Structural and functional properties of a magnesium transporter of the SLC11/NRAMP family

Members of the ubiquitous SLC11/NRAMP family catalyze the uptake of divalent transition metal ions into cells. They have evolved to efficiently select these trace elements from a large pool of Ca2+ and Mg2+, which are both orders of magnitude more abundant, and to concentrate them in the cytoplasm aided by the cotransport of H+ serving as energy source. In the present study, we have characterized a member of a distant clade of the family found in prokaryotes, termed NRMTs, that were proposed to function as transporters of Mg2+. The protein transports Mg2+ and Mn2+ but not Ca2+ by a mechanism that is not coupled to H+. Structures determined by cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography revealed a generally similar protein architecture compared to classical NRAMPs, with a restructured ion binding site whose increased volume provides suitable interactions with ions that likely have retained much of their hydration shell.

Protein inspired chemically orthogonal imines for linchpin directed precise and modular labeling of lysine in proteins

The chemical technologies for the precision engineering of proteins connect chemistry, biology, and medicine. However, they face enormous hurdles due to a large pool of competing proteinogenic residues. While resolving...

Intention and Monitoring Influence the Content of Memory Reports

Objectives While voluntary memories are intended and expected, involuntary memories are retrieved with no intention and are usually unexpected (when one is not waiting for a memory). The present study investigates the effects of retrieval intentionality ( wanting to retrieve a memory) and monitoring processes ( expecting a memory to appear) on the characteristics of autobiographical memories. Methods To this end, by applying mixed-method analysis of memory descriptions (i.e. combining qualitative with quantitative analyses) we re-analysed the large pool of involuntary and voluntary memories obtained in one previously published study, asking independent judges to rate all the memories on several dimensions reflecting memory accessibility (i.e. the likelihood that a memory can be retrieved). Results When discussing our findings, we speculate that there may be several stages of memory retrieval that might be differently influenced by intention and monitoring. Conclusions We discuss the novel hypothesis that there may be two different types of monitoring that operate independently of each other, before and after retrieval, respectively.

Metapragmatics and genre: Connecting the strands

Genre analysis involves at least a foray into the social/contextual dimension framing genre-exemplars. One way to explore this dimension is drawing on the concept of metapragmatics, which is primarily associated with (American) linguistic anthropology. However, with a few exceptions, genre studies have not consistently operationalized metapragmatics, either theoretically or practically. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to explore one possible angle of such operationalization by means of studying discourse fragments reflecting on fragments of (these very or other) discourses (so-called metapragmatic discourses) vis--vis any generic properties of the reflected discourse. Specifically, we analyzed comments sections for a number of YouTube videos exemplifying several lifestyle genres. The results indicate that generic references can range from simply using a generic label to refer to the discourse in question (as a token of a certain type/genre) to actually discussing the generic characteristics of the genre it instantiates, as well as projecting certain (generic) metapragmatic stances. Another observation is that different wordings used by the discourse community to refer to generic models can be, as it were, proper generic labels, but they can also be words and phrases that would hardly qualify as proper names of genres from an analysts point of view. Both these proper and other - genre-like - labels are also often used in conjunction with or are replaced by other ways of metapragmatically referring to what the speaker does or even what they are in/by dint of using the discourse in question. This suggests that any generic labels or cues are just part of a large pool of other possible metapragmatic meanings, knowledge, and ideologies circulating in discourse communities. More broadly, the results may indicate that genre studies should see genre as an even less stabilized entity because what a genre is depends on what people who actually use it make of it, as well as augment their standard toolkits with methods aimed at exploring metapragmatic discourse.

Making sense of COVID-19 over time in New Zealand: Assessing the public conversation using Twitter

COVID-19 has ruptured routines and caused breakdowns in what had been conventional practice and custom: everything from going to work and school and shopping in the supermarket to socializing with friends and taking holidays. Nonetheless, COVID-19 does provide an opportunity to study how people make sense of radically changing circumstances over time. In this paper we demonstrate how Twitter affords this opportunity by providing data in real time, and over time. In the present research, we collect a large pool of COVID-19 related tweets posted by New Zealanders–citizens of a country successful in containing the coronavirus–from the moment COVID-19 became evident to the world in the last days of 2019 until 19 August 2020. We undertake topic modeling on the tweets to foster understanding and sensemaking of the COVID-19 tweet landscape in New Zealand and its temporal development and evolution over time. This information can be valuable for those interested in how people react to emergent events, including researchers, governments, and policy makers.

