Sexual conflict

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Evolutionary conflict arises from differences in the fitness interests of replicating entities and has its roots in relatedness asymmetries. Every replicator is related to itself by 100%, but in most cases is less related to other replicators, which generates selfishness and conflicts of interest. Since this basic condition is the norm at many levels of biological organization, conflict is rife in biological systems. Sexual conflict, on which we focus here, is the evolutionary conflict that occurs between males and females because of their divergent fitness interests. Sexual conflict occurs despite sexual reproduction requiring some level of cooperation between males and females because the fitness interests of the sexes are nevertheless never perfectly aligned. In other words, males and females may agree on where they are going, but not necessarily on how to get there. Sexual conflict is a vast topic with relevance to many areas of biology and so here we restrict our focus to matters we think are of broadest interest. Hosken et al. introduce sexual conflict

Inspiratory muscle responses to sudden airway occlusion in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Brief airway occlusion produces a potent reflex inhibition of inspiratory muscles that is thought to protect against aspiration. Its duration is prolonged in asthma and obstructive sleep apnea. We assessed this inhibitory reflex (IR) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Reflex responses to brief (250 ms) inspiratory occlusions were measured in 18 participants with moderate to severe COPD (age 73 ± 11 yr) and 17 healthy age-matched controls (age 72 ± 6 yr). We compared the incidence and properties of the IR between groups. Median eupneic preocclusion electromyographic activity was higher in the COPD group than controls (9.4 μV vs. 5.2 μV, P = 0.001). Incidence of the short-latency IR was higher in the COPD group compared with controls (15 participants vs. 7 participants, P = 0.010). IR duration for scalenes was similar for the COPD and control groups [73 ± 37 ms (means ± SD) and 90 ± 50 ms, respectively] as was the magnitude of inhibition. IRs in the diaphragm were not detected in the controls but were present in 9 participants of the COPD group (P = 0.001). The higher incidence of the IR in the COPD group than in the age-matched controls may reflect the increased inspiratory neural drive in the COPD group. This higher drive counteracts changes in chest wall and lung mechanics. However, when present, the reflex was similar in size and duration in the two groups. The relation between the IR in COPD and swallowing function could be assessed. NEW & NOTEWORTHY A potent short-latency reflex inhibition of inspiratory muscles produced by airway occlusion was tested in people with COPD and age-matched controls. The reflex was more prevalent in COPD, presumably due to an increased neural drive to breathe. When present, the reflex was similar in duration in the two groups, longer than historical data for younger control groups. The work reveals novel differences in reflex control of inspiratory muscles due to aging as well as COPD

Expanding the parameters of academia

This paper draws on qualitative data gathered from two studies funded by the UK Leadership Foundation for Higher Education to examine the expansion of academic identities in higher education. It builds on Whitchurch’s earlier work, which focused primarily on professional staff, to suggest that the emergence of broadly based projects such as widening participation, learning support and community partnership is also impacting on academic identities. Thus, academic as well as professional staff are increasingly likely to work in multi-professional teams across a variety of constituencies, as well as with external partners, and the binary distinction between ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ roles and activities is no longer clear-cut. Moreover, there is evidence from the studies of an intentionality about deviations from mainstream academic career routes among respondents who could have gone either way. Consideration is therefore given to factors that influence individuals to work in more project-oriented areas, as well as to variables that affect ways in which these roles and identities develop. Finally, three models of academically oriented project activity are identified, and the implications of an expansion of academic identities are reviewed

Climate Dynamics: A Network-Based Approach for the Analysis of Global Precipitation

Precipitation is one of the most important meteorological variables for defining the climate dynamics, but the spatial patterns of precipitation have not been fully investigated yet. The complex network theory, which provides a robust tool to investigate the statistical interdependence of many interacting elements, is used here to analyze the spatial dynamics of annual precipitation over seventy years (1941-2010). The precipitation network is built associating a node to a geographical region, which has a temporal distribution of precipitation, and identifying possible links among nodes through the correlation function. The precipitation network reveals significant spatial variability with barely connected regions, as Eastern China and Japan, and highly connected regions, such as the African Sahel, Eastern Australia and, to a lesser extent, Northern Europe. Sahel and Eastern Australia are remarkably dry regions, where low amounts of rainfall are uniformly distributed on continental scales and small-scale extreme events are rare. As a consequence, the precipitation gradient is low, making these regions well connected on a large spatial scale. On the contrary, the Asiatic South-East is often reached by extreme events such as monsoons, tropical cyclones and heat waves, which can all contribute to reduce the correlation to the short-range scale only. Some patterns emerging between mid-latitude and tropical regions suggest a possible impact of the propagation of planetary waves on precipitation at a global scale. Other links can be qualitatively associated to the atmospheric and oceanic circulation. To analyze the sensitivity of the network to the physical closeness of the nodes, short-term connections are broken. The African Sahel, Eastern Australia and Northern Europe regions again appear as the supernodes of the network, confirming furthermore their long-range connection structure. Almost all North-American and Asian nodes vanish, revealing that extreme events can enhance high precipitation gradients, leading to a systematic absence of long-range patterns

Quantum Gravity in 2+1 Dimensions: The Case of a Closed Universe

In three spacetime dimensions, general relativity drastically simplifies, becoming a ``topological'' theory with no propagating local degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, many of the difficult conceptual problems of quantizing gravity are still present. In this review, I summarize the rather large body of work that has gone towards quantizing (2+1)-dimensional vacuum gravity in the setting of a spatially closed universe.Comment: 61 pages, draft of review for Living Reviews; comments, criticisms, additions, missing references welcome; v2: minor changes, added reference

The Development of a Point of Care Clinical Guidelines Mobile Application Following a User-Centred Design Approach

This paper describes the development of a point of care clinical guidelines mobile application. A user-centred design approach was utilised to inform the design of a smartphone application, this included: Observations; a survey; focus groups and an analysis of popular apps utilised by clinicians in a UK NHS Trust. Usability testing was conducted to inform iterations of the application, which presents clinicians with a variety of integrated tools to aid in decision making and information retrieval. The study found that clinicians use a mixture of technology to retrieve information, which is often inefficient or has poor usability. It also shows that smartphone application development for use in UK hospitals needs to consider the variety of users and their clinical knowledge and work pattern. This study highlights the need for applying user-centred design methods in the design of information presented to clinicians and the need for clinical information delivery that is efficient and easy to use at the bedside

The General Age of Leadership: Older-Looking Presidential Candidates Win Elections during War

As nation-state leaders age they increasingly engage in inter-state militarized disputes yet in industrialized societies a steady decrease in testosterone associated with aging is observed – which suggests a decrease in dominance behavior. The current paper points out that from modern societies to Old World monkeys increasing both in age and social status encourages dominant strategies to maintain acquired rank. Moreover, it is argued this consistency has shaped an implicit prototype causing followers to associate older age with dominance leadership. It is shown that (i) faces of older leaders are preferred during intergroup conflict and (ii) morphing U.S. Presidential candidates to appear older or younger has an overriding effect on actual election outcomes. This indicates that democratic voting can be systematically adjusted by activating innate biases. These findings appear to create a new line of research regarding the biology of leadership and contextual cues of age