Karyotype evolution in Rhinolophus bats (Rhinolophidae, Chiroptera) illuminated by cross-species chromosome painting and G-banding comparison

Rhinolophus (Rhinolophidae) is the second most speciose genus in Chiroptera and has extensively diversified diploid chromosome numbers (from 2n=28 to 62). In spite of many attempts to explore the karyotypic evolution of this genus, most studies have been

Cross-Lingual spoken language understanding from unaligned data using discriminative classification models and machine translation

This paper investigates several approaches to bootstrapping a new spoken language understanding (SLU) component in a target language given a large dataset of semantically-annotated utterances in some other source language. The aim is to reduce the cost associated with porting a spoken dialogue system from one language to another by minimising the amount of data required in the target language. Since word-level semantic annotations are costly, Semantic Tuple Classifiers (STCs) are used in conjunction with statistical machine translation models both of which are trained from unaligned data to further reduce development time. The paper presents experiments in which a French SLU component in the tourist information domain is bootstrapped from English data. Results show that training STCs on automatically translated data produced the best performance for predicting the utterance's dialogue act type, however individual slot/value pairs are best predicted by training STCs on the source language and using them to decode translated utterances. © 2010 ISCA.

Decision tree-based context clustering based on cross validation and hierarchical priors

The standard, ad-hoc stopping criteria used in decision tree-based context clustering are known to be sub-optimal and require parameters to be tuned. This paper proposes a new approach for decision tree-based context clustering based on cross validation and hierarchical priors. Combination of cross validation and hierarchical priors within decision tree-based context clustering offers better model selection and more robust parameter estimation than conventional approaches, with no tuning parameters. Experimental results on HMM-based speech synthesis show that the proposed approach achieved significant improvements in naturalness of synthesized speech over the conventional approaches. © 2011 IEEE.

Some behaviours of strongest short-term coastal change induced by cross-shore wave energy flow and corresponding theoretical consideration

There is a number of famous theoretical and experimental works that oriented themselves to solve actual problem of coastal change, including the change of coastline, under versatile influence of oceanic wind waves. In this paper the author would like to give supplementally a few new behaviours of that phenomena observed along the coasts of Vietnam, such as coastal collapse & primitive on-the-spot accumulation, material hurl, etc. Most simple theoretical explanation of them grounding on the Newton's second law has been presented and as results of that there appeared such notion as indicator and criterion which could be used for demarcation of different behaviours in initial stage of general coastal changing processes.

Extraction, PCR amplification, and sequencing of mitochondrial DNA from scent mark and feces in the giant panda

To expand the feasibility of applying simple, efficient, non-invasive DNA preparation methods using samples that can be obtained from giant pandas living in the wild, we investigated the use of scent markings and fecal samples. Giant panda-specific oligonucleotide primers were used to amplify a portion of the mitochondrial DNA control region as well as a portion of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b gene and tRNA(Thr) gene region. A 196 base pair (bp) fragment in the control region and a 449 bp fragment in the cytochrome b gene and tRNA(Thr) gene were successfully amplified. Sequencing of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products demonstrated that the two fragments are giant panda sequences. Furthermore, under simulated field conditions we found that DNA can be extracted from fecal samples aged as long as 3 months. Our results suggest that the scent mark and fecal samples are simple, efficient, and easily prepared DNA sources. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Detection of usual and atypical aldehyde dehydrogenase alleles by mismatch amplification mutation assay

The genotypes of liver mitochondrial high-affinity aldehyde dehydrogenase-2 (ALDH2) are strongly associated with the drinking behavior and the alcohol liver diseases, since the individuals with atypical ALDH(2)(2) allele have higher levels of acetaldehyde in their plasma. The atypical ALDH(2)(2) allele has a nucleotide base transition (G-->A) in its exon 12. Based on this point mutation, we developed a rapid, reliable and inexpensive method, mismatch amplification mutation assay (MAMA), for the determination of human ALDH2 usual and atypical alleles. Two pairs of primers were designed for the amplification of the usual ALDH(2)(1) allele and the atypical ALDH(2)(2) allele, respectively. If the sample for the detection was heterozygous, it could be amplified by both of the primers. The product of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of ALDH2 exon 12 could be easily screened by electrophoresis on a 2% agarose gel. The results of the MAMA method were further confirmed by sequencing. In the total of fifty samples from unrelated healthy Chinese Han people from Wuhan, China, the frequency of atypical ALDH(2)(2) allele was found to be 12%.

Isolation and characterization of microsatellite markers for the endangered Taxus yunnanensis

Eleven polymorphic microsatellite loci were characterized for the endangered conifer Taxus yunnanensis. Eight loci were isolated through SSR-anchored PCR, one locus was developed by cross-species amplification tests, while the last two loci were obtained

A single amino acid defines cross-species reactivity of tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri) CD1d to human invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells

P>The non-classical major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecule CD1d presents lipid antigens to invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which are an important part of the innate immune system. CD1d/iNKT systems are highly conserved in evoluti