Retesting personality in employee selection: Implications of the context, sample, and setting

The present study sought to assess when and how actual job applicants change their responses when filling out an unproctored personality selection assessment for a second time. It was predicted feedback would be a key contextual motivator associated with how much applicants change their answers during the second administration. Mediation results showed that individuals receiving feedback that showed a low score on the personality assessment was the reason they did not get the job were more likely to employ faking response strategies in the second testing session, predicting the highest change in scores between the first and second testing sessions. Individuals receiving no feedback and those not experimentally motivated to fake (i.e., a comparison group of students) showed less change in responses across administrations. © Psychological Reports 2013

Riboswitches Control Fundamental Biochemical Pathways in Bacillus subtilis and Other Bacteria

AbstractRiboswitches are metabolite binding domains within certain messenger RNAs that serve as precision sensors for their corresponding targets. Allosteric rearrangement of mRNA structure is mediated by ligand binding, and this results in modulation of gene expression. We have identified a class of riboswitches that selectively recognizes guanine and becomes saturated at concentrations as low as 5 nM. In Bacillus subtilis, this mRNA motif is located on at least five separate transcriptional units that together encode 17 genes that are mostly involved in purine transport and purine nucleotide biosynthesis. Our findings provide further examples of mRNAs that sense metabolites and that control gene expression without the need for protein factors. Furthermore, it is now apparent that riboswitches contribute to the regulation of numerous fundamental metabolic pathways in certain bacteria

Definitive observation of the dark triplet ground state of charged excitons in high magnetic fields

The ground state of negatively charged excitons (trions) in high magnetic fields is shown to be a dark triplet state, confirming long-standing theoretical predictions. Photoluminescence (PL), reflection, and PL excitation spectroscopy of CdTe quantum wells reveal that the dark triplet trion has lower energy than the singlet trion above 24 Tesla. The singlet-triplet crossover is "hidden" (i.e., the spectral lines themselves do not cross due to different Zeeman energies), but is confirmed by temperature-dependent PL above and below 24 T. The data also show two bright triplet states.Comment: 4 figure

Regional-scale chemical transport modeling in support of the analysis of observations obtained during the TRACE-P experiment

Data obtained during the TRACE-P experiment is used to evaluate how well the CFORS/STEM-2K1 regional-scale chemical transport model is able to represent the aircraft observations. Thirty-one calculated trace gas and aerosol parameters are presented and compared to the in situ data. The regional model is shown to accurately predict many of the important features observed. The mean values of all the model parameters in the lowest 1 km are predicted within ±30% of the observed values. The correlation coefficients (R) for the meteorological parameters are found to be higher than those for the trace species. For example, for temperature, R \u3e 0.98. Among the trace species, ethane, propane, and ozone show the highest values (0.8 \u3c R \u3c 0.9), followed by CO, SO2, and NOy, NO and NO2 had the lowest values (R \u3c 0.4). Analyses of pollutant transport into the Yellow Sea by frontal events are presented and illustrate the complex nature of outflow. Biomass burning from SE Asia is transported in the warm conveyor belt at altitudes above ∼2 km and at latitudes below 30N. Outflow of pollution emitted along the east coast of China in the postfrontal regions is typically confined to the lower ∼2 km and results in high concentrations with plume-like features in the Yellow Sea. During these situations the model underpredicts CO and black carbon (among other species). An analysis of ozone production in this region is also presented. In and around the highly industrialized regions of East Asia, where fossil fuel usage dominates, ozone is NMHC-limited. South of ∼30-35N, ozone production is NOx-limited, reflecting the high NMHC/NOx ratios due to the large contributions to the emissions from biomass burning, biogenics sources, and biofuel usage in central China and SE Asia. Copyright 2003 by the American Geophysical Union

A Model for Developing a Well-Prepared Agricultural Workforce in an International Setting

Abstract Agriculture is an important sector of the economy of Egypt and other North African and Middle Eastern countries. While a system of Agricultural Technical Schools (ATS) is in place i

A regional scale modeling analysis of aerosol and trace gas distributions over the eastern Pacific during the INTEX-B field campaign

