Desmosomes in a tangle ntermediate filament–associated desmosomes—like their actin-associated counterparts, adherens junctions—link neighboring epithelial cells through cadherin connections. Crystal structure analyses of adherens junction cadherins suggested that these proteins interact at their NH 2 -terminal tips. A recent model shows that the most distal of five extracellular domains, called...

www.stormh2o.com Mosquitoes are annoying. No joke. A single mosquito flying around your bedroom when you are trying to sleep can literally test your mental and emotional limits. While one is bad enough, a swarm of mosquitoes can lead to outright panic. What’s more, many species have embraced the urban lifestyle, using sources of standing water we’ve intentionally or unintentionally created as n...

We apply reinforcement learning to the problem of finding good policies for a fighting agent in a commercial computer game. The learning agent is trained using the SARSA algorithm for on-policy learning of an action-value function represented by linear and neural network function approximators. We discuss the selection and construction of features, actions, and rewards as well as other design c...

Within the species Astyanax mexicanus, there are several inter-fertile populations of river-dwelling sighted fish and cave-dwelling blind fish which have evolved morphological and behavioral adaptations. We have recently reported a developmental and neurophysiological basis for the loss of aggressive behavior in the blind cavefish morph of Astyanax. Using an appropriate behavioral assay, we hav...

Researchers are building their response to the attack by creationism on evolution as interest in Darwin memorabilia continues to grow.

Lamellipodia fight back formin T he actin-organizing activities in a reaching lamellipod fi ght back the trailing lamella, say Sarmiento et al. The feedback might coordinate inchworm-like migration in normal and cancerous cells. Tumor cells such as breast cancer carcinomas become dangerously motile because they have hyperactive actin-poly-merizing pathways that respond to epidermal growth facto...

Since our hunter–gatherer ancestors began to develop agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, farmers have been battling with Nature to protect their cultivated plants against pests and diseases. Organisms from all kingdoms of life—from mammals and insects to bacteria, fungi and viruses—are attracted by the easy pickings that large fields of plants represent, and farmers have sought to contain t...

Disputes about scientific findings unfold following a well-rehearsed script. One researcher (let’s call her Dr. X) makes an intriguing new observation and manages to get it past the refereeing process of a top journal. The study is published and Dr. X happily moves on to her next project. But she is interrupted by an annoying piece of news e a report from the lab of another scientist (let’s cal...

Action recognition has become a hot topic within computer vision. However, the action recognition community has focused mainly on relatively simple actions like clapping, walking, jogging, etc. The detection of specific events with direct practical use such as fights or in general aggressive behavior has been comparatively less studied. Such capability may be extremely useful in some video surv...

This paper reports on a pilot project of the Turnitin plagiarism detection software, which was implemented to determine the impact of the software on the level of plagiarism among University of Botswana (UB) students. Students’ assignments were first submitted to the software without their knowledge so as to gauge their level of plagiarism. The results recorded the average level of plagiarism a...