What Extension Personnel Should Know About Midwestern Goat Producers

The growth of the goat industry has created opportunities for producers looking for a profitable alternative enterprise. Little is known about goat production or educational needs of producers in Missouri and Arkansas. A survey of goat producers in Missouri and Arkansas addressed farm characteristics, product marketing characteristics, preferred information sources, and educational topics of interest for goat producers. A better understanding of goat production and producer needs can support Extension\u27s development of education programs to further develop the emerging goat industry

Effects of Age, Sex, and Neuropsychological Performance on Financial Decision-Making

The capacity to make sound financial decisions across the lifespan is critical for interpersonal, occupational, and psychological health and success. In the present study, we explored how healthy younger and older adults make a series of increasingly complex financial decisions. One-hundred sixteen healthy older adults, aged 56–90 years, and 102 college undergraduates, completed the Financial Decision-Making Questionnaire, which requires selecting and justifying financial choices across four hypothetical scenarios and answering questions pertaining to financial knowledge. Results indicated that Older participants significantly outperformed Younger participants on a multiple-choice test of acquired financial knowledge. However, after controlling for such pre-existing knowledge, several age effects were observed. For example, Older participants were more likely to make immediate investment decisions, whereas Younger participants exhibited a preference for delaying decision-making pending additional information. Older participants also rated themselves as more concerned with avoiding monetary loss (i.e., a prevention orientation), whereas Younger participants reported greater interest in financial gain (i.e., a promotion orientation). In terms of sex differences, Older Males were more likely to pay credit card bills and utilize savings accounts than were Older Females. Multiple positive correlations were observed between Older participants’ financial decision-making ability and performance on neuropsychological measures of non-verbal intellect and executive functioning. Lastly, the ability to justify one’s financial decisions declined with age, among the Older participants. Several of the aforementioned results parallel findings from the medical decision-making literature, suggesting that older adults make decisions in a manner that conserves diminishing cognitive resources

C-terminal Truncations of the Yeast Nucleoporin Nup145p Produce a Rapid Temperature-conditional mRNA Export Defect and Alterations to Nuclear Structure.

A screen for temperature-sensitive mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae defective in nucleocytoplasmic trafficking of poly(A)+ RNA has identified an allele of the NUP145 gene, which encodes an essential nucleoporin. NUP145 was previously identified by using a genetic synthetic lethal screen (E. Fabre, W. C. Boelens, C. Wimmer, I. W. Mattaj, and E. C. Hurt, Cell 78:275-289, 1994) and by using a monoclonal antibody which recognizes the GLFG family of vertebrate and yeast nucleoporins (S. R. Wente and G. Blobel, J. Cell Biol. 125:955-969, 1994). Cells carrying the new allele, nup145-10, grew at 23 and 30 degrees C but were unable to grow at 37 degrees C. Many cells displayed a modest accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA under permissive growth conditions, and all cells showed dramatic and rapid nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA following a shift to 37 degrees C. The mutant allele contains a nonsense codon which truncates the 1,317-amino-acid protein to 698 amino acids. This prompted us to examine the role of the carboxyl half of Nup145p. Several additional alleles that encode C-terminally truncated proteins or proteins containing internal deletions of portions of the carboxyl half of Nup145p were constructed. Analysis of these mutants indicates that some sequences between amino acids 698 and 1095 are essential for RNA export and for growth at 37 degrees C. In these strains, nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA and fragmentation of the nucleolus occurred rapidly following a shift to 37 degrees C. Constitutive defects in nuclear pore complex distribution and nuclear structure were also seen in these strains. Although cells lacking Nup145p grew extremely slowly at 23 degrees C and did not grow at 30 degrees C, efficient growth at 23 or 30 degrees C occurred as long as cells produced either the amino 58% or the carboxyl 53% of Nup145p. Strains carrying alleles of NUP145 lacking up to 200 amino acids from the carboxy terminus were viable at 37 degrees C but displayed nucleolar fragmentation and some nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA following a shift to 37 degrees C. Surprisingly, these strains grew efficiently at 37 degrees C in spite of a reduction in the level of synthesis of rRNAs to approximately 25% of the wild-type level

The KD Sr/Ca in cultured massive Porites spp. corals are reduced at low seawater pCO2

