A standardized list of behaviors was recorded as observed or absent for both conditions with each dog serving as its own control. To calculate the agreement of individual behaviors between the two conditions, Cohen’s Kappa was used. However, since many of the behaviors occurred at very low or high-frequency-rates, Prevalence-Adjusted, Bias-Adjusted Kappa (PABAK) was used along with Cohen’s

Kappa selleck chemicals due to Cohen’s Kappa’s sensitivity to high or low prevalence, for which PABAK adjusts. For the purposes of this study, PABAK or Kappa scores greater than 0.61 were considered an indicator of a good degree of agreement between reactions toward the fake and the real dogs. The degree of agreement varied widely across individual behaviors with, Kappa ranging from -0.04 to 0.75 and PABAK from 0.29 to I. Collapsing individual behaviors into behavior traits (e.g., friendly, aggressive, fearful) revealed a high degree of agreement for the friendly trait (Kappa = 0.60, PABAK = 0.69). However, the aggressive trait did not demonstrate adequate agreement (Kappa = 0.11 and PABAK = 0.38) and the fearful trait demonstrated only moderate agreement between the two stimulus conditions (Kappa = 0.50 and

PABAK = 0.51). These results suggest that, while it may be APR-246 possible to use a fake dog for the dog-to-dog subtest to assess friendly behavior toward other dogs, fearful and aggressive behaviors may not be consistent between the fake and real dogs, thus limiting the usefulness of the fake dog during behavior evaluations. In addition, the results of this study suggest more research is needed into the predictive validity of both fake and real

dogs, since it appears the stimulus dog, whether fake or real, can influence the subtest’s results. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.”
“Adjacent alternative 3′ splice sites, those separated by smaller than = 18 nucleotides, provide a unique problem in the study of alternative splicing regulation; there is overlap of the cis-elements that define the adjacent sites. Identification of the intron’s 3′ end depends upon sequence elements that define the branchpoint, polypyrimidine tract, and terminal AG dinucleotide. Starting with RNA-seq data this website from germline-enriched and somatic cell-enriched Caenorhabditis elegans samples, we identify hundreds of introns with adjacent alternative 3′ splice sites. We identify 203 events that undergo tissue-specific alternative splicing. For these, the regulation is monodirectional, with somatic cells preferring to splice at the distal 3′ splice site (furthest from the 5′ end of the intron) and germline cells showing a distinct shift toward usage of the adjacent proximal 3′ splice site (closer to the 5′ end of the intron). Splicing patterns in somatic cells follow C. elegans consensus rules of 3′ splice site definition; a short stretch of pyrimidines preceding an AG dinucleotide.