A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection

Background  

Alignment of RNA secondary structures is important in studying functional RNA motifs. In recent years, much progress has been made in RNA motif finding and structure alignment. However, existing tools either require a large number of prealigned structures or suffer from high time complexities. This makes it difficult for the tools to process RNAs whose prealigned structures are unavailable or process very large RNA structure databases.     

Olfactory memory: the long and short of it

It has been proposed that memory for odors does not have a short-term (or working) memory system. The distinction between short- and long- term memory in other sensory modalities has been generally supported by three main lines of evidence: capacity differences between the proposed systems, evidence of differential coding, and differential memory losses in neuropsychological patients. The present paper examines these issues in an effort to establish a similar distinction for the memory of olfactory stimuli. Each of these lines of evidence is examined in relation to the literature on olfactory memory. Based on this examination, it seems that there is at least preliminary support from each of these lines of evidence to advocate a distinction between a long- and short-term memory for olfactory stimuli. Emphasis is placed upon the qualitative similarity of olfactory memory to other memory systems. This similarity is further highlighted through an examination of the literature pertinent to serial position effects in memory for olfactory stimuli.