Assessment Methods for Evaluation of Recommender Systems: A Survey

The recommender system (RS) filters out important information from a large pool of dynamically generated information to set some important decisions in terms of some recommendations according to the user’s past behavior, preferences, and interests. A recommender system is the subclass of information filtering systems that can anticipate the needs of the user before the needs are recognized by the user in the near future. But an evaluation of the recommender system is an important factor as it involves the trust of the user in the system. Various incompatible assessment methods are used for the evaluation of recommender systems, but the proper evaluation of a recommender system needs a particular objective set by the recommender system. This paper surveys and organizes the concepts and definitions of various metrics to assess recommender systems. Also, this survey tries to find out the relationship between the assessment methods and their categorization by type.

Citizen science in cities: an overview of projects focused on urban Australia

Citizen science offers a unique opportunity to connect urban-dwellers with the often hidden natural world upon their doorsteps and to contribute to authentic research that increases knowledge of urban ecology and biodiversity. With the majority of Australia’s population residing in large cities, this diverse potential pool of participants in science creates a significant opportunity to increase the spatial and temporal scale of research. Herein, we provide an overview of Australian urban citizen science projects based on an analysis of the projects listed in the Australian Citizen Science Association’s Citizen Science Project Finder. We draw out key features (such as those with research questions specific to cities such as reintroduction and persistence of species in urban environments) from urban citizen science projects that make them suitable for the urban environment and use these features to suggest recommendations for further expansion and development of this important subset of projects. We conclude that the number and diversity of urban citizen science projects is relatively low in Australia, and advocate for an increase in initiatives that can tap into a large pool of potential participants for the benefit of science and society.

PERSONA: A personalized model for code recommendation

Code recommendation is an important feature of modern software development tools to improve the productivity of programmers. The current advanced techniques in code recommendation mostly focus on the crowd-based approach. The basic idea is to collect a large pool of available source code, extract the common code patterns, and utilize the patterns for recommendations. However, programmers are different in multiple aspects including coding preferences, styles, levels of experience, and knowledge about libraries and frameworks. These differences lead to various usages of code elements. When the code of multiple programmers is combined and mined, such differences are disappeared, which could limit the accuracy of the code recommendation tool for a specific programmer. In the paper, we develop a code recommendation technique that focuses on the personal coding patterns of programmers. We propose Persona, a personalized code recommendation model. It learns personalized code patterns for each programmer based on their coding history, while also combines with project-specific and common code patterns. Persona supports recommending code elements including variable names, class names, methods, and parameters. The empirical evaluation suggests that our recommendation tool based on Persona is highly effective. It recommends the next identifier with top-1 accuracy of 60-65% and outperforms the baseline approaches.

Reporting Issues of Adverse Effect of COVID-19 Vaccine in India: What We Know or Don’t Know?

Vaccines for COVID-19 in India have been allowed to be administered among large pool of adult population. In-depth knowledge regarding the adverse effect of vaccine is scarce till date, mainly due to the lack of reporting, analysing and making the data publicly available. Informed choice by the recipients is totally barred and further, compensation associated with the vaccination is also compromised. These important issues need to be highlighted in the public forum for greater awareness and action.

Online vs Offline: Experimenting the Belief in Career Exploration Methods of University Students

The beliefs in career exploration methods varying largely between the online and the offline career exploration methods. Among large pool of career explorers, university undergraduates can be considered as one of the most intense and immature group of explorers. At the same time, it is apparent that students are exploring career opportunities through various methods. Therefore, the primary objective of this research was to find out the beliefs in online and offline exploration methods in university undergraduates and decide the most effective method for career exploration. An experimental model was developed based on Stumpf, Colarelli, & Hartman‘s “Development of the Career Exploration theory. Three treatment groups were formed by the final year university students to denote two main career exploration methods. The sample was selected by randomly assigning an equal number of participants (25). Pre and Post beliefs about each career exploration method were assessed and analyzed to conclude the most effective method. The results found that after the treatment, pre and post believes about career exploration was not been significantly changed by its method. Yet, the amount of information gathered and exploration satisfaction were high in the online method. The respondents never had any systematic or planned way when exploring via online sources. The doubt about reliability of information gathered was high in the offline method. Further, the results revealed that there was no impact of stress and satisfaction for exploration belief. Implications are invited for allocating career exploration awareness for the target group in their early career exploration stages to prepare them for successful career decision making by forward-thinking.