Post-mating sexually selected signals are expected to indicate parental quality. The good parent model assumes that expression of the sexual character positively reflects parental ability, resulting in a potential link between the exaggeration of the character and nestling-fitness traits. We tested this prediction in a population of a monogamous passerine, the magpie (Pica pica), for which nest...

Our challenge in annotating the 2.91-Mb Adh region of the Drosophila melanogaster genome was to identify genetic and genomic features automatically, completely, and precisely within a 6-week period. To do so, we augmented the MAGPIE microbial genome annotation system to handle eukaryotic genomic sequence data. The new configuration required the integration of eukaryotic gene-finding tools and D...

Interactions between DNA and transcription factors (TFs) guide cellular function and development, yet the complexities of gene regulation are still far from being understood. Such understanding is limited by a paucity of techniques with which to probe DNA-protein interactions. We have devised magnetic protein immobilization on enhancer DNA (MagPIE), a simple, rapid, multi-parametric assay using...

Over the past decades, quantitative methods linking theory and observation became increasingly important in many areas of life science. Subsequently, a large number of mathematical and computational models has been developed. The BioModels database alone lists more than 140,000 Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) models. However, while the exchange within specific model classes has been supp...

Hosts of obligate avian brood parasites use visual cues to distinguish between their own eggs and those of the parasite. Despite major differences between human and bird vision, most previous studies on cuckoo egg mimicry estimated color matching based on human color vision. Undetected by humans, ultraviolet reflectance (UVR) may play a previously ignored role for rejection behavior in avian br...

Today’s mobile and pervasive computing devices are embedded with increasingly powerful sensing capabilities that enable them to provide exceptional spatio-temporal context acquisition that is not possible with traditional static sensor networks alone. As a result, enabling these devices to share context information with one another has a great potential for enabling mobile users to exploit the ...

In this paper we present the Mobile computing with AGents and Publish subscribe for Intelligent pervasive hEalthcare (MAGPIE) platform. MAGPIE is an agent platform designed for the Android OS. The aim of the platform is to simplify the definition of Personal Health Systems (PHSs) to monitor chronic diseases. The agents running in the platform use a symbolic reasoning approach to formalize the e...

background: corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine birds including crows, rooks, mag­pies, jays, chough, and ravens. these birds are migratory species, especially in the shortage of foods, so they can act like vectors for a wide range of microorganisms. they live generally in temper­ate climates and in a very close contact with human residential areas as well as poultry farms. there is no ...