The sequence of the mouse genome is a key informational tool for understanding the contents of the human genome and a key experimental tool for biomedical research. Here, we report the results of an international collaboration to produce a high-quality draft sequence of the mouse genome. We also present an initial comparative analysis of the mouse and human genomes, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the two sequences. We discuss topics including the analysis of the evolutionary forces shaping the size, structure and sequence of the genomes; the conservation of large-scale synteny across most of the genomes; the much lower extent of sequence orthology covering less than half of the genomes; the proportions of the genomes under selection; the number of protein-coding genes; the expansion of gene families related to reproduction and immunity; the evolution of proteins; and the identification of intraspecies polymorphism.

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Brassinosteroids (BRs) regulate multiple aspects of plant growth and development and require an active BRASSINOSTEROID-INSENSITIVE1 (BRI1) and BRI1-ASSOCIATED RECEPTOR KINASE1 (BAK1) for hormone perception and signal transduction. Many animal receptor kinases exhibit ligand-dependent oligomerization followed by autophosphorylation and activation of the intracellular kinase domain. To determine if early events in BR signaling share this mechanism, we used coimmunoprecipitation of epitope-tagged proteins to show that in vivo association of BRI1 and BAK1 was affected by endogenous and exogenous BR levels and that phosphorylation of both BRI1 and BAK1 on Thr residues was BR dependent. Immunoprecipitation of epitope-tagged BRI1 from Arabidopsis thaliana followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) identified S-838, S-858, T-872, and T-880 in the juxtamembrane region, T-982 in the kinase domain, and S-1168 in C-terminal region as in vivo phosphorylation sites of BRI1. MS analysis also strongly suggested that an additional two residues in the juxtamembrane region and three sites in the activation loop of kinase subdomain VII/VIII were phosphorylated in vivo. We also identified four specific BAK1 autophosphorylation sites in vitro using LC/MS/MS. Sitedirected mutagenesis of identified and predicted BRI1 phosphorylation sites revealed that the highly conserved activation loop residue T-1049 and either S-1044 or T-1045 were essential for kinase function in vitro and normal BRI1 signaling in planta. Mutations in the juxtamembrane or C-terminal regions had only small observable effects on autophosphorylation and in planta signaling but dramatically affected phosphorylation of a peptide substrate in vitro. These findings are consistent with many aspects of the animal receptor kinase model in which ligand-dependent autophosphorylation of the activation loop generates a functional kinase, whereas phosphorylation of noncatalytic intracellular domains is required for recognition and/or phosphorylation of downstream substrates.

“Tar balls” are amorphous, carbonaceous spherules that occur in the tropospheric aerosol as a result of biomass and biofuel burning. They form a distinct group of particles with diameters typically between 30 and 500 nm and readily identifiable with electron microscopy. Their lack of a turbostratic microstructure distinguishes them from soot, and their morphology and composition (∼90 mol % carbon) renders them distinct from other carbonaceous particles. Tar balls are particularly abundant in slightly aged (minutes to hours old) biomass smoke, indicating that they likely form by gas‐to‐particle conversion within smoke plumes. The material of tar balls is initially hygroscopic; however, the particles become largely insoluble as a result of free radical polymerization of their organic molecules. Consequently, tar balls are primarily externally mixed with other particle types, and they do not appreciably increase in size during aging. When tar balls coagulate with water‐bearing particles, their material may partly dissolve and no longer be recognizable as distinct particles. Tar balls may contain organic compounds that absorb sunlight. They are an important, previously unrecognized type of carbonaceous (organic) atmospheric particle.

AbstractÐThe need for efficient content-based image retrieval has increased tremendously in many application areas such as biomedicine, military, commerce, education, and Web image classification and searching. We present here SIMPLIcity (Semanticssensitive Integrated Matching for Picture LIbraries), an image retrieval system, which uses semantics classification methods, a wavelet-based approach for feature extraction, and integrated region matching based upon image segmentation. As in other regionbased retrieval systems, an image is represented by a set of regions, roughly corresponding to objects, which are characterized by color, texture, shape, and location. The system classifies images into semantic categories, such as textured-nontextured, graphphotograph. Potentially, the categorization enhances retrieval by permitting semantically-adaptive searching methods and narrowing down the searching range in a database. A measure for the overall similarity between images is developed using a region-matching scheme that integrates properties of all the regions in the images. Compared with retrieval based on individual regions, the overall similarity approach 1) reduces the adverse effect of inaccurate segmentation, 2) helps to clarify the semantics of a particular region, and 3) enables a simple querying interface for region-based image retrieval systems. The application of SIMPLIcity to several databases, including a database of about 200,000 general-purpose images, has demonstrated that our system performs significantly better and faster than existing ones. The system is fairly robust to image alterations.

Converting environmental "waste energies" into electricity via a natural process is an ideal strategy for environmental energy harvesting and supplying power for distributed energy-consuming devices. This paper reports that evaporation-driven water flow within an all-printed porous carbon film can reliably generate sustainable voltage up to 1 V with a power density of ≈8.1 µW cm −3 under ambient conditions. The output performance of the device can be easily scaled up and used to power low-power consumption electronic devices or for energy storage. Furthermore, the device is successfully used without electric storage as a direct power source for electrodeposition of silver microstructures. Because of the ubiquity of water evaporation in nature and the low cost of materials involved, the study presents a novel avenue to harvest ambient energy and has potential applications in low-cost, green, self-powered devices and systems.

Solar-enabled steam generation has attracted increasing interest in recent years because of its potential applications in power generation, desalination, and wastewater treatment, among others. Recent studies have reported many strategies for promoting the efficiency of steam generation by employing absorbers based on carbon materials or plasmonic metal nanoparticles with well-defined pores. In this work, we report that natural wood can be utilized as an ideal solar absorber after a simple flame treatment. With ultrahigh solar absorbance (∼99%), low thermal conductivity (0.33 W m K), and good hydrophilicity, the flame-treated wood can localize the solar heating at the evaporation surface and enable a solar-thermal efficiency of ∼72% under a solar intensity of 1 kW m, and it thus represents a renewable, scalable, low-cost, and robust material for solar steam applications.

RPA is a versatile complement or replacement of PCR, and now is stepping into practice.