In order to obtain a machine understandable semantics for web resources, research on the Semantic Web tries to annotate web resources with concepts and relations from explicitly defined formal ontologies. This kind of formal annotation is usually done manually or semi-automatically. In this paper, we explore a complement approach that focuses on the "social annotations of the web" which are annotations manually made by normal web users without a predefined formal ontology. Compared to the formal annotations, although social annotations are coarse-grained, informal and vague, they are also more accessible to more people and better reflect the web resources' meaning from the users' point of views during their actual usage of the web resources. Using a social bookmark service as an example, we show how emergent semantics [2] can be statistically derived from the social annotations. Furthermore, we apply the derived emergent semantics to discover and search shared web bookmarks. The initial evaluation on our implementation shows that our method can effectively discover semantically related web bookmarks that current social bookmark service can not discover easily.

Ensemble forecasting is advocated as a way of reducing uncertainty in species distribution modeling (SDM). This is because it is expected to balance accuracy and robustness of SDM models. However, there are little available data regarding the spatial similarity of the combined distribution maps generated by different consensus approaches. Here, using eight niche-based models, nine split-sample calibration bouts (or nine random model-training subsets), and nine climate change scenarios, the distributions of 32 forest tree species in China were simulated under current and future climate conditions. The forecasting ensembles were combined to determine final consensual prediction maps for target species using three simple consensus approaches (average, frequency, and median [PCA]). Species’ geographic ranges changed (area change and shifting distance) in response to climate change, but the three consensual projections did not differ significantly with respect to how much or in which direction, but they did differ with respect to the spatial similarity of the three consensual predictions. Incongruent areas were observed primarily at the edges of species’ ranges. Multiple stepwise regression models showed the three factors (niche marginality and specialization, and niche model accuracy) to be related to the observed variations in consensual prediction maps among consensus approaches. Spatial correspondence among prediction maps was the highest when niche model accuracy was high and marginality and specialization were low. The difference in spatial predictions suggested that more attention should be paid to the range of spatial uncertainty before any decisions regarding specialist species can be made based on map outputs. The niche properties and single-model predictive performance provide promising insights that may further understanding of uncertainties in SDM.

The pathogenesis of cardiac hypertrophy is tightly associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Disequilibrium of mitochondrial dynamic is one of the main drivers in the pathological processes during development of various cardiac diseases. However, the effect of mitochondrial dynamics on cardiac hypertrophy remains largely unclear. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that can switch off expression of many genes. Mitochondrial anchored protein ligase (MAPL) is a small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) E3 ligase, which is an important contributor in mitochondrial fission process. In this study, we found that hypertrophic agonist phenylephrine (PE) enhanced the expression of MAPL and promoted mitochondrial fission, while it decreased the expression of mitochondrial fusion protein2 (Mfn2) in hypertrophic cardiomyocytes. Silencing expression of MAPL by siRNA attenuated PE-induced depletion of Mfn2 and increase of mitochondrial fission as well as hypertrophic response in cultured primary cardiomyocytes. MiR-485-5p is screened as a candidate inhibitor of MAPL. Overexpression of miR-485-5p blocked mitochondrial fission and hypertrophy induced by PE through inhibiting MAPL expression and increasing the level of Mfn2 in cultured primary cardiomyocytes. In mice model of cardiac hypertrophy induced by PE, the administration of miR-485-5p agomir significantly decreased the PE induced increase in the expression of MAPL and hypertrophic markers (ANP and β-MHC) along with protection of cardiac structure and function. Together, this study exhibits a novel signaling axis composed of miR-485-5p/MAPL/Mfn2, which regulates mitochondrial machinery and cardiac hypertrophy.

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