The Sulfur Transport and dEposition Model (STEM) is applied to the analysis of observations obtained during the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment-Phase B (INTEX-B), conducted over the eastern Pacific Ocean during spring 2006. Predicted trace gas and aerosol distributions over the Pacific are presented and discussed in terms of transport and source region contributions. Trace species distributions show a strong west (high) to east (low) gradient, with the bulk of the pollutant transport over the central Pacific occurring between similar to 20 degrees N and 50 degrees N in the 2-6 km altitude range. These distributions are evaluated in the eastern Pacific by comparison with the NASA DC-8 and NSF/NCAR C-130 airborne measurements along with observations from the Mt. Bachelor (MBO) surface site. Thirty different meteorological, trace gas and aerosol parameters are compared. In general the meteorological fields are better predicted than gas phase species, which in turn are better predicted than aerosol quantities. PAN is found to be significantly overpredicted over the eastern Pacific, which is attributed to uncertainties in the chemical reaction mechanisms used in current atmospheric chemistry models in general and to the specifically high PAN production in the SAPRC-99 mechanism used in the regional model. A systematic underprediction of the elevated sulfate layer in the eastern Pacific observed by the C-130 is another issue that is identified and discussed. Results from source region tagged CO simulations are used to estimate how the different source regions around the Pacific contribute to the trace gas species distributions. During this period the largest contributions were from China and from fires in South/Southeast and North Asia. For the C-130 flights, which operated off the coast of the Northwest US, the regional CO contributions range as follows: China (35%), South/Southeast Asia fires (35%), North America anthropogenic (20%), and North Asia fires (10%). The transport of pollution into the western US is studied at MBO and a variety of events with elevated Asian dust, and periods with contributions from China and fires from both Asia and North America are discussed. The role of heterogeneous chemistry on the composition over the eastern Pacific is also studied. The impacts of heterogeneous reactions at specific times can be significant, increasing sulfate and nitrate aerosol production and reducing gas phase nitric acid levels appreciably (~50%)

From toothpick legs to dropping vaginas: Gender and sexuality in Joan Rivers' stand-up comedy performance

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 Intellect.This article employs sociocultural analysis to examine Joan Rivers’ stand-up comedy performances in order to reveal how she successfully operates in a sphere of artistic expression that has been, and continues to be, male-dominated. The analysis uncovers how Rivers’ stand-up comedy performance involves a complex combination of elements and how it fuses features that are regarded as ‘traditionally masculine’, such as aggression, with features frequently used by other female stand-up comedians, such as self-deprecating comedy and confessional comedy. Furthermore, the analysis exposes the complex ways in which constructions of gender and sexuality are negotiated and re-negotiated in Rivers’ stand-up comedy performance, and illustrates how dominant ideological identity constructions can be simultaneously reinforced and subverted within the same comic moment

Mechanisms of Cognitive Impairment in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease: Multimodal MRI Results from the St George's Cognition and Neuroimaging in Stroke (SCANS) Study.

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is a common cause of vascular cognitive impairment. A number of disease features can be assessed on MRI including lacunar infarcts, T2 lesion volume, brain atrophy, and cerebral microbleeds. In addition, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is sensitive to disruption of white matter ultrastructure, and recently it has been suggested that additional information on the pattern of damage may be obtained from axial diffusivity, a proposed marker of axonal damage, and radial diffusivity, an indicator of demyelination. We determined the contribution of these whole brain MRI markers to cognitive impairment in SVD. Consecutive patients with lacunar stroke and confluent leukoaraiosis were recruited into the ongoing SCANS study of cognitive impairment in SVD (n = 115), and underwent neuropsychological assessment and multimodal MRI. SVD subjects displayed poor performance on tests of executive function and processing speed. In the SVD group brain volume was lower, white matter hyperintensity volume higher and all diffusion characteristics differed significantly from control subjects (n = 50). On multi-predictor analysis independent predictors of executive function in SVD were lacunar infarct count and diffusivity of normal appearing white matter on DTI. Independent predictors of processing speed were lacunar infarct count and brain atrophy. Radial diffusivity was a stronger DTI predictor than axial diffusivity, suggesting ischaemic demyelination, seen neuropathologically in SVD, may be an important predictor of cognitive impairment in SVD. Our study provides information on the mechanism of cognitive impairment in SVD

Spontaneous mutation accumulation in multiple strains of the green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Estimates of mutational parameters, such as the average fitness effect of a new mutation and the rate at which new genetic variation for fitness is created by mutation, are important for the understanding of many biological processes. However, the causes of interspecific variation in mutational parameters and the extent to which they vary within species remain largely unknown. We maintained multiple strains of the unicellular eukaryote Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, for approximately 1000 generations under relaxed selection by transferring a single cell every ∼10 generations. Mean fitness of the lines tended to decline with generations of mutation accumulation whereas mutational variance increased. We did not find any evidence for differences among strains in any of the mutational parameters estimated. The overall change in mean fitness per cell division and rate of input of mutational variance per cell division were more similar to values observed in multicellular organisms than to those in other single-celled microbes. However, after taking into account differences in genome size among species, estimates from multicellular organisms and microbes, including our new estimates from C. reinhardtii, become substantially more similar. Thus, we suggest that variation in genome size is an important determinant of interspecific variation in mutational parameters