Attachment styles and personal growth following romantic breakups: The mediating roles of distress, rumination, and tendency to rebound

© 2013 Marshall et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The purpose of this research was to examine the associations of attachment anxiety and avoidance with personal growth following relationship dissolution, and to test breakup distress, rumination, and tendency to rebound with new partners as mediators of these associations. Study 1 (N = 411) and Study 2 (N = 465) measured attachment style, breakup distress, and personal growth; Study 2 additionally measured ruminative reflection, brooding, and proclivity to rebound with new partners. Structural equation modelling revealed in both studies that anxiety was indirectly associated with greater personal growth through heightened breakup distress, whereas avoidance was indirectly associated with lower personal growth through inhibited breakup distress. Study 2 further showed that the positive association of breakup distress with personal growth was accounted for by enhanced reflection and brooding, and that anxious individuals’ greater personal growth was also explained by their proclivity to rebound. These findings suggest that anxious individuals’ hyperactivated breakup distress may act as a catalyst for personal growth by promoting the cognitive processing of breakup-related thoughts and emotions, whereas avoidant individuals’ deactivated distress may inhibit personal growth by suppressing this cognitive work

A Plant DJ-1 Homolog Is Essential for Arabidopsis thaliana Chloroplast Development

Protein superfamilies can exhibit considerable diversification of function among their members in various organisms. The DJ-1 superfamily is composed of proteins that are principally involved in stress response and are widely distributed in all kingdoms of life. The model flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana contains three close homologs of animal DJ-1, all of which are tandem duplications of the DJ-1 domain. Consequently, the plant DJ-1 homologs are likely pseudo-dimeric proteins composed of a single polypeptide chain. We report that one A. thaliana DJ-1 homolog (AtDJ1C) is the first DJ-1 homolog in any organism that is required for viability. Homozygous disruption of the AtDJ1C gene results in non-viable, albino seedlings that can be complemented by expression of wild-type or epitope-tagged AtDJ1C. The plastids from these dj1c plants lack thylakoid membranes and granal stacks, indicating that AtDJ1C is required for proper chloroplast development. AtDJ1C is expressed early in leaf development when chloroplasts mature, but is downregulated in older tissue, consistent with a proposed role in plastid development. In addition to its plant-specific function, AtDJ1C is an atypical member of the DJ-1 superfamily that lacks a conserved cysteine residue that is required for the functions of most other superfamily members. The essential role for AtDJ1C in chloroplast maturation expands the known functional diversity of the DJ-1 superfamily and provides the first evidence of a role for specialized DJ-1-like proteins in eukaryotic development

Genome-Wide Interrogation of Mammalian Stem Cell Fate Determinants by Nested Chromosome Deletions

Understanding the function of important DNA elements in mammalian stem cell genomes would be enhanced by the availability of deletion collections in which segmental haploidies are precisely characterized. Using a modified Cre-loxP–based system, we now report the creation and characterization of a collection of ∼1,300 independent embryonic stem cell (ESC) clones enriched for nested chromosomal deletions. Mapping experiments indicate that this collection spans over 25% of the mouse genome with good representative coverage of protein-coding genes, regulatory RNAs, and other non-coding sequences. This collection of clones was screened for in vitro defects in differentiation of ESC into embryoid bodies (EB). Several putative novel haploinsufficient regions, critical for EB development, were identified. Functional characterization of one of these regions, through BAC complementation, identified the ribosomal gene Rps14 as a novel haploinsufficient determinant of embryoid body formation. This new library of chromosomal deletions in ESC (DelES: http://bioinfo.iric.ca/deles) will serve as a unique resource for elucidation of novel protein-coding and non-coding regulators of ESC activity

A life course examination of the physical environmental determinants of physical activity behaviour: A “Determinants of Diet and Physical Activity” (DEDIPAC) umbrella systematic literature review.

