• Title/Summary/Keyword: human evolution

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Crystal Structure of Histidine Triad Nucleotide-Binding Protein from the Pathogenic Fungus Candida albicans

  • Jung, Ahjin;Yun, Ji-Sook;Kim, Shinae;Kim, Sang Ryong;Shin, Minsang;Cho, Dong Hyung;Choi, Kwang Shik;Chang, Jeong Ho
    • Molecules and Cells
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    • v.42 no.1
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    • pp.56-66
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    • 2019
  • Histidine triad nucleotide-binding protein (HINT) is a member of the histidine triad (HIT) superfamily, which has hydrolase activity owing to a histidine triad motif. The HIT superfamily can be divided to five classes with functions in galactose metabolism, DNA repair, and tumor suppression. HINTs are highly conserved from archaea to humans and function as tumor suppressors, translation regulators, and neuropathy inhibitors. Although the structures of HINT proteins from various species have been reported, limited structural information is available for fungal species. Here, to elucidate the structural features and functional diversity of HINTs, we determined the crystal structure of HINT from the pathogenic fungus Candida albicans (CaHINT) in complex with zinc ions at a resolution of $2.5{\AA}$. Based on structural comparisons, the monomer of CaHINT overlaid best with HINT protein from the protozoal species Leishmania major. Additionally, structural comparisons with human HINT revealed an additional helix at the C-terminus of CaHINT. Interestingly, the extended C-terminal helix interacted with the N-terminal loop (${\alpha}1-{\beta}1$) and with the ${\alpha}3$ helix, which appeared to stabilize the dimerization of CaHINT. In the C-terminal region, structural and sequence comparisons showed strong relationships among 19 diverse species from archea to humans, suggesting early separation in the course of evolution. Further studies are required to address the functional significance of variations in the C-terminal region. This structural analysis of CaHINT provided important insights into the molecular aspects of evolution within the HIT superfamily.

Dimensions of Smart Tourism and Its Levels: An Integrative Literature Review

  • Otowicz, Marcelo Henrique;Macedo, Marcelo;Biz, Alexandre Augusto
    • Journal of Smart Tourism
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.5-19
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    • 2022
  • Smart tourism is seen as a revolution in the tourism industry, involving innovative and transformative theoretical-practical approaches for the sector. As a result of its application in the tourist context, benefits can be seen such as more sustainable practices, greater mobility and better accessibility in destinations, evolution of processes and experiences of tourists. Much of this is achieved through the support of technological solutions. However, despite the immense expectations, and the many researches carried out on it, a literature summary regarding the dimensions that can be observed in each application of this smart tourism has not yet been proposed. Therefore, supported by the PRISMA recommendation, this research proposed to carry out an integrative review of the literature on smart tourism (in its different levels of application, such as the city, the destination and the smart tourism region), with the objective of mapping the dimensions that underlie it. Thus, from an initial scope of 833 intellectual productions obtained, inputs were found for the dimensions in 363 of them after a thorough analysis. The compilation of data obtained from these productions supported the proposition of 14 operational dimensions of smart tourism, namely: collaboration, technology, sustainability, experience, accessibility, knowledge management, innovation management, human capital, marketing, customized services, transparency, safety, governance and mobility. With this set of dimensions, it is envisaged that the implementation of smart tourism projects can present more comprehensive and assertive results. In addition, shortcomings and opportunities for new research that support the evolution of the theory and practice of smart tourism are highlighted.

Ethics for Cloned Human Beings: (<네버렛미고>를 통해본 복제 인간 윤리)

  • Kim, Mihye
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.17 no.8
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    • pp.121-129
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    • 2017
  • The evolution of biotechnology is no longer strange to the hypothetical scenario of cloning human genes to make cloned human beings. The characters of are cloned humans made in the laboratory by the 100-year-old life planning. They are cohabited in a school called Hailsham, where they are secretly reared. The purpose of this project is to provide healthy organs to real human patients with incurable diseases. The main characters Cathy, Tommy, and Ruth experience the growth of body and consciousness here during adolescence, and they also know the secret of identity as a clone. As adults, they move to a second residence, Cottage and are ready to begin organ donation. The second stage is also part of a program to provide more genuine-like organs to real patients. Even though they know all the plans that humans have built, they do not resist them and fatefully accept their situation. However, their non-responsiveness is not a declaration of renunciation of life, but a self-sacrificing life extension for another future that is the extension of life through their organ donation. The film emphasizes the fraternity and sacrificial attitudes of the cloned human beings and shows that it is necessary to continue the discussions on cloned human beings from a bio-ethical point of view supported by philosophical reasons.

