheilostomatida Bugula neritina and the cryptogenic Ctenostomatida Amathia verticillata. The settlement of both nudibranchs was presumably promoted by a trophic shift of P. hedgpethi from the natural prey B. neritina towards the largely available and not exploited A. verticillata. This short food web, without evident links with native fauna and having G. quadricolor as the top predator, is described. A DNA barcoding approach was used to confirm the identity of this facelinid species and to explore the possible genetic divergence occurring among the samples analysed.     

心血管病因探索新进展

美国《科学》杂志对发达国家中处于领先死困的心脏疾病的两类鲜为人知的致病因素给予特别关注：其一,导致往往丧命的心脏缺陷的突变的基因;其二,最近发现的与堵塞动脉的斑块形成有联系的一些感染……1993年夏,波士顿塞尔特球星雷杰·刘易斯摔死网球场,世人震惊。但这种摔死有其常发人群。隔不了几年,又有一位著名的年轻运动员,成为未检出的遗传性心脏不良的牺牲者、没有前兆的摔死于运动事件。这些病例,提供了极好的例证,说明心脏病不必从中年发展动脉硬化开始,它能隐匿地起自心脏本身的遗传性缺陷。从先天性心脏畸形,到致死的心…     

Anionic activation of human salivary amylase.

In all earlier studies on alpha-amylase, the influence of different ions were studied in phosphate buffer. The present report shows the effect of different ions individually with Tris and amino acid. Though it has been claimed recently that sodium ion is an activator of alpha-amylase, this study reconfirms that sodium ion does not activate human salivary amylase.     

Distribution of the blood flow supplied by the vertebral artery in rats: anatomical, functional and pharmacological aspects.

In rats, the vertebral artery make only a minor contribution to the blood perfusion of the ponto-medullary area. This was measured with radioactive microspheres and was confirmed by methylmetacrylate casts and local injection of a centrally acting hypotensive drug.     

Single-nucleotide evolution quantifies the importance of each site along the structure of mitochondrial carriers

Mitochondrial carriers are membrane-embedded proteins consisting of a tripartite structure, a three-fold pseudo-symmetry, related sequences, and similar folding whose main function is to catalyze the transport of various metabolites, nucleotides, and coenzymes across the inner mitochondrial membrane. In this study, the evolutionary rate in vertebrates was screened at each of the approximately 50,000 nucleotides corresponding to the amino acids of the 53 human mitochondrial carriers. Using this information as a starting point, a scoring system was developed to quantify the evolutionary pressure acting on each site of the common mitochondrial carrier structure and estimate its functional or structural relevance. The degree of evolutionary selection varied greatly among all sites, but it was highly similar among the three symmetric positions in the tripartite structure, known as symmetry-related sites or triplets, suggesting that each triplet constitutes an evolutionary unit. Based on evolutionary selection, 111 structural sites (37 triplets) were found to be important. These sites play a key role in structure/function of mitochondrial carriers and are involved in either conformational changes (sites of the gates, proline–glycine levels, and aromatic belts) or in binding and specificity of the transported substrates (sites of the substrate-binding area in between the two gates). Furthermore, the evolutionary pressure analysis revealed that the matrix short helix sites underwent different degrees of selection with high inter-paralog variability. Evidence is presented that these sites form a new sequence motif in a subset of mitochondrial carriers, including the ADP/ATP translocator, and play a regulatory function by interacting with ligands and/or proteins of the mitochondrial matrix.     

GPU加速的图像实时分形编码

图像分形编码压缩率大且质量较高,但实时性不好,因此难以推广应用.提出使用GPU对编码进行加速的方案.以图像FW算法为基础,在CUDA规范下,使用GPU并行地对图像中所有的待编码子树同时进行最优父树搜索.实验表明,该文编码方案在保持原有算法图像解码质量的情况下,可将编码时间缩短至毫秒级,满足了实时性的要求.