Pet

A pet or companion animal is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or protection, as opposed to working animals, sport animals, livestock, and laboratory animals, which are kept primarily for performance, agricultural value, or research. The most popular pets are noted for their attractive appearances and their loyal or playful personalities.

Pets commonly provide their owners (or guardians) physical and emotional benefits. Walking a dog can supply both the human and pet with exercise, fresh air, and social interaction. Pets can give companionship to elderly adults who do not have adequate social interaction with other people, as well as other people that are living alone. There is a medically approved class of therapy animals, mostly dogs or cats, that are brought to visit confined humans. Pet therapy utilizes trained animals and handlers to achieve specific physical, social, cognitive, and emotional goals with patients.

The most popular pets are likely dogs and cats, but people also keep house rabbits, ferrets; rodents such as gerbils, hamsters, chinchillas, fancy rats, and guinea pigs; avian pets, such as canaries, parakeets, and parrots; reptile pets, such as turtles, lizards and snakes; aquatic pets, such as goldfish, tropical fish and frogs; and arthropod pets, such as tarantulas and hermit crabs.

Pets (song)

Pets is a song by alternative rock band Porno for Pyros and the second single from their 1993 self-titled album Porno for Pyros. The Cursed Female / Cursed Male single preceded Pets, but saw only a limited radio station and promotional release making Pets the first widely available commercial single from the album.

The song became a #1 hit on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song's success was aided, in part, by a unique video directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (they would later direct the critically acclaimed film Little Miss Sunshine) which received heavy rotation on MTV.

Music

"Pets" deals with dissatisfaction with the human race ("Adults are even more fucked up") and how the human race is on the brink of destruction ("My friend says we're like the dinosaurs only we are doing ourselves in much faster than they ever did"). The song then describes how maybe aliens will be able to take over for us, and then states that we would make great pets to our overlords.

Product bundling

In marketing, product bundling is offering several products for sale as one combined product. It is a common feature in many imperfectly competitive product markets. Industries engaged in the practice include telecommunications, financial services, health care, and information. A software bundle might include a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program into a single office suite. The cable television industry often bundles channels into a single tier. The fast food industry combines separate food items into a complete meal. A bundle of products may be called a package deal, a compilation or an anthology.

Most firms are multi-product companies faced with the decision whether to sell products or services separately at individual prices or whether combinations of products should be marketed in the form of "bundles" for which a "bundle price" is asked. Price bundling plays an increasingly important role in many industries (e.g. banking, insurance, software, automotive) and some companies even build their business strategies on bundling. In a bundle pricing, companies sell a package or set of goods or services for a lower price than they would charge if the customer bought all of them separately. Pursuing a bundle pricing strategy allows you to increase your profit by giving customers a discount.

Mad (Ne-Yo song)

"Mad" is a song by American pop/R&B singer Ne-Yo. It is the third single from his album Year of the Gentleman and was produced by Stargate and himself.

Music video

The video for the song was directed by Diane Martel. It premiered on AOL on November 25, 2008. The video, shot in black and white, presents a narrative wherein Ne-Yo argues with his girlfriend (played by Faune Chambers). After leaving, in an attempt to save a child from a car accident, someone is fatally hit. At the end of the video, it is revealed that the whole time it has been the ghost of Ne-Yo's character singing, and that it was he who was killed. The video to this song is Part 2 to his song Part of the List.

The music video appears to mirror the 1999 American thriller The Sixth Sense from M. Night Shyamalan, in which Bruce Willis plays a psychologist who is shot by an estranged patient of his. Based on how the film was shot and portrayed, Bruce Willis is shown in many situations as if he is there physically, when in actuality he was murdered by his patient, just as how Ne-Yo appears with his girlfriend, seeming to be there physically and that she is ignoring him due to their earlier argument, when he is actually dead.

Mad1

Mad1 is a non-essential protein in yeast which has a function in the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC). This checkpoint monitors chromosome attachment to spindle microtubules and prevents cells from starting anaphase until the spindle is built up. The name Mad refers to the observation that mutant cells are mitotic arrest deficient (MAD) during microtubule depolymerization. Mad1 recruits the anaphase inhibitor Mad2 to unattached kinetochores and is essential for Mad2-Cdc20 complex formation in vivo but not in vitro. In vivo, Mad1 acts as a competitive inhibitor of the Mad2-Cdc20 complex. Mad1 is phosphorylated by Mps1 which then leads together with other activities to the formation of the mitotic checkpoint complex (MCC). Thereby it inhibits the activity of the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C). Homolog’s of Mad1 are conserved in eukaryotes from yeast to mammals.

Introduction

In the early 90s, yeast genes were identified which mutations resulted in a defect in mitotic arrest in response to microtubule disassembly (mitotic arrest deficient genes - MAD genes). This cells showed during division no mitotic arrest in the presence of microtubule polymerization inhibitors and were therefore not able to delay cell division. The genes identified included the MAD1, MAD2 and MAD3 genes. They are conserved in all eukaryotes and are involved in a pathway that is active in prometaphase to prevent the premature separation of sister chromatids and constitute the so-called spindle assembly checkpoint(SAC). This checkpoint monitors the status of chromosome attachment to the mitotic spindle and inhibits the metaphase to anaphase transition by preventing the activation of the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C), and thereby the degradation of cell cycle regulators. Mad1 is in this pathway accumulated at unattached kinetochores and acts as a sensor for unattached kinetochores in this machinery.

Mad2

Mad2 (mitotic arrest deficient 2) is an essential spindle checkpoint protein. The spindle checkpoint system is a regulatory system that restrains progression through the metaphase-to-anaphase transition. The Mad2 gene was first identified in the yeast S. cerevisiae in a screen for genes which when mutated would confer sensitivity to microtubule poisons. The human orthologues of Mad2 (MAD2L1 and MAD2L2) were first cloned in a search for human cDNAs that would rescue the microtubule poison-sensitivity of a yeast strain in which a kinetochore binding protein was missing. The protein was shown to be present at unattached kinetochores and antibody inhibition studies demonstrated it was essential to execute a block in the metaphase-to-anaphase transition in response to the microtubule poison nocodazole. Subsequent cloning of the Xenopus laevis orthologue, facilitated by the sharing of the human sequence, allowed for the characterization of the mitotic checkpoint in egg extracts.

Metaphase-to-anaphase transition

Animal

Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). All animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently, at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance.

Most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals are divided into various sub-groups, some of which are: vertebrates (birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish); molluscs (clams, oysters, octopuses, squid, snails); arthropods (millipedes, centipedes, insects, spiders, scorpions, crabs, lobsters, shrimp); annelids (earthworms, leeches); sponges; and jellyfish.

Etymology

The word "animal" comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, having soul or living being. In everyday non-scientific usage the word excludes humans – that is, "animal" is often used to refer only to non-human members of the kingdom Animalia; often, only closer relatives of humans such as mammals, or mammals and other vertebrates, are meant. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans.