Centromeres were familiar to cell biologists in the late 19th century, but for most eukaryotes the basis for centromere specification has remained enigmatic. Much attention has been focused on the cenH3 (CENP-A) histone variant, which forms the foundation of the centromere. To investigate the DNA sequence requirements for centromere specification, we applied a variety of epigenomic approaches, ...

Humans have the fascinating capacity to understand, and anticipate the actions of other humans in the same space, without requiring verbal communication. This ”intention reading” capacity is underpinned by a common motor-repertoire that is shared by all humans, and afforded by a subtle coordination of eye-head-arm movements that encodes the cues and signals that will ultimately be deciphered by...

Humans navigate crowded spaces such as a university campus by following common sense rules based on social etiquette. In this paper, we argue that in order to enable the design of new target tracking or trajectory forecasting methods that can take full advantage of these rules, we need to have access to better data in the first place. To that end, we contribute a new large-scale dataset that co...

Chromosome rearrangements (such as inversions, fusions, and fissions) may play significant roles in the speciation between parapatric (contiguous) or partly sympatric (geographically overlapping) populations. According to the "hybrid-dysfunction" model, speciation occurs because hybrids with heterozygous chromosome rearrangements produce dysfunctional gametes and thus have low reproductive fitn...

We discuss, in this paper, the design of a life-like agent interface that considers the social aspects in human-agent interaction. The underlying hypothesis of the design is that human social behaviors toward life-like agents are on a par with those toward humans. Humans tend to sympathize with and follow other humans based on their affiliation needs. Therefore, it should be with life-like agen...

Humans have the ability to mentally travel forward and back in time. They can retrieve vivid memories of past events (episodic memories) and can imagine the future (planning). Although it has been suggested that this is a uniquely human ability, the evidence for subjective time travel in humans is typically based on verbal report and elaboration. Such evidence cannot be obtained from animals. H...

Humans evolved in populations structured in groups that extended beyond the nuclear family. Individuals interacted with each other within these groups and there was limited migration and sometimes conflicts between these groups. Suppose that during this evolution, individuals transmitted their behaviors or preferences to their (genetic or cultural) offspring, and that material outcomes resultin...