A Case Study of a Text Mining Method for Discovering Evolutionary Patterns of Mobile Phone in Korea (국내 휴대폰의 진화패턴 규명을 위한 텍스트 마이닝 방안 제안 및 사례 연구)

  • On, Byung-Won
    • Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.29-45
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    • 2015
  • Systematic theory, concepts, and methodology for the biological evolution have been developed while patterns and principles of the evolution have been actively studied in the past 200 years. Furthermore, they are applied to various fields such as evolutionary economics, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary linguistics, making significant progress in research. In addition, existing studies have applied main biological evolutionary models to artifacts although such methods do not fit to them. These models are also limited to generalize evolutionary patterns of artifacts because they are designed in terms of a subjective point of view of experts who know well about the artifacts. Unlike biological organisms, because artifacts are likely to reflect the imagination of the human will, it is known that the theory of biological evolution cannot be directly applied to artifacts. In this paper, beyond the individual's subjective, the aim of our research is to present evolutionary patterns of a given artifact based on peeping the idea of the public. For this, we propose a text mining approach that presents a systematic framework that can find out the evolutionary patterns of a given artifact and then visualize effectively. In particular, based on our proposal, we focus mainly on a case study of mobile phone that has emerged as an icon of innovation in recent years. We collect and analyze review posts on mobile phone available in the domestic market over the past decade, and discuss the detailed results about evolutionary patterns of the mobile phone. Moreover, this kind of task is a tedious work over a long period of time because a small number of experts carry out an extensive literature survey and summarize a huge number of materials to finally draw a diagram of evolutionary patterns of the mobile phone. However, in this work, to minimize the human efforts, we present a semi-automatic mining algorithm, and through this research we can understand how human creativity and imagination are implemented. In addition, it is a big help to predict the future trend of mobile phone in business and industries.

Genetic signature of strong recent positive selection at interleukin-32 gene in goat

  • Asif, Akhtar Rasool;Qadri, Sumayyah;Ijaz, Nabeel;Javed, Ruheena;Ansari, Abdur Rahman;Awais, Muhammd;Younus, Muhammad;Riaz, Hasan;Du, Xiaoyong
    • Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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    • v.30 no.7
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    • pp.912-919
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    • 2017
  • Objective: Identification of the candidate genes that play key roles in phenotypic variations can provide new information about evolution and positive selection. Interleukin (IL)-32 is involved in many biological processes, however, its role for the immune response against various diseases in mammals is poorly understood. Therefore, the current investigation was performed for the better understanding of the molecular evolution and the positive selection of single nucleotide polymorphisms in IL-32 gene. Methods: By using fixation index ($F_{ST}$) based method, IL-32 (9375) gene was found to be outlier and under significant positive selection with the provisional combined allocation of mean heterozygosity and $F_{ST}$. Using nucleotide sequences of 11 mammalian species from National Center for Biotechnology Information database, the evolutionary selection of IL-32 gene was determined using Maximum likelihood model method, through four models (M1a, M2a, M7, and M8) in Codeml program of phylogenetic analysis by maximum liklihood. Results: IL-32 is detected under positive selection using the $F_{ST}$ simulations method. The phylogenetic tree revealed that goat IL-32 was in close resemblance with sheep IL-32. The coding nucleotide sequences were compared among 11 species and it was found that the goat IL-32 gene shared identity with sheep (96.54%), bison (91.97%), camel (58.39%), cat (56.59%), buffalo (56.50%), human (56.13%), dog (50.97%), horse (54.04%), and rabbit (53.41%) respectively. Conclusion: This study provides evidence for IL-32 gene as under significant positive selection in goat.

