Who Deserves My Trust? Cue-Elicited Feedback Negativity Tracks Reputation Learning in Repeated Social Interactions

Trust and trustworthiness contribute to reciprocal behavior and social relationship development. To make better decisions, people need to evaluate others’ trustworthiness. They often assess this kind of reputation by learning through repeated social interactions. The present event-related potential (ERP) study explored the reputation learning process in a repeated trust game where subjects made multi-round decisions of investment to different partners. We found that subjects gradually learned to discriminate trustworthy partners from untrustworthy ones based on how often their partners reciprocated the investment, which was indicated by their own investment decisions. Besides, electrophysiological data showed that the faces of the untrustworthy partners induced larger feedback negativity (FN) amplitude than those of the trustworthy partners, but only in the late phase of the game. The ERP results corresponded with the behavioral pattern and revealed that the learned trustworthiness differentiation was coded by the cue-elicited FN component. Consistent with previous research, our findings suggest that the anterior cue-elicited FN reflects the reputation appraisal and tracks the reputation learning process in social interactions

A NEW BLAST-RESISTANT DESIGN METHOD OF RC MEMBERS AND ITS APPLICATION IN PERFORMANCE BASED BLAST-RESISTANT DESIGN PROCEDURE

Design method is very essential and important for engineers. Present study proposes a new blast-resistant design method. First, two common used blast-resistant design methods are discussed. By analyzing the disadvantage of the common procedures, a new blast-resistant design method is proposed. The new design method has less design loops, as well as good control of the maximum displacement and ductility. Then, a dimensionless P-I diagram, which is convenient for design, is proposed based on the new design method. Finally, the new blast-resistant design method is applied in the performance-based blast-resistant design (PBBD) procedure described using a detailed design example. The design example shows that the proposed design method could be easily applied in the PBBD procedure

Размагничивание ферромагнитных частиц в пульпе

Розглядаючи механічне переміщення частинки феромагнетіка у вязкому середовищі під дією зовнішнього магнітного поля, отриманий закон її руху, і визначена частота зміни зовнішнього магнітного поля, коли частинка істотно відстає по фазі від вектора зовнішнього магнітного поля, що спричиняє можливість її розмагнічування в пульпі.Рассматривая механическое перемещение частицы ферромагнетика в вязкой среде под действием внешнего магнитного поля, получен закон ее движения, и определена частота изменения внешнего магнитного поля, когда частица существенно отстает по фазе от вектора внешнего магнитного поля, что обуславливает возможность ее размагничивания в пульпе

A Study on Influence of Minivan Front-End Design and Impact Velocity on Pedestrian Thorax Kinematics and Injury Risk

Thoracic injuries occur frequently in minivan-to-pedestrian impact accidents and can cause substantial fatalities. The present research work investigates the human thoracic responses and injury risks in minivan-to-pedestrian impacts, when changing the minivan front-end design and the impact velocity, by using computational biomechanics model. We employed three typical types of minivan model of different front-end designs that are quite popular in Chinese market and considered four impact velocities (20, 30, 40, and 50 km/h). The contact time of car to thorax region (CTCTR), thorax impact velocity, chest deformation, and thoracic injury risks were extracted for the investigation. The results indicate that the predicted pedestrian kinematics, injury responses, and thoracic injury risks are strongly affected by the variation of the minivan front-end design and impact velocity. The pedestrian thoracic injury risks increase with the increasing vehicle impact velocity. It is also revealed that the application of the extra front bumper is beneficial for reducing the thoracic injury risk, and a relatively flatter minivan front-end design gives rise to a higher thoracic injury risk. This study is expected to be served as theoretical references for pedestrian protection design of minivans

Elevated plasma levels of pigment epithelium-derived factor correlated with inflammation and lung function in COPD patients

