Geochemistry of the pre/syn-metamorphic granite in the Ongul Islands, East Antarctica

Latest Proterozoic to Early Paleozoic pre/syn- and post-metamorphic granites occur in the Lutzow-Holm Complex (LHC), East Antarctica. The pre/syn-metamorphic granites in the Ongul Islands consist of biotite hornblende (BH) granite and garnet biotite hornblende (GBH) granite. The Rb-Sr whole rock isochron age of 580±23Ma with an initial ^(87)Sr/^(86)Sr ratio of 0.70784±0.00059 is obtained from the BH granite. This age is slightly older than SHRIMP U-Pb zircon and CHIME monazite metamorphic ages (520-550Ma) from the complex. The BH granite has lower aluminum saturation index than the GBH granite. The pre/syn-metamorphic granites have a wide variation of εSr and εNd values at 580m.y. before the present, and the BH granite has lower εSr_(580Ma) and higher εNd_(580Ma) values than the GBH granite. One end of the variations in the ε diagram is close to the values of the mafic to intermediate metamorphic rocks in the island; the other is close to those of the old continental crust. These geochemical and isotopic features suggest that the PSMGs were originated by mixing between magma derived from mafic to intermediate metamorphic rocks and old continental crust

Cohort Profile: The AGES 2003 Cohort Study in Aichi, Japan

Background: The longevity of Japanese is thought to be associated with psychosocial factors such as sense of coherence, social support, and social capital. However, the actual factors responsible and the extent of their contribution to individual health status are not known. Methods: The Aichi Gerontological Evaluation Study (AGES) 2003 Cohort Study is a prospective cohort study of community-dwelling, activities of daily living-independent people aged 65 or older living in 6 municipalities in Chita peninsula, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Information on psychosocial factors and other individual- and community-level factors was collected in the second half of 2003 using a baseline questionnaire. Vital status and physical and cognitive decline have been followed using data derived from long-term care insurance certification. Geographical information on the study participants was also obtained. Results: A total of 13 310 (6508 men; 6802 women) study participants were registered in the study. For an interim report, we followed the cohort for 48 months, yielding 24 753 person-years of observation among men and 26 456 person-years among women. Conclusions: The AGES 2003 Cohort Study provides useful evidence for research in social epidemiology, gerontology, and health services

Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism.

Clinical evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. However, less was known about whether mindfulness meditation might alter pro-social behavior. Here we examined whether mindfulness meditation activates human altruism, a component of social cooperation. Using a simple donation game, which is a real-world version of the Dictator's Game, we randomly assigned 326 subjects to a mindfulness meditation online session or control and measured their willingness to donate a portion of their payment for participation as a charitable donation. Subjects who underwent the meditation treatment donated at a 2.61 times higher rate than the control (p = 0.005), after controlling for socio-demographics. We also found a larger treatment effect of meditation among those who did not go to college (p < 0.001) and those who were under 25 years of age (p < 0.001), with both subject groups contributing virtually nothing in the control condition. Our results imply high context modularity of human altruism and the development of intervention approaches including mindfulness meditation to increase social cooperation, especially among subjects with low baseline willingness to contribute

Social environment shapes the speed of cooperation

Are cooperative decisions typically made more quickly or slowly than non-cooperative decisions? While this question has attracted considerable attention in recent years, most research has focused on one-shot interactions. Yet it is repeated interactions that characterize most important real-world social interactions. In repeated interactions, the cooperativeness of one’s interaction partners (the “social environment”) should affect the speed of cooperation. Specifically, we propose that reciprocal decisions (choices that mirror behavior observed in the social environment), rather than cooperative decisions per se, occur more quickly. We test this hypothesis by examining four independent decision time datasets with a total of 2,088 subjects making 55,968 decisions. We show that reciprocal decisions are consistently faster than non-reciprocal decisions: cooperation is faster than defection in cooperative environments, while defection is faster than cooperation in non-cooperative environments. These differences are further enhanced by subjects’ previous behavior – reciprocal decisions are faster when they are consistent with the subject’s previous choices. Finally, mediation analyses of a fifth dataset suggest that the speed of reciprocal decisions is explained, in part, by feelings of conflict – reciprocal decisions are less conflicted than non-reciprocal decisions, and less decision conflict appears to lead to shorter decision times

How the Use of Curriculum Resources Explains Inter-Teacher Differences in Lesson Planning

This study concerned teacher education in mathematics―specifically, curriculum resources (textbooks and other media that teachers use when planning a lesson or delivering classroom instruction). Four levels of curriculum resources (media) were identified, and the concept of “translation” was adopted to describe the process in which a medium at a higher level is replaced by a medium at a lower level. A survey was conducted among 15 trainee teachers in t he 2019 academic year. The purpose of the survey was to examine inter-teacher differences in lesson planning; particularly, the media the teachers used in their translations, the order in which they used the media, and how each medium shaped the translation process. The results revealed that (1) the trainee teachers simulated the actions of the textbook authors or students and that (2) the functions of the media changed after a translation was performed. These findings imply that differences in lesson planning can be explained by differences in the type of media translated, the order in which they are used, and the way the media are used

Induced cancer stem-like cells as a model for biological screening and discovery of agents targeting phenotypic traits of cancer stem cell

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) retain the capacity to propagate themselves through self-renewal and to produce heterogeneous lineages of cancer cells constituting the tumor. Novel drugs that target CSCs can potentially eliminate the tumor initiating cell population therefore resulting in complete cure of the cancer. We recently established a CSC-like model using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology to reprogram and partially differentiate human mammary epithelial MCF-10A cells. Using the induced CSC-like (iCSCL) model, we developed a phenotypic drug assay system to identify agents that inhibit the stemness and self-renewal properties of CSCs. The selectivity of the agents was assessed using three distinct assays characterized by cell viability, cellular stemness and tumor sphere formation. Using this approach, we found that withaferin A (WA), an Ayurvedic medicine constituent, was a potent inhibitor of CSC stemness leading to cellular senescence primarily via the induction of p21Cip1 expression. Moreover, WA exhibited strong anti-tumorigenic activity against the iCSCL. These results indicate that our iCSCL model provides an innovative high throughput platform for a simple, easy, and cost-effective method to search for novel CSC-targeting drugs. Furthermore, our current study identified WA as a putative drug candidate for abrogating the stemness and tumor initiating ability of CSCs