We consider a simple information-theoretic model for evolutionary dynamics approaching the "coding threshold," where the capacity to symbolically represent nucleic acid sequences emerges in response to a change in environmental conditions. We study the conditions when a coupling between the dynamics of a "proto-cell" and its proto-symbolic representation becomes beneficial in terms of preservin...

Image salient object detection is useful for applications like image retrieval, object recognition etc. Aiming to obtain the pixel-level saliency map, most traditional saliency models ignore the object-level information and become inappropriate in complex scenes. A new salient object detection method is proposed in this paper by incorporating the notion of object and background prior directly i...

The products of proto-oncogene play critical roles in the development or maintenance of multicellular societies in animals via strict regulatory systems. When these regulatory systems are disrupted, proto-oncogenes can become oncogenes, and thereby induce cell transformation and carcinogenesis. To understand the molecular basis for development of the regulatory system of proto-oncogenes during ...

We report the results from an optical imaging survey of proto-planetary nebula candidates using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The goals of the survey were to image low surface brightness optical reflection nebulosities around proto-planetary nebulae and to investigate the distribution of the circumstellar dust, which scatters the star light from the central post-asymptotic giant branch star...

Hereditary medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is caused by autosomal dominant gain-of-function mutations in the RET proto-oncogene. Associations between specific RET mutations (genotype) and the aggressiveness of MTC and presence or absence of other endocrine neoplasms (phenotype) are well documented. Mutations in six exons (10, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 16) located in either cysteine-rich or tyrosine...

Linguistics and archaeology have been, and continue to be, entwined in the discourse on the early human history of the Pacific. It is commonly assumed, explicitly or otherwise, that the bearers of the Lapita culture were speakers of Proto-Oceanic, the ancestor of the Austronesian languages of most of the Pacific. In this discursive piece, the chronological data for the location and timing of th...

This paper describes the function and distribution of main morphological markers voice valency in Oceanic language Äiwoo: undergoervoice suffixes -i, -nyi(i), -ive, -eâ, -nâ, circumstantial clitic =Cä. It compares these functions distributions to those reconstructed for Proto-Oceanic transitivizing morphemes *-i *akin[i], suggests pathways change that can account many present-day Äiwoo forms as...

Ancient (proto-) Bulgarians have long been thought of as a Turkic population. However, evidence found in the past three decades shows that this is not the case. Until now, this evidence has not included ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. To fill this void, we collected human remains from the 8th to the 10th century AD located in three necropolises in Bulgaria: Nojarevo (Silistra region...