Background: Participation in regular physical activity is associated with a multitude of health benefits across the life course. However, many people fail to meet PA recommendations. Despite a plethora of studies, the evidence regarding the environmental (physical) determinants of physical activity remains inconclusive. Objective: To identify the physical environmental determinants that influence PA across the life course. Methods: An online systematic literature search was conducted using MEDLINE, ISI Web of Science, Scopus and SPORTDiscus. The search was limited to studies published in English (January 2004 to April 2016). Only systematic literature reviews (SLRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) of observational studies, that investigated the association between physical determinants and physical activity outcomes, were eligible for inclusion. The extracted data were assessed on the importance of determinants, strength of evidence and methodological quality. Results: The literature search identified 28 SLRs and 3 MAs on 67 physical environmental characteristics potentially related to physical activity that were eligible for inclusion. Among preschool children, a positive association was reported between availability of backyard space and outdoor toys/equipment in the home and overall physical activity. The availability of physical activity programs and equipment within schools, and neighbourhood features such as pedestrian and cyclist safety structure were positively associated with physical activity in children and adolescents. Negative street characteristics, for example, lack of sidewalks and streetlights, were negatively associated with physical activity in adults. Inconsistent associations were reported for the majority of reviewed determinants in adults. Conclusion: This umbrella SLR provided a comprehensive overview of the physical environment determinants of physical activity across the life course and has highlighted, particularly amongst youth, a number of key determinants that may be associated with overall physical activity. Given the limited evidence drawn mostly from cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies are needed to further explore these associations

Legal linked data ecosystems and the rule of law

This chapter introduces the notions of meta-rule of law and socio-legal ecosystems to both foster and regulate linked democracy. It explores the way of stimulating innovative regulations and building a regulatory quadrant for the rule of law. The chapter summarises briefly (i) the notions of responsive, better and smart regulation; (ii) requirements for legal interchange languages (legal interoperability); (iii) and cognitive ecology approaches. It shows how the protections of the substantive rule of law can be embedded into the semantic languages of the web of data and reflects on the conditions that make possible their enactment and implementation as a socio-legal ecosystem. The chapter suggests in the end a reusable multi-levelled meta-model and four notions of legal validity: positive, composite, formal, and ecological

A methodology for exploring biomarker – phenotype associations: application to flow cytometry data and systemic sclerosis clinical manifestations

BACKGROUND: This work seeks to develop a methodology for identifying reliable biomarkers of disease activity, progression and outcome through the identification of significant associations between high-throughput flow cytometry (FC) data and interstitial lung disease (ILD) - a systemic sclerosis (SSc, or scleroderma) clinical phenotype which is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in SSc. A specific aim of the work involves developing a clinically useful screening tool that could yield accurate assessments of disease state such as the risk or presence of SSc-ILD, the activity of lung involvement and the likelihood to respond to therapeutic intervention. Ultimately this instrument could facilitate a refined stratification of SSc patients into clinically relevant subsets at the time of diagnosis and subsequently during the course of the disease and thus help in preventing bad outcomes from disease progression or unnecessary treatment side effects. The methods utilized in the work involve: (1) clinical and peripheral blood flow cytometry data (Immune Response In Scleroderma, IRIS) from consented patients followed at the Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center. (2) machine learning (Conditional Random Forests - CRF) coupled with Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) to identify subsets of FC variables that are highly effective in classifying ILD patients; and (3) stochastic simulation to design, train and validate ILD risk screening tools. RESULTS: Our hybrid analysis approach (CRF-GSEA) proved successful in predicting SSc patient ILD status with a high degree of success (>82 % correct classification in validation; 79 patients in the training data set, 40 patients in the validation data set). CONCLUSIONS: IRIS flow cytometry data provides useful information in assessing the ILD status of SSc patients. Our new approach combining Conditional Random Forests and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis was successful in identifying a subset of flow cytometry variables to create a screening tool that proved effective in correctly identifying ILD patients in the training and validation data sets. From a somewhat broader perspective, the identification of subsets of flow cytometry variables that exhibit coordinated movement (i.e., multi-variable up or down regulation) may lead to insights into possible effector pathways and thereby improve the state of knowledge of systemic sclerosis pathogenesis. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0722-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users