Rationale: Pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF) is a 50 kD small secreting glycoprotein that participates in multiple physiological and pathological processes. Recent studies have reported that PEDF plays an important role in inflammatory responses in several diseases. However, the role of PEDF in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) remains unclear. Objective: The aim of the present study is to explore the potential relationship between PEDF and COPD. Methods: We used differential proteomics – stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture – to investigate protein expression profile changes in cigarette smoke extract-treated pulmonary cells and found that the neurotrophic and antiangiogenic protein PEDF was abnormally expressed. Furthermore, Western blotting was used to detect the expression of PEDF in the lung tissue of rats that were exposed to cigarette smoke. Eighty subjects between the ages of 40–90 years, including 20 healthy nonsmokers, ten smoking volunteers, and 50 COPD patients, were recruited from September 2012 until August 2013 in Sichuan Province, People’s Republic of China. We measured the plasma PEDF concentration and classic proinflammatory cytokines by multiplex enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In addition, we performed a spirometry examination to diagnose COPD patients and we also analyzed the correlation between PEDF and lung function. Results: First, we found that the expression of PEDF in cigarette smoke extract-treated cells increased 16.2-fold when compared with the control group. Next, we confirmed that 4 weeks’ exposure to cigarette smoke can upregulate PEDF levels in rat lung tissues. We also discovered that plasma PEDF in COPD patients was significantly increased when compared with either healthy nonsmoking or smoking subjects. Furthermore, circulating PEDF was correlated with inflammatory cytokine and blood neutrophil numbers, but it was reversely associated with a decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 second percent predicted. Conclusion: Our findings provide a novel link between PEDF and COPD. Elevated PEDF levels may be involved in promoting the development of COPD by performing proinflamma-tory functions

A comprehensive genome variation map of melon identifies multiple domestication events and loci influencing agronomic traits

Melon is an economically important fruit crop that has been cultivated for thousands of years; however, the genetic basis and history of its domestication still remain largely unknown. Here we report a comprehensive map of the genomic variation in melon derived from the resequencing of 1,175 accessions, which represent the global diversity of the species. Our results suggest that three independent domestication events occurred in melon, two in India and one in Africa. We detected two independent sets of domestication sweeps, resulting in diverse characteristics of the two subspecies melo and agrestis during melon breeding. Genome-wide association studies for 16 agronomic traits identified 208 loci significantly associated with fruit mass, quality and morphological characters. This study sheds light on the domestication history of melon and provides a valuable resource for genomics-assisted breeding of this important crop.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

A comprehensive genome variation map of melon identifies multiple domestication events and loci influencing agronomic traits

Melon is an economically important fruit crop that has been cultivated for thousands of years; however, the genetic basis and history of its domestication still remain largely unknown. Here we report a comprehensive map of the genomic variation in melon derived from the resequencing of 1,175 accessions, which represent the global diversity of the species. Our results suggest that three independent domestication events occurred in melon, two in India and one in Africa. We detected two independent sets of domestication sweeps, resulting in diverse characteristics of the two subspecies melo and agrestis during melon breeding. Genome-wide association studies for 16 agronomic traits identified 208 loci significantly associated with fruit mass, quality and morphological characters. This study sheds light on the domestication history of melon and provides a valuable resource for genomics-assisted breeding of this important crop.This work was supported by funding from the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (to Yongyang Xu, S.H., Z.Z. and H.W.), the China Agriculture Research System (CARS-25 to Yongyang Xu and H.W.), the Leading Talents of Guangdong Province Program (00201515 to S.H.), the Shenzhen Municipal (The Peacock Plan KQTD2016113010482651 to S.H.), the Dapeng district government, National Natural Science Foundation of China (31772304 to Z.Z.), the Science and Technology Program of Guangdong (2018B020202007 to S.H.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31530066 to S.H.), the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFD0101007 to S.H.), USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative (2015-51181-24285 to Z.F.), the European Research Council (ERC-SEXYPARTH to A.B.), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (AGL2015–64625-C2-1-R to J.G.-M.), Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D 2016–2010 (SEV-2015–0533 to J.G.-M.), the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya to J.G.-M. and the German Science Foundation (SPP1991 Taxon-OMICS to H.S.)