This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (award NE/I022973/1) to AAF and NA.Coral skeletal Sr/Ca has valuable potential as a proxy of sea surface temperatures (SSTs). However seawater pCO2 can influence skeletal Sr incorporation and Sr/Ca-SST calibrations derived from present day corals may not be applicable to ancient specimens or older sections of modern corals deposited under lower seawater pCO2 than the present day. In this study we analysed skeletal Sr/Ca in multiple genotypes of massive Porites spp. cultured over a range of seawater pCO2 (from 180 to 750 μatm) and temperature (25°C and 28°C). Multiple linear regression analysis indicates that the Sr/Ca aragonite partition coefficient, KD Sr/Ca is inversely related to seawater temperature and positively related to seawater pCO2 (equivalent to changes in skeletal Sr/Ca of 0.046 mmol mol-1 °C-1 and 0.0002 mmol mol–1 µatm-1 respectively). Applying present day Sr/Ca-SST equations to older coral skeletons growing at lower pCO2 could underestimate seawater temperatures. However KD Sr/Ca vary significantly between some coral genotypes cultured at the same seawater pCO2 indicating that other unidentified processes also influence skeletal Sr/Ca and it is unknown how these processes varied when ancient corals were deposited. We do not observe a significant relationship between KD Sr/Ca and coral calcification rate after combining all coral genotypes to allow identification of the correct KD Sr/Ca to apply to coral records.PostprintPeer reviewe

The remembering–imagining system

Remembering and imagining are intricately related, particularly in imagining the future: episodic future thinking. It is proposed that remembering the recent past and imagining the near future take place in what we term the remembering–imagining system. The remembering–imagining system renders recently formed episodic memories and episodic imagined near-future events highly accessible. We suggest that this serves the purpose of integrating past, current, and future goal-related activities. When the remembering–imagining system is compromised, following brain damage and in psychological illnesses, the future cannot be effectively imagined and episodic future thinking may become dominated by dysfunctional images of the future

Consumer Decision Making and Aging: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

We review existing knowledge about older consumers and decision making. We develop a conceptual framework that incorporates the notion of fit between individual characteristics, task demands and the contextual environment. When the fit is high, older consumers use their considerable knowledge and experience to compensate for the impact of any age‐related changes in abilities and resources. When the fit is relatively low, older consumers feel increased need to adapt their decision making processes. We discuss these consumer adaptations and propose a number of research questions related to the processes underlying them in order to contribute to a better understanding of how they can lead to more effective consumer decision making for older adults. We further consider some pragmatic implications of the adaptations for marketing management and public policy.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141554/1/jcpy2.pd

The genetic architecture of divergence between threespine stickleback species.

The genetic and molecular basis of morphological evolution is poorly understood, particularly in vertebrates. Genetic studies of the differences between naturally occurring vertebrate species have been limited by the expense and difficulty of raising large numbers of animals and the absence of molecular linkage maps for all but a handful of laboratory and domesticated animals. We have developed a genome-wide linkage map for the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), an extensively studied teleost fish that has undergone rapid divergence and speciation since the melting of glaciers 15,000 years ago. Here we use this map to analyse the genetic basis of recently evolved changes in skeletal armour and feeding morphologies seen in the benthic and limnetic stickleback species from Priest Lake, British Columbia. Substantial alterations in spine length, armour plate number, and gill raker number are controlled by genetic factors that map to independent chromosome regions. Further study of these regions will help to define the number and type of genetic changes that underlie morphological diversification during vertebrate evolution

The use of propensity scores to assess the generalizability of results from randomized trials

Randomized trials remain the most accepted design for estimating the effects of interventions, but they do not necessarily answer a question of primary interest: Will the program be effective in a target population in which it may be implemented? In other words, are the results generalizable? There has been very little statistical research on how to assess the generalizability, or “external validity,” of randomized trials. We propose the use of propensity-score-based metrics to quantify the similarity of the participants in a randomized trial and a target population. In this setting the propensity score model predicts participation in the randomized trial, given a set of covariates. The resulting propensity scores are used first to quantify the difference between the trial participants and the target population, and then to match, subclassify, or weight the control group outcomes to the population, assessing how well the propensity score-adjusted outcomes track the outcomes actually observed in the population. These metrics can serve as a first step in assessing the generalizability of results from randomized trials to target populations. This paper lays out these ideas, discusses the assumptions underlying the approach, and illustrates the metrics using data on the evaluation of a schoolwide prevention program called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports

A generalised module for the selective extracellular accumulation of recombinant proteins

Background: It is widely believed that laboratory strains of Escherichia coli, including those used for industrial production of proteins, do not secrete proteins to the extracellular milieu.Results: Here, we report the development of a generalised module, based on an E. coli autotransporter secretion system, for the production of extracellular recombinant proteins. We demonstrate that a wide variety of structurally diverse proteins can be secreted as soluble proteins when linked to the autotransporter module. Yields were comparable to those achieved with other bacterial secretion systems.Conclusions: The advantage of this module is that it relies on a relatively simple and easily manipulated secretion system, exhibits no apparent limitation to the size of the secreted protein and can deliver proteins to the extracellular environment at levels of purity and yields sufficient for many biotechnological applications