Empathic Neural Responses Predict Group Allegiance.

Watching another person in pain activates brain areas involved in the sensation of our own pain. Importantly, this neural mirroring is not constant; rather, it is modulated by our beliefs about their intentions, circumstances, and group allegiances. We investigated if the neural empathic response is modulated by minimally-differentiating information (e.g., a simple text label indicating another's religious belief), and if neural activity changes predict ingroups and outgroups across independent paradigms. We found that the empathic response was larger when participants viewed a painful event occurring to a hand labeled with their own religion (ingroup) than to a hand labeled with a different religion (outgroup). Counterintuitively, the magnitude of this bias correlated positively with the magnitude of participants' self-reported empathy. A multivariate classifier, using mean activity in empathy-related brain regions as features, discriminated ingroup from outgroup with 72% accuracy; the classifier's confidence correlated with belief certainty. This classifier generalized successfully to validation experiments in which the ingroup condition was based on an arbitrary group assignment. Empathy networks thus allow for the classification of long-held, newly-modified and arbitrarily-formed ingroups and outgroups. This is the first report of a single machine learning model on neural activation that generalizes to multiple representations of ingroup and outgroup. The current findings may prove useful as an objective diagnostic tool to measure the magnitude of one's group affiliations, and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce ingroup biases

Do Complexity Measures of Frontal EEG Distinguish Loss of Consciousness in Geriatric Patients Under Anesthesia?

While geriatric patients have a high likelihood of requiring anesthesia, they carry an increased risk for adverse cognitive outcomes from its use. Previous work suggests this could be mitigated by better intraoperative monitoring using indexes defined by several processed electroencephalogram (EEG) measures. Unfortunately, inconsistencies between patients and anesthetic agents in current analysis techniques have limited the adoption of EEG as standard of care. In attempts to identify new analyses that discriminate clinically-relevant anesthesia timepoints, we tested 1/f frequency scaling as well as measures of complexity from nonlinear dynamics. Specifically, we tested whether analyses that characterize time-delayed embeddings, correlation dimension (CD), phase-space geometric analysis, and multiscale entropy (MSE) capture loss-of-consciousness changes in EEG activity. We performed these analyses on EEG activity collected from a traditionally hard-to-monitor patient population: geriatric patients on beta-adrenergic blockade who were anesthetized using a combination of fentanyl and propofol. We compared these analyses to traditional frequency-derived measures to test how well they discriminated EEG states before and after loss of response to verbal stimuli. We found spectral changes similar to those reported previously during loss of response. We also found significant changes in 1/f frequency scaling. Additionally, we found that our phase-space geometric characterization of time-delayed embeddings showed significant differences before and after loss of response, as did measures of MSE. Our results suggest that our new spectral and complexity measures are capable of capturing subtle differences in EEG activity with anesthesia administration-differences which future work may reveal to improve geriatric patient monitoring

Diverse hypolithic refuge communities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys

Hyper-arid deserts present extreme challenges to life. The environmental buffering provided by quartz and other translucent rocks allows hypolithic microbial communities to develop on sub-soil surfaces of such rocks. These refuge communities have been reported, for many locations worldwide, to be predominantly cyanobacterial in nature. Here we report the discovery in Antarctica’s hyper-arid McMurdo Dry Valleys of three clearly distinguishable types of hypolithic community. Based on gross colonization morphology and identification of dominant taxa, we have classified hypolithic communities as Type I (cyanobacterial dominated), Type II (fungal dominated) and Type III (moss dominated). This discovery supports a growing awareness of the high biocomplexity in Antarctic deserts, emphasizes the possible importance of cryptic microbial communities in nutrient cycling and provides evidence for possible successional community processes within a cold arid landscape

Micro-eukaryotic diversity in hypolithons from Miers Valley, Antarctica

The discovery of extensive and complex hypolithic communities in both cold and hot deserts has raised many questions regarding their ecology, biodiversity and relevance in terms of regional productivity. However, most hypolithic research has focused on the bacterial elements of the community. This study represents the first investigation of micro-eukaryotic communities in all three hypolith types. Here we show that Antarctic hypoliths support extensive populations of novel uncharacterized bryophyta, fungi and protists and suggest that well known producer-decomposer-predator interactions may create the necessary conditions for hypolithic productivity in Antarctic deserts

Yang-Mills Instantons with Lorentz Violation

An analysis is performed of instanton configurations in pure Euclidean Yang-Mills theory containing small Lorentz-violating perturbations that maintain gauge invariance. Conventional topological arguments are used to show that the general classification of instanton solutions involving the topological charge is the same as in the standard case. Explicit solutions are constructed for general gauge invariant corrections to the action that are quadratic in the curvature. The value of the action is found to be unperturbed to lowest order in the Lorentz-violating parameters.Comment: 16 page

