Cannabinoid signalling in TNF-alpha induced IL-8 release

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00142999 Copyright Elsevier B.V. DOI : 10.1016/j.ejphar.2006.04.015Peer reviewe

An ecological analysis of prison overcrowding and suicide rates in England and Wales, 2000-2014

Prisoners are at a greatly increased risk of suicides compared to the general population. Differences in suicide risk can be partly explained by individual risk factors, but the contribution of prison characteristics remains unclear. Overcrowded prisons have higher suicide rates, but this may be related to prison function, security level, population size and turnover. The aim of the current study was to investigate the contribution of each of these prison characteristics to suicide rates, using data from the Ministry of Justice for adult prisons in England and Wales from 2000 to 2014. Negative binomial regression analysis showed that larger population size, higher turnover, higher security and public management were associated with higher suicide rates. When controlling for these factors, overcrowding was not found to be related to suicide rates. Questions remain about the causal mechanisms underlying variation in prison suicides and the impact of the lived experience of overcrowding. Further research is needed to examine the relative contribution of prison and prisoner characteristics to suicides.Criminal Justice: Legitimacy, accountability, and effectivit

Disentangling the effects of plant species invasion and urban development on arthropod community composition

Urban development and species invasion are two major global threats to biodiversity. These threats often co-occur, as developed areas are more prone to species invasion. However, few empirical studies have tested if both factors affect biodiversity in similar ways. Here we study the individual and combined effects of urban development and plant invasion on the composition of arthropod communities. We assessed 36 paired invaded and non-invaded sample plots, invaded by the plant Antigonon leptopus, with half of these pairs located in natural and the other half in developed land-use types on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. We used several taxonomic and functional variables to describe community composition and diversity. Our results show that both urban development and A. leptopus invasion affected community composition, albeit in different ways. Development significantly increased species richness and exponential Shannon diversity, while invasion had no effect on these variables. However, invasion significantly increased arthropod abundance and caused biotic homogenization. Specifically, uninvaded arthropod communities were distinctly different in species composition between developed and natural sites, while they became undistinguishable after A. leptopus invasion. Moreover, functional variables were significantly affected by species invasion, but not by urban development. Invaded communities had higher community-weighted mean body size and the feeding guild composition of invaded arthropod communities was characterized by the exceptional numbers of nectarivores, herbivores, and detritivores. With the exception of species richness and exponential Shannon diversity, invasion influenced four out of six response variables to a greater degree than urban development did. Hence, we can conclude that species invasion is not just a passenger of urban development but also a driver of change

The Evolution of Facultative Conformity Based on Similarity

Conformist social learning can have a pronounced impact on the cultural evolution of human societies, and it can shape both the genetic and cultural evolution of human social behavior more broadly. Conformist social learning is beneficial when the social learner and the demonstrators from whom she learns are similar in the sense that the same behavior is optimal for both. Otherwise, the social learner's optimum is likely to be rare among demonstrators, and conformity is costly. The trade-off between these two situations has figured prominently in the longstanding debate about the evolution of conformity, but the importance of the trade-off can depend critically on the flexibility of one's social learning strategy. We developed a gene-culture coevolutionary model that allows cognition to encode and process information about the similarity between naive learners and experienced demonstrators. Facultative social learning strategies that condition on perceived similarity evolve under certain circumstances. When this happens, facultative adjustments are often asymmetric. Asymmetric adjustments mean that the tendency to follow the majority when learners perceive demonstrators as similar is stronger than the tendency to follow the minority when learners perceive demonstrators as different. In an associated incentivized experiment, we found that social learners adjusted how they used social information based on perceived similarity, but adjustments were symmetric. The symmetry of adjustments completely eliminated the commonly assumed trade-off between cases in which learners and demonstrators share an optimum versus cases in which they do not. In a second experiment that maximized the potential for social learners to follow their preferred strategies, a few social learners exhibited an inclination to follow the majority. Most, however, did not respond systematically to social information. Additionally, in the complete absence of information about their similarity to demonstrators, social learners were unwilling to make assumptions about whether they shared an optimum with demonstrators. Instead, social learners simply ignored social information even though this was the only information available. Our results suggest that social cognition equips people to use conformity in a discriminating fashion that moderates the evolutionary trade-offs that would occur if conformist social learning was rigidly applied

Large body size constrains dispersal assembly of communities even across short distances

International audienc