The Evolution of Makeup Methods of Korean Women in Response to Changing Standards of Beauty in the Early 20th Century (20세기 초 미의식의 변화에 따른 국내여성들의 화장법)

  • Lee, Soon-Jae
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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    • v.34 no.8
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    • pp.1364-1377
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    • 2010
  • Although the human body is a biological subject with definite and distinctive physical features, its actualization and perception differs among societies. The aesthetics of the human body are based on diverse cultural perceptions that must be considered prior to design development. This study establishes the foundations of newly adopted concepts of beauty that are presumed to have been established in the first half of the twentieth century that continue to affect our mindset even now. The research includes human figures in the articles of women's magazines and cosmetic advertisements in the early $20^{th}$ century. The results are as follows: First, the change of perception in the human body: Instead of being a subject of preservation, the body has become a subject of sculpture with emphasis on health in the 1920's and on beauty in the 1930's. The recognition of the importance of the body has created intensive attention on physical training and an increased sense of hygiene. The body exposed to the public perceives itself through the eyes of others that alter one's own perception of oneself as well as become a target of evaluation. There is an additional emphasis on the exotic eroticism of a passive subordinate. Western culture became the standard for modernization along with the dissociation of traditional standards and values. Through the effect of education and western thinking, the awareness of women's rights and self-appreciation was developed. Second, ideal beauty can be summarized as follows: Unprocessed natural beauty was extolled as ideal in the 1920's, but the 1930's, it highlighted big eyes and an aquiline nose that are the characteristics of western women. Taking care of one's appearance was recognized as an important value for every social class. Cosmetics and skin care treatments promised soft and white skin. In contrast to western cosmetics, dark and shiny hair was highly favored. Exercising and traveling, differing seasonal and regional skin treatments were also widely accepted. In its initial stages, the research had originally assumed that the beginning of the twentieth century would be a time in which traditional concepts of beauty and new, westernized aesthetics coexisted. However, as the research progressed, it was clear that the idea of beauty had already adopted occidental ideals by that time. Thus, it seems necessary to continue the study on the shifting paradigms of beauty that must have occurred in the nineteenth and late twentieth century.

A Component-Based Framework for Structural Embedding of Mobile Agent System (모바일 에이전트 시스템의 구성적 임베딩을 위한 컴포넌트 기반의 프레임워크)

  • Chung, Wonho;Kang, Namhi
    • The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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    • v.12 no.6
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    • pp.33-42
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    • 2012
  • Rapid evolution of wired and wireless technologies results in various types of embedded systems, and the software to be embedded into those devices now needs the flexibility rather than the fixedness which was well-known property for the embedded software in the past. Mobile agent is one of the useful distributed technologies of reducing network load and latency because of its disconnected operations and high asynchrony. In this paper, a component-based mobile agent framework, called EmHUMAN, is designed and implemented for structural embedding into the devices showing different functions and resource constraints. It consists of 3 layers of components. Based on those components, a structural embedding, considering resource constraints of required functions, amount of storage space, computing power, network bandwidth, ${\ldots} $ etc can be performed. The components in each layer can be extended with addition of new components, removing some components and modifying components. EmHUMAN plays the role of a framework for developing mobile agent based distributed systems. It is also a mobile agent system by itself. EmHUMAN provides several utilities as built-in API's, and thus high effectiveness in programming mobile agents can be achieved.

Pre-Service Biology Teachers' Views of the Nature of Science and the Origins of Human Beings: Focusing on Religions (예비 생물교사의 과학의 본성과 인간의 기원에 대한 인식 조사: 종교배경을 중심으로)

  • Kang, Kyunglee
    • Journal of Science Education
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    • v.34 no.2
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    • pp.246-259
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    • 2010
  • The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service biology teachers' perception of the evolution. This study was to compare the views of pre-service biology teachers with no religion with those of christian preservice teachers. Subjects were 77 pre-service biology teachers who enrolled in an university and graduate school of education located in Seoul. The instrument of this study was a questionnaire which consisted of 14 items on 2 domains: the nature of science, the origins of human beings. The key results are as follows. Most pre-service teachers showed highly understanding of the characteristics of science. However pre-service biology teachers still possessed naive views on the distinction of law and theory. In terms of the methods of science, many of the pre-service biology teachers considered scientific theories to progress through the accumulation of observation and experiments or through changes and modifications in existing theories. Compared with the pre-service teachers with no religion, christian pre-service teachers had conflicting views and misconceptions about the origins of human beings. The factors of religion were found to be one of the important barriers which prevent them from understanding the origins of human beings. The results suggested that the education program for pre-service biology teachers integrating the concepts and development process of the scientific knowledges should be effective for understanding the nature of science. For pre-service biology teachers, It is important to understand conflicting views of the christian pre-service teachers who understand creationism as a science.

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QUANTIFICATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VESSEL TRAFFICSERVICES

  • 박진수
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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    • 1994.10a
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    • pp.49-58
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    • 1994
  • The methods of estimation of VTS effectivenss are compared and the worldwide literature related to the VTS effectiveness is reviewed. The review suggests three potential approaches ; simulation ; synthesis of expert opinion and statistical analysis of casualties. this study adopted dissimilar approaches to estimate the VTS effectiveness to the earlier studies ; the combination of synthesis of expert opinion and causal analysis of casualty. The VTS effectiveness is derived by multiplying casualty rate reduction factors by the effect level of causal factors. The development of casualty rate reduction factors was based on the questionnaire survey and the evolution of effect levels was based on the causal analysis using functional block diagram. According to these procedures the maximum benefit to be obtained through the introduction of a VTS system was approximately 46 percent overall. The collision reduction rate was estimated to be approximately 50 percent for a VTS system with advanced radar surveillance. And 47 percent of groundings 36 percent of rammings and 21 percent of founderings could be reduced by the introduction of VTS. These figures are more or less the same to the earlier studies. The VTS effectiveness by the different causal factor groups was examined. VTS may reduce about 68 percent of causal factors classified as environmental conditions 40 percent of human factors and 35 percent of technical factors in collision accidents. As a whole 60 percent of environmental factors 41 percent of human factors and 20 percent of technical factors may be prevented by a VTS. The key variable of the effectiveness percentage is the value of weight coefficient $\delta$. Therefore differing values for this input was discussed and the impact that these variations have on the VS effectiveness noted. As the results of sensitivity analysis of VTS effectiveness by $\pm$10 percent the effectiveness is varied approximately three to seven percent by casualty type. And the value is changed roughly four to eight percent by a $\pm$10 percent variation by different sub-areas.

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Sex and Population Differences in Intelligence Are Partly Caused by Sexual Selection: Hn Evolutionary Hypothesis

  • Piffer, Davide
    • Interdisciplinary Bio Central
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    • v.6 no.4
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    • pp.2.1-2.7
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    • 2014
  • Sexual dimorphism in intelligence suggests that this phenotype is a sexually selected trait. This view is supported by an overrepresentation (compared to the autosomal genome) of genes affecting cognition on the X chromosome. The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that sexual selection can explain sex and country-level differences in performance on tests of fluid intelligence. Nationally representative samples from N = 44 countries were obtained from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Creative Problem Solving (CPS), which evaluates the core of intelligence, that is novel problem solving ability. Sexual selection has the double effect of increasing the prevalence of a favored phenotype and reducing genetic variation in sexually selected traits. Matching these predictions from evolutionary theory, the average country fluid intelligence is positively correlated to sexual dimorphism after partialling out per capita GDP and the latter in turn is inversely correlated to variance in intelligence scores within populations. Males have a higher variance than females but there is a negative correlation between male-female difference in variance and sexual dimorphism in intelligence, suggesting that selection reduces variance more in the selected sex. Average country male height is negatively correlated to sexual dimorphism in intelligence, a fact that supports the notion of a trade-off between physical and intellectual competition in the context of access to females. The results of this study, if replicated, imply that genome-wide association studies of cognition may benefit from a focus on sex chromosomes, which so far have been neglected. Another implication of this study is that intelligence has continued to evolve after different human populations migrated out of Africa and possibly up to the 19th century, as suggested by the substantial variability in sex differences even between neighbouring countries.