Evaluating Good Practice in Coaching Delivery between Governing Bodies of Sport and County Sports Partnerships UK

Introduction Between October 2011 and October 2012, 15.51 million people engaged in sport at least once per week, an increase of just above the targeted 1% rise from the previous year (Sport England, 2012). Additionally, there are more than 1.1 million people delivering coaching in the UK (North, 2010). Despite the considerable number of people impacted by the work which goes on between County Sport Partnerships (CSPs) and National Governing Bodies (NGBs) of sport, to date there have been no formal investigations into the effective functioning of these collaborations. Successful partnership working has long been considered of vital importance in other areas of sport development (Robson, 2008) with factors such as the pooling of expertise and resources being typically cited as potential benefits of such work. In light of this, the present project seeks: •To establish what impact a successful partnership between CSPs and NGBs should deliver for sports coaching •To determine the enablers for successful partnership working between CSPs and NGBs •To determine the key facilitators of successful partnership working between CSPs and NGBs •To determine the barriers to successful partnership working between CSPs and NGBs •To investigate the extent to which key stakeholders share a common understanding of the partnership and what is required to make the collaboration successful. Methods A standardized online questionnaire targeting nationwide responses from NGBs and CDMs on a range of aspects which have been shown to be critical to partnership working was completed by 36 respondents. In addition, 12 telephone interviews were conducted. Representatives included NGB officers (n = 6) and CDMs (n = 6). Results In total, there were 36 responses to the online questionnaire; 32.4%, (n = 12) from NGBs, 62.2% (n = 23) from CDMs with one ‘other’. These quantitative data revealed that respondents were generally happy with decision making processes, although CDMs perceived their influence to be greater than did their NGB counterparts. Examination of partnership characteristics showed consistent, strong, correlations between communication and four measures of effectiveness including satisfaction (Τ = 0.566) and ownership (Τ = 0.534). The quantitative data revealed a complicated relationship between perceived challenges and benefits. For partners to perceive that ‘there are many more benefits than difficulties’ concerning collaboration working, it is evident that respondents needed to perceive approximately four times as many benefits as costs. The qualitative data revealed that the vast majority of respondents considered the establishment of the ECN as a positive step. In particular, partners perceived the flexibility of the ECN enabled CDMs to provide a needs-led approach to coach development which greatly benefitted the workforce. The interview data also revealed that regular, informal and varied communication strategies are particularly well suited to effective partnership functioning in this area. It is these communication strategies which provide the foundation for the generation of trust and respect between partner agencies. Conclusions Findings demonstrate that CSPs and NGBs are committed to developing high quality coaching through a range of formal and non-formal opportunities. The ECN functions well as a flexible rather than a prescriptive template for CDM-NGB interaction allowing partnership arrangements to take place on a ‘needs-led’ localised basis. Respondent opinion indicates that the ECN should retain its focus on appointing key personnel to specific roles. Most notably, the leadership and management of partnerships is considered to be excellent across the respondent cohort. High quality leadership facilitates high levels of enthusiasm amongst partnership staff and allows a considerable degree of flexibility within the construction of partnerships themselves. As with many partnership-related studies, findings also demonstrate that central to partnership success is good communication. There is a need for CDMs to emphasise the benefits of partnership working in order to build commitment and ownership within NGBs thereby helping to offset the impact of negative barriers and challenges. At times, partner agencies need persuading of the value of partnership working and may be unwilling to invest in such relationships as a consequence of the perceived burdens of collaborative working. Funding remains a core challenge concerning all parties within the partnerships, particularly given the lack of funds available and the short-term nature of related decisions in sport in the UK.   Recommendations •CDMs should ensure that NGBs understand the role of CSPs in coach development by communicating key aims, objectives and functions. The ECN should be used a vehicle for doing this, whether implicitly or explicitly, depending on the situation. •It is important that CDMs continue to embrace the flexibility afforded by the ECN and focus on providing bespoke, local and needs-led coaching support. •It is important that CDMs understand the communication preferences of NGBs so that a range of regular, formal and informal communication strategies can be utilised to maximum effect. •CDMs should continue to demonstrate high levels of reliability and consistency within the context of partnership working in order to secure the trust, commitment and ownership of NGB partners. •CSPs should investigate strategies to increase the longevity of the roles of key partnership personnel. •CDMs should seek to promote and reinforce the benefits of partnership working with NGB officers. •CDMs and NGBs should consider how to maintain their engagement should strategic directions be altered. •CDMs should consider whether their coach development strategy could be tailored to better support the needs of a range of NGBs •Improved communication on behalf of NGBs would assist in the development of emerging collaborative relationships and help maintain clarity of roles and responsibilities for those already established with CDMs. •CDMs should continue to promote the role of CSPs in coaching development, both formally and informally, in order to underpin their relevance across the sporting landscape